It was almost depressing how beautiful the day of Carrot Top’s funeral was. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as apparently nopony had told the Ponyville Weather Department that a cloudy sky was more appropriate for the solemn occasion and there were plenty of chirping and singing birds that Fluttershy had not been able to corral in time. Thankfully there were no butterflies which soothed The Cutie Mark Mourners and Spike, who was aware of their significance and threat via having to write the letter explaining Carrot Top’s death to Princess Celestia, immensely.

“Carrot Top was a good mare.” Mr. Waddles repeated solemnly as the funeral attendants milled about the entrance of the graveyard, Carrot Top’s coffin already in the process of being buried. “It’s always terrible when somepony is taken by… cruel circumstance.” He said trying to come up with a way to explain death by disease and rabid wolf attack.

“I just don’t know how it could have happened…” Fluttershy whispered to herself and everypony present tried to suppress their wincing at the shake of her voice. As the pony more or less in charge of animal control in and around Ponyville the presence of a rabid wolf, one that had yet to be caught even, cast a… unappreciative eye on Fluttershy. Nopony had gone as far as to blame her but suspicions how well she was performing her duties were certainly prevalent and growing.

“Aw dang.” Applebloom whispered to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo as they stood away from the adults, doing their best to act more bored than afraid for their own mortality. “We shouldn’t have let them say it was a wolf, we didn’t think about Fluttershy.”

“We didn’t get a say in it remember?” Scootaloo reminded, her voice now completely recovered from her encounter with the grub. “We ran to the Library, distracted Twilight, and sent the letter through Spike. By the time those Anomalous Division ponies arrived we were getting bounced around by everypony and they had a story prepared for us.”

“And what else could we have said?” Sweetie Belle reasoned, pawing at the dirt. “That grub ate its way out of her, can’t really explain that any other way.”

“Ah know that!” Applebloom angrily retorted. “But… maybe it would have been easier if they just, y’know, erased the memories of everypony who saw the body or heard about it. Just say she died of disease, save everypony else the worry about a rabid wolf on the loose. Ah heard Big Mac and Applejack talkin’ about joinin’ a huntin’ party for it last night!”

“By the time they got here half of Ponyville knew.” Sweetie Belle reminded. “Ponies were waking each other up and wandering the streets to tell everyone. And unless they can wipe everypony in town’s min-” She stopped in mid-sentence as Ditzy approached, having been one of the last to leave Carrot Top’s gravesite along with her relatives, completely ignoring the adults and heading straight for the three young fillies.

“Hello girls.” She said with a strained voice as everypony gather tried to watch unnoticed. “We haven’t gotten a chance to talk have we?” Her eyes were red and puffy from crying every day since Carrot Top’s death but they were straight and focused intently on them.

“No Miss Ditzy.” Applebloom answered for them.

“Well I wanted to say thank you for being there for Carrot Top before she… Just thank you.” She managed to say, her voice wavering a tiny bit. “And that I’m deeply sorry for asking you to be there for her when that… monster!” She spat out angrily, Fluttershy wincing slightly at the anger directed at an animal. “When that monster… murdered and ate her!” Ditzy cried before kneeling down to their level, the girls backing away a step. “When we find it, we’ll need you to identify it okay?” She whispered to them. “We have to be sure it’s the one that got her.”

“Yeah, sure thing Miss Ditzy.” Scootaloo answered with a shaky smile, her wings flapping nervously. This seemed to satisfy the mourning mare and she wandered away with a quiet thank you, the other adults suddenly very interested in their previously dropped conversations as she walked past. “…We should have burned down Carrot Top’s house.” Scootaloo whispered once Ditzy was a sufficient distance away.

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle agreed before Apple Bloom could voice her shock, “in retrospect it makes the most sense. Would have explained Carrot Top’s death, hid the evidence, and killed the grub before it could try to reproduce. There’d still be butterflies at least.” She said quietly looking up at the clear sky. “How long do you think until they start to notice?”

“They already have.” Scootaloo answered. “Rainbow Dash was showing me some tricks yesterday, trying to cheer me up I guess.” She explained with a frown, the idea of watching Rainbow Dash perform or hanging out with her no longer as grand as she remembered. “And she mentioned that Fluttershy and Twilight were talking about it. She said that they were doing some “nerd things with books and charts” and planning their own trips around the forests surrounding Ponyville.”

