Family Secrets

by Keeper of time RD

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Scootaloo, Adventure, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 30523

Scootaloo has always had secrets in her family. Secrets that she has diligently kept for quite some time. But all that changes when an unexpected chain of events drags her best friends into the side of her life she's always kept secret from them.

Scootaloo has always had secrets in her family. Secrets that she has diligently kept for quite some time. But all that changes when an unexpected chain of events drags her best friends into the side of her life she's always kept secret from them.

This is a sequel to In Another Pony's Hooves, and placed several months after it, though reading it isn't required to understand what's going on here it does help set the stage.

A special thanks to Gadgetphile for editing.

Published 2015-07-20 17:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-07-20 17:10:02 UTC

Chapter 1: A Lonely Day and Stone Cold Nights

A classroom full of fillies and colts sat whispering to one another as they awaited their teacher, Miss Cheerilee, to start the day’s lessons. Among them was an orange pegasus filly with a violet mane, named Scootaloo. While her classmates chatted away their last few moments of freedom, Scootaloo sat in silence and her purple eyes fell to the two empty seats nearby, normally occupied by her friends Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.

Somewhere in the back of her mind the chain of events leading to her friends' absence played out once again.

How Apple Bloom’s big sister, Applejack, wanted her younger sister’s help with a delivery to Las Pegasus, and when she asked Cheerilee to excuse Apple Bloom the next day for it, she promised to take the filly to the Hoofer Dam so there’d be something educational on the trip. And how Cheerilee had taken the moment to offer an extra-credit assignment for all three of the cutie mark crusaders, especially since Bloom and Scootaloo could use something to bring their grades up. How their teacher insisted that they do some library research on the dam. Or how when Applejack realized there wouldn’t be time to stop at a library on the trip, so one of the crusaders would have to stay in Ponyville to do the research part of the ‘research paper.’ And finally how Scootaloo had lost the coin toss to decide whether it would be her or Sweetie Belle that had to sit in a library while their friends were off adventuring around another city and touring a dam.

Scootaloo’s mind snapped back to the here and now when her teacher finally entered the room, and on seeing the pegasus of the crusader trio flashed a sinister grin (that was actually an innocent chuckle.) at her.

The dark pink schoolteacher with two lighter shades of pink for her mane didn’t linger her gaze on the unfortunate crusader. Instead the earth pony mare turned to the class and said, “Good morning class. If I recall we were on the last chapter of the Equestrian Civil War.” With that the teacher gave her class a moment to pull out their books before launching into the lesson.

“…The final battle was fought about fifty miles west of Baltimare, near what is now Iris Lake. While supported logistically by earth ponies, the defending force was primarily made up of pegasi. The battle was swift and decisive, and when the dust settled the unicorn separatists surrendered, ending the war. Never again have unicorns claimed that their magic was superior to the magic of the other races, and so harmony was restored to Equestria.”

With her lecture finished, Cheerilee looked to her class and raised an eyebrow at the sight of an orange hoof signaling a question.

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“What actually happened in the final battle?”

Tilting her head to the side the teacher asked, “What do you mean?”

“All of the other war battles have those maps with all the rectangles and arrows and stuff that show what units moved where and who flanked who and all that. But every time the last battle of the Civil War comes up it’s always just ‘the good ponies stood up for what was right and the bad ponies surrendered.’ Why is that? What actually happened?”

Looking to her book, Cheerilee flipped the pages back and forth a few times. “That’s… actually… a good question,” she concluded. “I’m sorry but ‘the battle was swift and decisive’ is all the book says. If you weren’t already doing an extra-credit assignment I’d suggest you try a history book dedicated to Equestria’s Civil War, instead of a general history book like this. In fact, if you want an ace-in-the-hole for the next time you get a C in something, you’re still more than welcome to find the answer to that and write me a paper on it.”

“Forget it. I’m not that curious,” Scootaloo said with a frown, dropping her gaze back down to her book, and drawing some giggles from her classmates. Just because she had all day to sit in a library researching stuff didn’t mean she wanted to spend any more time doing so then absolutely necessary.

“And don’t forget that you have until Wednesday to get those permission slips signed if you want to come on the museum fieldtrip,” Cheerilee reminded her students at the end of class.

* * * * * * *

With Ponyville’s town library still in ruins the town made use of the library at the new crystal-tree-house castle as a substitute for the time being. Princess Twilight Sparkle didn’t seem to mind, as it gave average ponies an excuse to visit the otherwise underused building.

Although the princess seemed to be out and about today that didn’t stop her assistant, Spike the dragon, from running the castle just the same as the library that the two previously lived in. The youthful dragon in question stood no taller than the filly he was leading into the castle library. His purple scales stood out among the predominately green crystal of the castle. Although the green spikes along his spine blended in nicely.

Pointing a clawed hand toward the third row of shelves from the left wall Spike said, “I think we put the architectural books over there. I’d bet that any of the ones that talk about dams would have a section on the Hoofer Dam. Since it’s the biggest dam in all of Equestria and all.”

With a forced smile Scootaloo thanked Spike, not that she wasn’t grateful for the help. It was just that library research was way too boring for the young pegasus. That and she’d rather be out doing something than stuck sitting around reading a book.

* * * * * * *

Much to her dismay it ended up taking the majority of the day to find what she was looking for. It might not have helped that Scootaloo had spent half of that time daydreaming about what she’d do tomorrow, since that would be Saturday and even though her friends wouldn’t be back in town until Sunday she’d still have the day to devote to fun.

The sun was low on the horizon when Scootaloo rolled through the front door of her house, grumbling to the wind about what a waste of a day today had been. Setting aside her signature blue scooter with red wheels and hanging her purple helmet with two white stripes on its handlebars, her tummy gave an impatient grumble of its own, reminding her that it was dinner time.

After setting her saddlebags by the coffee table by the couch, she made her way into the kitchen, where she tore off a large chunk from a loaf of bread. Returning to the coffee table she pulled the piece of paper out of her saddlebags that had the facts and figures about Hoofer Dam that she’d written down.

Now that she’d sat down to look over her work, she used her front hooves to take the bread out of her mouth and started biting off smaller more manageable portions from the loaf.

The report paper before her wasn’t so much a report as it was a collection of facts and figures tied together in a loosely coherent string of sentences. She’d even left an empty section in the middle where her friends could add whatever they’d learned from the tour. Not that it mattered. Scootaloo had yet to write a joint report for the crusaders that Sweetie Belle hadn’t completely rewritten (just to make it better of course.) before they turned it in, and the pegasus had little reason to believe that this time would be any different.

She gave a cynical laugh at the thought that all those numbers that she really didn’t care anything about would likely be the only parts of her original report to survive to the version they gave Cheerilee. Pushing her own work aside, Scootaloo pulled out the other loose paper in her saddlebags.

Before her return, the lone inkwell and orange quill had been the only things differentiating the top of the coffee table from the generally equally barren dinner table. That and the fact that Scootaloo didn’t need to sit in a chair to be chest high to the coffee table. The quill was one of her feathers that she’d shed weeks ago. Or was it months now? It didn’t matter, either way she shed good feathers around the house more often than she broke quills so she was never in want of writing supplies.

Uncapping the inkwell and taking the quill, she dipped it in the ink and quickly scrawled her father’s signature on the permission slip without so much as a second thought. Sure, he’d probably be back in the next day or two. But he wasn’t always around to sign those things in time, and he’d never complained about the times she’d signed for him before. So why bother him with this one?

Even as those thoughts filtered through the filly’s mind she heard a creak come from above. Not a wind-making-the-house-shift kind of creak, but a creature-heavier-than-herself-shifting-its-weight-on-the-floorboards kind of creak.

Setting down the quill and stuffing the last of her bread in her mouth, Scootaloo made her way up the stairs. “Dad? That you?” she asked as soon as she’d swallowed the last of her dinner.

Only silence answered her.

Poking her head into her father’s room she found that the room was as empty of ponies as usual. The years’ worth of dust coating everything that wasn’t the master bed hadn’t changed. Judging from the hoofprints in the dust on the floor, her father hadn’t been here in at least six days. A perfectly normal thing for her father to do given the nature of his work for the royal guard.

But if her dad wasn’t here then what made that sound? It’s not like anypony else came and went from this house like they owned the place. Had she imagined the noise? Was it really just the house shifting in the wind?

Closing her eyes, Scootaloo listened and was met with silence, not just within the house but the silence that declared that there was no wind outside either. For a brief moment she wondered if she’d ever given Rainbow Dash standing permission to come into her house. For a slightly longer moment she wondered if Dash even thought she needed permission to go wherever she pleased. A glimmer of hope flickered in the filly’s heart at the idea that her hero might have noticed how bad a day she’d had and snuck into her house to give her a pleasant surprise, and she certainly could use a pick-me-up about now.

Regardless there wasn’t exactly much of the upstairs left to check, so she set her sights on the door to her own room.

Scootaloo entered her room hoping to find the one friendly face she knew was in town, who might be willing to sneak into her house unannounced. Instead she found a face she’d never imagined would ever willing set hoof in her house.

“Diamond Tiara?” Scootaloo said with a voice that could only be called dumbfounded. “What are you doing in my house?” she added, mixing anger into her voice.

“What I’m doing, is called revenge,” the pink earth pony filly with a purple and white mane said.

At the same time Tiara tapped a hoof against the side of her saddlebags, causing a chicken to poke its head out from under the flap of the bag.

“Wha-huh?” was all Scootaloo could say as a million questions raced through her mind. Why in creation did Diamond Tiara have a chicken in her saddlebag? How did bringing it here count as revenge? Where did she even get a chicken anyway? Did she steal it from Sweet Apple Acres? No wait, Applejack ran the farm not Apple Bloom, so stealing the chicken from there wouldn’t really be revenge against the crusaders… Oh hey are that chicken’s eyes glowing?

Right as that last thought passed through Scootaloo’s mind a bolt of white light shot from the chicken’s eyes, flashed across the room and struck the pegasus in the chest. A strange sensation passed through her body and seemed to settle in her hind hooves. A quick glance revealed that her hind hooves were turning into gray stone.

A cockatrice! The revelation flashed in Scootaloo’s mind, as she suddenly understood what the creature in Diamond Tiara’s saddlebag truly was. Fear and rage fought each other for command of the filly’s response. In that moment anger won the internal argument, causing her to slide her hooves apart slightly, lowering herself a little to match the widened combat stance.

With rage burning in her voice, the pegasus demanded, “Why are you doing this?!”

“Consider this payback for the Equestria Games,” Diamond Tiara said, contempt oozing from every word.

The Equestria Games? Scootaloo and her friends had won the contest and carried the flag for Ponyville at the games ages ago! Ages to a filly anyway. Even knowing that Diamond Tiara was evil, Scootaloo couldn’t fathom that anypony could hold a grudge that long.

“I know you hate our guts, but you’ve gone way too far this time!” Scootaloo shouted, slamming a front hoof on the floor and flaring her wings in anger.

Truth was the self-styled crusader was angry enough to smack that smug look right off the face of the mansion-dwelling brat, cockatrice in her saddlebags or not. Pretty much the only thing stopping her was the fact that the back half of her body was now stone. Heck even her front knees had gone numb by now.

Diamond Tiara never really responded to that last shout, except to keep looking at the petrifying pegasus with a sinister smugness.

A fleeting thought that maybe she should look away from Tiara, and more importantly the cockatrice, flashed in Scootaloo’s mind. But now that her neck had gone numb that wasn’t going to happen, so she did the only thing she could do. Narrow her eyes and glare angrily at Diamond Tiara.

Glaring at her foe didn’t do much, but it did allow Scootaloo to catch a glimpse of her own muzzle as it turned to stone just before the cockatrice’s magic washed over her eyes and she blacked out.

Chapter 2: Chasing Shadows

“-and the Hoofer Dam supplies over half of the electrical power used in Las Pegasus,” Apple Bloom finished.

“Very good. A little brief, but good. I have just one question. Wasn’t Scootaloo supposed to be helping you with this?” Cheerilee asked the yellow earth pony filly with the red mane.

“She did her part, Ah swear! Ah… Ah don’t know why she didn’t come to school today,” Bloom answered, not really knowing if her claim was true or not.

The white unicorn filly with the pink and purple mane beside Apple Bloom said, “Maybe she got sick? You’ll still give her credit for this, won’t you?”

“Well, if she really did her part of the work, and she has a good reason for not being here to present the final report with her team, of course I’ll give her credit. But that will have to wait until we know why she’s not here.”

* * * * * * *

“What if she really is sick?” Sweetie Belle asked with a hint of worry in her voice, as she walked along at a hurried pace, trying to keep track of her friend in the crowded afternoon streets.

Weaving her way past a moving cart as they headed to their missing friend’s home, Apple Bloom answered, “Let’s hope she is. That seems to be what Cheerilee is expecting, and Ah don’t want to have to help her with another extra-credit assignment.”

“Wasn’t this whole ‘research paper on Hoofer Dam’ thing because Applejack wanted to excuse you from class for a day?”

A slight blush appeared through the fur on Apple Bloom’s cheek. “Well… yeah. But Cheerilee only made it a group assignment because Scootaloo needed the help with her grades! Ah mean, Celestia knows you don’t! Oh good, we’re here,” she added, quickly reaching up and knocking on the door.

Sweetie Belle soon joined her friend in pounding on the door and calling out for their missing friend.

Their plea was answered, not by the one they were calling out for, but by a sky blue pegasus with a prismatic mane. “Hey guys, is something up with Scoots?” the mare asked as she swooped down, taking up hovering just above the two fillies.

Of the two fillies, Apple Bloom was the one to answer. “Rainbow Dash! We don’t know what’s wrong. Scootaloo didn’t come to school today and no pony seems to know why. And she’s not answering her door. We don’t even know if she’s home or sick or anything. Ah don’t suppose you’ve seen her around today?”

Dash opened her mouth to speak but never started. Instead she turned her gaze to the side and started tapping a hoof on her chin. “Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen her lately either.” Giving a quick shrug she added, “No biggie. I’ll just go peek in her window to see if she’s here or not.”

As Rainbow Dash zipped around the side of the house, leaving the two fillies by the front door, Sweetie Belle said, “Look in her window! Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Because her room is on the second floor, and Ah don’t see a ladder just laying around for us to borrow.”

“Oh. Right.”

A moment of silence passed as the two friends awaited the results of Rainbow’s investigation. The sound of a window being slid open and followed by a muffled cry from the elder pony didn’t exactly encourage them. Maybe a full second later the sound of the front door being unlocked gave a fraction of a second’s warning before the door swung open.

Not wasting a second Rainbow Dash grabbed the two fillies, one in each front leg, and zipped back into the house so fast that the back draft alone was enough to close the door behind them.

“What’s… wrong?” The first word had been uttered as they were being flown up the stairs, by the second word Dash had deposited the two fillies in their friend’s room.

“That!” Rainbow Dash said, pointing right in front of them.

There, standing more or less in the middle of the room, was a perfect stone replica of their pegasus friend, glaring angrily at an empty spot near both Scootaloo’s desk and window.

“Ah don’t get it,” Bloom said.

“She has a statue of herself?”

“I don’t think that’s a statue. It’s too perfect,” Dash shared her observation.

Two sets of young eyes suddenly got wide with fear. “Y-You don’t think there’s ah-ah cockatrice lose around town? Do ya?”

“What? No! Maybe, I don’t know. Just keep an eye on her while I go get help,” Rainbow Dash said.

Before either filly could protest the plan Dash had already leapt out the window and taken wing to… to wherever she was planning on getting help from.

When Rainbow returned ‘help’ turned out to be Princess Twilight Sparkle, and even Applejack and Rarity had caught word in time to come running in with her.

Applejack, the orangeish-tan earth pony with the blond mane, sat beside her sister. Also sitting beside her sibling was Rarity, a white unicorn with a flowing, and overly styled, purple mane.

The four onlookers waited and watched as the purple glow of Twilight’s magic pulsed around both her horn and the stone filly. With nothing better to look at, the less magically astute observers had nothing better to do than let their gaze wander back and forth from the stone filly and the princess’ purple coat. Or her darker purple mane with a pink and purple stripe through it. Or even her cutie mark depicting a large pink and white star surrounded by five smaller white stars, that symbolized her talent for magic.

The Alicorn’s magic flickered out. “Well girls, I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news, darling?” Rarity asked.

“The good news is that Rainbow Dash was right.”

“And the bad news?”

“That Rainbow Dash was right. This is Scootaloo and she’s been hit by a petrifaction spell.”

Stepping forward, her eyes glistening with that watery pleading look that only a foal can pull off, Sweetie Belle asked, “You can change her back, right?”

“Of course, Sweetie. But it’s going to take some time.”

“If you know how to change her back, why can’t you just do it now!” Rainbow Dash said with a touch of annoyance and a lot of impatience in her voice.

Almost immediately the pegasus regretted her question. No, make that immediately, as Twilight took the excuse to launch into lecture mode. “Well you can think of a petrifaction spell as being like both a lock and cement.”

“It’s like a lock in that the primary point of the spell is to lock the target away for a while. And just like a lock, the easiest way to open the lock is with the key. In the case of a petrifaction spell, the source of the spell becomes the key. Usually whoever cast the spell can dismiss it fairly easily.”

“Just like when Fluttershy had the cockatrice turn you back from stone in the Everfree Forest!”

“Yes, Apple Bloom. Just like a cockatrice dismissing its own spell. But just like a physical lock you don’t have to use the key to open it. With enough force you can just brake the lock. And since we don’t know who put this spell on Scootaloo that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

“And that brings us to the part where a petrifaction spell is like cement. The longer a petrifaction spell is allowed to sit the more stable its magic become and the harder it becomes to brake it through raw magical force. Just like it’s easier to pull a pony out of wet cement than to have to get a jackhammer to free them from hardened cement.”

