“The most skittish pony you know!?”
Fluttershy lighted down outside the Wonderbolt Barracks.
“Dash...?” She called tentatively. Even though it was after hours and deserted, the military base made Fluttershy uncomfortable. It wasn’t a place whose spirit exactly meshed well with her own, and she wouldn’t even voluntarily be here if she hadn’t been summoned.
“Dash?” she called again, less softly.
An office window several floors up slid open and a multicolored mane popped out.
“You’re here!” Rainbow Dash bellowed in the stilted voice of a bad drama student reciting something pre-rehearsed. “Don’t come up, I’ll come down.” Not waiting for an answer, the recently-promoted Grand Marshal ducked back inside.
Fluttershy felt a frown of suspicion form, but she stood where she was, taking note that all the windows on the barracks seemed shuttered for some reason. Eventually, the front door opened.
“Come in,” an unseen Rainbow Dash called.
Fluttershy did as she was told, feeling the satchel she’d been asked to bring bump her side with each step. She entered the lobby and blinked several times. Despite it being early evening, the lights were all off.
The door behind Fluttershy slammed suddenly, making her jump out of reflex and throwing the entire lobby into darkness.
“Power’s out,” Rainbow Dash’s voice said off to her left. “Pretty spooky, huh?”
“I thought you once told me this place used oil lamps and candl-“
“That’s really neat, Fluttershy,” Dash cut in. “Did you bring the glowstones?”
Fluttershy nodded, then realized gestures wouldn’t work in the dark. Wordlessly, she used a wing to flip open her satchel and the green illumination of the rocks within it allowed her to see somewhat.
“Oh no,” Rainbow Dash declared loudly. “Glowstones were supposed to help, but all they did was make this room even spookier.”
There was a moment of extremely awkward silence.
“I said,” Dash nearly shouted, “that this room is now even spookier.”
Fluttershy opened her mouth to voice her growing irritation, but was interrupted by an echoing whinny that sounded like it was coming from the walls itself. She glanced around before finally settling back on Rainbow Dash, who in the light of the glowstones looked... pleading?
Fluttershy wasn’t the worst at picking up social cues, but she wasn’t the best either. Dash wanted her to do something, but seemed to not want to say it out loud.
“Um...” Fluttershy fumbled. “What was that noi-“
“What noise?” Dash interrupted again. “Probably nothing. Stop being silly and paranoid. Let’s go up to my office.”
Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and began trotting in the direction of the spiral staircase.
“Slower,” Dash suggested.
Fluttershy grunted in frustration, but reduced her pace. Under different circumstances, she might have been unsettled by all this buildup, but Rainbow Dash was such an atrocious actress that-
”Boo!”
The shout had been so loud and near her face that Fluttershy’s only response was to freeze midstep and scrunch her eyes shut. She barely noticed when she dropped her satchel, sending glowstones rolling in all directions. Back behind her, Rainbow Dash groaned in exasperation.
“Too early, you see-through idiot!” she said. “Too early!”
“Wha-?”, came a voice in front of Fluttershy. “But I thought you had her good and wound up.”
“I think it was pretty obvious that she was not good and wound up.”
The second voice took a moment to reply.
“Well...to be honest, it’s kinda dark so, ya know, it’s not that obvious. Whoa, hey, what’s she doing over there?”
Art by u/readynwillin
Taking advantage of Rainbow Dash’s argument with the unseen other, Fluttershy had maneuvered her way through the gloom and found one of the shuttered windows.
Ignoring the two protesting voices behind her, she gave the shade a yank.
In the now sunlit room, Rainbow Dash was standing on the center rug, ears flat against her head submissively. Near the stairs where Fluttershy had just been, a messy-maned specter of an Earth Pony hovered slightly off the floor.
Fluttershy looked back and forth between the two of them with the same miffed but expectant expression that a mother might make after coming home to find one of her foals had broken a vase.
“Dash, who in Equestria is this?”
To Fluttershy’s surprise, the specter burst into tears.
“You said she was the most skittish pony you know! A total freebie! But look at her, she’s not afraid at all.” The specter buried her muzzle in her translucent hooves. “You were wrong, Grand Marshal Dash. I’m not… I’m not scary! I’m a failure!!” Still sobbing, the specter phased through the ceiling and into the upstairs where her continued cries were muffled, but not muted entirely.
Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. “Guess I kinda look like a jerk right now, don’t I?”
"The most skittish pony you know!?" Fluttershy marched over and delivered a sharp flick to the nose.
“Owww!” Rainbow Dash whined, more out of indignation than actual pain. “You know, you could’ve at least pretended to be scared. Stock Image is a mopey mess on her regular days and now after this, she’s gonna be... uh... where are you going?”
“The most skittish pony you know...” Fluttershy repeated under her breath, already halfway up the stairs. She paused just long enough to toss back a withering look.
“I’m going to talk to her. Without you in the room.”
“Without me? Wait, then what am I supposed to do til you get back?”
Fluttershy made a sweeping gesture to the glowstones still scattered across the floor. “You can clean up my mess," she suggested. Then her tone hardened.
“While I try to clean up yours.”
