Interval+03: EXTRACTION

***R.E.A.R.

---***

{----- [[[[[-Interval+03: EXTRACTION-]]]]] -----}

“David, get ‘em outta here!”

.............................................

“...Ugh...”

Scootaloo awoke with the sharp pain of wind cutting the outer muscles of her eyes. Her body was lightly being thrown up and down as time passed. The motion had been set even before she woke up.

In response to all this and more, she shut her eyes and did the only thing that came to her mind at that point.

Question the situation:

“What the hell…is going on?”

Even as exhausted as she was, she stiffened her muscles and expected combat. In her haunted mind, she was still seeing those...things that attacked her and SweetieBelle earlier in the same night she felt all over her body.

Scootaloo was cold; freezing.

“Hey, hold on!” Scootaloo was instructed-

No. She was ordered to create a tight hold on the suddenly discovered stallion she was riding upon. The wind continued to scar Scootaloo’s face at a microscopic scale; and still flinched, she wrapped her front legs around the stallion’s exposed ribs.

Whoever this guy was, he saved her life.

She didn’t know in her heart that this was her fate. “Th...ank you...”

-But she did know this stallion, though vaguely. It was the very same individual whom she had spoken to during the previous day.

Morning broke as the rising sun was seen climbing atop the far mountains that far surpassed the clouds.

This guy’s name was David, simple enough.

However, with Scootaloo’s dramatically diminished sense of recognition upon her previous beating, she could not determine the physical appearance of the brave male. The only way she knew of his identity was due to the feel of numerous gaping scars on any part of his body that she touched, something the recipient had informed her of previously.

Scootaloo was starting to catch onto unfamiliar feelings as she also began to cough profusely. She was feeling dizzy, among other things. But primarily, an overwhelming insecurity haunted her; and that was only an addition to what she was already trying to overcome.

Scootaloo noticed that, just before she was staring to drift away again, SweetieBelle was riding alongside her.

Well, in front of her, actually. Scootaoo was able to take a quick glance at her friend, however facing away from her.

SweetieBelle lay fainted on David’s neck, failing to weigh him down at the least. All four of her legs her hanging off to the side their savior. Her back looked as if that region’s coat had been scalped clean off. Her horn was barely visible as her wet mane was covered in filth, obscuring the definition that was eligible to call her a Unicorn.

Scootaloo was able to fight off her temptation to die. She was paranoid that if she were to drift off to a weak, unintentional slumber, she would never wake up.

And as she saw the divine sunlight puncture the thick clouds above her distant home, she tightly clamped Sweetie’s tail between her lips, in pure hope.

”Everything’s gonna be okay, Sweetie... Everything’s gonna be...

Alright...”

Eventually, Scootaloo drifted into that forsaken period of recovery that her body automatically began. But she wouldn’t be safe, and she knew it underneath her skin. Except... she couldn’t do a thing about it.

She was already in the darkness’s sticky little fingers.

................................................

Scootaloo was a mess...

She had been fighting off those monsters as they all swarmed her, surrounding her. Her close combat skills were clearly second to none; ripping off heads with swift slices of her hooves. Whenever a differentiated monstrosity would assault her, she would overcome it as if it was nothing.

Strangely, her virtual self was able to remember how poorly her encounter with...AppleBloom went. She could remember the outcome, miserable as it was.

She could remember the pain, she could remember the pleasure her best friend seemed to be partaking in. The poor manipulated filly couldn’t control a single thing she was doing.

She remembered everything...

Finally, after all the monsters were gone; beheaded and defeated, Scootaloo knelt on the blood-catered floor, in which the crimson shades were streaked precisely across. She collapsed on her knees because she had become weak, and suddenly too.

She didn’t understand. She was feeling plenty vigorous prior to the action she had taken, but all of a sudden, she was utterly exhausted. Even to the point of giving up her desire to be living at the time. Her body ached and her insides were crying...

She felt everything...

Then, she appeared, however unmaterialized.

“Scootaloo?”

