[3 minutes earlier] Streets of Manticore - (Rainbow Dash)

Rainbow Dash and Applejack were both in a car with the orange pony behind the wheel, going to visit Spike at the Solar Guard Station.

AJ looked at Rainbow in the corner of her eye. "Remind me again on whuts the deal with this 'Red' character ya'll talkin about?"

"Like I told you before AJ...Red's my older brother" Rainbow replied, "I haven't seen him in 12 years...and I don't know why he's working with Sombra..."

"Alright...well, tell me what happen those years ago...before you joined The Solaris Sisters."

"Well...like I told you before...It's still a little fuzzy." Rainbow looked out the window. "But...It's only fair if I can tell you as much as I can remember when we get to the Station..."

"Why not now?"

"I want to make sure that Spike is alright first..." Rainbow looked out the window. "I know what it's like to be locked up..."

Applejack and Rainbow Dash arrived at The Solar Guard station and got out of the car, both of them race walking into the building.

When they got in they saw two guards, a blue pegasus and a gray wolf exiting an interrogation room, they even saw the wolf flip off whoever was in there.

"I swear to god...if he gets under my skin again...I'm fucking gutting his ass!!!" The wolf said with intense anger.

"Don't fret, Virtus..." The pegasus replied. "And let's just get to the computer room to take a look at the data..."

"Data?" Applejack asked questionably, she looked at RD. "What data?"

RD shrugged her shoulders and looked at the door the two guards walked out of and approached it, hearing two voices. One of them she recognized as Spike's.

"Well...before we get to the important bits...I believe it's only fair if you learned my and Rainbow's full story."

"Okay...I'm listening."

Rainbow knocked and opened the door. "Spike, you in here?" The first being she saw when she opened the door though was a certain red pegasus who wasn't supposed to be there. "Red?! What are you doing here?!"

The red pegasus looked at her and stood up. "Sis...what are you doing here?!"

"I came to see if Spike's alright...I got worried about him..." Rainbow answered. "So now tell me...what are you doing here and what do you want from Spike?"

"I'm here on very important business...and what I want from Spike...is to share him something...our past."

"I already shared my past with Spike...I just haven't told AJ..." Rainbow replied.

"Well...it's time they learn the full story on how we got involved with the Mafia..."

Spike looked at them both. "No offense to my Dashie...but what the hell does this have anything to do with me?"

"This is important kid...what we're about to tell you...very well may change your perspective on me and Dash."

Rainbow walked over and stood by Red's side, looking at Spike as Applejack stood by the sidelines of the room, listening in.

"It all started during our Summer Break, 14 years ago..."

[June - 14 years ago] Red and Rainbow's Childhood Home

Red: "Me and Rainbow were just little kids and we lived with our parents...we were a big happy family...but all that changed after that day..."

"Okay..." A female mare with blue fur and an orange mane looked at the stairs. "Red! Dashie!"

Down the stairs came Red and Rainbow when they were little kids, Red was a 12-year-old colt, he wore a black hoodie, blue jeans, and sneakers. Rainbow (at the time, called Dashie) was a 9-year-old little filly, she wore a dark blue t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. In Rainbow's hands was a toy sword and a cardboard shield and in Red's hands were a cardboard helmet that looked like a dragon's head. It was pretty clear on what they were doing.

A cyan pegasus with a rainbow-maned mohawk and five-o-clock shadow got on one knee to look at them with a smile. "Mommy and I are gonna get something for dinner tonight...we're getting pizza!"

Rainbow and Red both cheered. "You are the best Mommy and Daddy in the world!!!" Rainbow yelled, hugging her Dad tightly.

Their Mom and Dad chuckled. "Well the place you guys love sadly doesn't deliver...so your father and I have to go there by car...its just gonna take us a few minutes...Red would you be okay to look after Dashie while we're gone?"

Red did a cute little salute to his mother. "Don't worry Mom, I won't let anything happen to my little sis."

"Good...we'll be back in just a few minutes." Their parents closed the door and left the two kids alone in the house for a few minutes as they continued playing.

Red: "What me and Dash didn't know...was that our parents wouldn't be back in a few minutes..."

Dash: "Yeah...we heard about it late that night..."

Dash and Red were sitting in the living room, flicking through channels on the TV, wondering where their parents went. The cyan pegasus looked at her older brother. "Big brother? Where are Mommy and Daddy?"

"I don't know Dashie...I'm just hoping that everything's alright..." Red replied, stopping his channel surfing on a news channel that showed a car that crashed into a construction site. "W-Wait...that looks like..."

