Scootaloo and the Slendermane

Scootaloo spent the whole night under the close watch of Rainbow Dash.  However, her sneezing and shivering continued.  She just seemed to get worse and worse as the night went on.  Rainbow did not even sleep for a second because she needed to make sure that the little filly was going to be okay.  It appeared to be just a bad cold and a high fever because of being out in the cold rain all night.

However, when Scootaloo woke up in the morning after a few hours of sleeping, she was very dizzy.  Rainbow was making breakfast in the kitchen, and Scootaloo stumbled over while trying to make it to the table.  When she sat down on the chair at the breakfast table, her head was spinning.  “Good morning, Scoots,” Rainbow said while putting a cheese bagel in front of the sick filly.

Scootaloo just looked at the food.  She did not feel well enough to eat it.  “Hey, are you alright?” Rainbow asked her.  Scootaloo just shook her head to show that she clearly wasn’t.  “I think we should take you to the hospital,” the mare suggested.

Rainbow grabbed the sick filly, wrapped her back in the blanket, and brought her to the hospital to get some urgent care.  She did not know what was wrong with the filly, but it was not good, to say the least.  It was not just a normal cold or flu, it had to be something worse to be affecting her this badly.

Scootaloo was able to get her very own room at the Ponyville Hospital, which was actually by chance the same room that Rainbow was in when she injured her wing.  “Ah, memories,” Rainbow said as Nurse Redheart, the female earth pony who worked at the hospital, brought Rainbow into the room while she held the sick filly, who was just staring off into space and groaning at her sickness.  Rainbow laid Scootaloo down on the bed, and Nurse Redheart asked Rainbow to leave and go to the waiting room while the doctor would come in and do some tests.

Rainbow Dash waited patiently in the waiting room.  There really was not anything else to do there.  She looked at all the other sick ponies waiting to get attention.  They all had different illnesses and problems.  A male pegasus to her right had injured his wing.  She knew exactly how that felt, having been through the same thing herself.  She decided to just nap in her seat until either the doctor or nurse would come to get her.

As Rainbow slept, the drool from her mouth dripped down her face.  That was when she was tapped by the same doctor who had cared for her when she was in the hospital.  “Hello Rainbow Dash,” he said.  “I hope the wing is doing just fine!”

“Oh yeah, it’s great.  Thanks, doc!  How is the little filly doing?” Rainbow replied and asked while popping her head up.

The doctor responded, “Well, not good, but not too bad either.  We still can’t figure out what kind of sickness she has.  We care going to have to keep her here overnight and continue to do tests.  Until then we are giving her medication that will hopefully help her flu-like symptoms.  We suggest you go home and come back first thing in the morning tomorrow.”

“Alright, doc, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Take care of my little sister, please,” Rainbow said with care as she left the hospital.  Scootaloo was given heavy medicine to help her get better.  She was able to sleep very deeply throughout the night.

“Huh?  Where am I?” Scootaloo asked out loud as she stood in front of a large house at night.  Something about this house seemed familiar to her.  It was large and quite old, but she had been here before.  It was raining hard outside, so she decided to go into the house, not knowing who was inside.  She knocked on the door with her hoof, but the door wasn’t locked.  She slowly leaned her head in the door.  “Hello?” she asked to see if anypony was home.

Because there was no response, she decided to go in.  To her it was better being inside a house than to be outside in the thunderstorm.  As she closed the door after entering the poorly lit house, a lightning bolt struck close by.  The sound of the thunder made her jump in place.  There was no sign of anypony in the house, but she knew that she had seen this house before.  Where this house was located was still unknown to her.  The young filly, full of energy, decided to do some investigative work to find out where she was.

In the main first room of the house she saw a large statue of a mare with her hoof in the air made of stone.  There were two stairwells leading to upstairs, but she decided to go straight to the main floor first.  The first room and small hallway on her left led to a room with two beds, a few dressers, and a glowing painting.  She decided to go up to the painting.  It was a painting that she clearly remembered from before.  It was that creepy painting that her father loved, for some reason unknown to her.  It had a picture of some kind of creature that looked like the grim reaper in front of a few trees.  She stared at it weirdly for a few seconds and then moved on.

Scootaloo continued to walk throughout the main floor of the house.  She could see all of the furniture, including old tables, couches, and for some reason, multiple pianos.  But that was when she realised where she was: her childhood home in the outskirts of Ponyville.  It was severely run down from the time that she lived there, but was still mostly left the same.  She could still not remember what her parents looked like, who they were, or even how they had passed away.  But she was starting to remember certain things of her childhood come back to her.  The more items she passed, the most memories she got back.  She must have come from a rich family to live in a house this big; a mansion, if you will.

The orange pegasus found a donut in the water fountain, a cookie on a bed in a spare bedroom, and a frying pan on another bed, which did not make much sense to her at all.  She also found a key on the table to go to the upper floor.  Going up the stairs to the second floor, she kept getting more and more of her childhood memories through the items she passed.  She could see old paintings, furniture, and other things as she continued to walk around.  Two items in particular brought memories back to her mind, and tears to her eyes.  She found her old bedroom and her old teddy bear that she used to fall asleep with.  Back then it was bigger than her, and now, well, it was still bigger than her, but not as big as she remembered.

Beside her bed on her night table she found a picture.  No picture would ever mean as much to her as that one did.  It was a picture of her as a really young foal in the arms of her parents.  The smile on her face told the whole story.  She remembered that she had such a happy foalhood.  She could also now picture in her mind how her parents looked.  Her parents were both pegasi.  Her father was a brilliant shade of yellow, and her mother was red, hence leading to the orange colour of Scootaloo.  Scootaloo picked up the picture and held it in her hooves.  A teardrop from her eyes fell onto the picture frame.  “Father… Mother… What happened to you?  Why did you leave me so soon?  Why would you leave me to fend for myself?” she asked out loud as she cried while looking towards the picture.