“Shoot.” Sweetie Belle cursed. “Do you think they’ll still go to the Grand Galloping Gala? I heard Rarity talk about it with Pinkie Pie and she’s thinking of not going because she doesn’t want to leave me alone.” She leaned in and whispered so low that her friends had a hard time hearing her. “Do you think they’ll remember me freaking out at that butterfly you vomited up? If they start making connections…” She trailed off, sending a worried glance to the gathered Elements of Harmony.

“Are you guys serious?” Apple Bloom suddenly asked glaring at the both of them. “We’re at Carrot Top’s funeral and all ya can talk about is how we should have handled things after she died? How it affects us and everypony else? How about we talk about how we should have saved her?! How about we talk about how we screwed up!” She cried and nearly drew attention to them as eyes flicked their direction, but few panicked moments later they found themselves completely ignored again.

“What do you mean?” Scootaloo asked quietly sharing a concerned glance with Sweetie Belle as they stepped forward to drop their voices lower. “I know you didn’t see her but let me tell you Apple Bloom, there was no saving Carrot Top. Her stomach was gone and the grub was eating its way up her chest.” She explained, shuddering at the memory of lifting the filth covered bedsheets to see the pale grub nestled in a crater of blood and flesh. “I don’t know how she was alive when we found her.”

“No ah mean before that!” Apple Bloom retorted. “Why didn’t we notice anything was wrong with her?” They stared at her questioningly, trying to figure out she could possibly mean. “Back at her house ya said that something didn’t feel right.” She said looking at Scootaloo. “Ya said “Don’t go, something’s not right”, how did you know?”

“It was just a guess alright? We show up and Miss Ditzy bolts out in a panic and Carrot Top doesn’t answer when we call for her? It’s not hard to get spooked by that.” Scootaloo answered but shifted her gaze away from Apple Bloom as she spoke. “We’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff lately and… I don’t know maybe I’m starting to get paranoid.”

“I know what you mean.” Sweetie Belle confided. “I mean Princess Luna listed off some much stuff I would have never thought of… you think we’ll ever meet aliens?” She asked suddenly, her curiosity getting the better of her. “We’ve already seen two anomalous objects and a monster, they can’t be far off. That or a pony with superpowers.”

“Ah’m being serious.” Apple Bloom whispered harshly. “We all noticed somethin’ weird with Bit Sav-, ah mean Juggles remember?” She started. “The night of the meteor shower we all noticed that his clothes dried when Pinkie Pie came to get us. Because we ignored that he ended up wanderin’ around for days tryin’ to entertain ponies until he nearly died!” She explained, as if they had any idea just what was going on at the time they first met Juggles. It was the clown nose that clued them in that the cup of dice wasn’t a singular oddity after all and that maybe something bigger was going on. “After we went to Twilight and The Princesses explained everything why didn’t we notice anything weird going on with Carrot Top? She had been locked up in her house for days after suddenly getting’ sick! That doesn’t happen very often!” She cried as Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo shared a look.

“Apple Bloom, when did we ever talk to Carrot Top outside of the time we broke her fence?” Sweetie Belle explained. “When we were out crusading for our Cutie Mark’s or just playing did we ever even see her around town? She ran her farm by herself and only had a few friends.” She gestured to the gathered mourners who were starting to disperse, the first leaving being neighbors and acquaintances who attended out of respect and expectance more than loss or grief. Even that made up half the crowd though.

“And I don’t know if you remember this Apple Bloom but we were kinda ordered to not try and capture or even approach any anomalies we found by the Princesses.” Scootaloo reminded. “We only disobeyed that because the grub was probably going to wander into Ponyville and turn somepony into a bunch of butterflies.”

“It also only applies to things that we can confirm to be anomalies, unless we check out every weird thing that happens in Ponyville and keep taps on everypony there’s no way we-” Sweetie Belle continued only to be cut off.

“Well why don’t we check out everythin’?!” Apple Bloom countered. “What else have we got to do?! We can’t crusade for our Cutie Marks anymore after all!” She argued furiously. “All we’ve been doin’ is avoidin’ talkin’ about this stuff and playing around like a bunch of babies!”