Looking back to the stone Scootaloo, Twilight gave a deep sigh before finishing. “The spell on Scootaloo is perfectly stable, so I’d say she’s been this way for more then a day. Anyway, she’s going to need a lot of magic therapy to… soften the petrifaction spell, so to speak, before I’ll be able to break it outright.”

Right about then was when a heavy clop sounded out from the doorway. “Why does there seem to be a convention in my daughter’s room?” the orange pegasus stallion, with a red and yellow mane, and a cutie mark of white flames, standing there asked in a less than friendly tone.

“Oh, well, um. You see… Scootaloo didn’t go to school today. So her friends came to check on her and well…” Twilight’s voice trailed off as she realized that where she was she was blocking the stallion’s view of his daughter. Stepping aside she added, “They found her like this.”

“I see,” he said with his voice suddenly calm, to the point of being so cold that it was clearly forced calmness. “How long until you have her back in action and she can tell us who did this to her?” he added, walking past his daughter and following her frozen gaze.

“As I was about to say, it will take at least a full day, so my best guess would be sometime tomorrow afternoon, maybe evening. If you don’t mind, I’d like permission to move Scootaloo to my castle. I’ll need to call in some help from Canterlot to maintain the spell array that will be needed, and I’d rather not have to cram an entire squad of unicorns into your home. Not to mention that having a larger room to set up a proper array would probably help.”

“Do whatever you need to do to help my Scootaloo,” the stallion said, seemingly more interested in the floorboards than his daughter.

Then Scootaloo’s father turned and opened his wings, as if he were getting ready to fly out the window. Although he stopped himself and was about to say something more, but Twilight Sparkle spoke first.

“Wait! Aren’t you going to stay by her side? She was just turned to stone. I’m sure she’d really like to see her friends and family when she comes out of it.”

For a moment he merely looked at the princess as if that was the dumbest question ever asked, even waving a hoof over his horn-less forehead. “In case you didn’t notice, I don’t do magic. I can’t help you cure my daughter.” Shaking his head slightly he added, “No, by her side I’m useless to her, and she’s stronger than you give her credit for. But there is somewhere else I can be that can be of use to her.”

After a short pause to re-gather his thoughts Scootaloo’s dad added, “Before I go, I need to ask two things of you. Lock up when you’re done here. And once Scootaloo is back to normal, tell her that if she deems it necessary she has permission to use it.”

“It?” Just about everypony else in the room echoed.

“She’ll know what I’m talking about,” Scootaloo’s dad said just before he finally jumped out the window and took flight, disappearing into the sky.

* * * * * * *

“I hope Scootaloo’s better now,” Sweetie Belle said as she and Apple Bloom were running to Twilight’s castle, the next day.

“Actually Ah was hoping we’d get to see them break the spell, myself.” Even as she said it a slight blush appeared on Apple Bloom’s cheek as she realized what she was implying. “Ah-Ah mean… Ah just wanted to see the magic. Not that Ah want Scootaloo to be stone any longer then she has to be.”

Sweetie Belle giggled. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.”

Despite its name Twilight’s Castle lacked the fortified walls, or guards, or any form of security that usually made a castle a more defendable structure than non-castles. Of course with Canterlot Castle, the capital of Equestria, only a few hours away by ground and only a few minutes by air there truly was no real tactical value to the newest castle in the land. A fact that was further testified to by the two fillies who went right up to the front door and let themselves in completely unchallenged.

Once inside the two were stopped, not by any form of security, but by a question.

“Uh, Sweetie Belle, do you remember which room they put Scootaloo in?”

A similar ‘uh’ answered as the unicorn filly in question started looking at the hallway full of seemingly identical doors.

“Third door on the right,” Twilight said, as she emerged from a different door, and quickly followed her words with a yawn and a stretch of her wings.

“Thanks Twi. But are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just up most of the night channeling the spell on Scootaloo before I handed the spell work off to the unicorns from Canterlot. I seem to have spent most of the day sleeping, and just woke up a minute ago.”

After rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Twilight’s horn flickered to life for a second and then she added, “Would you like to come with me to see how Scootaloo is doing?”

“Yes, please!” the two fillies answered together, and quickly zipped to the princess’ side.

A set of emerald green doors opened. A princess and two fillies entered the room. And the first thing they saw were two Rainbow Dashes standing side by side in the same aggressive stance. Eyes boggled, eyebrows were raised, heads were tilted, and mouths hung open as if to speak but never uttering a sound.

That lasted all of a second, and then the larger Rainbow Dash finally moved, rolling over onto her side, giggling.

With that the three newcomers to the room shifted their gaze to the smaller Rainbow Dash and quickly realized that it was Scootaloo, still stone, and merely painted in Rainbow Dash’s colors.

“You painted her?!” Twilight yelled, admonishing the elder pegasus.

Rainbow Dash gave an innocent smile and said, “What? Luna said that when a stone curse is broken the outer layer shatters off like an eggshell. So it’s not like the paint will stay on Scootaloo.”

Twilight stood with her mouth open and a hoof raised as if ready to launch into a lecture. The only thing stopping her was that Dash was right, there was no harm in painting the petrified filly. It was rude maybe, but harmless. Then she caught one of the names uttered by the pegasus. Looking back to Scootaloo, Twilight found that not only was the filly glowing in soft-blue magic light, but so was the ring of magic runes drawn on the floor around her and the horn of the nearby princess of the night.

Looking to the alicorn with midnight-blue fur and an ethereal mane that flowed in an unfelt wind and looked like a vision of the stars, Twilight almost yelled, “You let her paint Scootaloo?!”

Only the tiniest of smiles marred Luna’s otherwise perfectly stoic exposition. “What? Rainbow Dash and I were talking, and she mentioned that stone gray wasn’t a fitting color for Scootaloo. I merely agreed. And given how often that filly dreams of being like Rainbow Dash I doubt that she would mind the attempt to give her petrified form a brighter color scheme more befitting her youthful spirit.”

“Ah bet she’d think she looks cool right now.”

“She’s got you there,” Sweetie said to Twilight, agreeing with Luna.

Bowing her head slightly, Twilight shook it slowly it in defeat. “Fine. Silliness aside, Luna, seeing as you’re channeling the spell, how much longer until Scootaloo can be cured?”

A bit of a sarcastic smile formed on Luna’s face. “Well if you want me to finish by myself, I’d say another hour or two. However, now that you are rested, I suspect there’s enough magical power in this building to cure her now.”

“Alright then,” Twilight said, as she gave a nod.

As Twilight Sparkle walked over to one side of the runic pattern Luna gave a sharp whistle that made everypony in the room flatten their ears. Within moments eight unicorns marched swiftly into the room, all of them had gray coats and were sporting the golden armor of the Canterlot royal guard.

“It is time.” Was all Luna had to say to get the unicorn guards to gather around the edge of the magic circle surrounding Scootaloo.

Rainbow Dash and the two fillies shuffled themselves into a corner, where they still had a clean line of sight of Scootaloo and waited for the magic users to do their thing.

They didn’t have to wait long before every unicorn and alicorn horn in the room was aglow with magic. The runic pattern on the floor surged with power as the colored glows from the different magic users merged into one radiant, white light. A wave of white light washed over Scootaloo and in its wake glowing cracks began to form in the stone. Finally, the stone filly shattered as if it had been nothing more than a shell all along, revealing the flesh and blood pegasus beneath.

At first Scootaloo started to collapse. On instinct she caught herself an inch before allowing her belly to hit the floor. As she stood back up the look of rage that had been frozen on her face for days was gone, replaced with one of weary confusion.

“Wha-huh…what happened?” Scootaloo asked, even as the fog of thoughts in her mind started to clear.

Twilight answered, “We were hoping you could tell us.”

Anger flared up in Scootaloo’s eyes as she snarled, “Diamond Tiara!”

“What?” both princesses asked.

“Diamond Tiara! She snuck into my house! Surprised me in my room! Pulled a cockatrice out of her bag, and turned me to stone with it!”

“What?”

“Really?”

The mixed responses came from around the room.

“Are you sure?” Twilight amended her question.

“She was like four feet in front of me! So, yeah I’m sure.”

Twilight Sparkle passed Luna a concerned glance. The aggressive use of banishment or petrifaction spells were one step below murder as far as ranking the seriousness of crimes was concerned. Especially since it could take hundreds of years to notice the difference between a petrified pony and a pony statue enchanted to resist erosion if no one familiar with petrifaction spells thought to check specifically for that.

With a sideways nod and wave of her hoof Luna dismissed the unicorns of the royal guard. “Perhaps a visit from two displeased princesses will help dissuade this Diamond Tiara from such a destructive path?”

“Certainly a matter that bears investigation,” Twilight said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Even as two princesses, three fillies, and Rainbow Dash were heading for the door, Dash’s curiosity got the better of her. “Hold up a second, squirt. When your dad saw that you were stone, he said that ‘If you thought you needed it, you had permission to use it.’ He didn’t say what it was, but he seemed to think you’d know what he was talking about.”

That stopped Scootaloo in her tracks. “What? That… That doesn’t make any sense,” she said, with all eyes on her.

“Oh? Why not?” Twilight Sparkle couldn’t help but ask.

Scootaloo’s eyes had become unconfused the moment she seemed to comprehend her father’s message, and whether by intent or happenstance her eyes came back onto focus on Twilight’s wings. “Forget it! It’s not important!” she claimed in a tone of voice that made it clear that she was hiding something, but that something else ensured she wouldn’t be giving an honest answer any time soon.

* * * * * * *

Filthy Rich had been reading in his study when he noticed the sound of unexpected guests in his foyer. Considering that the butler was usually the one to answer the door that wasn’t too unusual, but what struck Mr. Rich as odd was the fact that a good twenty seconds had gone by and Randolph had yet to tell him who these unexpected guests were. Why would his butler let strangers into the mansion and then not fetch the master of the house?

Seeking out the answer for himself, Filthy Rich found a most unexpected group of visitors waiting in his entrance room, namely two princesses, a weather pony and three fillies. Of the fillies he only knew the name of one of them, and only then because she was the granddaughter of one of his business partners.

“Hello. It is always a pleasure to have such guests in my home, but to what do I owe this unexpected visit from two princesses?”

“I’m afraid that our visit is not a cordial one. We wish to speak with Miss Diamond Tiara,” Princess Luna answered the business tycoon.

Suddenly the presence of fillies his daughter’s age made sense to Filthy Rich. It probably didn’t hurt that the animosity between his daughter and these three fillies wasn’t exactly a secret. But he could have sworn that that was water under the bridge, as he vaguely recalled Diamond inviting the trio to a pool party or something not too long ago. Ironically enough that also made the adults here even more of a mystery. After all, if this was about kid’s stuff he would have expected Cheerilee to be the visitor, so what did this have to do with royalty and a weather pony?

Before Rich could put his thoughts to words the angelic voice of his daughter came from the top of the stairs.

“Well hello, Princess Twilight, Princess Luna!” Diamond Tiara greeted in a most pleasant tone. “And others,” she added in a much less welcoming voice on seeing those with the royalty. Yet looking back to the princesses Diamond’s voice perked back up, becoming almost smug. “I must admit, I thought Randolph was joking when he said two princesses wanted to talk to me. So what was it that not one, but two princesses wanted to talk to me about?”

“You know darn well what this is about! Your little payback for us carrying the flag at the Equestra Games!” Scootaloo shouted, slamming a hoof on the marble floor.

From the look on Tiara’s face she was either genuinely surprised or a master actress, or maybe both. Regardless she answered, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not mad that you and your friends got to carry the flag at the games, and even if I was, shouldn’t I be mad that the judges that chose your routine over mine?”

“Stop playing dumb! You broke into my house! I was standing right there when you pulled that cockatrice out and turned me to stone! Did you really think I wouldn’t tell on you?!”

Now it was Diamond Tiara’s turn to yell and slam a hoof down. “Is that why you missed school the last two days? Look, as much as I would love to see you turned to stone, there are two huge problems with your featherbrained theory! First, I thought you lived under a bridge or something. So I couldn’t have broken into your house when I didn’t even know you had one, forget where it is! Second, I don’t even know what a cockatrice is, let alone how to use one to turn somepony to stone!”

By the time Tiara had finished her rant she and Scootaloo were standing at most a foot apart, glaring at each other. The adults in the room stood silently, with the exception of Rainbow Dash who hovered silently, all waiting to see what came of this staring contest.

If the fact that she’d been turned to stone wasn’t enough to make Scootaloo’s blood boil the fact that she’s just realized what day it was and that her weekend had been totally ruined was. But as much as she wanted to blame Diamond Tiara anyway, every fiber in Scootaloo’s body was saying that the crusaders’ mortal enemy was telling the truth. But the final nail in the coffin was the message from her dad and the implication that whatever was going on was way bigger than Diamond Tiara. And that thought made another possibility occur to the young pegasus.

“Forget it. She didn’t do it.”

Scootaloo didn’t think her declaration that they were wasting their time here was that big a deal. But apparently she was mistaken as she was suddenly wrapped in Twilight’s magic and pulled to the side in such a way that Rainbow Dash, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom all rallied defensively to her side.

“Scootaloo, you can’t go accusing ponies of crimes like that just because you don’t like them!”

More than Twilight’s words, her disappointed and admonishing tone and look sent Scootaloo’s mind spinning. Why did it sound like she was being treated like the bad guy all of a sudden? Then she realized that Twilight, the spirit of magic, hadn’t jumped to the same conclusion as she had.

“No! I saw Diamond Tiara turn me to stone! But I also believe her. She is too stupid to know what a cockatrice is-”

“Hey!”

“-So whoever turned me to stone must have been using some kind of illusion magic to make themselves look like Diamond Tiara.”

“I suppose that makes sense. But illusion magic like that is fairly high level, which begs the question, why would a high-level magic user want to turn Scootaloo to stone?” Twilight asked.

“Maybe it was a changeling? All of them can look like anypony they want,” Apple Bloom suggested.

“Also possible. But same question, why would a high-level magic user or a changeling want to turn Scootaloo to stone?”

Turning her back to the pondering princess, the mysterious permission given by her dad made it clear to Scootaloo that he was the one pony who might know what was really going on. A small smile graced her face as it dawned on her that the princess of the night might know where he was.

“Luna?”

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“My dad’s a royal guard. He works for you. So, do you know where he is?”

A slight glimmer in Luna’s eye hinted at a sudden understanding, and yet she answered, “I am sorry. But I can not tell you where he is.”

Scootaloo may have had an ace-in-the-hole with her father, but not only did she have no such thing with Luna, but what the filly did know had to be kept secret from the princess of the night. So all she could do was to do her best puppy-dog face and plead, “Please, I think he might know what’s going on.”

“You misunderstand me, Scootaloo. I literally can not tell you. Given the nature of your father’s… investigation, he could be anywhere in Equestria right now. I will not know when he was where until his investigation is complete and he files his mission report.”

“Oh. How about Captain Cloud Wall?”

The shake of a head didn’t bode well for the answer to Scootaloo’s question.

After a moment of tapping her chin Luna answered, “Same problem I’m afraid. I believe he was investigating a crime ring that has been smuggling illegal magic artifacts. So again he could be anywhere at the moment.”

A frown crept onto Scootaloo’s face. Then a single eyebrow went up as the princess’s words filtered through the filly’s mind. Luna refused to mention the nature of her dad’s mission, but she volunteered Cloud Wall’s. Did that mean Cloud’s mission had him openly acting like a member of the royal guard? And did that mean she might find him by asking around the guard stations?

A smile flashed on the young pegasus’ face before she remember that Luna’s answer was meant to be heard as a negative one. Bowing her head and sighing in mock disappointment, Scootaloo turned and walked away, heading for the door.

Seeing their friend about to leave the Rich manor, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom went after her.

“Wait up!”

“Where are ya going?”

Scootaloo gave a two-word answer. “My house.”

Seeing the three crusaders leaving, Rainbow Dash nodded her head toward the trio. A quick unspoken conversation followed with Twilight giving an approving nod and Dash responding with a salute and flying after the three fillies, leaving the princesses to diplomatically apologize for the hastily made accusations.

* * * * * * *

Had it been any other day Scootaloo would have been thrilled that her best friends and her personal hero and honorary big sister seemed to think they needed to hang out with and comfort her. But today she had a lot on her mind, and that last thought just made her add ‘think of a shorter but still suitably awesome title for Rainbow Dash’ to that list. Okay maybe it wasn’t a long list as the new addition brought her to-do list up to three items, but the first two were important enough to count as a lot.

Regardless, what mattered was that Scootaloo’s dad had given her permission to use it. And that meant that he had known all along that this was way bigger than Diamond Tiara. It also meant that her dad thought that it might be needed, which realistically meant that by giving her permission to use it, he was really asking her to bring it to him. And most importantly this was the first time since Las Pegasus that her dad had asked her to do anything even remotely shadow-ops related for him. And to top it all off this wasn’t just anything, this was the biggest, most important secret she knew.

But now that Scootaloo was standing in her room surrounded by friends that weren’t allowed to know her family’s secrets, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Or maybe there was. If she was going to deliver it to her dad, first she needed to figure out where he was. The filly’s first instinct was to check her window, but her outside windowsill proved to be note-less. So much for getting lucky, she thought to herself.

Next Scootaloo turned back to her room, namely the spot where she’s seen Diamond Tiara.

“That’s new.”

