Scootaloo Plays With A Roaring Death Machine
Three sharp knocks rang out through the tiny house, and Scootaloo let the tiny fabric dolls drop from her tiny hooves. Her ears were perked, facing forward as she stared out through her bedroom door and into the hallway. Not even a second after the telltale knocks came a calling voice.
"Special delivery!"
Scootaloo shot out of the room, down the aforementioned hallway, and toward the front door. Her hooves dug into the multicolored rug on the living room floor as she attempted to stop, sending her sliding into the coffee table and knocking a bowl of caramel candies all over the floor. She recovered quickly, brushing the candies from her mane with a hoof as she reached the door.
"Is anypony in there?" asked the voice from outside. Three more knocks resounded through the room as Scootaloo leapt up, her wings buzzing in a weak attempt to gain enough height to reach the doorknob. Her wings gave out after barely more than a second, but granted her the boost she needed to wrench the door open. She fell back to the wooden floor, door swinging open beside her.
A blonde-maned pegasus stared down at her, a smile forming on her lips. "Oh, there you are," she said. "I have a package for Scootaloo here."
"That's me!" Scoots hopped back onto her hooves, wings flapping excitedly. "Where is it?"
"Ah ah ah," the blonde pegasus chided, "you need to sign for it, first." She pulled a little notepad from under one wing, holding it in front of Scootaloo. The little orange pegasus looked at the pad for half a second, shrugged, and planted her hoof on it.
"There we go. Package is on the lawn," the blonde pegasus chirped, tucking the pad back under her wing. She stepped sideways and spread her wings, taking off toward the sky.
Scootaloo's eyes widened, her little hooves carrying her toward her package. The sunlight sparkled against the smooth, red plastic of the machine and the exposed steel frame. A soft breeze fluttered the thin strips of rubber guarding the mouth of the mechanical beast. Its long, black neck stretched out from one side, reminding Scoots of some manner of sea monster. It was the most glorious package the little pegasus had ever received, and she squealed with joy at the mere sight of the commercial-grade woodchipper that was now hers.
She bounded over to the machine, tearing the decorative red bow from its chute and tossing it aside without care. Her hooves wandered over it slowly, coming to rest against the circular motor mounted on the side opposite the neck. She flicked the little aluminum switch to the "ON" position, but nothing came of it. Her tiny birdbrain reeled in confusion for all of two seconds before she noticed the black-handled ripcord sitting beside the switch. Wasting no time, she gripped it in her teeth and yanked.
The mighty woodchipper roared to life, shuddering like a rabid weasel after sucking down seven cups of coffee in as many seconds. Scootaloo jumped back, half to get a better view and half due to fear of being sucked in by the rampaging monster, immobile as it was. There it sat, grumbling away as the blazing blades buzzed within, ready to bust birch branches to bits. There was but one problem: Scootaloo didn't have anything she needed to mulchify.
She brought a hoof to her chin, struggling to think through the raging fracas that were the woodchipper's breaths. She never did yard work and had no trees, so what could she use such a machine for? It wouldn't have been her first choice of prizes, of course, but the sweepstakes in the local paper hadn't offered anything other than a new woodchipper. Being poor, she jumped at the chance for a new anything, but still, what was she going to do with a woodchipper?
Chip things, of course.
Scootaloo turned to run back into her house, emerging a few moments later with a foreleg-full of stuff. She only made it a few feet across the yard before her hooves tangled beneath her and sent her little body flying over the grass toward the woodchipper. Her forelegs spread wide, trinkets scattering across the ground.
She raised her head from the dirt, bringing her narrowed eyes back toward the object that had tripped her. It had been the old lawn gnome that her dad insisted on keeping in the front yard, despite how irrefutably ugly the little thing was. A family heirloom, he'd said it was. Said he'd gotten it from his grandmother mere moments before the griffons had hauled her away to the camps for questioning, from which she'd never returned. The small-but-tasteful funeral had to be done with an empty casket. Ever since, the gnome had rested outside their front door.
