Chapters The sun hung low in the sky like a giant glowing mango, giving off hues of red and orange as its first rays of the day brightened Equestria. Sunrise had only begun an hour or so ago, and the day itself had barely gotten started. The ground was aflame with light as the sun cast off the clinging shadows of night, through the majority of which the large carriage on the long road had been travelling, pulled by a lone stallion.
Inside the carriage, Fluttershy slept on one side, with Rainbow Dash next to her, who was impatiently staring out the window at the rolling landscape. Across from them, all three of the young and normally energetic Crusaders slept in their seats. All five had been on the move since yesterday evening, and had slept through most of it.
The carriage rolled without incident for another hour or so, until eventually rolling to a stop. The stallion pulling it settled on the side of the road for a moment, then leaned back and called to his passengers.
"Last stop, Appleoosa!" He hollered.
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were first off the carriage, and the Crusaders followed behind them. Rainbow Dash tipped the stallion for his services, and the carriage rumbled off towards the town, billowing up a cloud of dry country dust behind it. Fluttershy watched it go with reluctance, then turned her attention back to those she had arrived with.
"He was a nice pony," she said, commenting on the driver pulling the cart. "But we really do need to hurry, the bat sanctuary is still a ways from here, and I'd like to be back in town before dark." Her mane parted just slightly, revealing the yellow striped bat nestled within it, fast asleep.
"I still don't see why we couldn't have just released the thing in Ponyville," Rainbow said.
"Because," Fluttershy said impatiently. "Yellow striped bats are rare, and he needs to be among his own kind. Besides, the bats in Ponyville are wild and untamed. They might hurt him."
"Alright," Rainbow said, then looked down at the Crusaders. "You three still want to spend the day with Braeburn, huh?" she asked, reaching for a bottle of water to defend her throat against the dry desert air.
"Sure! Ah don't get many chances t'see mah family way out here," Apple Bloom said excitedly. "It'll be a good opportunity to study gynecology!"
Rainbow Dash choked on the water she was drinking. "What?!"
"Y'know, study mah family?"
Rainbow gave a relieved sigh. "Oh, you mean genealogy," she said. Fluttershy had said nothing, nor gave any indication she was even listening. Her gaze was fixated on a butterfly.
"Yeah, why what'd ah say?" Bloom asked.
Rainbow Dash turned red for a moment then quickly got over it. "Nothing. Never mind. Just go meet up with Braeburn, and don't go wandering off, understand?" She asked.
"Don't worry about us!" Sweetie Belle promised, and although that only made Rainbow Dash want to worry all the more, the two adult pegasi started heading down a road leading off to the west.
"We're totally gonna go wandering, aren't we?" Scootaloo asked.
"Of course," Bloom said.
The three young fillies trotted down the road leading through town, mesmerized by all the new and fantastical sights that a new location had to offer. They moved all the way through the small town and emerged on the other side. A grassy hill emerged upwards from the ground, the dirt trail that wound through town going up and over it. The girls followed it, and they had barely gotten to the top of it when Scootaloo pointed with her hoof.
"Look!" she exclaimed.
What appeared to be the remnants of an old abandoned town lay at the bottom of the hill on the other side, and the dirt road wound right through it. Sweetie Belle shifted uncomfortably.
"It's so empty," the unicorn said. "It's like... a ghost town."
"That must've been the old town b'fore they outgrew it and formed Appleoosa," Apple Bloom said. "Come on, let's check it out!" She raced down the hill with Scootaloo right behind her. Sweetie Belle held back for a few moments, not liking the look of the old city at all.
"It doesn't look safe..." Sweetie Belle said, but ran before she lost track of her friends, and quickly caught up.
The town was in fairly good condition, all of its buildings still standing, but faded with time. Most of the buildings where ponies had once shopped and conversed were now desolate and boarded up, forgotten and abandoned. A fountain in the middle of the town was dry and overgrown with moss and weeds. Scootaloo looked up at a large building which said NURSERY across the front, and squeezed herself into the open doorway. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle followed.
Inside, dust covered everything. Spiders had spun webs in most of the corners and across the ceiling. Cribs and small beds were placed in neat rows, mattresses in some of the beds, others nothing but bare springs. An abandoned rocking horse and a pile of blocks sat in the corner.
"Ah don't like this," Apple Bloom said. "We should go."
"Don't be a wimp, Bloom," Scootaloo said. "There's nobody here. It's just a few buildings. If there was someone in here, we'd have seen hoofprints in the dust."
