Author's Note: Die evil chapter of death.
Chapter Three: Our Old Talents
Scootaloo looked up at the sky. She knew that it was a horrible thought, but she wanted to fly up into the blue expanse until it became black and then just keep flying until she was mixed with the stars. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had been stuck in the Everfree Forest for a week now. Scootaloo had never dreamed she would one day describe the Everfree Forest as boring. But, after running away from the Timberwolves, the only thing of interest that had happened was they thought they might have seen a dark silhouette of a pony following them at night for the last three days. As consequence, Scootaloo had convinced her friends that at night at least one of them had to be awake at all times keeping watch. That way somepony was always watching and alert to see if the silhouette suddenly decided to attack them.
Unfortunately this new arrangement meant they were all a little sleep deprived and cranky. They didn't fight, much at least, not like they used to. The fillies definitely weren't physical in their fights anymore. But, all their nerves were edge, and Scootaloo was slowly becoming more and more frustrated with the fact that she couldn't fly high enough over the trees to see the end of the Everfree Forest. The pegasus supposed there was one good thing about her weak wings. Now, even if she wanted to, she couldn't just fly away and abandon her friends to the forest. On the other hand, sometimes she really hated that she couldn't fly away. Her friends drove her nuts sometimes, and it wasn't big thing either, just the smallest thing could irritate her these days like Apple Bloom's accent or Sweetie Belle's constant humming. Still, Scootaloo knew that if she lost track of her friends, she would never see them again. The forest was too big, and if she left them, she feared they could be dead by the end of the day.
Scootaloo looked to the sky and took in a deep breath, closing her eyes and letting exhaustion settle into her bones for a moment. Acknowledging its growing weight. Sweetie Belle was working on trying to do the levitation spell, but she could hardly lift a leaf an inch off the ground for a second. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo told her to stop and save her energy. Unicorns were only good at one, maybe two spells; levitation was something most unicorns learned eventually, but not always right away. Even though it was the first spell taught, a lot of unicorns first had to and master the spell that connected to their special talent before they were able to master levitation. Convincing Sweetie Belle that she needed to wait until she learned more spells had been hard. She didn't know any other spells. The one she had used on the bridge was one she made up herself, and it didn't make sense. Sweetie Belle knew she was wasting magic with the bell sound, but didn't know how to stop it. And there was no one to teach her since her parents were too busy to teach her, her sister too distractible to be a good teacher, and Twilight too intense to be a good teacher.
Apple Bloom looked around suddenly, pausing in her steady trot, before she started cantering toward a tree. Her friends followed slowly behind her, not running, but making sure Apple Bloom didn't canter out of sight. They'd been having a little trouble finding edible plants the last few days and they needed more space in their pacts to store the food they found but didn't eat. Sweetie Belle hadn't brought much with her when they ran away, so she storied most of their food, and there was some stilted arguments about getting rid of the useless crafts in Apple Bloom's pack. Apple Bloom had so far refused to get rid of her crafts, claiming they would be useless once they got out of the Everfree Forest and had to contact their families.
Under the tree Apple Bloom had run to, there were chestnuts in the prickly green shells that were a almost impossible to crack open. Still, the book said the nuts were edible, though it had a page of notes under that fact. Still, edible was edible, so the Cutie Mark Crusaders were opening the prickly shells and taking out the nuts and shoving them in the wilting flowers they'd pulled off a vine the day before. They ended taking the flowers out and eating them, and then throwing chestnuts still in their shells in instead of wasting time trying to open them. The things they ate these days never seemed enough. Apple Bloom could still hear her stomach rumbling for more food after they finished the flowers, and she swore her friends were starting to become skin and bones. It didn't help that they had only found one edible plants each day. Finally they had filled Sweetie Belle's pack with chestnuts. The chestnuts would last longer than the greens and flowers they usually ended up with, which was good. If only they weren't so hard to get into.
Apple Bloom looked up toward the sky. The forest was thick with trees, and every caw of a bird or rustle of the leaves made her fear that the inevitable monster would appear and kill them. Apple Bloom had never heard of the Everfree Forest being so quiet. Zecora always told her stories about monsters and odd magical plants and places that were close to her tree and all the tricks she had learned to escape or defeat them. Usually it was only seconds before the forest threw something dangerous at a pony who entered its borders, whether the threat was immediate or slow to take hold, it was there. Oh, at first the forest might seem quiet and maybe just a little creepy, but any situation a pony found herself in, no matter how benign it seemed had to be questioned when it took place in the Everfree Forest.
