Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were walking. To the untrained eye, they seemed to be returning from a dip in the swimming pool. Of course, untrained eyes are often incorrect, however these particular untrained eyes were very correct indeed.
“Did you see my backflip off the springboard Sweetie Belle?”
“The one where you almost hit that old guy?”
“Yeah! That was awesome!” Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were happily discussing their escapades of the day, while Apple Bloom merely gazed forlornly at the ground.
“Hey, what’s wrong Apple Bloom?” Sweetie Belle inquired, with an inquisitive look on her face.
“I just... I just don’t know what we can get our cutie marks in anymore...” It was at this point that a certain pegasus filly happened to look behind them.
“AARRGH! You need to stop sneaking up on people, Featherweight.” The perpetually happy, light-as-a-feather pony grinned, and began walking next to them.
“You’re probably right. It’s going to get me in trouble one day, but until then...” Featherweight chuckled to himself. “Anyway, I’ve actually been getting kinda bored with journalism and photography and such. I sort of wish I had a different cutie mark.”
A certain small white unicorn gasped.
“Are you kidding me?! If I had a cutie mark, all my problems would be over!”
Most of us are aware that one thing cannot simply solve all your problems, unless there is only one problem to solve. Sweetie Belle had only one problem occupying her mind at the exact moment, however as most are aware, problems are inevitable, and always seem to appear at the most inconvenient moment.
“So I take it you’ve still been looking for your cutie maAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Featherweight’s sentence trailed off as the wind swept her off her feet. “Well, that was weird.” Scootaloo proclaimed, receiving a solemn nod from her two companions, before heading off in the same direction.
It is a little known fact that often, when you are feeling at your worst, people will often endeavour to cheer you up, while actually making you feel worse. Sadly, some people (and in some rare cases, ponies) can endeavour to make you feel worse quite intentionally. It was one (or more specifically, two) of these ponies who chose this exact moment to appear in front of them.
“Would you look at that? It’s the cutie mark crybabies!” A pink pony, with a rather attractive mane of purple and white stepped out of an alleyway. Her silver friend, with a cutie mark so deceptively simple that no-one was quite sure what it meant, jumped down from a rooftop, ensuring there was no possible escape for the hapless fillies.
“Did ya’ll plan this, or did ya’ll just happen to be there?” Our protagonist filly with an apple cutie mark no cutie mark at all asked, to no avail.
“We were simply returning from your apple orchard, Miss Bloom.” Diamond Tiara said menacingly. She gave the CMC a rather disconcerting smile, before strutting off to torment some other unfortunate soul.
“Ya’ll come ba-“
“What did yo-“
“Why did-“
The three fillies were unable to quite finish their sentence, before Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon turned a corner, taking the time to throw one quick glance behind them, snickering at the CMC’s open jaws.
Spike the dragon had been hard at work for most of the day his life, and today was no exception. After categorising the checklists his friend and surrogate mother had compiled (according to the checklist she had made just for this occasion), feeding Peewee, and various other chores, he and Twilight Sparkle had made their way to Applejack’s orchard, so that they could help out around there.
Applejack and Twilight Sparkle disappeared for a while that afternoon, after spending some time in the CMC’s clubhouse, consuming several bottles of Apple family cider. Spike wasn’t quite sure where they went, and so he merely helped bake apple pies with Granny Smith.
Several hours later, and Twilight Sparkle and Applejack had travelled back to the library with Big Macintosh, after ordering Spike not to return for a while, for fear of ruining Big Macintosh’s surprise party. He wandered aimlessly around the orchard for a while, occasionally roasting some apples for his own amusement, before running into the three rambunctious fillies.
“Oh... uh... hey guys!” Spike stood awkwardly, as the three fillies blocked his path. “Hey Spike. We were just heading down to the clubhouse, wanna come?”
“Err... you might not want to head down there right now. Something is uh... happening there... I was sent to...umm... tell you about it...” Spike stumbled over a couple more words, before sprinting off.
“Did ya’ll notice Spike was covering something up?” Apple Bloom asked. This was met by two negatives from her two (less observant) friends. “He seemed to stutter a lot more than usual.”
