Chapter 1: Secrets

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It was early morning in the Hoofington Resort lobby. The smell of pancakes and various fruits came from the hotel’s restaurant as it prepared breakfast for any guest who might stop by. The lobby itself was decorated with ornate polished wood and brass ornaments. It was no Canterlot hotel but the Hoofington Resort was the finest inn the town of Hoofington had to offer.

Only a few ponies were about. Mostly staff or a guest or two checking out early to get a jump on the day’s plans. And not one of them thought anything of the filly in the bellhop outfit entering the door marked ‘employees only.’

Inside the staff room her purple eyes scanned the room until she found what she was looking for. The filly went over to the key box and put down the suitcase in her mouth just long enough to take a set of master keys.

Across the room the morning shift manager watched the orange pegasus filly with a violet mane as she made her way over to the service elevator. The stallion was about to speak up when the filly noticed the room service carts on her own. She examined them for a moment before tossing her briefcase on the bottom rack of one of the carts, and then took the cart into the service elevator, even giving him a smile as the elevator doors closed.

The stallion gave an annoyed sigh. He didn’t mind that he had a new filly on his shift to manage, but he made a mental promise to chew out his boss for hiring a new pony to his shift and then not bothering to tell him about it. He watched the elevator’s indicator until it showed the filly had gone to the fifth floor, the floor he knew the meal cart she had taken was supposed to go. Content that whomever the new kid was she knew what she was doing the shift manager made a mental note to try and catch her name before day’s end. But as long as there was work for the bellhops to do he wasn’t about to get in their way for something so trivial, so he returned his attention to his own work.

The elevator doors opened and the pegasus filly stood ready to push her service cart out into the hallway, but she hesitated. Her pause lasted only a moment before a mare’s voice whispered in her ear, “Floor’s all set. Clear to proceed.”

With that the young pegasus pushed the cart out into the hall and started looking at the numbers on the doors. First she found the door that’s numbers matched the card on the cart, the destination for the meal under the pan on the top of the cart. She pounded the door and called out, “Room service! Just leave the cart in the hall when you’re done and somepony will pick it up later.” With that she took her briefcase from the bottom rack and hurried down the hall to her true destination.

“Thank you…? Huh didn’t even wait for a tip,” the stallion who answered the door said to an empty hall when he opened the door expecting to find a bellhop but finding only the service cart with his order waiting.

The young pegasus bellhop sat outside another door, suitcase in mouth, waiting. She didn’t have to wait long before she heard what she was waiting for, the sound of running water. Placing the fifth floor master key in the door’s lock and tightening the muscles in her throat in an odd way, trying to make herself sound more like a colt than a filly when she spoke, she said, “Maintenance! I’m coming in to change the batteries in the smoke detector!”

“Stay out! I just got in the shower!” a male voice too gruff to even belong to a pony responded.

“Great! Then I won’t even be in your way!” the orange filly responded, opening the door anyway.

“I said stay out! I’ll complain to your manager!” the voice in the shower insisted.

“Go ahead and complain to my manager. But he’s always backed me up on changing the smoke detector batteries on schedule before, I bet he’ll do the same today.” The pegasus filly responded, doing her best to maintain her colt voice impression with a suitcase hanging from her jaw.

“Gah, fine just don’t touch my stuff,” the voice in the shower relented.

“Would never dream of it sir,” the filly responded with a slight grin that said otherwise.

This time a male voice came through the radio piece hidden in the filly’s ear, and it said, “Should be under the bed.”

Nodding pointlessly to the empty hotel room, the young pegasus looked under the bed, where she found a suitcase just like the one she was carrying in her mouth. Ignoring the suitcase under the bed for the time being, she set her own down next to the bed, then climbed up onto the bed and set her sights on the smoke detector on the ceiling above.

With a wing-boosted bounce, she reached it and clamped on to its sides with her hooves. It was a hard object to grasp, but with the downward thrust from her wings canceling out most of her weight, holding on to it was a manageable task. She used her mouth to open the battery compartment and yanked the battery out, then stuck her muzzle into one of the pockets of her bellhop outfit and pulled out another battery. Carefully, the filly pushed the battery into the slot in the smoke detector, then looked over her hoofwork. With the exception of some small slits in its side, the new battery looked just like the one she’d dropped to the bed below.

“Testing the new battery, it’s going to get loud for a second.” She said with her colt impression voice, loud enough that even anyone in the neighboring rooms could hear. Then she closed the battery compartment, folded her ears flat to help protect them and pressed the small red button on the side of the smoke detector labeled ‘test.’ For the fraction of a second she held the button down the smoke detector sounded its earsplitting siren.

“Yeah it works,” the mare’s voice groaned through the radio in the filly’s ear.

With the first task complete the filly let go of the smoke detector and let herself fall to the bed below. Taking a moment to tighten the sheets on the bed, even making it neater than she’d found it, and to snatch the original battery from the smoke detector into one of her pockets. Admiring her hoofwork the filly thought to herself. If this whole secret agent thing doesn’t work out maybe I really should try being a bellhop.

Finally she lowered her briefcase to the floor, and slid it under the bed, replacing the guest’s briefcase with her own. Taking the swapped briefcase’s handle in her mouth, she started for the door. She was reaching up to open the handle when her heart skipped a beat as she heard the water from the bathroom turn off.

The filly quickly opened the door and darted out into the hall as quick as she could, moving as swiftly as she could without letting her hoofsteps hit the carpeted floor too hard or too loud.

“Left, last door on the right,” the female voice from her radio whispered in her ear, as the filly neared a juncture in the hallways.

As soon as the young pegasus turned the corner she broke into a full gallop, deciding that she was far enough now that the carpet alone was enough to muffle her hoofsteps. The last door on the right was clearly marked as a stairwell.

Despite her apparent haste, the filly pressed the handle bar to the stairwell door down gently before darting inside. She also set the briefcase down just long enough to grab the door’s handle from the other side. Twisting the handle down and shutting the door carefully so it made no noise as it closed and latched. Taking up the briefcase again, she ran up the stairs as quickly as she could.

The filly paused again as she neared a door marked ‘roof access.’ Though her interest was in the small green box beside the door. She dropped the hotel’s master keys and the battery from the smoke detector in the box before taking the briefcase back up and opening the door to the roof.

The young pegasus burst onto the roof and waiting for her was a pegasus stallion with a white coat and blue mane, clad in radiant golden armor that marked him as a royal guard. The stallion was also hitched to a pegasus chariot, built in the golden style of Canterlot, the capital of Equestria.

The orange filly jumped into the chariot and grabbed hold of the rim. The stallion wasted no time braking into a gallop and flapping his wings, hauling the chariot and its passenger into the sky. The filly waited only long enough for the jarring sensation of acceleration to fade before turning to the bench on the right side of the chariot. Pressing her hooves against two seemingly ornate decorations in the base of the bench the top popped up, revealing a hidden compartment below the seat. She put the briefcase in the compartment and closed it.

With the briefcase taken care of the filly turned her attention to the other bench and unlatched a similar compartment. She then took her bellhop uniform off and stuffed it in the compartment while pulling out the dress she found waiting inside.

It had been maybe fifteen seconds since they had left the hotel roof when the two pegasi heard an enraged yell from below. The mare’s voice giggled a little as it spoke through the radio, “If you didn’t hear that, I think he noticed the swap.”

The filly hurried to finish putting on the dress and slammed the compartment shut, and then laid down on the right bench while trying to look appropriately tired for the early hour despite the adrenaline flowing through her system.

A minute latter a male griffin came flying up to them and addressed the pegasus pulling the chariot, “You there! I’ve been robed!”

“I’m sorry to hear that sir, but I’m on contract duty foalsitting this brat for some self important Canterlot VIP today,” the stallion said sounding board out of his mind. Then immediately pointing to a building below and behind he added, “I’m fairly sure that’s the Hoofington guard station. If you file the report with them I’m sure they’d be more than happy to have somepony look into it for you.”

“I don’t need to file a report! I need to know if you’ve seen anyone with a briefcase in the last minute or two!” the griffin yelled, already looking the chariot over and frowning on seeing only a pegasus filly dressed as if she belonged in a ballroom.

“Hmm… We passed a couple of pegasi a few minutes ago but I don’t remember seeing any briefcase,” the stallion offered, pointing to two colorful dots in the sky behind them.

“How about you? You see if they had anything?” the griffin asked the filly in the chariot, using opportunity as an excuse to more closely look over the chariot itself.

You want high-and-mighty-snob-brat huh? I can do that. The filly thought to herself as she conjured up the image of a certain pink earth pony filly in her mind. One that she felt fit that description perfectly. Trying her best to impersonate said pony’s way of speaking the pegasus filly answered, “Sorry, I was too busy thinking about what I’m going to do today to pay any attention to the likes of them.”

The griffin snarled under his breath and departed, looking to the ground as he flew off.

A few minutes latter the griffin returned to the hotel. The moment the griffin was out of sight the pegasus stallion dropped low and changed his heading some, aiming south of Canterlot.

A moment of silently staring at her dress later and the filly had to ask, “Captain Cloud Wall, why do you have my flower girl dress from Cadence’s wedding?”

The stallion laughed before he gave his reply, “I may lead a shadow ops unit but we are actualy royal guards too you know. I was at the reception as security and I ran into the mare who made that dress. So I pointed you out to her and told her some story about having a niece your age who was suppose to be a flower girl soon too and asked if she’d make a dress like yours for me. I thought it would be a fitting addition to the costume collection, just in case I needed to pass you off as a Canterlot pony or something. Oh and good job in there today.”

“Thanks.”

* * * * * * *

It was still morning by the time the two pegasi approached another small town, this one called Ponyville. The buildings of the town were mostly of wooden construction, with thatched roofs. The occasional standout building spotted the town, like the one building that looked like a life sized gingerbread house, or a large tree with windows and a balcony protruding from it.

“Scootaloo, drop zone incoming,” Captain Cloud Wall said over the winds.

The orange filly stood up at the sound of her name. She had long since returned the flower girl dress to its hidden compartment and now only wore a purple helmet with two white stripes down the middle. Scootaloo moved dangerously close to the back edge of the pegasus chariot and opened her wings. For a moment she savored the feel of the wind in her face, her tail, and around her wings. If not for the weight on her hooves it felt like flying, a feat she herself was not yet capable of.

The chariot dipped below rooftop level and flew through an alleyway. Scootaloo took one last step backwards and fell from the chariot’s rider platform. A few beats of her wings were all it took to correct her aim as she fell towards her target. Sitting atop a pile of crates was a blue scooter with red wheels and Scootaloo landed on it, bracing her legs against the baseboard and handlebars simultaneously. The forward momentum from her fall launched the scooter off its hiding place and down to the alleyway below. Scootaloo made a hard right turn and shot down a different alleyway, while Captain Cloud Wall continued straight and pulled up, back into the open sky above.

With the dismount hidden in the alleys nopony noticed that the royal guard flying above had lost his passenger. Scootaloo emerged from the alleyway onto the dirt road streets of Ponyville, racing through her hometown.

As she arrived at her house Scootaloo swung around to the back door, where she took off the helmet and hung it on the handlebars of the scooter, knowing that they weren’t truly her own but, like the dress she’d used earlier, were only replicas of her scooter and helmet. She darted into and through her house, finding her actual scooter and helmet waiting just inside the front door, right where she’d left them. And more importantly so were her saddlebags with all her school supplies, lunch and homework. Properly outfitted for class she used her wings to push her scooter out the front door.

* * * * * * *

With the excitement of the morning long over, and the fact that she had woken up well before dawn to get dragged to another town and back, Scootaloo was beyond tiered sitting in her seat listening to Miss Cheerilee read from a history book. Thankfully she and Cheerilee had long since come to an understanding of each other. As long as Scootaloo turned in work with passing grades in general Cheerilee usually turned a blind eye to the filly sleeping through history class when she thought it was too boring.

A hoof slammed down on the desk startling Scootaloo awake. “Care to repeat what I just said?” the teacher asked the drowsy pegasus filly.

Scootaloo’s eyes darted to the chalkboard for a clue only to find a math problem written on it. Her body clock yelled that something was wrong, there was no way she’d slept through recess and into math class. The filly’s eyes found the wall clock, which said she had done just that. Turning her head to the window she grinned. “Something like, let’s play a trick on Scootaloo and see if we can make her think she slept through recess,” she finally answered her teacher.

“What makes you think you didn’t?” Cheerilee asked, grinning back and her student.

“You forgot to change the clock on the clock tower too.” Scootaloo answered, pointing out the window to the tower that said it was an hour earlier then the wall clock in the room did.

Cheerilee both sighed and smiled as she responded, “Well, if nothing else I guess I’m teaching you to be observant. Featherweight can you change the clock back, everypony get your history books back out. Now I was talking about the trade treaty of…”

Cheerilee continued her lesson but Scootaloo was too tired to care about boring old names and dates. The exciting parts of history were the adventurous stories of exploration and war, not the parts about political deals or who was a famous artist that died long before she was born. So the filly planted her face firmly back into her pillow of a history book.

Lunch had helped Scootaloo get back her youthful energy and the rest of the school day proceeded as any other. Until Cheerilee dismissed class for the day but asked her to stay for a moment. Scootaloo even received a worried glance from her two best friends when their teacher shooed them out of the schoolhouse so she could speak with Scootaloo alone.

“Scootaloo you’re worrying me. That’s the fifth time in the last two weeks you’ve come to school tired like that,” the teacher voiced her concerns.

“Sorry. I’ve had some… chores around the house lately… and I don’t get to choose when they happen or how long they take to finish, sometimes they keep me up late. ” Scootaloo answered, staring at the floor, unable to look her teacher in the eye while lying to her. However, the apology was truly sincere, she really didn’t mean to treat her teacher like this, but she had long known that some secrets were worth keeping and her teacher didn’t need to know what was really keeping her up at odd hours.

“Then maybe I should talk to your father, so he’ll stop giving you things to do when you should be in bed.” Cheerilee half-threatened, half-bluffed, as she knew how much of a pain it was to schedule a parent teacher meeting with the filly’s dad.

As much as Scootaloo hated lying to her teacher’s face she knew this next lie had to be delivered boldly if it was going to work. Looking up with her best poker face and trying to purge any emotion from her voice she said, “Talk to him all you want, but he’s going to back me up on this one.” Scootaloo was only half bluffing really. She knew that her dad would excuse her behavior to Miss Cheerilee. But if the matter was brought to her dad’s attention he would investigate, and Scootaloo knew she couldn’t keep secrets from her dad. He would find out the truth, one way or another. That thought made a shiver run down her spine and a drop of sweat form on her forehead.

Cheerilee stared at the filly for a moment, knowing her student was hiding something. But she also couldn’t help but remember the few times she had spoken with Scootaloo’s father. He had always been aloof, only seeming to care about his daughter’s behavior if it was hurting the quality of her work. What little evidence the schoolteacher had said that Scootaloo was telling the truth, her father probably would just dismiss the complaint. One more chance Scootaloo, I’ll give you one more chance. Cheerilee thought to herself as she conceded. “It’s not healthy for a filly your age to suffer sleep deprivation. Please get to bed on time,” she finally said, opening the door and allowing her student to leave.

Scootaloo rushed home as quickly as her wing-powered scooter allowed. Bursting in her front door she let her scooter fall to the side, with one quick motion she tossed her helmet onto the couch as she ran past it heading for the stairs. Upstairs and in front of the door to her room was where her haste finally abated as she pushed her door open.

She didn’t enter her room, for she knew the nets lining the ceiling weren’t as ornate as they appeared, and each and every one of them was linked to a booby trap. Whether it was the pressure plate under the yellow flower rug or the all but invisible trip lines wired around her room.

Scootaloo knew where all the traps were, mainly because she’d set them herself. Of course, she was in too much of a hurry to walk carefully through her own traps, so she began flapping her wings. Her wings might not have been able to lift her off the ground but they could cancel out most of her weight. With a single wing-boosted leap she cleared her room and landed on her deck by the window.

First she slid her schoolbags off, setting them on the edged of the deck she was standing on, doing so she noticed something outside her window. Sitting on the outside part of her windowsill was a small pouch. Scootaloo opened the window just long enough to bring the bag inside, and set it down on her desk once she had stepped down from the desktop and onto her chair.

The clatter of coins came from the pouch when she set it down. Ignoring the pouch itself, she moving her attention to the small note stuck in its drawstring. Freeing and unfolding it Scootaloo found a simple message saying, ‘4 the usual tree, tomorrow.’

That was fast, Cloud Wall. She thought and she pushed the pouch aside, she could worry about that latter. Ripping the note in two, she tossed the halves into her trashcan. Finally she brought her attention to the one thing that needed to be dealt with right now, her homework.

Scootaloo had less then an hour if she was going to meet her friends at the clubhouse and she was determined to not be late. Today was her day to choose what they did after all, and time was of the essence if they were going to pull off her plan for the day. And so she rushed through her schoolwork, if she couldn’t make an educated guess in under five seconds she just made something up, so that every question had an answer.

When she finished Scootaloo looked down at her work and frowned. Already knowing the piece of paper with her history work had too many guessed answers, and Cheerilee was probably going to give it back and demand she do it over. But at least the filly had something to turn in tomorrow, and that meant she wouldn’t be docked points off her final grade for being late, even if she did have to redo the assignment.

Regardless, she stuffed her books and now complete homework into her schoolbags and set them on the floor next to her desk. The coin pouch was the only thing left on the desk. At least it was until Scootaloo climbed up from her chair and joined it on the desktop. Taking the pouch in her mouth she started flapping her wings again and leapt across the room to land on her bed. From there she walked onto her dresser and then down to a safe spot on the floor in front of her dresser.

Scootaloo pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside were spare sheets for her bed, folding them in half, revealed what was below, that being rows of pouches just like the one grasped in her mouth. Four of the rows had ten coin pouches each. She placed the newest one on the fifth row, bringing it up to eight.

Officially Scootaloo wasn’t part of Captain Cloud Wall’s team, and as a civilian hire free agent she had to be paid off the books, on a per mission basis. The filly’s life’s work may only totaled a few months worth of an adult’s salary but it was still more money than she knew what to do with, literally. Mostly because she didn’t have an allowance and the first time she bought something for herself her father had noticed it and asked how she came up with the money to buy a pair of night vision goggles. Scootaloo had to tell her dad some story about helping her friends sell apple juice and buying them from the local costume shop. In hindsight she was surprised her excuse worked, as her dad of all ponies should have been able to tell the difference between real night vision goggles and costume ones in a heartbeat. But whatever the reason her dad hadn’t bothered to press the issue.

Not that it mattered, the event had taught her she couldn’t just spend what she earned on things that could lay around the house to be found. So most of the coin pouches were still untouched, only a few had their contents spent and even then mostly on little things like the occasional treat or supplies she could leave at the clubhouse that she shared with her friends.

The thing that mattered most to Scootaloo about the collection wasn’t the useless money she couldn’t spend, but the pouches themselves. For she had long ago adopted the practice of returning the emptied pouches that had held the pay for what she considered failed missions, so the coin pouches now arrayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer represented her successful mission. She looked down at the collection and thought to herself. Two more, then he can know. Fifty can prove I won’t mess up anymore. Scootaloo folded the blankets back and closed the drawer.

She put on the saddlebags that had her crusading supplies and with one final hop she cleared the only trip wire between herself and the door. Leaving her room she glanced down the hall and spotted the open door to the master bedroom. Still open, just as it always was. Scootaloo couldn’t see what was inside from this angle, but she didn’t need to. That room never changed. Save the dust on the floor that betrayed the hoofprints, showing that once in a while somepony went to and from the bed but everything else in the room hadn’t been touched in years.

Looking at the door she bowed her head and whispered to the emptiness, “Dad’s house.” And a memory played in the back of Scootaloo’s mind.