So, this silence was weird and worrying. Sweetie Belle's stomach was constantly knotted in worry she didn't think. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo even noticed how quiet it was. Sweetie Belle was sure they saw the forest as a playground. A dangerous playground, but to them the danger only increased the chances of a pony earning her cutie mark. Sweetie Belle did not share her friends' love of the Everfree Forest. She'd go into it without a thought, but only when her friends were with her. She felt invincible with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo at her side. But going in by herself or with another pony? No, she'd avoid the forest in those cases. She would avoid completely if possible, but for the moment she just wished Apple Bloom was more careful and Scootaloo was more careful after the poisoning scar. Though having someone on watch constantly was a good idea.
And now that they had been in the forest for a week, Sweetie Belle was sure that something sinister had to be happening that they just hadn't figured out yet. What other explanation was there for their easy passage so far? Was the forest itself playing a game with them? Maybe the forest was leading them around in circles, starving them and trying to drive them mad. Who really knew? All Sweetie Belle knew was while her friends were wary of the forest, they weren't frightened of it like she was, and that gave Sweetie Belle an edge. If any of them figured out first what the Everfree Forest was planning, it would be Sweetie Belle.
"It's almost midday," said Apple Bloom casually, glancing toward the sky and catching sight of a few trickles of sunlight through the dense canopy of branches and leaves. Scootaloo took this as her sign to try and fly high enough to see over the trees; unfortunately, her wings hurt from trying to fly the rest of the week and she had no coordination, so she got tangled in the low hanging branches and crashed back to the ground. Thankfully she only fell about a foot.
"I wish there weren't so many roots and rocks the ground," grumbled Scootaloo, her friends looked at her and she blushed. "I mean, we could zip out of here if we could use my scooter."
"But you didn't bring any helmets with you," said Sweetie Belle. Scootaloo rolled her eyes.
"I'm good at scootering. I wouldn't crash us," said Scootaloo waving one hoof in dismissal. She then secured her pack as they started to continue their way through the forest. Apple Bloom shrugged.
"Maybe we could have used you scooter if we were on a road, but we can't let ourselves get caught in the 'what ifs'. We have what we have and must make the best we can with it," said Apple Bloom confidently. The words sounding rehearsed or repeated from her sister. "Come on, we need to find another water source. Our canteens are starting to get low."
"And our blankets are starting to get musty," said Sweetie Belle while scrunching up her nose just thinking about the smell. "We'll have to wash everything early in the morning so that they can dry in the sun."
Scootaloo stomped her hooves. Why did both her friends seem better at this than her? She had some ideas, but she the only good one was bothersome and her friends seemed to make all the really important decisions. Scootaloo was the one who liked to go on adventures. She was the one who always had the exciting "special talents" to try when the Cutie Mark Crusaders were trying to earn their cutie marks. She was the one who had experience in camping. So why were her friends the ones with the good ideas? They were the ones who got things done and used their heads. Scootaloo might have brought the canteens and blankets, but Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were the ones who kept them filled. Scootaloo had been the one to lose the other blankets. Celestia, it was because she got sick that they were now somewhere deep in the bowls of the Everfree Forest.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders continued in what they hoped was a straight line out of the forest, carefully skirting around a patch of poison jokes and a patch of bleeding tooth fungus. Sweetie Belle trotted and tried to levitate things without her friends noticing, flipping her mane over her horn before she started. The unicorn tried to levitate her saddle packs for a little while but they were too heavy. She never thought she'd think of her saddle packs as too heavy. She remembered Twilight Sparkle complaining that during her studies she sometimes had to fill her saddle bags so full that they hurt her back, but Sweetie Belle's bag never had more than two books and a couple of other school essentials. Now Sweetie Belle knew what Twilight Sparkle had been talking about. Even with her packs being the lightest of the three, since she only had one book and the food she could put it in the pacts, she still felt like she had a boulder on her back.
"Scootaloo, you think you could try to fly up high enough and see if there's a river or brook nearby?" asked Sweetie Belle. Scootaloo huffed in annoyance but tried again. This time she would climb as high as she could before trying to fly over the dense canopy. A twig snapped on the ground somewhere to their right. Both Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle stared in that direction, waiting for some evil monster to jump out and attack them. But nothing happened, and as time stretched on, they started to wonder if the sound had only been in their heads.