“Apple Bloom… we couldn’t have saved Carrot Top.” Scootaloo said softly as Apple Bloom reeled back suddenly. “You didn’t see her, there was… was nothing left of her below the ribs. I don’t know how she was alive when we found her.” Scootaloo shuddered, being the only one of them to see the grub actually eat its host before it escaped the house. “I’m sorry but, there was nothing we could have done. But it’s dead now, it and all of its babies that it made me vomit up that would have done to who knows how many other ponies.”

“It’s dead because of us… because of you mostly.” Sweetie Belle continued, stepping forward to place a comforting foreleg around Apple Bloom. “You leapt up on top of that stack of crates and dropped one right on its head without a second thought!”

“Ah… Carrot Top was my neighbor.” Apple Bloom said looking down at the ground. “Everything that was happenin’ to her was only a few hundred yards at least, how’d… how’d ah not know?” She sniffed and looked up at her friends. “How are we supposed to find these anomalies before they hurt anypony if we can’t tell what they are at first glance or… ah don’t know… feel them magically?” She glanced over at the cemetery as they’re sisters and friends parted ways, Applejack and Rarity wandering over at last. “How many more ponies are going to end up like Carrot Top because we weren’t lookin’ in the right places? Or at all?”

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were unable to answer her before they were all collected by their families, quickly putting on the bored if still content smiles that they’d all learned to wear around family to stop them from asking if anything was wrong. They were wearing it a lot lately and would continue to until they had no more family left to pretend in front of.

Luna touched down on the moon with a careful gentleness, the dirt barely disturbed and hardly any dust kicked up when her hooves struck the surface. Her wings twitching she started walking to a nearby large crater, using her extensive knowledge of the moon’s surface to know where she was. While it would have been faster to fly to her destination or just land right on top of it she knew that the moon wasn’t as lifeless as everybody on Earth thought, she had even bothered to fill in dear Celestia on what was up here deciding to stick with the SCP Foundation facility to help her argument about those three little ponies.

Still though, Luna wasn’t as sharp or quick as Nightmare Moon so the horizons of nearby craters shifted and sunk into the surface as she scaled the ridge of the crater. Reaching the top she gazed down into it at the pathetic remains of the SCP Foundation Moon Facility, four broken open husks no bigger than an average home connected to a single solid center the size of a large town hall by long deflated tunnels.

Sliding down the rest of the way, apparently not caring if she kicked up a dust cloud anymore, Luna calmly made her way to the center building. Hopping into the open airlock, the stairs long ago collapsed and doors flung away, she wandered the pitch black halls expertly knowing them as well as the moon’s surface until she came to the room she needed. Flicking the light switch with some magic the emergency generators kicked on (Still running after nearly 4 millennium! SCP Foundation built nothing to fail if they can help it.) and she stepped over the slowly collapsing skeleton of a griffon, a strange metal device in its claw and a small perfectly round hole in its skull.

Her magic working rhythmically she pressed a variety of buttons on the machinery on the desk in front of her, the ancient computer slowly booting up to display the SCP Foundation symbol on the monitor which made her grit her teeth.

“Paasss… Passs… Password… word… Plea… Please.” A tinny voice asked from the speakers and Luna leaned forward and spoke slowly in return.

“78. October Day. Made in the United Cities of Unicorns.” The computer whirled and whined quietly before it made a confirmation ding and a profile popped up of a smiling young male griffon in a scientist lab coat and glass named Gregory Philips, the SCP Foundation symbol on the right breast pocket. “Are you going to come out or keep watching me?” Luna asked as the computer loaded Greg’s settings and files. “I can feel your eyes on my flank.” In my defense it is a rather pleasing sight, even after all these years.

Hi.

How you doin’?

Name’s Edge.

It’s short for Signal from the Edge of Space.

I like it. Better than Signal or SCP – 1887.

I see you.

“I was just wondering about the change in style.” I say as I separate from the shadows outside the room, careful to duck and maneuver my large horns into the room carefully. “I like the gentler color scheme but the height difference made the sex awkward before,” I say as I walk over, my cloven feet thundering as I step to place a seven fingered hand (Yes I got hands, no claws for me.) on her rump, “but we can manage.”