* * * * * *

It was a bright day, a cheerful day. A gray pegasus mare with a yellow mane and a wall-eyed stare stood at the front door to her house. Scootaloo had just finished signing for a package when the mail mare cheerfully said, “I promise, one of these days I’m going to get your dad’s signature.”

“Ha, good luck with that! You know I’m the only one who really lives here,” Scootaloo joked back.

The two of them giggled for a moment. Then the mail mare’s laughter turned nervous as she added, “Good joke… I’d better be going.”

Scootaloo closed the door slowly as the burning sensation on the back of her neck made her realize that today of all days was one of the rare days her dad was actually home. Finally turning around she confirmed that her dad was standing right behind her.

Her father then gave her the sternest reminder that he owned the house. Scootaloo remembered the anger in his eyes hurt her far more then one of his old spankings, and that she wished he’d have just struck her instead of looking at her with those eyes burning with rage. But he hadn’t done that to her in years by then, she was too old for that kind of discipline now, and he had trusted her for far too long for physical pain to be of any use disciplining his daughter.

When he finished his rant, when for a the briefest of moments Scootaloo thought her dad might be angry enough to hit her anyway, she cringed, closed her eyes and turned away, ready to take the blow she had preyed for. Only to be pulled into the most loving embrace she could remember receiving from her dad. The words her dad spoke next were still clear in the filly’s mind, “I am so sorry I’m not around enough, that you’d feel alone enough to even make that joke. But know I am your father and I will always love you. Even if the needs of the world keep me from you physically, you are never alone in spirit.”

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo looked away from the master bedroom. She had known long before that day why things had to be this way. But that was the day she truly came to understand that it was because her dad loved her that he was never there for her. The memories of love were dulled from time but they were enough, at least until the next time her dad remembered to show his love for her in some way other than making sure she had a roof over her head and food to eat. Smiling briefly and weakly, she even giggled a little as she whispered what her dad usually said to say ‘goodbye’ to her, “Have fun. Guard the fort. Don’t burn the house down.” With that she headed downstairs.

With her scooter back in her possession and helmet retrieved from the couch, Scootaloo stepped out into the daylight once more and closed the door to her house. The cares of the past melted away as she opened her wings and smiled a truly happy smile. She had ten minutes to get to the crusader’s clubhouse on the other side of town and she knew she could do it and doing so was even going to be fun.

Chapter 2: Crusading

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Scootaloo and her friends were currently in the rolling hills north of Ponyville. The orange pegasus was on her scooter, pulling her friends in the little red wagon hitched to said scooter with the thrust from her wings.

“That it! That’s one of the places you saw with Rainbow Dash, right?” the white unicorn filly, with the pink and purple mane, asked.

“Yes Sweetie Belle, that’s it,” Scootaloo answered.

“Why couldn’t ya find someplace with a road to it? Ah’m getting real tiered of getting shook numb riding through rough fields like this,” complained the yellow earth pony, who’s red mane was adorned with a pink bow.

“Apple Bloom. If ponies came here all the time we wouldn’t be exploring,” Sweetie Belle guessed even though the question had been aimed at Scootaloo. That answer sounded as good as any she could come up with so Scootaloo kept quiet as she continued to power their preferred mode of transportation.

That bought the young pegasus some silence while she pulled the group up the last hill, until they came to a stop at the top of the hill and just outside a large stone building. The stones of the building had long since been bleached white from the sun. Old stain glass windows adorned some of the frames, although some of the windows had succumbed to the ravages of time.

Scootaloo rested her wings for a moment as her friends stretched away the numbness from sitting in a prolonged rattling metal wagon ride. Apple Bloom opened her saddlebags and passed out some apple tarts for the three friends to snack on while they rested.

Once the break was over Apple Bloom looked up at the impressive building and smiled. “Today is the day crusaders. Today we will find our special talent and earn our cutie marks as…” the earth pony began. “Cutie mark crusader explorers!” all three fillies called out together.

Going inside the three young ponies found rows of bookshelves. Some of the books seemed to have enchantments protecting them from decay while others had disintegrated to dust on the shelves over the years. A balcony from a second level overlooked the main chamber and several hallways were off to the sides. Overhead the wooden roof seemed to have tolerated the years of neglect fairly well but some small parts had collapsed, leaving debris on some of the bookshelves below.

“What is this place, a library?” Scootaloo asked, a tone of disappointment at the seemingly mundane nature of the ruin hung in her voice.

“I think it’s a monastery,” Sweetie Belle’s voice squeaked a little as she answered.

“Monastery? What’s that?”

“Ah think it’s what they had before libraries,” Apple Bloom gave the short answer.

Sweetie Belle expanded on the short answer, “Yeah, back when books were expensive to make, small towns couldn’t afford to get a lot of books. So they would work together with the nearby towns to build a monastery, usually somewhere between them. Then ponies would come live here while they learned about whatever they wanted to know. Once they invented the printing press books became cheap enough that even small towns could afford to make their own libraries so places like this weren’t needed anymore.”

“Sweetie Belle why do you know that?” Scootaloo couldn’t help but ask.

“Because I don’t fall asleep in class.” Sweetie’s reply wasn’t meant to be a jab at her friend but Scootaloo lowered her ears in embarrassment anyway.

Scootaloo spotted something to change the subject with, as a gentle breeze turned the pages of two books on a nearby table. “Hey, somepony was here recently.”

“Why do ya think that?” Apple Bloom asked her friend.

“Because somepony wiped the dust off this half of the table. They must have been reading these two books.” Scootaloo answered, motioning to the evidence before her.

“Well, what are they?” Sweetie Belle asked as she trotted up beside her pegasus friend and began to examine one of the books.

“This one looks like an old to new equestrian translation book.” Scootaloo said as she looked down at the mix of symbols like horseshoes, lightning bolts, stars and accompanied by alphabet letters. Both written languages were still taught in Equestria, so she could read both sets of symbols and they seemed to repeat the same thing in both written sets. “They must have been using this to read the other one. What is it?” Scootaloo asked, noticing that the book Sweetie was examining had only the old runic writing on its pages.

Sweetie Belle closed the book and read the title aloud. “War of the Pegasus Tribe.”

“Oh that’s Commander Tempest’s story,” Scootaloo remarked, beaming that she remembered it.

“How do you know that?” Sweetie Belle asked, with a curious eyebrow raised.

“Didn’t Cheerilee talk about it last month in history?” Scootaloo asked, no longer sure when or where she’d heard the story.

“Yeah… but you sleep through history class,” Sweetie Belle responded, causing Apple Bloom to giggle at the honest observation.

“Only when it’s boring. And war isn’t boring,” Scootaloo defended herself. Noticing something beyond her unicorn friend the young pegasus, pointed while adding, “And neither is that!”

Her friends turned to look at the wall Scootaloo had pointed to and found a painting almost the size of the wall it had once been attached to. Nether filly was sure if the landscape depicted in the old painting was of a real landmark or a fictional place, and not knowing the place made it impossible to tell if the sun setting the light in the scene was a sunset or a sunrise. Apple Bloom was the first to ask what they were looking for. “A giant painting? What’s interesting about that?”

“Not the painting. Look at the holes in it, there’s a hall or something hidden behind it!” Scootaloo beamed as she answered.

The table with the books was abandoned as the three fillies darted over to the painting, and pushing the giant painting aside they found a stairwell leading downward. Another detail caught the eyes of the three young ponies, that being, there were no torch stands in the subterranean tunnel. With no doubt in their minds that they had found a secret passage the three crusaders grinned at each other.

Scootaloo opened her saddlebag and pulled out three head-mounted flashlights. With the cloth straps of the lights secured, the three friends descended the stone steps into the darkness below.

* * * * * * *

“Ah can’t believe we haven’t found anything down here!” Apple Bloom complained as they walked down another dark stone hallway, after having passed through three essentially empty rooms.

“I can,” Sweetie Belle remarked. The look drawn from her earth pony friend prompted the unicorn to explain her reasoning. “These ruins have to be hundreds of years old and that secret entrance wasn’t exactly well hidden. So I’m not surprised that we aren’t the first to find this basement. I bet anything interesting was taken by other explorers long before we got here.”

“How’s this for interesting?” Scootaloo’s voice made the other two crusaders realize they’d entered into another room, and that this room was full of statues. The statues were larger than life and while the one Scootaloo was looking up at when she spoke was of a pegasus there were also statues of earth ponies and unicorns.

The three friends spent a few minutes examining the status, many having been built in heroic poses, until Apple Bloom spoke up. “Darn, nothing. Any of you get a cutie mark?”

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle looked to their flanks only to find they still lacked any magical symbol telling them they had found their special talent and their purpose in life.

“No,” was Sweetie’s reply, as her ears fell flat in disappointment.

“Nope,” Scootaloo answered in a casual tone, hardly upset at all. Then motioning to the doorway she was near she added, “This room isn’t enough. Let’s keep exploring.”

With that the three friends ventured deeper into the ruins.

* * * * * * *

Four mostly empty rooms later and the cutie mark crusaders were venturing down yet another hallway. Until they found their path blocked by a large and ornately carved stone door. Three lines divided the pattern into three sections.

“Is that Arcanous?” Sweetie Belle asked, looking to the section on the lower right part of the door. Looking to the upper section and then the lower left she added, “Who’s that? And what’s with the star chart in the top part?”

Apple Bloom answered for the section of the patter on the lower left that depicted an earth pony mare surrounded by plants. “Ah think that’s the earth mother. Granny Smith told me stories about her. Ah think they went something like-”

“-When the world was new, the spirit of the earth awoke and found nothing but stone, and sea. She was not happy that the world was lifeless, and so she made the plants and the wild animals of nature. But it wasn’t enough. Nature was wild and untamed on its own. It needed someone to guide and to watch over it. So she gave a part of her own spirit to created the earth ponies, and that’s why we earth ponies have such a strong connection to the earth and to the plants she made.”

“Wow,” was all Apple Bloom’s friends said as she finished her story.

Apple Bloom didn’t let the silence last as she pointed to the section in the lower right depicting a unicorn stallion surrounded to all kinds of swirls and sparkles and asked, “Sweetie Belle you called this guy by name. Do you know his story?”

Sweetie Belle nodded and smiled as she launched into the story she had head, “Yes, Arcanous, The father of magic. The story I was told said that he was the sprit of magic itself. And one day he looked forth from the realm of magic as saw the world, it was teaming with life but it’s magic was wild and chaotic. He saw ponies trying to tame the land, but they lacked the ability to interact with magic. He thought to himself that ‘no good could come from that.’ So he used his magic to make a new breed of ponies, the unicorns. He taught them to use magic as he could, so they could bring order to the young and chaotic world.”

With Sweetie Belle’s story finished the two crusaders who had told their stories looked to the top section. Finally Sweetie conceded, “I’m not sure why there’s a star map up there.”

Unicorn and earth pony both looked to their pegasus friend. Scootaloo shook her head, not because she didn’t know what her friends wanted to hear, but because she did. She had already figured out the pattern to the door’s ornate design.

Scootaloo gave a weak smile and then answered, “That’s not a star map. Every pegasus knows that constellation. The constellation of the celestial pegasus. Her story says that she was flying among the heavens when she noticed the world below. Looking down on it she saw the earth ponies and unicorns, and she could tell they had good spirits. But they were hiding in caves from the terrors of the sky, dragons, gargoyles, harpies and other demons of the sky. So long as they hid the ponies of the world couldn’t tame the world before them. So she came down into the world and gave birth to the first mortal pegasi. When her children were numerous enough to be called a tribe, she taught them to fight and commanded them to be the guardians of the skies. Then she left them, returning to the heavens. But she gave the pegasi one last promise before she left, that when any pegasus, who lived their life doing what was right and just, died that she would call their spirit up the heavens to fly among the stars with her in eternal paradise.”

The other crusaders stared at their pegasus friend as they put the pieces together in their mind. Apple Bloom became the first of Scootaloo’s friends to solve the riddle by saying, “So the door, it has the three tribes origin stories.”

The three young ponies’ eyes were drawn to the other thing in each section of the design, a single hoofprint. “Ya don’t think…” Apple Bloom said as she stood up on her hind legs, reached up and with a little difficulty placed her small hoof in the shape that would have been more accommodating to an adult pony’s hoof than her youthful one.

Sweetie Belle shrugged and reached up to place her hoof in the hoofprint beside the image of Arcanous, saying, “Couldn’t hurt to try.” Though a shiver ran down her spine, as her experience had long taught her that any crusading activity had a good chance of finding a way to be painful.

“Ready?” Scootaloo asked her friends. They broadened their shoulders in response, so that Scootaloo could climb up on them, to reach the hoofprint in the upper section, below the celestial pegasus.

The moment Scootaloo fit her hoof into the last hoofprint a pulse of light ran through the pattern. A line of light cut down the middle of the door and the two halves started moving back, slowly opening the stone door.

Scootaloo leapt down before the door had moved enough to force her friends to come back down on all fours. “Cool!” the three friends whispered in unison, as they waited for the door to finish opening.

The cutie mark crusaders entered the now open doorway, into a dead end chamber. The room was simple, with only a few things of note in it. A small table with the remnants of two place mats for sitting on either side of it. Beyond the table was a small podium, as if somepony was suppose to stand at it to preside over whatever was happening at the table.

Finally on the table itself was a small figurine, made of three colors of stone. The figurine depicted three ponies, a unicorn made of purple stone sitting up with its front legs holding up the back legs of a pegasus. The pegasus part of the figurine was made of a blue color of stone and had its wings spread as if in flight. Though the pegasus’ front legs came down on the back legs of an earth pony made of green stone. The earth pony part of the figurine looked as if it was lying on its back with its back legs holding up the other half of the pegasus, and its front legs stretching out to connect with back legs of the unicorn. All together the three ponies of the figurine created a loop with a perfectly smooth center hole just the right size for a unicorn’s horn to be placed in the middle.

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom approached the table with the figurine on it, both muttering, “Cool.”

“Girls, wait!” Sweetie Belle’s cry snapped her two friends out of their awe.

“What?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that this is here?” Sweetie asked in return.

“What do ya mean?”

“That door wasn’t exactly hard to open, and you can’t tell me that we’re the first ponies in hundreds of years to figure out how to get in here. So why hasn’t this been taken by other explorers already?”

Sweetie Belle’s question had some merit to it and it gave her two friends pause as they began looking around the room for an answer.

Scootaloo spoke once she’d given the room a good looking at. “No holes in the walls. No bones laying around. I don’t see anything that looks like a booby trap,” she thought out loud as she brought her muzzle next to the figurine.

Scootaloo then gave the figurine a little nudge, moving it slightly, squinting, trying to see if there were any lines on the table that would hint at a pressure plate trigger. Although she found the task difficult thanks to how dim the table was. Wait, why was the table dim? Come to think of it why was the room dim? The thoughts made Scootaloo lift her head only to notice the spot on the wall in front of her flicker.

“Umm, Scootaloo? Did you recharge the batteries in the flashlights?” Apple Bloom asked, as she noticed the dimness too.

“I thought it was your turn to maintain the equipment,” Scootaloo confessed, already feeling that she knew she was wrong.

“No. I brought the snacks. Remember?” Apple Bloom sighed.

Right then Scootaloo’s headlamp flickered out completely. Throwing caution to the wind Scootaloo grabbed the figurine, tossed it in her saddlebag and bolted for the doorway saying, “Come on! We gota get out of here before yours run out.”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle joined their pegasus friend in running back the way they had come, but they had just left the room when their headlamps also flickered out. “Wait!” Sweetie Belle cried, bringing the trio to a halt in the now infinitely dark hallway.

“What’s wrong?” her friends asked together.

“I can’t see,” Sweetie said with a hint of panic in her voice.

“Yeah, none of us can. But how’s standing still going to get us out of here?” Scootaloo asked.

“No Sweetie Belle’s right, we can’t afford to get lost and separated down here. We need someway to stay together while we find our way out,” Apple Bloom said.

The three friends pondered their situation for a moment. As she did so, Scootaloo remembered one of Rainbow Dash’s flight lessons had been about navigation and making a mental map of the area. And when she applied the lesson to her current problem she envisioned a map of the ruin’s rooms and their path through them. “I think I remember the way out,” she said, smiling to the darkness.

“Great, but how do we stay together now that we can’t see anything?” Apple Bloom asked. Then a second latter adding, “Oops, sorry Sweetie.”

“No big deal, it’s just my tail,” Sweetie forgave her friend.

“Sweetie Belle you’re a genius! Take my tail, Apple Bloom take hers we can make a pony chain to stay together!” Scootaloo said, swishing her tail back and forth until she felt somepony bite down on it.

Once she heard her friends sound off with muffled voiced that they each had the tail of the pony in front of them, Scootaloo held one wing out to brush along the wall of the hallway, to keep herself from bumping into the walls as she lead the trio onwards.

* * * * * * *

The plan worked perfectly. Until Scootaloo had led them out of yet another hallway and felt her wing brush not a wall, but a statue’s base. The young pegasus froze as she remembered the room. But unlike the mostly empty rooms where the only thing to remember was what door they had left from, here she remembered the statues she’d looked at. She remembered that statues had lined the outer wall and another set of statues had been lines up in the middle of the room, and that she had gone three fourths of the way around the walking path from where she entered before going out the door she just returned through. But she couldn’t remember what way around the room she had gone.

“Uh, guys, we’re in the room with all the statues. Do either of you remember if we went left or right when we left that room?”

“Left!” Apple Bloom exclaimed.

“Right!” Sweetie Belle answered at the same time.

Scootaloo lowered her ears in annoyance. They were doomed to get lost down here weren’t they? Closing her eyes, not that she could see anything anyway, she tried once more to remember what way she had gone around the room. However, whether she played the memory with herself going left or right both versions felt just as real, even though only one could be. What she did remember was the pegasus statue that had been right by the door they had entered from, if she could see that statute again she’d know where they had come from.

“Sweetie Belle, you need to use your magic,” Scootaloo said, knowing the retort that was about to come.

“You know I can’t use magic yet,” the young unicorn said.

“I remember a statue by the entrance to this room, if I can see it again I’ll know which way is out.”

“That’s nice and all Scootaloo but that doesn’t change that part about me not knowing how to cast an illumination spell,” Sweetie Belle protested.

“I don’t need a real spell! I’ve seen you get sparks from that horn of yours before. That’s all I need, just enough to see for a second or two! Only you can do that!” the orange pegasus practically begged her friend.

“Okay, I’ll try,” Sweetie whimpered, fearing that she would fail to be helpful to her friends.

A moment latter Sweetie Belle could be heard groaning as she tried to focus her will into her horn in a desperate attempt to force any kind of reaction. After a moment of trying a few green sparks of light shot from her horn and fell like the embers of a firework.

The light from the sparks was dim and lasted only a second, but it was enough. Scootaloo saw that the doorway currently on the left side of the room didn’t even have a pegasus statue next to it, and that the statue she remembered was on the right. “Got it!” she announced as the veil of darkness once more hid the room from sight, and she resumed leading her friends out.

The remaining rooms were easy enough to navigate by memory, even to the point were Scootaloo could feel the slack on her tail indicating that even her friends were retracing their paths more by memory than the tugs of the tails keeping them together. Finally they stumbled onto the stairs, and once they started ascending they caught the first glimpse of natural light their eyes had seen in over an hour.

The trio of friends rushed out into the monastery ruins and kept running until they were outside entirely, where they collapsed onto the grass beside Scootaloo’s scooter.

After a moment of laughing the three crusaders looked eagerly to their flanks only to find no magic symbol had appeared on any of them. Apple Bloom sighed, but then perked up as she said, “No cutie marks. But at least we found some treasure! Come on! Let’s get back to the clubhouse!”

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo was the last to enter the tree-house clubhouse. She was hot, sweaty, and tired. Although, she knew she was overacting how tired she was as she trudged across the clubhouse to the first body pillow she could find and fell on it like she had just died. Her friends didn’t deny her the act of the heroic and battle worn champion. Apple Bloom did however help herself to Scootaloo’s saddlebag to retrieve the figurine from it and set it on the floor in the middle of the room.

