"I'm totally serious!" Scootaloo chirped, the sunlight glinting off her orange coat as she smirked at her two friends. "I'd rather be eaten alive by a sea serpent than end up with water drops for a cutie mark!"

"Ew, really?" Sweetie Belle remarked with a raised eyebrow.

"What a thing to say!" Apple Bloom exclaimed. It was the first hour after school ended, and the three crusaders were trotting over the crest of a hill overlooking Ponyville. "I'd be plum happy to get any cutie mark, no matter what the shape!"

"Or the smell!" Sweetie Belle added with a squeak.

Apple Bloom groaned and went on. "Just what's so goddessawful about water drops, anyways?" she asked.

"Pffft!" Scootaloo rolled her eyes under her helmet and pushed the scooter along. "Only that it's the most common butt tattoo on pegasi ever! Have you guys ever heard of the 'Climate Talent Curve?'"

"Is it anything at all like 'saddle cell disease?'" Apple Bloom grinned wide. "Cuz Applejack says the Apple Family has a long, sordid history with that."

"Come on, guys! Cheerilee taught us all about it just last month! Ahem... 'Because of the similarity of most talents, cutie marks start to resemble one another at an alarming rate.' In other news, one in every three pegasi gets a bunch of lousy rain drops for a cutie mark, because they're forced to—I dunno—huff clouds all their lives and crud," Scootaloo said with a stifled groan. "I am so not gonna be one of those common ponies." She skidded to a stop and grinned wide. "Especially now that I have Rainbow Dash to teach me all the cool stuff she knows!"

"Oh, yeah!" Apple Boom beamed, stopping in her tracks to turn and face Scootaloo. "That's right! She's promisin' to be yer big sister from now on, ain't she?"

"Yaaay!" Sweetie Belle giggled, her cheeks rosy. "That's almost as awesome as having a little mother!"

"Unnngh..." Scootaloo face-hoofed. Regardless, with a fluttering of orange wings, she glanced back at the two fillies and spoke, smiling. "What matters is that I gotta prove to Rainbow Dash that I have what it takes to keep up with her!"

"Oh, uhm, sure! I guess that—"

"Starting..." Scootaloo spun and pointed brazenly down the sloping crest of the hill, towards the rear wall of a two-story restaurant where a sloping archway rose up from the ground to the meet the rooftop. "...with the Diabolical Downtown Death Dive!"

"The... The..." Apple Bloom trembled, her amber eyes wide and quivering as she observed the forbidden ramp far below the three. "The Quadruple D?!"

"Oh yikesies!" Sweetie Belle whimpered, covering her mouth with a pair of alabaster hooves. “That’s, like, an instant pony oatmeal maker!”

"Heck yeah!" A demonic twinkle flashed across Scootaloo's eyes as she scuffed one of her hooves against the dirt and prepared for the suicidal plunge towards the maniacal destination. "More like a one-way trip to the only spot in all of Ponyville that will launch me over—not two—but four houses in a single bound!" She tightened her helmet and hunched down atop the scooter to begin her speedy descent. "Sisterly glue-binding, here I friggin' come!"

"No! Scootaloo! Just wait a cotton-pickin' second!" Apple Bloom stood directly in front of the pegasus, waving her yellow limbs about as she stammered, "Nopony has ever tried the Quadruple D and lived!"

"Yeah!" Sweetie Belle joined her companion in blocking Scootaloo's path. "My big sis says that a Double-D is enough to make a lady's rear legs sag!"

"Unnngh... Honestly, Sweetie Belle?"

"What?! She's fine now! She got reduction!"

"Out of the way! I mean it!" Scootaloo licked her lips and gripped the scooter's handles tighter. "It's either this, or Rainbow will never teach me how to dive!"

"But you could hurt yourself!" Apple Bloom exclaimed.

"So?! What's a little risk?"

"Dangerous things are worth bein' frightened about!" Apple Bloom gave a calm smile and rested a hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder. "Applejack is always tellin' me that it's safe to listen to one's fears every once in awhile."

Scootaloo blinked at her. With a deflating sigh, her ears drooped. "Ehhh... Yeah, I guess you're right, Apple Bloom." She leaned back on the scooter, smiling gently. "I guess Rainbow Dash wouldn't wanna hang out with a pile of orange paste."

"Not unless she had a ceramic bowl!" Apple Bloom said, then joined Scootaloo in giggling.

"Heehee!" Sweetie Belle chimed in, her eyes happily shut. "And Rarity is always saying that I'm the family's favorite little accident!"

"Maybe I can get Rainbow to spot—" Scootaloo stopped in mid-sentence, blinked at Sweetie Belle, shrugged, and resumed. "Maybe I can get Rainbow to spot me on a slightly smaller jump, and then I can work my way up towards supreme awesomeness from there!"

"Now that's thinkin' with yer noggin'!" Apple Bloom said with a proud wink. She led Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle down the hill, towards less dangerous altitudes. "And so long as you still got yer head on yer shoulders, Rainbow Dash will know how high her forelimbs gotta go when she hugs you!"

"Or Rumble for that matter!" Sweetie Belle said with a girlish little hop. "Hehe! He can't very well cuddle you when your blood and guts are all inside out from a death jump!"

"Snkkt—Hey!" Scootaloo frowned at Sweetie Belle, though her cheeks were as undeniably red as a beet. "What's Rumble gotta do with anything?!"

"Reckon we don't know much about him and anythang, but we certainly can say a lot about him and you," Apple Bloom sing-songed with a flutter of her eyelashes.

"He totally gave you pretty flowers the last three recesses in a row!" Sweetie Belle’s voice cracked.

"Some filly's got a special someponnnnnnyyy!"

"Ew! Guys, knock it off!" Scootaloo tilted the top of her helmet down over her reddening features. "You're worse than my Auntie Raindrops."

"I think you two are sooooooooo cute together!" Sweetie Belle said, producing an errant squeeing sound or two in the warm afternoon wind. "You're like Canter Holmes and Trot Cruise, only—y'know—with less lawsuits." She smiled. "And miscarriages."

"I've got a cutie mark to earn and a bunch of awesome things to do before the day I die!" Scootaloo barked. "I can't afford to be bogged down by... ughhh... colts."

"Even adorable colts with silky black manes who nuzzle you when you think nopony's looking?"

"You... it... they... nngh... shaddup!"

"Heeheehee!"

"I mean it!" Scootaloo upturned her nose and glided effortlessly over the grass. "I'm too busy being awesome! Just like Rainbow Dash! Heck, she's telling me all the time how she'll be long dead before ever falling into the loving embrace of a handsome stallion!"

Apple Bloom was suddenly gnawing on her lip. "Ermm..."

Sweetie Belle glanced nervously down at her hooves. "Uhhh..."

Scootaloo squinted rigidly at the two. "What?"

"I've got heaps'o'homework to do!" Apple Bloom broke into a gallop, waving at her friends as she carried herself along with her school saddlebag southwest towards Sweet Apple Acres. "I gotta skedaddle!"

"Yeah!" Sweetie Belle squeaked and ran off in the opposite direction. "Me too—Ooof!" She slammed skull-first into a mailbox, teetered, and waved with a wall-eyed expression. "Good Scootaloo, afternoon!" And she limped away.

"Pffft... Bunch of dweebs," Scootaloo said, nevertheless smirking. "Life's awesome, and if nopony's gonna believe it but me, then fine!"

She blurred her wings, accelerated on her scooter, and hit a major ramp of broken earth. Like an orange comet, the filly sailed her fearless way towards the apartment district of Ponyville.

"Woooooo-yeahhhh! Eat it, Tuesday!"

LIFE SCOOTS AND THEN YOU DIE

Based on a True Story...

"Scootalooooooo!" At the bottom of a two-story condominium, Raindrops peered up a staircase towards a cracked bedroom door. Night lingered outside as the matronly mare balanced several half-clean dinner plates on her outstretched wings. "Don't forget to scrub behind both ears when you bathe before bed! I don't want you dying of brain lice like the last niece I had to take care of!"

Inside her bedroom, Scootaloo grumbled, hunched over a spread of math textbooks before a windowside desk. "Unngh... Auntie Raindrops..." She grunted towards the cracked door behind her. "How many times do I have to remind you: my cousin Weather Vane died cuz she was run over by a showmare's supply wagon!"

"Well, if she didn't have lice in her ears, maybe she would have heard it coming!"

Scootaloo facedesked once, twice, a third time—to the point of forming red welts on her brow.

"I just want my darling niece to grow up old enough to get a cutie mark like mine!"

"Yaaaaargh..." Scootaloo's bleary eyes stared lethargically at a melting candle as the flame danced in the nightly wind wafting in through the open window. "A cutie mark like yours..."

A bitter chill ran through the tiny foal's body. Turning over, Scootaloo smiled warmly at a photograph of Rainbow Dash posing with sunglasses. A conspicuously proportioned cut-out of an orange filly shared the claustrophobic picture frame with the slick stunt mare. Regardless of the cloud-white tears separating the two dimensionally incompatible beings, the collage melted into a perfect image in the young crusader's sparkling eyes.

"Oh Rainbow Dash, you're so awesome,

I'd happily get run over by a showmare wagon for you anyday," Scootaloo said with a drunken grin. She yawned, her little fuzzy ears curling back from the heated touch of exhaustion. She leaned against the desk, nuzzling her chin into a warm crook formed by a pair of petite forelimbs. "Getting a cutie mark like yours would be a dream come true," she murmured, further drifting... further drooling into the soft sea of graphite arithmetic exercises. "Yes... a dream... come true..."

Just then, Scootaloo was ever so subtly overwhelmed with what may or may not have been a water rippling transition effect...

"Weeeeee!" Scootaloo pumped her hoof, catching several stars in the crook of her forelimb as she rode on the shoulders of Rainbow Dash. "Faster, Dashie! Faster!"