Scootaloo comprehended the faraway voice as AppleBloom’s. It was so fluent, despite her diminishing accent. But it was also very rough, and that wasn’t usual. She had always used a clear, high octave tone in her voice.

Scootaloo?? questioned AppleBloom once again.

But the desired recipient was unable to respond. She was incapacitated with her own mental troubles.

The thing was...her head was aching all too powerful for even a strong filly like Scootaloo, physically and mentally, to bear. The pain that she was feeling was killing her, literally.

She was dying...

The simply described pain was ironically powerful. It was as if the very skin from her head was being scalped off.

Then, after some time seemed to have passed, the pain stopped, and Scootaloo was finally given a fair opportunity to recover, no matter how hard she struggled to even try.

But inevitably, she managed. She bit her outer lips and rose from the understandably transparent floor, however false.

Upon gaining height, she took another observation to the floor.

This was bad...

The floor was now covered...saturated.

It was flooded with the vital elixir. And it would; it should only decipher the message that life is beautiful upon that definition.

No, this was the exact opposite of beautiful. There’s no way hell could be beautiful.

The silence and the lack of pain concerned Scootaloo. She would have been able to assume that this was a scene straight out of a horror movie, but it just didn’t come to her. It was part of her far from quaint nightmare.

And it was became true nightmare when her somewhat clear sight of perception anguished her as it weakened. She tried to keep her line of sight even barely valid, and she succeeded to her own surprise.

And then, just before Scootaloo woke herself from all of this, a visionary closely resembling a face rushed up to her hastily diminishing sight.

………………………………………

Scootaloo reacted upon witnessing her nightmare’s end. Awaking with an instantaneous defensive stance; an uncontrollable reaction, she found herself an early departure from her status as a passenger.

And with SweetieBelle’s ridiculously layered tail between her lips, she dragged the white unicorn along with her, waking her in the frightening process.

Scootaloo cried out for her other sibling, and as such, released her tail from her lips’ hold. Sweetie went flying up above the Pegasus, ironically enough.

The two friends made contact with the sharp points of the rocky ground at lightning speed. SweetiBelle rolled across the blades along with her incredible momentum, while Scootaloo hit a soft patch of grass. Ironic again because of what she had witnessed, yet failed to comprehend in her subconscious mind.

Immediately after receiving shock from the violent impact. SweetieBelle was allowed to see her friend across an estimated five foot pool of shadow. Her peripheral vision was also available, letting her witness the rampant chaos brought upon Ponyville by...more of those things.

“SCOOTS!” she called for her, but to no avail. The two practical sisters were witnessing the beginning of the end.

They had only been carried out of the alleyway about a quarter mile by the stallion whom was not able to be seen any longer due to the thick shadows.

The town of Ponyville had pretty much already been wiped off the face of the Earth. Nothing in the establishment was left standing. Even now, flames consumed what little remains of homes and local business existed prior to this disaster.

Only a few surviving residents were seen attempting to flee the scene, but it was also to no avail. The innocent mares, fillies, and colts were killed upon their first few steps from the burning debris that were their only home.

The unforgettable monsters mauled them in small groups.

They didn’t stand a chance...

And all the while, with chaos and destruction; evaporation and disappearance, the morning sun only highlighted these events further.

The scene disappeared from their sight, which was now blinded by darkness. However, SweetieBelle saw the pool of dark but noticeable lavender shadow grow out of the corner of her eye.It gained height beyond comprehension to the two fillies.

It reached a certain height until it inevitably stopped and materialized, creating a solid body for itself. It wasn’t a surprise to Sweetie that the creature’s goal was to kill her, and she expected it to be another one of those hideous monstrosities.

“Help...”

But she saw that she was wrong...

The creature grabbed SweetieBelle by her neck; something that was impossible for another quadruped to do. She was immediately cut off from the tainted oxygen that she needed to breathe in. Strangely, four separate veins of hers were being clotted at once.

This thing threw her up in its mysterious type of appendage, cold as it was along with its actions. Its body was shrouded in darkness, as was everything else.

Scootaloo at this point. She was out of sight, perhaps existence.