“What is?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“This is where Diamond Tiara was standing when she turned me to stone. But I don’t remember these scratches in the floor,” Scootaloo answered, motioning to the fresh scars in her wooden floorboards.

“They don’t look like the kind of scratches you make with the edge of your hooves either,” Sweetie Belle observed.

Landing beside the spot in question, Rainbow Dash gave the scratches a look.

“That because they’re talon marks. And judging from the size, I’d say they’re a griffin’s.”

“That… doesn’t help. I don’t know any griffins,” Scootaloo said, frowning.

“Are there any griffins in Ponyville?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is that Le Grand guy.”

“Who’s that?” the three fillies couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh, some chef that entered a baking contest against Pinkie Pie. We rode the train to Canterlot together. He makes some pretty good eclairs. Don’t suppose you did anything to tick him off lately, squirt?” Dash asked.

Scootaloo shook her head. “Not that I know of. I haven’t crashed my scooter into anything lately. Do you really think he’d turn me to stone over something like that?”

“Probably not,” Rainbow Dash conceded. Then her eyes lit up with revelation. “Maybe it wasn’t anything you did!” The excited remark drew only questioning looks from the three younger ponies, prompting Dash to explain. “You said Diamond Tiara said that this was ‘revenge for the Equestria Games’ didn’t you? Well, Ponyville did win the metal count in the games! And you three were the flag bearers for Ponyville at the opening ceremony.”

“Ah guess that makes sense,” Apple Bloom said, nodding.

“I don’t know. Sounds kind of petty for a professional sports team.”

“I’m with Sweetie Belle on this one. Why come after me when the flag bearers were the only ones who couldn’t win medals in the games?” Scootaloo voiced her concerns with the theory.

“Well, have you three got any better ideas?” Rainbow asked, half honestly and half impatiently.

Rainbow Dash waited a moment, but with no timely responses she opened her wings and said, “Then I’m going to tell Twilight about this. Knowing we might be looking for a griffin should help her investigate.” With that she opened Scootaloo’s window and leapt out.

In the back of her mind, Scootaloo gave a sigh of relief once Rainbow Dash had left. Now she just needed to get her friends to leave her alone, so she could tend to the secret stuff her dad seemed to have tasked her with.

Dang, the young pegasus thought to herself as she realized her friends had that look in their eyes. The one that said ‘something bad happened to you, so now we won’t leave your side until we think you feel better.’

“So what do we do now?” Apple Bloom asked, breaking the silence that had formed in the wake of Rainbow Dash’s departure.

Bloom’s gaze had been on Scootaloo when she asked the question, but after the pegasus didn’t respond Sweetie Belle answered instead. “There’s always crusading for our cutie marks. What haven’t we tried?”

Both of Scootaloo’s friends started tapping a hoof to their chins, not so much thinking about what they wanted to try to earn their cutie marks, as they were pondering what they thought Scootaloo would enjoy doing in the name of earning their cutie marks.

“If you two want to crusade for your cutie marks, fine. But I’m not in the mood for that right now.”

Scootaloo’s declaration was met with a swift and identical response from both of her friends.

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

“Uh…” Scootaloo hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to her friends, but given the nature of the task she believed her father had left her, she certainly couldn’t tell them what she wanted to do. Not completely anyway. “I…I think I need to take something to my dad,” she finally answered.

Apple Bloom was quick to ask, “You’re talking about that mysterious ‘it’ your dad mentioned aren’t ya?”

Somewhere in the back of Scootaloo’s mind she knew if their positions were reversed her curiosity would be just as bad. Bowing her head in defeat, Scootaloo sighed and said, “Yes. But it’s a secret. I can’t tell you what it is, and I can’t show it to you, or I’d be in big trouble.”

Sweetie Belle seemed ready to back down and give her friend some privacy, but then Apple Bloom said, “That’s fine. You don’t need to do either of those for us to help you.”

She didn’t? Scootaloo’s eyes fell on an empty set of saddlebags. Bloom was right, she didn’t. As long as… “You two promise not to try and peek in my bags once I have it?” she asked.

Once both of her friends had given their word that they would respect her secret, the young pegasus took her saddlebags and said, “Okay… just stay in my room while I go get it.”

Scootaloo had barely gotten into position in the hall when she had to say, “I said stay in my room.”

“What? We are!” Apple Bloom said, as she and Sweetie Belle sat in the doorway to Scootaloo’s room.

In hindsight it didn’t matter if her friends saw what was about to happen, so Scootaloo just coiled her legs and brought her wings to life. Above her was a frame with a flat panel that looked much like the rest of the ceiling.

Although Scootaloo’s wings may not have given her flight they did cancel out most of her weight. So when she finally jumped she shot through the frame in the ceiling with ease, knocking the unsecured panel out of the way in the process.

On the other end of the jump her hooves came down on the floor of the attic. Like most attics this one was clearly a storage space for long forgotten things. Maybe a little sparse compared to most, but it still had some random boxes, some storage chests, a couple of bookshelves and the like.

In one corner there was even a large heavy-duty safe, containing a few documents from her dad’s work if what she’d been told about it was right. Just little things like out-dated patrol routes, a map showing the location of secret military installations, (most of which didn’t actually exist.) and maybe a few old records that were too embarrassing for the government to leave in official archives but too important to destroy. Despite all of that, Scootaloo knew that the safe was a decoy, a tantalizing treasure to convince any thief that they had already found the greatest secret within the house.

Instead the filly made her way over to a bookshelf that was only about as tall as the average stallion and only had enough room for three shelves. Seeing as the wall behind the bookshelf had to match the angle of the roof, there was a gap between the bookshelf and wall that made a decent crawlspace.

Hidden away within that crawlspace was a lever. A lever that was now held in a small orange hoof, and yet, Scootaloo hesitated for a moment. Was this really what her father wanted? In his message he’d only given her permission to use it after all. Shaking the doubt from her mind she assured herself that this was how shadow ops worked, and of course he’d been vague, he had to pass the message to her through ponies who weren’t allowed to know what was truly going on.

She pulled the lever and a distinct click was heard from somewhere below.

Returning to the entrance to the attic, Scootaloo propped up the panel that once covered it so that it would fall back into place as soon as she got out of the way and then jumped back down into the living space of the house.

Even though she felt the gaze of her friends from the doorway to her room, Scootaloo gave no acknowledgement of them as she made her way downstairs. Thankfully her friends correctly interpreted that to mean they were still supposed to stay in her room.

As for Scootaloo, she made her way to the first-floor hallway and opened a small closet. Reaching under a shelf at the back of the closet, she turned the right most support to the side and the click of something unlocking was heard.

With a push the back wall swung open, revealing that the closet was about two feet deeper then it first appeared to be. And in that hidden space was a steep, narrow stairwell descending into the ground beneath the house.

At the bottom of the stairs the underground passageway opened up a little. Not much, but enough that an adult could comfortably walk through it. Although the passageway before her went on for a few hundred yards, Scootaloo didn’t go more than twenty feet before she stopped.

The only thing keeping the infinite darkness at bay were a few enchanted glow stones embedded into the ceiling of the tunnel. Sparsely spaced as they were, they were still enough for Scootaloo to spot the small wooden panel in the wall that was ajar.

Opening the panel she then punched in a three-digit code on the keypad behind it, causing a section of the wall beside the keypad to open up. In addition to revealing the new pathway, putting the code in had caused the sound of a small motor to turn on from somewhere in the newly revealed tunnel.

An adult would have had to crawl on their belly through the secret passage within a secret passage, and even Scootaloo had to walk with her keens bent to the point where her belly was almost touching the floor.

She hadn’t gotten far when she felt the dirt floor become a metal grate. Knowing what was below, Scootaloo couldn’t help but tense her muscles as she crawled out onto the grate. Halfway across the grate a click sounded and with a much louder clang the grate below swung open, allowing the filly to fall to her doom.

Or she would have if not for the layer fog in the pit below, courtesy of the fog machine chugging away within said pit. That and being a pegasus helped, as her ability to walk on clouds meant that Scootaloo barely moved at all when the trapdoor gave out beneath her.

Continuing to crawl across the top of the fog-machine-made cloud, Scootaloo easily reached the far side of the pit, and with the last line of defense behind her she continued down the remainder of the secret tunnel.

The room at the end of the passageway was a simple one, with sturdy wooden support beams and stone walls giving the place a very mine-like feel. Even though she was alone down here, as Scootaloo emerged into the room the ghosts of the past appeared in her mind’s eye, and she could still hear them as they played out the only memories she had down here.

* * * * * * *

A Scootaloo, from over a year ago crawled out of the passageway, and looked up to her father, who was standing off to one side, brushing off the dirt he’d acquired crawling through that same passage.

“What’s that?” Scootaloo asked, pointing to the only other thing in the room.

The lone, mostly silver object sat on a small stone block in the middle of the room. With its silver rings, frames and shoe it looked halfway between a boot and a knee-high leg brace, a fancy one given the metal it appeared to be made of. On the bottom of the boot part of the device was a clear crystal lens. The supports that would go up the sides of the leg also had a long thin crystal embedded in the silver, that revealed a chamber with liquid rainbow was housed in the supports. Near the top of one of the side supports was a white button. The device ended in a silver ring that seemed like it was meant to fit around the leg just below the knee.

Looking down at the device Scootaloo’s father said, “It’s the secret I’m sworn to keep and protect. A secret that has been passed from parent to child for generations, a secret that has been kept hidden for over a thousand years.”

“I get it, dad. But what is it?”

“A weapon.”

“So, who are we keeping it secret from?”

“Everyone. When your grandma handed it down to me she said that when the princess ordered it hidden away she gave the first guardian strict instructions that it was to be kept secret even from her, so that not even she would know where it had gone. It is something that time is meant to forget. But we weren’t, somepony had to keep it around because even though it is truly dangerous, it is my understanding it that was once used to do something truly good, and the princess wanted it kept around so that it could be used that way again. When the time was right.”

“But if the princess isn’t allowed to know about it, who gets to say when the time is right?”

“Only the guardian watching over it can make that call. So right now me, and someday, when you’re old enough, you.”

Little Scootaloo gazed into the silver of the device deeply enough to see her own reflection before asking, “So how do you know when the right time is?”

Her father laughed. “Like I said, it’s been kept secret for over a thousand years. Wars have come and gone, and as far as I can tell the guardians at the time have kept this hidden, so whatever it is needs to be really important if war alone isn’t a good enough reason. From the rumors it’s probably something that’s meant to be used against powerful dark magic. Save the world stuff, like your comic books or something.”

“Rumors?”

“Yeah. Turns out when you pass something down through the generations, under conditions of secrecy, the details get lost along the way. Even your grandma didn’t know how much of what she’d been told was true or just the myths that formed about it.”

The pure awe glowing in the filly’s eyes slowly faded as she gazed down at the object before her, slowly being replaced with a lone eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Dad, why are you telling me all of this now?”

A genuine smile graced the stallion’s face. “Because you’ve known the true nature of my job for three months now, and I haven’t heard a single rumor floating around town about how special Scootaloo’s dad is. So obviously you’ve kept my secret. And more importantly you’ve proved that you are a big enough filly that you can stay home alone now. But if you’re going to do that then you need to know this is here.”

Tilting her head to the side Scootaloo asked, “Why?”

“Because seeing as it’s a weapon you can use it to protect it. Or if it looks like you need to abandon the house, this is the one thing you need to escape with.” After pausing for a moment the stallion added, “I’d prefer if you tried to escape first. Fight only if you don’t see any other way out. Here I’ll show you how it works.”

As he went through the motions of demonstrating the basic use of the artifact he said, “All you have to know is how to turn it on, and that it shoots out of the lens on the bottom. So just point your hoof at the target and push the button to fire. And be careful, I’m told it’s pretty powerful.”

“How powerful?”

Returning the device to its place he told his daughter, “I have no idea. I’ve never had a reason to fire it. And from what I was told it hasn’t been fired since it was first used eons ago. So hopefully you’ll never have a reason to fire it either.”

With a bit of a grin he added, “For now, just keep this secret. And who knows, if you do a good job at that, maybe I’ll let you come to work with me for once.”

* * * * * * *

As the memories of the past faded from her mind’s eye, Scootaloo couldn’t help but wonder how long had it been since that day? She couldn’t remember exactly, but she could remember that she hadn’t met Apple Bloom by then.

Regardless, that had been the day Scootaloo had earned her father’s trust as a secret keeper. Ironically enough, when he’s made good on his word, that would become the day she lost his confidence as a secret agent, and been doomed to forever be left behind to ‘guard the fort’ as he always said. That was until today, anyway.

Closing her eyes for a second she refocused her mind, and then reached down and put her leg into the device. Being the magical artifact that it was, it glowed slightly with a soft white light and shrank down until it fit her perfectly. With its smaller, more convent size she took it off the pedestal and slipped it into her right side saddlebag.

Emerging back into her house she closed the secret passage at the back of the closet and returned to her room.

Apple Bloom greeted her with, “So are ya ready?”

A nod answered the question.

“So what do we do to find your dad?” Sweetie asked.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but grin before answering. “We track him down the hard way. How are you feeling about Cutie Mark Crusader Detectives?”

Chapter 3: Fieldtrip of Fate

Much to Scootaloo’s dismay the Ponyville guard station had no record of her father being stationed there. Needless to say they couldn’t tell her where her dad was, and not being a central hub they didn’t have the records of where her dad was stationed. With their only real lead exhausted, there was little surprise when the day ended and she and her friends were calling it a night empty hoofed.

Thanks to a reminder from her friends the night before, the next day saw Scootaloo ready for an explanation to Cheerilee and a field trip with the class.

The good news was that between the rough first draft (as Cheerilee called it) and the news that she’d missed class on account of being turned to stone, her teacher gave Scootaloo credit for her part in the Hoofer Dam assignment.

The more good news was that the field trip had the class going to the Baltimare Magical Artifacts Museum. While the museum itself had no value to Scootaloo, the idea that she could slip away during the lunch break and ask around the Baltimare guard station for signs of her father had inspired her to bring her family secret with her. Granted it was a wild long shot, but it was all she had to work with.

Of course that meant she had to get through the museum tour first. And sitting in the entrance room of the building with its grand pillars and marble floors was already trying Scootaloo’s patience. Had she been paying more attention she might have noticed the odd exchange of words between Cheerilee and the tour guide. Namely that her teacher had thanked the museum staff for the invitation and the tour guide had responded by saying she wasn’t doing anything that wouldn’t be done for anyone else who reserved a tour.

Instead Scootaloo was focused on pacing in circles, paying attention to the weight in her saddlebags. Like any other inanimate object it dutifully weighed her down, waiting patiently.

“Come along class!” Cheerilee finally told her students, motioning for them to follow the guide.

The tour began with the wing dedicated to magic artifacts of historical significance. Mostly stuff where the names like Star Swirl or Meadow Brook came up. Maybe some other names came up too, but Scootaloo had basically tuned out what the tour guide was saying by the third artifact.

The artifacts themselves captured her interest though. The polished metals and various crystals and gems that they had caught her eye. Most seemed to be primarily made of gold or silver, although the older ones seemed to prefer bronze or brass and even a few wooden artifacts could be found.

As the tour went on Scootaloo couldn’t help but notice that unicorn made artifacts seemed to use gemstones and/or enchanted, runic etchings to serve as the power source, seemingly without exception. Interestingly enough, just as she was wondering if unicorns ever made magic artifacts that used liquid rainbow as a power source, Apple Bloom put a similar question to words. The tour guide laughed and then tried to explain that potion making was considered a different field all together, so ‘potion-powered devices’ weren’t considered ‘magic artifacts’ as diplomatically as possible despite the dismissive laugh that preceded it.

Entering yet another room not only Scootaloo, but all of the class’s eyes fell on a simple wand, made of ebony steel and topped with a dark purple gem. A black and purple darkness swirled in the gem that made the crusaders’ skin crawl.

“What’s that?” Sweetie Belle asked, with a timid note in her voice.

Taking a position beside the glass box containing the artifact in question, the tour guide said, “That is a shadow crystal. An artifact of such powerful dark magic that it draws in all magic that touches it and turns it into more dark magic. The rod is actually just to handle it safely, as touching the crystal directly results in excruciating pain. Or so I’m told, on rather good word I might add.”

Suddenly Scootaloo couldn’t shake the feeling that a glass box and a velvet-rope barrier didn’t seem like enough security for this display.

“Isn’t it kind of dangerous to have something like that out in the open like this?” Sweetie Belle said, putting the shared concerns to words.

The guide just smiled and said, “Don’t be a silly filly. Powerful artifacts are never put on display. This is just a replica made by one of our artists. The only magic this thing has is a little bit of illusion magic to make it look exactly like the real thing. The real one is safely locked away in the vault, in the basement.”

With that the guide moved on, leading the group to another display and giving a quick explanation of the artifact being presented.

They had made it about half way around the room when the floor in the center of the room exploded. Bits of concrete, marble flooring, and the displays that use to be in the middle of the room sailed outward from the blast.

Colts screamed like fillies, fillies screamed like fillies and a few adults screamed like fillies, some just screamed. Among all of the screaming only Cheerilee’s scream of ‘Take cover!’ was remotely coherent.

Also strangely accustom to random catastrophic explosions (possibly for related reasons,) the three crusaders acted on instinct and found the largest piece of debris headed their way and jumped to be anywhere else. And as soon as their bellies hit the floor they covered their heads with their front legs to shield themselves from all the smaller stuff they couldn’t hope to dodge.