“What do you suppose it is?” the earth pony filly asked.

“Looks like a figurine to me,” Sweetie Belle stated the obvious.

“Well duh, but ya don’t go and make a figurine of an earth pony, a unicorn, and a pegasus forming a loop with their bodies, and hide in a secret basement, behind a magic door with the three tribes origin story characters on it, if it ain’t special.” Apple Bloom stated the even more obvious.

“Oh, right,” was all Sweetie said, before returning to examining the figurine in question.

Scootaloo just continued to lie on the pillow and watch her friends. Guessing the nature of an artifact hidden in an abandon monastery’s basement was for intellectual ponies. And the young pegasus knew she was a pony of action, just like her hero, mentor and honorary big sister, Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo’s eyes drifted to a picture on the wall of her hero, depicting the sky blue pegasus with the rainbow mane, and smiled as she thought. Rainbow Dash will be so proud of me when I tell her this story.

By now the figurine was sitting snugly on Sweetie Belle’s horn, although the unicorn filly was frowning. “See I told you it’s too big to be a horn ring,” she complained as she reached up to remove the figurine.

“Wait, maybe your only suppose to put your horn in there to turn it on or something. Try using magic on it,” Apple Bloom suggested.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but smirk at how silly her unicorn friend looked right now. Whatever the artifact was it certainly wasn’t a fashion accessory.

“Fine,” Sweetie Belle said, rolling her eyes before closing them to concentrate.

A few tiny sparks of green magic came from the filly’s horn, and immediately a powerful pulse of light came off the artifact, even knocking itself free of Sweetie Belle’s horn. Apple Bloom also visibly recoiled from the wave of light as it filled the clubhouse. Scootaloo felt the wave of light push slightly against her as it washed over her body, but she didn’t move nearly as much as her friends.

“Wow, that tingled,” Scootaloo said, as she finally got up from the pillow she’d been resting on.

Her friend also confirmed having felt a tingling feeling pass through them with the light, but other than that the three friends were at a loss as to what, if anything, the magic artifact had done. Aside from the fact that the artifact had a constant glow now, nothing else seemed different about the clubhouse or themselves.

“Maybe it was a dud? Or maybe I didn’t do something right, so it didn’t do anything? No that doesn’t sound right, it’s glowing now so it had to do something. We should probably take it to Twilight. If nothing else I bet she could tell us what it is,” Sweetie Belle suggested.

“Agreed, but it’s gonna have to wait until tomorrow. It’s getting kinda late, and ah don’t want to be late for dinner,” Apple Bloom said, pointing out the window at the sun low on the horizon.

The three friends nodded in agreement and went their separate ways, all heading home.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo rolled in her front door and closed the door behind her. Seting her scooter beside the door she hung her helmet from its handlebars. A growl from her belly drew her into the kitchen, where she made a sandwich.

As Scootaloo ate the cold, plain meal she had prepared she couldn’t help but wonder what truly tasty dinners her friends were having, thanks to having somepony around to cook a real dinner for them. Despite her thoughts Scootaloo wasn’t jealous of her friends. She knew that her friends’ lives weren’t any more perfect than her own, only imperfect in different ways.

Every now and then Scootaloo would daydream that someday her family would be back together. And that could happen. All she needed was for her father to stop working so hard and her mother to find a job that didn’t keep her on the other side of the world all the time, granted that wasn’t likely to happen but Scootaloo could dream it. But that was a dream Apple Bloom couldn’t have because her parents were dead, and nothing fixed dead.

And then there was Sweetie Belle. It really wasn’t that hard to see how Sweetie longed for her big sister, Rarity’s, love. But it also wasn’t hard to see that Rarity was perfectly content living her own life, in which Sweetie Belle’s presence was not only optional, but usually deemed a distraction. And yet in only one night, all Scootaloo had had to do was bare her soul to Rainbow Dash, and already Dash had become a better big sister to her than Rarity was to Sweetie Belle. So no, Scootaloo wasn’t jealous of her friends, and knowing what she knew, how could she be?

With her dinner finished and darkness having clamed the land outside the windows, Scootaloo looked up from her spot on the couch at the stairs up to the second floor and her room. Feeling too tired to want to climb the stairs tonight, a smile crept across her face as she thought about the fact that there wasn’t anypony else in the house to care where she slept. So she turned out the lights and curled up on the couch.

Chapter 3: In Another Pony’s Hooves

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Scootaloo couldn’t believe it was morning already. But she didn’t even need to open her eyes to see that the world beyond her eyelids was way too bright to still be night. Fighting the inevitable anyway she rolling over, turning her back to the lighter side of the room, pulling her sheets over her head and burying her face in her pillow.

That woke her mind up. Sheets? Pillow? Didn’t I fall asleep on the couch? How’d I get in bed? She asked herself in the back of her mind. Laziness was no match for the feelings that continued to assault Scootaloo’s mind. More than the bed around her, something about her body felt… wrong. She couldn’t tell what was wrong but it sure didn’t feel right.

Scootaloo opened her eyes and pulled the sheets off her head only to find more confusion waiting for her. She recognized the room but it made no since that she was here. Why in creation was she in Apple Bloom’s room, or her bed for that matter?

Noticing the yellow hoof holding up the sheet, and the leg with the yellow fur coat it was attached to, Scootaloo lowered her leg only to watch the yellow limb obey the mental command. Her eyes started darting around Apple Bloom’s room until she found her friend’s mirror. Bolting out of bed and to the mirror, she found Apple Bloom’s reflection looking back at her. Scootaloo blinked only to see her earth pony friend’s orange eyes do the same in the mirror.

“This… can’t be real…” Scootaloo muttered to herself, only to hear her own words spoken in her friend’s voice. A dream maybe? Scootaloo thought to herself. She remembered being taught something about dreams by somepony, but what was it? Pain, it was something about pain. “That’s right, you can’t feel pain in your dreams. That was it, wasn’t it?” she whispered to nopony.

Raising her now yellow hoof she slapped her other front leg with it. “Oww…” she moaned from the pain. She was definitely awake. A stray thought made her friend’s orange eyes go wide with panic, if she was in Apple Bloom now, who was in her body?

Scootaloo bolted for the door, with one more stray thought bringing her back in the room. If she was going to run to her house, even if she somehow got back in her body Apple Bloom wouldn’t have time to come back and get her schoolbags before class time. Quickly looking around the room Scootaloo spotted her friend’s bags and with a quick peek inside she saw books that were the right color to be the schoolbooks. That was confirmation enough for her to throw the saddlebags on and bolt from the room.

“Morning sis… uh, where are you goi’n? And she’s gone…” Applejack said, as she watched who she assumed was her little sister dash through the kitchen and out into the fields of sweet apple acres. The elder sister looked to the clock in the room and thought aloud, “Ah wonder what’s got her in such a hustle.” Then looking down to the untouched plate that held Apple Bloom’s breakfast, Applejack followed the thought to the bagged lunch still sitting on the counter. “It’s mah turn again ain’t it, Big Mac?”

“Euyup,” was all the stallion with the red coat and blond mane said.

Outside Scootaloo only got halfway to the sign welcoming ponies to sweet apple acres when she felt something wrong, no many things wrong. Apple Bloom’s saddlebags felt too light. Slowing to a trot just long enough to open the flaps of the saddlebags and actually examine the contents. Counting off the right number of books and even seeing some stray papers tucked between them that she hoped was Apple Bloom’s homework, Scootaloo had to conclude that everything was here.

She gave the bags a bounce with her back and was sure the books felt lighter than they should. Apple Bloom’s body, Scootaloo thought, then adding, She must be stronger then me. That felt like the right answer, and some of the feeling of wrong-ness went away, but something else still felt off. Though Scootaloo reminded herself that she didn’t have time to ponder every little thing if she was going to get to her house before a potential disaster, so she galloped off into town.

Running through the streets of Ponyville she found two more sources of the wrong-ness she was feeling. First was feel of Apple Bloom’s muscles, the more she thought about them the more Scootaloo felt that they seemed stronger, but felt slightly sluggish to respond to her will. She could finally understand what people meant when they spoke of earth pony strength. It was a subtle difference, but she could feel that Apple Bloom’s muscles were built for raw, unmitigated power, at the expense of agility.

Scootaloo salved the riddle of the final source of wrong-ness when she rounded a corner and spotted a sign at the far end of the street. She knew what the sign said by heart, but that was just it, she had to read it by memory as Apple Bloom’s eyes couldn’t bring the otherwise large letters into focus until she came closer to the sign. With that thought Scootaloo realized that it wasn’t just the signs, but all distant objects weren’t quite in focus anymore. Eventually she would concede that that actually made since, as she was use to looking at the world through the eyes of a pegasus, but earth pony eyes weren’t built to look for things hundreds of feet away like pegasus eyes were.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo finally reached her house. Tired, sweating and gasping for air, but she was here. After carefully opening the door, she slipped quietly inside, and looking up saw her own body curled up in a ball, still sleeping peacefully on the couch. First Scootaloo smiled, then a shiver ran down her spine at the awkwardness of looking at herself from across the room.

The thought of having to wake herself, or whoever was in her body, up was just too wired to Scootaloo. So naturally she did what any pony her age would do. Stall for time by inventing something else on the to-do list before having to get to the unwanted item. In this case the weight on her back reminded her of her own schoolbags upstairs in her room.

Quietly Scootaloo made her way up the stairs, but when she opened the door to her room she froze. In her earth pony friend’s body she had no wings to make an easy jump over all her booby-traps. Carefully, Scootaloo walked through her room, exaggerating her steps to make sure her legs were above the tripwires, and making sure to avoid the pressure-plate under her rug.

Once she had retrieved her schoolbags from beside her desk and made it back to her doorway Scootaloo thought how much of a pain in the flank it was to go through her room like that. Why did she even still have these booby-traps anyway? It had been years since being the only pony sleeping in her house gave her nightmares. No promises that other things didn’t give her nightmares from time to time, but she didn’t need to sleep surrounded by traps to feel safe in her own house anymore. The simple fact that she had fallen asleep downstairs on the couch was proof of that.

The thought crossed Scootaloo’s mind that if she dismantled her traps there would no longer be a reason to keep her friends out of her room. Turning her eyes to the master bedroom’s doorway, she whispered, “Dad’s house. Dad’s secrets.” Aren’t in my room. She added in her thoughts. Scootaloo shook the idea from her mind. There was no way her dad would allow her to have friends over. Not unless he was there to make sure they stayed away from the important parts of the house anyway, and trying to predict when he’d be home would take a miracle.

Scootaloo decided that whoever was in her body was a deep sleeper, as she hadn’t been nearly as quiet coming down the stairs as she had been going up. Still not ready to face herself Scootaloo turned to the kitchen instead. Making a sandwich to put in her schoolbag, the weight on her back reminded her that she had two sets of schoolbags today, so she fetched another paper bag and made a second sandwich. The low growl in the belly reminded her she hadn’t had anything to eat yet, but she didn’t really have time for a real breakfast, so she just grabbed an extra piece of bread and ate that instead.

Feeling that she couldn’t delay any longer Scootaloo stepped out of the kitchen ready to wake the sleeping pegasus filly on the couch. She froze instantly when a stallion’s voice came from the stairs. “Oh, hello. Hmm… yellow earth pony, red mane, pink bow. That sounds familiar are you-” he began in a low voice, trying not to wake the sleeper on the couch.

“Dad! What are you doing here!?” Scootaloo’s hushed cry cut him off, before the orange stallion with a red and yellow mane and white flames for a cutie mark could finish his question.

The stallion raised a curious eyebrow over his orange eyes. And with a forced smile he whispered in a flat tone, “Ha, ha, I know I’m not around that much but I do know that my daughter is a pegasus.”

Scootaloo didn’t have time for this, in her panic she didn’t know why, but she did know she didn’t want the pegasus filly on the couch to wake up to this. Pulling out her trump card she started whispering something only she and her dad should know, “Las Pegasus, Grand Pegasus Hotel, seventy seventh floor, room seven-seven-two-one-”

She would have continued but the stallion’s hooves swept her aside and pressed against her yellow muzzle. “That’s enough Scoots,” he whispered, then gesturing a wing toward the orange filly on the couch he quietly added, “But if you’re you, who’s that?”

“Don’t know. Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle, I gue-” Scootaloo responded, only to cut herself off when the filly on the couch stirred.

The pegasus stallion and earth pony filly beside him watched in absolute silence as the pegasus filly on the couch awoke. First she stretched and yawned. With her eyes still closed she started pawing around, searching for sheets that didn’t exist. Scootaloo watched her body across the room as her own eyes opened. Slowly at first, that lasted about a half-second as the sleepy smile vanished from the young pegasus’ face and her eyes went wide in panic as they started darting around the room.

The panicked pegasus’ eye’s fell on the earth pony filly standing beside a stranger. “Apple Bloom! What’s going on? Where are we? Who’s that? What’s wrong with my voice?” the pegasus filly practically pleaded for answers.

“Good morning, Sweetie Belle.” Scootaloo sighed at her own body, then adding, “It’ll be easier to just show you what’s going on then to explain. There’s a mirror in the bathroom, second door on the right.” She gestured toward the hallway not far from the couch.

Scootaloo watched as her own body looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but then turned and disappeared down the hallway. Bobbing a yellow hoof in the air she whispered, “Three, two, one.” On queue she heard her own voice scream from the bathroom. Scootaloo cringed as he heard the sound of her own body falling off the bathroom stool. Following the clatter of small hooves running down the hall, her body returned to the living room, wings flared and eyes once more showing a look of panic.

Revelation flashed in those panicked purple eyes as they once more found the yellow earth pony. “Wait! If I’m Scootaloo now, how did you know I’m really Sweetie Belle?”

“Because I’m Scootaloo, and you sure aren’t Apple Bloom or you’d have freaked out when you first saw your body across the room. That and you were the only other pony around when that artifact thingy started glowing,” Scootaloo explained her simple process of elimination.

“Oh yeah,” Sweetie Belle mused.

“Wait, what artifact?” the pegasus stallion asked.

Scootaloo’s earth pony eyes flashed with revelation as she answered her dad, “Oh yeah! Yesterday we were out crusading for our cutie marks as explorers. And we found a figurine like thing. When we took it back to the clubhouse it started glowing. At first we didn’t think it did anything. But now that I think about it, that has to be what made us wake up in the wrong body.”

“That sounds right,” Sweetie Belle agreed in Scootaloo’s voice.

The instincts honed by his work kicked in for Scootaloo’s father and they demanded swift action. “Okay, here’s the plan. Scootaloo…” He looked first to the orange pegasus filly, then shaking his head he looked to the yellow earth pony beside him, “…Gah, just, you two, go to school. Find your other friend and keep a low profile. I’ll go get this artifact thing. If I recall correctly, Princess Celestia has a student of magic stationed at the Ponyville library. If it turns out time is of the essence, I’ll come excuse you from class.”

As the three ponies headed for the door Scootaloo’s dad leaned down to whisper to his now earth pony daughter, “One question, where’s your clubhouse?”

Scootaloo made no effort to humor her dad’s attempt at subtlety. “Sweet apple acres, the tree-house in the north field,” she responded in a plane voice, even shacking her head in mock disappointment.

Once outside the two crusaders were trotting toward school, but they didn’t get far before Sweetie Belle had a barrage of questions. “So this is your house? What, that means that was your dad, right? Wait a second, are you sure all your books are here? You bags feel kind of light.”

“Yes. Yes. And yeah I thought the same thing about Apple Bloom’s bags until I realized she’s stronger then me, so the books just feel lighter to her,” Scootaloo answered as quietly as she could, hoping to draw as little attention as possible from the other ponies out and about.

Seeing a hint of annoyance from her friend Sweetie Belle lowered her voice as well but asked one more question. “Okay, last question. I promise. How do you get your wings to fold?”

Scootaloo glanced back at her unicorn possessed body and realized that Sweetie Belle’s borrowed wings were still flared, as they had been when she first panicked. “I don’t know. They just do what I want, same as my legs I guess,” Scootaloo said, as she sat down, freeing up her front legs, and then used her front hooves to gently push on her wing’s major joints and force them to fold back to a resting position.

“Oh wow that feels weird,” Sweetie Belle shivered as she spoke, as the forced movement made her truly feel Scootaloo’s wings for the first time.

“Not as weird as waking up without wings I bet. At least I know what Rainbow Dash felt like when Discord took her wings away,” Scootaloo whispered, as the two friends resumed their journey to the schoolhouse.

* * * * * * *

“I hope Apple Bloom brought my homework,” Sweetie Belle moaned as they neared the schoolhouse. “I hope she wasn’t too scared waking up as me,” she added as she continued to think out loud.

“Relax, we’re been to your place tons of times. I’m sure it wasn’t anywhere near as scary as waking up in a place you’ve never seen before,” Scootaloo said, trying to ease her friend’s mind.

“Yeah, I guess so. Oh good she’s here… or I’m here?” Sweetie Belle said, on seeing her own body pacing back and forth anxiously in the yard in front of the schoolhouse.

The earth pony possessed unicorn came running up once she spotted her other friends. Although Scootaloo couldn’t help but to greet her friend with her own voice. “Hey, Apple Bloom. Crazy morning huh?” she whispered and giggled.

Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow at her own body. “If y’all can guess that Ah’m guessing that makes you Scootaloo.” A nod answered her question. Then, as she fixed her bow for Scootaloo, Apple Bloom added, “Well, what are we goina do? Ah don’t wanta be stuck like this forever!”

“Don’t worry. My dad is already taking that artifact to Twilight. He asked us to keep a low profile during school though. So all we have to do in not draw any attention to ourselves through class then we can meet him at the library so Twilight can fix us,” Scootaloo whispered.

Apple Bloom kept her eye trained on her own body as she asked, “Well how the hey are we suppose to do that?”

“Come one, we’re best friends. I’m sure I can pull off acting like you Apple Bloom. You’ve got to know Sweetie Belle well enough to pretend to be her for just a few hours.”

“Yeah how hard can it be? But, Apple Bloom, you might want to try to talk a little more like me. I Don’t stretch my ‘I’s out into ‘ah’s, and I say girls, or everypony, not y’all,” Sweetie Belle added.

As her friend agreed to go along with the plan Scootaloo made a mental note to try and mimic Apple Bloom’s way of speaking, that and try not to talk around other ponies at all if she could help it.

* * * * * * *

Lunch had been interrupted by Applejack showing up with Apple Bloom’s lunch and having to explain why Scootaloo ‘sharing’ somehow produced full potions for the both of them. Class had gone acceptably well, as far as the three friends could tell anyway. Although, Scootaloo wasn’t entirely thrilled that Sweetie Belle’s idea of 'pretending to be Scootaloo' meant pretending to sleep through history class, but Cheerilee didn’t seem to notice that the topic had been entertaining enough that Scootaloo didn’t think she would have slept through that story.

The crusaders were approaching the library and Apple Bloom was making small talk as they walked. “Ah… um, I can’t believe you got to see Scootaloo’s house.”

“I know. But it was weird, it felt like something in the living room was missing,” Sweetie Belle answered, giving a slight flutter of her borrowed body’s wings.

“Like what?” Scootaloo had to ask. She knew that Sweetie Belle had never seen her living room before, so how she could say something was missing from it seemed truly odd.

“I don’t know. I was kind of busy panicking about waking up as you to figure out why the room felt wrong too. It just did,” Sweetie Belle answered, thankful that they had finally reached the library, saving her from any more scrutiny on the feeling she couldn’t explain.

As they entered the library Scootaloo was lost in thought, for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything odd about her living room. Her secrets were all in her room, and her dad’s secrets were in his room, the attic, and the first floor storage closet. Scootaloo’s pondering was interrupted when her dad saw they had arrived and spoke. “Are you telling them or am I?” he said, clearly addressing his question to the purple unicorn with the darker purple mane.

