Scootaloo’s Parents
Fanfic by englishwitch
Disclaimer: The following is an entirely fan-created parody. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, it’s characters and all other affiliated merchandise are the intellectual property of Lauren Faust and Hasbro. Please support the official MLP: FiM show.
I make no profit, or money at all, for the production and distribution of this fanfiction.

Chapter 2

Scootaloo stared out of the window. She’d been silent for almost five full minutes, a surprising amount of time for her. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom had tried to say nice and encouraging things after their hugs and tears were over but their words had gone unheeded.

“It all makes sense now.” Scootaloo broke the silence. She continued to stare out the window, looking forlornly out at the street of Ponyville.

Applebloom looked up from the comic book she’d been reading. “What does?”

“Why I can’t get my cutie mark.” Scootaloo replied bitterly. She finally turned from the window, jumping from the ledge and back into the room. “A cutie mark is supposed to appear when a pony finds that something that makes her special. How the hay am I supposed to know what’s special about me? I don’t even know what’s normal about me. I’ll probably never get my cutie mark. I’ll just end up being some blank flank old mare living by herself with a hundred cats.”

“How can you live by yourself, and live with a hundred cats?” Sweetie Belle looked at her, confused.

Applebloom looked doubtful. “And you hate cats ever since Rarity’s cat scratched you. Why would you even want one, let alone a hundred?”

“You’re either living on your own, or you’re living with a hundred cats.” Sweeite kept talking, oblivious that the conversation was continuing without her. “You can’t be both.”

Scootaloo sighed and shook her head. “It’s just a figure of speech alright?” She jumped up onto the bed and took the picture Sweeite Belle had been holding onto all this time. The near-decade old picture of Lyra, Bonbon and the month old Scootaloo taken on the day they’d moved into Ponyville. Her problems had been there from the start. It was probably the reason she couldn’t fly yet when so many other pegasus ponies her own age could. What did an earth pony and a unicorn know about flying? If she’d had a mother who’d wanted her, who could be bothered to raise her, she would have seen how it was done while she was still crawling. Maybe she would have been raised in Cloudsdale, known other pegasi and learned their tips and tricks for flying. She might have even been able to fly alongside Rainbow Dash by now.

She put the picture down, it was getting too depressing to look at.
"You okay Scoots?" Applebloom asked cautiously. Scootaloo just smiled and tried to laugh. It came out weak, thin and unconvincing.

"Hey, I'm great. You think a little thing like not having any real parents is going to get me down for long? C'mon. So what if I don't know anything about who I am, or where I came from, or why my mom didn't love me enough to raise me herself." She turned away from them, jumping from the bed and hurrying over to her scooter. She wanted to get outside and clear her head. Pull a few stunts, race around for a while, get the wind blowing through her mane. It would help her feel better.

As she clipped her helmet into place Applebloom and Sweetie Belle were instantly at her side. Scootaloo tried not to let the frustration show on her face. She said she was fine, couldn't they take that answer and leave her alone?

"I'm not gonna let those things bother me." Scootaloo said to them flatly. "If I'm never gonna get any answers, there's no point even thinking of the questions. Now get outta my way so I can go for a ride."

"But...we ain't in the way Scootaloo." Applebloom looked to the left, to Scootaloo's bedroom door. The filly had only to turn 90 degrees and she'd have a straight line clear run.

Scootaloo shook her head and looked at the two as though it was their fault for not standing in the right place. "I knew that." She rotated the scooter and fluttered her wings, ready to shoot off.

"Scoots, shouldn't the door be open?" Applebloom spoke up. "And shouldn't you be outside? Or at least not upstairs?"

"Remember what happened last time you went down stairs on your Scooter?" Sweetie Belle asked.

Scootaloo stopped her wings and nodded. She couldn't forget. She could swear the coat on her left flank cheek was still shorter and thinner than on the rest on her body. Stupid taffy, it was near impossible to scrub out once it had matted into hair.

"If ya don't mind me sayin," Applebloom pressed gently, "ya seem a bit muddled."

In frustration Scootaloo pulled off her helmet and tossed it to the floor. "Fine!" She turned and looked at the two fillies angrily. "Yeah, so I'm a little mixed up, who wouldn't be? I just had my whole life turned upside down a couple of hours ago. Anypony would get a little muddled." She glared, as though daring them to say otherwise.