"You ain't seen nothing, kid!" Rainbow Dash cackled in an echoing voice, like a thousand megaphones screaming down an aluminum funnel siphoned directly into the little filly's quivering ears. The mare's mighty blue wings flapped on either side of the foal's straddling limbs as she carried the two of them through several loops, somersaults, and barrel-rolls across the Milky Way. "Do you dig the Andromeda Galaxy?!"

"Buck, no!" Scootaloo grinned with a twitching eye.

"What pony does?!"

Screaming, Rainbow Dash accelerated past the speed of light, her wingtips and tail trailing ribbons of fire. In one mighty sweep, the two equines exploded through a giant cluster of stars, sending burning chunks of the ill-fated galaxy flying in every dark direction across the quivering universe. "Haa haa haa! Suck on that, Colt Sagan!"

"That's a billion less black holes for you to write about, you silly dead scientist slash philosopher!" Scootaloo hollered, her head spinning, until her little orange chin came to a stop against Rainbow Dash's elbow.

"Stay here, kid," Rainbow Dash said with a wink. She planted Scootaloo atop a wooden bench floating through the heavens as her body rolled over from mane to tail with titanium plates of armor. "I have to go save time and space from lameness," her shiny larynx rang with an electronic voice.

"Heeee!" Scootaloo cooed, lying upside down on the bench as goosebumps came over her. "Just don't take too long! You still gotta show me how to earn a cutie mark in atom splitting! Also, androids!"

"Seriously, kid, would I make the world any less cool by disappearing?" Robot Dash remarked with a grin. She then backflipped into a black hole. "Zoop!"

The resulting false vacuum metastability event sent waves of incomprehensibly blind light burning Scootaloo's way. She giggled into the event horizon, hugging herself and rolling over the wooden planks of the bench until she bumped into a quartet of royally polished horseshoes.

"Huh?" Scootaloo glanced up. In an instant, she was jumping up to her hooves. "Your Majesty!"

"Greetings, Scootaloo," uttered the voice of none other than Princess Luna.

Scootaloo performed an honorable curtsy before the graceful midnight alicorn. "I did not know that you were coming here to witness the destruction of reality's natural laws! I'm sure I would have worn something breezy, at least—"

"I am the Princess of Dreams," Luna declared, resting a hoof against her chest.

Scootaloo blinked, frozen in mid-curtsy. "Erm... yes. So I've heard."

"It is my task to watch over the colts and fillies of Equestria in their slumber."

"Whoah, wait..." Scootaloo's ears perked up as she gazed with sudden shock at the swirling cosmos around them. "You mean to say that this is a dream?!"

"But of course, my child."

"Eheheh." Scootaloo blushed, rubbing a hoof across the back of her neck. "Guess I should have figured that out on my own when Rainbow Dash became a robot. The real Dashie would have turned into explosions instead..."

"I am the Princess of Dreams," Luna said, her wandering eyes as dull as glaciers.

Scootaloo blinked... then blinked again. "You... you just said that—"

"It is my task to watch over the colts and fillies of Equestria in their slumb—"

"Ahem—Say, uhhh..." Scootaloo's tail flicked, brushing off an errant comet or two as she and Luna surfed the blazing constellations atop the wooden bench. "I never did thank you—y'know—for helping me that one night when I was camping with Rainbow Dash... heheh... and I was all 'Waaaaaie, the headless horse!' and you were all like 'You need to face your fears!' and then Rainbow Dash was all like 'I can totally be your big sister and stuff because I'm awesome!'"

"But are exploding stars and collapsing galaxies what you truly fear, my child?"

Scootaloo's brow furrowed. "Uhhh..." She glanced aside as brilliant meteors collided with each other while purple nebulae farted out streams of infant stars. "I'm pretty sure that I'm not scared of the night's sky, your Majesty. Astronomy is boring, not scary."

Luna's blue eyes became piercing daggers. "You will not have a pleasant night's sleep until you confront that which truly frightens you!"

"But... but everything is cool between me and Rainbow Dash now!" Scootaloo squeaked in a foalish whimper. She gulped as her tail hung between her legs. "R-right?"

"Scootaloo!" Princess Luna shouted, her wings flailing as her body was yanked back into a swirling ether of darkness flanked by forked lightning. "Face your fearssssss!"

"But I totally am!" Scootaloo leaned forward on the floating platform, her face pale with panic. "Aren't I?"

Luna couldn't reply, for she was gone. The cosmos swirled and swirled around the frightened, panicked little foal.

"What..." Scootaloo stammered, staring down the abysmal gaps of dark matter that made up the bulk of the universe. "Just what am I still afraid of?"

Then the bench exploded, probably because it had nothing better to do.

"Gaaaaaah—!" Scootaloo began shrieking.

She ended with a gasp, nearly falling out of her deskchair.

Sheets of math homework flew in the candlelight, fluttered to the floor of her bedroom, and fell still. Scootaloo found herself gazing into the panicked, sweating reflection of an orange face in the glass of the half-open window pane.

"Princess... Princess Luna..." Scootaloo gulped, shivered, and murmured, "A warning?" She gazed down at her trembling hooves. Frowning, she curled her limbs tightly to her chest until she shook no more. "No... a message." Scootaloo gritted her teeth. "I can't let fear keep me from having sweet, succulent bonding time with Rainbow Dash!"

She slapped her hoof onto the desk, almost knocking the candle over.

"That's it!" She grinned devilishly. "You're right, Luna! I will do it! I will face my fears..."

"...Starting with the Diabolical Downtown Death Dive!" Scootaloo shouted the next afternoon, strapping the helmet tightly to her skull while cracking the joints in her neck. "Wooooooooo!" She Ric Flair'd, gripping her scooter's handlebars at the crest of the hill overlooking sunny Ponyville. "Quadruple-D, meet Badflankle-Dum!"

"No! Scoots!" Apple Bloom bounced once more into frame, trying in panicked desperation to shove her friend off the four-wheeled suicide machine. "Don't ya dare! You'll break yer neck and die!"

Sweetie Belle bounced up beside her, waving her forelimbs in tandem. "I like puppies!"

"Nnngh!" Apple Bloom shoved Sweetie Belle to the ground and gripped the front of her friend's scooter. "Please, Scootaloo! You're scaring me!"

"And you, Apple Bloom"—Scootaloo effortlessly brushed the farm filly aside and pushed the scooter downhill—"need to take that which you're scared of, stare it straight in the eyes, and say—Oh holy Celestia farts this is steeeeeeeeep!" The petite pegasus' wailing scream filled the rooftops of Ponvyille like a fog horn.

Apple Bloom winced, her eyes tearing. Sweetie Belle had already dug a hole in the hilltop large enough to fit her ducking head.

Down below, rocketing at a maddening one hundred miles per hour, Scootaloo's descent turned into a ninety degree plummet, before violently leveling out at sea level with enough friction to burn her wheels off into rubber slivers. Before the scooter could collapse from terminal velocity, she hit the archway attached to the back of the Ponyvillean restaurant. Over the next few seconds—during which Scootaloo's throbbing heart had stopped—she scaled the thatched summits of four separate buildingtops. The gawking faces of shocked ponies blurred underneath, and then there was another flash of platinum hay, forcing Scootaloo to gasp in such a manner that sparked her dead heartbeat into resuming, because—

"Five rooftops..." She slurred in slow motion, her body clinging to the red-hot scooter like an orange flag attached to a runaway kite. "I've just jumped five buildings! That... is... a new... Ponyville record!" She closed her eyes and pumped one hoof in the air. "Wooo—Yes!" She reopened her lids, taking in the enormity of the great brown earth flying directly towards her skull. "Ohhhhhhhh no! No no no no no no no—mother of haddocks—No!"

In reply, the ground swallowed Scootaloo up. Thankfully, a bouncy rosebush located in a cottage's front garden absorbed most of the filly's fall. Still, that did not stop her scooter from scraping across a flower bed, ricocheting off the front of the cottage, bouncing off a shattering bird bath, smashing through a trough of tulips, and sailing like a burning missile towards a

mule pulling a wagon full of manure. The hoofed laborer gave one glance at the hurdling mass of death flying at him, shrieked like a mare, and dove away just in time. The remnants of the scooter knocked the wheels out from beneath the cart, overturning the vehicle so that it dumped the entirety of its thick, rank, fly-buzzing contents into the demolished wasteland that the cottage's flower garden had cataclysmically become.

Scootaloo was too busy struggling to disentangle her little body from the rose bush to take in the full view of this fresh holocaust. Just as the blood rushed back into her head, she heard the sound of the cottage's front door creaking open. Roseluck trotted gaily out of her home, followed by three well-dressed elders with clipboards in their hooves and corsages pinned to their Canterlot vests.

"You have no idea how happy I am that this day has finally arrived!" Roseluck sing-songed, marching proudly into the middle of her well-kempt yard. "All my adult life, I've worked on this yard, making it the best in Ponyville, hoping that I'd get a visit from you—the fine mares and stallions of Canterlot's Home and Garden Annually—" Her hoof plunged into something brown and sticky. "Huh?" Blinking, Roseluck glanced down at the veritable mountain of sludge bathing every square inch of her ruined masterpiece. The shriek that came from her lips was enough to crack diamonds from the inside out.

"Oooooooh..." An old mare was already scribbling notes down on her clipboard in red pen. "Too much fertilizer! That is most certainly overdoing it!"

"And such a foul smell!" A stallion with thick glasses and an even thicker accent grunted, "Ptooie! Most definitely not fragrant!"

"And to think that this was your only chance in thirty years of making it into our esteemed national periodical!" Another mare said with a wrinkled grin. "Better luck three decades from now!"

"But... but... b-but..." Roseluck sputtered, falling on her knees and clutching the dripping globs of invasive compost in either hoof. "I... I don't understand! How in Equestria c-could this happen?!"

"Hey, Miss Roseluck!" Derpy chimed as she flew up to the shattered mailbox. "A letter from the landlord!" With a tongue sticking out at a perverse angle, she ripped the letter open and rolled half of her googly eyes over it. "Uhhhm... something about 'No way in Tartarus would that amount ever be enough to pay off the rent.'" She gave a lopsided grin. "Hey, at least the signature's pretty just below the eviction deadline!"

