Blade

It was four days until ‘Winter Wrap Up Day’. According to the Equestrian calendar, it was February the ninth, on a Monday. It was on this day that a large number of things happened; important things, all of which happened relatively around the same time as each other.

The first thing of significance happened early in the day, right before the afternoon. The school bell rang and all of the children rushed outside to have recess. It would be stupid to assume that Scootaloo wasn’t alone during this time. She was hiding in the furthest corner of the playground.

Scootaloo was shivering. She no longer had a scarf. One of the kids had pulled it right off of her neck. She paid hardly any mind to it, though. Her soul had been grinded to pieces.

As she sat there, she looked up at the sky. It was grey, like it always seemed to be. A question rattled around in her head. It was easy; one that everyone has to ask at some point in their life.

She wondered why she was alive.

Now that question is always hard to answer. Nobody just knows why they’re alive, it takes a lot of thinking and soul-searching to find out what one’s purpose is. But Scootaloo sat there and thought and thought, but nothing came. There was no soul to search; it had been crushed into oblivion.

There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to look back at now too. The sky was without definition and detail. There was nothing but an enormous blanket of clouds covering the sky and blocking the beautiful sun. Scootaloo felt like the clouds.

But when she looked at how they flew over the world and thought about all the things they saw, she was jealous. She flexed her wings subtly, testing to see if they worked at all, even though she knew they didn't.

It hurt her to remember she could never fly. Maybe it was god’s little inside joke; the one that only he and the rest of the world understood. Her entire life was just a farce for him to sit back and laugh at; a classic slap-stick comedy starring worthless little Scootaloo.

God worked in mysterious ways, she was always told. His sense of humor was certainly mysterious.

Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she had done something stupid or worthless that made him hate her and she didn’t even know.

In the distance, she saw a lone pegasus fly through the clouds.

It was like the world was taunting her. Nothing could be worse than that. The world was so much bigger than her and she knew there was no fighting the world.

        The pegasus split some of the clouds down the middle while cruising along cheerfully. A feeling flashed through the small filly. It was yearning. For what, it was blurry, but she was almost certain that it was being in her mother’s hooves as she soared though the night sky over the city of lights.

Yes. That was it. The memory flooded back.

It was so vivid. The lights glowed like heaven from below as the clouds tickled her nose. Her mother was humming something that angels sing, no doubt. Her father was nearby too. It was such a simple moment. But that’s all the filly could have wanted in all her life. Even being a mile high, she had remembered feeling safe. It was something she wanted to remember all day, but the feeling faded without permission, and it went un-replaced, making the child feel emptiness indescribable to those who have never suffered such pain as her.

Nothing left to do, she started to weep, of course. Though it was really all she ever did, she didn’t resist. There was no reason to. She wept openly in the far corner of the playground, not noticing the shadow approaching her.

“Waaaaahahaahaaaaaaa!!!!” A harsh voice mocked.

Scootaloo didn’t bother to turn around. It was what the figure wanted.

Diamond Tiara was holding back laughs, like something very funny was going on.

“Crying again?” She taunted, pretending to be surprised.

Scootaloo didn’t bother with a ‘go away’. She had learned by then that nobody listened to that.

“Thinking about, your daddy?”

Scootaloo didn’t answer.

Diamond Tiara quickly grew impatient. She would have to try harder.

“Cripple says what?” She mumbled fast.

Scootaloo had stopped listening entirely. There was no point in that either.

The pink filly grunted, now fairly frustrated.

“Hey!” She shouted. “I’m talking to you, loser! Cripple! Freak!”

Nothing.

She was doing it again. That fucking freak was ignoring her.

Scootaloo should have expected it, but she didn’t. A rock whizzed through the air and struck the back of her skull, making her jar and fall flat on her nose, breaking it.

It took her several seconds to come back. She felt a steady and constant flow from her nose, also feeling a pool forming around her mouth. She lifted her head and saw that the rock had some blood on it as well. After that, she noticed the heavy drops of crimson falling from her face and into the small puddle that had been made in the seconds she had been on the ground. The last two things that bought her back to reality from surprise’s abyss were the least pleasant. Scootaloo’s nervous system finally came to and jolted what felt like a javelin of pain into the back of her head, forcing her to scream. The other thing she noticed, was Diamond Tiara storming toward her.

Her face was distorted. It was mangled into an expression of pure hatred and fury. Scootaloo was able to absorb it quite a bit more than she was supposed to in the swift moments before Diamond Tiara’s hoof collided with her stomach.

Scootaloo lurched over. Diamond Tiara struck her back, making her fall back to the ground. Scootaloo landed in her blood, making it splash just ever so lightly and stain her coat.

No time was in between then. Diamond Tiara kicked Scootaloo in the chin, sending her tumbling under the fence that served as the boarder of the school grounds. Some of Scootaloo’s teeth chipped, while a few came loose and either rumbled in her mouth or flew out. She could hardly tell what was happening. There was no time to figure it out.

