The Trotting Dead

"Um...  Twilight?"

Twilight Sparkle woke up to feel a lump on the corner of her bed.  Opening her eyes, the mare saw that it was Fluttershy, who was looking at her softly.

"Twilight?"

Twilight Sparkle sat up in her bed.  "Yes?" she asked politely.

"Well, um, Rainbow Dash wants you to see something.  She says it's really important."  Fluttershy looked at Twilight and quietly added, "But, you know, I don't really care much if you decide not to..."

Twilight shook her head.  "No, no," she assured her, "I'll come.  Just give me a second."

A squeaky voice to the right of Twilight asked, "For what?"

Twilight Sparkle recognized that voice and looked over to face Scootaloo, who she noticed was now awake.  "Oh, there's something Rainbow Dash wants us to see."

"Oh, I'm gonna get ready!  I haven't seen Dash in forever!"  Scootaloo rushed out of bed and opened her small-sized saddlebags, which were lying in the corner of the tent.

"Well..."  Fluttershy looked from Twilight to Scootaloo, and then back again.  "I guess I'll see you two outside, y'know, if that's okay with you..."  The shy pegasus slipped out of the tent, leaving Scootaloo and Twilight alone to get ready.

Twilight got out of bed slowly and walked over to the tent's zip-up door.  Before leaving, she glanced over to Scootaloo, who was brushing her mane with a light blue hairbrush.  "I'm going out to go outside.  You can come out when you're ready."

"Okay, Mom!"  The orange filly started brushing her mane vigorously, impatient to follow Twilight.

Twilight stepped outside, thinking about Scootaloo's nickname for her.  "Mom," she said aloud, rolling it around with her tongue.  It may just be easier for Scootaloo to call Twilight "Mom" rather than "Twilight", and it may not be very special to Scootaloo, but to Twilight it was; she felt some longing to the small filly, as if she really was the mother of Scootaloo.  But then again, Twilight had been a mother to Scootaloo; she had taken her in, protected her, fed her, everything that Scootaloo's mother might have done, Twilight  did.  Twilight was a mother to Scootaloo, and Scootaloo was a daughter to Twilight.

"Hey Twilight!  Glad you're here; we got a huge problem!"

Twilight looked up to see Rainbow Dash, who was hovering right over that clearing that could be used to see the whole of Ponyville.  Twilight shouted over to her friend, "What is it?"

Rainbow Dash yelled back, "It's Ponyville!  C'mon, you gotta see this!"

Twilight trotted over to where Rainbow Dash was and noticed that the rest of her friends were staring at Ponyville in disbelief.  Twilight soon found herself gaping at Ponyville the same way as she saw what had become of it.  In the old town were around a hundred Trotters, and they were all headed toward the campsite.  Slowly but surely, they would make there way up the hill, into the campsite, and...

"Hey, what's all the fuss?"

Twilight looked away from the disturbing sight to see Scootaloo.  Apparently, the flightless pegasus had finished getting ready, and was now going to see what was so important to the rest of the ponies.  With no response, she shrugged and made it to the clearing.  Then she looked at Ponyville.

"Oh my Celestia..." she said under her breath.  Scootaloo then turned to the adults and asked, "What are we going to do?"

Rainbow Dash was the first to speak.  "There's only one thing to do.  We have to get out before," she emphasized herself by pointing a hoof to where to Ponyville was, referencing the Trotters, "they get here."

Applejack added, "Or we could always jus' wait it out, sit here and kill 'em one by one."

Rainbow Dash was appalled.  "That's suicide!"

"Nah, we got plenty of weapons an' ammo.  Hell, I bet we could make it without losin' a single pony."

Rainbow Dash disagreed.  "Why take any chances?  We can easily outrun them, and we wouldn't be losing any ammo or ponies!  Honestly, I don't know why you'd make such a stupid suggestion in the first place!  Are you trying to get us all killed?"

Applejack was enraged.  "Are you suggestin'," she began, her voice almost shouting at the rainbow-maned pegasus, "that Ah don't put the safety of each an' every one of these ponies as my top priority?!"  Applejack stomped her foot on the ground angrily and continued, "Are you suggestin' that I don't care for each and every one of you as if ya'll were my own?!"

"Obviously not!  If your dumbflank plan didn't work on your farm, it's not going to work here!"

"You've no right to bring that up!"

"It was your fault he died!"

Applejack had had it.  The orange pony whipped around, put her weight on her two front feet, and bucked Rainbow Dash in the face.

Rainbow Dash was forced back from the impact, and landed on the ground with a hard thud.  She didn't get up.

Twilight rushed over to the cyan pegasus, and the rest of Twilight's friends (excluding Applejack, she just stood there, mouth agape at what she had done) soon followed.  They sat there at the cyan pegasus's body, tears rolling down some of their faces.  Rainbow Dash's breathing was uneasy, and the pegasus had been knocked out cold.  After a while, Twilight turned her attention to Applejack, who was still just standing there, staring.  She suddenly had a burst of rage; Applejack had just bucked her friend!  In the face!  "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" she screamed at the orange earth pony.

Applejack slowly responded, "I don't know... I-I'm so..."  Tears started dripping down from her eyes, finding places on the ground two feet below her.