Roseluck's voice cracked, "Wh-what?!"

"Oh, there you are, Miss Roseluck," Nurse Redheart said, walking up from beyond the white picket fence. "We need to have a talk about... erm... your Leukemia tests..." She blinked at the messy scene. "Oh, is this a bad time?"

"I... I... I..."

"What's going on here?!" A royal guard touched down, his majestic white wings flapping in the horribly-scented air. "What's the meaning of all this noise and racket?!"

Roseluck's eyes were brimming with tears. "Officer... please... I c-can explain..."

"A garden party!" The guard suddenly beamed, his eyes sparkling jubilantly. "Oh, it fills me with such joy to see this land that we defend every day being treated so dearly. Heh heh heh... Ahhhhh..." He took his helmet off, took a deep breath, and smiled. "Oh, and Miss Roseluck? Your brother died from a marauding band of griffon mercenaries just two weeks ago."

"Nnnghaaaauugh—What?!"

"Well!" He slapped the helmet back on his skull and took off for the horizon. "Off to defend the homeland some more!"

Roseluck collapsed in a mountain of manure, curled into a fetal position, sobbing hysterically. Meanwhile, a few feet away, a little orange pegasus slowly and stealthily snuck away from the fly-buzzing scene.

"Oh, my dear sweet handsome prince," Scootaloo cooed, leaning forward as her gaze was devoured ravenously by the stallion's dark and dashing eyes. "I have waited so long for this night to come." She clasped her hooves together as a fragrant gust of wind blew over the palace balcony, softly kicking the tresses of her violet braids in the midnight air. "Could this really be happening? Will I finally be made a mare by the stallion of my dreams?"

"Hmm-hmm-hmm," Rumble chuckled in a deep, bass voice, his tuxedo rippling from underneath with chiseled muscles as he cradled her dainty figure. His hooves played with her poofy gown's embroidered bodice. "I shall cherish you all night, all week, all existence, my love, until every breath you have to give is that of rapturous exultation in the release of all your heart's deepest desires."

"Ohhhhh..." She sighed dreamily and leaned into the crook of his neck, inhaling his mystique and extravagant cologne. "If I had known you would be so deliciously sweet to me, I would have tossed myself at you sooner..." Her bedroom eyes wafted across his stone-like grin. "My darling Rumble..."

"Shhhh..." The stallion's warm breath silenced her as he raised a pale hoof to her lips and closely murmured, "No more words; only kisses..."

"Do your worst," Scootaloo said with an evil grin. "You handsome rogue—"

But Rumble hadn't stopped saying the last word. "Kisses-Kisses-Kisses-Kisses," he stuttered, his head bobbing with each utterance, as if the prince had become a broken record.

Scootaloo slumped back in her gown, blinking. "What the...?!"

There was a loud flap of wings.

Scootaloo spun with a twirl of her skirts and blinked towards the balcony's edge.

A midnight blue owl touched down, glanced at her, hooted, and proceeded to bash its feathery skull numerous times against the marble railing. After the fifth or sixth slamming of its cranium, the owl cracked from the top down like a blue egg. With a flicker of bright lightning, Princess Luna hatched from the center. She loomed before Scootaloo, casually brushing the owl-shells off her coat.

"Greetings, Scootaloo. I am the Princess of Dreams."

"Uhhhh..." Scootaloo stared. Suddenly, her eyes twitched—as if the vessels inside them were bursting. "Wait. Am I dreaming right now?"

"Affirmative."

Scootaloo gawked at her. Slowly, she swiveled to look at Rumble again.

The façade of an older stallion smiled at her, his lips pursing juicily—

"Ewww—Yuchkk! Gross gross gross!" Scootaloo shrieked, ripping the poofy dress off her limbs and tearing it to silken tatters. As she flung it to the winds, the balcony shattered like a glass menagerie, and the mirage of adult Rumble along with it. "Brrrrrrrrrr-Gaaah! Get this fairy tale crap off of me!" Scootaloo shook from mane to tail, once again her normal, naked self. "Goddess above! I thought I was just reading some boring book for school or something! Ugh!"

"It is my task to watch over the colts and fillies of Equestria in their slumber."

Scootaloo froze in the middle of brushing the cooties off herself to give Luna a lopsided squint. "Er... Yeah. You... uh... you've kinda told me that already, your Majesty. More than once—"

"This colt," Luna said, her blue eyes once more becoming serrated daggers. "He is an object of your desires?"

"Ohhhhhh he's an object, alright," Scootaloo said with a dreamy sigh. She winced, then spun about on the dissolving balcony. "I mean, sure! He's cool and all, but..."

"You are afraid to approach him in the waking world?"

"Well, yeah, I-I guess." Scootaloo gulped. "But it's not all that. I mean, I kind of don't have time for colts, and—besides—Rainbow Dash is always telling me about how they're nothing but 'thickheaded nose-breeders'... or, wait, is it 'sickheaded rose-bleeders?'"

"You must learn to face your fears, Scootaloo..."

"Uhm, okay." Scootaloo bit her lip, fidgeting. "About that, your Majesty. I took your advice last time and... well... I kind of sort of ruined the center of Miss Roseluck's existence. I mean, everypony in town has been talking about it, even Auntie Raindrops. I’ve heard something about a bridge... and a river..." Her teeth started to chatter as her irises shrank into guilty little pinpricks. "...and a search party with a bunch of nets..."

"Colts and stallions do not know the pain of true love," Princess Luna said, her eyes rolling back in her head, albeit taking alternate routes. "It is your job as a growing mare to introduce them to the agonyyyyyyyyyy of r-r-r-romance."

"Uhhhhhhh..." Scootaloo flashed Luna a double-take. "Huh?"

Luna's eyes were normal again. "I have lived for thousands of years and have had thousands of lovers. All of them loved me, and then they all died."

"Yeah, but what does that have to do with—?"

"You must hurt him to love him!"

"What?! Hurt who?! Rumble? But why—?!"

"Scootaloooooo!"

"Gaah! Wh-what?!"

Princess Luna rose into the air, her body brimming with lightning as it shattered the last scant remains of the balcony. "You must face your fearssss!"

"But I'm not afraid of—"

"Yesssssss! Face themmm!"

"Alright, already!" Scootaloo trembled. "Jeez!"

Luna disappeared in a blink of comprehension.

"Meh..." Scootaloo smoothed her bangs back and plopped her flank down on the last remaining square inch of the balcony. "How come a princess like that gets away with not wearing a big, poofy dress?"

The floor beneath her disappeared.

"Gaaah!" The flightless pegasus plunged.

The next day, in Cheerilee's schoolyard, Scootaloo had her hooves on the ground. Sh had been standing in the same place for several minutes—consuming the better part of an hour—during which she stared ceaselessly at Rumble, watching as his pale coat and shiny black mane glistened in the sweet morning dew of the blossoming day. The young colt was running circles around the playground with Snips and Snails, playing tag and laughing his young lungs out in the brisk, morning air.

Scootaloo's nostrils flared as she tried to steady her heartbeat.

"And then Rarity said that the reason I have to sleep on the floor is because my fuzzy coat has a natural static cling and it would instantly attract hundreds if not thousands of dust bunnies into the bedsheets if I was to jump up onto just any mattress," Sweetie Belle said, gazing deeply into the grass. Her forehead twitched, and yet she maintained a fragile, porcelain smile. "I was finally allowed to eat something off the kitchen table this morning. And tomorrow, Rarity says, I can pee sitting down for once."

"Yeah, uh huh, that's nice, Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo muttered. "Will you excuse me for a second?" She trotted firmly across the schoolyard, making a beeline towards Rumble.

"Oh, uhm, okay!" Sweetie Belle chirped, her tail flicking. "I'll just—uh—be here, standing up!" She gulped. "Totally not sitting down!" Her legs began quivering at that last utterance.

In the meantime, Apple Bloom galloped up from the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. "Scootaloo! Good mornin' to ya!" She bit her lip as she trotted swiftly to keep up with her friend's march. "Uhm, I'm so sorry to hear about yer scooter yesterday, Scoots. I almost went into Ponyville to buy you a new one, but the bridge to downtown was blocked off last night. These ponies were haulin' something out of the river. It must have been the biggest fish I ever did see!"

"Not now, Apple Bloom." Scootaloo brushed past her and broke into a canter, piercing the happy cluster of prancing colts and fillies. "I have to go proclaim my undying love to a colt."

"Oh!" Apple Bloom remarked. She suffered a slight spasm, then gargled, "Er... why, exactly?"

"Because I'm afraid to?"

"Really?"

"Meh, I dunno." Scootaloo arrived right in front of Rumble, almost tripping him as he ran backwards from Snips and Snails.

"Ooof!" Rumble spun around. "Say, what's the big idea—?!" He froze instantly upon seeing Scootaloo. His warm eyes bugged, and a crimson blush immediately washed over his torso. "Oh... uhhh... h-h-h-hey there, Sc-Sc-Scootaloo."

"Hello, Rumble," Scootaloo said with a plastic voice, followed by an even more plastic grin. "You're adoracute." She then grabbed a nearby water trough, poured the contents loose, swung the hulking thing over head, and smashed the full wooden length of it across the colt's cranium.

Rumble vibrated from head to tail in sheer agony. Shrapnels of wood splashed all around him in slow motion, accompanied by the bullet-timed spray of crimson juices. He spun like a top until his skull flew perpendicular to the ground. His wings buzzed in last-second hilarity, doing nothing but propelling him even harder into the dense, compact soil of the schoolyard, christening the wet grass with a calcified spray of baby teeth.

When time resumed, a deep bass noise morphed into a high-pitched whine, namely the haunting sound of Rumble sobbing like a clubbed seal into the bloody mess that his mouth and nose had become. "Waaaaaaaaiiii-eeeeeeeuuugh!" His warbling voice echoed in the twitching ear of every colt, filly, chaperone, and squirrel gawking incredulously at the precious little massacre.