Sweetie Belle turned to Scootaloo, who was trying to fly up to the next branch on the tree she was climbing. The pegasus really wasn't very good at flying. Scoot could hardly hover and her wings went so fast that they made noise like a humming bird. Was that normal? Maybe Scootaloo's wings weren't developed enough to fly yet. But other Pegasus were flying from birth like the Cake's colt. Maybe Scootaloo was right, maybe her wings would never be strong enough to fly Sweetie Belle shook that thought away. But Scootaloo used her wings all the time. Not necessarily to fly, but to give her more speed on her scooter. How could her wings not be developed? She was just a late bloomer was all.
Apple Bloom was also watching Scootaloo fly, but her thought were on surviving nighttime. While the days were stressful because they were waiting for the other ball to drop and their adventure to begin, Apple Bloom thought the nights were worse. She was glad Scootaloo had thought of sleeping in shifts because she hadn't been sleeping at all before that. Since their second night in the forest, it had felt like something was stalking them, like the forest itself is watching them and just waiting for a moment to make its move. Apple Bloom had drawn the stick for staying awake for the last shift, so, and she spent her days in sleepy fear of whatever it is that was following them showing up and attacking. Every day she was pretty sure she would never be able to sleep the next night, but when night came she instantly crashed after laying her head on her pack and only to woke up when Sweetie Belle roused her for her shift in the empty, silent, staring forest.
"It's to the right," said Scootaloo and then she whooped. Sweetie Belle winced at the noise, but Apple Bloom quickly joined in on the cheering. They were soon happily trotting in the direction of the stream Scootaloo had spotted. It was just noon, and hot, if the part of the river they got to immediately was sunny, then they should have no problem drying out their blankets.
And apparently their luck continued to hold out. Apple Bloom smiled and helped wash the blankets with Sweetie Belle, while Scootaloo filled their canteens upstream. It was all too perfect. No monsters attacked them, no creepy silhouette or trees with scary faces, the vegetation wasn't poisonous since that first night. The Everfree Forest didn't work this way. It had never worked this way. Ponies didn't just avoid the forest because it somehow worked without ponies, help. They avoided it because when a pony went in it, they came out with five new scars, were scared near death at least thirteen times, misunderstood another animal or situation fifty times, found themselves in peril at least ten times, and that was just if they were in for a day.
This nothing. This lack of action and trickery. It was unnerving. No matter how much the crusaders smiled or joked, they were just waiting for that terrible thing to happen.
They were hungry. They were sleep deprived. They were terrified.
"I've been thinking," said Sweetie Belle with a grin as she finished hanging up their blankets. "We need to earn our cutie marks before we get home, but maybe we need to get down to the basics first. Like what Twilight said. We need to concentrate on what we're already really good at and explore it more to see if it's our special talent."
"We tried that already," said Scootaloo, rolling her eyes.
"Sorta, but remember the stories they told us? They all talked about finding that thing they were good at by looking inside themselves. By discovering something that most of them already knew was there," said Sweetie Belle. Scootaloo snorted.
"Fluttershy didn't. She got her cutie mark only seconds after she'd first put hoof on the ground," said Scootaloo. But Apple Bloom actually seemed to be thinking about what Sweetie Belle said.
"No, I think I know what Sweetie Belle means. You guys know Twist right? Well, her special talent is making peppermint sticks, but she's been making those things since I met her and it took her until right before I met you guys before she realized it was her talent. We've been trying all these different things, but what if what we're really good at is something we've been doing all along and just haven't realized is what we're the best at yet?" said Apple Bloom, bouncing on the tip of her hoofs excitedly. "Even if we have tried something, maybe we just didn't give it enough time or chances for us to know for certain it was or wasn't our special talent."
"But we already tried that," said Scootaloo. "The talent show ended up being a joke. We even tried being comedians afterward, but that was worse. The talent show only worked on accident."
"No. I mean… when we did the talent show, we didn't try doing something we were already good at," Sweetie Belle pointed out and then she blushed. "After the show my sister asked me why I wasn't lead singer or wrote the song. I asked her if Twilight Sparkle told her I didn't write the song, and she said she could just tell."
"You think that you're talent is singing or song writing?" asked Apple Bloom excitedly. The white unicorn shook her head.
"No, I've tried that since I was little. My voice always cracks, and I can't sing in front of ponies," said Sweetie Belle.