“Maybe he just had the hiccups?” Sweetie Belle offered. Her friend pondered this for a while, before shrugging the matter off. “Hey, where did Scootaloo go?”
30 minutes later, and two fillies were walking along a well-worn path, towards Applejack’s old clubhouse. Scootaloo had disappeared along the path a while ago, on her trusty scooter, that always managed to be there, even when it had fallen down a waterfall. As Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle approached the clubhouse, they heard faint sobbing.
“Scootaloo? What’s wrong?” Sweetie Belle called, always looking for an excuse to spend time with her friend. It became alarmingly apparent as she turned the corner, just what the problem was. A small orange filly was gazing up at the clubhouse, wings furiously buzzing as she tried to find another entrance.
“Our ladder... it’s... it’s gone!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed, eyebrows furrowed. “Who would do this?!” The last filly to turn the corner was the one who had built the ladder over several days, and had quite a reaction to her discovery.
“I WILL FIND YOU!” Apple Bloom’s voice echoed out across the orchard, then across Ponyville, and then to Canterlot. For a brief moment, her friends expected to see a microphone shimmer into existence on her backside, but alas, it did not.
Apple Bloom sat on a nearby log, and thought long and hard. Her friends had more difficulty concentrating than Apple Bloom, but would occasionally come up with suggestions.
“Hey Scoots! I found this notepad, we can play hangman!” Sweetie Belle shouted, about to put her master plan into action. “Give me that!” Apple Bloom snapped, cranky because of the events of the day. Nopony noticed Sweetie Belle scowling. Apple Bloom procured her pencil, used for drawing blueprints and maps, and wrote down a list of details, announcing them as she wrote.
“We know that the ladder was destroyed while we were at the pool, or while we were on our way back.” Apple Bloom looked at her companions, ensuring they understood, before continuing. “We also know that they would have had to return along our path, in order to leave the orchard, and so we must have encountered them along the way.”
Apple Bloom wrote a list of names down.
• Spike the Dragon
• Diamond Tiara
• Featherweight
• Silver Spoon
• Twilight and Applejack
Scootaloo gazed at the sheet of paper with more concentration than she had shown in a while, before whispering to Apple Bloom. The aforementioned filly let out a chuckle. “Very true Scoots. Very true.” Apple Bloom added Scootaloo’s thoughts next to each of the names.
• Spike the Dragon – seemed like he was trying to hide something, could have burnt ladder
• Diamond Tiara – isn’t particularly fond of the cutie mark crusaders
• Featherweight – light enough to get around unseen
• Silver Spoon – isn’t particularly fond of the cutie mark crusaders
• Twilight and Applejack – seemed slightly drunk
Gazing over her notes, Apple Bloom stifled a grin. The other crusaders looked at her quizzically, before Sweetie Belle spoke up. “Did you figure it out Apple Bloom?” Apple Bloom chuckled to herself. “Come on girls, we’ve got someone to talk to.”
Featherweight hung his head in shame, before looking up to the loud applause being generated by a particularly excited orange filly.
“Great job Apple Bloom! How did you know it was Featherweight?” Sweetie Belle asked, already procuring a notepad and pen from who knows where.
“Well, I looked over all the suspects we had seen, and made a list of why they could or couldn’t have done it. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were too busy climbing onto the rooftops to frighten us, so they couldn’t have really been at the orchard!” Apple Bloom finished, before making a bow.
“But... what about all the other suspects?” The aforementioned excited orange filly inquired. “What about Twilight and Applejack, or Spike? Why couldn’t they have done it?”
Apple Bloom sighed in exhaustion or frustration. It was hard to tell which. “I talked to Granny Smith earlier, and found out that the last Spike had seen of Twilight and AJ, they were down near the clubhouse! Spike didn’t want us to see them, so he was trying to stop us going down there!” Apple Bloom paused to take a breath at this point, and the other two cutie mark crusaders let out their held back breaths.
“So that’s why Spike couldn’t have done it. He didn’t want to go near mah sister and Twilight while they were drunk, so he wouldn’t have even gone near the clubhouse. Not to mention the lack of scorch marks around the remains of the ladder.”