"Oh suck it up!" Scootaloo hissed into his spasming ears with a cockeyed grin. "You handsome side of simmering coltmeat!"

"Scootaloo!" Cheerilee squawked horrifically over the sounds of Rumble's blood-curdling shrieks. "Why in Equestria's name did you do that!"

"Uhhh..." Scootaloo paled, her ears drooping. "Because I... like him?"

"In my office! Now, young lady!"

"I don't get it!" Scootaloo squawked, her eyes twitching towards the horrified expressions of Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom in her peripheral vision. "Colts are supposed to be tough, aren't they?!"

"Boy..." Snips murmured, standing next to Snails as he stared nervously at Rumble's sobbing form. "I sure wished a girl liked me that much!"

"Oh, uhhh..." Scootaloo picked up a flower pot off a nearby window sill of the schoolbuilding and smashed it over Snips' collapsing spine. "There!" She followed the resulting thunder with, "But you're paying for dinner!"

"Scootaloo!" Cheerilee venomously spat, yanking the filly towards the school's entrance by her tail. "That's enough! Inside! Now!"

Scootaloo held a hoof up to her ear and grinned towards the dizzied males. "Call me!"

"Ughhhh..." Snips whimpered into the grass. "My ears are farting out blood..."

"Hah hah hah!" Snails guffawed. "You got beat up by a girl-sucker!"

"Suspended?!" Raindrops exclaimed, her mane a frazzled mess as she paced loops around Scootaloo in her upstairs bedroom that night. "I feed you! Dress you! Bathe you! Teach you how to put your horseshoes on tight, and you get yourself suspended from school for a month?!"

"Hey, I don't need you to keep me from tripping on my horseshoes!" Scootaloo said, folding her forelimbs in a stubborn pout. "And besides, that colt was asking for it!"

"How?! How in Celestia's effluent mane was that poor little pony asking to have his teeth knocked out of his jaws?!"

"Because... uhm..." Scootaloo's eyes searched the ceiling as she tongued the inside of her mouth. "Something something 'thickheaded nose bleeders'..." Her optics bugged, and she broke into snorting laughter. "Hah! Now I get it! 'Nose Bleeders!' Heeheehee! Good one, Dashie—"

"Scootaloo, I swear," Raindrops growled, her teeth gritting so hard they produced sparks. "If this has anything to do with the time you've spent wasting away in the foolish company of that cloud-snorting tomcolt—"

"Hey!" Scootaloo frowned. "This has nothing to do with Rainbow Dash! I'll have you know, Auntie, this is simply about me loving colts so much that I’d give them a compound fracture with a horse trough!"

"Enough!" Raindrops stomped her hoof down. "Clearly I haven't made things clear to you, my little pony! Life is not about fearlessness and reckless abandon! You can't toss yourself all over town on a scooter like you have a death wish! And you most certainly can't just march up to anypony and give them a concussion!"

"But he's my prince charming!" Scootaloo's voice cracked. She fidgeted. "Granted, with a few missing teeth, but, hey! All the more room for my tongue—!"

"I'm not even going to pretend to argue with you! You think being suspended from school for a month is bad?! Well, young lady, you're grounded for two months!"

"Awwwwwwwww..."

"Don't whine at me! I've had it up to here with your violent shenanigans! This is not the little niece I was asked to raise!" Turning around, Raindrops stomped out the room. "Now wash up and go to bed! I don’t care if it’s early! We're going to have a long talk in the morning!"

The door slammed shut behind her.

Scootaloo scowled. "Hmmph..." She tossed her mane back. "As if a mare like you has raised anything in her life, you washed-up old maid—" She turned to walk away, but tripped the very moment that one of her horseshoes popped loose. "Oh crap!" She landed flat on her face and instantly fell unconscious.

"Player One Has Entered the Galloping Grid."

"F'naaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Scootaloo war-cried, her black leotarded body leaning forward as she propelled a glowing scooter across an infinitely flat plane of geometric lines. Beneath the gaping darkness—punctuated randomly with bursts of digital lightning—several mean-faced ponies solidified. They jumped, performed ballet leaps, and landed on glowing cycles that bled bright gold lines as they converged on the pegasus' figure.

Scootaloo gritted her teeth. The cyclists' glow reflected off her helmet as she swerved hard to the left, drawing a bright blue barricade in front of the opponents' charge.

Two of them were lucky enough to swing parallel to her turn. A third flew straight into her light wall, shrieking with a reverberating echo effect as his equine body was pulverized into brittle glass shards. The remaining gladiators accelerated their cycles, attempting to cut Scootaloo's path off halfway down the grid. She remained two turns ahead of them, swerving left and right in a game of serpentine death traps.

Eventually, however, the two ponies got smart. They split up, came about in wide arcs, and approached Scootaloo from opposite ends. Ever daring, Scootaloo spotted a tiny space in the bright yellow barriers ahead, and she accelerated towards it, hoping to thread the infinitesimal gap before her glowing opponents could squash her into floundering bits.

"This is it." Scootaloo's breath fogged against her helmet as she grunted against the humming engine. "Come on."

Just as she approached her exit, an alicorn figure materialized into view like a solar sailer. "Behold, Scootaloo, I am the Princess of Dreams—"

"Oh for pony's sake!" Scootaloo screamed and slammed on the brakes.

It was too late. Her light wall caught up with her and snagged the rear wheels of her scooter. The entire vehicle

flipped forward, launching her like a black latex corpse from a glowing catapult. Her opponents crossed paths, shattering the remains of the scooter below her as her body flailed over the grid. With a howling shriek, Scootaloo landed and slid to a scraping stop. Half-a-second later, she kipped up to her hooves and pulled a large, glowing horseshoe from her flank.

As the two cyclists came around, Luna touched down to the grid and and coiled her wings. "It is my task to watch over the colts and fillies of—"

"Yeah, uh huh!" Scootaloo gnashed her teeth as a pair of fiery hot horseshoes streaked towards her. She agilely deflected them with her own weapon as the two opponents sped towards her. "Could you maybe give me the spiel when I am not having the most awesome dream ever?!"

"My dear child," Luna spoke calmly beneath the rising cacophony of the digitized blood sport. "The beasts of the field have suffered under the imperialists hoof of Equestrian society for far too long."

"Nnnngh!" Scootaloo somersaulted forward—right as a cyclist tried slamming into her. Upside down, she sliced her red-hot horseshoe straight across the pony's helmet, decapitating him instantly. The cycle exploded as the equine's body dissolved into glass bits with a Pac-Mare sound. Scootaloo touched down, panting, in time to grunt, "What the hay are you even talking about?!"

"There is no need for cattle to be herded like livestock," Luna murmured, daintily examining her own regal hoof. The last remaining cyclist dissolved his bike, leapt over the Princess, and charged Scootaloo with a blood-curdling cry as Luna continued, "They are sentient, and deserve to reap the fruits of harmony just like any other pony."

"I'm a little too busy right now to chew the cud!" Scootaloo wheezed, deflecting the glowing gamer's ravenous horseshoe strikes with her own. "I-I mean, don't have a cow, princess. Er, I mean—Rraaaugh! Why are you so tough, ya little melon fudge?!" She blocked the gamer again, yanked his forelimbs to the side, and headbutted him in the muzzle. "Nnngh!"

"As a product of your own civilization's sins, it is only natural that you are ignorant to the ills of society's disproportionate class structure."

Scootaloo flashed Luna a sweaty look. "Huh?! Whoah!" The colt had pounced upon her, struggling to slam his burning horseshoe down through Scootaloo’s skull.

"But you must face your fears if you are to bring righteous emancipation to the bovine population of the downtrodden proletariat."

"Excuse me?!" Scootaloo wheezed, squirming beneath the other gladiator's weight. "Your Majesty, what—nnngh—what do half of those words even mean?!"

"Finish the game!" The colt spat in her face.

"Finish your face!" She bucked him straight up into the air, somersaulted up to her hooves, and flung her horseshoe straight up into the lightning. "Raaalraragagahhrllge!"

As his body came back down, it was cleaved in two by the glowing hoofpiece. His screaming essence shattered, reduced to a rain of crystalline shards that settled all around her. Reaching a blind hoof out, Scootaloo caught her horseshoe on the rebound and locked it back into place on her suit's flank. Catching her breath, she allowed her helmet to retract into her mane so that she might squint unimpeded at the Princess.

"What's the big deal about cows, anyways? They give us milk and stuff, right? Heck, I'd give milk, but Auntie Raindrops keeps telling me that I gotta fit into a training bridle first."

"You have lived a lie all your life," Luna said, her eyes ping-ponging in opposite directions before normalizing in a royal blink. "Do not allow your fears to control you any further."

"Yeah, uhuh—"

"Or else you will not actually be living..."

"Look, your Majesty—"

"You will only be killing time."

"I faced my fears twice and it got me didley squat!" Scootaloo barked. She gestured with her hoof. "Look, your Highness, I know you're the goddess of the moon and sleep and—"

"Behold, I am the Princess of Dr—"

"Yes! I got that!" Scootaloo snarled. After a feline hiss, she sat back on her latex'd haunches and fiddled guiltily with her front hooves. "But now poor Rumble is having to get prosthetic teeth. Miss Cheerilee and Auntie Raindrops are super-merry-go-round pissed at me. And... uhm..." Her lips quivered as she whimpered, “I think I may have gotten a mare drowned—"

"The cattle are only chained to the world because they've been told all their lives that the invisible shackles are real—"

"Look, will you stop talking about the stupid cows?!" Scootaloo squawked, frowning.

Luna's eyes rolled back towards the lightning in the blacker-than-black sky. "They must be free to run in green pastures, unfettered by dairy farms and restrictions on methane gas. I know that this concept frightens you, my little pony—"

"I am not afraid of free cattle!" Scootaloo stomped her hooves and shouted. "Will you just listen to me, you stupid blue space horse?!"