Before she could continue, Twilight shouted, "JUST GET OUT!  JUST GET THE BUCK OUT!  YOU'RE A MONSTER!"

The sun dipped low in the sky, and the moon started to take over.  Twilight knew that the Trotters would arrive any hour now, and then they'd have to leave.  However, Applejack still hadn't shown up; after Twilight had screamed at her, the guilty pony had sprinted off in the direction of the woods and hadn't shown up since.

Twilight knew Applejack had done wrong, kicking Rainbow Dash in the face like that, but she couldn't help but feeling guilty.  The way Applejack had tears rolling down her face, the way she was admitting something, it was...

She was apologizing! realized Twilight.  And I screamed at her!  What...  What have I become?!  She looked at the ground.  Tears were welling up in her eyes when she realized that she could make her situation right again.  She got up and, in the process, woke up Scootaloo.

"Wha?" stumbled Scootaloo, confused.  She thought Twilight had told her to take a nap, for 'the days ahead' or something.  Now the unicorn was getting up, getting ready to leave.  Then Scootaloo went wide-eyed.  "Are the Trotters here?!" she asked frantically, ready to rush out of her bed and the camp.

"Huh?"  Twilight looked behind her to find a very scared-looking pegasus upright in her bed.  She didn't think an action as quiet as getting up to go out would wake Scootaloo.  Then again, she didn't think two months ago that her life would be in danger from dead ponies.  The world had changed.

"No, I'm just going out."

Scootaloo relaxed a bit, but then piped up again.  "Why?"

Twilight thought about telling her, but decided not to.  The incident with Rainbow Dash and Applejack had scared the filly enough, she didn't need to be reminded of it.

"It's just a little walk in the woods, to get some fresh air, some peace."

That effectively made what Twilight was about to do seem boring as hell to the hyper filly.

"Applejack!"

Some of the leaves from the trees fell down upon Twilight's yelling.  She was starting to get tired; the mauve scholar had been outside for about an hour now, just shouting Applejack's name.  It had been a fruitless attempt so far, with absolutely no response every time she had called the yellow-maned pony.  However, Twilight was determined to find Applejack, no matter how long it took.

"Applejack!  Please!  We need you!"

Still no response.

"Applejack!  Come out!"

This time, there was a response.  Off in the distance, someone had screamed something.  It was repetitive, with the message repeating every so often.  Every time it was the same.  Twilight strained her ears until she could finally hear the voice.

"Trotters!"

That was it.  That was the alarm.  Twilight was shocked.  She knew the Trotters were going to come, but she didn't imagine it happening now!  She started to rush back to her camp, but then remembered that if she did, she'd be abandoning Applejack.  She turned back around and continued her search for Applejack.

"Twilight!"

Now her friends were looking for her.  That changed things.  Her friends weren't going to leave without her.  If she continued her search for Applejack, she'd be abandoning them.  Twilight had no clue what to do.  On one hoof, she'd be leaving four of her friends, but they'd have each other, while on the other hoof, she'd be leaving one all alone.

"Twilight!"

The conflicted mare had to make her choice fast.

"Twilight!"

She didn't know what to do.

"Mom!"

Now she did.

Twilight emerged from the woods to find hundreds of Trotters in her friends' campsite.  Tents were trampled,  and supplies had been crushed.  However, not one Trotter had noticed Twilight; all of their attention was focused on the ponies standing the opposite side of the campsite.  Twilight strained her eyes to see that they were slowly moving away from the huge mob coming towards them.  She noticed the merchant's cart she had seen before was being used to not only drag supplies from the campsite, but also was being used to drag Rainbow Dash; the rainbow-maned pegasus had still not come to.  Then Twilight saw Scootaloo.

Scootaloo was in tears, clutching onto Lyra's hoodie, which the strange mare had given to her out of empathy.  She had obviously broken down; losing two mothers was too much for the filly.  Twilight knew that it was foalish, but she shouted out the crowd of survivors, if only to calm down Scoots.

"I'm here!"

Her shouting not only caused all of her friends to look her way, but also some trotters.  The evil creatures let out a low moan and started limping towards her in an awkward fashion.

Twilight had had it with these monsters.  "I'm not going to play your damn game!" she shouted in the face of one of the Trotters.  She teleported to the campers.  Twilight Sparkle was right; she wasn't going to play their game.

Moments after Twilight's abrupt arrival, Scootaloo gave up hugging Lyra's hoodie and instead hugged her mother.  The magical unicorn looked down at Scootaloo and ruffled her purple mane with her free hoof.

"It's okay Scoots, I'm alright."

The orange pegasus looked up at the unicorn.  "I just thought..." she choked out between sobs, "I just thought th-that you were gone, that y-you were..."  Scootaloo hugged Twilight's leg even harder and buried her face in her shallow fur.

Twilight Sparkle lowered her face down to the filly's eye level and wrapped her foreleg around her.  "It's okay, everything's okay now.  I'm here, and that's all that matters."

Scootaloo was comforted for a bit, but then asked, "W-what about Applejack?"

Twilight looked off into the distance, towards the woods where the orange mare had disappeared.  Someday, she thought to herself, I'll find you.