Chapters Scootaloo drifted through the shadows of Cloudsdale like a ghost, never spending more than a second out of the darkness. Her long pink mane was tied up in a ponytail that fluttered in the high altitude winds as she rounded the corner of a city block, ducked low so that anypony that might glance out their windows would not see her beneath. It was a new moon, so the night was black save for the few glittering stars that blinked in the sky like so many snowflakes. She was out far past the curfew of a pony of only thirteen years, and her rumbling stomach reminded her that any unwanted attention was not something she could afford.
She came to the edge of one of the city’s massive cloud banks, a residential neighborhood she’d been lurking through. The summer air was warmer here than in the heart of the city, coming up and over the edges like lazy ocean waves. Not more than fifty feet beyond the drop was another cloud basin, its edges dotted with thin streams of rainbows flowing off into the night like multicolored ribbons. Scootaloo payed no mind to the air or the colors, only the gap.
She gave a glance back and fluttered her wings. Her face hardened at the sight of them, scrawny and misshapen. She knew she couldn’t fly half the distance before her, let alone the entire length. A weary, hungry sigh, and Scootaloo began the slow march around the edge of the neighborhood in search of a way across.
Not two miles down the road, she found it. Here, the gap shrunk to less than ten feet, and even sunk down on the other side. With a running start, she could make it with just a jump. Still keeping low, she backed up a short distance, broke into a sprint, and leapt through the air.
Scootaloo landed on three legs, her fourth slipping on the very edge of the cloud bank and into the air below. She stifled a scream as she stumbled, and her other hind leg went over. Instinctively, her wings began pumping like mad, buzzing like a motor and giving enough force for Scootaloo to pull herself back over the edge. She flopped on her back, wings burning, trying her best to gasp for breath in silence. She lay there for nearly a minute before shakily standing up and making her way around the side of a massive building labeled “Cloudsdale Weather Services.”
Around back, she found a giant ventilation grate twice her height, a few inches off the ground. Lucky for her, the screws had long since rusted, and the grate itself was bent and brown in several places, even missing entire bars. Such was the fate of any metal materials used when building a factory made of condensed water. She grabbed both ends of it and gave a yank, and with a dull crack the vent was open. She stepped inside, not even bothering to duck, and pulled the grate over the mouth of the vent behind her.
She followed the vent until she found an opening, lowering herself into an intersection of hallways. The walls were lined with white marble columns, giving the factory an almost regal feel. Scootaloo had never understood pegasus architecture, being born and raised in Ponyville. The thought of the tiny town had her thoughts on a tiny cottage, four blue-green walls, a voice calling from downstairs–
A cone of light turned the corner and Scootaloo flung herself through an open door beside her. She pressed herself up against cold metal lockers, hearing only her heartbeat and the hoofsteps of the guard outside. Dim shadows danced across the room as he passed by, until everything was dark again and she let out a quiet sigh of relief.
Breaking into empty homes was one thing, she noted, but a massive facility like this was almost out of her league.
No! Don’t think like that! What would Rainbow Dash do, give up?
Scootaloo paused, then groaned. She probably wouldn’t be stealing lightning jars for money in the first place. Her stomach growled at her, she sighed, and walked to the far end of the locker room to a purple door emblazoned with a white lightning bolt. She opened it slowly, making sure it didn’t creak, and peered inside.
No guards in here, she noticed. Another stroke of luck. Scootaloo closed the door behind her and squinted into the darkness. This was one of the newer rooms, after Cloudsdale had moved on from metal machinery so they wouldn’t need to replace them every few years. There were two giant coils for generating the lightning, each with dozens of thick multicolored wires trailing off them like tails. The ceiling was easily three stories high here, dotted with thin metal rods to catch wild arcs of electricity. On either side of the room, staircases rose to overhead catwalks that bordered the chamber, with several doors on each side. And in the corner, a pile of boxes hummed through the silence, with faint, colored light leaking through the cracks.
Scootaloo’s eyes widened and she licked her lips at the thought of her first hot meal in weeks. She padded her way across the room and opened one of the boxes.
Lightning jars. White and yellow and blue. Each one would sell for a hundred bits or more, and at that thought she had her first smile in weeks. Reaching inside, Scootaloo lifted out the first jar, turned around, and saw the locker room door open across the room.
“Hey! What are you doing in here?”
Before the guard could even move, Scootaloo grabbed the jar and was bounding towards the stairs as the his light flared behind her. She ran up the steps two at a time, and as she reached the top she heard the first alarms ringing. The guard had pulled an emergency switch, and more guards would be here any second. Without thinking, she yanked open the first door she came to.