While her friends had closed their eyes as they cowered, Scootaloo dared to keep one eye open and peak out from under her hoof. Among the falling rubble two things captured her attention. First the replica shadow crystal landing on the floor, a few feet away. Second was an oddly familiar, white stallion of the royal guard landing a few feet beyond that, with another shadow crystal grasped in his mouth.

The instant the pegasus stallion’s eyes came back into focus from his hard landing, he spotted the replica and a millisecond after that he saw the orange filly just beyond it. The moment their eyes met, the corners of the stallion’s mouth gave a hint of a smile and immediately he spat out the wand with the shadow crystal and leapt at the replica instead.

With the shadow-crystal topped wand sliding right at her, Scootaloo didn’t even think twice before stretching out her neck, biting down on the metal rod, and stuffing the artifact into her left side saddlebag.

Scootaloo pulled her muzzle out of her saddlebag and looked back up just in time to see five more pegasi come out of the basement’s new skylight. The mare and stallion with white coats and blue manes, who wore golden armor were clearly of the royal guard. And much like the stallion on the floor a few feet from her, Scootaloo even knew their names. On the other hoof, the three pegasi who wore only saddlebags positioned to cover up their cutie marks were complete strangers to her.

Of the three bandit pegasi, the stallion of the group had a midnight blue coat, black mane, and his brown eyes were currently darting around the room searching for something.

That was when Cloud Wall stood up with the replica shadow crystal in his mouth and said, “Loofing for thish?” And with that the royal guard captain flapped his wings and bolted into the air.

That definitely got the bandit’s attention, and he then darted after Cloud.

By now Scootaloo’s friends had noticed that the debris had stopped falling around them and so they dared to open their eyes.

The first thing to catch Apple Bloom’s eyes were the royal guard mare and the bandit mare with a gray coat and rusty red mane trading blows in the air, a few feet from the balcony above her.

The first thing to grab Sweetie Belle’s attention was the royal guard stallion brawling with the other bandit mare. The pegasus bandit in question had a lime-green coat and blond mane. The two bounced off of each other as a result of both landing decent kicks on the other’s torso. The guard flapped his wings hard and recovered from his fall inches above the floor, while the bandit kicked off of one of the few displays still standing in the room to recover from her spin. Both darted right back at each other, resuming their fight in the air over the hole in the floor.

By now everypony in the room was starting to realize what was going on and new shouting joined the chaos of the moment. A teacher shouting for her students, museum staff shouting for everyone to head for the main hall, and guards and bandits shouting at each other as they fought.

Scootaloo didn’t hear a word of it. Instead her mind was so focused on Captain Cloud Wall and the fact that the captain just flew through a doorway on the balcony that the sounds of everything around her seemed muffled. Her eyes shrank to dots at the thought that her best chance of finding her dad just left the room, and the only impulse she could feel was the one that told her to go after him.

Even as the bandit followed through the same doorway as the captain, Scootaloo’s eyes had already locked onto a doorway below that one, on her own floor, that looked like it would lead to the same room and dashed at it.

Seeing their pegasus friend run off in the opposite direction that their teacher was calling the class left Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle in a moment of indecision. But if nothing else, the crusaders were friends and soon they ran after Scootaloo. Only Sweetie Belle took a moment to glance over her shoulder as she left the room, to see that Cheerilee was too busy corralling other students to see the trio of fillies chasing after the fight instead of fleeing from it.

As Scootaloo ran through the short hallway, she couldn’t help but notice something felt off about her saddlebags. Namely that they weren’t touching her sides anymore, almost as if she had two magnets in them, each repelling the other. But she didn’t have time for distractions right now, so she banished the thought from her mind and continued on, despite the increasingly uneasy feeling growing in her gut.

Emerging into another room of the museum, Scootaloo found new cries of surprise filling the air, as Cloud Wall flipped over the balcony railing in a less than controlled manner and smashed into a display formerly containing a golden crown and scepter. As the captain came to a sudden halt the shadow crystal replica went flying.

Scootaloo ducked behind the nearest set of enchanted pony armor and peeked out to watch the captain and bandit both jump for the errant replica.

A second later, the sudden feeling of presence made her look back to find her friends joining her in taking cover behind the armor display.

“Ah know this is exciting to watch an all, but won’t Miss Cheerilee get awful upset with us for ignoring her like this?” Apple Bloom asked in a whisper.

“I’m sorry, but this is too important. So I don’t care if I get in trouble. I need to talk to him,” Scootaloo whispered, motioning to the guard captain currently brawling with the bandit over the shadow crystal replica.

“Fine, Cutie Mark Crusader Fieldtrip Ditchers it is,” Bloom muttered with a sigh, shaking her head slightly.

Right about then the bandit pegasus managed to land a good kick on his opponent, sending the captain tumbling to the floor and the shadow crystal replica sliding free across the marble floor. Snatching the fake wand off the floor, he yelled, “Got it!” Then he promptly took flight, soaring out the nearest window.

A second later the two bandit mares appeared in the sky outside the window, followed by one of the royal guards. The mare of the guards however came blitzing into the room and spotting her captain sprawled out on the floor came to a hover just above him.

“Sergeant?” Captain Cloud Wall asked.

“Chasing.”

Motioning for Scootaloo to come out from her hiding place, Cloud said, “Thank Celestia you’re quick, kid. Now let’s get out of here before they realize they stole a fake.” As soon as he’d finished speaking the captain raised an eyebrow at the realization that not one, but three fillies came out from behind the armor display.

“Wait! Don’t Ah know you?” Apple Bloom asked.

“We’ve met in passing before, yes. But now isn’t the time for that. Let’s go!” Cloud Wall insisted, as he started leading the way toward the exit.

Cloud had barely stepped into the entrance hall when he suddenly stopped and shot his hoof out to the side. Bumming into the unexpected obstacle, Scootaloo backed up, raised a single eyebrow and gave the captain a ‘what gives?’ look.

“There are two ponies out there with press hats,” he explained.

Now it was Sweetie Belle’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “What’s the big deal? The museum just got robbed. Isn’t that a newsworthy story?”

“Exactly, kid. The museum just got robbed, like forty-five seconds ago. There’s no way anypony from the actual press should be here already, they must be with the robbers.” With that the captain turned around and headed deeper into the museum, adding, “Let’s go slip out the back door instead.”

Soon the five ponies found themselves peeking cautiously out an open door marked ‘Garden Exhibit.’

“Where is everypony? Ah mean, Ah’m not surprised that the museum is empty but it looks like they’ve clear outa here already too!” Apple Bloom pondered aloud.

A guilty smile crept onto Cloud Wall’s face. “My team and I weren’t here because of luck you know. We had reason to think something was going down today, so we may have dropped a not so subtle hint to the museum staff that they should be ready to clear everypony out on a moment’s notice today.”

As they left the building, they traded the marble floor and plaster walls for smooth brick paths and walls made of hedgerows and backed by black iron fences. On the grass, on the sides of the path was an assortment of magic artifacts. Some being really tall like the enchanted lightning rod next to the building and others being magic artifacts designed to react to the sun or rain, all of them accompanied by the usual plaques describing them in more detail.

As soon as they had entered the garden area, the two royal guard ponies bolted, inspiring the trio of fillies to do the same. Yet Apple Bloom had an observation she couldn’t help but share. “This place looks awful walled in! Are ya sure there’s an exit around here?”

The two adults and even Scootaloo all giggled at the question.

“What are you laughing at? You can’t fly either!” Bloom reminded her pegasus friend.

The reason Scootaloo had joined in the laughter was that she’d already noticed the one display that was out of place. Being the only magic artifact sitting on the brick path the royal-guard pegasus chariot stood out to her. It didn’t hurt that the plaque next to it had a distinctly impermanent design that separated it from the other artifact’s plaques out here.

Cloud Wall quickly grabbed the plaque next to the chariot and tossed it into the nearest bush.

“Wait! I know you’re guards and all but that doesn’t mean you can steal the museum’s guard chariot!” Sweetie Belle protested.

“Yeah… this never belonged to the museum in the first place,” Cloud explained as he slipped into the harness. A second later he added, “Hold on to something!”

Scootaloo had already grabbed hold of the bench on the right side of the chariot, but the captain’s words prompted Sweetie Belle to mirror Scootaloo on the left side bench. At the same time Apple Bloom stood up and used her front hooves to grab the top of the leading wall of the chariot like a proper rider.

Flapping his wings hard and pushing off hard with his legs, Captain Cloud Wall pulled the chariot into the sky. Judging from the screams maybe a second before two of the fillies were ready for hard acceleration, but a glance over his shoulder confirmed that no pony had fallen out.

With her friends defeating the point of keeping quiet even Scootaloo couldn’t help but let out a cry of her own, although in her case it was more of a cheer than a scream.

On the city streets below few noticed the royal guards flying overhead, and the ones who did mostly only to wonder why they were flying so low, staying well below the tops of the buildings around them.

As they flew north Sweetie Belle joined Scootaloo in looking out the open back of the chariot and admiring the city as it rush by. However, Apple Bloom couldn’t take her eyes off of the stallion pulling said chariot through the sky.

“So where do Ah know you from?” Bloom finally put her thoughts to words.

“I’m friends with her dad. I gave you a ride to a library once, but outside of that I don’t believe we’ve crossed paths,” he answered, giving a nod in Scootaloo’s general direction.

The hasty retreat from the museum lasted at most a minute before Cloud Wall brought the chariot down, landing and taking cover in the first patch of trees he could find.

Breathing heavy from his aerial sprint Cloud said, “Oh wow, you’re a life saver, Scootaloo. And thank Celestia that you’re quick enough to figure out what to do even without the briefing. Heck I’m surprised you were even here.”

“What do you mean?” Scootaloo asked, tilting her head slightly.

“I left you a note Saturday but when you were a no show Sunday I figured you were sick or something. I mean it’s not like you to not show up even if all you can do is explain why you’re too busy to help. So yeah, I figured you wouldn’t even be on that fieldtrip I set up for your class.”

“Wait! You arranged that fieldtrip?” Sweetie Belle asked the stallion.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, like I said I wanted Scootaloo on site. But given the formalities involved I had to set the ball rolling on that last week. Say why didn’t you respond to my note?” he said, aiming the last part at the pegasus filly.

“Someone using an illusion spell turned me to stone, and no pony found me until Monday. And speaking of what you wanted me to do, can you hurry up and take this thing? It’s giving me the creeps.”

“That’s… that’s a new one,” Cloud managed to say, clearly caught off guard by the answer.

Opening her left side saddlebag and motioning for the elder pegasus to take the contents, Scootaloo added, “Oh and I need to talk to you about dad.”

The instant the dark magic artifact was removed from her saddlebag the feeling that Scootaloo could only liken to a weird magnetic tempest in her gut also vanished.

Also as Captain Cloud Wall withdrew the former museum artifact from the filly’s bag, Sweetie Belle gasped and said, “You stole the shadow crystal?!”

“Well technically the royal guard gave this to the museum in the first place, and if I’d known this was what the thieves were after I could’ve just asked for it back and removed it this morning. But I didn’t. So hence the rather improvised method,” Cloud explained to Sweetie. Then turning to Scootaloo, he added, “So what’s this about your dad?”

Taking a deep breath and putting on her serious face, Scootaloo railed off, “When dad found out I’d been turned to stone, he asked me to bring him something important, but he didn’t say where to bring it, so I need your help finding him!”

Taking note of the weight bulge in Scootaloo’s right side saddlebag Cloud Wall said, “I might be able to help with that. But seeing as your teacher will notice your absence soon, maybe I should just take it to him for you.”

“No. You’re not allowed to know what it is,” she stated flatly.

“I’m not allowed to know?” the captain repeated in relative disbelief.

Scootaloo simply shook her head to confirm her statement.

Taking a moment to consider the authenticity of the filly’s assertion Cloud tapped a hoof on his chin. Looking the filly over he couldn’t help but notice the dead serious look on her face and the shimmer of determination in her eyes.

Finally he asked, “Who is allowed to know?”

Now it was Scootaloo’s turn to pause and think for a moment. “Just me and dad, I think.”

A hint of revelation flashed in Cloud Wall’s eyes. “Ohhh… one of those kinds of secrets.” Soon the captain’s eyes found their way back to Scootaloo’s friends, then to the mare that happened to be his coworker. “Lieutenant, can you take these two back to the museum? Tell them that we have the missing artifact and tell Scootaloo’s teacher that we’re keeping her for questioning or something.”

The lieutenant nodded.

“No.”

All eyes fell on the yellow filly who had just spoken.

“Y’all heard me, Ah said ‘no.’ The cutie mark crusaders are a team, so where Scootaloo goes, we go!”

“Yeah, what she said!” Sweetie Belle chimed in.

Cloud Wall stared at Scootaloo. “What?” was all she could say in reply.

“They’re your friends. Can’t you talk them into being reasonable?”

“I don’t think the crusaders have ever been accused of being reasonable. Besides, I already tried.”

“They do know they’re asking to go someplace that could be dangerous right?” Pausing for a second the captain looked to Scootaloo's friends and repeated, “You do know that, right?” Once he's asked the question, he pulled a spare saddlebag from his chariot’s hidden bench compartment.

“We don’t care! If it’s not too dangerous for Scootaloo, it’s not too dangerous for us!” Apple Bloom insisted. Although a worried look crossed Sweetie’s face, she seemed intent to stick with her friends.

With a quick glance into the saddlebag now hanging from his mouth, the dark aura of the artifact within pulsed as if to threaten oblivion to those who lingered in its presence. “Fine, we don’t have time for this.” Turning to the mare, Cloud amended his orders. “Aurora, go inform the museum that the artifact is safe, and give these three a cover story.” Tossing the saddlebag with the shadow crystal in it to the newly arrived stallion, he added, “Comet, take that to HQ. Then meet us at rendezvous point echo.”

“Yeah, that figures,” Comet said in a flat tone of voice that practically screamed ‘I missed something important, didn’t I?’

Chapter 4: Cutie Mark Crusader Secret Agents, Yay!

Once more gathered into the pegasus chariot, the trio of fillies were whisked across the Equestrian countryside. Following the uneventful flight, the fillies soon found themselves sitting in the corner of a Vanhoover police station.

While Cloud Wall spoke with one of the officers of the Vanhoover City Police Department, the three crusaders had to fight their youthful energy’s demand to be up and about. Oddly enough, despite being the most restless of the three, Scootaloo seemed to be handling the boredom the best, her eyes diligently searching and researching the deck of the officer Cloud was talking to.

Apple Bloom’s gaze wandered about the room as she fidgeted and silently wished she better understood what was going on with her pegasus friend.

It was Sweetie Belle’s gaze that first took noticed of the papers pinned to a nearby wall.

“Umm, should we be worried about that?”

“About what?” Apple Bloom asked, following Sweetie’s gaze.

“They look like missing pony pictures, and look how many there are.”

“So?”

“Most of them look like ponies our age,” Sweetie clarified her concern.

“Do you think that’s normal?” Apple Bloom asked.

“I don’t know, how about you, Scoot?”

“Wha-huh?” Scootaloo said, mentally replaying everything she’d heard from her friends but didn’t really pay attention to the first time. Spotting the wall full of missing pony posters helped her piece together enough of the sounds for her to answer with, “How should I know if that’s normal for Vanhoover or not? I’ve never been here before.”

“Sorry, It’s just that with you keeping us in the dark, it seems like you’re the only one of us who knows what’s going on. I mean Apple Bloom and I are kind of out of our element here.”

Scootaloo cringed slightly, as the sorrowful and maybe slightly accusing tone of her unicorn friend felt like a jab in the chest to her. “I’m sorry, but some secrets need to stay secret,” was the only answer she could mumble.

“Why?”

Scootaloo could think of a dozen answers, none of which she could say. How many times had she seen Cloud Wall and his team save the day from the shadows and the resulting newspaper articles be dead wrong about what really happened? How many times had she seen the secrets kept by her dad or Cloud and their teams protect ponies precisely because no pony else knew the truth?

Better yet, how could she explain any of that to her friends without sharing the very secrets that brought misery to those who knew them and joy to those who were ignorant of them? She couldn’t. Or at least she couldn’t think of a way. More impotently there was the misery that having to keep even the more harmless secrets brought her personally. No, there was no way she would spread that burden to her friends.

When she finally answered her friends all she could say was, “They just do.”

Apple Bloom opened her mouth to press the issue but was cut off before she could start.

Done gathering what information he could, Cloud Wall approached the fillies and said, “Well the good news is that your dad was here as recently as this morning. The bad news is that judging from the notes he left, he and his team are running in full shadow-ops mode. The more good news is that it seems he was right the last time we talked. So come on, we should get to the rendezvous point and meet up with the rest of my team.”

* * * * * * *

The rendezvous point turned out to be a rather pleasant little cliff ledge, east of Vanhoover, overlooking the city. A few trees and bushes dotted the ledge and lush grass covered most of the ledge like a soft carpet.

Sweetie Belle’s first impression was that this place would be great for a picnic, well for pegasi anyway as flying was the only easy way to reach this ledge. Admiring the shallow cave in the cliff face behind them, Apple Bloom could see why a group of pegasus guards would use this cliff as a meeting place. The first thing to catch Scootaloo’s eye was the fact that two particular towers in the city were almost perfectly lined up with each other from this point of view, making it fairly easy for any pegasus to find. As long as they knew which two towers to line up and follow away from the city anyway.

Speaking of pegasi, two colorful dots appeared and seemed to dive down and start heading right for the cliff-side meeting place. Of the two, the stallion’s coat and mane were midnight blue and his cutie mark was that of a silver comet. The coat of the approaching mare was a dull pink, her mane a bright yellow, and on her flank was the cutie mark of several green and blue wispy lines not too unlike the northern lights.