Her sadness had to be put on hold, as she heard what seemed to her like the front door opening and closing.  She quickly became rigid in her stance as she could hear footsteps coming up the stairs.  She looked around the corner to see what was coming towards her, but nothing was there.  She took a few steps back, and hit a very large pony.  The fill turned around, expecting to face her possible doom.  She looked up and met the eyes of a creature she saw in the forest: Princess Luna.

“Huh?  What are you doing here?” Scootaloo asked the Princess of the night.

“Young Scootaloo, I am here to tell you that this is a nightmare.  You are currently in the hospital recovering from an illness.  I do not know what happened to your parents, but I want you to know that you should continue in this dream, because it will also keep giving you memories of your parents.  Your brain is trying to help you remember what happened through these dreams.  I suggest that you keep the dream going and try to remember everything you see.  It will help you to get closure.  I must go now, because there are other fillies who need my help.  Be brave, Scootaloo.”  The princess left the dream by flying backwards and out of the open window behind her.

Scootaloo, now knowing it was a dream, decided to keep going with it to try to gain memories of her parents.  Perhaps she could figure out what happened to them.  She found a key on the couch that would lead to the basement of the house.  She carried that, along with the picture frame of her and her parents.  She went towards the main floor in order to go to the basement.  As she made her way down the stairs she saw the Slendermane at the front door.  She stood rigid in place, hardly being able to move a muscle.  “I… I am not afraid of you!  Get out of my house!” she yelled at the Slendermane.  The Slendermane just stood there, not really doing anything in particular.  Scootaloo began to fell fuzzy in her eyes and brain as she looked at the Slendermane.  “Ah forget it, you’re useless.  I have memories to capture,” she said as she turned around to go down the hallway and to the stairwell leading to the basement.

She didn’t feel the urge to run down the hallway.  She just walked, knowing that the Slendermane was behind her.  The little filly proved to be brave when determined to accomplish something.  She went down and unlocked the door to go into the basement.

The basement had many hallways as well, but not really any rooms.  It appears that her father never did finish the renovations on the house, because the walls were still unpainted drywall.  As she continued to look for memories of her parents, she saw an old bust of a face that her mother had crafted.  It was an original creation that her mother had made, called a ‘human.’

The bathroom surprisingly had a memory for Scootaloo.  She could see a box of bath soap.  She could remember when she was only one or two years old, when her mother used to put her in the bath with all of the bubbles and toys.  Scootaloo really loved bath time.  She had a memory come to her mind when she sat in the bath, and her mother reached in to pick her up.  Scootaloo struggled against her because she wanted to stay in the water, but her mother said, “You have to come dear, it’s bed time.  I’ll sing you a lullaby.”  It didn’t have any particular importance to her, but any memory of her parents was a good one.

Scootaloo continued throughout the basement.  She found an open room which had her father’s old grandfather clock.  He had moved it there while they did renovations on the house.  She turned around to go back, only to see the Slendermane had followed her there.  This time she had forgotten that she was being followed.  She jumped in place and let out a little scream, dropping the picture frame on the ground and cracking it.  She looked down at the picture quickly.  The frame was cracked, causing the picture of her parents to be blocked, and the memory of what they looked like removed from her mind.  “No no no no no, why?” she said as she looked at the broken memory on the ground.  Another tear fell from her eyes.  She turned to the Slendermane, who was still just standing there.  She took a breath and sniffled, but sternly said to the Slendermane, “You do not know how much I hate you right now.  Get the buck away from me!”  The Slendermane vanished, which was exactly what happened in the forest when Scootaloo stood up to it.  She remembered the words of Luna in the forest, “To conquer fear… you must become fear.”

Scootaloo proudly smiled at standing up to one of her fears once again, but she was still saddened that she broke the memory of what her parents looked like.  There seemed like no way to bring it back to her mind here.  She leaned forward on her knees to look at the broken picture frame.  “Why, why did it have to break?  Why can’t I remember what you look like anymore?”

She was then grabbed from behind and pulled up.  Not even knowing who was there, she screamed out, “Let me go, you monster!”

“Scootaloo, it’s me, Rainbow Dash.  You’re having a nightmare, wake up,” Rainbow, who was holding her in the dream, said.

“No!  I need to remember my parents…”

Scootaloo woke up in her hospital bed.  She slowly opened her eyes to see that Rainbow was visiting her.  “Are you okay, Scootaloo?  You were having a nightmare of the Slendermane from the sounds you were making,” the mare said to her.

The filly, who was feeling much better after having a good night’s sleep, said in response, “Yeah, I was.  But it actually was starting to help me remember my parents.  I found a picture frame of me and them, and I could remember what they looked like.  But when I saw the Slendermane I dropped it, breaking the memory of them.”

Rainbow stroked her hoof through the little filly’s mane.  “I am so sorry, Scoots.  Maybe I should take you to Twilight if you feel better tomorrow.  She’s an egghead, so she may be able to help you with your dreams.”

Scootaloo asked, “Actually, can we go see Princess Luna?  Luna has entered my dreams a few times.  She may be able to help me.”

“If you really want to do that, squirt, we can do that,” Rainbow said.  The blue pegasus gave her little sister a hug.  Scootaloo was still not healthy enough to go home on this day, but the doctor said that the next day would probably be safe enough for her to leave the hospital.  Until then, sleep and medicine would help her get better.