Apple Bloom looked back at the door they'd entered through, and saw only three tracks leading in. Sweetie Belle gave the horse a cautious push, and it creaked back and forth.
"Ah suppose," she said.
Outside, through all of this, a pair of glittering green eyes were watching them through the dirty, dust covered window. They were set into a dark shape, which watched them for only a moment, then quickly disappeared.
While the Cutie Mark Crusaders were off exploring the forgotten town of ages past, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were dealing with problems of their own. They had travelled countless miles to deliver Fluttershy's yellow striped bat to the Bat Sanctuary, and now some uppity-know-it-all staff pony wouldn't even let them through. It wasn't as if he was being necessarily rude about their predicament, he was being as patient as he could, given the situation. But his answer was still not the one that either of the pegasi wanted to hear.
"What do you mean you can't let us in?" Rainbow Dash asked incredulously.
"Ah mean," the guard drawled, "that y'all got there an outside bat, and ah don't know where it came from. Don't got no paperwork, could have any number of diseases. Ah can't jes' let an outside bat in with the inside bats, it ain't procedure. What if it got some virus that spreads, and it wipes out the whole population?"
Fluttershy gasped with horror. "Oh, we can't have that... well, we tried, maybe we'd best just turn around and-"
"Not so fast!" Rainbow interrupted. "Our bat is good, you have our word on that!"
"Oh, your word!" The guard exclaimed. "Well that changes everything, don't it? As long as ah have yer word, ah'll just break procedure and let y'all in anyway."
Fluttershy beamed. "I knew you'd understand, thank you!" She said.
Rainbow facehooved. "He's not letting us in, Fluttershy. He's being sarcastic. You're gonna have to do that thing to him."
The guard was instantly on alert. "Thing? What thing? Ah think y'all had better leave."
Fluttershy was equally confused. "What thing, Rainbow?"
"You know, that... thing you do?" Rainbow Dash widened her eyes to comical proportions.
Still lost, the yellow pegasus now just looked concerned. "Do you have something in your eyes, Dashie? Do you need to rinse it out? I could get you some cold water... if that's alright..."
"No! The stare! Use the stare!"
Fluttershy bit her lip. "But I don't like to use the stare, and it only works on animals, not on other ponies!"
The guard outside the sanctuary was not relieved by any of this, and gestured back the way they'd came. "Ah really think you two oughta leave now," he said.
Rainbow Dash frowned, and gradually slid a hoof in front of his face. "You are going to let us in," she said slowly.
"Git!" The guard shouted, with such sudden force that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy took off running in the direction they'd come from. Rainbow Dash looked at Fluttershy.
"Well that didn't work," she said.
Fluttershy looked at Rainbow Dash. "At least you tried, Dashie," she said gently. "Although what you were trying to do I have no idea. But it was a good try."
With neither of them looking where they were going, they proceed to run down some poor pony who had been walking towards them. The three bodies tumbled head over hooves, the yellow striped bat becoming frightened and zipping into the air where it hovered until things settled down.
"Why don't you watch where you're going?" The newcomer scolded.
"We're sorry!" Fluttershy squeaked. "We just... oh!"
Both of them finally got a look at the pony they'd run down, as Braeburn reached down to pick up his hat, dusting dirt off his vest.
"Well howwwwwwwdeeeeeeee and blow me down!" He hollered. "I know y'all! Yer them buffalo gals! Whatcha doin' way out in these parts?" He asked, the former attitude of annoyance gone almost instantly.
"Braeburn!" Rainbow bounced back onto her hooves. "What do you mean? Didn't the girls tell you?" She asked.
"Girls?" Braeburn asked. "What girls?"
Getting a sinking feeling, Rainbow's voice struggled to stay even. ."The Cutie Mark Crusaders? Three fillies... they were supposed to come see you immediately!" She insisted.
Braeburn took off his hat in a solemn gesture, and held it against his heart. "Well ah'm rightly sorry ma'am, but ah ain't seen no little fillies, not hide nor hoof of 'em."
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes, a dangerous red flush rising to her cheeks.
"Apple Bloom..." She hissed.
Fluttershy folded her wings against her sides, and the bat lowered itself from the air to nestle itself in her hair once more, now that all the commotion was gone. "You don't know that Apple Bloom's behind this," she said gently. "It might easily have been Sweetie Belle, or Scootaloo."
Rainbow looked offended. "Scootaloo wouldn't be involved in horsing around like this! She's got a good head on her shoulders... takes after me."
Braeburn snickered. "Hah. Horsing around."
