“For the strength of the Flock is the Chicken, and the Chicken the strength of the Flock.” The Law of The Chicken-Yard.
Scootaloo slung her book bag down on the ground and kicked it. She hated it when Diamond Tiara called her a chicken. She and Apple Bloom had taught the obnoxious little filly what was what at recess and Sweetie Belle had sat on her head. Detention with Miss Cheerilee was worth it, but that meant there wasn’t much time after school to decide what they’d try next to earn their cutie marks. Archeology had been a bust. They hadn’t found any hidden artifacts, just potato sprouts. It seemed like hardly any time at the clubhouse before Apple Bloom had to go home and help with the chores, and Sweetie Belle said reluctantly that she hated when Rarity fussed over how late she was, so there wasn’t much point in staying.
She didn’t have to be home for dinner right away. It was worth another try.
Strapping on her helmet and picking up her skateboard, she trotted back along the road. She placed the board down and got it up to the highest speed she could manage, and. . . .NOW!
Her wings caught the wind. One slow beat and she was soaring past the oak tree. It felt great until her early training cut in, and then she began to flap wildly, crashing into the road. Scootaloo muttered into the dust, “Ah, brawk.”
Getting airborne wasn’t the problem. The problem was staying there.
“Look well! Look well, O Chickens! Ye know the Law!” The orange foal was rolled into the center of the circle. She lay on her back, all four legs in the air.
There was a long silence, and then Top Knot said, “What the brawk is that thing?”
It was a long, tense Council Meeting. Red Comb said that the thing had wings, and so it was a chicken. Top Knot argued that the thing had four legs and so was clearly not a chicken. Finally Old Frizzle settled the dispute and decided it was a “Not-A-Threat-To-Chickens-Probably,” and there the matter rested.
The filly didn’t know the whole story, but when she asked, Old Frizzle just pointed to the sky, then waved her wing at The Flock, and finally threw her wing over her. That was good enough for her, as long as she thought in chicken.
She was one of The Flock. She learned everything there was to know about being a chicken. She scratched with her foot for food and brought her head down to take little stabs at it when she ate it, which wasn’t very efficient. She learned to scatter when there was a sudden noise. She was good at the scattering part: too good at it. She kept scattering too far, and sometimes straight up. Once she had sailed over the yard in a wide circle, feeling the breeze in her feathers, and then looked down to see everyone screaming at her. All the other chickens jumped up and down and flapped wildly. Okay, she thought, clearly not supposed to do that. She landed awkwardly in the chicken yard, and promised herself never to do that again.
The chickens taught her that the way to use your wings was as an assist. You could skitter quickly out of the way if you used your wings, but not UP. That wasn’t what we chickens did.
There was no friendship among The Flock. There was simply Flock and Not-Flock. Whatever was Not-Flock didn’t matter. Within The Flock, everything ran on a strict pecking order. Old Frizzle was at the top, with Red Comb and Top Knot frequently fighting for second place.
She squabbled over seeds, and never really seemed to get enough. It got harder and harder to fit into the shed with everyone else. Then one morning, she awoke bright and early. Rainclouds were scudding out of sight, sailing across a clear blue sky, followed by a parade of fluffy white clouds.
She rose up and shook herself, trotting over to take a drink from a beautiful new clear puddle. The sky made the puddle into a bright mirror. She blinked at the animal in the puddle. She blew at it, and the water rippled, but it didn’t go away. She straddled her legs out awkwardly, getting lower and lower to the surface, almost touching it. That’s me, she thought, and wiggled her wings. The wings were just like everybody’s, sort of, but--
She looked at all the other chickens. Then she looked at the chicken in the puddle, and made its wings flap. Then she looked at the other chickens again, and then back to the chicken in the puddle. I don’t look like the other chickens at all, she thought, and then, I’m me. In that moment, she became Not-Flock, and after that, she had to go.
That was when Old Frizzle explained things to her, if you could call it an explanation. The Flock made her a bag out of an old feed sack. In it they put several pounds of birdseed, a piece of paper that Old Frizzle walked back and forth on, and a little bunch of faded blue and white ribbon that the chickens seemed to think was important somehow. The gray frizzled chicken placed her wing on the little filly’s shoulder. They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Brawk.”