Scootaloo dashed over the catwalks like a madpony, tiny wings buzzing. Still clutching the cork of the lightning jar in her teeth, she turned the corner, vaulted over the catwalk and landed with a thud in the winter machine room. Doors slammed open on the catwalk above, and the room filled with flashlight beams, all pointed at her. Without stopping, she dove through a gap in the metal pipes connecting the different parts of the machine, slid under a thick water hose barely two feet off the ground, and–spotting another large, rusted vent grate on the wall above–leapt up, bounded off the water hose with all four legs, and headbutted the grate so hard that it split down the middle.
She clambered up, wings buzzing, all the while struggling to keep the only grippable part of the lightning jar in her grasp. This vent wasn’t as tall as the other, so that she had to duck ever so slightly. So Scootaloo crouched and shambled her way through, all while alarms and the shouting of guards were ringing in her ears. About ten seconds in, she realized she was shaking. She came to a stop at the vent’s corner, just for a second, and tried to harden herself. There could be no mistakes now. She would not go hungry for another month.
Several minutes of guessing which turns went where, and Scootaloo found herself dropping onto a catwalk overlooking a chamber filled with cloud machines. So she’d found herself in another abandoned part of the factory. Just how large was this place?
Massive vats of water were suspended over boilers, with hoses leading to a set of pressurized tanks just beneath her. Catwalks criss-crossed the room every few yards. The machinery all looked rusted, as if nopony had used it in years.
Just then, the lights sparked to life across the room. Doors opened on either side of her, guard ponies ran out.
Time seemed to slow down as she weighed her options. If the space beneath her had been a cloud floor, she may have been able to drop off the railing and continue on the bottom floor. But a row of decrepit steam tanks seemed less promising. Going back into the vent would only leave her cornered, assuming she could clamber back in without one of the guards getting a hold of her tail.
That left only forward, across the gap between the catwalks. The width of the chasm seemed to grow with each rapid heartbeat, so that the distance of twenty feet seemed like a hundred. Scootaloo swallowed, her wings buzzing.
“Stop right there!” the left guard shouted. Both he and the guard to her right were nearly a foot taller than her, and they both lunged at her. Just as they were about to grab her, Scootaloo leapt up onto the catwalk’s railing and dove into the gap, her fragile wings buzzing like mad. Her front legs reached out, grasping desperately at the catwalk before her–but she found only air. Gravity finally overpowered her, and Scootaloo screamed.
She felt herself spinning backwards mid-air, and saw the lightning jar fall past her, just outpacing her. The electricity in the jar crackled before her as she blinked one more time. She heard one of the guards shout something, saw him make desperate a reach towards her–
The jar hit a steam tank and shattered, filling her vision with light. Had it been any other room in the factory, where the machines were modern and strong, it wouldn’t have mattered. But here, the pressure within was held back by only thin, rusted aluminum.
The noise of fifteen steam tanks exploding rocked the entire building, blasting past and around her in a fury of white light and hot steam. The force of the explosion blew out her eardrums and threw Scootaloo back, where her head smacked against a pipe. Her ears bleeding, she looked up just in time to see a jagged chunk of metal streak across the room and strike her through the chest, nailing her body to the wall. Scootaloo sputtered, only for a moment, and managed one last brave look down.
All she saw was red, and then nothing.
Rainbow Dash sat expressionless in the shade of an oak tree as ponies stood behind the podium, said some words, and walked away. It was a perfectly clear day–not her doing, for sure–with the afternoon sun lighting up the field just outside Ponyville, bringing out the color in everything. Not what many ponies had been expecting, she noted. Funerals are so often presented as grey, rainy affairs, wrought with black garb and tears. The reality was less dreary, and all the more depressing for it.
She looked up from the grass to see a dry-eyed pony, likely one of Scootaloo’s classmates, giving some speech about remembrance or living on in memory. He was a remarkably thin colt, nearly white with a stringy brown mane. His eyes never left the prepared speech he read off the podium, and the twenty or so ponies who’d come showed even less interest. When he was done, he left the podium, and Scootaloo’s casket was alone once again. Rainbow Dash dared not look at it.
More nameless ponies came and went as Rainbow Dash leaned into the rough bark of the tree. Even some of her friends spoke, and they talked about how Scootaloo was a good friend, a brave pony, taken too young.
Rainbow Dash scoffed at them all. She was stupid, is what she was , Rainbow thought. Stupid and reckless. Breaking into the weather factory? Trying to steal lightning? Why in Celestia’s name would she try to do something so crazy?
Of course, Rainbow Dash knew exactly why.
Finally, Rarity made her way over and sat down next to her.
“Lovely service,” Rarity said. When there was no response, she kept talking. “It truly is awful, what happened. Just awful. She was such a good girl, and so young...”
“Save the speech, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash muttered, glancing at the podium. “I heard it the first time.”