“I’ll tell them,” Twilight Sparkle said, with a sigh. The three fillies glanced at each other with nervous looks. If Twilight wasn’t happy than this couldn’t be good news. They didn’t need to wait long to find out as Twilight launched into her lecture mode. “Well, first off, the artifact you three found is from the early classical era, not long after the founding of Equestria. While the events of the hearth’s warming did a lot to bring the three tribes together-”

“Twilight, enough with the history lesson. Can you fix us?” Scootaloo interrupted.

“Well I was getting to that. But the short version is. As long as it remains active, the artifact will continue swapping your minds every midnight, however, it was only intended to be used on two ponies at a time. And judging from the cyclical nature of the magics within the artifact, I’m guessing you’ll probably wake up in your other friend’s body tomorrow and then be back in your own bodies the day after that. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait this out, and once you wake up in your own bodies come back to me and I’ll turn the artifact off, so it stops messing with your minds.”

“So there isn’t a reverse switch on it or something?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“That’s not how magic works Scoota… wait, who are you again?” Twilight asked of the pegasus filly who had just spoken.

“I’m Sweetie Belle. And can’t you just fix us with your magic?”

“Right, and no, I don’t know that spell. I even sent Princess Celestia a letter on the matter and her reply was that the last unicorn she’s aware of knowing that spell died over three hundred years ago. She also advised you simply wait out the effects as I just suggested.”

The three friends looked to each other, not sure what to do about their current situation. Although Scootaloo also looked up to her dad, knowing he was the only other pony in the room that knew that this problem was bigger than her friends could ever know.

Apple Bloom was first to break the silence. “Well what do we do now?” Neither of her friends had an answer so she tried to answer her own question. “Ya know, Ah thought it was kinda fun pretending to be you Sweetie Belle. If we have to be stuck like this, why not have a little fun with it and see if we can get through this, with as few ponies as possible finding out we’re not really ourselves?”

Sweetie Belle promptly agreed to the plan, and the two friends decided that Scootaloo agreed by not rejecting it. Scootaloo didn’t answer at all because she didn’t know what to say, not with her dad standing around listening to all this. Thankfully the stallion answered on her behalf. “If you want to pretend to be Scootaloo I’m not going to stop you. But you’ll have to pretend to be Scootaloo while she’s staying over at Apple Bloom’s place.”

“Aww, how come?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie said together.

The stallion rolled his eyes as he answered, “First, I already know Scootaloo’s not herself today, so that would defeat the point of your game to try to hang out with me. And more importantly, my house isn’t foalproof, and I know I can trust my Scootaloo. I know she knows how to stay safe in a dangerous place, but I don’t know that of you two. And I am not going to let you hurt yourselves just so you can play ‘being Scootaloo,’ especially since you’d be hurting her body if you did.”

Scootaloo tried not to frown listening to her dad’s lies, knowing there wasn’t anything dangerous in their house, only secrets. Her life seemed to be filled with secrets these days. While a part of her was proud to be a trusted guardian of her dad’s secrets, a part of her was annoyed by all the lies that came with that. Was that why she like being a cutie mark crusader so much? Because it was the one part of her life where she didn’t have to hide anything?

“But-” Apple Bloom started to protest, but was immediately cut off by a harsh, commanding glare from Scootaloo’s father. A kind but submissive look from Sweetie Belle sealed the deal and Apple Bloom backed down completely. “Ah guess you’re right. That wouldn’t be fun at all.”

* * * * * * *

Before leaving the library Twilight Sparkle agreed not to tell anypony about the magics messing with the crusader’s minds as long as they stayed out of trouble. Now the three crusaders plus Scootaloo’s dad were walking down a dirt road with seemingly endless apple trees on both sides. The bright red farmhouse that marked the core of sweet apple acres came into view, yet all eyes were searching the fields around them as they walked.

“There she is,” Apple Bloom said, pointing a white hoof through a wooden fence. Beyond was a tan-ish-orange mare with a blond mane.

With a quick flap of his wings Scootaloo’s dad was over the fence and landing not far from the mare in question. “Excuse me, Miss. Are you Applejack?”

“Well howdy. Ah sure am. You’re a new face, ya new in town? My sister an her friends ain’t giv’n ya trouble are they?” Applejack replied, taking a break from the art of kicking apples out of the trees that she called apple bucking.

“Actualy I’m Scootaloo’s father, and I was hoping to ask you something,” the stallion said, forcing a smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet ya, sir. What can ah do for ya?” Applejack said, with an honest, neighborly smile.

“Well, the thing is I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days, and Scootaloo will need to stay someplace. Her friend Apple Bloom offered here, so can you look after her until I’m back in town?” He asked, having made the story up on the spot, drawing a confused look from the pony whom appeared to be his daughter. Yet the earth pony filly beside him just smiled and nodded to confirm the fabricated story.

“Sure, wouldn’t be the first time Apple Bloom’s had her friends over for a sleep over. Ah reckon we can manage hav’n Scootaloo stay here for a little while.”

“Thank you. If this doesn’t cover the cost of looking after her I’ll pay you the difference when I get back,” the stallion said, as he dropped a small coin pouch to the ground. The heavy rattle of coins with in it drew the farm pony’s eyes down. Glancing at the pegasus filly nearby Scootaloo’s dad added, “And don’t be afraid to put her to work around here. I’d expect you to help out around here, just like at home.” He directed the last line to the pony that looked like his daughter.

“Yes, Sir,” Sweetie Belle couldn’t help but say, thanks to the military style glare baring down on her from Scootaloo’s dad.

The pegasus stallion didn’t give anypony a chance to change their minds before he flapped his wings and took to the sky. Everypony except Scootaloo watched her dad fly off. Her mind was already elsewhere, pondering how she was going to get where she needed to be without explaining anything to anypony.

She didn’t have a chance to find an answer because right then Applejack spoke, saying, “Now that ah think about it he does buy apples from me every now and then. Never did catch his name… Say, Scootaloo what is your pa’s name?”

It took Sweetie Belle a good two seconds before she even realized the question had been directed at her, at which point she started sweating bullets. Scootaloo just shook her head ‘no’ because she knew that her dad never used his name around town, never. In fact there were probably only three ponies in Ponyville that even knew her dad’s name, her dad, herself and the mailpony, and the latter two probably only knew the stallions name for the same reason, they’d read it off his mail.

“Umm… I just call him dad?” Sweetie Belle finally answered, noticing her clear lack of confidence in her voice she put on her best ‘I’m innocent please believe me’ smile. Scootaloo wouldn’t have believed it for a second. But apparently all of Sweetie Belle’s practice manipulating her older sister paid off as Applejack hesitantly accepted the response, or perhaps she just thought she had better things to do than pry into the filly’s life if she wasn’t even going to be honest with her.

When Applejack finally responded she said, “Ah guess ah wouldn’t have known my pa’s name at your age if ah hadn’t read it of his tombstone… Anyway, Apple Bloom ya know where the sleeping bags are. Get one out an set your friend up to stay with ya in your room.”

Once Apple Bloom had helped ‘Apple Bloom’ comply with her older sister’s orders, by showing Scootaloo where the sleeping bags were, the three friends were heading toward their clubhouse when Scootaloo spoke up. “Look I need to go take care of my chores real quick. I promise I’ll be back in like an hour, tops.”

“If they’re your chores shouldn’t I be the one doing them?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“My dad just explained why he doesn’t trust you in his house… I have to be the one to do them,” Scootaloo said, rolling her eyes.

“But he also said he was leaving town. He even told me to do chores here. He can’t expect you to do chores at an empty house,” Sweetie Belle replied.

“And half of that was a lie,” Scootaloo said, honestly enough.

“Wait. You mean your dad isn’t leaving town?”

“Not likely.” Scootaloo lied. Ironically enough that part of what her dad said was likely going to be true, and the house probably would be empty for a few days. Scootaloo sighed. “Just, cover for me with Applejack if she notices that ‘Apple Bloom’ isn’t around until I get back. Please?”

The disappointment on the faces of Scootaloo’s friends made it clear they had hoped this unexpected turn of events would help them learn more about their pegasus friend. Thankfully a certain chain of events surrounding the school paper had taught the crusaders that sometimes it’s better to leave other ponies secrets be, so they agreed and let Scootaloo go without further challenge.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo had arrived early at the average looking tree at the edge of town, just ten minutes before four in the afternoon. She climbed up the tree knowing that Cloud Wall wouldn’t come if he saw somepony he wasn’t expecting waiting. The act of climbing the tree had proven easier than Scootaloo had anticipated given her current lack of wings, but the strength of Apple Bloom’s body made it easy to pull herself up the tree even without the help of wings to cancel out most of her weight.

Soon enough the white pegasus with the blue mane landed by the base of the tree. “Captain Cloud Wall,” Scootaloo greeted him from her hiding place in the tree’s branches.

The captain gave the filly above him a wary eye as he responded, “Oh hello. I was kind of expecting to meet somepony. I don’t suppose you’ve seen a pegasus filly around lately?”

“Scootaloo? Yeah I’ve seen myself plenty today.” Scootaloo’s response made the pegasus stallion raise an eyebrow but he said nothing. So Scootaloo asked, “What do I need to tell you to make me believe I’m me? Want me to tell you what we did yesterday morning in Hoofington?”

“You clearly know too much. So that either means you’re Scoots or she’s dead and I’m about to be ambushed in two seconds,” Cloud Wall said, taking a combat stance.

“You’re going to be waiting a lot longer then two seconds if you’re waiting for an ambush. Besides this is the only tree for like a hundred feet, and you’re already looking up. So where would anypony hide to ambush you from?” Scootaloo asked, partly curious if there was an answer to her question.

Apparently it was a good observation as his answer was, “Fair enough, I’m listening.”

Scootaloo then told him about the ruins and the mind-swapping artifact. “…And if Twilight’s right tomorrow I’ll wake up in Sweetie Belle’s body,” she finished her story.

Cloud Wall sighed, “Dang.” The yellow earth pony filly raised an inquisitive eyebrow, so he finished his out loud thinking, “I’m guessing that means you won’t be able to provide a distraction for me tomorrow. Right?”

“I don’t think so. If I don’t have my wings I don’t think I can pull off any of my good stunts. Besides I don’t want to risk getting Sweetie Belle hurt if something goes wrong. Sorry,” Scootaloo added the apology when she saw the captain hang his head in disappointment.

“No, you’re right. I really shouldn’t get used to planning around the assumption that I have a fourth member on my team when you’re an off the books civilian agent. I wouldn’t be much of a tactician if I couldn’t make do with my actual team,” Cloud Wall said, with a weak smile.

“Can I still help once things are back to normal?” Scootaloo asked, fearing she’d just been written off the captain’s team altogether.

“Of course, I’ll drop you a note the next time I find a use for you. See ya around,” he said as he took flight, leaving the earth pony filly behind.

* * * * * * *

On her way back to sweet apple acres Scootaloo took a moment to swing by her house, not to do any chores, but to pick up her scooter and helmet. By the time she returned to the apple farm she truly wondered how earth ponies thought scooters were fun, with only her legs to push with, she couldn’t really get going any faster than she could run, unless she was going downhill anyway. And while it was easier than running, without her wings to help she couldn’t get that satisfying since of speed that made scooter riding so fun to her.

Once Scootaloo rejoined her friends the crusaders passed the afternoon by finishing Apple Bloom’s chores, doing their homework and playing games at the clubhouse.

Sweetie Belle was first to break up the game they were playing when she noticed the time. “Apple Bloom, you’d better get going. The sun’s getting kind of low, dinner will be soon and my mom and dad will get worried if I’m not home on time,” the unicorn possessed pegasus said. Once Apple Bloom had taken the saddlebags with Sweetie Belle’s homework, Sweetie added, “Before you go lets hear your me impression.”

“Fine. Mom, dad, I’m home!” Apple Bloom said doing her best to sound like the unicorn filly she appeared to be.

“Close enough,” Sweetie Belle giggled. The two remaining friends waved goodbye as the earth pony turned unicorn left. As they watched from the window Sweetie Belle turned to the friend who’s body she was in and asked, “Scootaloo. Are you okay?”

Looking to her own body Scootaloo cocked her head to the side and asked, “What do you mean?”

“It’s just that I’ve been getting use to your body all day and all, but… Something still feels… not right. I can’t place it but it’s worse outside.”

Scootaloo smiled. “Outside huh? Take a look over there,” she said, as she pointed out the window to some trees a few hundred feet away.

“Okay… What am I looking for?” Sweetie Belle asked, as she looked over the familiar field of apple trees around the clubhouse.

“Now try looking at the tree next to the clubhouse,” Scootaloo suggested, still grinning.

Sweetie Belle looked back and forth between the near trees and the far ones. Little by little Scootaloo watched the eyes of her body growing wide as revelation set in, until Sweetie Belle finally proclaimed her understanding out loud, “Everything’s so clear! Wow! Scootaloo your eyes are so amazing! Wow, the sunset looks so beautiful!”

Scootaloo joined her friend in looking to the setting sun, although she frowned. The sunset looked nice enough through Apple Bloom’s eyes but she could see a more beautiful sunset by closing her eyes and remembering what one looked like through her own eyes. Opening her eyes, she spotted something that gave her an idea. “You want amazing, I’ll show you amazing,” Scootaloo said, and then called out, “Rainbow Dash!”

The colorful speck Scootaloo had seen in the distance grew bigger and closer until it could clearly be identified as a sky blue pegasus mare with a prismatic mane and tail. “Did I hear somepony over here calling for the most awesome flyer in all of Equestria?” the mare asked as she came to a hover just outside the tree house’s window.

Doing her best Apple Bloom impression, Scootaloo said, “Yep, Ah did. You see, Scootaloo and Ah were talking about the sunset and Ah started thinking the only thing that would make it look even better was a sunset rainbow. And being an awesome weather pony and all, Ah don’t suppose you could make one?”

Rainbow Dash brought a hoof up to her muzzle as she pondered the question. She knew liquid rainbow evaporated quickly without the light of the sun, so she wouldn’t need any high quality rainbow since it only needed to last a few minutes. “I don’t know… I guess I can just use some rainbow from my home fountain so I can get away with an unscheduled rainbow. What do you think squirt? Should I do it?” Dash asked the pony she thought was Scootaloo.

Despite having spent the day pretending to be Scootaloo it still took Sweetie Belle over a second to realize the question was aimed at her. Sweetie looked to her friend and the earth pony filly nodded, so she said, “Yes please. I mean, that would be cool.”

Rainbow Dash raised a skeptical eyebrow, wandering what was up with Scootaloo. But just as quickly shrugged it off, turned to who she thought was Apple Bloom and said, “Okay, I’ll do it. But don’t go thinking I’ll be taking orders from you at the drop of a hat like I do from AJ. I have to do that because she’s runs the farm and it’s part of my job as a weather pony to help the farmers in Ponyville.” Despite her choice of words Dash’s voice was playful enough to make it known she didn’t mind petty requests from friends as much as she said she did.

Rainbow Dash then darted out of sight and a minute latter a rainbow started appearing in the distance, framing the setting sun. Scootaloo watched the awe in her own body’s eyes grow into pure wonderment. That must be what I look like when I’m watching Rainbow Dash fly. Scootaloo thought to herself, before turning to look out at the scene that had Sweetie Belle transfixed.

Scootaloo breathed a silent sigh. It was as she expected. As beautiful as the scene before her earth pony eyes was, it paled in comparison to her imagination combining the memories of a sunset and a rainbow as seen from her pegasus eyes. The two fillies sat there watching the scene before them, though it only lasted a few minutes before the sun disappeared behind the horizon and the rainbow began to fade.

With the splendor of the sunset rainbow gone Sweetie Belle finally managed say, “Wow… So beautiful… I don’t… Thank you.” She concluded by pulling her friend into a hug, knowing her words couldn’t convey the thanks she felt for the gift she had just been given.

“Umm, you’re welcome. But can you lay off the mushy stuff? What if Rainbow Dash comes back and sees me acting like that?” Scootaloo responded, slightly startled by the show of affection. She knew the world looked a little clearer through the eyes of a pegasus but she didn’t think it was that big of a difference.

Sweetie Belle didn’t release her friend from the hug but tried to convey her thanks again. “I know you didn’t mean to let me borrow your eyes or anything, but letting me see that, through your eyes. I will always remember what you showed me. And I’m sorry that there’s nothing I could ever do to repay you for this.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s what friends do, right? But for now I’ll settle for you letting me go,” Scootaloo said. To which Sweetie finally released her from the hug. “Come on Sweetie Belle. We should get back to the house before Applejack comes looking for us,” she added, gathering up their saddlebags.

* * * * * * *

The two crusaders had managed to get through dinner without raising the Apple family’s suspicions, mainly by keeping their answers to questions as short as possible until Applejack and Granny Smith got talking about things the two fillies didn’t feel any need to comment on.

Up in Apple Bloom’s room the two friends stood still, occasionally tossing a glance to one another. “Well this feels weird.” Sweetie Belle broke the silence.

“I know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in Apple Bloom’s room without her around before. It’s like I don’t want to touch anything since she’s not here,” Scootaloo whispered, trying not to be heard by anypony outside the room.

“Yeah. I guess we should just go to bed then?” Sweetie suggested.

“Agreed.” Scootaloo answered, as she climbed onto Apple Bloom’s bed. Looking down at the sheets a thought made her ask, “Do you think I should be in her bed? If Twilight’s right then tomorrow she’ll wake up in my body. Do you think she’d rather wake up in her bed or would she only what her body in her bed?”

Sweetie Belle stared back at the earth pony on the bed for way longer then Scootaloo would have liked before answering, “I don’t know, but wouldn’t Applejack find it odd if she checked on us and found Scootaloo in the bed and Apple Bloom in the sleeping bag?”

“I guess so…” Scootaloo’s reply drifted off as she fell into thought. The idea that somepony would check in on her while she slept was such a foreign concept that it had never crossed her mind. It must be nice to feel like somepony would watch over and protect you while you sleep. She thought to herself as she slipped into Apple Bloom’s bed.

Scootaloo reached out and turned off the lamp on Apple Bloom’s bed stand feeling a mix of pride and regret. She was proud that she knew her dad let her be alone in the house all the time because he trusted her, because she wasn’t a baby anymore and didn’t need to be looked after all the time. But at the same time she regretted that earning her father’s trust also meant being alone so much of the time. It was to those muddled feelings that she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 4: A Sweetie Day

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As morning came Scootaloo’s mind woke slowly. She didn’t want to open her eyes, but she didn’t have to. An attempt to open her wings, only to feel the sensation of nothing proved she didn’t have any wings. Twisting her face deeper into her pillow found an extra resistance from the horn on her forehead. She was definitely in Sweetie Belle’s body all right.

Scootaloo sat up as her mind told her it was time to get up, but Sweetie Belle’s body was trying to pull her back into sleep. Sweetie Belle, I think your body clock is broken. Scootaloo thought to herself.

“Sweetie! Time to wake up!” the voice of Sweetie Belle’s mom called from downstairs.

As soon as she heard it she could feel Sweetie’s body agree that it was time to wake up. Oh, I get it. You get a wake up call every morning. Scootaloo thought, as she was finally able to command her borrowed body to leave the bed altogether.

Walking over to Sweetie Belle’s dresser and looking into the mirror she found that Sweetie Belle’s mane had a natural curl to it, but the bed head still showed. A brush sitting by the mirror told Scootaloo that Sweetie must fix her hair in the morning. First she picked the brush up with her mouth and then she glared at herself in the mirror. Ditching her dumb natural instinct of holding things in her mouth she spit it back out and tried holding it between her front hooves. While that allowed her actualy reach her mane, it felt awkward, clumsy and she was fairly sure she was making her mane worse, not better. Then she tried curling one hoof around the brush like it was a cup. That got the other leg out of her way and felt better but the strokes she made still only seemed to mess Sweetie Belle’s mane up even more.