"Do not let your fears control you!"

"Pfft—Fine! I'll do whatever!"

"Scootaloo!" The world de-rezzed around them both as Luna spun around a million times and lit up the sky like an effluent, stretch-faced, living centrifuge. "Face your fearssss—"

"I said I got it! Graaaugh!" Scootaloo ran, jumped, and leapt down the cylindrical hollow of the Princess. "But I'm telling you right now, this is bull—"

"—sit right down and be quiet!" Applejack shouted, her head pointed upwards in an indignant posture as she trotted briskly across the sunlit lengths of Sweet Apple Acres. "Cuz I ain't hearin' none of it! Y'all've had your chance, Rainbow! Now git!"

"But let me just explain!" Rainbow Dash stammered, floating on limp wings after the angry farm mare. Her face was stretched with pain and worry. "It was the cider's fault! What’s more, you’re the mare who gave me two friggin’ mugs of it! Didn’t you know just how dang sloshed I’d get with a single drop of that stuff in my system!"

"No, I didn't know!" Applejack grunted, approaching the morning's first line of trees and bucking the apples clear off. She huffed and puffed as the fruit collected in a wobbling basket. "But I reckon I'm startin' to get an idea, for once!" She turned and glared at her shuddering friend. "You lost yer manners, yer mind, and all sense of common decency!"

Rainbow Dash's face broke through with a momentary eye-waggle. "You forgot to mention your hair ribbon in the end."

"Erm... yes, well..." Applejack fidgeted, her freckles awash in a crimson sea.

"Crumpled up on the wooden floorboards beside your—"

"I wasn't myself that Saturday night!" Applehack hollered. "Besides!" She pointed an angry hoof in Rainbow's chest. "You took advantage of me!"

"How did I take advantage of you?!" Rainbow's voice cracked. "You, who, after twice as many sips as I took, ever so casually suggested we play 'Pin the tail on the Iron Pony?' And I was like 'Well that's silly, you silly pony, cuz my tail's on my butt, so how can I pin it on anything, you silly pony?' And then you got all up in my face and purred, 'Well it's a good thing this silly pony bought something special while on vacation at Las Pegasus. It's not exactly a tail, but it'll get the job done—'"

"I was supposed to be bakin' apple fritters that night!" Applejack growled, fanning herself with her hat. "Not becomin' one!" Her green eyes rolled back as she groaned in frustration. "Awwwww shucks. The worst part was when Granny Smith walked in."

"Really?" Rainbow Dash smirked, then hovered down to nudge Applejack's side. "Cuz I thought the worst part was when she trotted away the following morning. Eh? Ehh?!"

Applejack threw up into the apple basket.

Rainbow Dash jerked back in midair. "Horsefeathers!"

"Bleaaaaachkkk..." Applejack shuddered, wiping the fresh bile from her lips, lurching spastically. "Celestia above! I completely forgot about th-that!" She choked, tearful eyes bulging. "She done told me that her hip broke from trippin' over the woodpile out back!"

"I remember stuff piling up last Saturday, AJ, but it sure as heck wasn't wood!"

Applejack retched again.

"Aww crap!" Rainbow Dash winced, looking every which way. "Stay right here! I'll... uh... go get a horse trough!" She darted off in a blue blur, soaring ignorantly past a fenced-in part of the field where an orange filly stood before a circling group of grazing cattle.

"So, if you look at it in a broad perspective, you've all been kept here against your will," Scootaloo said. "It's like you've been chained up with imaginary fetters imposed upon you by an oligarchic regime formed by an elitist group of equine matriarchs. I mean, let's look at the flowchart again. Winona?"

With a happy bark, the little collie flipped a cardboard graph across an easel erected before the thick audience of observing bovines. Panting, it clamped its jaws over a metal pointer and tapped the end of it against a blue-colored dip in a line graph while Scootaloo spoke.

"See this? See this line here? This is—like—social inequality stuff, measured against the... err... gross median of the ponies' detrimental theft of your cultural identity, measured by... uhm... squirrels?" Scootaloo squinted at the x-axis. "Does it say 'squirrels' here? Eh, squirrels, yearly income, it's all the same.

Whatever." Scootaloo cleared her throat and faced the fenced-in cattle squarely. "Bottom line is, you're a bunch of slaves. Are we done here?"

"Moooooooo—" One cow began, briefly coughing up a few vomitous flakes of grass. "Ahem... This is all very interesting, but I've got lots of grazing to do."

"Ja, grazing," another added. "Lots of that going around, don'tcha know?"

"Ja, we like grazing!" A large cow smiled, her horns glistening in the morning air. "The ponies here are so good to us!"

"Uh huh... Okay." Scootaloo sat back on her haunches and rubbed her chin with a hoof before gesturing. "Here's a question. When was the last time any of you cows spoke without being talked to first by ponies?"

Winona barked to add emphasis to that last inquisition.

"Well, I'd say it was about—" One cow began, only to falter halfway through her speech. Her face hung in a perpetual grimace, her eyes widening more and more by the second. "I... I never really thought of that." She gulped hard, a series of trembles spreading through her obese figure. "Actually, I don't really think that much in words... only in... 'Moooooooo...'"

Several more cattle mimicked the sound, filling the air with a deep bass noise of brainwashed subservience, at least—that is—until one of them hoarsely whimpered:

"I... I don't even know wh-what that means." She gulped, her bell rattling from where it hung from her throat. "Everytime I think about it, I shiver, and this th-thing around my neck makes so much noise! It used to frighten me."

"Me too!" Another stammered.

"Ja! It would frighten all of us!"

"Why?" Scootaloo leaned forward. "Why does it frighten you?"

"Just why are you asking us all this, my little pony?"

Scootaloo scowled. "Cuz I wanna friggin' dream without a goth alicorn getting all up in my grill!"

Winona barked again.

The trembling swam all across the herd now, filling the air with the cacophonous cricket noise of cowbells, until each and every one of the pensive bovines ripped their rattling articles off and flung them down to the softy, clingy earth.

"I am tired of this noise!" one hissed. "Tired of... of being m-milked!"

"Nopony should be allowed to touch these udders," another murmured with a little shake of her abdomen. "Not without my personal permission..."

"But they're so k-kind to us!" a third interjected. "Applejack—she always rubs my nose and calls me 'Moooella.'"

Winona nudged Scootaloo. Scootaloo blinked dazedly at her. The canine shoved her again, and the pegasus snapped out of it, ultimately asking, "And just how long have you accepted your slave identity?"

"I..." The cow fidgeted, her eyes wide with horror and revelation all at once. "I am not 'Moooella'..."

Another gazed up into the heavens. A single tear rolled down her calico cheek as she murmured, "'Felicia'... My name is 'Felicia'..." As her lips moved, she became aware of several emerald blades hanging off her tongue. She gasped, spitting out the shoots of grass and scooting away from them as if they were composed of arsenic. "Oh gawd! What h-have I been eating all these years?! Oh gawd! Oh gawwwwwd!"

"Grass! I've been eating grass all this time!"

"What is this branding on my flank?!"

"Where is my family?! So many of them were shipped away to the 'happy place!' Where is this happy place?! I want to see my babies! I want to hold them in my hooves again!"

"Oh gawwwwwwwd!"

A panicked tumult rose through the crowd. Scootaloo whistled shrilly. With tired, bleary eyes, she nevertheless maintained a calm smile as she waved for the crowd to calm down.

"Settle down, everypon—er... everycow. Eheheh. Ahem. I know that this is a lot to take in, but try not to get so freaked out, okay? As of now, you're free spirits, so... I dunno... go out and buy a music album or something. You're all e-mansion-pantied, or something."

"I believe you mean to imply that we have all achieved full sentience, and as such have been universally emancipated from the unwarranted bonds that have oppressed us into bestial behavior for so many countless generations."

"Right. That. Whatever. Just go chillax somewhere that isn't fenced in. I'm gonna go sleep without a stupid dream interruption for once." With a deep breath, Scootaloo packed up her flowcharts and trotted limply away from the patch of farmland and its population of worriedly murmuring cattle. "Nyeeeugh..." She stifled a yawn and smiled down at the happily frolicking Winona. "Well, hey, for once that wasn't so bad. Maybe the Princess is actually onto something!"

Winona barked and wagged her tail with joy.

"You soul-sucking, heartless, bastard children of stud seed!" A bull shouted through a megaphone from the front steps to Ponyville's town hall building. "You lied to us all!"

"Yeah!" Dozens upon hundreds of cows flanking the large, muscular figure yelled, hollered, and stomped their hooves in one accord, casting a furious thunder of racial indignance across the beleaguered town. "Give us back our children!"

"Give us back our lives!"

"We want freedom!"

"Equal rights to cloven hooves! Equal rights to cloven hooves! Equal rights to cloven hooves!"

Gathered around the exterior of the town hall building in tiny gawking clusters were several bright-eyed ponies. They clung to each other, shivering in their silken saddlebags and brushed manes and polished horseshoes, watching in shock as the once subservient denizens of livestock interrupted the flow of the golden afternoon. Foals sobbed and hid their faces into the flanks of their mothers. Farmers, merchants, and delivery ponies frowned and growled from where they sat obstinately atop their wagons, abandoned on the side of the road the very moment that every cow in town decided that they were no longer hauling equine materials across the urbanscape.

The cows shouted and chanted their hymns of protest, undaunted, as they had for the last several hours in a row. The town Mayor paced in restless circles just a stone’s throw from the town hall building. Police ponies gathered around her, forming a barricade as angry cows flung bells, branding irons, and smelly clumps of manure at their uniformed figures. A frazzled, sickly Applejack stood before the Mayor, wrestling with her hat until it became a crumpled, brown mess.

"I just plum don't know how this all happened, Miss Mayor!" Applejack's right eye twitched spastically as her teeth chattered with each resonating vibration of the cattle's angry shouts. "One moment they were all gathered in the pasture all peaceful-like, and suddenly they're marchin' down main street singin' some nonsense about a low-swingin' chariot!"