“Yes. Well...” Rarity shifted uneasily. “Don’t you think you should say something? We all know how much Scootaloo adored you, Rainbow Dash. She would want you to speak at her–”
“Don’t tell me what she would have wanted,” Rainbow Dash said. Rarity bowed her head, but nonetheless Rainbow Dash stood up and made her way across the service. Ponies left and right looked up over at her, either offering condolences or whispering something to one another. She paid them no mind.
When she got to the front, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were at the podium, shakily trying to say something–anything–about their friend.
“S-She was always so upbeat,” Sweetie Belle spoke so softly that Rainbow Dash could barely hear her. “Even when she l-lost her family, she never lost her s-smile...” She tried to continue, but her words trailed off into sobs. Apple Bloom led her off, both of them in tears. With that, there was nopony before the casket but her, and all eyes turned to Rainbow Dash.
“I, uh...” She stood there, left of the podium, staring out at the crowd. Normally she loved being the center of attention, but not here. Everypony was expecting her to give some great speech, but she had no words. Rainbow Dash was motionless, gazing out past the crowd, racking her brain for something–anything–to say. Lowering her eyes, she finally looked down, and saw the face that had been on her mind for the past two days.
Scootaloo’s eyes were closed, her mouth expressionless. She was extremely pale, looking less orange and more the color of sand. She’d been dressed up in a fancy outfit to cover the grisly scar from the metal shard that tore her chest in two, and her mane, still in a ponytail, was draped around the left side of her face and over her shoulder.
But Rainbow Dash didn’t see any of that. Instead of a thirteen year old corpse, she saw a foal, a little girl, a sister she’d never had, and would never have again.
“Nopony knew her as well as I did,” she said suddenly, even surprising herself. “Sure, she had her friends, but they didn’t care about her in the same way. The only other pony who did died four years ago, and when Scootaloo turned to me after, I...”
Everypony was silent. Back behind the rest of the crowd, her friends exchanged concerned looks with each other. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle huddled together next to them, and everypony’s eyes were on Rainbow Dash.
“Y’know what? Buck this. ” And with a flap of her wings, she was gone.
Rainbow Dash crashed through the wall of her home at nearly a hundred miles per hour. Her face was red, her eyes filled with tears, and she screamed as she reared back her legs and kicked her kitchen table to pieces. She tore through to her living room, ripping posters and pictures off the walls and crumpling them or smashing them into the floor.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!” Her voice was raspier than usual as she pounded a hole through a wall. In her mind, she was replaying everything the factory had told her about the incident.
“She was trying to steal a jar of lightning”, one of the night staff had told her. “We think she got in through the ventilation shafts, but we can’t tell for sure. The security in that wing of the building is practically nonexistent.”
“Trying to steal from the weather factory? Scootaloo, you idiot!” Rainbow Dash took a picture of herself and her friends and threw it into a shut window like a frisbee, cracking the frame. Turning to the window panes, she punched a hole right through the glass with a scream, shattering it and leaving her leg bloody.
One look at the red cuts and she was screaming again. It would take days for them to clean the blood off everything, they had told her, let alone repair the damage. The piece of the steam tank that exploded was lodged so deep that it went entirely through Scootaloo, pinning her body to a wall. The image of the poor filly desperately trying to free herself as she bled out had Rainbow Dash smashing another window.
She flew up the stairs, sobbing, and crashed into her bed haphazardly. “Why, why, you stupid kid, what were you thinking...” she said, curling herself into a ball as she buried herself in the sheets. But as much as she wanted to blame Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash knew who’s fault it was.
“I’m so s-sorry, Scootaloo,” she whimpered. “If I’d stuck around, if I’d been a better s-s-sister to you, then maybe you’d still...”
“Be alive?”
“Gaahh!” Rainbow Dash sprung up, flinging the blankets aside. Her tear-stained eyes darted around the room, but she saw nothing, nopony. “Who’s there?!” she shouted.
“Forgotten about me already?” Scootaloo said, emerging from seemingly nowhere. “Can’t say I’m surprised, after everything you’ve done. Or, didn’t do. Whatever’s easier.” She raised an eyebrow. “But that’s always been your style, hasn’t it?”
The first few seconds of death are confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. For Scootaloo it was the former. Her mind was trying to project the way things used to be–up and down, gravity, physics in general–onto the bizarre reality she found herself in. From the moment she’d stopped clutching at the rusty shard in her chest, the world had spun away into a seemingly endless tunnel. There was no logical explanation for how she could be watching herself lie splayed out with a thick metal tooth running through her bloodied body, all the while being thrown backwards through a this tunnel to wherever. So obviously, she must be dreaming.
