Fluttershy is being plagued by nightmares of blood, fearing the worst.
Fluttershy has been having nightmares of blood ever since her first bat transformation. She fears both for herself and for her friends. She can only hope that nopony gets hurt.
Recently I've been plagued by horrible nightmares. Let me describe the most recent one that I remember to you now.
I was sitting on a rather uncomfortable metal chair in a cold, dark room alone. The air was rather thin, to thin for my liking, leaving me gasping for breath as it was quite difficult to breathe. I could hear hoofsteps coming from somewhere that sounded near.
Suddenly, the ground beneath the chair shook and gave way. I fell for what felt like an Alicorn's age until I landed in a bed of flowers. They were a quite dark shade of red. Blood-red.
My wings had changed form and now resembled those of a bat. My eyes were a dark pinkish-red. My teeth had sharpened to fangs.
A small pool was in front of me so trotted up to it and stooped to take a drink from it. I looked into the pool and my reflection faded, revealing a brown Unicorn stallion with a cutie mark of three green gems. He was carrying a bag of bright red apples, which matched the colour of the flowers surrounding me.
I gazed longingly at the apples the stallion had. I fell muzzle-first into the pool, somehow transported to the scene I had been watching. The brown stallion gazed at me in awe. I lunged for the stallion who jumped back. Surprised, his dark green aura vanished from around the bag of apples and they dropped to the ground, apples spilling out onto the cobblestone street.
I stopped staring at the apples and gazed at the stallion, attempting to give him an apologetic glance, but he was frozen in shock. A shadow fell over the brown unicorn and I turned around.
The shadow seemed to belong to Princess Celestia. Her horn lit up with her yellow aura. After that everything went black and I woke up. I am sure you can now see why I am so terrified. I am so relieved that it was just a dream and I can just hope, whatever happens, that I don't hurt anypony. . . .
The mailpony, Ditzy "Derpy" Doo, landed on Fluttershy's doorstep and knocked on the door with her hoof. "Who is it?" A gentle voice sounded from inside the small cottage. "I have a letter here for a Miss Fluttershy?" There was a click as Fluttershy unlocked and opened the cottage door. The yellow Pegasus took the letter from the mailmare. "Thank you, Derpy," Fluttershy said before heading back into her cottage.
What could this possibly be? She set the letter on the table in front of her sofa. She studied the envelope. The envelope itself was a light purple. The yellow Pegasus flipped the envelope over, looking at the writing in magenta ink on the back. It read: To: Fluttershy, Ponyville, Equestria. From: Princess Twilight Sparkle, Saddle Arabia, Equestria.
"It's from Twilight!" Fluttershy gasped aloud. She carefully opened the purple envelope and pulled out the piece of paper which read:
Dearest Fluttershy,
How are all your animals? Starlight and I are coming home on Saturday. You are invited to a welcome home party in my castle that evening. Would you be able to get there early and greet all of the guests as they arrive? Thank you if you are able to do that for me! I have enclosed a copy of the guest list. Be home soon and I miss you all!
Your friend, Princess Twilight Sparkle
"Twilight's coming home on Saturday!" Fluttershy squealed with glee. Her rabbit pal, Angel, covered his ears at the high-pitched sound. The yellow Pegasus covered her mouth. "Whoops! Sorry, Angel," she apologized to the bunny. He replied by simply hopping away and leaping up the stairs.
Fluttershy just shrugged and pulled the guest list out of the envelope and read the guest list.
Entertainment: Countess Coloratura, DJ Pon 3, Octavia Melody, Songbird Serenade, Rainbow Dash, Soarin, Spitfire, Fleetfoot, Thunderlane, Surprise, Firestreak, Blaze, The Great and Powerful Trixie,
Guests: Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Cadence, Princess Skyla, Princess Flurry Heart, Prince Shining Armor, Lemon Hearts, Moondancer, Fancy Pants, Fleur De Lis, Sassy Saddles, Rarity, Photo Finish, Filthy Rich, Spoiled Rich, Diamond Tiara, Silverspoon, Rumble, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Tender Taps, Pipsqueak, Babs Seed, Sunny Daze, Peachy Pie, Snips, Snails, Toola Roola, Coconut Cream, Pinkie Pie, Cheese Sandwich, Party Favour, Twisty Pop, Applejack, Burnt Oak, Braeburn, Apple Tart, Granny Smith, Goldie Delicious, Big McIntosh, Grand Pear, Caramel Apple, Apple Fritter, Night Light, Twilight Velvet, Fluttershy, Sunburst, Spike, Ember, Thorax, Starlight Glimmer, Lyra, Sweetie Drops, Cupcake, Carrot Cake, Pound Cake, Pumpkin Cake, Zephyr Breeze, Derpy, Dinky, Doctor Hooves, Cheerilee, Sugar Belle, Marble Pie, Limestone Pie, Igneous Rock Pie, Cloudy Quartz, Sparkler, Seaswirl, Maud Pie, Mud Briar, and Discord.