There was a whole world beyond the chicken yard. After a short morning’s trot, the path ended at a wide meadow, waving with tall grasses and wildflowers. Everything in the little filly’s body screamed out that this was the kind of place she belonged. She dropped her bag on the path and sprang out into the meadow in huge jumps, somersaulting over and over and finally lying down for a long, satisfying roll. Afterwards, there were mouthfuls of this wonderful stuff. It was crispy, spicy, and fresh, and there was as much of it as she wanted. She chased herself all over the meadow, and then lay down for a nap.
She woke up just at dusk. A few raindrops hit her coat, and some more ran down her wing feathers. She shivered. There wasn’t a shed to get to now. She was just going to have to get wet and cold, or worse.
She couldn’t know that far above, weather ponies were bickering about whether rain was on the schedule or not, but the raindrops stopped just as suddenly as they had started. The sky was beautiful, as orange as her coat and as purple as her tail. The stars came out one by one and she fell asleep with no fear, as though there were nothing in the world that could harm a small pony all alone, asleep in the middle of a wide open field, and maybe she was right.
In the morning, she enjoyed another meal of grass and meadow flowers, slung the sack over her back, and kept walking in the direction of the sun, the way Old Frizzle had showed her.
In a small cottage on the edge of the Whispering Wood, two old earth ponies sat in the kitchen, enjoying the cool summer breeze through the open half of the front door. There was a rustling just outside. The blue stallion paused, plate in mouth, then placed his plate carefully back on the table. “Sweetheart? Could you get the door? I’ll finish clearing up from dinner.”
The white mare trotted to the door and looked out the upper hatch. Nopony seemed to be there.
“Hello?” she said, then looked down to see a small orange filly with a purple mane. She stood with her four legs braced, meeting the old mare’s gaze with an absolutely fearless gaze of her own. Sweetheart swung the bottom half of the door open. “And who would you be, dear? Do you have a name?”
The little filly smelled something sweet, the unfamiliar smell of apples, and moved eagerly towards the table. She flapped her wings, propelling herself faster, but never really leaving the ground. Sweetheart laughed.
“Look at her, Teddy! She doesn’t trot, she scoots! Isn’t that cute?”
Teddy nodded and pushed the bowl of apples across the table. “From now on, we’re calling you Scootaloo,” he said, smiling. “Is that all right?”
The young filly looked up at him, eyes round. “Brawk,” she said solemnly, and had her first taste of apple.
Later, after Scootaloo had been tucked into bed, the two older ponies sat up, worrying.
“I’m sure I’ve never seen her before, Teddy,” Sweetheart insisted. “I know I would have remembered her. Maybe there’s something in her bag that would tell us more.” She turned Scootaloo’s bag out onto the table.
They quickly agreed that the several pounds of birdseed weren’t going to be much help. They found a piece of paper, but that wasn’t much help, either.
“I can’t make it out,” said the old blue stallion, scratching his brown mane with one hoof. “It’s like chicken scratch.”
“Oh, look, Teddy,” Sweetheart breathed. She brushed aside some of the birdseed, revealing a clump of blue and white ribbon. It was in several pieces, and it was curled and bent, as thought it had once been tied into a mane and tail. She sniffed. “Somepony must have loved her very much.”
Teddy blew out a breath. “I know what you’re going to say already, Sweetheart. We’re going to have to keep her until we can find her real family.”
“We’re her real family now,” Sweetheart said firmly.
“Hay,” Sweetheart said patiently, pointing down at Scootaloo’s plate. “Hay. Go ahead.”
“H-ay.”
“Very good!”
Scootaloo was a quick learner. By the end of the summer, she’d learned how to speak. As soon as she’d learned how to talk, she’d learned how to argue. Uncle Teddy made her a skateboard, thinking of the skates he and Sweetheart had once loved so much, and then thought about it some more and made a helmet, too. The first time she’d gone flying off the skateboard, he’d tried running on his stiff legs to catch her, but she never seemed to care if she crashed, even though she did it all the time. There was just one thing the two affectionate old Earth ponies couldn’t teach her.