The stances of the unicorn and earth pony fillies wavered nervously at the sight of two strangers approaching what they thought was a secret place.

“Who are you?” Apple Bloom asked trying her best to sound casual despite being an earth pony in a place she couldn’t possibly reach on her own.

The mare raised an eyebrow and asked, “You don’t know?”

“Why would Ah know that? Ah’ve never seen you before.”

Looking to Captain Cloud Wall the mare said, “She doesn’t know? They don’t know? But you used our names in their presence already. You shouldn’t do that if they didn’t already know!”

“They’re Scootaloo’s friends and, as much as I’d rather they didn’t, they’re going to be helping us. So they were going to find out one way or another,” Cloud said, shrugging off the death glare coming from his lieutenant.

At that the midnight stallion couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m Sergeant Comet Fall, and this is Lieutenant Aurora Wind,” he added, while motioning to himself and the mare beside him. “What are your names?”

“Sweetie Belle!”

“Ah’m Apple Bloom… Wait a second! Aurora, Comet, doesn’t that make you the other two royal guards? You aren’t even the same color!”

“Not everypony in the guard is blessed with white fur and a royal blue mane, like Captain Cloud here. So the rest of us use dye to be regulation colors when we’re on the clock. And seeing as we’re shadow ops we use a really weak dye that’s easy to wash off. You know, just in case.”

“Shadow ops, that’s the second time I’ve heard that term today. What does it mean?” Sweetie Belle asked.

This time it was Aurora’s turn to chuckle. “You really haven’t told them a thing, have you? Consider me impressed, kid,” she said, looking at Scootaloo. The pegasus filly heard enough of the lieutenant’s tone to know it was a rhetorical question, so she didn’t bother gracing it with an answer. Looking back to the other fillies, Lieutenant Aurora just smiled and added, “It’s exactly what it sounds like. We’re the secret agents of the royal guard. And everything you’ve seen and heard today never happened. Got it?”

Something about the way that Aurora used her wings to ruffle the manes of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle seemed both playful and threatening, to the point where both fillies felt that they really should nod slowly in agreement.

Seeing the moment of apprehension in the two, Captain Cloud Wall jumped on the opportunity to ask, “Are you sure you two want to stick around long enough to have decent odds of getting hurt?”

With a nervous glance Sweetie Belle asked, “Scootaloo?”

The young pegasus gave her right side saddlebag a pat. “I have to get this to my dad, and Cloud Wall is my best bet at finding him. I have to go, but there’s no reason you have to come.”

“Forget it! You’re our friend and fellow cutie mark crusader, so we’re not letting you do this alone!” Apple Bloom said, stomping a hoof on the ground hard enough to kick up a ring of dust through the grass.

Both Scootaloo and Cloud placed a hoof on their forehead and sighed. “Fine.”

Pulling his helmet off, Cloud Wall added, “Alright team, and fillies who are tagging along despite my opposition, here’s what we know. First it seems our case has run into a common thread with my friend’s case. Thanks to the notes left at the police station, we know that the alias ‘Dark Feather’ has been popping up far too frequently in both investigations for it to be coincidence.”

Giving a nod toward Scootaloo, the captain continued, “And from what the kid told me, I can only imagine one reason to petrify somepony and then leave them where they won’t be mistaken for a statue, that being a stalling tactic. Something big is going down, and it's going to happen soon.”

Cloud Wall continued, “Hopefully, this morning at the museum bought us some time. But if the legends are true there are six of those shadow crystals, so unless the enemy plans on needing all six, I suspect we at most inconvenienced them. Granted, I may be jumping to the same conclusions as her father.”

“Oh come on! Doesn’t anypony say his name?” Sweetie Belle blurted out at yet another overt refusal for somepony to speak the name of Scootaloo’s dad.

“No, we don’t. We never use names on a mission, only rank. And if you’re going to tag along with us, then don’t you dare so much as breath anypony’s name either,” Lieutenant Aurora answered, glaring the unicorn filly into silence.

“We don’t exactly have titles. What are we supposed to call each other?” Apple Bloom complained.

Cloud gave a slight grin and motioned to Scootaloo. “As far as I’m concerned this kid is the only one on my team. The rest of you fuzzballs are tagging along on your own, so keeping you two in line is her problem. As for you, kid, as soon as we get back into the city I need you to find some dirt to roll around in. It seems the missing pony cases are mostly of homeless foals all of a sudden, so you’ll need to pass for one if you’re going to bait our trap. But we need to be quick, we only have a few hours before school lets out and it won’t be unusual for a filly to be wandering the streets.”

Scootaloo gave a quick salute. “Yes, captain!”

By now the two adults serving under Cloud had put on black cloth vests that had an assortment of pockets. Turning to his team, Captain Cloud Wall gave the order, “Okay everypony, grab a filly and let’s move out!”

Scootaloo quickly fluttered her wings and hopped onto the captain’s back. The sergeant lowered himself down, allowing Apple Bloom to climb on. The lieutenant took the order literally and scooped up Sweetie Belle with her front legs, taking flight with the unicorn filly dangling beneath her.

* * * * * * *

“We’ve been wandering around for hours! How long is this going to take? Do we even know where we are?” Apple Bloom protested as they rounded the corner of yet another random street, with yet another street name that meant nothing to the filly.

The buildings to either side looked like apartment buildings, mostly of brick construction. While not in true disrepair the occasional crack in a window or wall was proof that the maintenance of the buildings in this neighborhood was minimal at best.

Patience wasn’t one of Scootaloo’s virtues, but determination was, and it prompted her to answer, “As long as it takes.”

Right about then a small coach painted with a taxi’s colors pulled up beside the trio. “Well hello there. What might three fillies be doing wandering around at this time of day?” a green stallion with a black mane asked in a pleasant tone of voice.

“We’re kinda, maybe, a little bit lost,” Apple Bloom answered the earth pony with the checkerboard cutie mark.

Striking her face with her hoof, Scootaloo said, “How can we be lost when we weren’t going anywhere? We’re just wandering around, remember?”

“Not knowing the way back home counts as lost,” Sweetie Belle pointed out.

Scootaloo’s eye twitched as the temptation to bang her head on the side of the taxicab was growing rapidly within her.

Then the stallion pulling the coach said, “Maybe I can offer you a ride home?”

“Really? That’d be great!” Sweetie squeaked.

“Ya realized we don’t have any money, right?” Bloom asked.

With a friendly nod the taxicab pony said, “That’s fine, it’s not like I’m bumping a paying customer for you.”

With that the stallion gave a kick with one of his hind legs, striking a lever that opened the door to his taxi. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle took a seat on the padded bench that let them see forward, while Scootaloo sat down on the bench that had her looking out the back window. The door closed and a soft jolt informed them that they were underway. And with each passing second a smile grew on Scootaloo’s face.

Noticing said smile Apple Bloom asked, “What’s up?”

By now Scootaloo had noticed that she couldn’t even hear the trot of the stallion pulling them, yet despite the clear soundproofing on the cabin of the cab she held a hoof to her lips and whispered her answer. “We got him.”

Taking the hint Bloom whispered back, “What do ya mean?”

“He offered to take us home, and he’s already taking us somewhere. But he never asked us where home is.” With her friend’s eyes shrinking to dots Scootaloo added, “Just look normal. Don’t let him know we’re on to him.”

As the ride stretched on from seconds into minutes even Scootaloo’s friends came to notice the level of soundproofing on the coach. Naturally once they’d realized that the stallion pulling the taxi couldn’t hear them either, they started passing the time with idle chatter.

“So if we’re Cutie Mark Crusader Secret Agents now, and we can’t use our names, then we need secret agent names now, right?” Sweetie Belle reviewed the recent logic between her and Apple Bloom.

“Exactly! But what?”

“Well we don’t have ranks, but we do have a title, crusader!”

“No,” Scootaloo interrupted bluntly.

“Why not?”

Possibly exaggerating her frustration by planting her face in her waiting hoof, Scootaloo explained, “Because we call ourselves that back home. It’s too easy to trace that title back to us.”

“Isn’t the captain actually a captain?”

“There are hundreds of captains in the guard. But I haven’t heard of anypony else running around calling themselves crusaders. Have you?”

“Well, no,” Bloom admitted as she saw an equally stumped look on Sweetie.

Tapping her hoof on her chin thoughtfully Apple Bloom tried again. “Ah know! Sometimes strangers call me ‘Red’ just because Ah got a red mane. That’s got to be a common nickname!”

“Perfect!” Sweetie said with a slight squeak in her voice. Then she looked to the floor and with a less enthusiastic tone she added, “But nopony calls me by nicknames. It’s always things like ‘filly’ or ‘hey you’ if they don’t know my name.”

Hanging her head slightly Scootaloo gave a small sigh. “You realize that we probably won’t need spy names, right? The captain is just going to call me ‘Kid’ and he made it clear that you two are just going to be following me.”

“But what if you decide we need to split up? You’ll need spy names for us then, won’t you?” Apple Bloom asked with a bit of a grin.

“…Fine, you can be Red, she’ll be White and I’m Kid. Happy?” Scootaloo answered.

If Red was planning on answering, the fact that the taxi came to a sudden stop interrupted her. Looking out the window the trio of fillies noticed that they weren’t even in the city anymore, but instead were on a road heading east of Vanhoover.

Standing in front of the taxi pony was Captain Cloud Wall and though his mouth was moving the three fillies couldn’t hear a word he was saying. After a short exchange of words the captain came to the side of the carriage, tapped on the window and spoke. Judging from his mouth he’d said three words, probably something like ‘Is that so?’ but they didn’t hear anything besides the tap on the window.

Knowing that the taxi pony could see her head through the window behind her, Scootaloo put on a show for him by just smiling pleasantly. But below the back of her chair, where only the captain could see, Scootaloo held out her front left leg and suddenly twisted it.

Mimicking her friend’s forced smile Apple Bloom whispered, “What’s that suppose to mean?”

“Twisted, crooked, same difference. Right and left, and right and wrong are both opposites. So I basically just signaled that he’s a crook and on the wrong side,” Scootaloo whispered back. Of course like any hoof signs she used she’d just made that one up on the spot, so it was up to the captain to reach a similar conclusion at to the meaning of what he’d just seen.

Outside the coach Captain Cloud Wall turned to the owner of the cab and said, “That’s some impressive soundproofing you got there. Too bad I know for a fact you can’t be offering these fillies a ride home, because I know exactly where they live.”

The taxi pony’s eyes suddenly became dots.

Without a pause the captain continued, “But lucky for you, I have bigger fish to fry. So my only question is, am I pinning the blame for every missing foal in Vanhoover on you? Or are you going to lead me to the kingpin of this fillynapping ring?”

“I-I,” the taxi pony said, as beads of sweat began to trickle down his forehead.

The smile on the captain’s face became a snarl. “Need more of an incentive I take it? How about this, you give me somepony more important than you and I just might forget to lock you up. And if I get my kingpin and find out that the foals you’ve been selling into some Celestia-forsaken fate are still alive, I just might forget to have you fined for the amount equal to all your ill-gotten gains.”

Taxi pony’s eyes once more became specks. “I-I can take you where I drop them off and get paid. B-But I don’t know if that’s where their boss is. I swear!” he said with near panic in his voice, in no small part due to the realization that he would never be able to pay such a fine.

Opening the door to the cab and letting the trio of fillies out, Captain Cloud said, “Okay kid, here’s how this is going to work. Our new friend here is going to take you to the bad guy’s place while we follow from the shadows. As soon as you’re inside we’re going to raid the place. Once the alarms go off the other team should break cover to help us take down the bad guys. Assuming we’ve caught up to them that is.”

Turning to the taxi pony, Cloud added, “We’ll be arresting you too, but if all goes well you’ll be home in time for dinner. Just do us a favor and once we take you down, stay down.”

Looking back to Scootaloo and her friends, Cloud Wall had one more thing to say. “You’re heading into enemy territory, so last chance to do any last minute preparations.”

The three friends all gave a salute and jumped back into the taxicab and were soon underway.

* * * * * * *

The taxi had turned off of the main road and took them into a wide valley in the base of the mountains east of the city, though deep enough in the valley that the city could no longer be seen. As they went up the hill on one side of the valley a lone building came into view. At a glance it seemed to be a single story building, not too unlike a villa, but at the right angle it could be seen that there was a basement level that was only partly built into the hillside and partly exposed on one side.

However Scootaloo was too busy raiding her saddlebag to pay much attention to what was outside the taxicab to notice their destination.

Now that her tactical harness was on, she opened her wings and gave them a quick shake to settle the feathers back into a more comfortable place. Of course her harness was little more than a black cloth vest, and with the row of pouches along the bottom completely empty it served no real purpose aside from making two thirds of her torso black.

The next thing she pulled out of her right side saddlebag was her night-vision goggles. Ignoring the fact that it was the middle of the day, so they were at least four hours away from having any potential use, she put them on and slid them up to her forehead.

Finally she put her saddlebags on the floor and reached in with her front right leg, shifting it around until she felt the silver device within and slid it into the right position. In a moment of hesitation Scootaloo sighed, knowing that her friends would soon see something they weren’t supposed to see. Yet the idea of taking it into enemy territory left her no other choice. Putting her weight on her leg an audible click sounded as the device latched onto her hoof, locking it to her leg.

“So the big secret is a silver leg brace?” Sweetie Belle asked as she beheld the device now adorning Scootaloo’s leg as it came out of the saddlebag.

The orange pegasus raised a single eyebrow. “You do realized that I’m probably grounded forever just letting you guys see it, right? He’d kill me if I told you what it is… So, yeah keep thinking that it’s just a leg brace, that works.”

“Seriously, it looks like you hurt your ankle or something,” Apple Bloom couldn’t help but comment, as she took note of how the top of the silver framework around Scootaloo’s leg came just short of her knee. After a moment another observation made Bloom add, “Why are ya lying on the floor?”

Giving her goggles a tap Scootaloo answered, “Because these are kinda a big giveaway so I’d rather stay out of sight until the captain makes his move.”

Right then the carriage came to a halt. Jostled by the sudden stop, the two crusaders still on their chairs couldn’t help but to look out the windows. “Cool,” muttered the two who could see the white plaster walls and red tile roof of the building just down the way. Arches seemed to be favored by the architect of the structure, as they framed all of the windows and doors. Carefully tended flower gardens and trimmed hedges spotted the yard and even a small fountain stood as the centerpiece of the landscaping.

“This looks like one of those fancy vacation homes!” Sweetie Belle said.

Apple Bloom gave a sharp whistle. “No kidding. But why are we stopping here? There’s plenty of path between us and the front door.”

Outside the cab, the taxi pony stomped his hoof on the ground thee times in a distinct pattern. A moment later and the ground before him started sinking down, becoming a ramp leading down into a hidden tunnel.

Inside the taxicab, Sweetie Belle said, “Oh, a secret path, that explains it.”

From her position on the floor the only thing Scootaloo could see through the windows was the sky. At least until the roof of the secret tunnel took its place anyway. The trio didn’t have to settle for the gray walls of the tunnel for scenery for long though, as the tunnel soon opened up into what looked like a commercial loading dock. Not that the gray walls of the loading dock were much different, but at least they weren’t so close.

The taxi pony pulled up, in between a plane looking wagon, currently backed against the loading dock and with its tailgate down for easy loading, and a pedestrian ramp that led to the upper part of the loading dock. On the upper part of the loading dock two earth ponies seemed to be awaiting the new arrivals. And at the back of the dock was an open garage-style door that lead to a room where several crates could be seen. Of the two ponies on the dock, one was a dark gray stallion and the other was a light brown mare.

As the taxi pony released the straps from his carriage’s harness three blurs of fast flying pegasi entered the room. The dark blue blur ended at the gray stallion and the pink blur came down on the brown mare, as the sergeant and lieutenant clobbered their respective targets. At the same time the white blur of the captain led to the taxi pony, ending with the captain tackling him to the ground.

As the captain stood up it became clear that his guard armor was long gone, and instead he wore a black tactical harness just like the ones worn by his subordinates. And for the first time that day his cutie mark of a blue shield with a cloud in the middle of it was visible. Taking in the eerie silence that followed the surprise attack, the captain tossed a glance to the two unconscious thugs on the loading dock. Following their captain’s lead the two other agents turned their ears toward the deeper part of the facility.

With the lack of commotion coming from deeper inside and the captain’s eyes falling on a red box mounted on the wall, with a lone button marked ‘alarm,’ he said, “Well that’s convenient.”

“What is?” Sweetie Belle asked as the trio of fillies jumped out of the taxicab.

“They didn’t even get a chance to trigger the alarm,” the captain answered. Then spying some spare rope near the crates and bringing his gaze back to the knocked out thugs he added, “Maybe stealth is still an option.”

Walking over to the dark gray stallion, the captain took the criminal’s lanyard, motioned to the ponies they’d just taken down and said, “Tie these three up.” Turning to the three fillies behind him he added, “Hey kid, would you and your friends be willing to play the part of captives a bit longer?”

Scootaloo raised a skeptical eyebrow and looked herself over as if to say ‘don’t I stand out?’ “You’re asking me?” were the words that actually came out of her mouth.

“Kid, first off, fillies your age dress however they want, so I doubt anypony will care what you were dressed like when you fell for their trap. Second, you have to remember that I’m here looking for black-market artifacts. Finding the team investigating the fillynapping ring is your mission, not mine.” Tossing a glance at the silver device on the filly’s leg the captain added, “And seeing as you don’t seem to be at liberty to discuss the true nature of that, I can’t really plan around whatever it is you or the other captain hope to accomplish with it. So yeah I’m asking the only pony who knows if it gets in your way or not, if you want to hold off on blowing the alarm or not?”