Why is this so hard? It’s not like I’ve never… Scootaloo froze at the thought. When was the last time she’d taken a brush to her own mane? Was it the wedding at Canterlot? She remembered being dressed up real fancy to be a flower girl, surely somepony had styled her mane even if she didn’t do it herself. Glancing around Scootaloo saw that Sweetie had some pictures from the wedding reception, it took only a second to find the one with the trio of friends together. Scootaloo frowned as she looked at herself in the picture, with the same windswept helmet-hair style she always had, only with a crown of flowers in it.

The more Scootaloo thought about it the more it occurred to her that the last time she had done anything other then wash her mane was when she spiked it up for a rock and roll song she and her friends had put on for a school talent show. And Sweetie Belle had been the one to style it for her. “Oh I give up.” Scootaloo whispered harshly, as she put the brush back and walked away. If Sweetie Belle didn’t like seeing her own mane messed up, she could fix it herself at school.

She found where Apple Bloom had put Sweetie’s schoolbags just in time to hear Sweetie’s mom call out, “Sweetie, hurry up and come down here or you won’t have time to make yourself breakfast!”

Scootaloo had expected to find what she needed to make a cold bowl of cereal or something, instead she found the kitchen counters lined with just about anything she could imagine. “Oh good we still have time for cocking lessons, so what did we want to make today, Sweetie?”

A nervous smile appeared on the filly’s face. Neither Sweetie Belle nor Apple Bloom had bothered to mention that Sweetie had morning cooking lessons. And while the thought have having a warm breakfast for once in her life was appealing to Scootaloo, she didn’t have a clue what Sweetie Belle knew how make.

At home Scootaloo had never been one to make anything that needed heat as an ingredient. Something about her father’s goodbye always including the line ‘don’t burn the house down.’ Although he always said it in jest she had always avoided touching things that might make her fail to fulfil that command when her dad wasn’t home anyway. But she had parents watching her now, and even asking her to make something.

The filly’s eyes fell on a loaf of bread, a tub of butter, and the jars of cinnamon and sugar. The idea was simple, simple enough that even Sweetie Belle should know this recipe. Jumping into action she gathered her targeted supplies and set them away from everything else on the counter. With two slices of bread buttered, sprinkled with the condiments, and tossed into the toaster oven, a question popped into the filly’s mind. Turning to Sweetie’s parents, Scootaloo asked, “Am I just making enough for me or am I making you some too?”

“I’d love a slice,” Sweetie’s mom said with a voice that practically shouted ‘I’m going to say you did good, no matter how good or bad it really is.’

“I’ll take one too, Sweetie,” Sweetie’s dad said, in a much more casual and, to Scootaloo’s ears at least, honest tone.

Scootaloo started making two more slices of cinnamon toast. However, she had barely finished buttering them when she noticed the toast in the toaster oven was already getting darker than she’d intended. Quickly taking the butter knife in her mouth, she opened the toaster oven and used the knife to slide the toast out onto the counter. She quickly finished preparing the other two slices of bread and tossed them in the toaster, watching the second set like a hawk, she quickly found them turning dark as well.

This time Scootaloo had a plate ready and shoveled the second set of toast out onto it. She gave the more perfect pieces of cinnamon toast to Sweetie’s parents, while keeping the slightly over-toasted ones for herself.

As she ate her breakfast her tongue came alive to the taste. It was simple, sweet, and warm and it warmed more than the filly’s mouth and belly to have so simple a luxury this early in the morning. It was a little crunchier than she’d intended but nothing that couldn’t be saved by the fact that she'd probably overdone it on the sugar.

When Scootaloo finished eating a new warmth came when Sweetie Belle’s mother pulled the filly into a hug saying, “This is amazing, Sweetie, your best yet. Tell you what. I’ll make you a special treat for lunch today.” Despite her earlier tone this praise sounded sincere, and even if it wasn’t being wrapped in a mother’s love was more than enough for Scootaloo.

The last time Scootaloo had felt love like that was on that fateful night near Winsome Falls when Rainbow Dash had agreed to take the filly under her wing as an honorary sister. Then as suddenly as it had begun the hug ended as Sweetie’s mom turned back to the counter and started preparing something for the filly to take to school as lunch.

Maybe he’d seen something in her eyes, but whatever the reason Sweetie Belle’s dad lowered his morning newspaper and motioned for the pony he thought was his daughter to come to him. When Scootaloo obeyed he too gave the filly a hug. It didn’t feel as deeply meaningful as the mother’s or even as the last heartfelt hug Scootaloo had received from her own father but this was a fresh memory, un-dulled by the passage of time, and she soaked it in anyway. So this is what it’s like to have a normal family. She thought to herself, as she lingered in the feeling, and not just the knowledge, of a parent’s love.

Soon, just two more. Scootaloo thought to herself. Soon she’d have enough successful missions under her belt. Then her own dad wouldn’t be able to deny her anymore, then she could come with him again. Earn his love once again, instead of always being left behind. Until she could feel this affection from her own dad again, this taste would have to do.

“You okay Sweetie?” the father asked in a soft tone.

“Yeah… I just needed this… Thank you.” Scootaloo answered, finally and reluctantly backing out of the embrace. The only downside in Scootaloo’s mind was that she knew that the love she’d just felt wasn’t truly for her but for the pony they thought she was, Sweetie Belle, and it felt slightly wrong for her to be basking in the love meant for her friend.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo was practically skipping when she reached school. Apple Bloom trotted up, opened her newly borrowed wings, and greeting her friend in a hushed tone, “Hey Scootaloo.” Even Scootaloo joined in giggling at being greeted by her own body, just she had done to Apple Bloom the other day. After a moment Bloom added, “So what’s got ya in such a good mood today?”

Scootaloo directed her answer to the earth pony of the trio, “Sweetie Belle, remember last night? Let’s just say you’ve already repaid me.”

“Really? How’d I do that?” Sweetie asked, as Apple Bloom looked back and forth between the other two fillies.

“My dad’s usually gone to work before I wake up. So it was nice to have somepony there for a change. Oh and I really seem to impress your mom during your cooking lesson. Oh yeah! She seems to think you know how to make cinnamon toast now,” Scootaloo answered as quietly as her happy mood allowed.

Sweetie Belle frowned slightly as she responded, “Then you’re going to have to show me how to do that.”

“Really? It’s easy…” Scootaloo was surprised that Sweetie didn’t know, but went on to tell the simplistic recipe to her friend anyway. “…Oh and watch it closely, I think your toaster runs way too hot or something.” She finished just in time for the school bell to call them inside for the first class.

“Enough fun and games you two. Time to get in character,” Apple Bloom said with a smile, and a flutter of her wings, that told she was really enjoying acting like each other.

* * * * * * *

Yesterday Scootaloo had taken the act for granted, after all her and Apple Bloom’s grades were more or less the same. But now she was in the hot seat. If she was going to convince Cheerilee that she was Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo would really have to do better than normal. But how does one act smarter than you really are? If she don’t know the answer it’s not like pretending to know was going to get her to give the right answer like Sweetie would have.

Scootaloo was sweating bullets, trying to stay awake to the painfully dull topic, and more importantly keep her book open to the page that was talking about the same thing as Cheerilee. “Sweetie Belle, care to tell us when the expedition discovered Saddle Arabia?”

Sweetie Belle… oh crud that’s me isn’t it? Scootaloo thought. “umm…” was all she said as her eyes darted around the pages of her book, checking numbers until she found the ones with the requested information. She relayed the answer right from the book.

“Very good Sweetie Belle,” Cheerilee praised the unicorn filly and then resumed the lesson.

Scootaloo slumped down in her seat a little, somehow she’d given an acceptable answer and would be safe for another ten minutes or so, as that seemed to be how long it took before their teacher would come back to Sweetie for an answer.

* * * * * * *

“I don’t envy you one bit Sweetie Belle. How do you stand the pressure of Cheerilee always expecting the right answer from you?” Scootaloo asked.

The earth pony glanced at the streets of Ponyville around them. The trio wasn’t exactly alone, but they were ‘alone in a crowd’ enough that nopony noticed the unicorn addressing herself. “All I do is pay attention in class and answer what I can,” she said in a low tone, innocently enough that it was clear she wasn’t bragging.

A moment of silent walking later and Apple Bloom had an idea. “Ah know. How about y’all show me Scootaloo’s place?” the pegasus whispered with a bit of a grin.

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow and glared in a way that said ‘haven’t we been over this before?’ Sweetie Belle gave a devious grin. Scootaloo bowed her head in defeat and motioned for her friends to follow. Sweetie knew where she lived now, so Scootaloo knew that if she didn’t show Apple Bloom where she lived now, Sweetie would just show her later. Since it was going to happen anyway Scootaloo felt she owed it to her friend to be the one to do it.

Once they’d arrived Scootaloo stopped and motioned to the house before her. “Ah don’t get it. What’s so secret about this?” Apple Bloom said, as she looked over the seemingly normal house. The house in question was more or less of the same simple wooden design as all others on the street. It even shared the same style of thatched roof as the surrounding homes. Indeed the only thing that set this house apart from any of the others on the street were the two white pillars flanking the front door, and supporting the extended second floor. Apple Bloom’s grin returned as she asked, “Since we’re here can we look inside? Maybe get ah quick glass of water?”

“No,” Scootaloo answered flatly.

“Why not? I’ve seen your living room and there wasn’t anything dangerous about it. True it felt a little weird, but I blame waking up in your body for that,” Sweetie Belle volunteered.

Scootaloo glared at her friends, with a genuine hint of anger in her eyes. Anger that was directed more at herself and her dad for their crazy mixed up lives getting in the way of her attempts to enjoy the normal things in life than at her friends. And maybe a little bit of anger at her actual friends as she knew that with their curiosity re-ignited they’d be pestering her for at least a few weeks before they’d let the topic die again.

The act did the trick as her friends backed down and followed as Scootaloo started walking away from her house. After a moment Apple Bloom tried to lighten the mood with a positive comment, “At least we know where ya live now.”

“Like that’ll do you any good,” Scootaloo countered. On seeing the look she was drawing from her friends she added, “Come on, you two know me well enough to know that if I can play and I’m not with you I’m usually riding around town on my scooter.”

“Don’t you ever just hang out at home?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No,” Scootaloo answered.

“How come?” Apple Bloom.

Scootaloo thought on the question for a bit. When she answered she said, “Because my house is not a place for fun. I eat there. I sleep there. I do my homework there. I don’t play there.”

“Why not?” her friends asked in unison.

Once more Scootaloo had to think long and hard for an answer. Her dad had never actually forbid her to play in the house. When had she stopped having fun at her house? When she found it she shared her best guess with her friends. “I guess it’s because dad expects me to keep the house clean. And I found the easiest way to keep him happy is to not mess it up in the first place. I think that’s way I’m always playing outside on my scooter, or with you guys.”

At first silence followed as the trio of fillies walked on. Then Apple Bloom broke the silence by asking, “Your dad really trusts you doesn’t he?” A nod answered her question, and then Bloom added, “Ah wish AJ trusted me like that… But ya know, all you had to do was tell us all this and we could have promised not to touch anything while you showed us around.”

“Isn’t Applejack going to expect you two to be back at sweet apple acres soon?” Scootaloo asked, trying to change the topic.

“Yeah. Oh! You should get going too, before Rarity starts worrying about me,” Sweetie Belle responded, as she picked up her pace.

“Wait! Rarity? Aren’t I going to your place Sweetie?” Scootaloo asked, caught off guard by the implied destination.

“Huh? Oh, no, nopony’s home right after school, and I’m not allowed to be home alone. So I have to stay at Rarity’s until my parents come home.”

“Oh, so that’s why you do that,” Scootaloo thought out loud.

“See y’all back at the clubhouse later!” Apple Bloom said, and with that the trio parted ways. Scootaloo heading to Rarity’s place to play ‘Sweetie Belle’ for the time being, and her friends heading back to the apple family farm to resume their day as their other friend.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo’s experience with Rarity had been that whenever she’d lingered in Rarity’s boutique she’d been forced to play mannequin while the elder unicorn made a dress around her. So far the filly had managed to avoid that dreadfully boring fate. But she’d found herself with another problem. What did Sweetie Belle do when she was hanging out with her older sister?

She tried to dig through her mind for an answer, but the only time she’d really seen Sweetie Belle hang out with her older sister in a casual setting was on a camping trip where Rarity treated Sweetie like a pack mule. Sweetie Belle had pulled a horrendously over-packed wagon and cheerfully performed every chore her older sister had asked of her, not exactly Scootaloo’s idea of fun… or hanging out… or a nice way to treat anypony for that matter.

So far she’d kept out of Rarity’s way by sitting in the corner with a sheet of paper and some crayons. But when the filly had started to draw she had to stop herself, as she was fairly sure that Sweetie Belle wouldn’t draw a picture of Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo looked down at the unfinished blue pegasus on her paper. She’d already drawn the wings by the time she’d realized she didn’t know what sort of things her friend would draw. Ultimately deciding that Sweetie would draw a pony in a dress or something. But Scootaloo had never really cared for fashion like the mare with the white coat and purple mane, working diligently before her, or the friend she knew looked up the that unicorn.

She pondered how to draw a dress on the pegasus she’d started, and that looked like she actualy cared about dressmaking. Looking up, she sighed as she saw the dress Rarity was working on lacked wing holes or sleeves so copying that onto the drawing wasn’t an option in the filly’s mind.

“Sweetie darling, would you mind giving this a quick wash?” Rarity’s words snapped the filly back to reality.

Left to her own, Scootaloo would have said ‘no’ but that’s not what she thought Sweetie Belle would’ve said, so she forced a smile and answered, “Sure, no problem.”

The dress being held in the soft blue glow of Rarity’s magic folded several times before being placed on the filly’s back. Scootaloo then took the dress downstairs and endeavored to find the wash room. Only once she’d found the wash room did it occur to her that she’d never washed her own cloths before, her father always did the laundry before. “It’s just laundry. How hard can it be?” she asked herself.

Spying two wash tubs and a box of powdered soap her first inclination was to treat the chore like washing dishes. So she filled the tubs with water and poured some of the soap into one of them. The idea being one to wash, one to rinse. And she’d seen more than enough cloths lines riding her scooter around town, so she had a good guess how she was suppose to dry the dress.

Scootaloo dropped the dress into to the soapy water and began swishing it around to clean it. As expected, soap bubbles began to form on the water. Not quite as expected, they continued to form, building up into a mound, threatening to spill over the edges of the tub. The filly’s ears fell to the side of her head as she thought, I used too much soap didn’t I? Removing her front legs from the water allowed it to settle and stop making more bubbles. But that didn’t tell her how to salvage this mess.

Looking around the wash room her eyes fell on the back door. Opening it, not surprisingly, she found the back yard and Rarity’s cloths line. Though it was the dirt and grass of the back yard that interested Scootaloo, if she had to make a mess better to do it where it might not get noticed.

She did her best to push the washtub without bothering the water, but that task proved impossible and with only a few steps the bubbles began flowing over the edges and onto her as she pushed the tub from the room. By the time Scootaloo got the tub into the yard she was covered from horn to hoof with soap bubbles. Hanging her head in defeat she consigned herself to her fate, closed her eyes, thrust her front legs into the soapy water and resumed washing the dress. While completely ignoring the building foam of bubbles as they consumed her, leaving only a mound of soapy bubbles visible in the yard.

Once satisfied that the dress had been washed, Scootaloo returned to the wash room to fetch the tub with the clean water. And once the dress had been rinsed, she had to return to the washroom once more to find where Rarity kept her cloths pins.

Looking over the dress as it dangled from the cloths line, Scootaloo couldn’t help but notice the annoyingly feeling of the soap residue in her fur. Looking back to the rinse washtub a smile formed on the filly’s face as she jumped in and started splashing around to rinse herself too. And before long the tub had become an ocean in her mind as she adventured along side an imaginary Rainbow Dash exploring it.

“An… acceptable job… Thank you Sweetie Belle.” Rarity’s forced praise snapped Scootaloo out of her daydream.

Scootaloo’s eyes found the mare standing in the doorway. And while the bubbles had long since popped on their own the pathway of soapy water still glistened clearly in the afternoon sun. Realizing that she’d forgotten to clean up after herself, she feared she’d just given away the fact that she didn’t have a clue how to do laundry properly, like she assumed Sweetie Belle did. “I can clean it up,” Scootaloo offered.

“Oh no, that’s quite alright. Besides won’t your friends be expecting you by now?” Rarity responded with a tone of voice that hinted at just trying to get rid of ‘Sweetie Belle’ while sounding nice about it.

“Right! I’ll get my things,” Scootaloo said perking up at the excuse to flee the fashionista’s home and starting to climb out of the washtub.

“Not like that you’re not!” Rarity said, grabbing up the filly in a sheath of her blue magic glow. “You would make mud if you walked across the dirt with your wet hooves like that. Come along and we’ll dry you off properly.” She explained, as she levitated the filly along behind her.

At this point Scootaloo was just hoping that Rarity didn’t notice how badly she’d cringed when grabbed by the magic. It wasn’t a feeling she was use to, or liked for that matter. Not that it felt bad, only unusual, like having a skin tight blanket lifting her from underneath and a bunch of suction cups gently pulling her up all at once. She didn’t have to tolerate the feeling long though, as it only took a moment before Rarity had taken her inside, wrapped her in a towel and set her down gently enough.

After a brief assault of magically levitated towels the filly was fully dried, and with a nod from the elder unicorn, Scootaloo took that as her cue to scram. Dashing to where she’d left Sweetie Belle’s saddlebags, she found a small paper bag sitting on top of them. Thanks to the aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies coming from it, the filly didn’t need to open the bag to know what was in it. A small note attached to the bag advised her to share them with her friends. Scootaloo was more than happy to obey, and she added the bag of snacks to the saddlebags and headed out.

* * * * * * *

Hours had passed since Sweetie Belle had left, and Rarity had just finished eating the snack that was going to pass for an early dinner when there was a knock on her door. Rarity had closed the shop early due to a combination of a lack of in-store business and a recently received, and rather daunting, mail order that came from one of the Canterlot catalogs. So she was expecting to find one of her close friends when she opened the door, after all who else would knock on her door when the sign said ‘closed’?

Much to Rarity’s surprise she found a pegasus stallion of the royal guard at her door. “Is Sweetie Belle here?” he wasted no time asking, breathing heavy as if he’d just flown a race.

Rarity immediately took notice of the stallion’s winded tone, and she answered, “Oh my, what did my sister do now?”

The guard proceeded to tell her a story about transporting an artifact and suspecting an ambush hiding it in the saddlebag of a passing filly. As he spoke Rarity examined the stallion, and while suspicion wasn’t part of Rarity’s nature she could only watch it serve Rainbow Dash well so many times before gaining an appreciation for it. At first the stallion’s story seemed to carry weight as he had the wounds to match, but as he neared the end of his story Rarity had noticed that the guard’s armor was still spotlessly polished to a shine. The stallion may have been in a fight but his armor had not.

“…So please is your sister here or not?” he concluded.

Unsure she wanted to trust the pony in the guard armor, but also not wanting to lie if he was really a royal guard, Rarity was thankful that a truthful answer would be useless to him. “I’m so sorry, but at this time of day she’s probably with her friends. And, knowing them, they could be anywhere in town,” she answered, with the false sincerity of a trained actress, neglecting to volunteer any information about the filly’s clubhouse.

The door closed and the stallion found himself alone on the shop’s welcome mat. With a beat of his wings he took off into the sky, turning his head downward, searching the growing evening shadows. Though his destination wasn’t Ponyville proper. Idiot, of course Scootaloo would be with her friends. Captain Cloud Wall mentally scolded himself as he flew right at sweet apple acres.