"We need milk for the baking desperately!" Mrs. Cake shouted from the front of Sugarcube Corner. "There's a wedding tomorrow, and the bride's father is invested in the clock tower to the west of town!"

An angry stallion hollered above the chanting voices. "If I don't make my regular delivery to the train station, I'll have to sell my whole farm!"

A wide-eyed doctor galloped panicked circles around an abandoned ambulance. "If we don't get these frozen organs to Canterlot by sundown, a dozen orphans will die!"

"How could this happen?!" The Mayor exclaimed, shaking Applejack's shoulders. "I have an election coming up! I can't afford a catastrophe like this! No mayor has helped Ponyville float economically like I have! We'll become the next Detrot!"

"Just simmer down, mayor! Now I’m sure that the cattle can be reasoned with!"

"Just what am I expected to do?!" The Mayor sneered, adjusting her cracked bifocals. "Hoof out mugs of cider and have a little pow-wow?!"

Applejack instantly threw up on her.

"Aaaugh!" The Mayor hopped back, grimacing. "Celestia, have mercy!"

"Mayor! Mayor!" A pimple-faced, teenage stallion galloped up, slumping down onto the ground and wheezing for breath. "You have to c-come look at th-this! It's horrible!"

The Mayor frowned, wiping Applejack's bile off her neckerchief. "My little pony, what could possibly be worse than—" Her eyes caught a sight behind him, and her irises shrunk to pinpricks. "Oh dear Goddess..."

"Urp..." Applejack looked up, rubbing green slime from her quivering lips. "Wh-what is it...?"

"It's the sheep..." The Mayor stammered, watching as a solid line of wool marched thickly down the street with rows upon rows of angry picket signs. "The friggin' sheep have caught on! That's it!" She spun around and shouted at the nearest stallion. "Big Macintosh! Restore order! Immediately!"

An angry glint flickered across the thick thoroughbred's green eyes. "Eeeeeeyup." Big Mac slapped on a firefighter's helmet and whistled over his shoulder. Several more stallions in firefighting gear gathered around a water pump, pulling at opposite ends of a lever system. A rush of water throttled through the contraption, and—with the help of multiple police officers—the ponies aimed a throng of heavy hoses at the protesting masses in the center of town.

"Now, my brothers!" The bull pumped a hoof while screaming into the megaphone. "Stand up against tyranny, injustice, and blblblblblbllblbllb—!" His voice became a muffled yelp of noise under the punishing fountain of reclaimed city water. Rows of cattle bravely threw their shoulders into the relentless deluge, while others fell over each other and were pushed all across the doused lengths of town.

In retaliation, several more cows stormed up the flank, flinging

stones, signs, and molotov cocktails. Mrs. Cake shrieked and ran for cover as Sugarcube Corner caught on fire. A herd of sheep pulled a stallion out of his wagon and began beating him against the curb. Ponies ran every which way, screaming in terror. An infant filly sat in the middle of the street, crying for its mother. Pigs and goats joined the fray, smashing storefront windows to bits and making off with expensive loot. Soon, plumes of fiery smoke rose from random parts of the riotous village as the landscape drowned in anger and white noise.

"Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa Haa!" The schoolfoals laughed and laughed.

Scootaloo blinked. Sitting dead-still at her desk, she turned and looked to her right.

Dozens of classmates were pointing at her, laughing and giggling endlessly at her expense.

Scootaloo's brow furrowed. She looked to her left.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were in stitches, pounding the desk as they pointed at Scootaloo and laughed their heads off. Even Cheerilee, halfway through a geometry equation on the blackboard, was shedding tears as she guffawed at the sight of the orange filly.

With an eyebrow raised, Scootaloo looked down at herself. She realized that she was in the middle of the classroom, and that she was the only pony wearing clothes.

"Unnngh..." Her eyes went thin as she stared off into space. "I already see where this is going."

A squirrel hopped up to the windowsill outside the classroom.

Scootaloo turned to glance at it.

The tiny, adorable thing looked up at her, its nose wriggling. Then, in a bloody explosion of brain and entrails, Princess Luna's winged body popped out of the small rodent.

"Gyaaaaaaugh!" Scootaloo fell out of her desk.

"Scootaloo..." Luna's muffled voice spoke as she knocked her blue hoof against the glass several times. "I am the princess of dreams—"

"Nnnngh—I know... I know!" Scootaloo climbed back onto the desk, trying her best to hold her lunch in. "Just, for once, could you find a way to approach me that isn't so... mmmm... kaizo?!"

With a loud crash, Luna's skull shattered through the glass. Her wall-eyes followed the blood drops trickling down her temple. "Fret not, dear child, for you are merely asleep—"

"Yeah, Raindrops and I are currently lying in the basement while the cattle ransack the city outside," Scootaloo murmured. She felt a cold trickle against her hooves and glanced down to see a pool of water rising up from the classroom floor. "...and apparently I gotta pee really bad."

"Dear Scootaloo..." Luna smashed through the wall, the window pane dangling around her bleeding neck. She stumbled through desks and drawing boards, her regal hooves splashing in the rising waters. "It is my task to watch over the colts and fillies of Equestria in their—"

"Look, we're done." Scootaloo swung her forelimbs out, frowning. "Finished. Finito! The votes are in; four more years of Obamare. You can go home now to your friggin' dream castle in the sky, for all I care—"

Luna swam backwards around Scootaloo, careful to avoid bobbing foals and lunchboxes. "How can you be expected to sleep comfortably if you don't face your fears?!"

"No." Scootaloo banged her head against her floating desk again and again and again. "No no no no no no no—"

"A mortal's life is defined by the degree to which she willingly faces the slings and arrows of adversity—"

"No no no no no no—" Scootaloo's skull was bleeding at this point. She formed a crack in the floating desk, took a deep breath, wheezed, and exhaled, "Noooooo—"

"Scootaloo, my child." Luna's head poked up through the murky currents like a sapphiric crocodile. "You must destroy the Equestrian Dam."

Scootaloo's head shot up. "The fudge—?!" Her beleaguered skull hit the classroom's ceiling. "Ow!"

"It is a blight upon the natural order of things." Luna's incorporeal voice bounced between her wandering eyes. "It must not be allowed to choke the rivers dry, for the fish and birds and bacteria of the northern wilderness must be allowed to flourish—"

"No, Princess! Thank you, it's been fun—" Scootaloo hissed through clenched teeth, struggling against the ceiling panels as the rising waters shoved her up against them. "But I'm done being your cosmically subconscious whipping filly! Go haunt Sweetie Belle's dreams and tell her to kick rocks!" Her lips sputtered against an emergency sprinkler as she fought for oxygen. "Heck, you'd love her! She's had a phobia of boulders ever since she was a baby and her parents tried to drown her!"

"A land that is parched of the flowing beauty of natural rivers knows nothing of drowning—"

"For the love of Pony Townsend!" Scootaloo sputtered, her spine pressed up against the ceiling as bare inches afforded her the dry air to speak. "You just don't give up, do you?!"

"It is only natural to fear that which structured society has built, even if it is a mistake on behalf of mortal equine kind."

"Princess Luna, I am not going to blow up a dam for you."

"You must face your fears, Scootaloo."

"Princess, I have a life to live! I wanna see Stone Colt Steve Oatsten fight CM Pegasus someday!" Scootaloo gasped and gargled through the rising currents. "Don't even immortal princesses have a bucket list?!"

"Face your fearssssss!"

"Dang it all—blbllblblblbb!"

"You must! For your sanity! For the good of your—"

"Fine! Just shut up, already! Just—Gralallgblbllblb—Friggin' A!" She bobbed under the water, blowing bubbles.

A winged blue shape roared into her: "Falblbllbl yllbllblb feblalblbblss!"

Growling, Scootaloo punched Princess Luna in the face, and the whole entire school burst like a giant water balloon.

"Oh go jump off a cliff, eh?!" Angrily, a stallion security guard slammed an orange phone down onto its base and slumped back in his chair. "Unnnngh..."

Across from him inside the cramped, concrete room, another security guard reclined at a desk with an issue of Playcolt in his hooves. He looked up with a raised eyebrow as a nearby fan blew at his old, gray mane. "Now just what are you so hosed aboot?"

"I swear..." The first groaned, staring at a local monitor displaying several live camera feeds. "The next time a stupid youngster calls in asking us how 'we're filling in the holes of Equestria's favorite dike,' I'm gonna go take a crap down somepony's chimney!"

"Heh heh heh..." The second stallion grinned as he flipped to another page full of estrogenical exploitation. "Well, that's the joy of workin' day in and day out at a dam, eh?"

"It's what I look forward to every morning while on the bus root," the first grumbled into his hoof. "Do you ever think that maybe we could use a little bit more excitement here? Aside from prank calls, I mean."

"I don't know." The other shrugged, stifling a yawn. "I heard about what happened in the town downriver yesterday. I don't know what's worse: a mandatory curfew or no milk to go with my cookies."

"Why are you so worried about cookies?" The first guard wagged his eyebrows. "You're chin deep in some rich strudel everynight, if I'm to believe what your little missus says to me behind your back."

"Hahah, I get it." The other flipped a page. "It's like sex, eh?"

"Heheheh." A buzzing sound emanated from a door just beyond the guards' desks. "Whoops!" He stood up. "Just remembered I had legs."

"It's probably the beavers screwing with us again."

"Just scream at them really loud and they'll go all lemming off the south side like normal."

"I only wish I was that lucky today." The door buzzed again; the stallion hurried towards it faster. “Just keep your touque on, eh?!” The stallion flung the door open, filling the office with bright, bright sunlight. He squinted, then blinked down towards a tiny silhouette in the frame. "Oh, hello there. A little too many clicks from civilization to be selling filly scout cookies, don’tcha think?"

"Hey there, good sir..." Scootaloo muttered. The bags under her eyes hung like black glaciers beneath violet suns. She teetered from side to side, as if she might fall into a narcoleptic coma at the drop of a saddle. "I was wondering if—"

"Whoahhh! Heheh... Looks like somepony needs some sleep!"

"Like you wouldn't believe," she murmured, gulping. "I was wondering—"

"Say, how'd you make it all the way up here on your lonesome?" The security guard stuck his head out, staring across the lengths of the concrete path that ran along the top of the wide, curved, moon-white dam blocking the huge lake north of Ponyville. "A pegasus your age is too young to fly."

"I rode the updraft of a million faeries possessed by an undying song."

"Huh?"

"Look, I dunno. I just wanna dream like a normal little angsty orphan again." Scootaloo gulped and glared blearily up at him. "Would you mind if I walked into the generator room of this dam here and planted several highly volatile explosives in an attempt to burst the lake behind it?"

"Pffft—Excuse me?!"

"I only wanna... y'know... free nature from the oppressive hoof of equestrian civilization"—she yawned—"and stuff."

"Well, I'm sorry, little filly." The security guard knelt down, smiled, and ruffled her mane. "But it's our job here to keep this dam in ship-shop shape, and we can't have that with you wanting to blow holes in it, eh?" He grimaced as her sweaty hair clung to his hoof. With a shake or two, he flung his forelimb free and cast her a nervous smile. "Now why don't you go home and have yourself a little nap?"

"Look, I'm serious," Scootaloo growled.

"Right, and I'm the Prime Marenister." The officer winked and stood up. "Go on home, darling. Besides, you shouldn't be out and aboot so close to curfew. There be cattle in these parts."

"I... but... it..." Scootaloo's ears twitched. She turned and looked at the brass knob to the office's door.

The effluent blue shape of Princess Luna's head materialized before the exhausted filly's eyes. With a regal stare, the alicorn's lips moved, forming an imperative statement with three prolonged words set in bold font.

"Hmmm... yeah..." Scootaloo gulped and glanced tiredly up at the guard. "Uhm... You know what?" She raised a hoof up, lingered, then eventually muttered, "Bee arr bee." Teetering, she turned around and shuffled back down the far end of the pale white dam.

"Huh..." The guard scratched his mane, shrugged, and shut the door.

"Well, if that wasn't odd," the other remarked, flipping more through Playcolt.

"It could have been worse," the first said as he turned, smiled, and trotted back to his desk. "She could have been a prank caller. Heh heh heh heh—"

The door exploded with a wave of shrapnel and splinters.

Both stallions were thrown to the ground amidst agonized cries.

The dust cleared, and Scootaloo stood in the doorway, propped on her scooter. A twitching scowl lingered under a red bandanna tied to her brow. She cradled a baseball bat and wore a saddlebag stuffed full with bulky weapons. A red wagon hung behind her, filled to the brim with every explosive and firework known to ponykind.

One stallion looked up, wheezed, and stammered—wide eyed: "Mother of fu—"

"Raaaaaaaaugh!" Scootaloo blurred towards the prone stallion. Before he had time to grab a radio, she spun three-hundred-sixty degrees and slammed the full length of her bat across his skull.

The stallion spat half-a-dozen teeth, painting the security monitors with scarlet juices. Across the room, the other guard fumbled for his taser.

Scootaloo flashed him an angry look. Unlatching her scooter from the wagon, she glided towards him.

He pulled his taser rod out and aimed it at her, hyperventilating.

Scootaloo ollied over the electrical burst, forward-flipped, and came at him low.

He stood up, gripped his desk in two forelimbs, and flung the whole thing at her with a panicked yell.

She bent backwards on her scooter, ducked the flying furniture, and ended with a slide between the stallion's legs. From there, she used her scooter like a vault and uppercutted the whimpering stallion with four bucking limbs. "Yaaaugh!"

He flew towards the ceiling, flailing.

Scootaloo stood in his shadow, reaching back into her saddlebag. She pulled a crossbow out, aimed it, and fired.

The bolt skewered his left forelimb, pinning him to the ceiling. He hung from there, shrieking amidst a gargle of blood as the scattered pages of Playcolt fluttered across the room.

Just then, the door to the rest of the dam opened and a frazzled guard poked his head in. "What's with all the racket, eh?"

Scootaloo spun towards him, snarling, eyes red.

"Whoah! Holy—"

With a shriek, the spastic filly flung the baseball bat at him like a javelin.

"Unngh!" The stallion took the bludgeon to the face and backflipped twice from the impact. A grand, cinderblock hallway loomed beyond him.

Scootaloo reattached the wagon to the scooter, dropped a smoke bomb in the ramshackled office, and speedily pulled her cache down the long passage, piercing the depths of the inner dam. As the murky clouds built up, the third guard coughed, wheezed, but managed with his last conscious breaths to reach up along the wall and slap his hoof over a button labeled "Emergency: In Case of Homicidal Filly Rampage."

A loud siren rang through the place, echoing against the thick walls of the dam's interior. Red lights strobed as dozens of muscular guards jumped out of their bunks, donned riot gear, and dashed into the nearby hallway, only to be assaulted by a speeding orange blur.

"Hraaaaugh!" Scootaloo detached her scooter from the wagon, hopped up, plowed through a guard's helmet, ran over a second stallion, and flung the vehicle upwards like a sickle so that it ensnared the forelimb of an officer trying to swing a taser at her. Locking the scooter around his hoof, she yanked him to the ground, kicked his face in, and then spun around in time to extend the scooter so that it slammed into the gut of another pony charging her way. As he stumbled, she vaulted over him, reloaded her crossbow, and fired at the legs of another advancing wave of guards.

One stallion fell down, clutching his bleeding limb and screaming for his mother. The four stallions who were behind him ran straight at Scootaloo, all jointly hoisting a murderously heavy battering ram at her petite figure.

They screamed.

She screamed.

The world slowed down in a red-strobing blink as Scootaloo forward-flipped over the group, pulled a cluster of throwing-stars out from her saddlebag, and flung them at their flanks while upside down.

Time resumed; Scootaloo landed in a squat on the other side of the group. Two and a half seconds later, the entire squad fell on either side of their battering ram, curling into bloody fetal positions and groaning.

A length of metal railing exploded just to the right of Scootaloo's head with buckshot.

She spun around, gnashing her teeth, eyes twitching violently beneath her bandanna.

A stallion in front of the generator room's door cursed and popped the barrels loose of his elephant gun in a desperate race to reload it.

"Nnnnngh—" Dragging the red wagon, Scootaloo sped forward on her scooter, charging angrily towards the last guard.

"Come on... Come on..." The stallion whimpered, fumbling to pop the shells into the rifle. "Please, Celestia. I'm sorry for all the mares and hoofcuffs and strawberry preserves..."

"Gaaaaah—" Scootaloo bore down on him, the red veins in her eyes showing.

"Yes!" The stallion slid the shells in, locked the barrels back, cocked the gun, and—

"RRRRRRGHHH!" Scootaloo jumped and flung the scooter forward like a club. One of the handles expertly slid into a single barrel of the elephant gun.

He pulled the trigger, and the rifle backfired, blowing his burnt body back through the door so that he burst through to the generator room. Down below, several ponies in thick-framed glasses and white collared shirts scrambled away from their workstations amidst the hum of hydro-generators.

"Oh dear Goddess, I knew this day would come!" a worker shrieked.

"She's gonna kill us, eh?!"

"Run for your lives! To the escape roots!"

Scootaloo stood, perched atop a length of metal railing, cradling the red wagon full of explosives over her shoulder like a bazooka. The light shimmering from the generators coalesced into an alicorn shape screaming at her face. "Face your fears, child!"

"I know!" Scootaloo hissed, her eyes rolling back in their sockets as she rubbed her bandanna'd head. "I'm working on it, you overbearing bag of moon farts!"

"There she is!" a voice shouted.

Scootaloo looked up with a jerk.

As the workers fled the generator room, an overseer stood behind a lofty glass booth. The pony picked up a microphone and shouted, her voice reverberating over the dam's PA system. "Release the manticores!"

Several pounding noises emanated from a metal-barred janitor closet. Scootaloo spun to see the bars mechanically lifting, and soon three hulking beasts with drooling fangs thundered out of their hold, knocking over water coolers and punch clocks. Their massive paws brought them—roaring and thundering—Scootaloo's way.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaugh!" She pulled two kitchen hatchets out of her saddlebag and met their charge.

Six sets of claws and three scorpion tails flung at her. Scootaloo swam through them all, spun gracefully, and stabbed the eyes out of one beast. It flailed in a bloody heap as she kicked another manticore against a generator, backflipped, avoided more stinger-swipes, and stabbed forward with the bloody hatchets ringing loudly.

Giving a lion's roar, the biggest of the three manticores batted her blades away and pounced on her.

"Ooomf!" Scootaloo grunted as she was slammed back through a workstation. Several levers and dials of a generator console stretched behind her.

The manticore roared, raising its stinger up towards the ceiling to bring down and impale the intruder. Suddenly, in the glint of the venomous barb, Luna's glowing face shouted, "Scootaloo! Press 'X!'"

Scootaloo gritted her teeth and yanked her head aside. When the stinger came down, it smashed into the console instead, spitting sparks and electrocuting the overbearing monstrosity.

"Press 'circle,' my child!" Luna's voice shouted.

Scootaloo mercilessly slashed the hatchet across the manticore's paw. With a pained shriek, the creature reared back off the filly.

"Now hit 'triangle!'"

"Hppp!" Scootaloo grabbed the manticore's mane, hoisted her body up, and mounted its back.

"And mash 'R1,' my royal subject!"

Gripping the monster's skull, Scootaloo threw her whole weight forward and slammed its face repeatedly into the sparkling instrumental

panel below it. "Rrrghh! Ghhh! Nnngh! Haughh!"

The manticore grunted, yelped, and mewled like a kitten drowning on its own blood. Soon it lay in a dizzied heap below Scootaloo.