With a sigh Scootaloo's anger vanished as quickly as it had risen. "I..." she clamped her mouth so tight she looked like she was trying to swallow her own lips. She'd never been good with all those mushy feelings and she knew she didn't always have the vocabulary to express herself properly. This was a time when that all counted against her. These were the most deeply personal things she was feeling and they were complicated emotions that she barely understood but knew she'd need a lot of big words she didn't know to even come close to describing them. “I feel like...I don’t know... Like something’s missing. I just...I...I guess I just wanna know why. Why my real mom didn’t want me.”

“Well...” Sweetie Belle spoke slowly, her face frowned in concentration as she slowly managed to piece together an idea. “Maybe we could find her? Then we could ask her all those questions and she could answer them.”

Applebloom grinned, “That’s a great idea.” Then the smile dropped. “But we don’t know where to find her. We wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Scootaloo’s mood brightened as a metaphorical light-bulb went off in her head. “Mom...I mean Lyra,” her smile faltered for a second. “well, she said that they got me a social worker’s office in Manehatten. Maybe they’d have some kind of record.”

“But we don’t know which office.” Applebloom sighed. “Manehatten’s huge. There’s gotta be hundreds of offices and social ponies with all kindsa papers stashed away. It’d be like lookin for a needle in a haystack. And that ain’t easy. I tried.”

“Mo- I mean, Bonbon never throws anythin away.” Scootaloo jumped in. For the first time what felt like years, a small smile had found its way to her face. “Our basement is stuffed with boxes of old photos, store accounts, letters,and all kids of stuff going back years. I bet she kept all the adoption papers somewhere.”

Sweetie Belle jumped off the bed and stood by her two companions. “Then lets do it.” She beamed, thrilled at an idea of her own had seemingly started them on this new mission. “Cutie Mark Crusader...mother finders?”

Scootaloo shrugged, “it’s as good a name as any.” She stuck out her hoof, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle did the same in a three-way hoofbump. “Okay crusaders,” Scoots looked at her friends with a devious and cunning expression. “First step is going down into the basement without being caught. We’ll need black clothing, ropes, grappling hooks, night vision goggles, walkie-talkies, three dozen eggs, a compass and one of little wind-up toys that look like puppies that bark and do back-flips.” She nodded her head as she ran over her check-list again in her head, it sounded like everything was there. “Pinkie Pie should have all that stuff, so lets see if we can borrow some. We’ll need to meet back here at 3am to sneak in undetected.”

“Or me and Sweetie Belle could just go outside,” Applebloom suggested. “help you down from your room with that rope we got when we tried being Cutie Mark Crusader Acrobats, and sneak in through the basement window. Everypony knows the lock is busted ‘cause Lyra ain’t got around to fixin’ yet.” She ignored the disappointed expression on Scootaloo’s face. “That is if you don’t wanna just go downstairs and go in through the basement door ‘cause you might be seen by Lyra and Bonbon.”

Scootaloo frowned, annoyed. “Yeah, I guess we could do all that. My way would’ve been more fun though.”

...***...

“Here, hold this against your head until the bleeding stops.” Sweetie Belle pushed an old cleaning rag against Scootaloo’s hairline. The orange filly took hold of the cloth in her hoof and groaned as quietly as she could given the throbbing pain that was running through every inch her tiny body. She threw an angry glare at the remains of the CMC-made rope which had betrayed her and broken as she had tried to climb out of her bedroom window. Her wings had only slowed her falling by a fraction, just long enough for her two pals to provide a soft landing, by being pony crash mats. It seemed Applebloom had taken the brunt of the impact.

“How you doing Appleblom?” Scootaloo looked over to her yellow filly friend.

“Thanks Granny Smith, I’ll have another slice.” Applebloom looked around the room with a blank expression on her face. Her eyes had drifted in different directions, reminding Scootaloo of the mail mare she occasionally saw around town, Derpy.