* * * * * * *

“Are ya sure we can’t go to your place?”

“I’d be in serious trouble if dad caught me letting you two in the house,” Scootaloo answered with an exasperated sigh. She would have thought being in the wrong bodies would distract her friends at least a little, but Apple Bloom seemed intent on trying to not be the only one of the three who hadn’t seen the inside of Scootaloo’s house.

“This coming from the pony that suggested sneaking out of Fluttershy’s place to go adventuring in the Everfree Forest. It’s not like your dad has to know you let me take a peek in your home. Besides, Sweetie Belle got to see and it’s not like you’re in trouble for that,” Apple Bloom insisted, with an unintentional flaring of her wings giving away her annoyance.

“Look if you want to play ‘being Scootaloo’ there’s my scooter, there’s my helmet. Go ride my scooter like I do or something. And just forget about my house already!” Scootaloo practically yelled in frustration of her own. She started to storm out of the clubhouse but stopped in the doorway as a memory of Apple Bloom’s less than acrobatic attempt to dance for a school talent show flashed in her mind. “Just don’t try any of my stunts, those are harder then they look to pull off. And I don’t want you braking my scooter,” Scootaloo added.

“Wait, where are you going?” Sweetie Belle asked, trying to calm the anger between her friends.

“Your house, to see if I can get through the rest of the day making your parents think I’m you, without hiding from them all day,” Scootaloo answered as she marched down the tree-house ramp.

Scootaloo had barely gotten past the sign welcoming visitors to sweet apple acres when a white pegasus stallion, clad in royal guard armor, landed on the dirt road right in front of her. “Scootaloo?” he asked.

“Cloud Wall? Wow, what happened to you?” Scootaloo responded while taking note of the cuts, bruises and bandages the stallion was now sporting under his armor.

“Plan B didn’t go so well. Time is of the essence, and you’re the only agent I know is available right now,” he said, with a hint of desperation in his voice.

“What about my dad? His team is special ops too,” Scootaloo suggested, honestly trying to be helpful, but not wanting to risk Sweetie Belle’s health by helping herself.

“What about him? I’ve been best friends with your father since we were foals and if it wasn’t for that joint operation in Las Pegasus I still wouldn’t have known we’ve both been special ops for years. Besides I tried his place first and no pony was home,” the captain said, rolling his eyes as he added the last line.

“Can’t you just get the rest of the royal guard to help you?”

“Not enough time, to fly to HQ on the hope that there might be a free team there, and the regular royal guard operates under Celestia’s rules of engagement. And I love the princess of the sun as much as the next guy but her rules of engagement are an act of suicide. So no, this has to be handled by special ops.” Cloud Wall punctuated the seriousness of his plea for help by kneeling before the filly.

Scootaloo looked about, eyes growing wide in near panic, she knew if Captain Cloud Wall was willing to plead to her, of all ponies, for help it had to be bad. And even if there was little risk of passersby on the dirt road to the apple farm, there was always the chance that Applejack or Big Macintosh might be working one of the fields beside the lonely road.

In the time she’d spent working for Cloud Wall, Scootaloo had noticed that his team always asked him two questions when they wanted more information from him, and always in the same order too. She paraphrased the first one, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The captain raised a hoof to his chin and thought for a moment before answering. “Worst case scenario. The weapon works better than they think it will and deals massive damage to Canterlot despite my warring allowing time to raise a shield spell over the city. What remains of the royal guard would retaliate swiftly and the enemy forces would likely be wiped out in the resulting battle. It would be a mass casualty event. I’d estimate said casualties to be in the vicinity of a hundred thousand, most likely the bulk of those would be the citizens of Canterlot.” Despite his dire choice of words, the captain had spoke with a very matter-of-fact tone the whole time.

From what she’d observed when his regular team questioned him Scootaloo knew better than to be bothered by the tactician’s honest assessment of the worst possible outcome and followed up with the second question she knew was usually asked of him, “And the most likely case?”

“Most likely scenario is that they will see my warning to Canterlot as left it too hard a target and will likely turn the weapon on the most conveniently located soft target to make their point instead. Seeing as Ponyville fits that description I’d imagine they’d hit there. Likewise I’d guess the retaliation from the royal guard would swift and harsh, also considering that Ponyville has a lower population and isn’t on a mountainside, I’d guess the event would likely end with the town in ruins by sundown tomorrow and casualties in the vicinity of a thousand. And since I can’t see more than two to three hundred active combatants fighting in the streets most of those will like be the citizens of Ponyville.”

Scootaloo looked solemnly down at her white hoof and muttered, “So Sweetie Belle’s in danger no matter what I do…” The filly’s eyes turned to the apple farm behind her. But Apple Bloom doesn’t have to be. She thought. Please forgive me.

Chapter 5: Desperate Shadows

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The wind was rushing through Scootaloo’s mane, or Sweetie Belle’s mane as the case was, as she sat in the pegasus chariot. A quick stop by Scootaloo’s house before they had left allowed her to grab her usual gear. Thankfully Sweetie Belle was basically the same size as Scootaloo so her tactical harness fit the unicorn’s body. Of course her ‘tactical harness’ was little more than a black vest with a bunch of pouches sown along the bottom like a tool belt, the two white spots of Sweetie’s coat showing on her sides made it clear she was a unicorn in a pegasus’ vest.

As annoying as the odd feel of wind blowing through the empty wing holes was, what currently annoyed the filly was the night vision goggles looped around her hoof. She had long ago abandon trying to wear them when she’d found that Sweetie Belle’s horn got in the way of sliding them up onto her forehead. How unicorns were suppose to wear night-vision goggles was beyond her. Did shadow ops unicorns even use them? Or did they just cast light spells when they needed to see in the dark?

She would have put the goggles away by now if not for how fast Cloud Wall was pulling the chariot. Flying this fast meant she’d have to fight with the secret compartments to get them closed once they’d caught the wind. Scootaloo shook the thought from her head. She had better things to be thinking about right now.

Not least of witch was the fact that they’d been flying for hours and that the sun had already set. They finally began to descend into, what Scootaloo had to guess was, the forests near Vanhoover. When they finally landed in a clearing she asked a question that had been bothering her most of the flight, “Captain, When you said the royal guard used Celestia’s rules you made it sound like we don’t. But don’t we work for Celestia too?”

“Huh? Oh right! When you first started we did operate under Celestia, but a few months after her return, Luna was put in charge of shadow ops units,” he started in his matter of fact tone, but a certain playfulness joined the smile that appeared on his face as he continued, “When the first complaint Luna received about our rules of engagement made her look at our rulebook… Well say what you want about the pen being mightier than the sword, I heard Luna took a sword to that book, and the results where spectacular. I must say I do like the no-nonsense get-the-job-done rules Luna handed down to us after that. In fact that was when I started using you for more than just super low risk scouting and distraction jobs.”

By the time he’d finished talking Captain Cloud Wall had already released himself from the pegasus chariot’s harness, and was emptying the contents of the two hidden compartments onto the grassy meadow they’d landed in.

With his royal guard armor long since removed he was now sporting a simple black body suit, although it had a multitude of cuts and stains marring it thanks to his earlier attempt. The captain quickly laid out the more useful items in one area while tossing the disguises aside.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but notice what was missing from this picture. “Where’s the rest of the team?” she asked.

“Lieutenant Aurora and I barely got out of there in one piece, dang girl tried to play it tough and said she was fine. But she passed out on me not far from Ponyville. I dropped her off at the hospital there. The good news is that Private Comet Fall was captured,” Cloud Wall said, as he filled his pockets with various tools.

“How is that good news?” Scootaloo had to ask.

“Hmm? Easy, because that means I still have a combat specialist in there. All we need to do is turn the enemy’s strength into a weakness by freeing him on our way in, then we’ll have a real chance of finishing this mission without a catastrophe,” the captain explained. Then motioning to the assortment of gear around them he added, “Help yourself to whatever you want.”

The filly’s eyes glistened like a foal in a candy store as she looked down at the espionage-tools before her. Then she found something she’d didn’t expect to find. “Is that the rocket scooter? I thought you said, there was only one,” she asked, looking at the black, folded up contraption.

“And when I told you that, it was true. But after the results you got with the first one, how could I not front the money for the R&D boys to make another one? You should probably take that.”

The folded metal scooter was a little smaller than the one she usually rode, but in its folded up state this one was easy to strap to her back. Seeing as her gear was usually chosen for her, she wasn’t sure what else would be useful, so Scootaloo then filled the pouches of her harness with throwing stars and the grenades that she couldn’t remember if the colored bands meant they were smoke grenades or flash bangs. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked, feeling nervous but as ready as she could be.

Cloud Wall unfurled a blue scroll. Scootaloo was no architect but even she recognized it as a building’s blueprints. “These are the plans on record for the building we need to infiltrate. I know that they are incomplete, as there’s clearly a hidden second basement not on these plans, but they seem fairly accurate for the layout of the first floor and basement,” the captain explained.

Pointing a small flashlight on them he pointed a hoof to a small area marked ‘supply closet’ and said, “Seeing as this isn’t really an office building I’m betting that this would be the best makeshift prison for them, so I’m guessing that’s where we’ll find Comet Fall.” Pointing to another part of the plans he added, “And judging from the industrial grade ventilation unit on the roof, that’s way too strong for just a regular sublevel, I’m betting that the hidden sublevel we’re looking for is on that side of the building. The plan is we sneak in through the roof maintenance hatch, get Comet and the three of us proceed to the main objective. Any questions?”

Now that she’d had time to think of it, Scootaloo had several, the one that won the fight to get out of he mouth first was, “You’ve never asked me to do anything like this before. I could really get Sweetie Belle hurt!”

“I know, I usually give you low risk stuff, and I’m sorry I have to ask this of you. But as much as I hate to admit it, just the times you’ve been caught in a situation gone bad by mistake has given you nine times more combat experience than me,” Cloud said, as he shut off his light and started storing the extra gear back in the chariot’s compartments.

A shiver ran down Scootaloo’s spine as she realized that number hadn’t been chosen out of thin air. She’d been caught in a fight eight times working for Captain Cloud Wall. And then there was the one, and only, time she’d worked for her dad, Las Pegasus.

“Wait! You’ve never been in a fight before today?” the filly asked, looking over the captain’s recently acquired bruises.

The stallion shook his head and answered, “They made me a captain because I’m a good tactician. You know full well that Comet Fall and Aurora Wind are my team’s combat ponies. This morning was the first time I’ve held a weapon since basic combat training ages ago.” He lowered his head in shame as he added, “I never realized just how small a margin for error I got use to operating with by placing so much of the burden on those two. No wonder I started using you so much. Even that little bit of help gave them some room to make minor mistakes and get away with it.”

Scootaloo didn’t know what to say to that so she just followed the captain through the forest until they poked their heads out of a bush and peered down the hill at a one-story building in the clearing before them. Then Scootaloo remembered another question to whisper. “Who are these ponies anyway?”

Cloud Wall whispered his answer back. “They clam to be anarchists. But their actions prove they’re lying or idiots that don’t know the meaning of the word. Most of them seem to have figured out that saying ‘they want to be free of oppressive rules.’ sounds better than saying ‘I have a grudge against the princesses.’ or whatever really drives them. Ultimately most of them seem to be useful idiots being manipulated by a few power players that want to being Equestria down.”

“Why would anypony want to do that?” Scootaloo asked, sincerely.

“Heck if I know. A thousand years of relative peace is a better record than any other nation in the world. That I know of anyway,” the captain shrugged off the question. Turning to the unicorn filly at his side he added, “Ready?”

Scootaloo nodded and then seeing the captain practically lying on the ground realized he meant for her to climb on. Once she’d done so the pegasus stallion opened his wings and the two of them took to the air.

She clung to the pegasus’ back as he hovered in the tree line, watching and waiting. The night was only lit by a quarter moon, but even without her night-vision goggles it was enough for Scootaloo to spot three guards around the building. Two walking patrols around the perimeter and the third standing guard by a broken window, shards of broken glass were scattered about, glimmering in the moonlight, marking where Cloud Wall and Aurora had escaped the building from the first attempt.

Then the captain made his move and darted silently from their cover, landing on the roof by a hatch. Scootaloo slid off the stallion’s back as quietly as she could, while Cloud Wall appraised the lock on the hatch. A smile graced his face as he found it was still unlocked from that morning’s attempt. Cloud lifted the hatch leading into the maintenance catwalks for the building ventilation system and motioned for filly beside him to go first.

Scootaloo didn’t hesitate to hop into the hole and grab the ladder. The captain was halfway in when a voice called out from behind him, “Hey, who are you?”

Scootaloo froze, the captain’s eyes flashed with concern for a second, but he whispered, “Don’t wait up.” He stood up straight so that the hatch fell closed, leaving Scootaloo alone inside. She heard Cloud Wall speak to the pony who’d surprised him, “I’m with the maintenance company, got a complaint about your air conditioning.”

“We do our maintenance in house.”

“It was worth a shot,” Cloud Wall said with a sigh. Immediately following the captain’s lament Scootaloo heard the sounds of a brawl begin on the roof just outside the hatch.

Turning her eyes to the unlit catwalks she realized why the captain had said what he did, they didn’t realize she was already inside. The ladder wasn’t really that long, or even necessary, as a stallion would have to walk slumped over just to fit in the space between the first floor ceiling and the roof. So Scootaloo started sneaking along the catwalk as best she could. But with the only light coming from holes allowing light up from the first floor her eyes had not yet adjusted to the newfound darkness.

Even though she was barely moving her heart was racing like she was in a marathon. Relax, you heard Cloud Wall, I’ve got more combat experience then him, I’ve got this… Scootaloo thought to try to calm herself. But the thought brought to mind just what her ‘combat experience’ was. And the more she thought about it the more it dawned on her that when things went bad and she’d been caught in a fight all she usually did was find a place to hide while the adults fought it out. Truth be told she’d gained more real combat experience fighting with schoolyard bullies over being teased than working for Cloud Wall.

Sure there was that time when she’d broken cover to grab the item everypony was fighting over, or that one time the captain had referenced regarding the first rocket scooter, but those were exceptions. How’d I let myself get talked into this? Scootaloo moaned in her mind.

Scootaloo’s eyes finally adjusted to the darkness enough that she could make out the tops of the walls and find her way thanks to the blueprint she’d seen earlier. She crept along until she found the small room the captain had guessed to be the makeshift prison. As carefully as possible she lifted one of the ceiling panels to peer into the room below. But instead of finding the bars of a makeshift jail and a pegasus special agent, she found an earth pony mare, with a brown coat and green mane, sitting in front of a bank of monitors. Apparently the storage closet had been converted into the security hub.

Thankfully the earth pony watching the security cameras was too fixated on the screens to notice the unicorn filly above her. Scootaloo was about to slip the panel back into place and sneak away when she noticed one of the screens had an image of a hall like room with jail cells on both sides. While the camera couldn’t see into the cells it was a safe bet that Comet was in one of them, and if she could figure out where that camera was she could go right there instead of searching blindly.

She just needed to get close enough to read the information on the screen though. And there was only one way she was going to do that. Slowly Scootaloo slid the panel aside until there was enough room for her to fit through. Then she jumped.

The mare heard something and looked up just in time to glimpse a flash of white hooves slamming into her head. The earth pony slumped into her chair as Scootaloo slid down onto her lap. She stopped to feel the chest of the mare. Knowing that Sweetie Belle’s body wasn’t as strong as her own Scootaloo hadn’t held back when she bucked down on the poor pony, and for a brief moment, feared she may have killed the mare. A sigh of relief was breathed when she felt that the mare was still breathing.

With her concerns diminished Scootaloo turned her attention to the desk full of monitors. Curiosity got the better of the filly as she first looked to the control panel, where the mare had been holding a hoof over just before being knocked out. Scootaloo found two buttons one had a small spinning light by it and was marked ‘perimeter alarm’. The button that the mare seemed to be debating whether or not to press before her untimely nap also had a small, but unlit, light next to it and was marked ‘master alarm.’

Thankful that only the guards outside the building knew there was an intruder about, Scootaloo turned her attention to the monitors. Pausing only for a moment to admire the uppercut the captain just delivered to some stallion in one of the perimeter camera’s line of sight.

Looking to the screen with the make shift jail Scootaloo noticed two things. First there was only a single stallion sitting between the back two cells, who also seemed to be asleep in his chair. Second in the corner of the screen was a digital marking identifying the image as camera ‘C3.’

A moment of looking around allowed Scootaloo to spot a map of the building with a matching marking, and more accurate room names than the blueprints the captain had. Checking the numbers and corresponding screens she saw that the first floor was effectively abandon. Another glance at a perimeter camera and it was hard to miss the fact that Captain Cloud Wall was now fighting and dodging gunfire from five guards.

While Scootaloo could appreciate that the captain was intentionally drawing as much attention as he could outside, she couldn’t help but wonder if he really intended her to free Comet by herself. Surely Cloud Wall would have known that, even if he was awake, the guard in the prison block wouldn’t abandon his post.

Scootaloo knew where she needed to be but there was one thing left to do before leaving the security room. Once, working for Cloud Wall, she’d ended up stuck with Lieutenant Aurora in a security room much like this. And one thing she learned watching the lieutenant was that banks of monitors like this always had a recording device with them. Hopping down from the lap of the knocked out guard Scootaloo found that device and pressed the eject button. Putting the tape away with a bunch of others she glanced back up at the control panel and smiled when she saw the light by the record button had gone out.

Now that she didn’t have to worry about leaving any video evidence that Sweetie Belle had been here, at least until somepony noticed the absence of a tape for the cameras to record to, Scootaloo tried to jump back up through the hole in the ceiling. Falling way short she remembered why she cared about not being seen or recorded here. She was Sweetie Belle today, and that meant no wings to help her jump higher than any unicorn could hope to jump.

Glancing back at the map of the building, she took note of the halls between the security room and the holding room, as the map called the makeshift jail. With one last look to the screens Scootaloo saw the halls of the first floor were still empty. She took a deep breath and opened the door and, after a final check to see if the coast was clear, she bolted from the room.

Scootaloo darted from one hall to the next. Pausing only in the blind spots of each camera along the way. And only long enough to take out her throwing stars and throw them until she’d disabled the camera. Had she thought things through, the filly might have realized that the lack of the master alarm sounding meant the pony in the security room was still knocked out and so the cameras were still useless. But with her original plan of returning to the now unreachable catwalks in the rafters to sneak her way to the jail ruined her mind had become too frazzled to think clearly and she was living only in the moment.

Usually having to use three or more throwing stars before she hit something important, she’d run out of throwing stars before she’d run out of cameras between her and the jail room. She poked her head out from around the corner. At the far end of the hall before her was the last, still working, camera. Halfway down that same hall was the door to the jail room.

Deciding she had no choice but to relay on speed, she ran for the door hoping to be in and out of the camera’s line of sight in just a couple of seconds. In her haste to avoid lingering in sight of the camera Scootaloo had forgotten about the guard, and quickly swung the door wide-open and dashed inside.

Startled awake by the sound of the door being flung open the earth pony stallion, with a light green coat and yellow mane, formerly sleeping across the room saw an unfamiliar figure and acted on instinct instantly. He raise his hoof with a gun strapped to it and with the other front leg pressed the button on the side of the firearm.

Seeing a gun leveled at her Scootaloo’s instincts demanded she dodge, so she jumped to the side. A bang rang out, a flash registered in the filly’s eyes, and she froze in pain.

The pain wasn’t severe, but the fact that she felt pain at all hit Scootaloo’s mind like a train. Slowly she turned to look at her left flank. Right where Sweetie Belle’s cutie mark would have been, if she’d ever earned one, was a thin red line. The bullet had only grazed the filly’s body and the blood oozed slowly from the minor cut that had resulted. Scootaloo knew her unicorn friend had acquired far worse injuries than this on her own just crusading for their cutie marks, but to Scootaloo this was worlds different. She had taken this risk. She had failed to protect Sweetie Belle.