By the fall, Sweetheart and Teddy decided she was ready to go to school with the other colts and fillies her age. He walked her to school, worrying that she wouldn’t remember how to talk and that she wouldn’t fit in. When he came back to get her, Scootaloo was racing back and forth talking about new friends and cutie marks and how someponies were –
Uncle Teddy said she was a very smart little pony to learn words so quickly, but she shouldn’t use those ones.
Did he know that ponies moved the clouds, and that there was one who was the fastest pony ever? And she was going to be just like that when she grew up and she was going to start practicing right now! Look at meeeee! Off she went, her little wings buzzing like a dragonfly.
After that, Uncle Teddy stopped worrying about her and told Aunt Sweetheart she should stop worrying, too. “Scoots is fine,” he said, when she began to fuss. “Look, Sweetheart, we can’t keep up with her, even if we wanted to, and I don’t think you should try. She’s always with her two friends, and one of them is Applejack’s little sister. I’m sure they can’t get into too much trouble.”
Scootaloo was relieved. Honestly, the way Uncle Teddy and Aunt Sweetheart flapped around and clucked, you’d have thought she was back in the chicken yard. Uncle Teddy wouldn’t let Aunt Sweetheart walk all the way into Ponyville for the talent show, but they admired her medal for comedy and hung it on the living room wall. The award had come as a surprise, because really she and Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had done their music act to get their cutie marks, and there was an awful moment where everypony had laughed at them. It had all been all right in the end, though, because they won the award, and best of all, Rainbow Dash had been there and actually came backstage to say hi.
Rainbow Dash was everything a pegasus pony was supposed to be. She’d been born up in the clouds. How cool was that? She never doubted herself. She didn’t even think about all the cool things she did, which was what made her so totally awesome. She probably rolled off her cloud and did two Sonic Rainbooms every morning before she even brushed her teeth, that’s how awesome she was. Scootaloo ought to be like that, too, living up in the clouds and being cool like a real pegasus, and she couldn’t even get off the ground and stay off the ground because she was still flying like she was a chicken.
She was a pony. She was not a chicken. That was important to remember. You could not walk over to Fluttershy’s chickens and just ask them to get back in their coop. It was better to go into the Everfree Forest than to admit that you knew how to do that. And even then ---
“Heeeere, chick-chick-chicken!” called Apple Bloom.
Scootaloo snorted. “That’s not how you call a chicken,” she said scornfully, before she could stop herself.
“Oh, and you know how to call a chicken?”
“I know that’s not the way.” Seed-corn-in-the process-of-almost-being-about-to-happen, Scootaloo muttered under her breath.
“Then show me!” jeered Apple Bloom.
“I don’t have to show you!”
“You’re just chicken!”
“Am not!” For a second, she thought she felt her flank itch, and panicked. I’m going to have an egg for a cutie mark! Everypony will know!
“Oh, wait, now I know how to call a chicken! Scootaloo! Scoot-scootaloo!”
She felt her feathers ruffle, her wings spread, and her nose twitch, as though she were going to start pecking Apple Bloom. No! she told herself. “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” she added angrily.
Then things got too busy to explain, even if she’d wanted to. But after that, she knew she’d never tell even her best friends about having been a chicken. After all, they were all trying to figure out what their very special talent was, weren’t they? They didn’t have to know that she was still trying to figure out how to be a pony, too.
She was sure she knew what it would be like to fly. It would be like that morning she’d bounced out into the meadow and felt the sunshine, suddenly knowing that she was a pony, running and rolling because it felt right. This would be better, because the sun would be closer and warmer, and instead of grass whipping past, it would be clouds. She’d really be who she was meant to be all along, and not having her cutie mark yet wouldn’t matter so much.
It turned out it was easier to learn something totally new than to forget something you’d already learned. She really needed help, but if she wasn’t going to tell her best friends that she’d been a chicken, she certainly couldn’t tell Rainbow Dash. She had nightmares of her hero exclaiming, “You used to be a chicken? BAH HAH HAH HAH!” and rolling around with laughter. That would be the worst thing ever. So she kept trying to teach herself, buzzing along on her scooter and following Rainbow Dash far above, piping shrilly, “wait for me!”