So that’s it , she decided, I’m dreaming. And she grew relaxed at the thought. She’d had worse dreams before, ones with empty cottages and only silence from down the stairs, or ones with her being stranded in Cloudsdale. Were those dreams? Everything before tonight seemed to blur together now. Something about this dream was placating her, like she was still falling asleep. Watching herself be impaled was certainly an outlier as far as dreams went, but at least she was watching it, and not living it.
But as Scootaloo’s view of her own death was receding away, she leaned back and realized the tunnel was stretching into a silvery white light. Hadn’t she heard something about that before? The light at the end of the tunnel?
That’s when it all came together. I’m dead, she told herself. She waited for the panic to set in, but no screams or struggles came. No panic or tantrums or sobs. Nothing. Maybe it was the dreary calmness that permeated her entire being, or–more likely, she thought–her life didn’t amount to much anyway and wasn’t worth freaking out over.
Several minutes of silent pondering passed. Scootaloo wondered if they’d give her a funeral. Those cost money, money she didn’t have. Something about the thought of a burial made her smirk. A pegasus grounded all her life, only to be covered in earth and left to rot there, out of sight and out of mind. On any other day such a thought would sour her mind, but now it only amused her.
Then, she saw the first of them. Other ponies, mostly old but some as young or younger than herself, careening down the tunnel with her. None of them spoke, as the tunnel was incredibly wide and most didn’t even seem to realize where they were. Her glance turned down the direction she’d come from. Even if she squinted, she couldn’t make out anything more than the walls of pale blue stretching all the way back to her body. The distance she’d traveled in such a short time made her wonder, just how fast was she going? Did speed even exist here?
For that matter, where was here? If this was the afterlife, it was incredibly boring. Left alone with her thoughts as she hurtled down a shaft to nowhere didn’t sound like pony heaven. Then again–and she grimaced at the thought–pony heaven probably wasn’t where she’d wind up.
Scootaloo turned around, and for the first time since her death tried to make a sound. With a silent gasp, she saw something very far down the tunnel, but still able to be made out. It was a massive swirling disk of... something. It made no sound as its liquidy surface spun in slow circles, like someone was stirring a bowl of soapy water. It covered the entirety of the tunnel, and the closer Scootaloo got to it, the harder it became to look. It shone brighter and brighter, giving off occasional silent flashes as other ponies soared into it, sending out little ripples from wherever they’d passed through.
As she drew nearer and nearer to the portal, whatever had been anesthetizing her mind wore off. Her eyes grew wide with terror, fully expecting a hellish nightmare beyond this gateway to eternity. In her abbreviated life, Scootaloo had given little thought to anything other than herself, especially when living on her own. If getting a meal meant breaking into another pony’s home and stealing whatever she could sell, then it was always worth it. With a gulp, she wondered if whatever divine being judged her would see things the same way.
The portal grew larger, seeming to bulge and swell as she closed in on it. More ponies drifted through, leaving nothing behind but a ripple through the swirling ether. Scootaloo spun around, buzzing her wings as hard as she could, but, as always, to no avail. The blinding light from the end of the tunnel forced her to shut her eyes completely, and she began to shiver in fear of whatever retribution came next.
Finally, the light grew so intense that not even Scootaloo’s eyelids could keep it back. She turned her back on the brightness, whimpered something even she couldn’t understand... and slammed into the portal as if it were a brick wall at an Equestrian speed of nearly three hundred miles per hour. Of course, in the afterlife the physics of speed and force of impact are completely impractical. Of course, that’s not to imply it didn’t hurt.
Scootaloo sank down to the bottom of the tunnel almost comically. If anything made a sound here, there may have been a squeak and a thud when she finally landed face down at the floor of the tunnel.
She didn't want to open her eyes. So long as she lay there, motionless, hiding behind the blackness of her eyelids, she could just invent her own reasons for why this was happening to her. So she lay there for minutes, hours, days–or maybe it was minutes. Seconds even. She couldn’t tell the difference.
And that was it. She'd just lie here forever, and never, ever, peek at what lay outside her thoughts. Of course, it must be a dream. The pains all over her body were not the result of smashing into a magical portal at the maw of a tunnel of death, they were from the steam tank. The piece that impaled her must have missed her vital organs and the blood loss left her unconscious. And in the same vein, that explained why she was lying down. She wasn’t dead, she was in a hospital, grievously injured. But alive. Maybe hitting her head on that pipe right before the tank exploded had knocked her out, and she’d never been impaled to begin with.
Of course I can’t be dead , she told herself. Thirteen year olds didn’t die. They had issues and they made bad choices sometimes, but they didn’t die. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. The tunnel, the other ponies and the portal and the vision of her own death, they were just the side effects of pain medicine. Obvious, really. It made a lot more sense than the other version of the story, the one with a giant tunnel and a portal to what could only be hell.