Fluttershy's heart did a flip-flop both because Discord was invited and because that was a large amount of ponies. She did not want to have a panic attack in front of all those ponies. But if it's for Twilight I guess I can risk it, she decided.
I should probably bring some cucumber sandwiches for the buffet table. She new that Pinkie Pie was most likely the one planning this party and if Pinkie Pie was planning it, there would be a buffet table there. She went into her kitchen and got the cucumbers from the fridge, and a loaf of white bread from the pantry.
She had just started to prepare the sandwiches when somepony else knocked on the door to her small abode. "Come in," she called, trotting to the front door.
She opened the door to see Rarity. The white Unicorn had a navy blue garment bag levitating beside her. It was surrounded by Rarity's light blue aura. "Oh, hi Rarity! I wasn't expecting to see you here today!" She paused, thinking to herself. "Why are you here exactly?"
The white Unicorn trotted into the small cottage and sat down on the green sofa. "I am here merely to bring you your gown for the welcome home party at Twilight's palace tonight, darling," the Unicorn answered.
Fluttershy placed a hoof to her chin thoughtfully. "But the party is on Saturday."
Rarity pointed with a hoof to the Forest Animals of Equestria calendar on the wall. "Today is Saturday, Fluttershy dear."
"It is?" The yellow Pegasus glanced at the calendar and gasped. "Oh! It is!" Rarity gave her the garment bag. "Rarity, could I ask you a favour? Would you be willing to help me make the rest of the cucumber sandwiches for the party?"
The Unicorn nodded, her curly dark purple mane bouncing up and down as she did so. "Of course I can, darling." She hugged Fluttershy and led her into the kitchen so that they could finish preparing the cucumber sandwiches.
***
Fluttershy stood by the door as the ponies streamed through the castle entrance, checking their names off as they went. She greeted each of the guests as they passed her.
She had on the dress that Rarity had generously crafted for her. It was a light turquoise fabric with a pink star brooch in the centre of the chest. The skirt had a layer of white lace from the waist of the dress down. Her mane and tail were done into lovely Prench braids, fastened with pink star pins that matched the one on her chest. Ponyville's mane stylist, Paris Prance, had chosen the pins for that particular reason reason.
Fluttershy checked off the last name on the list and trotted inside the castle and down the hall to the ballroom. She opened the tall double doors that led into the ballroom and entered it.
Rarity was the first to trot up to the gentle yellow Pegasus. "You look absolutely divine darling! Oh, and your mane is fantastic! I will have to ask Paris where she got those pins!" A blue pony, who was a Pegasus as well, with a rainbow mane and tail trotted up to the two ponies, followed by two Earth ponies, a small purple and green dragon, a light purple Unicorn, and a purple Alicorn. "Starlight and Twilight are back, as well," Rarity mentioned bluntly, stating the obvious. The ponies surrounded Fluttershy, gawking at her ensemble.
"Twilight! Starlight!" the yellow Pegasus gasped, relieved to see the two purple ponies who had returned from Saddle Arabia that day. "How was it in Saddle Arabia?" Fluttershy asked.
"It was great!" Twilight answered cheerfully. "We bought a whole seventeen barrels of books for the castle's library!"
Suddenly, Fluttershy shied away from her friends. "That's great," she whispered to the Princess of Friendship.
The ponies covered their ears as microphone feedback filled the huge ballroom. The announcer, a Unicorn named Loudsound Blitz, spoke into the microphone, his voice blaring from the speakers. "What's up ponies of Ponyville? We are here tonight to celebrate the return of our very own. . . . Princess Twilight Sparkle!" All of the ponies in the room stomped their hooves and yelled their greetings to the Princess.
Starlight stomped her hoof indignantly. "Hey! What about me?"
Loudsound Blitz glanced at his hooves self-consciously. "Uh, oh yeah, and her student, Starlight Glimmer!" More thunderous applause echoed throughout the room as ponies stomped their hooves once more.
As they quieted down, Loudsound spoke again. "Who are three musicians we love here in Ponyville?" The stallion's question caused confused looks from the crowd then the assembled ponies started yelling answers. "The answer is. . . . Octavia Melody, Songbird Serenade, and Countess Coloratura! These three wonderful musicians have come together to create a song about the very amazing and lovely Princess Twilight Sparkle with the help of Vinyl," the grey Unicorn paused as he realized his mistake of forgetting to use Vinyl Scratch's DJ name. "Excuse me. With the help of DJ Pon3!"