“Scoo-“But even considering Scootaloo’s apparent absence, Sweetie latently forced half of her friend’s name through her throat. But she didn’t have to suffer for long...

The world suddenly came to life again when the revealed bipedal creature was struck by an orange object. It stumbled a bit, stiffly recovering its position as it kept its tightening grip on SweetieBelle. But before the thing was able to fully recover its original posture, it was struck again, but this time by a blue blurring object. Whatever followed the orange burst of brightness had toppled the creature over, in turn releasing SweetieBelle from its grasp.

She managed to fall on all four of her legs, immediately starting an investigation based on her previous observation:

She hoped to her God that the orange sphere wasn’t Scootaloo.

She could vaguely recall the sight of a little bit of purple following the object, which only caused her worries to exaggerate. She also kept the idea of caution towards the fallen oppressor, whatever it was.

“S...o2, she’s okay...” Scootaloo spoke the truth, jesting her head as well as her vision to the northeast.

Something fell from the sky just then, right on the top of the Pegasus's head. It was some kind of set of white cables.

“...See?”

Sure enough, SweetieBelle followed her leader’s orders, no matter the status. There, no more than four feet away from her, she stood.

The country filly...

“Ah ain’t...goin’ down without a...a fight!”

She climbed atop the downed attacker that namely assaulted SweetieBelle. She was carrying something on her foreleg, and Sweetie noticed this as she stopped and stood in clear view of her two sisters.

Scootaloo retrieved the polished chrome item in a hurry, then shook off the dangling piece atop her head, which she connected to the device via plug-in slot. She knew what this was, but she wasn’t used to any wires being involved.

Afterwards, she kept her sight solely on AppleBloom’s equipped gadget; something she hadn’t noticed before.

Whatever it was, it was something she had never seen before, which meant she was ultimately fascinated, considering its function unknown. And on AppleBloom’s face...

Instead of a blood curdled face, or even something similar to the sort of thing as such would be expected at this point, a confident smile manipulated her lips.

The device on her arm was basically an extension of her foreleg, assuming the user’s bipedal position. Two thick rods of steel connected to a balled joint, only to bend the aforementioned steel to curve in any direction the user wished.

At the end of the unit, four long but thin rods were outstretched to their maximum length, with an additional oblong shaped member.

Each component was individually operated as miniature versions of the primary body of the unit. They were each also individually controlled at whim by the user. This was accomplished as a result of internal wiring; feeding off of the user’s mental desires, no matter what they were.

AppleBloom must have hated this strange being. She must have sensed the mutual suspicions of this creature.

She hovered the mechanical appendage over the fallen attacker’s body. Scootaloo and SweetieBelle just watched her in awe, still amazed as well as shocked by her rapid recovery.

How did she even recover from her hellish figure in the first place?

How did she even take that form?

Blatantly, AppleBloom knew her friends had many, many questions for her. They both completely realized that she was truly back to their world when she impaled the head of the monster by just levitating the mechanical arm over it. Her face then became streaked with a thin but sloppy red correspondent to the victim’s wound.

But even still, Scootaloo couldn’t help but keep her suspicions about her, though only small fractions existed.

Everything she thought of her now was questionable. She just couldn’t decipher the kinds of things she was thinking into comprehendible reasoning.

It was like...wherever AppleBloom was, disaster would soon follow.

The claim she had in mind was only true during the past month. Every single sign she had shown during that period, as well as some vague hints during the past night...

Either AppleBloom was just innocently growing up, making innocent and coincidental mistakes.

Or was it something more...?

When SweetieBelle looked back down at the creature, she found that it was dead; there was no doubting it. Its mouth was open, and inside it, a tall, glowing blue tablet was protruding from its flesh. She assumed that the worst was over: that all of it was over.

“APPLEBLOOM!!” she cried for her attention as she seemed skate across the rough patchy field.

Scootaloo was just as happy for her return, but she couldn’t really process the maximum positive potential she was capable of. She just didn’t really know what to feel at this point in time. She threw the braided wires over her neck as an opportunity to take the first action toward her thoughts.