So sure was Scootaloo in her recent rewriting of events that she bravely cracked her eyelids open. Squinting through her lashes, the first thing she noticed was white. That’s fine, she thought, just fine. Hospitals have white all over. Sheets, pillows, walls, clouds–
She was on clouds. Scootaloo struggled to stand up, fighting a numbness in every part of her body. Glancing around, she immediately recognized where she was.
“Rainbow Dash’s house?” She was startled by her own voice. Everything seemed so fresh and different, even herself. There was sound again, everywhere. The whistling of a breeze in her mane, her own ragged breathing, and a quiet, quiet whimpering.
Scootaloo made her way to the stairs. As she drifted across the room, she saw shattered windows, smashed furniture, even holes in the walls. A few drops of blood even trailed from the broken glass panes, past the couch and up the stairs. She followed the trail of destruction uneasily, not quite sure what she’d find at the end of it all.
As soon as she crested the staircase, she was greeted with a raspy shriek.
“Get away! Get out, get away! You’re not real, you’re in my head, it’s all in my head, get out!”
“R-Rainbow Dash...?” Scootaloo said timidly. Rainbow was covered in her bedsheets, her head sticking out of the pile. Her mane was a complete mess, different colors criss-crossing so much that parts of it appeared brown. And her eyes. Rainbow Dash’s eyes were completely red, streaks of tears lining her face beneath them. She huddled against the headrest of her bed, shivering and shaking like she was caught in a snowstorm.
“Don’t say anything! I know this isn’t real, I saw you! I saw you! This isn’t real!”
“Rainbow Dash, calm down! It’s me, it’s Scootaloo!” She took a step towards the bed. “I’m okay, see?”
“N-No!” Rainbow Dash croaked. “I saw your body! You’re dead! You’re dead and gone and you think it’s m-my fault! Everypony thinks it’s my f-f-fault!”
She broke down into heaving sobs. Unsure what to make of this, Scootaloo shifted nervously on the other side of the room. So she was dead after all.
“But wait...” she said aloud. “If I’m dead, how am I here? I was in the tunnel, then I hit that big swirly disc, then all of a sudden I’m here?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Rainbow Dash.”
Opening her eyes, Scootaloo squeaked in surprise. Rainbow Dash was gone, and so was the cloud house and the stairs and everything else.
“Rainbow Dash?” she called out into the blackness. There was no answer.
“Rainbow Dash? You out there?”
Still nothing but darkness and echoes. “Anypony here?” she called out again.
“Hello? Anypony?”
“Hello...?
Rainbow Dash smashed through the front doors of the weather factory like a wrecking ball, her eyes steeled with determination. Everything around her was a blur, but somehow she could still put it all together. Police ponies, yellow tape, and factory workers were nothing to her as she crashed through another set of double doors and flew down a hallway. Somewhere behind her, several ponies shouted something about clearance, but she didn’t slow down. Let them try to stop her.
Coming to a storage room, she swung the door open and made her way across the cloudy floor. The room was completely empty, an unusual sight, but it made her path easier. Across the way, she found herself before a door marked with a ball of steam. Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw it open.
That’s where the courage in her eyes died.
On the other side of the room, Scootaloo was leaned up against the wall, her head hanging low. Her ponytail was drooped over her shoulder, the tip stained in blood. A thick, jagged piece of metal was stuck through her chest, carving a diagonal line from her left shoulder to her right hip. Dried blood covered her torso and front legs, and what parts of Scootaloo weren’t bloodstained were a pale shade of their former orange. Even worse, the tips of her front legs were scarred by a hundred tiny cuts from where she’d struggled to pull the metal out of her. In front of it all, yellow lines of tape were criss-crossed, like some kind of barrier to keep the horror contained.
As Rainbow Dash drew closer, she became aware of the stench, a pungent, nauseating smell that permeating everything everywhere. Breathing through her mouth did little to help, and as Rainbow Dash opened it to inhale she found herself screaming.
“Scootaloo! Scootaloo, can you hear me? You gotta get up, kid!” She choked out the last few words as the foul odor of death overtook her. Rainbow Dash felt her stomach turning, but there was no time for that now. She flew across the room in a second, tearing through the rubbery yellow tape like it was tissue paper. “Hey, hey, this isn’t the end, okay? Up and at ‘em, squirt, let’s go!”
When she got no response, Rainbow Dash screamed louder. “Hey! Wake up Scoot, don’t you go to sleep on me!” She shook Scootaloo’s body like a ragdoll, tears welling up in her eyes. Breathing the stench was agonizing, but she couldn’t leave. Stepping back, Rainbow Dash tried to grab the massive chunk of rusted metal from any angle that would give her leverage. “C’mon, dammit, come on !” She tugged and pulled and wrestled with it, but the aluminum wouldn’t move an inch.