The filly spat blood, then turned to glare across the red-strobing lengths of the generator room.

The third and last manticore blinked at her. Its ears drooping, it turned and ran, only to slam skull-first into a metal pillar and instantly fall unconscious.

With flaring nostrils, Scootaloo dismounted the twitching beast beneath her and marched angrily over towards her red wagon. She took out the first of many plastique explosives and began affixing them to the multiple generators positioned in the center of the room.

"Remember to place them equally apart at the extent of their blast radius in order to most effectively utilize their destructive capabilities—"

"I think I friggin' got this! Thank you!" Scootaloo shouted, affixing an electric wire to all of the explosives. "I swear to Celestia, I better be dreaming about swimming in a sea of pizza rolls or I'm liable to blow up your palace too."

"A fearless soul is a noble soul—"

"Oh, shut the buck up." Scootaloo set the timer, activated the triggers, and dove behind a thick pillar of concrete. As the mess of charges began beeping, she ducked and covered into a fuzzy orange ball.

"Have you seen my muffin?!" A teary-eyed Derpy trotted across the ruined streets of Ponyville, past shattered storefronts and wagons full of rotting fruit. "The last time I saw her was two nights ago! She was in the middle of the street when the first cattle stampede happened and... and..." She broke down, hugging herself as her face melted in a heart-wrenching sob. "Oh goddess! Oh goddessssssssss..."

"Please! Somepony! Anypony!" Nurse Red Heart shouted from a stack of splintery wooden crates as several ponies fought over looted groceries in the middle of the street. "I need an expedition to head into Trottingham or another nearby town in order to get some much-needed plasma! I have over three dozen ponies bleeding out in the hospital and they won't last past sundown!"

"It's plum horrible, Rainbow!" Applejack sniffled, her blonde mane a disheveled mess as she leaned against a tree and weakly whimpered, "Without the wagons regularly makin' their scheduled routes, I can't get Granny any more of her daily medicine! She's been lyin' in bed all mornin'. She's hardly moved an inch! Apple Bloom won't stop sobbin' her poor little head off about her lost friends. On top of all that, Big Mac has been missin' since the mob carried him and the other stallions off!"

"There there..." Rainbow Dash hovered beside Applejack, patting her gently on the shoulder. "I'm totally here for you and... stuff."

"I'm left all on my lonesome to take care of the crops, but I'm scared that I won't make the next apple buck harvest in time!" Applejack wiped her cheek and shuddered. "And with no livestock to fall back on, I... I reckon I m-might have to sell the farm!" She gulped. "Even if Granny lives through all this mess, she'd never be proud of me if I sold out on my family legacy! Oh Rainbow Dash, I don't know if I could even live with myself if that were to happen!"

"Soooooo..." Rainbow Dash squinted, her ears twitching to the sound of a distant roar above the nearby wailing of starving voices. "Does this mean you... don't want to make out tonight?"

“Please!” Derpy shuffled over towards the two, so distraught that she was reduced to crawling limply through the muddied streets. “You h-have to help me find my muffin!”

“Go find your brain first!” Rainbow retorted. “I’m guessing the cattle trampled it after it sprouted wings and started delivering the mail through ponies’ windows. Look, don’t you see I’m trying to console my wife’s food?!” Rainbow’s eyes crossed momentarily. “Is it ‘wife’s food?’ ‘White fu?’ ‘Rifle foot?’”

“But... but my m-muffin may be dead!”

“Then go bake a new one!” Rainbow Dash barked. “ Jeez!”

"Everypony, look out!" The Mayor ran up, pointing with a frenzied expression. "The dike blows!"

Rainbow spun with a venomous frown. "Excuse me?"

"No! Look!" The Mayor pointed past her.

"Huh?!" Rainbow Dash turned around... then looked up. A heavy shadow fell over her as her wings drooped. "Oh? Oh!" She blinked. "Ohhhhhhh..." The air filled with a thunderous cacophony of noise. "Ohhhh-Oh-Oh-Oh sh—!"

A wall of crashing water slammed violently into her, Applejack, the mayor, and everypony in town. The streets of Ponyville were flooded instantly, the windows caving in and the lower floors crumpling like dominoes. Equine bodies flailed in the fountaining currents as hotels collapsed and warehouses crumpled to soggy lumber.

"I can't swim!" A mare shrieked.

"Please! Find my family!" A stallion howled above the rising mists of the flash flood. "Tell them that I love them—" A floating clock tower slammed into him, pulverising his body instantly.

"Goddess Celestia, please!" The Mayor banged against the windows of a stagecoach that she had foolishly jumped inside. The waters flooded the interior, rising up around her shivering body. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't—blblbllblbb!" Her ears twitched, spasmed, and were submerged in the currents carrying her, her town, the buildings, the trees, and everything into the freshly-flooded basin of doomed Equestria.

Scootaloo sat, bored stiff, on the edge of a marina overlooking a wide river under purple sunset. The currents weren't full of pizza rolls, but instead chicken eggs, and loads of them. She sighed long and hard, leaning her squishy orange chin against a limp hoof.

She heard a meowing sound.

Swiveling her head over, Scootaloo glanced down.

A cat with antlers looked up at her, its reptilian eyes blinking as a deep purr emanated through its furry body.

Scootaloo stared apathetically at it, saying nothing.

The cat purred and purred. At some point, a winged frog touched down to the ground between the pony and the animal and made a croaking sound. The air filled with a high-pitched hum as the antler'd cat pivoted, stared at the frog, and shot red-hot lasers out of its snake eyes.

The frog exploded, dousing Scootaloo's face with a splash of warm blood. Scootaloo exhaled slowly, closing her eyes.

The cat meowed again, sprouted shark fins, and dove deep into the river of chicken eggs with a spray of confetti. After a few seconds, Princess Luna emerged from the thick stream, covered with yolk. The regal alicorn marched out onto the wooden dock, shook the amniotic slime off her body, and leaned against a metal footlocker resting on the edge of the marina right behind the filly.

Scootaloo was silent as stone.

Luna looked at her. She took an extraordinarily long amount of time before uttering, "Greetings, Scootaloo, I am the Princess of—"

"Nothing."

Luna squinted. "I beg your pardon, child?"

"I fear nothing."

"Surely you jest. Everypony fears something. How else can you face that which makes you tremble in order to grow—?"

"I'm pissed off, your Majesty, not afraid." Scootaloo sighed. "There's a big difference between being annoyed and being scared."

"But what about your relationship with Rainbow Dash—?"

"I've gone past that," Scootaloo muttered. "Besides, I'm sure she's drowned in the floodwaters by now."

"Oh." Luna blinked. "And what of your beloved Rumble—?"

"That's been covered too. Concussion, prosthetic teeth, remember?"

"Uhhhhh..." Luna squinted, then raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yes, Princess. Really."

"And the... the whole thing with the cattle and the dam..."

"Yup. All tackled; I've faced them too."

"I see." Luna nodded, gazing off into the chicken egg river as a microwave oven jumped out, clicked like a porpoise, and submerged back beneath the hard-boiled currents. "And what of your tenuous adolescent struggle with pegasus flight?"

"I just really don't give a crap anymore."

"You no longer have a fear of heights? They don't give you goosebumps? Make your hooves tingle in even the slightest?"

"No."

"Then what of wandering the dark forest at night—"

"Uhm, hello? That's how we met?"

"Was it really?"

"Yes."

"I thought we met at the civic center."

"Nope."

"Are you certain? They were serving sandwiches."

"No, your Majesty, it was in a forest. During camping. Remember?"

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure."

Luna fidgeted, her wings coiled tightly at her side. With a lopsided blink, she grinned maniacally. "How about spiders? Everypony's afraid of spiders."

"Not me."

"For real?"

"I just step on them."

"How about bats? Tinnitus? Gang bangers from Mexicolt?"

"No, Princess. Just... just go haunt another pony's dreams. I'm over it. Like... for real."

Luna's brow furrowed. Her eyes darted in opposite directions as her mouth made a repetitive clicking noise. Brightening, she murmured, "How about the fear of being forgotten? Now that's a deep one."

"I can't be afraid of anything when I'm too friggin' pissed to think rationally, for myself or for anypony else, much less for a pony with too many wings and horns to know when she's nothing but a big bag of hot air, so go breathe your smelly way into another filly's dreams because I just don't care anymore! I really don't! Buck off!"

Luna blinked. She frowned, her wings twitching. "Yes... derr... well... I..." She hissed. "You're adopted." That said, Luna's wings wrapped around her body, spun a million times, and exploded, covering Scootaloo's flinching body in feathers and bone matter.

The filly hissed, her eyes rolling back as a loud snarl resonated from the center of her being, rising in volume as Scootaloo slammed her hooves repeatedly over the wooden floorboards of the dock.

"Dang it... dang it... dang it all!"

She looked all around, then settled for the footlocker. Bucking it with her hooves, she popped the door open, reached in, and pulled out a pump-action shotgun. Hugging the body of the rifle to her body, Scootaloo rolled over, stuck the barrels into her mouth, and kicked at the trigger with her rear hooves.

When her head exploded...

...she awoke with a gasp, violet eyes darting left and right as a sheen of sweat rolled down her face.

"Is it over?!" She stammered into the thick, stale air. "Am I no longer dreaming?!"

Scootaloo was silent.

She was clinging to a piece of driftwood, floating along a slowly swirling maelstrom of muddied water, punctuated randomly with the tops of sunken trees and bloated pony corpses bobbing in a foul sea above the wreckage that remained of Ponyville. The atmosphere stank with death, decay, and misery.

"Whewwwwwwwwwwwwwww..." Scootaloo leaned her head down and cuddled happily against the driftwood. "That's much better..."

Just then, there was a flash of light, emanating from her flank.

"H-huh?!" Scootaloo glanced back at her butt. A triplet of blue water droplets fountained from the image of an exploding dam on her flank. "Oh, come on!"

With a spray of bloodied water, a sea serpent burst out of the currents and swallowed Scootaloo whole.