High up from the topmost window of her library, a certain unicorn watched the pegasus filly riding her scooter every day, rising just a little bit higher into the air almost every time, and began to worry.
Twilight Sparkle was having tea with Fluttershy when Rainbow Dash raced up, blowing, her flanks foaming white with sweat.
“Dash? Is something wrong?”
“Faller foal,” she panted, still breathing hard. “”Scuse me. Phew.”
Fluttershy gasped in horror, hooves to her mouth.“Oh, the poor thing! Did somepony catch her?”
“What’s a faller foal?” the unicorn asked.
Rainbow Dash had her teeth gripped around the handle of the teapot, so Fluttershy explained. “It’s when a little foal . . . oh, it’s too horrible . . .”
“Flies straight off the edge of a cloud,” Dash said, finishing her sentence for her. “Mwf,” she added, yanking a plate of cookies towards her and beginning to chomp.
Twilight Sparkle glanced at each pegasus in turn. “Does, uh, that happen a lot?” she asked hesitantly.
A multicolored mane shook back and forth. “Only by accident,” Fluttershy said sadly. “Nopony wants it to happen. We don’t kick our poor little baby foals out of the nest on purpose.” She leaned down to offer her rabbit a carrot. “I mean, we’re not monsters, are we, Angel? Eep!” she added, as her fluffy bunny snapped the carrot off her hoof, a little too close for comfort.
Rainbow Dash gulped down a huge mouthful of cookie. “Actually, we probably should kick foals out of their nests.”
“Rainbow!” Fluttershy squeaked.
“Right off the edge, fly or fall. Teach ‘em to tread air with somepony watching.” Now both the other ponies were staring at her in horror. “What?” she said, staring back, genuinely confused. “It’s a safety thing!”
Fluttershy trembled, nose between her hooves and wings whirring in distress. “But it’s horrible to fall! I remember—“
“—windmilling your legs and wings just like you were supposed to. First lesson at Flight Camp. And it worked. I mean, it’s not like a flock of butterflies could really break the fall of a filly going a kajillion miles a second. Sheesh,” she said, rolling her eyes. She leaned back on her chair, waving her hoof in the air. “It’s like I told the Cakes. You’ve gotta watch a baby pegasus every single second. Luckily, somepony usually grabs them, or there’s another cloud underneath to break their fall.”
“What happens if there isn’t?” asked Twilight Sparkle. She was itching to take notes, but she knew it would be rude.
“They’re like baby birds,” Fluttershy said mournfully. “They can get hurt, and they can’t get back to the nest on their own.” Her eyes started to brim over. “They can even,” she sniffed, “they can even die if nopony finds them. My mother had a friend who never saw her foal again.”
“Yeah, well, this one’s fine,” Rainbow Dash cut in. “Are those sandwiches? Somepony push me the sandwiches. Anyway, that’s not the worst kind of accident. The worst is from trying to fly a maneuver and failing, which, yeah, I’ve done, so don’t remind me. Then it’s all about knowing how to fall.” She bit into her sandwich, the watercress sticking out on both sides of her mouth.
“Sooo,” said Twilight Sparkle, the forehead under her horn furrowed in thought, tracing figures on Fluttershy’s tablecloth, “you’re saying that a little pegasus could hurt herself really badly by trying hard to fly.” Rainbow Dash’s eyes bugged out, but her mouth was too full to say anything.
“Oh my, yes,” Fluttershy said earnestly. “I never fell until I was at Flight Camp. I was too scared to go anywhere near the edge. It’s the ones who really want to fly that get into trouble.”
Rainbow Dash swallowed, her mouth still green from the sandwich. She had the horrible feeling that she knew what was coming next.
“You mean the ones like Scootaloo? Fluttershy, may I have another lump of sugar?”
“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Fluttershy murmured, carefully nudging the sugar bowl closer to her guest. “Oh, yes, if Scootaloo had grown up in Cloudsdale, she would be exactly the kind of filly we’d have to watch all the time,” she added innocently.
“Good thing she didn’t grow up in Cloudsdale then, right?” the other Pegasus said, interrupting her. “Hey, look at the time.”
“She sailed past my window the other day,” continued Twilight, exactly as though Rainbow Dash hadn’t spoken, and dropping some sugar in her tea, “and I mean my highest window. She’s very athletic. Almost graceful, if you ask me.”
“Uh, sure, she likes heights and speed. But --”
“She likes ziplining,” Twilight said dryly.
“She’s still not going to get high enough to get into trouble. She doesn’t fly, she flaps. It’s like somepony taught her how not to fly. Weirdest thing ever.”
“Could you teach her?”
Rainbow Dash shook her head, her mane a blur. “Whoa, so not happening over here. Not good with kids, remember? After that thing with Apple Bloom, Applejack said she’d tan my hide, and I think she meant that literally. I don’t coach kids. Anyway, I don’t think I can help her if I don’t even know what’s going wrong.”
“Spike could take pictures,” offered Twilight Sparkle. “He can take lots of really fast pictures of Scootaloo flying. Then I can put them together and you can look at them one by one and figure out exactly what she’s doing and how to fix it.”
“Oh, Spike. We don’t need Spike,” bragged Rainbow Dash. “Look.” She stretched out one wing to demonstrate. “See, obviously the take off isn’t the problem. That all comes from the hind legs and wing power. It’s leveling out that’s the issue and letting the air do the work, not flapping all the time, which, sorry, Fluttershy, you still don’t get. The only reason you don’t crash and burn more often is because at least you’ve got a nice slow beat instead of a buzz, and you know how to streamline your body when you really want to, and—“ she stopped, realizing she had trapped herself.
“Sounds like you know exactly what she needs to do, then.”
“No!” Rainbow Dash wailed, flailing her front hooves. “Scootaloo thinks I can do anything, just because I’m the best flier ever, but I’m an awful coach!”
“Actually, um, you really sort of are. Oops. Sorry,” said Fluttershy.
“See? She’ll think she can do the same things I do! She’ll get herself up high and not be able to get down, or even worse, she will get down, really, really fast. Sure, I can keep her from hitting the ground if I’m around, but I’m not always going to be around, am I? She’ll become a Scootasmush! A Scootawaffle! and it will totally be my fault. I just wanna take my naps in peace!”
“If you teach her, then you can take your naps in peace, can’t you? As you said,” Twilight said smoothly, “it’s a safety thing.”
The blue pegasus rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right,” she sighed. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. I don’t want to get the kid’s hopes up. Gotta go, ladies. I’ve been on cloud clearing duty all day and then there was the faller, and my wings are killing me.”
Fluttershy waited until Rainbow Dash had taken off before saying, “Twilight, you did that on purpose!”
“Excuse me, Fluttershy, I didn’t know what a faller foal was and I couldn’t have set THAT up, so I don’t know what you mean.” Fluttershy looked almost as suspicious as Pinkie Pie at her worst. “All right, yes, I have been worried and I have been meaning to talk to Rainbow Dash about Scootaloo. That’s what friends are for, aren’t they, to encourage each other to do the right thing?”
Out in the fields next to the Whispering Wood, a small orange pony sat back and looked straight up at the sky. Something flashed by like a meteor, and then it was gone.
She looked at the stars and sighed. I’ll get up there someday, she told herself. After all, I used to be a chicken, and now I’m a pony. I can be a real pegasus, just like Rainbow Dash. I got this far.
She was, whether she realized it or not, born lucky.
Author’s notes: To Rudyard Kipling: I’m really, really sorry. To Walt Disney: I’m not really sorry, but I’m borrowing “I Wanna Be Just Like You” anyway.
The cover art is Scootaloo’s Lonely Night, by Birdco on Deviant Art. Thank you so very much for allowing me to use it!
Teddy and Sweetheart are Gen 2. They have no idea, Celestia bless ‘em.
Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, and Scootaloo are the property of Hasbro: to the best of my knowledge, this fanfiction falls within the guidelines of Fair Use.
