Resident Crusader

“Where did ya learn ta fight like that? Ya never fought like that before!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, still in shock as she still oogled Scootaloo.

The pegasus grinned nervously. “My aunt taught me. She knows some insane moves.”

“An’ who is this mysterious aunt? Ah doubt she would approve o’ this deadly killin’ stuff.”

Leon wondered if Apple Bloom was normally this nosy, or it was just because he was here.

“Lets’ just move on. I will tell you the story of my aunt, and everything at a later time.” She walked quickly down the rest of the path. Eventually, her friends decide to drop the subject and follow her.

They came across another cabin. This time, it was occupied. Leon could see a Crazy standing in the center, waiting for something. What did he do all day when no one was around?

Again, it was Scootaloo who decided to test her wits against the unfortunate soul. “Are you going to be a challenge? Your friend back there lacked in the skills department!” Scootaloo waited as the Crazy seemed to process her request.

“Ah can’t believe she is gonna fight again! She’s gonna get herself killed one o these days.” Apple Bloom’s words were angry, but her anger contradicted the concerned look she was giving her totally nuts friend.

After what seemed like a battle of the wits, the Crazy swung his knife, hoping to slice the pony who dared trespass on private property. Scootaloo gave a sad sigh and prepared herself for battle.

The Crazy yelled in pain and Leon and the Crusaders looked on, wincing, as they watched the poor guy get pummeled.

They heard the pegasus give a deranged giggle, and the sounds of something tearing.

“I am reasonably certain that you can’t do that with somepony’s arm,” replied Sweetie, looking slightly ill. “I am seriously worried about Scootaloo! She never acted this way on our crusades.”

Apple Bloom dodged a splash of blood, and glared at it as if it was responsible for her problems. Leon had to admit it; Scootaloo had some serious moves. Her work was sloppy though, having some amateurish aspect to it.

A scream pierced their ears, then a wet gurgle and silence. The cabin was soaked in blood. The brutalized body hung on the wall, a pole shoved into its stomach. The head was missing--explaining the wet gurgling noise. Scootaloo had a small grin on her face, surprisingly blood free.

They all remained silent for quite a while. Sweetie’s left eye had a faint twitch, and she was staring at Scootaloo with a little fear.

Apple Bloom was the first to break the awkward silence. “Ah guess we should stop callin’ ya a chicken, huh?”

“He struggled quite a bit, making it harder, but he eventually fell. Isn’t there anypony who can stand up to me?”

“Were you always this violent back home?” Leon had been bothered by Scootaloo’s violent tendencies, and he wondered if he was protecting a crazy pony.

“My aunt didn’t want me to use this technique to kill anypony. It got boring pretty fast, but I was able to withstand the temptation. Not a lot of crime happens in Equestria, and most of the time I am treated like a foal when anything fun happens. I guess being here allowed me to show off my skill.”

Sweetie nodded, everything making sense for her. Apple Bloom was giving Scootaloo an odd look, but Leon failed to realize the significance of said look. She was obviously feeling merciful, for she asked Scootaloo what had been on her mind.  “What ‘bout a Cutie Mark? Bein’ this awesome at kickin’ flank has ta be yer special talent.”

Scootaloo wilted, but quickly fought to gain a semblance of composure. “I-I never got a Cutie Mark for this.” She laughed nervously, “If I had a Cutie Mark, it would have shown up.”

Apple Bloom seemed to stare into her soul, analyzing, trying to pierce her friend’s defences. She looked at her friend’s flank as well. Leon just ignored this, pretending he wasn’t witnessing two fillies staring at each other’s asses. He also was aware of Scootaloo lying to her friend. Somehow, this Cutie Mark was some sort of sign that appeared on a pony's ass, eventually.

Scootaloo indeed lacked such a mark. Just how was it possible for her to show signs of lying, but have no mark? “We should probably get a move on. Ashley won’t save herself, and we are obviously on a tight schedule.” Scootaloo didn’t want anymore attention on her, and attempted to divert it away.

They started walking down the path. Leon still didn’t know the significance of this “Cutie Mark” business, and he intended to find out. As luck would have it, Apple Bloom seemed to replace Scootaloo in the front row.

“Apple Bloom, what exactly is a Cutie Mark?” he asked.

She perked up, the crisis with her friend momentarily forgotten.  “When a pony discovers what they’re good at, a special mark appears on their flank. The mission o’ the Cutie Mark Crusaders is ta discover our special talents.”

That explained part of it. He saw Scootaloo, who was talking to Sweetie Belle, frown slightly, and look down. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle might believe that her friend was telling the truth, but something was causing Scootaloo some grief. Apple Bloom spoke of a happy thing. For some odd reason, Scootaloo treated it as just the opposite. What was she hiding anyway?

Soon, an imposing door appeared, and for awhile they just stood there. The door wasn’t hurting anything, but this moment felt significant somehow. The air seemed to thicken around them.

“Are we just going to stand here staring at the door all day, or are we going to do something?” Scootaloo took charge of the moment and ran forward. She pushed slightly on the door, hoping she would have enough strength to open it. It groaned and creaked, but eventually slid open. She grinned triumphantly as she waited for the others to follow suit.

The path continued on, but soon they arrived at what appeared to be a small village. The inhabitants had the same disheveled look as the people they had fought recently. Leon deduced (rather cleverly) that these people were dangerous.

A small tune rang out and Leon hoped that the villagers didn’t notice the jingle. Hunnigan’s voice and picture appeared. “Leon, how are you holding up?”

He sighed. She had to ask that question, didn’t she? He was a bit on edge from nearly being killed and didn’t really want to deal with that question. “Bad question, Hunnigan.”

“Sorry to hear that. Are the Crusaders okay?”

He could see them staring at Leon’s phone, confused. When their gaze landed on him, he shrugged. He honestly had no idea how Hunnigan seemed to know about them. Since she wasn’t a hostile, he figured something else must be happening.

“They are all fine. We had a few close calls, but they are in relatively decent condition. Scootaloo is a bit of a badass and ripped apart a hostile, but otherwise, she is doing fine.”

This threw Hunnigan off for a bit. “Odd, that wasn’t in the show.” Her voice was a small mumble. Leon could just barely hear it. Just what the hell was she talking about?

“Hunnigan, what is going on? Why do you keep mentioning a show? This is the first time I saw these ponies. And, besides, show characters don’t tend to show up in the real world.”

A chill passed over his spine just then. He looked around, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. It must have been his imagination.

“No time for questions. Ashley is still being held somewhere, and you need to look for her. If anything happens, then call me.” The call was then disconnected. Hunnigan had dodged his question. He felt annoyed at something being kept from him.

Leon said, “We might as well get a move on. Before we go further, I want to check something out. The village needs to be mapped out, and we need to find any suitable places to hide or avoid the Crazies.” He looked at all three of them, hoping that, this time, they would listen to them.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle nodded their compliance. Scootaloo seemed to perk up. Leon really hated that overeager look in her eyes. The depression from earlier seemed to be forgotten. “How many ponies do you suppose are in this village?” the pegasus asked. Her grin was wide, and she was practically vibrating with enthusiasm.

Sweetie Belle looked at the people who were out and about. She shivered and replied, “Judging from how many are out and about, I can imagine that ten or twelve of them are prepared for us.”

This caused both Apple Bloom and Sweetie to shiver a little. Scootaloo, upon hearing her friend’s assessment, had a look similar to someone being told they won the lottery. Her happy grin seemed to stretch across her entire face. Pinkie Pie would have been displeased knowing that someone could surpass her happy energy.

“You better not start anything! You might be able to fight your way through them, but that still leaves us to fight whoever makes it past you. I don’t have that many bullets with me, and I don’t want to run out of them while we are fighting a mob,” Leon warned the brash Pegasus.

This did nothing to extinguish Scootaloo’s apparent manic happiness. However, she didn’t make any moves to draw attention to herself.

Leon brought out his binoculars and took position behind a small tree near the entrance of the village. He zoomed in once steady and looked around. The first thing that he saw was a fire burning in the middle of several villagers. At first, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but then he focused on what was burning. He gasped. A body was burning! The skin, from what he could tell, was burnt and charred horribly. Only some of it was still recognizable.

He finally knew what had happened to one of the cops who drove him. It was the one who offered him a smoke earlier.

“Did you find anything?” Apple Bloom had snuck up behind him and asked him a question. He really didn’t want them to see the burning corpse in the fire. The fact that several of the villagers didn’t pay attention to it was downright alarming.

Before he could answer, he noticed several villagers pointing in their direction. Those closest to the entrance took out several sharp implements and began to walk slowly towards them. A few ran. These people were definitely not zombies.

“I did find something, Apple Bloom, but right now we have several really bad problems heading toward us! I neglected to find a lookout, but they must have had someone posted. They are on their way!”

Sweetie shrieked and huddled next to Apple Bloom, shivering violently. Leon readied his gun and prepared for the ongoing rush. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scootaloo crouch, readying herself as well.

Leon shot the first villager in the face, watching in grim satisfaction as the head exploded. The second bullet just stunned the next one. Some heads were more fragile than others, apparently. He saw an orange blur race toward a mob of villagers, knocking some of them down and stomping violently on nearby heads.

Scootaloo turned to Leon after kicking some of the blood off her hoof. “Get Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle into that house over there! I will take care of them!” She was pointing at a small cabin with a conveniently opened door.

Leon didn’t immediately move. “Scootaloo, there are tons of villagers. You can’t fight off every last one of them!”

Several panicked shrieks came from her friends. Scootaloo ignored him and simply kicked at another villager from behind, causing him to stumble. She grabbed his pitchfork and rammed it through the guy’s chest.

“Just take them and go! I got this!”

She didn’t look panicked at all, a gleam in her eye. She was either really confident in her abilities or really stupid. Probably both. He didn’t have a lot of time to decide on the matter, as mobs of additional villagers made their presence known.

Leon grabbed Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and took off for the cabin. Sweetie realized that Scootaloo wasn’t among the escape party and shrieked, “What about Scootaloo?!”

No answer from Leon. This was already hard enough.

Something snapped in the unicorn’s mind. She began wriggling in his grip. “We can’t just leave her!” Tears fell down her face. The wriggling continued. “Nopony gets left behind! We are the Crusaders!”

Leon’s heart broke as he listened to her sob. “She will be fine! Scootaloo is very brave and she won’t let us down.”

“She has been through so much. She can’t die here in the middle o’ nowhere!“ Apple Bloom, caught on to the seriousness of the situation, attempted to calm down her crying friend. She didn’t like Scootaloo fighting a mob of crazy ponies all on her own, but  didn’t get a say in the matter.

Once she was sure her friends were safely inside the cabin, Scootaloo turned to the horde of villagers and smirked confidently. She was in her element and knew that nopony, not even her aunt, could touch her. Her aunt was the second toughest pony outside the princesses. Constant praise over her increasing skill was enough of an ego stroke to keep her going.

Several sharp implements greeted her. Scootaloo saw several pitchforks, a knife, and one guy with a chair leg in his grip. This was going to be so much fun! “So, are you all just going to stand there and admire the gorgeous scenery, or are you guys going to do something?!”

That did it. Villagers in groups of two and three rushed her. It seemed that these guys had slightly higher brain function then when they were on their own. They knew enough to team up. This wouldn’t help anything, though.

Hearing a villager sneak up behind her, Scootaloo grinned slightly and whirled around, grabbing the unfortunate soul’s weapon. She squealed happily when she discovered it was a knife. “You got a knife for me?! You really shouldn’t have.”