Scoots spat on the gnome and hurled it into the woodchipper. Scraps of ceramic spewed out of spout, spraying all over the lawn with a hideous grinding sound. Scootaloo smirked at her victory over the nefarious garden decoration, satisfied in knowing that she would never trip over it again.
She looked to the miscellaneous junk on the grass. She plucked up the first of her chosen victims: a hunk of driftwood that her mother had once brought back from her trip to Horseshoe Bay. Supposedly, she'd hung out with a mermare while going for a swim in the bay, but she didn't have time to bring back a souvenir for her only daughter. Scoots shoved the chunk of wood into the chipper, giggling with amusement as the device chewed up and spat out the very material it was designed to destroy.
Scoots held up the next item: a little blue and golden pegasus. The plastic Spitfire doll had once been Scootaloo's favorite toy, back when she would have called herself a Wonderbolts fanatic. Then Rainbow had told her the story of what big, stupid jerkheads they were, and how they'd thrown one of their own members under the bus. Of course, they'd done it so they could have Rainbow Dash on their team, but the cerulean pegasus didn't seem pleased at such disloyalty, so Scootaloo wasn't either.
She tossed the doll into the red chute, but paused when she didn't see gold and blue shreds splattering out onto the grass. Raising one eyebrow, she peered down into the chute. "Dang it," she muttered, seeing that the lightweight figure hadn't managed to make it through the rubber guard that protected ponies from pulverizing their precious limbs and processing them into pulp, as well as stopped sharp shards of shrapnel from shredding the user's face. Grumbling quietly (not that anypony could have heard it over the machine), Scootaloo reached down into the chute, prodding the Spitfire doll and trying to coax it through the rubber teeth. She hopped up, bringing both hooves down into the chute for more control.
Her hind hooves slid out from under her as she struggled. A moment later, her back hit the grass with a grunt. Plastic chips poured out onto the grass, and Scootaloo grinned as she got back up. Her eyes moved back to the knick-knacks she'd brought, of which there was but one left. She reached down, scooping up what was to be the woodchipper's final victim: a small, pony-shaped effigy made of cheap fabric. The stitching on the pink cloth was poor, the white and purple mane was made of stained mop strings, and one of the thin legs had fallen off some time ago.
Scootaloo scowled at the doll that totally didn't look anything at all like one of her classmates, and sent it tumbling down the chute. To her annoyance, however, this latest sacrifice to the God of Wood Chipping also refused to go quietly and get chipped like its fellow volunteers.
"Aw, come on," Scootaloo whined, hopping back up to the chute and hooking her hooves over the edge. There was the hoof-crafted toy, resting calmly against the rubber guard and staring back at her with its button eyes. She could swear that the tiny doll was even smirking at her. "Why, you little..."
She shoved her hooves down the chute, poking the doll to push it past the planks. "C'mon, stupid, get in there." Alas, it wouldn't listen to her commands, half because it wasn't alive, and half because all it did was squish against her hooves when she pushed on it. She growled, ears flat against her head as she leaned into the machine, hind hooves leaving the grass.
One forehoof braced against the wall of the chute as the other flapped and punched at the stubborn doll. "Come, on! Get, in, the—whoa!" Her cry of surprise was lost to the deafening racket of the woodchipper's engine as her bracing hoof slipped against the chute's smooth wall. The filly fell forward, her face hitting the flat floor of the chute and sliding down it.
Her hind hooves caught the edge of the chute just as her foreleg thrust the doll through the rubbery gateway and out of sight. She felt the machine shudder around her body as it sucked in the doll, the chipper's voice pitching up to a whine for but a second before falling back to its default growl.
Scootaloo narrowed her eyes and smirked in satisfaction, pleased that the doll had at last been destroyed. Her wings flapped like a hummingbird's, and she quickly freed herself from the woodchipper. That was surely enough chipping for the time being. She could always find more things to chip later. A flick of her hoof switched the machine off, silencing the beast for the day. She trotted back to her bedroom and waited for the horrible ringing in her ears to stop.
Author's Note
Written while drunk. Edited while sober.