Gazing off into space, through the ground, Scootaloo answered, “We don’t even know if he’s here. So, we’ll do things your way as long as we can.”

The captain took one last look at the lanyard before tossing it to the sergeant and saying, “Congratulations ‘Big Hoof,’ looks like you’re now a mercenary for hire. Now go see if you can take these three on a leisurely stroll through the complex. As long as they don’t look too closely, I doubt they’d notice that’s not really you on the security badge, and if they have to use those things it must mean new faces come and go all the time anyway.” Looking back to the three fillies he added, “Feel free to brake cover the instant it looks like they’re in danger. And kid, once we do trip the alarm and all hell breaks loose, use our distraction to do whatever you plan on doing.”

Looking to the pink pegasus mare, the captain said, “Lieutenant, let’s go see if we can find our artifacts before all hell breaks loose.” With that the captain and lieutenant ducked into the crate room and quickly slipped out of sight.

Taking notice of a rack full of collars and leashes not far from the alarm box, the sergeant muttered, “Looks like this is where their deception ends.” Taking the collars he put one on each of the fillies with him, although he didn’t bother to make use of the special locks on said collars and thus left the crusaders free to pop the collars off themselves at a moment’s notice.

Clipping the other end of the leaches to his harness, he gave his ‘captives’ a smile and a nod and cheerfully said, “Well, let’s go see what we can see.”

Walking through the crate room they couldn’t help but notice that of the crates that were open most were empty. But one still had its side waiting to be nailed shut and inside the crate was the stone statue of a colt about the crusaders’ age. Judging from the nearby tools it seemed like a safe bet that the two knocked out criminals had been in the middle of packing the crate before somepony knocked on the front door.

Yet it was when Sweetie Belle looked at the statue that she gasped, “I know him! He’s one of the ponies from the missing pony posters!”

The sergeant quickly shushed her and then looking back at the two crates on the cart behind them, he whispered, “Probably more in those. Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s probably less of a fuss smuggling them around like that.”

“They-They’ll be okay, won’t they?” Sweetie whimpered.

The sergeant gave a small nod and whispered, “Sure they will. Once we finish our raid and turn them over to the unicorn guard to be turned back to normal anyway.”

He allowed a moment’s pause for the trio of fillies to regain their composure before giving their leashes a tug to urge them forward. Although it took a sideways nod from Scootaloo to get her friends to resume following him.

In the next room they found a few ponies, mostly earth ponies and unicorns scattered about. Some seemed to be guards as they sat around a table playing cards, while others were busy unpacking a crate of steel ingots. None seemed to pay the stallion and three leashed fillies anything more than a quick glance before returning to what they were doing.

The overhead of the room allowed for a level of catwalks and there was also a suspended room in the upper left corner. Had this been a normal business one might have guessed the room to be the foreman’s office. Being a criminal organization it was probably the boss’s room. A pegasus was standing on the catwalks nearby the suspended room and seemed to be overseeing the work.

Being the one seemingly in charge, the sergeant lead the way over to just below where the pegasus was, and looking up casually asked, “Where did you want 'em?”

Bloom and Sweetie tensed up as they recognized the midnight blue stallion as the same one from the museum robbery mere hours earlier. However, Scootaloo knew better than to think the bandit would remember three random faces in the background when his focus had been on the captain and the crystal that morning, so she continued to look about curiously.

The bandit pony rolled his eyes as if to say ‘dang new guy,’ as he casually motioned a hoof toward the hallway on the left side of the room and said, “Fifth door on the left.”

The sergeant started toward the indicated hallway, but he didn’t get more than a few steps before another voice came from above. “Heh, aren’t you one unlucky pony!” the gruff male voice said.

Now it was the sergeant’s turn to tense up, with his body ready to jump into a fight he looked to the speaker. It turned out the speaker was a griffin, his body golden brown and the feathers around his head were silver-gray in color.

Even after the griffin had landed beside them, it took a second for any of the ponies to realize that his gaze was not on the sergeant, but locked onto Scootaloo.

As it dawned on her that she was the target of the comment, Scootaloo raised an eyebrow, tilted her head slightly and asked an honest question. “Who are you?”

The griffin gave a hearty laugh and answered, “Ah yes! I suppose it would be too much to expect you to remember me! You were a bit stoned at the time!”

The filly’s gaze quickly shifted from the griffin’s face, to his talons. “The claw marks on my floor! You were the one behind the illusion! You turned me to stone!”

Giving a much darker laugh the griffin said, “Yes. And I hope you enjoyed the sensation, because that’s how you’ll be leaving this place when I sell you.” With a sinister grin he leaned in close and added, “Don’t worry, I include an antidote with all the ponies I sell. Not much point buying a slave if they stay stone forever now is there?”

A simple question plagued Sweetie Belle, forcing her to ask, “Isn’t slavery illegal?”

“Well duh, why do you think I’m going to have you turned to stone? Customs gets really pissy if they find live ponies in shipping crates. But they don’t seem to mind you exporting pony statues so much,” the criminal griffin answered.

Scootaloo tried to take a timid step backward only to find herself at the end of her leash and forced to stand her ground. Then a thought came to her. “But if you turn ponies to stone to sell them, why did you leave me in my house?”

Standing back up properly, the griffin gave a sheepish smile. “Heh, well, poor planning on my part mostly. You see, I was so eager to field test my illusion belt and portable petrifaction ray that I forgot how heavy you ponies get when turned to stone. So… yeah, seeing as the illusion belt worked and you called me, whatever that name of that pony you know was, I figured I’d have better odds of not getting caught just leaving you there than trying to smuggle you out of your house like that.”

“But why me? Why’d you come after me?”

To this the griffin shrugged. “Fate, luck, whatever you want to call it. Thing is I have a cousin, who’s an athlete. And one day he went and invited me to watch the tryouts for some flag ceremony for the games he was going to be competing in. At the time, I was an innocent face in the crowd, and didn’t think much of it actually. But when I was thinking of how to test my newly crafted illusion belt I couldn’t help but remember the pure hatred that pink filly was shooting at you when the judges announced who would be flying the flag for Ponyville. And then I realized you made the perfect cover for the test, that way even if the portable petrifaction ray didn’t work quite right, you’d lead the authorities to pin the blame for my crime on that pony. The perfect failsafe if you will.”

“But Dia- that bully hates all three of us! So why’d ya have to go after our friend and not us!?” Apple Bloom demanded, stomping a hoof on the ground as loudly as she could.

“Oh that’s so cute, you ponies are so cute when you’re mad. Walking around, talking like you run the place, even when you’re in no position to be demanding anything. But since you’re such a cutie, I’ll tell you anyway. Truthfully I’d have settled for any of you three, but she was the first one I found alone, simple as that.”

The griffin seemed done talking to the fillies, so the sergeant gave the leashes a tug, urging them to follow. But Sweetie wasn’t done and even as she was being led away she shouted, “But why would you do something so mean?”

That got the griffin to turn back to facing the fillies again. “Because not everyone gets to live in your precious utopia, and it’s high time someone brought Equestria to its knees and showed you the misery the rest of us call life. And with the money I’m making selling you spoiled brats, soon I’ll be able to do just that!”

Once more the griffin turned to leave and the sergeant started to lead the trio of fillies toward the hall. This time it was Scootaloo who had a question to shout as she was being led away. “Why don’t you just build up your corner of the world, instead of tearing down ours?”

The griffin paused for a moment, hovering beside the catwalk to his office, but he gave no answer before going inside.

More than content with his observations of the room’s layout and the locations of its guards, Sergeant Comet gave one last tug on Scootaloo’s leash, and with it she reluctantly followed him. Leading the three fillies down the hall, he quickly found that there were only three doors on the left before the hallway turned. Giving the doors discreet glances, he gave a low grown, annoyed to find they had no windows and were only marked as storage. With a sigh he moved on to round the corner and head for their supposed destination.

Rounding the corner the sergeant counted off two more doors. Not that he needed to, as the ‘fifth door on the left’ had a guard standing in front of it. A light-green earth-pony stallion with a yellow mane to be exact. A haunting feeling that he’s seen this particular stallion before made the sergeant hesitate. Unfortunately he’s seen lots of ponies, most of them being random faces in crowds, and so unable to pin down the source of the feeling he continued to play the part of a mercenary leading three fillies to their doom.

As the fillies attached to the sergeant’s harness rounded the corner the guard by the door finally bothered to pay his visitors a glance. At first he didn’t seem too interested, as if it was just another day. Then his eyes went wide as they locked onto Sweetie Belle.

“You!” the guard said with a mix of panic and fear in his voice.

Seeing the gaze on her, Sweetie managed to squeak, “Me?”

“You!” Scootaloo said in a voice that was burning with a sudden anger, as she immediately charged forward and leapt at the guard.

At the same time Comet also leapt into action, simplify because he assumed he’d been recognized, and both he and Scootaloo punched the guard in the face.

The last thing the guard did as he tumbled down, on his way into Luna’s realm, was to push the button on the portable alarm trigger attached to his belt.

Every intercom speaker in the building blared to life. Sergeant Comet helped himself to the door the guard had been guarding and, opening it just a bit, he peeked inside. “Clear,” he whispered as he threw the door open and darted inside, yanking the trio of fillies in as well.

Inside the room and near the back was a large cannon-like object, pointed toward the left wall. Its design included a mix of metal and electrodes, and crystals and rune-engraved stone that made the whole thing look half science and half magic.

Between the alarms sounding and the sergeant ditching his end of the leashes, Scootaloo understood that the time for deception was over. Popping open the latch on her collar she let it fall away.

As she followed her friend’s lead in ditching their collars, Apple Bloom asked, “Sweet- um White, why did it sound like that guy knew you?”

“I don’t know. But it sounded like Kid knows,” Sweetie answered, as she pulled off her own collar.

Scootaloo lowered her ears, hung her head in defeat and sighed. “Remember that time with the magic artifact that swapped our minds with each other?” Her friends nodded, so she looked at Sweetie Belle and continued, “Remember that cut I got you when I was in your body?” Another nod answered her. “Well when I said that I made a mistake, it wasn’t some little everyday kinda mistake. I was doing something like this, and well… I ran into him and… I got the cut when he shot at me and I didn’t exactly dodge it completely.”

A vacant stare appeared on Sweetie’s face as she tried to process the information she’d just gained. “Y-You got shot? Wait, you got me shot?” she finally muttered.

“Sorry,” Scootaloo answered, once more folding her ears down and hanging her head in shame.

In a light-hearted tone and with a bit of a laugh, the sergeant commented, “Right, so that’s where I’ve seen that guy before.” Making his way over to the large device at the back of the room he added, “Heh, I’m guessing this is the non-portable version.”

The clopping of hooves from the hallway drew the foursome’s attention to the door. Looking to the trio of fillies with him, Comet said, “You might want to take cover. Oh and once I clear a path I’m heading out on my own to meet up with the captain and lieutenant.”

The three crusaders ran behind the large petrifaction ray. With that, the sergeant opened one of the pockets of his vest and pulled out a cloud grenade. Right when the hoof steps sounded as if they were right outside the door, Comet opened it slightly and rolled the grenade out into the hall.

A cry of “What the-” was heard from the hallway just before a blast of white filled the area with a dense cloud of water vapor. Sergeant Comet flew out into the hall, disappearing into the cloud. Gunfire echoed and thunderclaps crashed.

From their hiding spot the crusaders cowered, instinctually flinching at each loud noise to assault their ears. And yet, as the sound of lightning claps started coming from further away, Scootaloo couldn’t help but smile on the inside, even as she flinched from the very thunder making her body tremble.

As the sound of Comet’s fighting grew more distant, the realization that there was fighting going on out there made Scootaloo look down to the silver device attached to her leg. Remembering what little training she’d had with the device she reached for the top ring, just below her knee, and slid open a small panel to reveal a small toggle switch. Flipping that switch made a small high-pitched sound, like that of a crystal chime, sound for a moment before fading away. With that the filly closed the panel knowing the weapon was powered up and ready. She gave the small button on the side of the weapon a glance knowing all she had to do now was push that to fire. And somewhere in the back of her mind her youthful curiosity hoped she’d finally have a good reason to see just what the family secret could do.

Opening her eyes after another thunderclap and looking to her friends, Scootaloo said, “You two are more then welcome to stay and hide here or even sneak back out to the taxi if you want, but I need to see if he’s here.”

Apple Bloom just stood up and glared back at her friend as if to say ‘You’re not going to make me say it again, are you?’

“Or you could just follow me into the place where all the adults are shooting at each other,” Scootaloo added with a sigh.

At first Sweetie Belle seemed like she was contemplating staying hidden here. But when Apple Bloom confidently strode up beside their pegasus friend, Sweetie felt she had to accompany her friends anyway. Then she gave a nervous swallow and asked, “Anything we should know?”

Scootaloo gave a slight nod. “Staying close to the walls and keeping my head down seems to work most of the time. Find places too tight for an adult if you can. And whatever you do, try not to get between two adults, they’re usually too busy fighting each other to pay much attention to me…” The sound of gunfire and thunder started coming from the main room. “…So yeah, stay out of the middle of that.”

With the commotion elsewhere, Scootaloo was content that the hallway seemed clear of fighting. Not that she could be sure with the thick white mist of a cloud making it impossible to see more than three feet just outside the door. Regardless it was time to get moving, so she headed out into the hallway.

While she would have preferred to run through the cover-less hallway as quickly as possible being a pegasus her natural magics tended to treat the cloud filling the area like a foam wall. So instead she had to settle for trudging slowly through the cloud, pushing her way between it and the wall as if the cloud were an airbag she had to squeeze past.

As they followed effortlessly behind her, Scootaloo’s friends couldn’t help but share a giggle at the way their pegasus friend’s tail stuck straight out behind her, seemingly levitating as if she were swimming underwater or trudging through neck-high mud or something.

Thankfully the cloud was small enough that it didn’t even make it to the corner of the hallway. Peeking carefully around the corner, Scootaloo caught a glimpse of Comet and some other pony tumble into and out of view in an apparent wrestling match out in the main room. She could also see that somepony (probably also Comet,) had opened the other doors in the hallway between here and the main room. In addition to that, the floor of the hallway had two bandit ponies sprawled out unconscious on the floor, and between the frazzled manes and occasional twitch it was clear that lightning had made them that way.

It was funny really, in nature lightning was extremely dangerous. But when regulated by a pegasus a lightning strike could be less dangerous than a bullet. Having worked with Cloud Wall and his team enough times, Scootaloo had long ago learned that pegasi of the royal guard were taught not only how to kick lightning with the intent to kill, but also how to tone down that lightning to merely knock out the target. The ones in special ops were anyway, she wasn’t entirely sure about the rest of the guard.

Shaking the stray thoughts from her mind, Scootaloo refocused on the task before her and darted for the first of the open storage room doors. As her friends quickly joined her all three crusaders gasped at what they found.

The storage room held nothing but a half dozen pony statues, and given the frightened look on the faces of said statues, it wasn’t hard to guess that they weren’t really statues. Most of them were fillies and colts about the crusaders’ age, but one of the statues was large enough that she could have gotten away with being called a mare.

“This is terrible, we have to do something!” Sweetie Belle whispered.

Even as Apple Bloom nodded her head in agreement, Scootaloo raised a curious eyebrow at her unicorn friend. “No we don’t. As long as the captain and his team win, they’ll fix this.”

Looking to Sweetie, Bloom frowned and reluctantly said, “Ah guess she’s right. Besides, unless you just learned how to un-stone somepony there isn’t anything we can do.”

“Oh, right,” the young unicorn said, reflexively aiming her eyes up toward her forehead, even though she couldn’t actually see her own horn up there without a mirror.

As much as she hated the idea of leading her friends closer to danger, Scootaloo wasn’t going to find her dad sitting in this room, so she poked her head back out into the hallway and got ready to make her next dash toward the main room.

With one last look down the hall she was certain that nopony, or griffin for that matter, was paying any attention to the hallway. This time Scootaloo sprinted for the end of the hallway, slowing only to glance inside the other doorways as she went. Just as she’d expected the other two storage rooms also held petrified ponies. Finally coming to a stop just short of the main room she took a quick look to either side.

In the chaos field otherwise called the main room many things were happening at the same time. To the left Comet had just finished punching somepony into a trip to dreamland, while trying to stay behind the toppled card table that was shielding him from small arms fire. To the right Lieutenant Aurora had her hind hoof deep in the gut of the pegasus stallion who’d been overseeing things, sending him to the ground too winded to do anything but gasp and grown in pain. On the far side of the room the griffin was flying through another large garage-style doorway, deeper into the facility, while being chased by Captain Cloud Wall. And near the griffin was a unicorn bandit moving to intercept the captain. Finally, and seemingly from nowhere a silver pegasus mare with a blue mane and black shadow-ops vest tackled the unicorn, leaving Cloud Wall free to peruse the griffin unhindered.

A grin graced Scootaloo’s face as she whispered, “He’s here.”

“What? Who?” Sweetie whispered, trying to peek around her friend to see what she was muttering about.

Scootaloo had only met the mare once and she didn’t even know if she’d heard her name, but that one time was an important enough day to the orange filly that she still remembered the mare’s face. “The silverish mare, she’s part of his team,” she explained.

With Comet being shot at to the left, Scootaloo looked to the right and found what she was looking for. The space between the wall and the stacks of crates was just big enough for fillies to slip between. “Come on! We have to find him,” she whispered, right before she darted for the safest passage through the room.

A few quick sprints from one safe spot to another and the trio of fillies found themselves darting through the same doorway that Cloud Wall had left the main room through.