Scootaloo’s classmate ducked under the fence and made her way toward the cripple. When she reached her, she hung over her.

Thought she would never have done it any other time, she snorted strongly and then cleared her throat loudly. Diamond Tiara smirked just enough for Scootaloo to look up and see, then spat on her.

The ball of phlegm and saliva landed on her wing and seeped through some of the feathers, embedding itself.

“Having fun, Freak?” She asked.

If it was on any other face Scootaloo would have thought Diamond Tiara’s expression was one of sternness, but she could see more than that. It was a more concentrated actualization of all the hated for her condensed into a much calmer and diminutive expression.

Diamond Tiara stood on her hind legs.

“No…” Scootaloo moaned weakly.

*CLOK*

Scootaloo tumbled further down the hill away from the school. Her ribs were in pain now. Diamond Tiara calmly made her way up to her victim again. Scootaloo shielded her face.

“Are you going to do that again?”

“Wh-…what?” The bleeding and battered pegasus asked.

*CLAK*

Scootaloo wailed in misery as she tumbled even further away. Stopping, she almost vomited. She tried to move, but it hurt far too much. A simple and child-like dread rushed through her as she could do nothing but watch Diamond Tiara approach again.

“Are you going to ignore me anymore?” She playfully asked.

Scootaloo stuttered. She couldn’t understand.

*KLAUGHK*

*tumble*

“ARE YOU!?!” She roared.

“NO!” Scootaloo instinctively howled back.

Diamond Tiara kicked her one more time, firmly. Scootaloo choked for a moment, fixing it by hacking up a good amount of blood.

“Good.” Diamond Tiara finished. “I like it when things are good.”

Diamond Tiara turned around and started making her way back toward the school house, leaving the mess she made behind, squirming and wrecked. But she stopped for a moment. She thought about something. She thought of saying something not unlike something Mrs. Powell would have said. Great minds think alike, of course.

Some hold onto consciousness by a stump after taking such a brutality. Scootaloo was hanging by a string. A primal terror gleamed when she saw Diamond Tiara turn around and start coming back.

Scootaloo braced herself as much as possible, but wasn’t met with any further physical pain. Instead, Diamond Tiara smiled, genuinely. She bent over so that Scootaloo’s ear was right by her mouth.

“My dad owned the coal mine your daddy died in.” She told Scootaloo. “Your daddy died because my dad spent your dad’s salary on my birthday presents instead of paying him. Your dad wouldn’t have worked overtime that day if mine hadn’t bought me my tiara.”

This was topped off with a giggle at the end.

Diamond Tiara turned around again and left for the playground.

There was no way it was a coincidence. There was no luck involved. That was a direct intervention from god. Her father was dead because of Diamond Tiara and her greedy father.

Scootaloo’s mind shattered and became enlightened. She understood everything.

There was no reason for her to live.

No reason at all.

This sudden knowledge made her unexplainably strong, and she stood up from where she had been. Without reason, there are no laws. Scootaloo looked at Diamond Tiara and hated her with her entire existence, more than anyone could ever hate anything.

Scootaloo snapped.

And with that, she sprinted at Diamond Tiara, unrelenting in all ways.

Diamond Tiara heard the fall of hoofsteps. She turned around, but only caught a quick glimpse of Scootaloo’s face. Of course, she wouldn’t have known that. Nothing had ever looked so furious, so livid. It was the face of a hundred demons, all inside the crippled little freak that dared to ignore Diamond Tiara. She couldn’t even open her mouth to scream before Scootaloo’s hoof crashed into her face like a train swiping a car on the tracks.

She hit the ground so hard that it gave her a concussion. Her experience was much like Scootaloo’s. It took her several seconds to actualize the situation and get back into touch with all of the world and even herself. It all came to her at once. The pain, the horror. She almost screamed at the top of her lungs, but froze when she saw Scootaloo.

Her pupils were as small as pinholes. Blood still gushed from her. Her teeth were jagged and clenched. She was standing on her hind legs and what she was holding up was a rock twice the size of the one Diamond Tiara had used.

It dawned on the small earth pony what was about to happen. She gasped in unspeakable dismay.

“No.” She begged. “NO! NO!!!”

Scootaloo brought the rock down on her classmate.

And then she did it again.

And again…

And again…

Roughly an hour later, Mizmahl looked at the town’s sign.

“Ponyville, eh?” He said to himself, unimpressed. “This doesn’t quite strike me as a very well-guarded place.”

He grinned.

“Oh yea.” He said confidently. “She went here.”

Mizmahl drew his revolver and started to twirl it on his index finger as he strolled toward the town square, whistling a song he once heard on the radio.

He would find that to his luck, Dashclad was in the town square with her good friend Derpy, going to buy apples, which she had never had before. What a day it would be.