No Sense In Beating A Dead Horse
“Stock?” Fluttershy called as she gently rapped on the door to Rainbow Dash’s office. “Stock Image, may I come in?”
“The door’s unlocked, and I can’t stop you from opening it,” the specter’s gurgling voice came from inside. “I can’t open it myself either.”
Figuring that was as much of an invitation as she was going to get, Fluttershy entered to see the specter curled up miserably on top of the desk, facing away from her.
“What did Grand Marshal Dash tell you?” she asked without turning around.
“Just your name. I cut her off after that because I want to hear your story straight from the horse’s mouth.”
That grabbed the specter’s attention enough to make her turn around. “You cut off a Grand Marshal?” Her phantom voice was tinged with an awe that made Fluttershy blush.
“Maybe she’s the big tough leader of the Wonderbolts to those of you around here, but to me she’s just Rainbow Dash, my friend.” Fluttershy tapped her lip thoughtfully. “My sometimes bullheaded friend,” she added.
“Yeah, I think I preferred Grand Marshal Spitfire over her,” the specter agreed. “Um, don’t tell Dash I said that.”
“I won’t,” Fluttershy assured. “So if you knew Spitfire, I’m guessing you’ve been haunting the Wonderbolt barracks for a long time?”
The specter swept a few tangled locks out of her face and nodded. “Not too long. Only about twelve moons. Died way before that though.”
“I’m sorry to hear.”
“Don’t be,” the specter assured, waving a phantom hoof dismissively. “It was my own stupid fault. My father, Grand Marshal Daedalus, shoulda put his hoof down and said no when his Earth Pony daughter begged to be taken to work with him.”
Fluttershy blinked uncomprehendingly.
“I fell. Through the clouds.”
“Oh my.”
“Yeah, go figure. Nopony ever found where I landed, me included. And you know what happens to an equine soul whose body doesn’t get a proper burial.” The specter gestured down at herself. “My guess is my bones are at the bottom of a swamp somewhere.” She held up two hooffuls of her ratty, water damaged mane as evidence.
Fluttershy didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. Fortunately, the specter kept going.
“Hung around the barracks afterwards, since I had nothing else going on. Father never knew what to do with me even when I was still alive, so he just kept me a secret til he himself passed on. Spitfire inherited this office afterwards, but she never figured out what to do with me either. Now I’m Dash’s problem.”
The specter glanced over at the portraits of former Marshals on the wall and addressed the third most recent one. “Still trying to figure out how to make you proud of me, Dad. I’m not crossing over to join you and Mom til I can do it with my head held high.” Fluttershy shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, but the specter seemed to have momentarily forgotten her. “Really hoped Dash was onto something with her idea to make me the Terror Of The Academy. I was gonna be this urban legend, an unseen banshee whose very name would make all the cadets stand up straighter at practice and fly more alertly while doing their rounds. I woulda finally been useful.” The ghost of Stock Image shook her head. “Today was supposed to be practice for scaring ponies, but all it did was show me how silly of an idea this was.”
“Where’d you get the name Stock Image?” Fluttershy asked, trying to steer the conversation into more shallow waters.
“From my mom. She was a postcard photographer, and my special talent is-“ the specter glanced at the billowing fog trail that had replaced her flank and cutie mark. “Erm, it was posing for her camera. Not to brag, but I was a pretty cute foal.”
The wheels were starting to turn in Fluttershy’s normally unadventurous head.
“You’re pretty good at hovering,” she complimented.
“Hm? Oh. I guess so.”
“And you didn’t dissolve away when I let sunlight in earlier.”
The ghost of Stock Image huffed with indignance. “Even in death, I’m still Celestia’s little pony. Her magic only hurts evil spirits.”
“You know, I used to watch Rainbow Dash play on the varsity buckball team when we were in school together. And I still come to the Wonderbolt air shows sometimes to show her the same support I did back then.”
“You sound like a very dedicated friend.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose so.” Fluttershy felt her long bangs cascade over her face as she bowed her head bashfully. “But what I was going to say is those old buckball games had something that I feel the Wonderbolts have been needing for awhile: a mascot.”
It took the specter a moment to get the hint.
“Me? Become a mascot for the academy? I dunno. Sure I want to be useful, but... if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a skittish crybaby.”
“The most skittish pony I know,” Fluttershy admitted before smiling warmly. “I was like that, once. But I got over it... with help from some friends.”
The ghost of Stock Image still looked unconvinced, so Fluttershy added: “You know, if you go out there and do well in the cheerleading role, you’d probably get to pose for the cameras again.”
Imaginings of both her father and mother’s posthumous praise filled the specter’s mind as her incorporeal eyes shined brighter than the glowstones Rainbow Dash was still scraping off the lobby floor.
“Y-you really think ponies won’t be put off by me?”
“Um… no offense, but I think we already established that you aren’t scary.”
For the first time in a long time, the ghost of Stock Image smiled. “Thank you for saying so, miss... um...”
“Fluttershy. My name is Fluttershy.”
Author's Note
Stock Image' s story continues in the Snippet Series Season One Finale!
EThe Snippet Series Season One Finale
After fifteen fics spanning many mini-arcs, several storylines converge for a cooperative payoff.
Casketbase77 ·
6k words
· 40
1 ·
605 views