Sweetie Belle looked between her two injured friends and decided it was down to her to look around for the fabled documents. Even though they weren't entirely certain any of the paperwork was down here. She wasn't certain where to start. Just as Scootaloo had hinted, the basement was packed with boxes. It looked to Sweetie Belle that the piles had each started in one of the four corners and had slowly grown and spread out over time. The basement was six feet high and the piles brushed the ceiling. If there was ever a fire down here Ponyville would be kept warm all winter. Bonbon did seem to have some organisational skills, she had organised the stacks in groups and left space enough to move around, paths between the stacks. The boxes were labelled, more or less. The labels might have been enough for Bonbon or Lyra but the only clue they gave Sweetie Belle was to stay away from the pile marked Store Accounts. The rest were all pretty generic, Photos – Lyra, Photos – Scootaloo, Photos – Bonbon, birthday cards, hearts and hooves day cards, hearths warming eve cards, decorations – birthday, decorations – hearths warming, School reports, Sweetie Belle was tempted to look at that, wondering how Scootaloo’s reports compared to her own. There wasn’t time. There wasn’t, predictably enough, a box labelled Scootaloo’s adoption records, which was a shame. Sweetie turned her attention to the nearest box that bore Scootaloo’s name, Scootaloo – Foal memories, it was the bottom of a stack of four boxes, each as big as herself. Balancing on her rear hooves she pushed the top boxes away with her forelegs. They wobbled, leaned and started to tip, in the wrong direction. With a scream Sweetie Belle curled up, covering her head with her hooves as the three heavy boxes collapsed on top of her. Papers, books, pictures and cardboard buried her.

“You okay Sweetie Belle?” Scoots came around the corner, still holding the rag to her forehead. She saw a pile of rubbish and a familiar looking purple and pink tail sticking out of one side. The mound of rubbish shimmered and shook and Sweetie Belle emerged. She was dirty and shaken but hadn’t suffered anything worse than getting a few pieces of scrap paper impaled on her horn. The end of the paper hung in front of her eyes, Sweetie could only see by blowing upwards, fluttering the paper out of her eyes for a few seconds.

“I’m okay.” She climbed out of the junk pile and pried the paper off her horn. “The stupid boxes just fell on me.” She grabbed the Foal Memories box she’d been aiming for in the first place and pulled it free. With a kick of her hoof she took off the lid and looked inside. To her disappointment she wasn’t greeted with a piece of paper baring information of Scootaloo’s adoption.

On the very top of the box was a large clay disc bearing two tiny hoofprints. Scootaloo age 11 months, had been carefully scratched underneath the marks. Sweetie Belle lifted it out of the box with more care than she’d ever shown anything else in her life. Sootaloo took it from her with the reverence of a priest receiving a holy relic. “My foal-prints.” She smiled. “I wondered where they’d gone. They used to sit on a shelf in the living room, until...” She drifted off and her smile faded as she remembered why they’d been removed. “I said it was embarrassing to show them off. Mom took them away. I didn’t know she’d put them down here.”

Sweetie smiled at the cute story as she continued rooting around the box. Wrapped in an orange ribbon was a lock of hair from Scootaloo’s first haircut, carefully preserved in a tiny book were soft downy feathers from Scootaloo’s baby wings, which had been shed before her first birthday. Accompanying the feathers were several pictures of foal Scootaloo. A couple of her sitting on the back of Lyra, a few more sitting with Bonbon, and one of Bonbon looking panicked, while the baby pegasus was flying around the ceiling, circling the light.
“You’re flying?” Sweetie pointed out the picture to Scoots who just shrugged like it was nothing.

“It’s only a baby glide.” She said. She took the baby book and looked at the picture, a nostalgic smile on her face. Sweetie Belle looked confused, she’d never heard of it. Scoots wasn’t surprised, very few non-pegasus ponies would have heard of it, they didn’t need to. “It’s not real flying. Just like the surges baby unicorns get aren’t real magic. It’s just some instinctive thing.”

Sweetie nodded in understanding and looked back to the box. There were a couple more baby pictures, a tiny blue blanket, a little hat, and a few pieces of paper which were just coloured scribbles on the page.
“Nothing.” Sweetie pouted. “I thought it would be in here.”

“It must be in one of the other boxes.” Scootaloo looked around, taking in the huge number around her. The three crusaders could search for days and not find the one piece of paper they were looking for. With a sigh her eyes drifted down to the floor. A piece of paper was under her hoof, the piece that had been impaled on Sweetie Belle’s horn. Her hoof was right over the hole, and just above the hole was a logo:

Scootaloo lifted her hoof and stared at the torn piece of paper. Despite the huge hole most of it was still readable. It was the paperwork she’d been looking for.