Realizing he’d just shot at a filly the guardspony reacted as anypony with a heart would, he lowered his weapon and spoke to the kid. “Whoa! I don’t know how you snuck in here, but you’d better sneak back out. This is a restricted area. You could get-” he cut himself off when her heard the filly mutter something. “What?” he asked, hoping the unicorn filly would repeat herself.

Scootaloo was shivering and yet she was burning up inside from a seething, burning rage that demanded release. She was furious with herself for getting her friend’s body hurt. Ever since she’d become friend with Apple Bloom Scootaloo had been getting better at containing her anger, it might escape onto her face but she wasn’t so quick to act on her anger by jumping into a fight anymore. Yet Scootaloo was barely able to keep her anger from moving her mussels. However, today her anger had another means of escape, Sweetie Belle’s horn.

“HOW DARE YOU HURT MY FRIEND!” Scootaloo repeated her earlier muttering as a yell. At that moment an orange glow surrounded the filly’s horn. A split second later a flash of lightning arced forth from Scootaloo and the lightning bolt knocked the stallion back, sending him to a crumpled heap against the wall behind him.

Scootaloo had been just as surprised by the lightning bolt and her hind legs gave out and she fell into a sitting position as a result. It took several seconds before she realized that the lightning had come from her. Dang, Sweetie, you’ve been holding out on us! That wasn’t so hard. Scootaloo thought, jokingly, to herself as she realized she’d just used unicorn magic.

When her eyes fell on the guard, still lying on the ground, a moment of fear pushed the filly to go check if he was still alive. She ran over to the guard and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the slow but rhythmic rise and fall of the guard’s chest.

Finally remembering why she was here in the first place, Scootaloo took the keys dangling from the guard’s belt. Glancing around she found the pony she was looking for in the cell on the right. A pegasus stallion who’s coat and mane were a deep dark blue, fitting of the night sky. For a cutie mark he had a silver comet adorning his flank. His light blue eyes looked on the filly with genuine curiosity as she approached his cell, keys in mouth.

“Third from the right,” he said, after the filly tried a key at random on the lock to his cell. “Thank you, whoever you are,” he added once she’d opened the cell. She had left the keys dangling from the lock so he snagged them with his wing tip.

“Can it Comet. It’s me, Scootaloo,” she snarled in a hushed tone.

“Really? Somehow, you look different today. Did you do something different with your mane?” he couldn’t help but ask jokingly, as he removed the firearm from the knocked out guard and strapped it to his own leg.

“Mind swapping magic artifact, this is my friend’s body,” Scootaloo said, as she trotted beside Comet, as the two of them returned to the front of the room. Her eyes drifting back to the cut she’d gotten only moments ago, while Comet turned his attention to several lockers.

“You must be a pretty quick study,” Comet commented with a grin, as he retrieved what was left of his gear.

“Yeah… I have no idea how I got lightning out of this thing,” She answered, tapping the horn on her head.

“If I had to guess, I’d bet it’s because you’re really a pegasus and our ability to kick lightning out of clouds comes much more naturally than magic dose to a unicorn.”

“Sounds as good as anything I can think of,” Scootaloo said as she opened the door to the hallway, letting the private peek out first.

“Clear. Anything I should know from the captain?” he asked, ducking back into the jail room when he spotted the camera at one end of the hallway.

“Last I saw he was fighting outside. He told me not to wait up, so I guess he wants us to finish without him,” Scootaloo’s tone was heavy with concern as she spoke.

Right then the distant blare of a siren from outside was drowned out by an alarm from the building’s interior intercom. Glancing at the camera over their heads, and then back to the knocked out guard still laying in full view of said camera Comet laughed, “Looks like he wasn’t the only pony asleep at the switch.”

Scootaloo said nothing, but frowned, knowing that the mare in the security room must have woken up. As if on queue, the knocked out guard’s radio blared to life and a mare’s voice cried, “Intruders inside the compound! And they’ve released the captive! I repeat two or more intruders are inside! One still fighting on the perimeter!”

A grim look crossed Comet’s face. “We shouldn’t keep the captain waiting any longer then necessary. Stay close, follow me.” Scootaloo nodded in response. The private jumped out first and with one shot destroyed the camera in the hallway, and with that the two of them left the jail room behind.

Thankfully, with most of the guards from the first floor still outside fighting Captain Cloud Wall, Scootaloo and Comet Fall found little resistance as they made their way through the office like halls. By the time they reached the stairs Comet had spent more time taking out cameras before they could see who or how many had rescued him than dealing with enemy guards.

The two ponies burst into the stairwell to find a squared spiral staircase leading down. Comet Fall smashed the camera by the door they’d entered from and then used a trashcan he’d borrowed from just outside the door to bar it closed behind them.

Seeing that the filly with him had already started descending the stairs Comet did a quick back flip into the empty space in the middle of the stairwell and fell down, opening his wings to catch himself when he reached the floor below. Sure enough he found another camera watching the lower door, and promptly bucked it to smithereens.

When Scootaloo joined the private her first instinct was to go to the door, but she stopped herself when she noticed that Comet showed no interest in going out onto the basement level and was tapping the walls on the stairwell nearby instead. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I may have been captured this morning but that doesn’t mean I took the day off. While I was in that cell I learned that the mistake we made this morning was assuming that the entrance to the hidden sublevel was going to be somewhere out there,” he answered, pointing a hind leg toward the door behind him. “But I overheard something about a secret in the west stairwell. Bingo!” He finished with a smile, as the tapping noise from his hoof suddenly sounded different.

A moment of experimenting later and the wall opened up to reveal yet another set of stairs, this time long and straight. Comet Fall frowned as he looked at the metal door at the bottom of the stairs, turned to the filly beside him and said, “You know. It occurs to me that the key to that door probably isn’t on the jailer’s key ring.” The sound of six to eight sets of hooves charging drew both ponies’ attention to the door behind them. “Any bets one of them has the key we need?” He added, with a grim laugh.

Out of habit Scootaloo looked for a place to hide, finding none a weight on her back reminded her of another option. “Forget it. We’ll use mine,” she said with a devious grin, as she released the object and with one fluid motion of her hoof unfolded the scooter.

“Is that?”

“Yep.”

“But I thought…”

“Me too. But luckily the captain lied to us.”

The devious grin proved contagious as the quick conversation made one appeared on Comet’s face as well. He nodded in approval while throwing himself against the door to the regular basement level to bar it. Only a second latter a pounding noise came from the other side as the guards tried to force their way in.

Scootaloo backed up as much as she could in the confines of the stairwell and pushed off as fast as she could for the hidden stairway. She hopped the scooter onto the hidden stairway’s guardrail starting a grinding decent toward the metal door at the bottom. Without her wings she found correcting her balance doable, but harder than she was use to. Thankfully the stairway was short enough that it didn’t matter. When she reached the halfway point of the stairway she flipped open a safety cover between the handlebar’s grips and pressed the red button behind it.

The twin black canisters on the sides of the scooter’s baseboard roared to life, and revealed the source of the rocket scooter’s name. Surging forward Scootaloo hopped the scooter off the rail, pointing it right at the metal door and jumped off the scooter, letting it blaze on head without her. Finally she closed her eyes, raised her front legs and pressed them together to guard Sweetie Belle’s head and neck.

When the rocket scooter slammed into the door the shaped charge on the front exploded, blasting the door off its hinges and knocking it inward. Though the shaped charge directed most of the blast at the door it still launched a backlash shockwave back up the stairway.

The shockwave washed over Scootaloo, although being prepared for it, she was able to keep it from knocking the wind from her lungs. To her the sensation felt a lot like being thrown through a cheep glass window, don’t ask how she knew what that felt like. Short version, cutie mark crusader window washers didn’t go so well.

Inside three unicorns, two mares and a stallion, stood in shocked surprise as the door to their room fell inwards and landed a good foot from its doorframe. A fraction of a second latter a collective sigh of relief and grunt of confusion was uttered by the three unicorns when, of all things, a unicorn filly came bursting through the cloud of smoke obscuring the doorway.

Scootaloo shot through the explosion’s smoke cloud holding the stance of a flying kick. Though her precaution proved pointless, save for making her entrance into the room look cooler, as there was no guard in the path of her blind entry. In fact the only ponies she found in the room were three unicorns in lab coats. None of whom seemed inclined to fight her as they all backed away from the strange and mostly square contraption with a long, thin cylinder on the top sitting in the middle of the room.

A moment after Scootaloo slid to a halt from her dramatic entrance, the sound of gunfire came from the stairway behind her and a second after that Private Comet Fall flew into the room. In a heartbeat he looped around, scooped the dislodged door up, tossed it back into its doorframe and immediately started dragging the nearest desk he could find to add to his makeshift barricade.

The moment the barricade was done the private flung himself against it just in time for the gunfire to stop and a half dozen angry vices started shouting and pounding on the barricade from the other side. “Destroy it!” Comet yelled.

Scootaloo knew it had to be done, and that she had to do it. After all if Comet stopped reinforcing the barricade for even a second the enemy forces would tare it down. But the strange device was made of metal, and all the filly had left was flash bangs and smoke grenades, the scooter had been her only heavy ordnance. So she did the only thing she could do. Lowering her head, she begged. Not out loud but in her mind she pleaded. Come on horn, you gave me lightning a minute ago. Give it to me again!

Sweetie Belle’s horn responded to Scootaloo’s desire that the device be destroyed. An orange glow formed round the horn and a bolt of lightning flashed across the room. The magnetic fields of the newly ionized metal caused some of the machine’s casing to be torn apart as if something inside had exploded. Although the bulk of the device remained intact and Scootaloo could hear motors still humming away inside, she could also see the dancing light of flames coming from gapes in the main chamber’s casing.

Breathing heavily and feeling the drain of the magics she couldn’t hope to understand Scootaloo was not convinced that the machine was unsalvageable. Looking over the newly revealed parts, she noticed that part of the device’s cannon had shed its casing, revealing a section that had a purple gem about the size of a pony’s hoof floating between two electrodes. The top half of the cannon must have been held up by magic, as with the casing gone nothing physically connected the two halves and yet the top part just floated in place as electricity arched around the crystal and between the two electrodes. Well that looks important. Scootaloo thought and then she charged at the device.

Scootaloo braced her mind for pain as she jumped at the machine and swung a hoof wide, through the crystal and the electricity arching around it. Both the filly and the gem tumbled to the ground on the other side. With the crystal gone the top part of the cannon fell straight down. The hum from the device became a high pitched whine and flames started jumping out from the inner working as parts started shorting out.

Scootaloo writhed in pain for a second as the electricity discharged from her body. Once she’d crawled back to her hooves she took the now dormant crystal and stuffed it in one of the empty pouches on her vest.

That was the moment one of the mares, the one who had faded green fur and a light blue mane, chose to step toward Comet and said, “Please don’t hurt us. We’re being blackmailed into helping them.” The other two unicorns, who both had brown fur and blond manes and looked like they might be bother and sister, nodded to confirmed.

“Where are the research notes on the weapon?” Comet asked, to test them. All three unicorns pointed to the same file cabinet without hesitation. “Burn them,” the pegasus added.

A pink glow surrounded the horn of the mare who had spoken and the file cabinet opened and some of the folders levitated out. She used her magic to guide them to the flaming device in the middle of the room and once lit returned them to the cabinet. A moment later and all of the cabinet’s contents were ablaze.

“Is there another way out?” Comet Fall asked, Looking about and hoping there was something he couldn’t see stuck holding up his barricade.

The lead lab coat unicorn shook her head. “The only way in or out is that door,” she said, pointing at the one Comet was desperately trying to hold closed.

“This ventilation shaft looks big enough to fly through. And I think I see stars up there!” Scootaloo volunteered, looking straight up through said shaft.

“Can you get the fan out of the way kid?” Comet Fall asked.

“I think so,” Scootaloo answered, not really sure she could summon another lightning bolt but seeing no other way out felt she had to say yes.

The pink glow returned as the screws holding the grate in were unscrewed and the grate was set aside. “What about us?” the mare asked.

Comet shook his head sorrowfully. “Tell them whatever you have to, to stay alive and more or less here for about an hour. Now that we know the weapon is inoperable we can have a regular guard unit raid this place, they’ll be more than happy to rescue you,” he told the three ponies in lab coats. To the filly he added, “Let’s go!”

Scootaloo jumped onto a box and readied herself to jump again. Comet gave a countdown and on ‘one’ Scootaloo jumped, Comet bolted, the filly landed on his back and wrapped her hooves around him and he shot up the shaft.

An orange glow shone from Sweetie Belle’s horn as Scootaloo desired the destruction of the air-conditioning unit above them, but the magic didn’t seem to want to come this time. The glow flickered and strengthened but no lightning came. Come on, just one more time! Please o please just one more! Scootaloo begged in her mind as they were quickly running out of shaft between them and the fan blades.

Whether Sweetie’s horn was listening or whether it was simple survival instincts, a bolt of lightning flashed past the side of Comet Fall’s head and blasted the fan. The fan shattered into pieces and while the rest of the air-conditioning unit didn’t explode outright it was weakened enough that Comet was able to punch through it. The two of them burst into the night sky and Comet Fall flapped his wings like mad trying to get away from the enemy building as quickly as he could.

Seeing the escaping ponies Captain Cloud Wall stopped going easy with the pegasus he was currently brawling with, delivered a powerful blow to the chest, stunning the pony and sending the mare crashing to the roof below. Then he took off after his team, dodging the gunfire from the earth ponies below until he was out of range of their weapons.

At first the trio flew north, and then ducked below the tree line to loop back, returning to the clearing with the pegasus chariot. Once there, the private radioed in the request for a formal raid and stayed behind to keep watch just in case the enemy tried to move the other three captives before said raid could get there. The captain quickly hitched himself to the chariot and took off for Ponyville with Scootaloo.

* * * * * * *

They were still a good fifty minutes outside of Ponyville but a glance at the moon high over head was all it took to see that midnight would come much sooner then that.

Seeing a worried look on his passenger’s face, even though he could guess the answer Cloud Wall asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You know that mind swapping artifact I mentioned? It goes off at midnight, there’s no way I can get Sweetie Belle in bed before then,” the filly answered.

“Did the mind swapping spell wake you every night?” the captain asked, glancing up at the moon to gauge the time of night.

“Well, no. I woke up like normal, just in a different body.”

“Then can’t you just go to sleep? I might be able to slip her back into her home before she wakes up anyway. Thanks to that note we left, her parents think she’d at Rarity’s, Rarity thinks she’s at home. So I sneak in, drop Sweetie off in her own bed and snag the note, Sweetie wakes in her own bed none the wiser and her parents think they imagined the note saying she’d be at Rarity’s. Given what we just pulled of that should be easy as pie,” Cloud Wall laughed.

“Yeah… one problem. I’m way too awake to fall asleep right now,” Scootaloo pointed out the flaw in the plan.

“Maybe you don’t have to be,” he suggested. An inquisitive eye from the filly in the chariot prompted him to explain. “I’d think your friend is asleep at this time of night. So if you just curl up and pretend to be asleep maybe she’ll stay asleep when her mind comes back to her body. You know, if she doesn’t fall over because you were sitting up or something when the mind swap happens.”

“Worth a shot, I guess,” Scootaloo admitted, but not sounding convinced at all.

“Look if she wakes up before I get her into bed, let me worry about it. I’ll find you right away and tell you whatever cover story I come up with to explain why you had her out and about in the middle of the night. Okay?” Cloud said, trying to reassure the filly. They hadn’t come this far just to let something small blow Scootaloo’s cover. It didn’t matter what happened he’d make sure the filly who’d helped him didn’t pay a price with her friends for doing so, he’d come up with something to tell Sweetie if he had to.

“Fine,” Scootaloo said, as she curled up at the front of the chariot, trying to hide as best she could from the wind.

She curled up tight enough to use Sweetie’s tail as a pillow, if not for the metal floor she might have even been comfortable enough to fall asleep, if she had enough time. She closed her eyes and waited.

Scootaloo was still awake when midnight came though. A bizarre sensation of motion without moving came over her, as she felt something tug at her mind. The darkness of the inside of her eyelids vanished, replaced by a sea of lights and images rushing past her far too quickly to make since of. As quickly as the darkness had been interrupted it returned. The magic sensation faded and the first thing Scootaloo felt was pain.

Chapter 6: Old Wings, New Beginnings

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Scootaloo expected being awake for the mind-swapping spell to feel weird, but she didn’t expect raw agony. Her eyes shot open to find she was lying on her back and staring at a ceiling that wasn’t Apple Bloom’s room as she’d expected, but one of white washed plainness that could only belong to a hospital.

Of course now that the element of surprise was lost, Scootaloo was able to feel that the pain really wasn’t as bad as she first thought. Her neck and chin only stung a bit. Her chest and belly hurt noticeably more, but only if she tried to move. Not that the bandages wrapped around her body allowed much movement. Her wings felt a little sore at most, certainly not hurt.

Wings! Oh the sweet, glorious feeling of having wings again! No more making her side twitch trying to command limbs that didn’t exist. She opened her wings and pushed them against the covers until she saw them move the sheets beside her torso. Thank heaven her wings felt fine.

Resuming her examination of herself she turned her mind back to the other feelings coming from her body. Only the front side of her hind legs hurt and only slightly at that. Her back felt perfectly fine. The more she searched her body the more Scootaloo felt that the bulk of the pain was coming from her front legs. And her knees at that, sweetie Celestia her knees hurt.

The pain was as if she’d belly-flopped into the dirt and tried to catch herself with her front legs, without bending them properly just before impact. Oh come on Apple Bloom, we’ve crashed through lots of stuff crusading. I thought you’d know how to crash right by now. Scootaloo thought chastising her absent friend. Then a terrifying thought crossed the young pegasus’ mind. Don’t you dare tell me you broke my scooter! The thought made her try to sit up, but trying to put pressure on her front legs made the pain fare back up.

Gah! Forget the scooter, I should have told her not to break me! She added in her mind. Out loud, in frustration and disappointment, Scootaloo snarled under her breath, “Apple Bloom.”

“Oh you’re awake. I’ll go wake the doctor for you,” a sudden and unexpected voice came from above.

Tilting her head to look, Scootaloo saw the radio mounted in the wall over her bed. “Don’t bother. I’m not talking to anypony until I get to yell at Apple Bloom,” the filly told the radio that she assumed was set to an open microphone.

* * * * * * *

Thankfully the night shift nurse didn’t bother the doctor in the middle of the night. And while the nurse did come in the change Scootaloo’s bandages the filly held true to her word and refused to say anything more.

When the morning twilight came, the doctor did come in to ask the filly some questions but she held her silence. And while the hours of night stewing on her anger at Apple Bloom hadn’t helped, Scootaloo stayed quiet for an entirely different reason. That reason being, she didn’t actually know ‘how she did this to herself’ because she didn’t do this to herself.

It was still early morning and not long after sunrise, but no longer so early that it would be unreasonable to be awake. The doctor had returned form his other morning rounds and was now engaging in a staring contest with Scootaloo, trying to get the filly to answer questions with words rather than just gestures. Even if the tan unicorn stallion with the brown mane wasn’t enjoying the impromptu game of ‘silent pony’ it was lightening Scootaloo’s mood.

Then the radio in the wall behind the filly blared to life. “The Apple’s are here, shall I send them up?”

“Please do,” The doctor answered. Relieved that he would finally get some answers out of the filly.

Moments later three ponies entered the room, Applejack, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle. Judging from the look on Sweetie Belle’s face, her only concern was the health of her pegasus friend. So Scootaloo figured Captain Cloud Wall had been successful in returning Sweetie to her bed without waking her.