"-That made this car swerve off the street and into a nearby construction site. The inhabitants of the car were found disemboweled due to the pipes, entering their chest and stomachs and coming out the other side...the ponies in this car were 33-year-old: Bow Hothoof....and 31-year-old: Windy Whistles."

"R-Red...a-are Mommy and Daddy coming back?" Dashie asked, on the verge of tears after hearing what the news anchor said.

Red was in the same amount of shock, he held Dash close to him and comforted her. "I'm so sorry little sis...it looks like we're gonna be on our own for a little while..."

Dashie then held her big brother close and began to cry into his shirt as Red rubbed the back of her head, letting her let it all out.

Red: "After that happened...we went into an orphanage since we didn't have any other family to go to...but I didn't want to live in a family of strangers, let alone risk me and Dash being separated....so I took Dashie and we began to live on our own...things were rough, to say the least, but we learned to adapted pretty fast and within a month we managed to set up a small home for ourselves on an abandoned house's rooftop...all we had was each other..."

Dash: "But then...when two months went by...my brother and I started to get a little....desperate"

[August - 2 months later] Pinkie Pie's Super Duper Amazingly Scrumpalicious Baked Treats!!!

"DASHIE, C'MON!!!!" Red yelled, holding a bunch of bread and muffins in his arms. Dashie grabbed a box of donuts and a box of cookies, running with her big brother out of the bakery.

Pinkie Pie, the owner, came out of the kitchen and pointed at the kids. "SO IT WAS YOU TWO WHO'VE BEEN STEALING FROM ME THE PAST FEW WEEKS!!!!!! GET OVER HERE, YOU LITTLE THIEVES!!!!"

"RUUUUUUUNNN!!!!!!" Red and Dash ran out of her bakery carrying the baked goods as the pink pony ran outside and started going after them.

"GET BACK HERE!!!!!! YOU CAN'T HAVE MY SCUMPALICIOUS TREATS WITHOUT PAYING!!!!!!"

The Dash siblings ran to an empty alleyway and stopped to catch their breaths as the pink pony ran straight by the alleyway they hid. Knowing they successfully lost her, the little blue pegasus looked at her older brother. "Big brother...why do we have to keep doing this? Pinkie was always good to us..."

"I'm sorry Dashie...we had no other choice on the matter...we couldn't pay for the treats even if we wanted to..." Red said with a sigh.

"But...isn't stealing wrong?"

The red pegasus looked at her little sister. "We must do what needs to be done to survive..." The two kids then squinted their eyes as a flashlight was shining in their faces.

"Hey, you two...”

Red and Dash looked at each other the red stallion put his arm in front of his little sis and whispered to her. "Dashie...stay behind me and let me do the talking..." He squinted his eyes as he looked at the flashlight's light again. "Who's there??"

The being who was shining the flashlight in their faces was a young adult female changeling, she wore a black jacket with a white dress shirt inside, blue dress pants, and black shoes, her hair was tied in a ponytail. She took out something from her pants pocket and showed it to the kids, it was some kind of badge. "Zero...Manticore Private Investigation Agency..."

She put the badge back in her pocket as she looked at the treats the kids had. "Did you two pay for those?"

Red bit his bottom lip and shook his head. "No...I didn't, my sister had nothing to do with it." He lied. "My sister hasn't eaten in days and...I got desperate...."

Zero arched her eyebrow. “I’ve gotten a report from a Pinkamena Diane Pie that a lot of her treats go missing nearly every week...and then tonight she called me and gave me the description of who the thieves are...”

She went on one knee, staring straight into Red’s eyes with an angry expression. “A red pegasus colt with a blue and green mane that looked around 10-12 and a very young cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane that looked around 7-9...”

Dashie started to shiver behind her brother, her eyes getting a bit watery with tears as Red sighed, thinking up another story. "Dash didn't know I wasn't paying for them...I told her to wait outside saying I'm gonna pay."

The changeling sighed shook her head of disappointment, not buying it. “I’m sorry kid, I’m afraid I have to take you both in...” She then took out two pairs of handcuffs.

The 12-year-old pegasus shook his head quickly, being protective over Dashie. "You don't have to do that..."

“Yes...I have to...you're under arrest for theft...” The changing opened the handcuffs and put Red’s wrists in them along with putting cuffs on Dashie, who started to cry.

Zero grabbed both of their arms and was taking them to her car, leaving the treats as Red looked at her with an angry expression. "You know you didn't have to cuff us...we would have just gotten the car ourselves...hows this going to look on you leading two kids handcuffed with one crying?"