"But what if it is and you're not giving it enough of a chance?" said Scootaloo, slowly starting to pick up on what her friends were getting at. Then a small smile appeared on her face and she started to hop with Apple Bloom, though her wings were humming so she stayed in air longer than Apple Bloom. "That's it. You're concentrating so hard on what you think you're bad at, that you're not letting your talent shine through. And the other one is just stage fright and uncertainty in your own talent."
"That's right," said Apple Bloom smiling. "You only did the dressmaking and props because your sister is a designer and you look up to her."
Sweetie Belle thought about this slowly and then nodded. She didn't look convinced, but her friends were sure that the singing was her talent than she would give singing a chance.
"And you," said Apple Bloom, turning on Scootaloo, whose wings froze and she landed on all fours, ready for her challenge to earn her cutie mark. "I bet yours could have something to do with chorography. Don't make that face."
"Think about it Scootaloo," advised Sweetie Belle, getting right in her friend's face so the pegasus had to pay attention to her. "You don't have to be a chorographer for dance or anything. What if you're meant to make up great chorography for scootering for extreme sport shows? I mean, you're great on your scooter, and you're even better when you have a routine to show us."
"I guess, but I've been scootering all my life, and I still don't have my cutie mark," pointed our Scootaloo.
"I've been singing all my life, and I don't have a cutie mark," Sweetie Belle pointed out.
"And Twist had been making peppermint sticks all her life, and it still took her nine years to figure out it was her special talent. And Applejack had been apple bucking all her life and it took her moving away to figure out it was her special talent. I think you have to wait and let the idea sink in and be open to it being your special talent before you realize that it is. Sometimes you find out dramatically, and sometimes you simply wake up and know," said Apple Bloom, talking a little stilted since she was discovering herself what it meant as she said it.
"So, we just have to keep exploring to earn our cutie mark, but remember to return to what we're good at to make sure that isn't our talent," said Scootaloo, though she still looked a little confused.
"Because what we're good at is probably our special talent," said Apple Bloom happily. "Mine, well, I guess it could be Kung Foo. I'm at it as long as I'm not trying to make it into a dance."
"Nah, you're definitely an architect," said Scootaloo offhand. The earth pony looked at her in shock and Scootaloo laughed. "You basically built our club house out of nothing. Actually, you built it out of worse than nothing."
"Scootaloo's right," said Sweetie Belle happily. "You didn't really let me help you rebuild it. I watched you for a little while. You were really good with a hammer and nail. I think it's your special talent too."
"Yeah, I guess," said Apple Bloom. Then a thought occurred to her. "But, one second. If we have figured out what our talent is and are open it. Doesn't that mean we should have our cutie marks now?"
They all instantly looked at their flanks and then sighed when they saw nothing there.
"Well, maybe that's not how it works," said Scootaloo. "I don't know about you girl's, but I'm still not sure about my talent being the chorography. I mean, scootering something I like to do, but I don't know if it's the best talent I could have chorography just sounds goofy."
"Well, we'll all work on our talents for the day, and then show each other what we did or produced before the sun sets," said Sweetie Belle and then looked up. It was an hour or so past none. "Alright girls?"
"Right," said Apple Bloom put her hoof our. Sweetie Belle put hers out too.
"Right," Scootaloo lifted hers next to her friends.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders!" said the girls and then threw their hoofs into the air.
"Remember to stay close by," shouted Sweetie Belle when she saw Scootaloo going off into the forest.
"Right," said her friends, though they sounded distracted.
They spent the rest of the day working on getting their cutie marks. Eventually they forgot that they were scared or hungry as they immersed themselves in earning their talents. Scootaloo took out her scooter and started looking around for a good place to do her tricks and flips. Yes, the ground was uneven and there was underbrush and inedible plants scattered around the forest floor. Still, she could make this work, a little imaginative thinking and with her skills… yeah, she'd be able to have something to show the girl's by the end of the day.
Sweetie Belle was already composing a song in her head. She had to stop sometimes to reflect and correct the song in her own head. Revising the lyrics on a mental sheet of paper. The way she composed a song was to first just sing what came to mind and then edit and figure out what it was actually about as she went along. But she was trying to be quiet about it. She couldn't let the other's hear until she had the song down perfectly.
Apple Bloom was in trouble. The other girls had easy enough assignments; all they needed were things they brought with them (or were born with). Apple Bloom needed tools to do her work. She needed hammers and nails and saws to begin building anything. But all she had were scissors, paper, glue, and an x-acto knife. Pretty useless for building anything substantial, but maybe she didn't have to build some grand tree house. Apple Bloom not only built things, she also made them beautiful. Maybe that could be her special talent. Her sister always said Apple Bloom had an eye for color, and while she enjoyed building things, her favorite part was painting and arranging the furniture, making all the elements in a room or house work harmoniously with each other.