“Hey Se-oofff!” SweetieBelle didn’t mean tackle AppleBloom, but, well...Sweetie was always a major klutz, especially when she was excited about something.

Without hesitating, AppleBloom managed to shrug Sweetie’s deathgrip off from her neck, but she still carried extra weight in addition to her piece of equipment. She ended up dragging Sweetie along with her at her left hoof.

She walked towards Scootaloo with a similar grin from the one before. Soon, she came close to her, and Scootaloo, having completed her thoughts, opened her arms wide for her, awaiting her friend’s embrace.

“Hey Scoots.”

She walked right past her; a light brush of her filthy tail trailing her face in the wind... She ignored the sanctuary that Scootaloo would be so certain to remind her of; that AppleBloom was still in possession of.

Friends...

Scootaloo...

At that very moment, as AppleBloom slowly walked across from her (dragging SweetieBelle along with her), she felt, for the first time in her life, truly alone.

AppleBloom was always willing to accept open arms from anyone, preferably her friends. It gave Scootaloo a sense of belonging; a feeling that she was actually good at something. Something she had always wanted to be acknowledged for her whole life.

That essence, in general, was what she had been pursuing for years alongside the friend she had always held dear.

But Scootaloo couldn’t believe that she was letting her own possible fortune to get in the way of her true feelings.

As she was trying to find a way to react to AppleBloom, her own curiosity finally got to her.

But she couldn’t combat the action and words she had in mind, especially considering what her friend said before. It had been true.

Something really was after AppleBloom and it wasn’t a lie.

She had experienced its wrath firsthand, but whatever it was, it wasn’t playing around. It almost reminded her of the story of her own past, the one that she could not remember.

She was really scared to be honest, and that girl did not scare easily. However, she couldn’t seem to share that same fear with AppleBloom anymore, as depicted by her actions.

“Hey, App!” Scootaloo was quite frustrated with her due to her own disability when it came to processing, or even overthinking, her emotions.

She turned around; ultimately wishing to confront her inquires intentions. SweetieBelle must have been asleep at this point.

“You okay?” AppleBloom was seen assisting a fallen stallion. It wasn’t the same one that she remembered from before, hell no. This guy had unbelievably noticeable colors intact to his name, whatever it was.

“Scootaloo, give me those earphones, quick!” Feeling down, she obliged. AppleBloom used the attached extension on her foreleg to pinch the white wires strategically.

Scootaloo approached the colorful stallion as AppleBloom inserted each end of the cables into both of his ears. It was safe to say that he was a protagonist towards an unknown cause.

Excluding the fact that he was injured, he was in pretty good shape. He was curled up in a protective position with his forelegs over his head, and his back legs bent.

As known before, he was a stallion with a deep blue coat with only that one imperfection in his attractive colored coat.

His mane and tail, both red with fluorescent green streaks, shimmered in the approaching sunlight, and highlighted the darkness of the existent shadows upon his hair. The universal theme resembled a sawblade; with his hair curving down.

He was a Unicorn, and it looked like the tip of his horn was stained with blood. His left thigh held the image of a single quarter note, surrounded by several arcane symbols.

Soon after taking a comprehensive look at the sight, the white colt from before appeared, carrying something that Scootaloo noticed only out of the corner of her eye.

“Who are you?” He asked of AppleBloom. “What happened?!”

“Can ya give me that big thing you picked up too?”

Scootaloo held the requested device in her mane since she found it. She pulled it out of her hair and presented it to AppleBloom. She immediately grabbed it from her and inserted the other end of the white cable into the upper right side chrome machine. On its backside, an image was evident, but it was so withered away due to heavy abuse.

Upon that activity, the blue pony began to show signs of life.

“Looks like that got him...up and running!” proudly said Davy. He had not been introduced to AppleBloom yet, but apparently, the blue colt has.

He sat up, rubbed his face a bit, and spoke to her after putting the chrome tablet into his pocket.

“Hey...thanks for your help.”

“No.” She looked at his magenta tinted eyes. “Thanks for your help.”

Oh, that’s another thing about these guys.

They wore these strange garments on their legs, as the blue unicorn also proceeded to stand on them. The pieces of clothing were blue; long tube-like sections seeming like they were both cut a bit below the middle of his two ligaments. There was really nothing too complicated about them; not even the shallow insertions on each side of their waists.

The blue male also noticed the white Unicorn behind him. The target of his attention had faint scratches and cuts all over his body.

“So, it’s nice to see that you haven’t completely failed, Davy.”

Threads of fabric from the cut clothing swaying in the wind as David took the bag off of his body and presented it to Scootaloo.

“I do believe this is yours, miss.” She took it from him when he reached close. She looped the leather strap across her chest and buckled the two endlinks together. She adjusted the constriction to her liking, which meant it wasn’t going anywhere aside her company.

“Thanks.” The one word was all she was able to mutter out from her still wondering state for the moment.

Now that she could assess her sight as clear, he took a good look at her savior.

In addition to his white coat, several faint cuts were visible on all areas of his body. What’s even stranger is that they were all a rusted brown color. Aside from that only bodily flaw, he was a fairly handsome stallion. He wore a sleek brown theme for hair. His eyes were also of a mixture of brown and black, those of which were somewhat enlarged by the half-eyed bifocal glasses he wore.

On his flank there laid the image of a pencil. It was pretty basic, so she didn’t give it much thought.

“Hey, it’s the least ah could do, you know.” said AppleBloom as she began to blush in a blatant fashion. Scootaloo became distracted from her own yearning conversation when she heard her speak in a curious tone.

But ultimately, she asked the white Unicorn:

“What the hay...is going on? I feel...different.”

“That’s so weird. So do I.” David agreed with Scootaloo. Indeed, since light was brought back into everyone’s existence, the air felt quite different. Aside from the destruction of Ponyville, and everything that happened in between according to Scootaloo’s memory, she didn’t know how to describe the new sensation flowing through her mind.

She turned her attention to AppleBloom now.

Funny. She was being friendly to Scootaloo now that her ‘new friend’ was walking away. “Come on.” he called out to the group.

“I see you finally got your ass mark, Scoots...” She sounded kind of concerned, all while Scootaloo was smart enough not to fall for that joke anymore. It was a broken record at this point.

SweetieBelle finally released her hold on AppleBloom’s leg and piped up with her annoyingly loud voice, only applicable when she entered a discussion that appealed to her.

“What?? You got your Cutie Mark?” She was as excited as she could ever be. “Come on, spin around! Show me those moves that you used to use on poles!” Well, obviously.

Scootaloo gave in to the monotonous temptation and gave her thighs a look, as she always inevitably did. However this was no joke.

“It looks kind of familiar...” AppleBloom added.

“What the hell?! Why do I have...Rainbow Dash’s Cutie Mark??” It was obvious that Scootaloo was really freaked out upon witnessing it with her very own two eyes. “I’ve gotta be dreaming. About everything!”

The image on her once blank flank was that of a forgery of Rainbow Dash, her lifelong idol and role model. Being able to clear the sky in ten seconds flat was a job only she could do. Performing Sonic Rainbooms was something only she could do...

“You look like you could really use a drink.” Yup. SweetieBelle was back in their faces as usual. “Don’t’cha think so, App?”

“That sounds great, Se2. T’s like you read my mind.” What was she talking about? She couldn’t drink! And neither could Sweetie! Perhaps they were just cracking jokes, like the good friends they were.

Either way, Scootaloo didn’t care, she was always one to defy the rules and make her own, assuming she was feeling up to it.

“Hey, maybe you’re right. I do need a good drink.”

The three friends were finally united again after such a terrifying and confusing ordeal. Following the path of the two Unicorns’ path, they headed back in the direction of their home: the treehouse.

The truth was, they all felt something else, similar to what the fearless leader was experiencing. Attitudes seemed changed from what was previous, new faces were met that only seemed to worsen the issue.

Nothing was what it seemed anymore, but this was the dawn of a new day.

The sun revealed the grass on the ground, but though it was all covered in the dead greenery, it was still beautiful to see even possible life instead of death.