On seeing her pegasus friend Apple Bloom lowered her head just enough to avoid braking eye contact. Scootaloo was glaring at her with an intensity that burned the young earth pony far worse then any flame could hope to. And yet Bloom knew she deserved Scootaloo’s anger right now, so she kept looking into her friend’s eyes.

Once Apple Bloom had sit down beside her bed, Scootaloo snarled, “Crusaders can stay. Everypony else, get out. And turn off that stupid radio while you’re at it.”

The adults in the room tossed each other glances. The doctor’s expression started as confusion, but after a nod from Applejack he seemed to understand. Then the doctor’s horn glowed and a similar glow appeared on the radio, flipping a switch and casing the power light on the radio to die out. With that he followed Applejack out of the room and closed the door behind them. Although the lack of further hoofsteps told that the adults were waiting just outside the door.

“Well?” Scootaloo asked, glaring at Apple Bloom and trying to sound as angry as possible while whispering.

“Ah’m so, so, sooo sorry!” Apple Bloom whimpered, braking into tears and finally looking away from the friend she’d injured.

Truth was that Scootaloo’s mind still hadn’t wound down from secret agent mode from last night. Seeing that her friend seemed to have forgotten the whole ‘keep Applejack in the dark’ game the crusaders had been playing for the last two days Scootaloo elaborated on the meaning of her earlier question. “I’ve had doctors and nurses asking me all morning how ‘I did this to myself.’ Well? How did I ‘do this to myself’?” she whispered, nodding toward the door to remind them they weren’t entirely alone.

Apple bloom wiped the tears from her eyes and looked meekly to her friend, whispering back, “Ah tried to fly.”

Scootaloo tilted her head to the side, raised a single eyebrow and voiced her confusion from that answer. “I try to fly all the time. I don’t put myself in the hospital doing it.”

“Ah know. It’s just… you know… the way you pull us around in the wagon with your wings. Ah thought that there was no way your wings could be that strong and not be able to fly. And after riding your scooter went so well, ah thought… Ah thought maybe ah could figure out what you were doing wrong.” Scootaloo repeated her one raised eyebrow look, but said nothing. Seeing there was no easy way out Apple Bloom decided to get it over with and finished with, “Ah jumped off the barn roof.”

Scootaloo’s eye twitched as she thought. I risked my honor and Sweetie Belle’s safety to protect you and you threw me off a roof?!

With her two friends refusing to look each other in the eye Sweetie Belle saw fit to intervene on Apple Bloom’s behalf. “We did set up hay bales for you… er, Apple Bloom to crash on just incase.”

“Oh? Then why am I here?” Scootaloo asked, whispering, with a hint of sarcasm and disbelief in her voice.

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to speak but Apple Bloom placed her hoof over the unicorn’s mouth. With a heavy sigh Bloom answered, “Thing is, ah did fly. Well it was more of a really long jump. But it was just enough to get past all the hay bales we’d lined up, so ah crashed on hard ground. Ah don’t know what happened after that. When ah woke up again ah was already back in my own body.”

Scootaloo had promised to yell at Apple Bloom and as she listened to the explanation she was already planing her outburst, now that she knew what Applejack must have seen/been told Scootaloo let said outburst fly. “I TOLD YOU I CAN’T FLY YET! SO, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW THAT I PROVED IT! DO YOU BELEAVE ME NOW?!” she yelled as loud as she could.

Apple Bloom cowered beside Scootaloo’s bed, and the earth pony could only whimper in response, “Ah’m sorry, Ah’m so sorry ah hurt ya. Ah’ll do anything to make it up to ya. Can you ever forgive me?”

Seeing Apple Bloom break down crying for the second time in so many minutes tore at Scootaloo’s heart. Why did it hurt so much to see a friend she should be angry with so sad? Then something Bloom had said sank into Scootaloo’s mind. The pegasus looked to Sweetie Belle. I hurt you too. I made the same mistake as Apple Bloom. Still looking to Sweetie, Scootaloo answered, “I don’t know. Sweetie Belle, can you forgive me?”

“Wait? What? Huh?” Sweetie Belle said, after the moment it took to realize she was asked something, she answered, “What am I forgiving you for? You haven’t done anything to me.”

“Come closer,” Scootaloo said to Sweetie. The unicorn filly stepped up until she was close enough for Scootaloo to reach her. “Yesterday I made a mistake and got you cut. See? So, can you forgive me?” Scootaloo said, stretching out her leg and gently brushed her hoof over Sweetie Belle’s flank, parting the fur as she went, revealing the thin extra pink line of healing skin beneath.

Looking at what her friend had shown her Sweetie Belle casually answered, “Oh so that’s why it was itchy this morning. Shoot this is nothing, of course I can forgive you.”

If she could be forgive who was she to deny forgiveness? Breathing a sigh of relief and looking back to Apple Bloom, Scootaloo said, “There’s your answer Apple Bloom. Of course I can forgive you.”

“Are-are you sure? You gave her a paper cut. Ah put you in the hospital,” Apple Bloom said, able to look her friend in the eyes again.

Scootaloo nodded, and was immediately taken into a powerful hug. “Ouch! The legs, watch the legs!” Scootaloo cried and giggled at the same time.

Once her friend had released her from the embrace, Scootaloo had her friends let the adults waiting just outside back into the room. Not surprisingly the first question asked when the adults returned was how Scootaloo had been injured. She gave them a story about Apple Bloom not believing that she couldn’t fly and being pestered until she agreed to prove she couldn’t by jumping off the barn. While not entirely true her friends played along as letting Apple Bloom take a portion of the blame, without admitting it was purely her fault, seemed more than fair to the other two crusaders.

“You’re lucky you only sprained your knees doing that young filly. Judging from the x-rays you came this close to braking you legs outright,” the doctor said, holding his front hooves so close together that the space between them almost couldn’t be seen.

“I know,” Scootaloo said, hanging her head low and trying to sound like she was accepting responsibility for her own foolishness. Yet in the back of her mind she knew that if she was using her wings to cancel out most of her weight she could actually fall from much higher than the Apple family barn and be okay. The doctor seemed to be done lecturing her so she asked, “Can I go now?”

The doctor was quick to respond, “Well, you’ll need to stay off your front legs for three days to let them heal. But if Miss Applejack is willing to take you home I guess I can let her sign you out.”

“Ah’m sure her father will take her home. Big Mac or Ah will let him know where she is when he comes to pick her up,” Applejack said.

“He’s not coming,” Scootaloo stated flatly.

“Oh come on. Ah’m sure-”

Scootaloo didn’t wait for Applejack to finish. “No. He’s not going to pick me up from your place. He knows I know where I live, he’ll expect me to come home on my own. He probably won’t even notice I didn’t come back until tomorrow.”

Applejack blushed for a moment before admitting, “Oh, Ah’m sorry. Ah didn’t know I’d be checking her out of here, Ah didn’t bring any money to pay the bill with.”

“Oh, I’m not asking you to pay the bill. Scootaloo’s father always pays her medical expenses in a timely enough manner. I don’t see why that would have changed. So we’ll just send the bill home with her. I just need you to agree to take her home since she’s in no shape to get around on her own,” the doctor explained.

“Oh yeah, Ah can do that.”

* * * * * * *

“Ah can’t believe you talked Scootaloo into jumping off the roof. Ya know better than that Apple Bloom,” Applejack repeated for the umpteenth time since they’d left the hospital. They had actually returned to sweet apple acres first and were now on their way to Scootaloo’s home.

“That’s my house over there,” Scootaloo said, lying on Applejack’s back, and saving Apple Bloom from having to apologize yet again.

Applejack knocked on the door. Scootaloo raised an eyebrow, questioning why she did that when she had a filly that lived here giving her permission to enter. Oddly enough, before Scootaloo could say such a thing she heard hoofsteps coming from inside. Scootaloo’s father opened the door and he also raised an eyebrow when he found the farm pony at his door.

Scootaloo pointed through the open door to the living room couch and said, “You can just put me on the couch.”

At the sound of his daughter’s voice the stallion stepped aside and allowed Applejack and Scootaloo’s friends to enter the house. Not a word was said, but the icy glare coming from Scootaloo’s father chilled everpony entering the house, even Scootaloo.

Why did he seem mad at her? He’d never seemed mad when Scootaloo had hurt herself before. As Applejack carried her in the filly spotted the reason. At the table was Captain Cloud Wall, in full royal guard regalia, he gave a small wave of a hoof and smiled toward the pegasus filly. The nail in the coffin however, was the coin pouch sitting on the table by Cloud Wall. The pupils of Scootaloo’s eyes shrank to dots as she guessed what the captain had said to her dad.

“Yes, it’s always good to catch up with a long time friend, don’t you think so? I imagine you can guess what stories he has been telling me,” the father said.

While it might have occurred to Cloud Wall to be mad at Scootaloo when he realized she’d been lying about having permission to work for him, it didn’t. Instead a startled look of surprised and shame flashed across his face, at the realization that he’d blown her secrets by talking about them to somepony he thought knew but had been kept out of the loop. Captain Cloud Wall gave a look of apology to the filly, as he suddenly understood the reason for the sudden chill felt in the otherwise warm room.

Applejack laid Scootaloo down on the couch. And while they might not have understood why, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle could feel that their pegasus friend was in trouble, so they dutifully climbed onto the couch and sat down beside their friend, on either side of her, as if that somehow offered some kind of protection.

Once Applejack finished helping Scootaloo get comfortable she turned to the filly’s father. “Ah’m real sorry about this.” The farm pony paused just long enough to remove her cowboy hat, revealing a coin pouch. The very same one the stallion had given her to watch his daughter. With a tilt of her head Applejack let the coin pouch fall to the ground and the heavy rattling thud it made when it hit the floor made it clear it was still all there. “See’n as ah failed to live up to my word, ah reckon ah don’t deserve a bit of this,” Applejack finished.

Although he saw the coin pouch Scootaloo’s father never took his eyes off mare speaking to him. “I’ll be the judge of that.” He said coldly. Completely ignoring the coin pouch and turning to his daughter he commanded, “Scootaloo, report.”

“Yesterday Apple Bloom talked me into jumping off the barn roof to prove I couldn’t fly,” the filly answered, knowing that her father knew about the mind-swapping magic artifact. “Oh yeah! This is for you, and the ponies at the hospital say ‘hi,’” she added, with a timid smile, opening her wing and letting her medical bill slip out onto the couch.

A glimmer of understanding sparked in the stallion’s eye and he took a moment before he responded with, “You jumped off the barn roof?”

“Yes.”

Raising a hoof to rub his forehead with, he asked, “I thought you said Rainbow Dash was giving you flight lessons?”

Scootaloo tilted her head to the side, not sure how that had anything to do with this, but she answered anyway, “She is.”

“I thought you said you were still cratering pretty badly off the two hundred and fifty foot cloud ramps?”

“I am,” she answered, blushing slightly from having to talk about her flightlessness in front of others.

“So… even knowing that you can’t pull out of a dive with two hundred and fifty feet. You jumped off of a barn that’s what, thirty, forty feet tall tops, just to prove to your friend that you couldn’t do it?” the stallion asked, possibly overacting how dumbfounded he was.

“Umm… yeah, let’s go with that,” Scootaloo answered trying to look like she felt foolish even though she knew she’d have never done what Apple Bloom did.

“We set up hey bales for her to land on,” the farm filly volunteered in her defense.

The stallion’s colors may have made him look like fire but his glare felt like ice as it fell on Apple Bloom. “I don’t recall speaking to you, and you would do well not to interrupt somepony else’s conversation,” he rebuked the yellow filly in a stern, icy tone.

“Ah’m sorry!” Apple Bloom barely managed to whisper. She lowered herself to the couch cushion, cowering as she remembered that this stallion know about the mind swapping incident and understood she was truly at fault. That thought actually calmed Bloom a little, as she now understood Scootaloo’s dad knew where the blame truly belonged. She wanted to promise to do what ever it took to make it right but, having never been so harshly rebuked for speaking out of turn before, the farm filly dared not speak again until she had permission to.

Turning back to Scootaloo, her father commanded, “Well Scoot, explain, is that true?”

“Yes, but it seems I flew just well enough to clear the crash pad. So I crashed into the ground instead.”

Turning from his daughter and to Applejack, the stallion said, “Keep the money. From what I can tell, you kept my daughter fed and happy. And as you can see, Scootaloo being herself tends to prohibit her from staying healthy for prolonged periods of time, so I can’t blame you for her recklessness.”

“That’s mighty kind of ya, but ah still don’t feel ah earned any of that. Ah know what she can be like too, ah should’ve kept a closer eye on her than ah did,” Applejack responded with modest honesty.

“Nopony can be protected from themselves. You looked after my daughter, just as I asked and I can’t fault you for failing to do the impossible. So as far as I’m concerned service was rendered so payment is due,” Scootaloo’s dad said in a stern tone. The stallion absolutely despised the idea of owing anyone a favor and the mare before him had done him a service, so if she refused to take payment for it he’d owe her just that.

A hint of a smile appeared on Scootaloo’s face. She knew her father could be stubborn, but unlike her dad, she also knew Applejack could be stubborn too. And part of her couldn’t help but wonder who would win this battle of wills between two headstrong ponies.

The command presence of Scootaloo’s father may have worked on Apple Bloom, but Applejack didn’t really care who this stallion was or how tough he acted. She leaned in close and, with no respect to personal space, pressing her muzzle and forehead against his and said, “Look, ah can appreciate that ya think ah did a good enough job and all. But ah didn’t, so ya don’t need to pay me anything.” Stepping back AJ gave a cunning smile and motioning to the coin pouch on the floor added, “Besides it’s not like ya can make me take the money.”

The orange pegasus stallion allowed Applejack a moment to revel before returning the sly smile. “Oh but I can make you take it, farm pony. And you will be paid for this. Either you take it now, or I buy ten months worth of apples only for most of them to rot before Scoots and I can get around to eating them.”

At first Applejack glared at Scootaloo’s father, but then her expression softened to a smile as she conceded. “Heh, fine, ya win. But no point waste’n good apples. Ah’ll take the money and whenever you buy something from me ah’ll just take the cost out of this until we’re even,” she said, as she returned the coin pouch to it’s hiding place under her hat.

Feeling like he owed others was unacceptable. Having others feel like they owed him was fine. “Fair enough. But before you go can I borrow these two for a little while?” he asked motioning to the two fillies on the couch with Scootaloo.

“Ah can’t speak for Rarity’s sister, and it is a school day, but see’n as Apple Bloom had a part in getting Scootaloo hurt ah’d say have’n her play servant to her friend while she recovers seems a mighty fitt’n punishment.”

“They’ll be late, but I’ll make sure these two go to school once I have things squared away here.”

“All right. Guess ah’ll stop by the schoolhouse and let Cheerilee know what’s up,” Applejack said as she headed for the door.

As soon as Applejack had closed the door behind her, Scootaloo’s dad found a spy hole and watched her as she walked away.

That was the moment Apple Bloom chose to speak up, “Sweetie Belle was right. Something seems missing in here.”

“Oh? Like what?” Scootaloo’s father asked as he started looking over the room. He quickly abandoned the effort as he realized that his daughter was probably the only one who knew the room well enough to know if anything was missing. That thought aside, everything seemed to be there to him.

“That’s it! The picture is missing!” Apple Bloom cried in jubilation.

On instinct everypony else in the room began looking to the pictures hanging on the walls. Most were of landscapes, some were star fields, but not a single empty picture hook could be found. “You mean these pictures?” Scootaloo’s dad finally asked.

“Kinda, but ah meant the family picture. Ah’ve never seen a living room without at least one family picture, somewhere. But none of these pictures have any ponies in them.”

Scootaloo’s father looked to his friend, Cloud Wall, then to his daughter. “Is it really that unusual to not have a family picture around?” he asked, knowing full well that the house was devoid of any evidence of who lived there on purpose.

“Well, yeah, kinda… Maybe not, but its definitely the first time ah’ve seen a living room without one,” Apple Bloom answered, blushing a little as all eyes in the room where now on her.

This distraction had gone on long enough. Scootaloo’s father peeked back outside and confirmed that Applejack was long gone, so he trotted over to his daughter while turning his head to the other pegasus stallion in the room he asked, “Captain. Mind helping me shuttle these three around?”

“Not at all,” Cloud Wall answered.

“What? I thought we were going to help take care of Scootaloo? And isn’t she in no shape to be moving around anyway?” Sweetie Belle asked, her voice squeaking a little as she spoke.

“Aren’t you forgetting that you three have an appointment at the library?”

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo was on her father’s back as they flew toward Ponyville’s library, while her friends were on Captain Cloud Wall’s golden-plated royal-guard-armored back. And looking over to them now she finally understood why he had his armor on in the first place. It worked wonders for covering up the bandages he was wrapped in, although it did nothing to cover up the black eye that had developed overnight. Scootaloo was too far away to hear, but she could see that Cloud Wall was talking, probably making up an elaborate, and purely false, story to explain his injuries to her friends.

The flight was short lived and soon the five ponies found themselves at the library and in the presence Twilight Sparkle. “Good,” the purple unicorn said as she finished using her magic to confirm that the three fillies minds were in fact all in their own bodies. “Sit still, this will only take a moment,” she added, levitating out the magic figurine and placing it between the three fillies.

The three friends looked to each other, then nodded to Twilight. A purple glow once more surrounded the elder unicorn’s horn and a sphere of light surrounded the artifact. After a second the sphere of light pulsed and then shattered into sparks, like shimmering specks of dust, that flickered out in an instant. With that the artifact’s glow was gone.

“There it’s done,” Twilight announced, as she relaxed her stance.

“That’s it? I thought it would tingle again,” Sweetie Belle said.

“That’s it. I can’t sense any more magic linking the artifact to you three,” Twilight confirmed, with a smile and a nod.

The three fillies gathered on the cushion Scootaloo was lying on and embraced each other in a group hug. “Ah’m so glade that’s over with. Now we can finally get back to crusading for our cutie marks!” Apple Bloom cheered.

“That’s all well and good, but I believe you two are late enough for school as it is,” Scootaloo’s father interrupted. Turning to the other pegasus stallion in the room he added, “Captain, can I bother you to make sure they get there in a timely manner?”

“I’d be happy to. Had my fill of tough assignments for now,” Cloud Wall laughed.

Taking the hint Scootaloo’s friends released her from the hug and said, “See you after school.”

“Yeah, see ya.” Scootaloo managed to say in a low tone, knowing that although she might ‘see’ them from the couch, after school when they dropped off her homework, her friends were unlikely to be allowed in the house that afternoon.

Once her friends were gone Twilight helped set Scootaloo on her father’s back and they too left the library.

They were flying slowly on the way home, and just above the roofs of Ponyville’s houses. Scootaloo had always enjoyed the feeling of flight, even if it was just from riding on her father’s back, and yet today it felt hollow. And worse yet, she knew why. She knew the hole in her heart was because she was holding out on her friends. Because she was holding something back that didn’t really need to be withheld from them, and it was long past time that she at least tried make this wrong right.

“Dad? Once I’m better, can I invite my friends to a sleepover?” she asked.

Her father slowed to a hover. He had many things to consider about that question. First off she was still in trouble for working special ops behind his back. But, considering the injuries her friend had given her, she was in effect grounded for the next three days and doomed to be board out of her mind lying around the house waiting to heal. A punishment worse than what he’d have given her if left to his own devices. Among other things, that left the practical problems.

“Isn’t your room rigged with a bunch of booby traps?” he asked in return.

Scootaloo gave a soft laugh. “That’s why I said ‘once I’m better’ dad. I don’t need them anymore, so once I can move around again I’m going to take them apart.”

The stallion resumed flying the two of them toward their house. If even half of what he’d heard from his friend about his daughter’s actions last night was true, than she’d more than earned this simple request. No matter how complicated their lives actually made it.

He smiled, although he was facing forward so nopony could see it when he answered, “We’ll have to time it for when we know I can be home that night, but sure.”