She looked at him when she heard his smartass remark and snapped back at him. “Well you know you didn’t have to constantly steal from a bakery and yet here we are....plus I don’t care how this makes me look, I’m not a cop...I’m a private investigator who takes in criminals for the guards. They don’t care how I get it done, as long as I get it done.”

As she opens the door for the kids, Red kept talking. "Maybe...but what else could we do? Our parents are dead...we have no family...and we would rather be on the streets than be separated in a foster home..."

She heard what Red was saying and looked at Dashie, who was still sniffling from crying, Zero sighed. “Look, kid...I got to take you in whether you like it or not...and I can’t promise you that you won’t be put in a foster home... it needs to be done...”

Red sighed. "I wish you hadn't said that..." He leaned against the door frame and put his foot on the bottom frame, making it harder for Zero to put him in, he then pushed back, and the back of his head hits hers, making her let go of him. He looked at Dashie. "Dash, run and hide, I'll come find you!"

Dashie gasps. “B-Big brother?”

The changeling held her head and growled. “Damn...you little shit!”

Red's survival instincts came in and he took a deep breath before twisting one of his hands with a loud crack, he then slid it out of the cuff and he quickly grabbed Dashie with his other hand. He then unfurled his wings and started to fly. Due to the weight of Dash he flew low at first, scraping his dislocated hand, and from a box that was on the ground, he grunted in pain but quickly ignored it as he gained altitude, his goal is to get his little sis out of there.

The changeling quickly came too and unfurled her bug wings, flying after them. When she got close enough, she grabbed Red’s hoodie. “I have to take you two in! There’s nothing I can do!”

Red growled a bit and threw his head back hard, feeling it hit something as the grip on his hood lessened, from behind him Zero held her right eye and blood began to come out through her fingers, there was a huge vertical cut over her eye.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The sound of Zero's scream echoed through the cold night of Manticore as Red ducked into a nearby alleyway with Dashie, hiding behind some old boxes, the pegasus looked at his sister and saw that Dashie was shivering after hearing Zero's blood-curdling scream that saw that she started to cry again. "Dashie, you okay?"

"R-Red...s-she's hurt..." Dashie said, her voice breaking.

Red sighed. "I know but there's not much we can do at the moment..." He then looked at the hand he bent to get out of one of the handcuffs, it looked disgusting, it was bleeding and a bone was sticking out. "Sheesh...that's going to be a bitch to fix..."

"Red, no swearing!" Dashie cutely scolded.

Red chuckled lightly. "I'm sorry Dashie."

"Is your hand gonna be okay?"

"Yeah it'll be fine...it's just gonna be harder to fix..."

"Kiiiiid!" Zero called, finding the alleyway they were in, the red pegasus gasped and ducked behind the boxes with his sister.

The siblings then heard the sound of Zero's shoes clopping on the sidewalk as blood dripped from the eye wound Red gave her with each step she took.

Red looked at Dashie with his index finger over his mouth as he mouthed 'Don't make a sound' to her.

“I know you’re in here...I just want to talk...” The changeling walked past them, some blood landing in front of them. “I have to take you in...but I might make a small exception...”

Dashie gave a small scared squeak when she saw a drop of Zero's blood in front of them. Red quickly looked around and noticed a small black pebble nearby, he then carefully grabbed it and threw it to the end of the alleyway.

The changeling's ears twitched when she heard the rock hit the ground, smirking. "Finally found you little shits..." Zero proceeded to run to where Red threw the pebble as the kids watched her.

That was Red's cue to pick up Dash with his good hand and fly them out of the alleyway, successfully getting away from Zero.

Spike: "So wait...you were stealing from the same bakery for weeks and once you got caught you went on the run from a Private Investigator...who got wounded in the eye by Red's hard head?"

Red: "Yeah, you remembered the rock skin I had when you tried stabbing me with a bottle? Apparently during that time was when I discovered it...I wondered for so long now I didn't feel a thing...Zero was the closest thing me and Dash had to a mom."

Spike: "Wait what? You told me she was trying to separate you two, you ran from her, she called you two 'little shits', and you fuckin' wounded her eye and possibly gave her a nasty scar...how the living hell is that 'closest to a mom'?!"

Dash: "Well to answer...Red's little stunt actually did give her a scar but to be honest it made her look pretty cool...and how she became close to a mother...actually happened in December..."

Author's Note

So now you guys know how Zero got that scar over her eye