“Hmmph,” Luna snorts and bucks my hand off softly, “you’re just lucky that my sister hasn’t somehow found a way to destroy radio based anomalies yet. Otherwise you’d be gone before those mouths could whisper those lies you love so much.” The circled array of mouths on my chest all grinned as one and I leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“But I never lied to you babe, I’ve never lied to anybody really. They just weren’t strong enough to handle the truth. To handle my message.” I start to massage the base of her left wing and she doesn’t stop me. “That’s why they cut me out of the radio waves, put me into this thing after they ripped its brains out and put the metal to keep me in. Do they even have radio down there again?” I ask suddenly curious, her return memories didn’t offer much variety.

“Nothing about you is remotely difficult to handle.” She retorts and I make a fake hurt noise. “But no, things are pretty much the same. Trains are back though.” The computer flashed and finished loading, presenting the desktop. Shrugging of my hands Luna carefully brought the mouse and microphone forward. “COMPUTER: Connect to Central Database.” She ordered and a window popped up, showing a satellite floating above Earth and beaming blue arcs down to it, the continents on the image much different than what was outside.

“What are you hoping to find?” I ask as I step back, content to now stand aside and see if the seed I planted would bear fruit. “So scared of three little fillies?” Her head whips around to glare at me so quickly I’m afraid it’ll fly off.

“I wouldn’t expect a monster to understand what it was like to be kept contained unjustly, to see all your efforts to make a primitive world better nearly dashed by an ignorant, arrogant, and mad force of terrible power, to be told that you’re the same as everything else they’d ever found and needed to be studied and poked and prodded the rest of your life!” She snarled getting up to my face and I smiled. She only got this angry when she was going hunting those giant moon beetlemen or when we were about to have sex.

I hope it was the sex.

“I showed up around the same time as you and Celestia babe.” I respond. “I saw a big ol’ blue ball emitting so many radio messages that was getting’ snowier by the month and I thought “Shit! There’s a party happenin’ down there I got to get in on!” and started hopping from radio transmitter to transmitter. My message helped a lot of struggling communities find their way during such tough times.” I smiled at the memory.

“They butchered their children and ate the souls of desperate travelers!” Luna roared, her horn lighting up threateningly.

“Like I said, only you could handle my words.” I chuckled but soon my smile disappeared.

Goodbyes are so hard.

I just met you and you’re already being pulled away.

Well I’ll cut to the chase and give you something to remember.

I hope you like it; I’m sacrificing my admittedly slim chances of getting laid for you.

“Anyway,” I say as I stand up tall my horns nearly scrapping the roof, “but I got to go Luna. Met some new friends who hooked me up,” her anger vanished as her eyes went wide, “don’t worry, you’ll meet them soon.” With a wave of my hand I depart and the body collapses into a heap, its strings cut. Luna probably stands there shocked and confused or perhaps terrified of what my cryptic message means.

But I don’t know for certain.

‘Cause I’m gone baby.

And I got me some new friends who appreciate the tale I’m spinnin’.

After what had happened with Carrot Top to say that Apple Bloom was getting the easy chores would be a gross overestimation of her responsibilities on Sweet Apple Acres. Before her mornings and afternoons were filled with a few hour long tasks she now got at best one task maybe lasting ten to fifteen minutes or was so easy that she could sleep while doing it. Like right now for instance.

The sheep of Sweet Apple Acres were generally a well behaved lot, kept content with plentiful grazing and sturdy roofs over their heads like most simple people, those that existed between true intelligence like pony or griffon and animals like rabbits. So that made sheepherding rather easy unless something startled them and a panic got ahold of the lot of them, which left Apple Bloom to just relax under an apple tree and stare up at the sky while Winona lay next to her content as could be.

“You’re pretty lucky Winona, you know?” She asked the dog who perked up at her name being said. “You never have to worry about whether or not what you’re doing is what you were made to do. You just know. Ah never told Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo but ah always hoped my Cutie Mark would be in somthin’, ah don’t know, apple related. Or somethin’ that involved workin’ with my hooves like construction. Ah really liked fixin’ up the club house.” She petted Winona as she quietly admitted this next part. “Ah always tried to steer our Crusadin’ in those directions even though it was probably a waste for Sweetie or Scoots. Ah wish… ah wish… ah don’t like this Cutie Mark.” She said looking down at her flank, the bold dark circles and three inward facing arrows staring back up at her. “Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are right, it is an ugly thing. Ah’d take a mop and bucket over this.” There was a sudden choked sob as Winona whined and Apple Bloom realized it had come from her. Forcing a few tough sniffs Apple Bloom went back to watching the sheep, their white fluffy bodies undisturbed except for one of them who was trying to scale the fence and escape the pen.