So, with that in mind, Apple Bloom wandered into the woods, not too far, and found the perfect place to show her interior design skills while working outside.
"Um, guys. Guys," Sweetie Belle practically shouted. Instantly her friends were at her side, but there wasn't any danger so they looked at her in confusion. Sweetie Belle blushed. "It's starting to get dark."
They all looked up into the sky, and Apple Bloom found herself blushing. She was so used to the Everfree Forest being dark that she hadn't noticed her eyes adjusting to the darkening sky. Here though, by the river, the forest was less dense and the light also reflected inward from the water. It didn't help that the river was headed toward the sun, so that it hadn't sunk below the trees long ago and given them a more amount of time to get ready to stop activities and get ready to sleep. Apple Bloom sighed. They'd just got used to it getting dark long before they actually needed to stop, and they had only been in the forest a few days. Would this mess them up again?
"Well, I didn't see anything around here to eat. What about you girls?" asked Sweetie Belle as she started taking the chestnuts out of her bag. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo blushed; glad the white unicorns couldn't see their embarrassed expressions. They hadn't looked for food all day, they'd been so caught up in trying to get their cutie marks. Apple Bloom checked, but no, she still didn't have a cutie mark. Scootaloo didn't need to check, she knew she didn't. She had checked after every successful trick or cool new move. Her flank it was just as blank as ever.
"Um, no. No new food around here," said Apple Bloom slowly.
"Which is too bad. I could really go for some seaweed right now," said Scootaloo and then blushed. Seaweed was filly food. Thankfully her friends didn't seem to notice and had their own dreamy expressions clouding their eyes.
"Yeah, I could really go for some alfalfa right now," said Sweetie Belle, and even Apple Bloom thought back on her home treats filled with apples.
"Well, we have chestnuts," said Apple Bloom. "And we don't need to cook em, right?"
"No," said Sweetie Belle, though she did open her book to do a quick check.
"Why would we need to cook it?" asked Scootaloo, not even bothering to wait for Sweetie Belle to look up the nuts before she found a rock and started trying to crack the hard, prickly shell. The other fillies shrugged, and Sweetie Belle put the book to one side without reading it. They ended up agreeing that it seemed to take way too much work to actually get to the nut inside the shell. Still, the nut itself tasted alright, but by the time they had gotten almost enough to eat, they were all exhausted and Scootaloo wasn't looking forward to taking the first watch.
Apple Bloom led them to her little setup, making sure to remind Sweetie Belle to grab her pack and blankets. Scootaloo watched her friends get ready to sleep and looked around as best she could in the dark. The little area was less rough then they were used to, and Apple Bloom had done something as that the ground almost felt soft. The pegasus kept one eye on her friends so they went to sleep before turning back to glare at the sky. Clouds covered and all the stars what was probably now only a sliver of the moon. Scootaloo liked staring at the stars. She didn't know the constellations, but that didn't stop her from admiring them she spent a lot of time just making up her own constellation.
Keeping track of time was going to be difficult with the clouds blocking her view of the moon. Usually the track the moon along its course through the night, following Luna's plan for it, was a good way to know the time. Scootaloo looked up at the sky and thought back on the stories of old. The stories of ponies before they fell under the rule Celestia and Luna. It was true, when ponies came to Equestria they thought they found the perfect place to stay. This land was covered with diamonds and jewels, perfect for most of the spells that were popular back then that had been scarce back home with so many dragons eating them. Equestria was also healthy with rich soil, where back home the land was hard, dried up, and full of rocks. Equestria had skies filled with playful and compliant clouds where back home the clouds that formed were best described as malicious and ill-tempered. So, it wasn't surprising that even when the curse of the windigoes was lifted, the ponies stayed and made Equestria their new home.
But, after a time of peace and prosperity, there was laughter. Miss Cheerilee had been good at telling this part. Of course Scootaloo thought the story was exaggerated. A little bit of a myth mixed up with what really happened after the windigoes. Even her friends thought the story was too overly dramatic to be real. Plus, why would Discord need to rule over anything? Didn't people who rule look out for their people and try to take care of them? Discord couldn't do that; he'd destroy everything just to show what the antithesis of a ruler was, though Scootaloo supposed he could bring it back again just to prove he wouldn't be the exact opposite of what was good.
