The Chapter In Which Secrets Are Revealed
Fluttershy paced nervously across the floor of her little cottage. Angel Bunny was sitting on her back, gently tugging at her mane in an effort to calm her down. That was about as close to stroking as the little hell-spawn got, so she appreciated the creature’s effort.
Rainbow Dash laid across Fluttershy’s couch, reading the latest Power Ponies comic she had gotten from Spike. This one had been pretty hot.
“I’m not sure I can do this…” Fluttershy muttered as she continued her pacing. “Maybe next year.”
“Maybe next year what?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”
A knock at the door interrupted the pair.
Fluttershy took a deep breath, and put on her very brave face. It was difficult to tell this was her very brave face, as it shared an uncanny similarity to her horse-apple scared face. Fluttershy lifted a hoof to open the door, then promptly put it back down again.
She repeated this process six times, the knocking on the other side of the door getting more and more insistent with each passing moment.
“OhIcan’tdothis,” Fluttershy yelped, as she dove behind the sofa Rainbow Dash was sprawled across. She gave Rainbow Dash the largest, wateriest eyes she could possibly give, and begged, “Rainbow, can you answer the door for me?”
Rainbow Dash shrugged, before tossing the comic onto the coffee table. Fluttershy gasped as it fell open on a particularly graphic page; quickly closing it and sliding it under her couch.
“Hey, Squirt,” she heard Rainbow Dash say as she opened the door. “What are you doin’ here?”
“I dunno,” Scootaloo replied. “Mother Matron said I had to come here today after school… Which is weird, because she usually has me come straight back to the orphanage to sew wallets.”
Fluttershy ducked behind the sofa as Rainbow Dash brought Scootaloo into the room; Fluttershy made sure to apologise to the family of anatidae she had disturbed in her fright.
“Oh yeah, how’s that going, by the way?” Rainbow asked.
Scootaloo looked down at her cracked hooves. “No cutie mark yet!” she laughed.
“So,” Rainbow Dash said as she fell back onto the couch. “What’s going on?”
Fluttershy looked nervously between the pair. This was going to be hard.
“Scootaloo,” she said, “I… I have something to tell you.”
Scootaloo raised her eyebrow, staring at Fluttershy expectantly as she got onto the couch next to Dash.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted you to know… well, you see…” Fluttershy looked at her hooves, nervously. “Maybe it would be better to tell you a story.”
“It’s not going to be boring, is it?” the little pegasus asked.
“N-No, it won’t be.”
“Alright then,” Scootaloo replied, her wary eyebrow still arched in suspicion.
“When I was a filly, maybe a few years older than you… I had a very special somepony—”
“Booooooooooooooring!” Scootaloo moaned, oblivious to Rainbow Dash’s squirming next to her.
“We cared for each other very much, and it was very special. But… but you see, it’s important… when you have a very special somepony… to make sure you use protection.”
Scootaloo raised her other eyebrow, lowering the previously raised one, just to shake things up, you know. Also, that’s pretty hard, cause most ponies have a dominant eyebrow they can raise individually, but the other one is hard. Scootaloo hoped that her eyebrow skills were secretly hella impressing Rainbow Dash.
A quick glance at her revealed the blue pegasus sweating a little. Obviously Rainbow Dash was mad jealous of Scootaloo’s eyebrow skills.
“You see, while we were only together for a short time… I… I had a foal.”
“Really?” both Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash asked at the same time.
Fluttershy nodded.
“Hahaha, wow…” Rainbow Dash laughed nervously. “Look at the time. I gotta go clear out some clouds. Or put clouds in the sky. Or put clouds in the sky to clear them out right away.”
Fluttershy and Scootaloo both gasped as Rainbow Dash bolted out the window and tore into the sky. The timid pegasus looked at the now-vacant spot on the couch next to Scootaloo and frowned. Sighing, she sat in the empty spot next to the little filly.
“So, what happened to the foal?” Scootaloo asked, completely oblivious to where the conversation was going.
“I had to give her up for adoption,” Fluttershy replied, hiding her face behind her mane.
“No way!” Scootaloo gasped. “That happened to me too! Do I know her?”
“You… could say that,” Fluttershy said, as she laid a gentle wing across Scootaloo’s back.
“Really, what’s her name?”
Fluttershy sighed. This was proving to be much harder than she expected, and she already had expected it to be quite hard.
I mean, really. I already told her I gave up a filly, and I have my wing across her back, and she was told to come here because I had something important to tell her.
Was I this dense when I was—
Well, if I wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have gotten knocked up.
“I never got to name her, I had to give her up before I could choose her name.”
“Seriously, wow. This is some crazy coincidence!” Scootaloo gasped. “That is like, exactly the same as what happened with me. What are the chances of that?”
Fluttershy daintily touched her forehoof to her muzzle. She wasn’t one for violence, but sometimes events call for a facehoof, even from someone like her.
“Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said, resting her head gently over the nape of the filly’s neck. “You are my daughter.”
“No-bucking-way!” Scootaloo exclaimed, her tiny wings buzzing with excitement.
“Watch your language, young filly!” Fluttershy growled.
“I can’t believe it!”
“Really?” Fluttershy asked. “You don’t notice the family resemblance?”
Scootaloo stared at the pink-maned, yellow pegasus incredulously.
“I mean, I’ve never been a strong flyer…” Fluttershy said. “And you’ve always been bucking-terrible.”
“Oh, of course! I come from bad genetic stock!” Scootaloo looked back at her wings. “Well, that’s one mystery solved. But… but who was my father?”
Fluttershy glowered as she looked at the broken window.
“Rainbow Dash.”
“NO MOTHER-BUCKING (sorry about that, mom) WAY, YOU GOT TO BE BUCKING KIDDING ME RAINBOW MOTHER-BUCKING DASH IS MY MOM!” Scootaloo squealed with delight.
“Your dad,” Fluttershy corrected. “Rainbow Dash is your dad.”
“Huh?”
“Well, I gave birth to you, so I’m your mom,” Fluttershy explained with a wave of her hoof. “So that means Rainbow Dash is your dad.”
“Wait, that doesn’t… how… Mother Matron says two mares can’t do that… that there has to be at least some meat in the sandwich.”
Fluttershy sighed. Had she known that the Orphanage would fill her daughter’s mind with such prejudiced thoughts… well, no, she still would have given the filly up. But that was besides the point.
“Haven’t you been given… the talk?” she asked.
“Mother Matron gave me some graphic novels… but I didn’t get it,” Scootaloo replied.
Fluttershy gulped nervously. Well, she had to be a mom some time, she’d been getting away with it scot-free for the past ten years.
“You see, Scootaloo… when two mares, or a mare and a stallion, or a stallion and a stallion—” Fluttershy paused, feeling she was being very exclusive with her explanation. So she tried again.
“You see, Scootaloo, when more than one pony loves another, and they’ve been special someponies for some time… and they are super sure they want to do it…” She looked down at the filly, eyes filled with worry. “And that is very important, that you are super certain you want to do it and you understand the responsibilities…”
Scootaloo stared at Fluttershy, one eyebrow raised, then lowered, then raised again, then lowered, and then switched to the other eyebrow so she didn’t get a brow-cramp.
“Well, when two or more ponies love one another… they… well, they buy a lot of spandex, and then they, well, they…” Fluttershy’s voice trailed off into silence.
“They what?” Scootaloo asked her mom, fully stoked that she had a mom to ask now.
“They fight crime.”
“Ah buck buck buck buck!” Scootaloo gasped as her left brow cramped.
“Language!” Fluttershy yelled at yelling-for-Fluttershy levels.
“You… you fight crime?” Scootaloo asked, disbelief in her voice.
“Yes,” Fluttershy replied, nodding. “Your father and I, well, we used to be quite the crime fighting duo.”
“But that… how does—”
“Well, after a particularly rigorous battle with our arch nemesis, Holly Maretrimony, I started to feel very ill. I would wake up, every morning for days after our battle, throwing up. I told Dash that I was just sick, but she soon got sick of solo night patrols.
“‘It’s no fun doing this by myself!’ she told me. ‘If you don’t wanna join me again, Shy… I just don’t think this will work out. Maybe… maybe we need to crime-fight with other ponies.’
“I didn’t know at the time why I felt so sick. And I didn’t want Dash to be unhappy… so I told her she should find her own happiness… that if she wanted to…” Fluttershy choked up. “Sorry, it’s still hard, even after all these years.”
Scootaloo passed the box of tissues to her mom, who wiped her eyes.
“I told her if she wanted to fight crime with somepony else… I told her I would be happy for her.”
“Wow,” Scootaloo said, stunned. “That’s not how I thought foals were made… like… at all!”
Fluttershy blew her nose loudly, and the little filly reached for a second tissue, accidentally knocking the box of tissues to the floor. Ducking down to get the box (and ignoring the indignant quacks of the family of anatidae she disturbed) she noticed something under the couch.
“What’s this—”
Fluttershy gasped, as Scootaloo brought up the Power Ponies comic Rainbow Dash had been reading.
“IT’S NOT MINE!” she yelped.
Scootaloo blushed as the page fell open to the centerfold, where the Masked Matter-horn was blasting the Mane-iac, while Fillysecond ran around her. Fluttershy closed the comic as quickly as she could.
“You… you can read things like that when you’re older.”
Scootaloo nodded, looking at her hooves and willing her blush to go away.
“So… so adults really do that?” the filly asked.
“They do.”
“So, like… Mr. and Mrs. Cake, they—”
“They… they’re part of the Ponyville Justice League… there’s a lot of members.” Fluttershy nodded, a blush growing across her face. “Not that there is anything wrong with that!”
“So then, Miss Cheerilee and Big—”
“Happy Meal and The Lunchroom-adore.”
Scootaloo stared at Fluttershy, her mouth wide open.
“Wow. Just… wow.”
~
A rainbow contrail streamed behind her, and the concentric circle of her rainboom faded in the distance far behind her.
I’m not ready to be a dad!
Rainbow Dash stared down as she whizzed past Appleoosa.
I’m *so** not ready to be a dad!*
~
“Twilight!” Spike groaned as he bashed on the door to the castle water closet. “You’ve been in there forever!”
The door opened, and a green-faced Twilight staggered out of the toilet.
“S-Spike…”
“Ewww, Twilight— you don’t look so good.”
“Sorry, don’t feel too well,” she replied as the drake ran past and slammed the door closed. She layed down on the cool, cool crystal floor. “Could you do me a favor, when you’re done?”
“Can it wait, Twilight? I’m kind of in the middle of reading something here.”
“Just… just get the girls to come over tonight. I’ve… I’ve got something to tell them.”