Watching as the sheep struggled to scale the moderately sized fence Apple Bloom wondered just what the sheep’s problem was, if it was something like a snake then they’d all be freaking out and stampeding. A pit opening in her gut she got up and began slowly walking over to the sheep, praying that she was just being paranoid.

“Okay almost got it! Just need to hook the left hind leg around-!” The sheep muttered in a deep voice, which signified that it was a he, as he was now stuck halfway somehow.

“Can ah help you?” Apple Bloom asked and he cried out in shock, falling back into the pen.

“Ow,” he muttered as he stood up and grumbled the other sheep’s wandering away muttering about the weirdo, “oh about time!” He exclaimed when he saw her. “Listen, you’re not going to believe me but I am not a sheep.” He said as he walked over to her and smiled hopefully. “I know I look like one but I’m not!”

“Oh?” Apple Bloom asked taking a step back her fears now more or less confirmed. Where were all these things coming from? “And what are you really?”

“Oh well first I was a pony which I was ever since I was born until about two weeks ago when I became a cow for a few days,” he started with a wave of a fore hoof, “then I was a coyote for a day, a snake for a couple hours, some bug pony thing for another couple days, a pony again for a day, and finally a sheep that got accidentally shipped here yesterday.”

“Yeah, we were supposed to be getting a couple new sheep weren’t we?” Apple Bloom wondered to herself, Applejack and Big Mac had probably taken care of it without bothering her. “So, how do ya change?” She asked examining him closely.

“I just got to be left alone with a type of creature for like two minutes and then I sort of, I don’t know, shift. Doesn’t hurt or anything, just very sudden.” He explained casually. “I got to say you’re rather open to all of this, everypony else I tried talking to just told me to shut up or kicked me along.”

“Ah’ve… got experience with this stuff.” She answered truthfully taking another step away. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were probably at home and those Anomalous Division ponies were probably still in town somewhere. She could probably just find one of them and let them take care of it.

Taking care of it being murdering him of course, destruction of all anomalies being quite clearly stated by the Princesses.

That realization hit Apple Bloom like a ton of bricks and nearly knocked all the air out of her, she almost didn’t hear the sheep speak to her.

“Wow really?! That’s awesome!” He exclaimed happily a grin spreading across his face. “Is that what that Cutie Mark means? I was wondering why it looked a little odd. So how do you fix this cause I haven’t been to work in two weeks and my boss is going to be pissed.”

“Ah…,” she stammered as she imagined the sheep in the middle of a field and that pegasus mare burning him alive as she’d done with the butterflies, “ah got to… to,” she pictured him dumped somewhere in an unmarked grave, “um… go meet with my friends!” She cried as she pictured him let go and wandering into the Everfree Forest and coming out as something terrible and intelligent and wreaking havoc and pain that his smile and friendly personality could be hiding.

Dashing away and ignoring the cries of the sheep for her to come back Apple Bloom didn’t notice the shadow staring down at her from the club house. “A rather simple base of operations.” The Professor remarked to himself looking around the children’s play area through the eye slits in his iron mask. “But they are growing and will learn, hopefully soon because I won’t be able to fix their mistakes forever. Oh no no no.” He tusked opening his satchel and pulling out two objects which he then carefully placed on the table in the center of the room.

The first was a sealed letter addressed “To the New Foundation”.

The second was a green plastic cup, five dice resting inside.

“Hopefully they’ll take better care of their treasures,” The Professor continued to say to nobody, “and find some better friends than a mob of… book burners!” He angrily snarled as he slammed the eye slits of his iron mask closed before spreading his wings and jumping up, his body thinning until he slipped through a crack in the wooden ceiling.

Author's Note

Poor girls probably dealing with the first of many deaths among neighbors, friends, and relatives. And Luna's got a few skeletons in her closest, should be fun having her explain to Celestia about how Edge could be out and about.

But the Green Cup is back! I want to see how many times I can have this thing be lost and recovered by the girls.