Roars of applause and cheers of joy broke out as three ponies crossed the temporary stage. Drums thudded. Pianos and flügelhorns blared. Fluttershy shrunk beneath her fur as she heard all of the loud noises surround her, accompanied by two singers and a cello.
Fluttershy opened the door and slipped out, racing down the hallway to one of the corridors to a spare bedroom. She slid her, silky dress off and sat on the bed, staring out the window at the full moon. A sole apple was sitting on the window sill. Apples, Fluttershy thought greedily, apples. She lunged at the fruit, grabbing it and flying out the window and into the night. By the time she reached the town square she was already in complete bat form.
Fluttershy yawned as she awoke. She was, for some reason, in one of the apple orchards at Sweet Apple Acres. The west one, to be precise.
Ow. My head hurts, she thought, rubbing her head with her hoof. When she retracted her hoof it was stained with a dark crimson liquid. Blood? Am I. . . . bleeding? The yellow Pegasus walked over to a nearby puddle and ogled herself. Her head had quite a big bump on it, but was not bleeding. It was, however, covered in a sticky red substance. Fluttershy smelled her hoof that she had dabbed her forehead with. It smells like blood. She shook this off. She would have all the time that she needed to go to the Ponyville General Hospital later on in the day.
She opened her wings and flew over the west orchard of Sweet Apple Acres, admiring the trees, their lovely autumn colours dancing in the early morning light.
Once she arrived overhead of the red farmhouse, Fluttershy descended and landed delicately on a small door carpet that read If it doesn't have apples in it, we don't sell it! Fluttershy giggled at this, though she did not quite know why. She had just been feeling very giggly lately for no particular reason.
"Alright Granny, I can do 'at for ya! Jus' let me hitch up the new cart!" The voice had a subtle female country twang to it.
"Them new carts ain't good for nothin'," an older voice argued.
"Well," the first voice responded, "things need to get done 'round here and I'm the only one 'at can do 'em, Granny!" This voice belonged to an orange farm pony that exited the farm house right then and accidentally bumped into Fluttershy.
Both ponies stumbled then looked up at each other. Applejack bent down to pick up her old and tattered cowpony hat, tipping it to the greyish-gold Pegasus pony before whom she stood. "Sorry, sugar cube," Applejack chuckled."I was just on my way into town to deliver the monthly supply to the Cakes down a' Sugar Cube Corner. I didn't mean to knock ya down like that! I'm just in a bit of a hurry is all." The orange farm pony paused. "Sorry again for knockin' ya down, Flu'rshy," Applejack tipped her hat once more to Fluttershy before heading into the large red barn, where Fluttershy followed her.
The orange pony stood in the doorway of the barn, her mouth gaping. Fluttershy came up behind her to see the inside of the barn in a complete wreckage. The dozens of barrels and bushels of apples, that were normally stacked neatly with apples piled to the brim within them, were on the floor of the barn, completely emptied. Fluttershy's mouth then gaped nearly as wide as Applejack's.
"What happened to your barn?" Fluttershy whispered to her friend.
"I. . . . Well, I don't know," Applejack replied sullenly, walking into the barn. She began to lift the barrels upright. "Apple Bloom did say she saw a fruit bat last night. 'Said it was a li'l on the larger side, but I just thought it was nothin'," the farmpony admitted to Fluttershy. "She said it was dusty yellow colour, which I think is quite unus'al for a fruit bat." Applejack glanced at her as of asking her opinion and the yellow Pegasus only shrugged in response. "She said that the bat looked like ya and I sent her to her room."
*** By the time the two friends finished restocking the now empty barrels, the sun was already going down. When Fluttershy put the last barrel on top of the small barrel pyramid Applejack called up to her. "Would ya like t' join us f'r dinner, Fluttershy?" Applejack asked her. Fluttershy responded with a small grateful nod of her head.
The Earth pony and the Pegasus trotted into the tall red farmhouse. "Granny! Imma get dinner started, okay?" There was no response. "Well, okay," Applejack chuckled. The elderly mare was probably just having a nap.
Applejack started to get a pot from one of the green cupboards when she asked Fluttershy,"it happened again, didn't it?"
Fluttershy's eyes widened as she realized that her friend had known all along that she had been the fruit bat the young filly had seen. "Yes," Fluttershy whispered quietly, ashamed.
Her friend gazed at her sympathetically. "I'm that there are lots of supernatural ponies in town," the orange Earth pony reassured her. Applejack had gotten some leftover carrot soup from the refrigerator and had began hearing it on the stove.
"But," Fluttershy asked,"how do you know?"
Applejack blushed at this topic. "I, uh, I just assume that if you can be a vampony then surely other ponies can be other things, y' know what I mean?" Fluttershy just sighed. "Meet me on the edge of the Everfree Forest an hour after the moon rises, okay?"