Just then, two ponies came in the door behind her. “Miss, you can’t be in here! There’s an ongoing investigation, and you’re contaminating the–”
“Don’t just stand there you idiots, help me with this friggin’ thing!” Rainbow Dash screamed as she gave the shard another yank. We’ve got to get her to a hospital!”
That’s when she heard it. “R-Rainbow...”
Her head spun around in an instant. “Scootaloo! I’m here Scoot, we’re gonna get you to a hospital!” Now she cried tears of joy. There was still time to fix this, still time to save her.
“Help me, Rainbow D-D-Dash... H-Help...”
“Just sit tight kid, we’re gonna get this thing out!” She turned around to the two pegasi in the doorway. “Don’t just stand there gawking, you stupid mules! Help me with her!”
Something grabbed her neck, and suddenly she couldn’t breath. Turning back to Scootaloo, she saw the pale, bloodstained filly grabbing her windpipe with both hooves.
“Sc-Scootaloo! Ah... What–”
“Help me, Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo pleaded softly. “Please, help me.” Eyes still shut, she stood up and tore the metal shard from her chest with one hoof, leaving a hole in the wall behind her where the shard had pinned itself in. The dried blood on her body cracked in several places, only to be replaced by fresh blood that splattered out of the gaping wound, and into Rainbow Dash’s eyes.
“Nnngh...! I-I-I can’t–”
With one swift motion, she took Rainbow Dash’s neck in one hoof and slammed her against the wall, holding her there a few inches off the ground. “Please Rainbow Dash, help me,” Scootaloo cried out once more, her eyes still closed.
Rainbow Dash had both her front legs around Scootaloo’s grip, but she couldn’t break free. Her wings were pushed up against the wall, unable to move an inch. Her lungs burned, and every heartbeat was a hammer blow to the skull. Squinting through the sting of blood in her vision, she saw the ponies in the doorway had vanished. She tried to speak, to gasp, to do anything, but Rainbow Dash could only glimpse through burning eyes as Scootaloo raised the metal shard in her free foreleg and lined it up with Rainbow Dash’s heart.
“Help me, Rainbow Dash...” she whispered. She pulled the fragment back, eyes closed, and swung it forward–
“Gaaaahhh! ”
Rainbow Dash shot up in her bed with a scream.
Gasping for air, she looked down at her chest and rubbed a hoof over it. Her neck was sore, her eyes hurt to open and her nostrils still burned, but there was no actual hole in her heart.
This was the third night in a row she had been plagued by the same nightmare. Was it the third time? Was she even sleeping at night? If it had been three days, then she ought to be hungry, but her stomach was silent. With a groan, Rainbow Dash flipped over and pulled the sheets over her head. She lay like that for nearly a minute, until her mind wandered to what happened before she’d fallen asleep.
Scootaloo had been here. Here, in this very room, in her house. At first she had blamed Rainbow Dash for what had happened, attacked her, screamed at her, until Rainbow Dash found herself trapped in that factory with a murderous corpse. As soon as she’d woken up, Scootaloo was still here. That time Rainbow Dash was positive it was still a nightmare, and maybe it was. Maybe she was still in the nightmare, and Scootaloo’s phantom would attack her in her bed any second. But as the minutes ticked by, and nothing happened, Rainbow Dash finally convinced herself that she was awake.
Then she realized something. If she was awake now, what if she was awake when Scootaloo was in her bedroom, too?
“She was here,” Rainbow Dash said out loud. “She was here, and I wasn’t dreaming.”
She sat up in bed again, staring at the wall. Scootaloo had been here, talked to her, and she hadn’t been sleeping. Something Scootaloo said resonated in her mind.
If I’m dead, how am I here?
It just doesn’t make any sense, Rainbow Dash.
Her eyes squinted, and then shot open again.
“Twilight!” In a second, Rainbow Dash threw her sheets aside and leapt out of bed onto all fours. Then she was flying down the stairs, out the door, and north towards Canterlot.
One look at the sun told Rainbow Dash it was well past midday. Her wings were stiff, her limbs ached, and her hooves stung as the cuts from when she’d punched through the window were bitten at by the wind, but all her focus was on the mountain in the distance.
“Don’t worry Scootaloo,” she whispered into the air. “I’m gonna get you back.”
“She was what? ”
She had expected Twilight to be skeptical. “I’m telling you Twilight, she was right there in front of me,” Rainbow Dash said. “She was just as much with me then as you’re with me now.”
“Rainbow Dash, you look exhausted,” Twilight replied. “I know how hard this is, but I think your mind was playing tricks on you.” She walked over to the tower’s giant window and pulled a string, shutting the blinds. “There, isn’t that better? I have a bed up here, why don’t you lay down for a few hours? It doesn’t do a grieving mind any good to not get sleep.”