Much like the previous room this one had the feel of a factory warehouse, with exposed pipes and ventilation ducts, and crates scattered about. Unlike the other room the crates in here were mostly open, and were either completely empty or had engineering supplies like gears or pistons or such in them. One thing was clear, if the fillynapping was the fund raising side of the operation than this part of the building seemed to be what they were using the money for.

Scenery aside Captain Cloud seemed to have been pulled into a fight with another unicorn. Also by now Lieutenant Aurora had made her way into this room and was trading blows in an aerial hoof fight with another of the pegasus bandits from that morning.

And yet none of that mattered to Scootaloo, the pony she was looking for wasn’t here so instead her eyes locked onto another large doorway on the opposite side of the room. Making her move she darted between two sets of stacked crates. The soft clatter of small hooves, and the feeling of presence close behind her, proved that her friends were keeping pace with her.

Scootaloo paused as she came to a rather large gap between her and the next tight pathway in her sights. A stray blast of magic rushed through that gap, causing her to hesitate all the more. A glance to the left, following the magic bolt, showing nothing but a wall for a target, glancing to the right made it clear that the shot had been intended for Cloud Wall but had missed the mark. In fact given the locations of the captain and the unicorn he was fighting the stacks of crates that the crusaders were here hiding in was the current backdrop of any missed shots from the unicorn.

Spurred on by that thought Scootaloo made her break for the rows of big metal drums across the way.

She didn’t get more than a few steps when a crashing noise came from above, thanks to Captain Cloud Wall being throwing into the very stacked crates she just left behind.

Apple Bloom’s voice cried out, “Look out!”

Scootaloo looked back to see what the warning was about. As her mind grasped the images passing through her eyes the world seemed to move in slow motion as she saw a crate falling toward Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom leaping forward. Worst of all, Scootaloo’s forward momentum forbid her from doing anything to help her friends, leaving her a helpless witness as Bloom shoved Sweetie out of the falling crate’s path.

The crate came down on Apple Bloom’s back half, forcing her to fall forward. Then the crate seemed to shoot Bloom’s rump out from under it like a tiddlywink but the farm filly’s back legs weren’t so lucky. A thundering crash sounded as the crate came down on her back legs. A sickening snap echoed out. A snap that Scootaloo knew too well, a snap who’s tone she’d only herd when one of her scooter tricks went horribly wrong, the snap of a bone.

As Apple Bloom’s agonized cry filled the room time seemed to start moving again for Scootaloo, or at least her body started responding to her commands again.

Bloom’s vengeance came quickly, and unintentionally, as her cry distracted the unicorn who’d knocked Cloud into the crates long enough for the captain to rebound and clobber her in a counterattack. Even as the mare fell from the first strike, the captain spun on his front hooves and bucked with his back ones, slamming the unicorn hard enough to ensure she wouldn’t be waking up any time soon, if at all.

At the same time, Scootaloo rushed to her friend’s side, threw her front hooves against the side of the crate and pushed up with all her strength. At first Apple Bloom’s cry lessened, but when she tried to pull her back legs out from under the crate she howled in pain once more and her instincts refused to move her back limbs. Putting her full weight into the effort, Scootaloo managed to angel the crate up a little more, but it also became apparent that moving the crate outright was beyond the young pegasus.

With Scootaloo’s muscles crying out for rest, desperate purple eyes found their way to Sweetie Belle. “Pull her out before I drop it!”

Until now Sweetie had been sitting motionless since she had been pushed to safety. Urged into action by Scootaloo’s command, she reached out, wrapped her front legs around Apple Bloom and pulled her friend until her hind legs were out from under the crate, causing Bloom to cry out in pain once more.

As soon as her friend’s legs were free of the crate, Scootaloo let the crate down. And as soon as the crate crashed down, Apple Bloom reached out and forced herself free of Sweetie’s grasp, pushing her friend away to lessen the pain racking the farm filly from the forced movement of her leg.

All three crusaders looked with horror at the bumps in Apple Bloom’s back left leg where the bones were threatening to brake through the skin at the unnatural bend halfway between the knee and ankle.

All Bloom could do to lessen the pain was to lie on her belly and keep her back half perfectly motionless. Through her pained sobs Apple Bloom managed to mutter, “Don’t touch it… It hurts so much… Help me…”

Having just been pushed away, Sweetie Belle found herself fighting the urge to hug her friend to offer comfort. Settling for standing as close as she could without touching her injured friend, Sweetie looked to her pegasus friend and with pleading eyes and a squeaky voice said, “We need to get her to a hospital, she needs a doctor!”

While Sweetie Belle’s reaction was understandable, Scootaloo’s mind was still in secret-agent mode enough to realize they were in the middle of nowhere, and that there probably wasn’t a hospital nearby this far out of the city. And yet her friends’ eyes were all on her, as if she somehow had the answer to everything. But she didn’t, she wasn’t a doctor, she couldn’t fix this.

By now even Cloud Wall had turned to face the trio of fillies but he made no motion to come to their aid. And why should he? Scootaloo knew he wasn’t a doctor either, and to top it off she knew his team didn’t have a medic… Scootaloo’s eyes lit up as a revelation came to her. “The other team has a medic!” Looking back to her unicorn friend, she added, “Stay with her! I’ll get help!”

With that the orange pegasus filly dashed off on a new mission. Seemingly giving a nod of approval to the plan, Captain Cloud Wall joined Scootaloo in charging off into the next room.

The new room was as big as the last, but unlike the previous one this one was mostly empty. Off to the right there were a few small generators, and on the left side of the room were some water heaters, but aside from that the room was mostly empty space. Had Scootaloo been more astute she might noticed that the paneling on the back wasn’t quite the same as the other walls in the room, but as it stood Cloud Wall was the only new arrival to make that mental note.

Scootaloo’s eyes focused on the only pony in the room that truly mattered, the white pegasus mare with a royal blue mane, and a cutie mark of a light-blue cross surrounded by equally light-blue swirls. Oh and her dad was in the background fighting the griffin mastermind, but that didn’t matter right now. No, right now, only the mare with the royal guard’s colors and the shadow-ops vest adorned with medical supplies mattered.

The name of the mare in question was Lieutenant Soothing Mist or Misty, or something like that. Much like the other member of her dad’s team, Scootaloo had only met the mare once, even if she’d heard this mare’s name from her dad’s stories, so she wasn’t 100% sure she had the name right. Not that it mattered, seeing as they were in the middle of the mission, so names were not to be used anyway.

Unfortunately the lieutenant wasn’t alone and was trading punches and kicks with the last of the pegasus bandits from the museum raid.

Panic flooded through Scootaloo’s mind, she didn’t want to interrupt Lieutenant what’s-her-name’s mission, but she couldn’t leave her friend without medical attention any longer either. So she took a deep breath and shouted the one name that mattered.

“Medic!”

The youthful shout definitely got the mare’s attention. And as she looked to the source, the orange filly added, “My friend is hurt!”

With her opponent distracted the gray and red bandit lunged. The movement in the corner of her eye drew the medic’s attention back to the fight she was in, but too late to do anything about the hoof flying right at her. The clack of hoof on hoof echoed out as the bandit’s attack met with Cloud Wall’s hoof.

With both mares surprised by the stallion’s intervention he angled his head slightly toward the medic and calmly said, “Help the kid out. I got this.”

With a firm nod, the medic flapped her wings and retreated toward Scootaloo, who was more than eager to run back through the doorway and point to where her friends were.

As the medic landed by her friends, Scootaloo’s eyes were drawn to the very limb she’d used to point them out and the silver device attached to it. Looking over her shoulder, back into the final room, her eyes found their way to her father.

At the moment the orange stallion was dodging a blast of strange, white energy from the griffin’s rifle. Unlike pony firearms, which were usually built to be strapped to the body in some way, the griffin held his rifle with his talons, and braced its stock against his shoulder. Another easily spotted difference between the two design types was that while pony guns favored button triggers, the griffin’s rifle had a small lever-like trigger that allowed the weapon to be fired with little more than the squeeze of a single digit of their talon.

But what truly caught Scootaloo’s eye was the oddly familiar bolt of white energy that had come from the weapon. With her father having dodged the blast it sailed across the room and struck one of the griffin’s henchponies instead. The unfortunate pony grimaced as he started turning to stone, although by the time the process was complete he looked more annoyed than anything else.

So that’s what really happened. Scootaloo thought to herself, as her mind recreated her own memory of being turned to stone, only this time it played out in her mind with this griffin and rune-inscribed rifle instead of Diamond Tiara and a cockatrice.

With a sudden blitz, her father got in close and managed to wrench the rifle free from the griffin’s grasp, sending it tumbling to the floor. Not that getting in a brawl with a creature that had claws was much of an improvement, so Scootaloo’s father allowed the griffin to back out of melee range and settled for positioning himself between the griffin and the fallen magic rifle.

The griffin looked to his fallen weapon and then glared at the fiery stallion who had deprived him of it. “Well, I’d hoped to wait until I had two shadow crystals to power it before I tipped my cards. But one should be enough to take care of mere pegasi!”

With his treat uttered, the griffin reached for a small radio-like device on his belt and pushed the button on it. With that the wall at the back of the room began to open, revealing a large figure. It stood upright, twice as high as the average pony and had hands like those of a minotaur. As the doors continued to slide open and the light better fell on the figure, the dark sheen of its ebony steel armor became apparent for all to see. In fact, if not for the dark purple glow that seem to be coming from the eye slots in the helmet and the absence of a minotaur’s horns, Scootaloo might have assumed it was an armor-clad minotaur. But those two details kind of made her toss that assumption out the window.

“Come my war golem! Defend your master!” the griffin commanded the metal figure.

As the metallic monstrosity obeyed the command and stepped forward another detail could be seen. Within its chest plate was a dark crystal with an eerie purple glow. And just below that was an empty slot, clearly meant for a second shadow crystal.

Unsure whether to continue fighting the griffin or go after the dark magic imbued machine, Scootaloo’s father allowed his eyes to dart back and forth between the two choices. His instincts told him to fight the wielder, not the weapon, but weapons didn’t normally move on their own either.

His decision was greatly simplified when Cloud Wall darted past, flying right at the golem, while shouting, “I got it!”

With the other captain dealing with the golem, Scootaloo’s dad charged at the griffin.

The clang of hoof on steel rang out when Cloud Wall executed a flying kick against the golem’s head. The golem barely reacted to the strike, taking little more than a half step back to stay upright. Cloud grimaced in pain as his leg conceded that it wasn’t an unstoppable force, but that the golem was definitely an unmovable object. In addition to that, Cloud forgot to flap his wings for a moment. As he started to fall away, the golem lashed out and with the back of its hand knocked the pegasus away.

Even though the attack had been little more than a backhanded slap from the golem it sent Cloud Wall slamming into the wall just to Scootaloo’s right. A few last second flaps of his wings saved Cloud the trouble of a second hit from the floor. Shaking off the blow, he reached into one of his vest’s pockets and pulled out a puff of cloud.

“Let’s see how you like this,” Cloud Wall muttered.

Then setting it in the air in front of him, he coiled one of his front legs and thrust his hoof into the cloud puff. Thunder boomed as the lightning bolt flashed across the room, past the two still brawling in the middle of the room and striking the golem.

Electricity arched around the golem, but as it did so it changed color, from white to dark purple. Then the golem lifted its arm and pointed its open hand at Captain Cloud, and with that a bolt of purple lightning shot back at him.

A last second dodge kept the bolt from hitting Cloud Wall outright, but it still clipped his tail and hind legs, sending him twitching to the floor. “Okay… Maybe I don’t got it,” Cloud moaned.

Scootaloo took a few timid steps forward, leaving the safety of the doorway. With Cloud Wall struggling just to stand back up, he was in no condition to keep fighting, and a war golem lumbering toward her father, she wanted to help. But how could she? She was just a filly, not a trained warrior like the two stallions in the room. As her eyes fell helplessly to the floor the silver glisten of the device strapped to her leg seemed to speak to her, and the filly smiled as a plan formed in her mind.

Small orange wings came to life, not in an attempt to fly, but to allow the filly to stand upright easily, freeing up her front legs. Pointing her silver-clad hoof at the war golem, Scootaloo discovered two problems with her plan. First, her dad was between her and the golem. Second, her dad was the guardian of the device, so technically that made it his call as to whether she should fire or not. Fortunately she saw a way that both problems could be solved with the same action.

“Get out of the way!” Scootaloo shouted.

Two thoughts came to the orange stallion downrange as he glanced at the source of the shout. The first being, Oh, I did hear my daughter’s voice earlier. And the second thought was accompanied by his eyes going wide and was along the lines of, oh crud! Flapping his wings hard he turned and bolted for the fastest way out of the logical line of fire.

With his opponent fleeing for the wall ninety degrees off of where a filly was pointing a silver medical brace, the griffin was beyond confused. But with his rival fleeing like his life depended on it, the griffin figured it was best not to stand his ground, so he bolted in the opposite direction.

Scootaloo’s dad was out of the way now. And more importantly, Scootaloo had counted off a full second since her dad reacted to her and she had yet to hear him say anything like ‘No! Don’t!’ or ‘Wait!’ And since he hadn’t forbidden her clearly broadcast intention he might as well have commanded it.

Scootaloo pushed the small white button.

To Scootaloo everything before her became a wall of light, as the beam that came from the silver device was easily twenty feet across. The beam itself was made up of seven colors of light, pure white plus the six colors of the rainbow, weaving through each other like ethereal streamers blowing in the wind, yet contained in a clearly defined cylinder of their own light.

And as the beam rushed across the room it dug a trench in the floor before Scootaloo and even cut a small channel in the roof as it scraped the high overhead. The war golem vanished as the beam of prismatic light washed over it, seemingly unimpeded on its way. It took only a fraction of a second for the beam to reach the far wall and when it did it tore through said wall with an explosion that sent a shockwave through the room.

The shockwave rushed back through the room, tossing those caught in it like rag-dolls in a hurricane. Ironically enough the continued discharge from Scootaloo’s weapon cut through the shockwave, rendering the spot where she stood and the cone of space behind her to be the most shielded from the sudden torrent.

The wall itself crumbled instantly, revealing that this was the one wall of the basement that wasn’t actually underground. Around the edges of the massive hole in the wall it could be seen that the beam was now sailing freely across the wide valley. When the beam hit the mountainside on the far side of the valley a sphere of prismatic light began to grow at the point of impact.

Even though Scootaloo had only pushed the button down for a fraction of a second, the beam continued to flow from the weapon for at least a full second, maybe even two. When the discharge finally finished, the tail end of the beam rushed out across the valley and disappeared into the growing sphere of light. When the last of the beam had joined it the sphere suddenly pulsed outward in an even more massive explosion.

The prismatic explosion dissipated in a brilliant flash, leaving a massive crater in the mountainside. The shockwave from this explosion radiated outward, knocking over the nearby trees just beyond the edge of the flash itself. As the shockwave radiated outward it weakened enough to only make a visible line in the trees from rustling them as it rush outward, across the valley.

When the shockwave reached the bettered villa and rushed back into the basement through the hole in the wall, the room was blasted with another powerful gust. Thankfully by the time it reached the room it was weaker than the blast wave from the wall’s destruction, and only made manes and tails flap like flags on a windy day for a second or two. That and the gust forced Scootaloo into a sitting position to keep herself from falling over.

With the light show over the fate of the war golem could be seen. The top half was missing entirely, and what remained seemed to be a molten husk. With one noteworthy exception, the setting that held the shadow crystal seemed perfectly intact, sitting atop the sundered remains of the golem.

Not that Scootaloo noticed, as her eyes were still locked on the avalanche crashing into the crater in the distance beyond the golem.

“My… My war golem… How could-” the griffin began to ask, only to be interrupted by a white hoof to the back of his head.

“I’m pretty sure that’s classified,” Cloud Wall pointlessly answered the now unconscious griffin.

After Scootaloo’s father had picked himself up and dusted himself off, he noticed something that compelled him to walk toward the remains of the war golem.

“What are you doing?” Cloud Wall questioned his friend.

Drawing close to the shadow crystal, the orange stallion said, “Do you see this?”

Cloud joined his friend in looking into the shadow crystal. His eyes grew wide as he saw that among the swirling purple and black there was now a point of white light, like a lone star in the darkness.

“Shadow crystals don’t do that.”

“And yet this one is… I wonder,” Scootaloo’s father pondered aloud. Turning to his daughter, he said, “Hey Sport, come here and blast it again. This time from point-blank.”

The filly twitched as her mind remembered that there was more to life than watching an avalanche miles away, on the other side of the valley. Her mind wandered as it processed her father’s words. The crater was still the focus of her thoughts, namely the shear size of it. And although she was guessing, her immigration couldn’t help but to paint an image of her hometown in the crater, and then to imagine two more craters of that size overlapping with the rest of the town.

Slowly rotating her front right leg, Scootaloo finally looked away from the destruction outside, and gazed through the crystal, into the liquid rainbow indicator. She saw that about one seventh of the rainbow fuel had been used up in the shot, and her body locked up again as it dawned on her that the weapon strapped to her leg could destroy Ponyville twice over and still have a shot to spare.

A soft whistle, a waving orange hoof and the word ‘Sport?’ made Scootaloo shift her gaze back up, to the father now standing by her side. A part of her wanted to rip the weapon off of her leg, run away and find some corner to curl up in until she could forget that the world was a dangerous place. The part of her desperate to please her father and win back his full trust wanted to march up and do as he asked.

