One less

Chapter 3: "Roads"

"Eye spy with my little eye, something beginning with bush. I MEAN B! Dammit, this is boring."

Walking for the majority of the day was not fun, quite the opposite actually. She attempted to play 'Eye Spy' with herself to try and kill some time. However it was pointless if your opponent always knew what you were looking at. Especially if you get so bored that you say its entire name by mistake.

Boredom caused her to seek the floor for entertainment, which surprised her when her eyes met cobblestone. Becoming confused she picked up her head to check her surroundings. Not only had she left the forrest but crossed a small clearing, a bunch of tree stumps and walked right onto a road.

"I'm out? I'm out, I'm out. I'M OUT!" This was followed by cheering and a little dance, which only consisted of a slight shuffle to the left then right. Becoming sucked into her little parade, she failed to notice a small wooden frame, being pulled by a smaller, but older one.

"Go ta' Equestria they said, lots'a opportunities they said."

Snapping her head in the direction of the voice she spotted something she quite didn't expect, considering she expected to still be lost. Which she was, just not in the Forrest.

"Oh! Hello!" She smiled as she said this. A little more enthusiastically then she should have. Racing up to the being half her size which she identified to be a small donkey with an ash coat, she continued to talk nonsense.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see you! All this time I thought something was gonna happen, like I would starve or something would get me or I would fall and die or." The donkey had stopped listening at 'Hello.' Staring blankly at the none-stop yapping pony in front of him, he wondered if 'New opportunities' were worth the hassle.

He continues to walk and ignore her at the same time, which made him slightly smile. For a while a friend of his insisted that it was virtually impossible for jacks to multitask, said to 'always get a Jenny to do a Jacks job'. Continuing to smile proudly to himself, without thinking, nor remembering he now had company, began to chuckle.

"Yea-heh, take that Littlesun!" The silence that followed unnerved him slightly, something had stopped making noise, although he was sure there was none to begin with.

Stopping to lift his goggles his stared at the pony that had decided to tag along. She stared back. This carried along for a bit too long. Figuring it had been a long enough, she broke the silence.

Raising an eyebrow, she spoke.

"Who's Littlesun?"

"Non'a ya damn Business that's who."

The conversation would have ceases, but something caught his eye. He noticed that she was limping. More so that the patchwork bandages had stained red and crusted over.

"Wait now, wait. Little lady how in the world did you do that?" immediately releasing  his mistake, he interrupted her just as she attempted to speak".

"Actually save that for later, we gotta change that thing you call a bandage. Its all mismatched and crazy lookin, like ya' made it yourself."

Turning around to venture into his mounts of luggage and bags. She said something that made him pause.

"I did."

Prompted to say something, he opened his mouth, only to close it again. Better to say nothing may she perk up again.

Rummaging though items most people called "trash" he appeared with a surprisingly clean set of bandages. Ranging from length and size.

Approaching the pony, he attempted to remove the crunchy bandage, but as soon as he touched it she recoiled in pain.,

"Not so hard!" Hearing her wine he tried again, only to have her repeat her move. Once again, he tried for the wound but she moved out of range.

"Do you wonna do it?" Nodding her head to this, she slowly unwrapped the bandages, the deeper she got the redder the bandage became. Reaching the end she removed the bandage to display her Foreleg.

His reaction was as follows.

"Yer do know yer got glass in yer leg right?"

"yes"

"Why?" He was pretty astounded. Usually when people got injuries that concealed whatever they were damaged by they take it out so the injury could heal. This genius decided not to do that. Just leaving it protruding out.

"I fell on it, isn't that obvious?"

"Yer, but why is it still there? Still pretty clueless, he pressed on, intrigued on her logic.

"If I took it out I could bleed to death!" Now that one was obvious in her opinion, just looking at it you could tell that it must of hit something important. Now that she thought about it, it scared her that she may have permanently damages her leg.

Hearing this the small older donkey chuckled lightly, shaking his head he turned back to his cart and rummaged some more.

Becoming offended by his reaction, she got a little steamed.

"Hey! What gives! Why you laugh?" She was pretty upset, thinking about it, she wondered how this all began again, for a few moments she had forgotten why she had been in there to begin with. It all came back within a matter of moments. Gasping she began to panic.

"Oh my god, oh my god!" She tried to look in all directions, seeing if she could spot the murderous ponies come to get her.

Making small sequel noises the donkey came back with a pair of doctors tweezers.

"Ok, calm down just stay still. Gotta get that shard out." tying to calm the mare, he positioned himself in a comfortable way. Getting low he grasped the visible edge of the shard, before pulling he warned her about the pain she would likely feel.

"This will hurt, jus' sayin."

Before she could respond to this he pulled as hard as he could. Eliciting a scream from her.

"What the hell!" screaming and screeching she held her forearm where the glass was dislodged. Blood, once again seeped down her painted forearm. Never had she screamed so much, tears once again streamed from her eyes staining her vision.

This continued for a while, the donkey was beginning to become irritated, digging a hole he buried the glass shard.

Walking back over to her he produced the clean bandages and some alcohol.

"That's quite enough blabbering, turn over so I can clean it." Hesitantly she released her rouge stained forearm. Pouring alcohol down her arm she cringed, it made things very painful, she realized how irritate the donkey way becoming so she attempted she stifled her crying.

After soaking her arm he wrapped it in bandages. Tying a knot he picked up the bottle of whiskey and gulped a mouthful. He wiped his mouth and offered it to her. Staring at the bottle she shakily took the bottle and began gentle sips. Although she had calmed down a soft sob would escape her lips every now and again.

He picked himself up and slowly walked back to his cart. On his way he paused and looked back at her.

"What's yer name anyway?"

Forgetting acquaintances she removed the bottle and began too speak.

"Err.." He name? She hadn't thought of a name. Thinking on her feet she quickly thought of a name and blurted it out. She regretted it almost instantaneously

"JOHN! Yea, John..." Dammit! She was so stupid! Something as simple as a name and she had to have picked that. She couldn't remember where she had heard it but it stuck in her head for some reason.

Now it was her name.

At least for a little while, until she could hide from the killers.

The doubt on his face was instant.

"Yer names John?.." 'John' nodded furiously.

Looking blankly at the too enthusiastic smile on her face he figured she was lying, pretty obvious actually. Either way he was satisfied with it, gave her an identity.

He hooked himself back to his cart and carried on his path. Coming face to face with John again he slowed down to speak, then walked usual speed on past her.

"Names Sign, maybe we should travel together. Headed to a small town just over yonder. Probably a hospital or something there."

She watched him walk ahead of her, and walked with him after picking herself up. Sign noticed that she was slower then him, he slowed down to accommodate

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Word had gotten around of the young griffins death. The forest that he had been murdered in had been close to Ponyville so relatives had gotten enraged quickly. A mod of civilians had gathered at the town centre, after the whole 'Town full of Pinkie Pies' trouble had just been cleaned up this problem had surfaced.

The mayor had been trying to calm the residents down, many ponies, griffins and other sentient beings were barking, creating a ruckus and just being plain rude.

"Quiet! Screeching in each other's faces will get us nowhere! We need to come to a conclusion, death is not an uncommon subject, but murder is. This is painfully serious and we need to take extra precaution to what our actions may be." She said this with the intent to calm the people down, but her response was quite the opposite.

The crowd proceeded with their roaring, they wanted justice. If justice was not up to par then they would take it into their own hands.

"Smoke it out!"

"Capture it!"

Many thoughts and ideas were surfaced, but without any control an action could not be taken.

The mayor turned to her current advisor, Twilight. The mayor had asked her to accompany her in this debate for her input. The Princesses protégé's opinion meant at least something.

"This isn't going well, they just wont listen to reason. Can you do something to make them listen?"

Twilight thought about something she could do to keep the audience quiet enough.

"Sorry, but I don't have a clue."

Thinks were becoming more and more dire. The audience was just feeding of each other's rage and in turn making the whole group into a raging inferno.

Rainbow Dash looked on, just glancing at them boiled her blood, someone was dead and all the people could do was rage at each other, and she had enough of it.

Flying to ground level she landed on the stage next to the mayor and Twilight. Taking a huge breath she face the audience and roared down the microphone.

"Shu-ut. u-up!" Gasping after this out burst she was met with the appropriate reaction. Silence.

Everyone was locked on her position, with everyone's attention she could now get this whole meeting started.

"Ok, now. We need to deal with this thing that killed that griffin, first things first, what even was it?" Rainbow meant business, no more messing around. This needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Silent whispers were carried though the crowd it seemed that nobody wanted to speak up.

"Hello-ow? Were you even listening?" More whispers, until one voice picked up. A small voice that somehow gathered to meet Rainbow Dashes ears.

"She said it was too dark too see what it was, all she remember was its eyes." Talking began to emerge again, threatening to become too loud to speak over.

"Quiet! What about its eyes?" Rainbow was becoming inpatient, the longer everybody messed around the longer that thing was still out there. Who knew when the next time it would strike. There was a long pause from the crowd, until that very same voice picked up again.

"That's the thing, there were none."