Sweetie Belle applauded. The case was solved. It took her 4.847 seconds before she realised who Apple Bloom had forgotten. “But Apple Bloom, if Twilight and AJ were down at the clubhouse, maybe they knocked over the ladder by accident!”
“Ahhh... that’s what I thought to Sweetie, until I found Big Macintosh wandering around the orchard, looking kinda traumatised. I asked him what was wrong, and he trembled for a while, before muttering something about Carousel Boutique, and ran off. But... I did manage to find out that he was with Twilight and AJ in the library, with the rope!”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle exchanged glances with one another. This whole event seemed like the half-baked idea of a tired author, who wanted to write something before he went to bed. The last line Apple Bloom said didn’t even make sense, unless it did in which case- EWWWWW!!! Scootaloo shook her head in disgust. “Cluedo... I hate that game...”
Sweetie Belle turned to look at Featherweight, who had been edging closer and closer to the safety of the trees as they talked. “So, Featherweight, why did you break down our ladder?” She asked, cocking her head in a curious manner, while slowly walking towards him in a vaguely threatening way. Her two compatriots flanked her, which only made her appearance look all the more threatening.
“Well, you see...” Featherweight began, and gazed at a point far beyond their heads, before Scootaloo slapped her in the cheek. “This is a storyreal life, damnit! You can’t have fade-out-into-a-flashback scenes in a story real life!” Scootaloo shook her head, after a brief lapse in continuity reality.
“Alright. Well, we were talking about cutie marks and such, and you know how I mentioned that I didn’t like mine, right before I got blown away?” The trio nodded their heads in agreement. “Well, I got blown away into the orchard, just near your clubhouse!” Sweetie Belle interrupted.
“That was sure convenient... you sure you didn’t plan for that wind?” Featherweight sighed. “I’m too light to be on the weather patrol. I got blown off course during my test.” The three cutie mark crusaders shared a moment of sympathy, before resuming their earlier glares.
“Anyway, I landed over near here, and wandered around for a while, before I realised I was lost. That’s when I found your clubhouse, and, thinking back to our earlier conversation, destroyed your ladder. I was just so jealous of you all, getting to have so much fun and do so much stuff, that I wanted to stop you! I’m so SICK AND TIRED OF BUCKING PHOTOGRAPHY!” Featherweight’s nostrils flared in anger, before reverting back to their normal state.
“Wow... that was complex... even for a mystery such as this!” Scootaloo pondered, and the other fillies all nodded their heads in agreement. Sweetie Belle subtly sidled closer to her, before Apple Bloom stepped in between them. Sweetie Belle was quite furious at this point.
“So Featherweight, I think ya’ll should probably start fixing up this ladder!” Apple Bloom said excitedly. “I went ahead a drew up some blueprints for ya, so ya’ll can get started right now!” Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo walked off, after throwing some sheets of paper behind them. Featherweight sighed, before heading off to grab some wood.
Sighing sadly, Featherweight took an innocent shortcut, before being yanked off his feet, and dragged into a dark alleyway. He could just make out two figures, but who they were, it was too dark to tell. He frowned.
“Do they know?” One of the figures asked. “Do they know who knocked over their ladder?”
Featherweight recognised the voice as distinctly feminine, but was once again unable to put a finger on just who it was. “Umm... no. I told them it was uhh... me.” Featherweight lied.
“You told them?!” One of the figures held up a hoof, before the other lowered it for her.
“Well, Apple Bloom figured out that it was me, but I told them I did it out of jealousy, not money.” Featherweight backed away, before the second figure appeared behind him.
“Good... that will have to do. We’ll come and find you when we need you again Featherweight.” The first figure said, to which a defiant Featherweight responded with no.
“I am done with you people. Just leave me alone, and we’ll all forget this happened yes?” Featherweight’s nervous words seemed to stir something up in the second figure. “I think you misheard me, young Featherweight. We’ll come and find you when we need you again Featherweight.”
Featherweight lowered his head, ears pointed towards the ground. “Yes Miss.”
As Featherweight left the alleyway, a feminine voice laughed. Nopony heard it.
THE END... OR IS IT THE BEGINNING?