Rainbow glared at him. "Well I don't suppose you know of any place they could have gone to?" She asked, her angered voice now tinged with an increasing level of worry.
"Well, the kids around here like to play in Oldtown, that's the name folks 'round here call the abandoned village. Was a thriving community about thirty years ago, but we outgrew it, moved onto what's now Appleoosa instead," he said calmly.
"Thanks for the history lesson," Rainbow chided. "Can you take us there? Those kids get into all sorts of shenanigans, but they're in a strange town in a remote part of Equestria, if anything happened to Scootaloo, I'd... I'd never forgive myself." Fluttershy looked at her, and Rainbow Dash quickly added "....Or Apple Belle either," she said. "Wait..."
"Sure ah can take ya, ain't far!" Braeburn said, rearing up on his back legs and kicking his fronts in the air. "Come on, gals, times a wastin'!" He galloped back down the road towards Appleloosa, the two pegasi following him without a moments hesitation.
The three adult ponies had done well to act quickly upon finding out that the fillies were not where they had promised to be, and had acted accordingly. But as things turned out, even that might not have turned out to be enough.
Back at the empty town, the Cutie Mark Crusaders filed out of the abandoned Nursery one by one, having found no further reason to be in there. Scootaloo looked back over her shoulder only once, giving a disapproving shudder.
"Don't you guys think it's weird that fillies here played with a rocking horse?" She asked. "I mean, isn't that like giving a stuffed teddy bear to an Ursa Minor?"
"Why would anypony give a teddy bear to an Ursa Minor?" Sweetie Belle countered. "Unless it's the biggest teddy bear Equestria has ever seen, an Ursa would rip it apart."
"Still, it's weird," Scootaloo said.
The three children entered another building, this one appearing to be a bank of some kind. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo ran behind the counter and immediately began checking drawers and boxes, hoping to find a bit or two that had been left behind. Apple Bloom looked at them disapprovingly, staying where she was framed underneath the frame of the entryway. The building, like so many others, was fairly sturdy still, but the expected amount of debris still littered the floor, and the insides had been taken over by rats and spiders.
"Come on, Bloom!" Scootaloo called. "Don't you wanna get rich? I bet there's loads of bits here somewhere!" Her voice was excited, although Scootaloo was fairly easy to please.
"Sure ah wanna get rich," the Apple pony said, "But not on money that don't belong tah us." Her voice was not as excited, and one not just of firm resolution, but also of disapproval. "It ain't right."
"You spend too much time around your sister," Scootaloo said, and Apple Bloom rolled her eyes, entering further into the abandoned bank to join her friends, although she did not participate in the scrounging.
"There's nothing here but dirt," Sweetie Belle pouted. "Rarity would have a conniption if she knew I was down here like this."
"Bless you," Scootaloo said.
"Of course there ain't," Apple Bloom said. "They didn't leave in a hurry or disappear overnight, they just moved to th' bigger buildings. Ah'm sure they packed everythin' up real careful like."
The bell over the door tinkled, and all three children instinctively flattened against the floor. They were still behind the counter, invisible for now, but had suddenly become very frightened.
"It's a robbery!" Apple Bloom whispered excitedly. "Just like in the old westerns!"
"It is not," Scootaloo whispered back. "There's nothing here to rob. Everything's empty. Including your brain, apparently."
"Should we go out and see who it is?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Not yet, it might be Rainbow Dash, and then we'd all be busted!" Scootaloo hissed. "Let's just peek over, real quick."
The three of them did just that, rising ever so slowly and peeking their heads cautiously over the top of the banking counter. Standing in the doorway was a very tall and lean figure, mostly obscured by the dark back robe it was wearing, tied around the waist with a gold cord. It's appendages, whatever they were, were hidden within vast, oversized sleeves, and a large hood obscured its features.
"I don't like this, I don't like this at all," Sweetie Belle whispered.
The figure turned directly to them, and in a hypnotic voice, began singing. The voice was soft and sweet, unmistakably female. It had an older quality to it, one filled with wisdom and experience that only came with time. There were no audible words to the song, only musical notes, and the most part it didn't seem to be doing much at all. Then an odd noise came from Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo and Apple Bloom turned to look at her.
Sweetie Belle's eyes and horn were glowing a bright shade of red, and the unicorn seemed frozen. The other two fillies looked at her with worry.
"Belle? Y'all right?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Get them," the stranger said, and Sweetie's horn glowed brighter.