In the end she slowly raised a hoof, pointed to the silver weapon on her other front leg and said, “You want me to fire this-” Then pointing her hoof at the crystal no bigger than her own youthful hoof, she finished, “-at that?”

Even though her hoof pointed to the shadow crystal her eyes were focused much too far away to be looking at anything in the room. Following his daughter’s gaze, the destruction on the far side of the valley dawned on him. He blinked as he considered his next move. If his theory was right this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something truly good with the family secret, to finally give all these years of lies and secrecy meaning, a good meaning. Yet his daughter was right, firing it wasn’t exactly a low-key event. Were the risks worth it? What were the risks? They were… nothing.

“Yeah… we’ve already made a crater, I doubt anypony will notice if we make it bigger.”

The stallion placed a wing on his daughter’s back, gently pushing her forward, and though hesitant she let him lead her up to the side of the molten slag that used to be the war golem. Standing behind her, he wrapped one front leg around his daughter and placing his hoof on her chest he lifted her up, helping her stand upright. Looking over her shoulder, he found his daughter’s weapon arm unsteady, unable to keep on the target now less than a foot away. With the soft touch of his wing on her shoulder Scootaloo’s aim steadied, and with one last nudge he had her aiming through the shadow crystal, at the center of the crater on the other side of the valley.

“There, fire.”

Scootaloo swallowed hard, pushed the button, and once more beheld the beauty and destruction the weapon attached to her leg was capable of.

When the discharge had finished and the blast of wind had passed, the three ponies opened their eyes, and they saw that the last remnants of the war golem were gone. The shadow crystal that had once been a shape of an elongated cube was also gone. But in its place was a radiant white gem in the shape of a four-pointed star. The star-like gem hovered in the air for a moment and then fell to the ground.

Scootaloo’s dad stepped forward and reached out for the gemstone.

“What are you doing? Touching a shadow crystal is dangerous!” Captain Cloud Wall protested.

The orange stallion shook his head and answered, “Can’t you see it? It’s physically transformed. Can’t you feel it? The aura coming off of it isn’t menacing anymore. It’s comforting. I don’t think it’s a shadow crystal anymore.”

There was no denying the physical change, and stepping forward Cloud joined Scootaloo and her dad in feeling the difference in the very presence of the crystal. Cautiously Cloud Wall gave a small nod, as if to retract his complaint.

Scootaloo’s dad once more reached out and gave the crystal a quick tap. With nothing more than two stallions raising an eyebrow in response, he touched it again firmly this time. Then scooping the gem up he held it on top of his hoof and said, “You realize what this means right?”

Cloud Wall nodded. “It means the legends are wrong, and that shadow crystals can be purified.”

Chapter 5: Aftermath

“What’s taking them so long? And how long are we suppose to stay in here?” Apple Bloom moaned, while shifting her weight slightly to better keep her sling-bound hind leg from touching anything it didn’t have to.

At first Sweetie Belle just shrugged and once more glanced around the rather plain room they’d been asked to wait in. Said room was technically an interrogation room at the Vanhoover police station. A few crumbs were the only things on the table and the last evidence of the lettuce and carrot sandwiches that had passed for dinner. The dim light bulb overhead did its best to illuminate the room but it wasn’t quite enough to keep the place from feeling less than welcoming. The one pleasant feature of the room was the two plush pillow seats that the fillies were currently reclined on, and ironically enough those had been brought in along with the sandwiches and clearly weren’t a permanent feature.

“That medic did a nice job of setting my leg and all, so Ah don’t want to complain. But shouldn’t Ah have gone to the hospital and gotten a proper cast on this by now?” Bloom said, looking at the splint and bandages wrapped around her broken leg, and continuing to defy the annoying silence that filled the room whenever one of them wasn’t talking.

Sweetie gave a soft sigh. “I’m wondering about that myself. Between that and the way they escorted me when I used the bathroom you’d think we’re under arrest here.”

The door finally opened and the fillies squinted at the figure silhouetted by the well-lit hallway outside. Although they didn’t really need any help guessing the identity of the small figure. When the new arrival closed the door behind her and the light returned to gloomy dim and they could see that it was Scootaloo for sure. They also made the observation that Scootaloo no longer wore the silver leg brace or her saddlebags.

“Can we go home yet?” Apple Bloom asked.

With her eyes unable to look up from the floor between them, Scootaloo shook her head and muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Sweetie asked, looking both curious and worried.

“I couldn’t talk dad into letting you remember any of this.”

“Say what now?” Apple Bloom asked, looking confused.

“He said that if it was only the crime ring you knew about, he’d have let me risk my cover by trusting you two to keep quiet. But…”

Scootaloo hesitated to finish her sentence long enough that Sweetie Belle deduced the answer and finished for her.

“Because we saw the silver thing your family keeps secret we know too much?”

Scootaloo nodded.

“Exactly. That’s why once we’re done talking, the next pony who comes through that door is going to be a unicorn from the shadow-ops damage control unit. They'll cast a spell, and the next thing you know you’ll be waking up tomorrow in Ponyville hospital not remembering anything that’s happened today. And everypony will be telling you that you two got hit on the head during the attack on the museum and that’s how you got hurt and why you can’t remember today.”

“If we ain’t gonna remember any of this, why bother telling us?” Bloom asked, gesturing to the room around them.

“Because I wanted to say, I’m sorry for lying to you when I tell you those same lies tomorrow.”

“Can’t be all that sorry if ya are planning to lie to us,” Apple Bloom said with a huff, crossing her front legs.

Scootaloo only shifted her gaze even closer to her own hooves.

“We forgive you.”

Scootaloo looked up in surprise at the sound of Sweetie Belle’s voice.

“We do?” Bloom asked.

“Of course we do. Scoot is our friend and we wouldn’t want to make this any harder on her than we have to, right?” she answered with nothing but compassion in her voice.

Bowing her head slightly, Apple Bloom said, “Fine, I forgive ya too.”

Scootaloo managed a small smile, and whipping away a tear from her eyes she said, “Thank you, girls. Is there anything you can think of that I can do to make it up to you? You know, before you forget why I owe you one?”

Apple Bloom looked at her broken leg for a moment.

“Actually, there is. Promise me that you’ll take good care of yourself.”

“Take care of my self? What do you mean?” Scootaloo asked tiling her head to the side slightly.

“If Ah remembered today, Ah know Ah’d get really worried for ya every time you ‘couldn’t play today’ since Ah’d know that meant you’d probably be out doing something dangerous like this. Just… don’t go getting yourself killed or something. Ah’d rather keep Scootaloo my normal friend than have to go to the funeral of Scootaloo the awesome spy.”

“Yeah, what she said,” Sweetie said in agreement with her earth pony friend.

Scootaloo nodded her head and as solemnly as she could she said, “I promise.”

With that the young pegasus got up to leave. The door opened and as she left a unicorn entered and the last thing Scootaloo’s friends saw was a flash of pink light.

* * * * * * *

Father and daughter stood in the secret room hidden within a secret tunnel. The elder pegasus pulled the silver weapon out of the saddlebags and placed the filly-sized device back on its pedestal.

Taking notice of the way his daughter looked at the family secret, and knowing the answer even before he asked, he asked anyway. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just… wrong. It was so… beautiful… awesome… and scary. It’s just wrong that something that awesome can be that destructive,” Scootaloo answered.

The father closed his eyes. With his daughter’s words a part of him felt bad by the fact that he wasn’t bothered by how destructive the weapon could be. Maybe it was just because his line of work had forced him to understand that the world was a dangerous place long ago. Maybe he just wasn’t as good a pony as his daughter that it didn’t bother him.

Yet there was more to his silent pondering. The hint of fear in Scootaloo’s words had made the more timid side of his daughter show itself. Not that anypony could blame her, having been born not only as a weak flyer but an especially weak flyer, it was only natural for other kids her age to notice that and tease her for being a pegasus who still couldn’t fly. As her father, a part of him wanted to help her conquer her fears, yet the idea that she might get scared away from the dangerous path of a secret agent also appealed to him.

Finally looking away from the silver weapon, Scootaloo said, “First Sweetie Belle, and now Apple Bloom. I-I can’t do this any more. I don’t want my friends to get hurt because of me.”

Resting a wing on his daughter’s back he finally replied, “No pony said you had to be a secret agent to be a guardian of our family secret.”

Looking back up at the silver device, she asked, “You said that the first time it was fired it did something good. What was that?”

“If the stories are true, it ended Equestria’s civil war.”

The answer was met with slowly growing eyes, and an equally growing tremble in the filly’s body. “I-It was f-fired at… ponies?”

“Maybe. Maybe it was just fired at an empty mountainside like today. I mean the history books only say that the unicorns surrendered and never again thought their magic was superior to the magic of the other races. Considering that this is one of the few pegasus-made magic artifacts in the world, and after seeing it work, I’d certainly come to that conclusion too.”

A small yet doubting smile crept onto the filly’s face. “Do you really think so?”

As much as he wanted to comfort his daughter, the elder pegasus knew his little Scootaloo was smart, and if she was smart enough to question the rosy theory he’d given her, she was smart enough to come to the same conclusion as he did, eventually. And while he knew he wouldn’t be winning any parent of the year awards anytime soon, the one thing that he’d found to keep the bond with his daughter strong was the fact that he’d give her the truth even when he wouldn’t give it to anyone else.

The stallion shook his head. “No, if that’s all that had happened the books would say so. The fact that they are so vague makes it stink of a cover up. It’s probably safe to assume that a lot of unicorns died that day. And while it might be sad to think about, it did end a war that killed a lot more ponies than that, a war that killed ponies who never wanted to fight in the first place even.”

After a short pause, with a more supportive tone he added, “Also, that was a long time ago, and you had nothing to do with it, okay? And now that we’ve seen it in action, we’re both better equipped to decide if and when the time is right to bring it out of hiding again.”

“I never want to fire it again,” Scootaloo said quietly.

“Don’t let fear stop you from doing the right thing,” he counseled his daughter. Seeing the unsatisfied frown on her face, he added, “Look on the bright side. As long as it took for the guardians of the weapon to decide to use a second time, what are the odds that we’ll think we need it again in our lifetimes? Besides even if we do think we need it again, as long as I’m alive, you won’t have to fire it.”

That got a smile out of her. “You promise?”

“I promise. Now it’s way past your bedtime, missy.”

The mere mention of bedtime was enough to make the filly yawn, and she certainly didn’t need any other reason to want to leave the secret room. With a sleepy smile she hugged her father quickly and then turned to leave.

As soon as Scootaloo was gone, her father looked back at the silver filly-sized weapon. Placing a hoof on the device he couldn’t help but fear. I just hope I’m not making a promise I can’t keep.

* * * * * * *

“So you’re telling me that this crystal, so radiant with light magic that it could justly be called a ‘holy relic,’ used to be a shadow crystal? The same type of shadow crystal that is legendary for its dark magic so strong that it corrupts all other magic it touches and is said that nothing can purify it?” Luna asked, with clear skepticism in her voice.

Between the darkened room and traveler’s cloak, her starlight mane was the only truly visible part of the princess of the night. Wearing similar cloaks, the two pegasus stallions nodded in response to the princess’s questions. A gesture that might have seemed foolish given the only dim light in the room was coming from the soft prismatic glow coming off of the star-like gemstone. Of course the two shadow-ops captains knew that the darkness didn’t bother the princess at all.

“With enough light magic it seems they can be purified,” the two said.

Looking between the two pegasi and then to the gem that resembled a four-pointed star, Luna asked, “Are not both of your teams made solely of pegasi? Where pray tell did you get ‘enough light magic’ anyway?”

In unison they answered, “That’s classified.”

“Even from me?”

“Even from you.”

Unseen in the darkness, Luna raised an eyebrow and the gears in her mind started to turn. As long forgotten memories found their way to the surface, revelation flashed in the alicorn princess’s eyes. “Ah, then I shall not ask which of you is the current guardian of the prism beam.”

“Prism beam?” both pegasi asked. Both curious in their own ways, as neither had actually heard that name before, either way they both carried a similar tone in their voice.

Luna gave a small laugh. “Come now, there aren’t that many things I’ve ordered hidden even from me. Surly you can imagine that there are even fewer capable of unleashing light magic.” Stopping to tap a hoof on her chin she added, “Although I suspect that this means that the official secret report blaming the war golem for the new lake near Vanhoover is not true either, is that right?”

“Yes ma’am,” both stallions answered.

Luna couldn’t help but smile at the clearly practiced uniformity the two before her were showing. Looking to the crystal on the floor in front of her, she said, “As nice as it is to be vindicated for defying my sister all those years ago, we can’t afford to have rumors floating around that the prism beam still exists.”

Daring to step forward, Cloud Wall motioned to the crystal on the floor and said, “Princess, I don’t understand. There are only five shadow crystals left in the world. The set can no longer be completed. Isn’t that one of the best things that’s ever happened for the safety of Equestria?”

“It is,” Luna answered with a nod. “But it is not that simple. Celestia views the prism beam as an abomination. As you no doubt know, light magic rarely takes on a purely destructive form. Even if she knew that it was the reason for the shadow crystal’s end, she would insist all the more that the prism beam is no longer needed. After it was first used, she ordered it destroyed. But I saw the truth, she was acting on emotion, not thinking things out. And most importantly I have seen her putting blind faith in the elements, and more recently, the spirits of harmony. Where she would see only the perversion of her precious light, I see the ultimate weapon of light capable of conquering the shadows that the elements and magic of friendship can not.”

Stepping forward, Scootaloo’s father asked, “And what do you want us to do with the crystal? A potent source of light magic like this could be used to do some good.”

“It should be hidden. One of you take it, pass it along to somepony who can be trusted to keep it hidden away, and have them pass it along to one that they trust to do the same. Let its origin be forgotten. When time has forgotten that it was once a shadow crystal, and it can no longer be traced to the disappearance of a shadow crystal, curiosity will take its course and somepony will use it for something good then.”

Seeing that the soldiers before her seemed to want more, Luna added, “Sadly that which can be made can be remade. And I’d prefer that the forces of darkness seeking to unite the shadow crystals spend their time searching for that which no longer exists than realizing they need to figure out how to make another shadow crystal to complete the set.”

The two stallions gave each other a nod and returning to acting in unison they saluted and said, “Understood ma’am, we’ll take care of it.”

* * * * * * *

Apple Bloom awoke slowly. Rubbing the stiffness out of her joints, she realized that this didn’t feel like her bed. Her mind snapped awake and she saw that she was in a hospital bed. Sitting up, she felt that something was wrong with her leg and looking at she found it wrapped in a cast. A feeling on her forehead informed her that she had bandages wrapped around her head from just above her eyes to just below the base of her ears.

“Ooohhh… my head…” she moaned. Then spotting Scootaloo sitting in a chair between her bed and another one, she added. “Scoot, what happened?”

The pegasus filly looked up from the comic book she had been reading.

“Apple Bloom! You’re awake!” she cheered.

Then she turned to face the other bed, thus drawing Bloom’s attention to the fact that Sweetie Belle was in other bed.

Scootaloo softly rocked her shoulder and in response Sweetie moaned.

“Shouldn’t you be letting her rest?” Bloom asked.

“You got it worse then she did, so if you’re ready to wake up, so is she.”

Suddenly sitting up and then drawing a hoof to her own bandaged head, Sweetie Belle said, “I’m up! I’m up! Oww! Why do I have such a bad headache?”

“There was a robbery at museum when we on the field trip,” Scootaloo answered.

“Museum? Field trip? You mean tomorrow’s field trip?” Sweetie said trying to make sense of what her memories were telling her.

“No, I mean yesterday’s field trip.”

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom look at each other with the same bewildered look.

“Ah don’t even remember going. What happened?”

“Like I said, there was a robbery. They blew a huge hole in the floor! Stuff when flying everywhere!” Scootaloo was swinging her arms excitedly as she narrated the event. “We all tried to take cover, and you were awesome Apple Bloom!”

“Ah was?”

“Yeah something big was about to smash Sweetie Belle! But you knocked her out of the way!” Suddenly sounding a lot less cheerful, Scootaloo looked to the cast on Blooms leg and added, “And it landed on you leg instead. That’s how it got broken.”

“Sounds exciting, I can’t believe we can’t we remember any of that,” Sweetie said.

“Yeah any idea why that is?” Bloom asked.

“You two got knocked out by falling rubble. We took you to the hospital when you didn’t wake up right away. And once they were done treating the broken leg and stuff they let us transfer you back to Ponyville’s hospital to wait until you woke up here. Anyway, the doctors said you two got real bad concussions. They even warned me that hits to the head like that might make you lose some of your memories.”

The two fillies in the hospital beds looked at their friend with blank faces for a moment.

Eventually Sweetie Belle returned her gaze to the end of her bed.

“I guess that makes sense.”

Reaching out and putting a hoof on the shoulders of both of her friends, Scootaloo said, “I’m just glad you two are okay.”

“Yeah, me too,” Apple Bloom said, hugging the hoof offered to her. “Say, Scootaloo?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever find your dad and deliver that secret thing to him?”

Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, he seemed to think things turned out okay. So you can just forget about it now. Mission complete,” she added, even faking a bit of a smile.

Then she got up and said, “I should probably get going now. I’m late enough for school already, and Cheerilee only said I could stay with you two until you woke up. So I guess I’ll see you later.”

She’d made it half way to the door when Sweetie Belle’s voice stopped her.

“Hey Scoot, don’t go doing anything too reckless without us out there!”

Scootaloo smiled.

“Don’t worry, I promise.”

Author's Note

Hope you enjoyed the story. And now that I rewrote the ending to keep it compatible with the session 7, hopefully it's even better.

As always any honest feedback is appreciated. :scootangel: