The Broken Crusader

What had rescued them? Scootaloo draped herself over Jay, much to his dismay. She was surprised by how soft his coat was and found herself extremely comfortable. They couldn't see who was underneath them or why they were in a purple aura, but they somehow knew that they were in good hooves. Even after the pony that had rescued them used a spell to knock them out, they still knew they were safe.

When Scootaloo opened her eyes again, she was inside a cloud house, most likely in Cloudsdale. Jay was propped up against the wall fast asleep. His white coat shimmered with what she assumed was sweat and a bead of drool dripped unattractively from his mouth. Scootaloo sat up and looked around the room only to spot the pony that had saved them: Twilight Sparkle.

"Scootaloo, what happened?" Twilight lifted Scootaloo up with her magic and sat her in front of herself. "After I brought you two here, I went back to see what happened at your house. What happened to Twist and that officer?" Her tone was concerned and sympathetic.

Scootaloo's eyes darted between Twilight and Jay. She had to think of an excuse that would trap Jay into agreeing. "Asher, the officer who was all hurt and stuff, was trying to kill me. Then Twist and I tried to fight back and we did all those things to him because..." she paused. What was the worst thing to do to a foal that would be a good enough cause to mutilate him in such a manner? She could barely contain a grin and keep her voice depressed, "He touched us." She looked up at Twilight with big, round eyes.

"T-That's so awful!" Twilight wrapped her forelegs around Scootaloo and hugged her tightly. She would have said something more intelligent, but she was too shocked. "But... what about the pegasus officer?" Twilight let go of Scootaloo and pointed toward the passed out cop.

"Asher called for backup because me and Twist were stronger than he anticipated. Then he's the one that came and he took Twist outside so I followed and jumped on his back to stop him and then he flew in the air and then-"

"I saw the part where he was trying to get you to fall and then you grabbed his wing to make him fall." Twilight interrupted. She could see the inconsistencies of Scootaloo's story clear as day, but she had just gone through something very traumatic and didn't need ponies questioning her.

"Can I go back home now?" Scootaloo asked. She huddled against Twilight's stomach and looked up at her with puppy-dog-eyes.

"No, I'm sorry." Twilight gently pet Scootaloo's head and held her close. "Lately the peace in Equestria has been disrupted in disturbing ways. Your crash, Diamond Tiara, your friends, and now this. Not to mention the unexplainable dark clouds..."

"Hey wait... if all the pegasi in Cloudsdale and Ponyville are supposed to be helping hold back the clouds," Scootaloo pushed away from Twilight and looked at Jay. "Why isn't he helping?" She turned back to Twilight again, "Why aren't the alicorns helping?"

"The princesses are needed to keep the rest of Ponyville under control." Twilight turned to look at Jay, "And I don't know about him."

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

Asher was now in a hospital bed, almost unconscious from the near overuse of morphine. Though he was in a daze, he could just make out what the doctor and nurses were saying. He knew they were planning a surgery to attempt to reattach his horn. He wasn't as worried about his horn as he was about his eye, which was a lost cause. Losing half of his sight would be a handicap, wouldn't it?

Asher at least knew that Scootaloo was out of the picture. Jay would have been fully capable of killing her and there did not seem to be anything stopping him. Maybe Asher would even get a promotion or a pay raise for solving this case. Jay would too, of course.

"Asher, Asher, can you hear me?" The doctor asked suddenly. Asher nodded. "Can you speak?" Asher shook his head.

That pencil had done impressive damage. His tongue couldn't move in the correct way to speak and even if it could, it would have hurt too much. There was now a circular hole on the roof of his mouth, his tongue, and going out of the bottom of his muzzle.

"We..." the doctor paused. "We're gonna have to rush you into surgery... but... well..." He stopped and looked down at a clipboard. "Nothing... nevermind..."

What was the problem? Were they missing any information? Money? Whatever it was, Asher wouldn't know for a while. The light brown doctor started pumping sleeping gas into the plastic mask and Asher was out like a light.

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

Featherweight's father was bouncing from smokey cloud to smokey cloud, each time he landed they would pop. His build was so unlike his colt's it was almost comical. He had broad shoulders and his legs were muscular, he almost seemed like Big Macintosh's pegasus form.

Rainbow Dash rushed past him, leaving a rainbow trail that threw off his aim. When he landed on a white cloud to get his balance, he noticed his scrawny son struggling to fly up to him. The bulky pegasus glided down to Featherweight and noticed he was carrying a piece of paper.

"What's this?" His father asked, grabbing the paper out of Featherweight's teeth. "A news update?"

"Y-Yeah..." The tan colt breathed. "It's... for... Rainbow... Dash..."

"Okay, I'll take it to her," his father turned back toward the dark clouds.

Featherweight returned to the empty house in Ponyville while his father flew up to Rainbow Dash. She was bolting in a zig-zag pattern between the dark clouds, landing sideways on them briefly before kicking off to the next black cloud. He launched in front of Rainbow Dash to stop her and showed her the paper.

"This is for you," he explained, "It's a news update thingy."

"Thanks..." Dash said distantly. She glided down to the nearest white cloud and sat down. She read the paper with wide eyes.

Inside of Scootaloo's home both a mutilated officer and a passed-out filly were found. The filly has been identified as Twist and the officer as Asher. Twist gave the description of another officer that, after seeing her being chased by her abusive mother, pursued her until she passed out. Asher is currently unable to communicate. Dash's chest began to ache when she read the final sentence: Scootaloo and the other officer (described by Twist) are nowhere to be found.

As Rainbow Dash gaped at the article, Spitfire saw her and assumed she was slacking. She swooped down next to the blue mare and lowered the paper.

"Crash, it doesn't look like you're working."

"Read this!" Rainbow Dash handed the paper to Spitfire and watched the orange pegasus read it. "Please let me-"

"Okay, this is serious enough to let you leave." Spitfire interrupted, sounded legitimately concerned. "Be back as soon as you can, though."

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

Jay's eyes opened slowly and he looked around. He was in a room made of clouds and most likely in Cloudsdale. He noticed the other pony that had been saved: Scootaloo. She was sitting in a corner staring smugly at him. Her purple eyes were dead as usual and her coat looked tattered.

"How did we get here?" He asked rubbing his head. Though he wished to avoid speaking with Scootaloo any way possible, he needed to probe.

"Twilight Sparkle saved us," Scootaloo said with a smirk. "I told her a sob story that made Asher out to be a child molester."

"W-What!?" Jay hopped to his hooves and launched at Scootaloo fully intending to kill her.

Before he could come near her, Scootaloo jumped out of the way and turned back toward Jay. He growled at her and lined himself up for another lunge. Scootaloo motioned for him to wait and she sat down.

"If Twilight comes back here to see that you killed me, you'd never see the light of day." Scootaloo cackled.

Jay stopped to consider and realized she was right. He looked down and back up against the wall. He sat down and leaned against the cloud, staring blankly at his hooves. Out of all of his years a cop, he was able to overpower adults, but this foal was outsmarting everypony. It seemed so impossible that it scared him. What if she just decided to kill him right there and then? Nopony would know that she was the criminal. Though he seemed calm on the outside, Jay was having a silent, still panic attack.

Scootaloo scanned Jay for anything significant other than his quick, shallow breaths and slight trembling. Her eye was drawn to his flank where a dove with an olive branch posed as his cutie mark. It was just as white and pristine as the rest of his coat and seemed to shine. After a few years in the CMC, Scootaloo had developed a fascination with cutie marks and everything that they meant or how they came to be.

She walked cautiously over to Jay and sat down within hoofs'-reach. She expected him to growl at her or walk away or at least turn to look at her, but he kept looking at his hooves. She glanced at his face briefly before looking back at his flank. He was shaking and breathing in a way that showed he was trying extremely hard to control it.

"What's your cutie mark for?" She asked, abruptly breaking the crushing silence.

Jay was tossed out of his thoughts and looked down at Scootaloo. She was too close for him to be comfortable, so he shifted and kicked her away with his back legs. She launched a few feet away and stumbled to her hooves. He was relieved that he had control over his body now.

"What's it for? Your cutie mark?" Scootaloo repeated shakily. She couldn't reveal that the kick was intensely painful.

Jay stayed quiet for a moment and tried to make sure his voice would be strong. "Symbolism for things like peace, devotion, purity..." He replied before he situated himself comfortably against the cloud wall. "The kind of things that ponies like you avoid."

Purity? Scootaloo's eyes widened as she noticed a correlation. Maybe that's why he looks so... weirdly angelic. I want to be pure and I am, but my cutie mark couldn't get farther from 'purity'!

"Do you want to go to jail or do you want to do what I say?" Scootaloo inquired darkly. She had a plan too delicious to ignore.

"Depends on what you want me to do." Jay sat up straight and looked at Scootaloo. His voice had a hint of hesitation and what almost sounded like fear.

"Meet me in Asher's hospital room, we'll discuss it further there," she stated. It was difficult to keep a smirk off of her face, but she managed to control herself.

Jay knew it was most likely a trap, but he would catch her if it was. He would tell the nurse to check in on them every 20 minutes. "Okay..."

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

"Twist, I need you to point to the picture that looks like the officer that chased you," the kind investigator said. She was a light purple unicorn with a yellow mane and tail. She held up a notebook and pencil with a purple aura and looked at Twist lovingly.

"Okay..." Twist squeaked. She stared down at the table that had 9 pictures of different mares and stallions. She scanned them and didn't see a single one that looked like the pegasus she had seen. "The one I saw was a pegasus, all these are unicorns or earth-ponies."

"A pegasus...? All of the pegasi are fighting the storm." The unicorn explained. "Are you sure he was a pegasus?"

"Yes!" Twist assured.

"Well... from your description it looks like the pegasus you encountered was an officer named Jay. He wasn't released in that area, though." She flipped through the notebook. "He was sick and sent home a week ago."

"But I saw him!" Twist put her front hooves on the table to accentuate how serious she was. "Are you absolutely sure he wasn't released?"

The investigator noted the tense behavior of Twist and decided it would not be healthy for her to continue to be questioned. She closed the notebook and put it in her saddle bag along with her pencil. "You should get some rest, anyways. Watch some TV or something, sweetie."

The investigator led Twist into a cozy room with a bed, TV, and a writing desk. She sat down on the bed and the mare left her alone. Twist was left with several unanswered questions that she assumed would continue to be a mystery. She rolled herself up in the warm blankets and closed her eyes.