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted up. “I’ve been in bed since the funeral. I don’t need more than three days of sleep to keep from going crazy.”
“Three days? Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo was buried over a week–”
“No time to measure calendars, Twilight! She’s still out there somewhere, trying to contact me somehow.” She grabbed her friend with both hooves and shook her. “You’ve gotta know some way to get her back!”
Twilight pushed herself away, wobbling. “Nnngh... Rainbow, please.”
Rainbow Dash shuddered at that.
“Look, losing somepony close to you is never easy.”
“We weren’t close anymore,” Rainbow Dash muttered.
“A few bitter moments doesn’t erase a lifetime of friendship,” Twilight said. “Scootaloo adored you, more than any pony she ever met.” She wrapped a foreleg around Rainbow’s shoulder. “But she’s gone now, Rainbow Dash. I know that’s not an easy thing to accept, but we can’t bring her back, no matter how much we wish we could.”
Rainbow Dash shoved her away, suddenly fuming. What didn't Twilight understand? “Then how do you explain her talking to me, huh? I know the difference between dreaming and not dreaming!”
“Rainbow Dash–”
“What, does the spell require some kind of sacrifice? A host body? Tell me!”
“There is no spell, Rainbow Dash.”
“Stop lying to me! ” she screamed. “Scootaloo’s spirit is still here, and you’re gonna help me fix this!”
Twilight took a step forward. “You’re not well, Rainbow Dash. Let me help you. Help me understand what you’re going through.”
“I don’t need help, haven’t you been listening? Scootaloo’s the one who needs your help!”
“Rainbow Dash, please, help–”
“Don’t say that! ” Rainbow Dash shrieked so loud her own ears hurt. Twilight stumbled back, and Rainbow Dash flew to the door, tears in her eyes.
“I’m gonna bring her back here, Twilight! And you’re gonna help me save her!” Before her friend could speak, Rainbow Dash was in the sky.
Scootaloo awoke in a pile of rusty shrapnel.
“Nnngh...” she groaned as she stood up. How long had she been out? Was she even sleeping? Ghosts didn’t sleep as far as she knew, but she certainly hadn’t been here the whole time.
Memories were becoming increasingly difficult. She’d been underground, there were other ponies and a light... Then Rainbow Dash’s house, then black. Had she fallen asleep at Rainbow Dash’s house? Was that part of a dream? Was this part of a dream?
Stepping carefully over the scrap metal, she recognized part of a symbol of a ball of steam that had been painted on. “Steam tanks,” she said aloud, “from the weather factory. Steam tanks like...”
“It's all gone. Like it never even happened."
Scootaloo yelped in surprise. Across the room, behind a few strands of yellow tape, Rainbow Dash stared at a hole in the wall. The floor and walls around her were pristine, white and cloudy as every other part of the factory. As Scootaloo drew closer, she saw Rainbow Dash was crying.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all," she said. She looked over her shoulder at Scootaloo, then turned back around. “I wonder if your mother follows me around too, and I just can’t see her.”
Words about her mother made Scootaloo stop short. Her face hardened, and she said, “I’m sure she wouldn’t be too happy to see you.”
Rainbow Dash said nothing for a moment. There was a long sigh, and then, “I was with her when she died, you know.”
Scootaloo had no words for that. Emotions swam in circles through her mind, first confusion, then anger, and finally a sudden sadness that gripped her and forced her to sit, head down. She sat motionless as Rainbow Dash continued.
“It was just after that big winter storm rolled in from the Everfree. Blizzards are always so much harder to control, and when you’re flying over so many gnarled branches and cliffs and rocks, and the wind knocks you down...”
She paused, taking a deep breath. “When we heard her screaming, it was through a hundred yards of wind and ice. There was no telling where she’d crashed, so we looked for over an hour beneath the canopy, in the canyon, even outside the forest, in case she’d been thrown there by the storm.”
Scootaloo shivered, feeling pressure behind her eyes. Could ghosts cry? That’s what she was, right?
“I found her at the forest floor,” Rainbow Dash continued shakily. “She’d gone down next to a ravine, where the rocks on the edges were all jagged. One of them had gone through her stomach, above her right leg. By the time I’d gotten to her it was t-too late. Snow was already building up on her, but even through it I could make out little f-furrows in the dirt, from when she’d tried to...” Her voice trailed off.
Both of them were silent for nearly a minute. Scootaloo felt tears when she blinked. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, Rainbow Dash began again, and she was silent.
“She was still kicking, even after I got there. B-Bleeding into the snow for over an hour, but still kicking.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Heh... Your mom always was a fighter.”
Scootaloo sniffed, feeling wetness on her cheeks. She stood up, taking a few steps towards Rainbow Dash, who kept staring at the ground as she spoke.
“Kicking little grooves into the m-mud with her heels, like the motion you’d use to slide under a table. I don’t think–” She paused, wiping her eyes. “I don’t even think she knew I was there.”
With a hitched breath, Rainbow Dash placed a hoof over the hole left in the wall by the metal fragment. “It doesn’t happen the way everypony says. You expect to see their spirit leaving their body, or feel them move on to the next life and leave this world with a smile. But that’s not how it goes.” She lowered her hoof and turned around, looking Scootaloo in the eyes. “One second she was moving, and the next she wasn’t. And you’d think the earth should bear some great scar to show the exact place she died, but there’s nothing. N-Nothing but frozen blood and those little trails in the dirt, and even those were buried by the snow...”
Scootaloo looked away, twirling her ponytail in front of her face in an attempt to hid her tear-stained cheeks. Rainbow Dash began walking towards her, still talking. “Maybe that’s why we have gravestones. To show the world we mattered to somepony, for however brief a time.”
“Rainbow Dash... Why are you telling me this?”
“I did a lot of thinking on the flight over here, Scootaloo. About you. About me. About those little trails in the dirt.” More tears welled up in Rainbow Dash’s eyes as she choked out the next words. “I-If I hadn’t looked in the wrong places, if I’d been f-f-faster ...”
Scootaloo’s face tingled as tears slid down her cheeks. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Rainbow Dash. Not what happened to my mom, and not what happened to me.”
“But it is , don’t you get it?” Rainbow Dash cried. “I ruined your life twice and you still don’t see it?”
“You didn’t make me try to steal lightning.”
Her comfort fell on deaf ears. “But you wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t left for Cloudsdale! And you wouldn’t have had to leave if I’d j-j-j-just–”
Memories of a shouting match with this very same pony played in her head. Grimacing, Scootaloo found herself without any words of comfort for the pegasus that had abandoned her to solitude.
“I thought I w-was doing what was best for you,” Rainbow Dash sobbed. “I thought I–Celestia, how could I have been so stupid? I’d never even heard of that shelter, but I left you there to starve all the same, b-b-because I was so damn sure I’d never be able to t-take care of a filly!”
After that, both of them were silent, save for Rainbow Dash’s sobbing. Scootaloo pawed at the floor with a hoof, trying and failing to think of something to say.
“And now I’ve lost you for good,” Rainbow Dash whimpered, her tail flicking behind her. “Twilight’s right about trying to bring you back. She’s always right about everything. What's happening to you doesn't mean a thing."
“I don’t even know what’s happening to me, Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo said. The tunnel, the black void, blinking around from place to place, none of it made any sense. Everypony was so certain she was dead, but this didn’t line up with any afterlife she’d heard of.
“Scootaloo, Twilight was also right about me not being well in the head,” Rainbow Dash said. “I don’t think anything’s been happening to you.”
“W-What? What do you mean? There was the tunnel! With all the other ponies, and the portal at the end!”
“I always imagined death would be like that,” Rainbow Dash spoke softly now, wrapping a wing around Scootaloo’s back. “A relaxing ride from the moment I died to the gates of pony heaven, wherever that is. But the more I think about it, I can’t even imagine dying.”
In the very back of her mind, Scootaloo felt some urge to push herself free of Rainbow’s wing, but found herself pressing tighter into the embrace. “Rainbow Dash, what’re you talking about?”
“Well, I mean... I can imagine dying. A crash, or a disease, or just being really, really old. Dying makes sense. I’ve seen dying before. But being dead? Nopony knows what that’s like, Scootaloo. We all have our own ideas of what’s on the other side, but nopony really knows .
“Y-yeah. I guess so,” Scootaloo said. A sudden exhaustion was sweeping over her, and she yawned softly. The room was so cold at this altitude, and Rainbow Dash was so warm. The more Scootaloo leaned in, the safer everything seemed. No lightning jars or blizzards or exploding steam tanks could reach her here.
“I guess it might be blackness, like an empty void. For a while, when I saw you after the funeral, that’s what I told myself to convince my mind that you weren’t real. But darkness is something ponies understand, something our minds construct to make sense of night and sleep. Being dead can’t be like that.
Rainbow Dash’s wing closed tighter around her, like she was tucking Scootaloo into bed. “Death can’t be a tunnel, it can’t be blackness. There probably isn’t a pony heaven, either." Rainbow Dash looked down at the filly under her wing, swallowed a tearful sigh, and said, “It’s probably just...”
She closed her eyes, blinking out a final teardrop, and sat there. She raised her head, opening her eyes to stare across the room at a hole in the wall.
“Nothing,” she said. She glanced down once more. Nopony was there.
“Absolutely nothing at all.”