Back to the story, Miss Cheerilee had said he laughed. It hadn't even been a cruel laugh, not at first. It was the laugh of something so innocent, it didn't realize what it did was wrong. Ponies were worried at first, but they all had jobs to do, so they got used to sporadic chuckles of glee and belly laughs of accomplishment. And then they noticed some things started to go wrong. Clouds would grow large suddenly, spill water, and then disappear. Some crystals turned out to be fake, to be virtually useless and started to be called 'false'. And then food started going bad or had weird side effects if ingested for what seemed like random groups of ponies some food would go bad with no warning. Ponies would say that maybe rats came and contaminated the food, but mold would appear out of nowhere, and no matter how much a pony watered and took care of the corn it still wouldn't grow, or, one day, a pony would go out to find frost had killed the entire crop but the pegasus would swear none of them had approved or started a frost.
It was the animals that finally sent everyone on edge. Rabbits suddenly didn't run out of fun but from genuine fear, even from their caretakers. Mother birds wouldn't take care of their young if a pony touched it. One day ponies would be talking with sad looking cows about the weird things that were happening and the next day the cows would be stupid. They wouldn't talk. They wouldn't respond in any sort of normal way. They'd just walk around and eat and eat and eat.
Finally Discord showed himself, and his laughter and glee became the thing that terrorized ponies. They couldn't leave Equestria. Every road led back to the fertile but insane land. And worse, trying to leave got you the "ruler's" undivided attention. If the weird, cruel things that happened hadn't been enough in the beginning, then his personal attention was worse. The world would make no sense for days on end and there would be no reprieve because no pony wanted to be around a pony touched by Discord tricks. He would drag anypony associated or helping his playmates into his games. Some ponies said that after a while suffering under his torment or torture; ponies claimed that through these trials they learned how much Discord did for them. That not every chaotic, unfathomable, and out of place thing that happened to a pony in Equestria was bad. The bad was just what they noticed.
These poor ponies were labeled as insane and beyond help. They were treated kindly, but avoided. Given their own house to live in far from civilization and checked on and brought food by ponies who didn't think Discord had anymore reason to torment those that helped the insane pony, since, by then, he had moved onto his next victim.
Ponies then tended to look to the moon for comfort then. It had a cycle. They knew it, and miraculously, it never changed. The ponies had kept detailed charts of the moon of that time. Moon associated cutie marks that were so uncommon nowadays, had been on a lot of flanks back then. Scootaloo couldn't remember the charts of the moons movement, books bored her, but she remembered how intricate they'd been and how ponies back then had seemed to almost worship the moon.
And then Celestia and Luna appeared and defeated Discord. Celestia locking Discord away in stone. But he could never be completely contained. His consciousness could, but his influence and his very essence was much harder to keep locked away completely. Most of it was pushed and kept in the Everfree Forest. That's why the forest was supposed to be so volatile and unlivable, though Zecora managed to live in it just fine, somehow. Still, discord still crept into Equestria in its own way, and there was no known way to stop it.
Scootaloo sighed and let her eyes drift open. The clouds had dissipated and the moon was now easy to see. She jumped up and quickly went to Sweetie Belle and shook her friend awake. Scootaloo shift was over and the she had been standing watch had hours felt like minutes, which meant she must have drifted off to sleep. Scootaloo curled under Sweetie Belle's blanket, the early history of Equestria still running in her head. She couldn't take this anymore. Her talent obviously wasn't scootering or making routines. It had to be something to do with her wings, but her friends would never support that belief because Scootaloo's wings were too weak to support her body.
Scootaloo glanced over at the sleeping Apple Bloom and then to the still sleepy Sweetie Belle. Her friends didn't need her; in fact, Scootaloo had proven herself more a liability to them than anything. Plus, Scootaloo was comfortable being alone. No, it was time to split up the Cutie Mark Crusaders. It was time for her to leave. This way her friends would have no problem finding their way home without worrying about Scootaloo.
Carefully, Scootaloo arranged her blankets to look like she was under it; using her friends' saddle bags to create bulk under the cover. Then she started to back carefully away. She couldn't fly. Her wings hummed like a humming birds or bees, so she carefully walked out of earshot. She sent one last look back at her white coated friend who was staring resolutely into the opposite direction as if danger would only come from there.
And then Scootaloo disappeared into the shadows of the forest.