The villager gave her a brief, confused look as he realized he no longer had a weapon, before he was slashed violently across his throat. Unlike the last time she committed a violent act, Scootaloo wasn’t spared blood splatter this time. His throat was torn apart and hung on a barely-working flap of skin. She bucked him in the chest so she wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore.

Scootaloo was greeted with a weak punch from one of them. She spun around, anger on her muzzle. “You just punched me! How could you have dared to do such a thing?! I will end you!” She struck the knife deep into an eye socket and slashed horizontally across. She had been aiming for the head, but she could work with this.

The villager howled with agony befitting a horrible wound. She proceeded to trample him into dust, leaving her hooves splattered with gore. She wiped them off on the dusty road.

Blood fell quickly as several more villagers were dealt with. Most of them were torn apart simply for being in Scootaloo’s personal space. She wanted to spend some personal time decorating them, but fighting for one’s life tended to give you priorities. Heads were shredded with some of the blood feeding the active fire.

Even though she was making a huge dent in the enemy forces, Scootaloo never found herself alone. Villagers seemed to come out of the woodwork, and she didn’t seem to have the chance to catch her breath. Finally, a whistle echoed throughout the village.

Villagers halted in their tracks, not bothering to attack. They soon surrounded the cabin where her friends hid. No one entered though. So, they were preventing her from entering? Why would they do that?

A chubby villager entered the blockade. He had what seemed to be a potato sack on his head. Where was this going? Scootaloo took this moment to catch her breath. She was covered in crimson, with yellow mixed in. The chubby village strolled casually through the blockade and stopped not too far away from her.

He had a strange device in his hand--a long, circular blade attached to a box. The sack stared at her coldly as his dirty fingers gripped a string and pulled. A very loud, very terrifying noise greeted her ears.

Soon, he began to run toward her, with the device revved and fully ready to taste her blood. She stared at the knife in her forehoof. This wasn’t going to work out very well.

The villager with the strange weapon slashed at the unfortunate souls in his path. Their bodies were torn apart instantly, blood spraying the ground.

This really wasn’t going to turn out well.

She couldn’t get close enough without getting in the way of that strange device. She narrowly avoided being sliced by jumping back, but this guy just slashed again, intent on striking her. She spent the next few moments dodging his wild swings. She hadn’t tossed away her knife yet, but she didn’t see how she could get a few swings in. This guy was really fast.

Her pattern consisted of some very close dodges, leaving her barely enough time to recover. He wasn’t giving her a chance to get an attack in. Scootaloo was slowing down, much as she hated to admit it. It wouldn’t take long at this rate for her to eventually get in the path of that sharp engine.

A wild swing from his weapon finally got lucky, biting into Scootaloo’s forehoof. She yelled in pain, part of her hoof shredded. She collapsed, cradling her injury. She was bleeding quite badly, and she couldn’t move very well due to the pain.

Before she could delve deeper into her melancholy defeat, a strange sort of hook flew through the air, colliding with the device in the creep’s arms, causing him to drop it. It dropped at the guy’s feet, but stayed turned on. The guy with the potato sack on his head stared at his dropped weapon at the same time Scootaloo realized that it was on the ground.

Struggling to ignore her pain, she threw herself at the device. Soon, a fight broke out for possession of the weapon. He aimed a few devastating punches at her, but Scootaloo dodged effectively. Despite not having his weapon, he was still a formidable foe and prevented her from reaching it.

She again got punched, not as quick to dodge this time. The pain of her wounds, pure exhaustion, and adrenaline was a lot for Scootaloo to handle. She didn’t give up there, however, and ran into the creep as he reached for his weapon.

He stumbled from her tackle, struggling to his feet, but realized that it was already too late for him. She glared at him, his weapon in her forehooves.

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” she screamed, slashing at him with his own weapon. She slashed and slashed, screaming from utter fear and intense rage.

The pain in her forehoof finally overtook her, and Scootaloo fell to the ground. She saw a figure in a red dress salute her as she went into a building, before exhaustion finally turned into darkness.