Fluttershy flew over Ponyville, making her way toward the Everfree Forest. I wonder why Applejack wanted me to meet her there. She spotted a tiny orange and yellow blob on the ground that was waving to her. Fluttershy swooped down and landed beside Applejack.
"Good, you came," the Earth pony gasped. Fluttershy was still confused as to why she needed to be here. It seemed that Applejack was able to read her mind because then she whispered, "you're prob'ly wonderin' why I asked ya to come here tonight. Well," she paused and glanced overhead at the waning moon in the sky. "It's because. . . . You remember a while ago when Spike saved me from the Timberwolves?" Fluttershy nodded. "Well, it seems he didn't come fast enough, because of this." Applejack lifted her mane from her neck, revealing a deep gash which seemed to now have become a scar.
Fluttershy's eyes widened. "You got that from. . . .from the Timberwolves?" Applejack nodded. Fluttershy continued. "Them does that that mean you're a werepony?"
The orange farmpony nodded before taking off her cowpony hat and holding up a small green crystal. "I got it from Zecora shortly after the attack. Helps me control my transformations." She whispered something under her breath which, to Fluttershy, sounded like it was in so,e type of ancient tongue.
When she had finished the quiet chant, her ears sprouting thick brownish-ginger fur that soon spread to the rest of her body. Her hooves slowly changed to paws and she grunted in pain. Her tailbone and muzzle extended, growing more wolf-like. Finally, her transformation was complete, with only her emerald eyes remaining the same. She had a red-orange apple-shaped gem in her chest that looked sort of like her old Element of Harmony. "Well," the ginger wolf said in a gruff voice that still sounded female and like Applejack's,"are you going to transform, too?"
Fluttershy shrugged. "I would, but I can't control my transformations like you can. Not yet. I only had my second transformation last night, so I don't really know how it works."
"First, ya want to prepare yerself by loosening your limbs," Applejack instructed her. "Then ya want to clear yer mind of all distractions. That's kind of hard when there's a huge wolf right in front of me, the normally gentle Pegasus thought bitterly. "Then ya want to stare at the moon until ya feel a little change in yerself, but don't stare at the moon too long or else you'll go plum crazy!"
Fluttershy followed her friends instructions carefully. She then felt her wing bones crack and cried out in pain. "Yer okay Flu'rshy." Her friend tried to calm her, but the Pegasus was in too much pain to register thought as her bones were cracking. She felt hot tears roll down her cheeks, joining together on her chin, then falling to the ground.
Her ears were literally burning with a terrible sensation. Her mouth hurt so much that it felt like her teeth were all falling out at once. Her vision then went blurry and she fell into darkness as her heavy eyelids fell over her cerulean eyes like shades, before opening again almost instantly.
"Applejack," she muttered, staring at the large wolf in confusion.
She looked at the gem on the wolf's chest, staring at her own reflection. Fluttershy ogled herself. Long ears with split tips; bat-like, leathery wings; to top off the look she also had crimson eyes and pointed teeth.
Her cutie mark, instead of being three butterflies, had turned into three pink bats. Maybe Applejack has a different cutie mark too. She looked the wolf's flank where there was a picture of a dark brown paw.
Bushes rustled behind them as a small orange cat with magenta stripes who had three scratch marks on her flank. The three scratch marks were each a different colour. One was a dark almost-red pink, the next a light whitish-pink, then the last, a dark purple. "Scootaloo?" Fluttershy gasped.
"Yep," answered the tabby cat in Scootaloo's voice, only a bit higher pitched. "Applejack asked me to meet you here." Two more tabbies padded into the clearing after Scootaloo, one with yellow fur and dark pinkish-red stripes, and the other had white fur and pink and lavender stripes. They both, however, had the same marks on their flanks as Scootaloo.
"And us!" Sweetie Belle chimed in.
Applejack leaped onto a boulder and sat. "Okay, y'all. We need to come up with separate names for ourselves, but they all need to have parts of our names in them so that we know who is who." The others nodded in agreement. "I'll start. I'll be. . . . Applewolf."
"I can be Sweetie Paws!"
"I'll be Apple Scratch."
"I'll be, uh, Scootastripe."
Everyone looked to Fluttershy. "I'll be, um. . . ." she looked to Applewolf. "What was it that Pinkie Pie called me when I first tramsformed?"
The ginger wolf thought for a moment. "I think it was. . . . Flutterbat?"
Fluttershy nodded. "Yes, I will be Flutterbat."
Apple Scratch padded forward. "So, what're we gonna do now, Appleja. . . . Applewolf?"
"Simple. We travel for a week and find other ponies who're like us. I've already told everypony in Ponyville that we're goin' on a camp in' trip."
The ponies all looked at each other and, as silence filled the clearing, they set off of their quest.