Author's Notes:

"It needs to be about 20% darker" - Rainbow Dash, 2016

Scootaloo was shivering from the last ice-cold shower that had blasted through the room. She had finally taken the time to bother looking up, finding four nozzles aimed to ensure the entire room got drenched at regular intervals. She stared at the door and considered trying to open it, but with her splitting headache she didn’t even want to move.

As the door creaked open, the shivering pegasus flinched and twitched her injured leg. The bloody wound had started to scab over, but the stabbing pains into her muscle remained. It had been one night, or maybe two, that she had been in here suffering. It was hard to tell time with the constant and steady jolts of pain in her head.

Sweetie walked in, carrying something with her magic. It looked like a short rope less than a hoof’s length long. Before Scootaloo could ask what it was, or beg mercy, she saw that it was a collar as it flashed under her neck and wrapped around.

There was an increasing tightness as the collar was fastened shut. Designed by unicorns for more rowdy pets, this one had no buckle or mechanism for Scootaloo to try and unlock. Instead, the leather collar made from some unfortunate animal had two metal ends that magically fused together. Then, the magic caused the leather to pull inward towards the sealed end caps, tightening it down.

It took a moment before Scootaloo realized the collar hadn’t stopped tightening. She gasped and began to cough as the collar tightened down to the point that the immense pressure on her neck triggered her to gag. In Between her chest heaving she tried to breathe, but Sweetie had applied a noose more so than a collar.

“There, Opal two. You may have made me lose my sister and my cat, you may have made the whole town pity me like some broken filly, but I will make you suffer and beg to be my pet, to want to die but not bother to ask knowing I won’t grant your wish.”

Scootaloo began to get to her shaky hooves, one foreleg uselessly pawing at the collar as the veins on her neck bulged out from the pressure.

Sweetie either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as she continued her diatribe, addressing the wall behind Scootaloo and not even bothering to let her gaze drift downward the few degrees it needed to make eye contact.

“So, how can I make you the perfect pet I asked myself? Well, I could stand here and tell you, but why don’t I show you instead what a good cat is?”

There was the sound of rusty metal wheels being pulled along the ground into the room. The stainless steel surgical tray clattered against the many instruments sitting on it. Scootaloo looked at it in horror, backing up a step before her legs wobbled and gave out. She landed on her rump, pain shooting through her injured leg, and lungs beginning to burn as they struggled hard to force tiny amounts of air through the compressed trachea.

Sweetie finally made contact with Scootaloo, who wished she hadn’t. There was no sign of sympathy or remorse in those eyes as they stared right into her soul. A pink and black aura began to glow around her horn and eyes, the colors swirling and mixing together as they flowed down onto one of Scootaloo’s wings.

With a soft popping sound, the feather was pulled harshly out of the wing, a bit of blood starting to trickle out of it. Another feather was plucked, more like a chicken to be cooked and eaten by a gryphon then the proud feathers of a pegasus.

As she continued to defeather her pet, Scootaloo began twitching and kicking her legs. Her broken wing was having the feathers plucked now, causing immense burning sensations to travel down the wing, through her spine. Her tail twitched back and forth in response, and the struggling made what little air she was getting insignificant.

Her lungs began to burn again and the room started to spin.

“I had considered anesthesia but I checked with Fluttershy, she said worms like you weren’t worth wasting medicine on. A little suffocation will dull the pain just as well.”

Scootaloo hardly registered what she said, some part of her knowing Sweetie was just taunting her. It felt like her eyes were bulging out of her head and she could feel her face flush with blood which was being pumped through her arteries, but couldn’t return to the heart due to the collar collapsing all the veins in her neck. The pressure continued to build until each heartbeat sent a tiny jolt of painful pressure into her already aching head.

Sweetie slid a number four scalpel off the surgical instruments table. There was no pomp and circumstance as her magic grasped the left wing like a vice, crushing the hollow bones and joints that made up her wing. Scootaloo screamed at the top of her lungs, a pained and soft whistling all that could be heard.

Before she could fully comprehend this crushing pain, the scalpel sliced into the base of the wing. It slid around the circumference of the appendage, slicing the flesh cleanly away from the bone. Sweetie then jabbed the scalpel into the joint and used her magic to leverage the metal tool, popping the bont out of the socket.

The next part was far worse than any pain Scootaloo had ever known times a thousand. Sweetie yanked at the bloody stump, and tore the wing clean off. The tendons, ligaments, and most painfully, nerves, that hadn’t been severed, were roughly torn apart. The electric jolt of pain caused Scootaloo to see black, nearly losing consciousness if not for a sudden but temporary relief of the pressure on her neck to allow one good gasp of air, which was just as quickly trapped in her lungs by the tightening collar.

Scootaloo felt the stabbing pain of the scalpel, not having noticed Sweetie continue her work as if she were mutilating a Filly doll from Maretel. The wing was ripped out and the pressure trying to escape the former pegasus’ lungs compressed her heart.

Her body reacted at once, heart rate plummeting from the increased pressure around it. The veins in her chest collapsed, and the beating heart began to pump nothing at all. The filly felt a coldness creeping through her limbs as blackness overtook her sight. There was nothing she could do as she lost consciousness.

Finally she felt her body twitch and spasm, once every five to ten seconds. Though she couldn’t fathom what was happening, it was her body’s desperate last attempts to breathe before total organ failure.

Sweetie finally looked down at the pegasus, operation complete. Before her lay a bloody mess of feathers on a now smooth back. Thick black sutures had closed the small wounds on her back, hiding the fact she had once been a pegasus unless one looked closely.

She also saw the eyes bulging out, and the way Scootaloo’s mouth was twitching open and closed, out of rhythm with the chest which seemed to rise and fall to a different beat.

Opal two was clearly about to die. Sweetie looked down at the pathetic beast, kicking her hard in the chest. She knew she couldn’t have a slave pet if she let this pathetic worm die, but on the other hoof, she honestly didn’t think this pathetic worm was worth saving.

Scootaloo blacked out at last, a small mercy as her captor stood over her deciding her fate.