The two other children began backing up, but were lifted up into the air as if they were made of paper. Sweetie's horn glowed brighter, an expression of pain and dismay on her face, her body not at all used to exerting such levels of magic.
"Stop..." Sweetie Belle hissed, her voice broken and afraid.
But it did not stop, and coils of rope snaked up from the floor, winding tightly around all three of the small children. Only once the three were tightly bound did Sweetie's horn and eyes stop their crimson glow, and the small unicorn broke down into tears. Some of relief, some of discomfort.
"Who are you..." Scootaloo demanded, her voice choking with effort. The ropes were tight, and dug into her limbs. "What did we do to you?"
"To me? Nothing," the stranger replied, the voice very clearly female. "But you're about the right size to work for me. It's been many, many years since I last had slaves, and I do miss being in the game." Hands tipped with sharp claws appeared from the depths of the sleeves, and pulled the hood back. Thick locks of faded orange hair tumbled down across her shoulders, once vibrant and dazzling and now streaked with gray. Large pointed ears twitched from above her head, and feline features turned their harsh green eyes on the fillies.
"I am Catrina," she said, straightening her back. "You three will work for me, and there's quite a bit to be done." She reached a hand into her robes, and pulled out a shining, silver orb, about the size of a tennis ball. Apple Bloom started to scream for help, but as Catrina's clawed traced across its surface, the orb rippled with light and all four of them vanished without a trace, silencing their screams.
Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Braeburn had emerged over the top of the hill outside the city limits, and were looking down upon the comparatively smaller abandoned town on the other side. Fluttershy's eyes widened. "Do you think... there's ghosts down there?"
"Nnnope," Braeburn said, and Dash looked at him. "Ain't nothin' down there that I can tell, hasn't been in years. It's just sort of a reminder of how far we've come. But every now and then when we're doin' expansions we'll use the wood and buildin' materials from down here, saves us time and bits," he explained.
"Even if the kids are down there, how will we find them?" Fluttershy asked. "What if they're hiding?"
"That's easy," Dash said, and pointed down to the ground. Three smaller tracks of hooves were running right into the old down, visible in the dirt and dust. "Jackpot," Dash said, and the three of them ran down the hill into town, following the tracks. The tracks weaved through a couple buildings before entering a large building marked "Nursery."
Entering into the building, the three adults followed the tracks out into what may once have been a sleeping area, or a play area, it was difficult to tell. Fluttershy rushed forward to the cribs, as if afraid that a foal would be abandoned and left behind in one of them. Braeburn and Rainbow Dash watched her with vague understanding that it was something she needed to do. Fluttershy examined all the cribs, and was pleased to find that they were all empty.
"They only moved up the hill, Fluttershy," Rainbow said. "It's not like Pompneii was exploding or anything. Nopony was gonna get left behind."
"Well I had to be sure!" She said. Fluttershy went over to the rocking horse in the corner, an nudged it with her front leg.
"Does anypony else think it's really creepy that the kids played on a rocking horse?" Rainbow asked.
Braeburn raised his hoof.
"Well, um..." Fluttershy began. "I think it's kinda cute..."
"You think bears and timberwolves are cute. I don't think you know what cute means," Rainbow said.
"Gals!" Braeburn said. "We're on a mission, which may very well be time critical. Look, the hoofprints lead outside," he noted. "They were here, but they left. We gotta keep goin'," he said. He followed the tracks outside, with the mares following him. He was used to mares following him, after all, he WAS pretty awesome, but that was another story entirely. The tracks circled around between a couple of buildings, then entered through a pair of swinging double doors.
"A bank..." Rainbow Dash noted, following Braeburn in through the swinging doors. The stallion was standing near the doors, frowning.
"What's up?" Dash asked.
"The tracks move around in back, then circle back towards the front," he observed. Fluttershy was last in through the doors, following something else. "There's more footprints outside going in," she said. "Somepony else was in here."
Braeburn's frowned deepened. "And there are no tracks leading out." Rainbow Dash looked down at the ground, and saw he was right. The tracks just... stopped.
"I don't like this," Fluttershy whispered quietly. "I don't like this at all."
"Well maybe we're getting all worked up for nothing," Rainbow Dash said, following the tracks back towards the banking counter. "I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explan-"
Braeburn and Fluttershy both looked up. Dash had frozen, a dead cold expression in her eyes. The other two adults slowly closed in on her, a feeling of dread rising in their stomachs. They'd never seen Dash look like that before. Fluttershy rounded the corner where the rainbow pegasus stood, and let out a small squeak.
Untied, a large red bow lay on the floor.