Case No. LF03G4MLP

The Undersigned Petitions to Adopt: Scootaloo

Petitioner
Full Name: Bonbon, Sweetie, Drops
Full Name: Lyra, Bee-Bop, Heartstrings

Marital Status: Common Law

“This is it!” She took the page up and beamed at Sweetie Belle. Quite by accident Sweetie had found exactly what they were looking for on her first try. Clumsy as she was the unicorn was also lucky. “Sweetie Belle, you’re awesome.”

...***...

Ten minutes later the three crusaders sat in Sugar Cube Corner, sipping at milkshakes. Actually Sweeite Belle and Scootaloo were sipping at milkshakes. Applebloom was still struggling to clear her head and had developed the idea that Mr Cake was her big brother Macintosh. At least her eyes were both facing the right direction again.

“Well now we got it, what do we do with it?” Sweetie asked.

Scootaloo frowned. This whole quest required a lot more thought and consideration than most of their usual schemes. “Well, we got this case number.” She pointed to the code in the top corner of the page. “Remember that time Miss Cheerilee had Twilight give the class that lecture on good organisation?”

Sweetie nodded. Twilight’s talk on how she organised the Winter Wrap Up teams had started as an example of how good organisation could help prepare for exams, school work and home work. It had turned into a lecture about how organisation helped in everyday life and how even organising your organisation with check-lists of check-lists could make you even more efficient. Before Scootaloo had fallen asleep with the rest of the class she vaguely recalled Twilight talking about how identification numbers on files and reports could help you know what you were looking for and where it was when you needed it.

“Well this number has to be linked to some file they got on me at this home, or maybe the offices of the adoption agency. So, I guess, what we gotta do is go out to Manehatten and ask for that file.”

“You think they’ll just give it to you?” Sweetie asked.

Scootaloo’s frown deepened. She hadn’t considered that. “Why shouldn’t they? It’s my file. It’d be like asking for my property back.”

Applebloom waved a hoof. “Big Mac, can we have some more apple pie please?”

The other two crusaders followed Applebloom’s gaze and noticed a confused and blushing Mr Cake.

“How are we going to get to Manehatten?” Sweetie asked, getting back to the subject at hand.

“I don’t know. The train I guess.” Scootaloo said. Why was it down to her to plan all the details? Usually they worked these things out together.

Sweetie’s eyes widened, she looked scared. “Go all the way to Manehatten, by ourselves?”

Scootaloo wanted to poke a little friendly fun at her but in truth she was scared herself. The furthest she’d ever been from Ponyville was Canterlot and that was with adult’s around her. If she looked out of the window the royal city could be seen, holding onto the edge of the far mountains. It looked far away but wasn’t really, not compared to Manehatten. To go all that way and to do it alone...she didn’t want to admit it but she did feel slightly afraid.

She sighed. “Well, maybe, we could ask an adult to come with us.” She thought about it. She didn’t want to ask Lyra or Bonbon. For one thing, asking them to follow her while she looked for her real mother would hurt them too much. For another, what if they refused and got angry because she’d been poking around in the basement, insulted because she wanted to find her real mother after they’d raised her? They could ground her if they wanted. In a hundred different ways they could stop her from just leaving Ponyville, let alone make it to Manehatten to start asking questions. “What about Rarity?”

Sweetie Belle shook her head. “She’s all busy with some new big project for the next couple of weeks. She doesn’t even go to her spa appointments.” Her tone was one of disbelief, as though Rarity missing a spa appointment should be on the same list of impossible things as chocolate tasting bad, Twilight Sparkle burning a book, or Pinkie Pie doing something boring.

Scootaloo sighed and shook her head. “Okay. Maybe we could ask-”

“Applejack.” Applebloom jumped in. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle looked up to see which pony she’d mistaken for a sibling this time.

To their surprise it really was Applejack. The farm pony didn’t look happy. “Applebloom, is this where you’ve been? You was supposed to be home an hour ago little missy. You got chores y’know.”

Applebloom’s expression remained blank. “I just been spendin time with my friends. Big Mac di’nt say nothin’ ‘bout any chores.” She pointed across the room.

Applejack’s eyebrow raised. “Big Mac?” Her eyes fell on Carrot Cake and her confusion deepened. “Sis, you okay?”

“She took a bump to the head but we’re sure she’ll be fine.” Scootaloo said. “Pretty sure... Well... we’re kind of hoping...actually you maybe want to get her to the hospital.”

With a sigh Applejack scooped up her sister and rested the filly on her back. “What you girls gone and done now?”

“Bye Big Mac!” Applebloom yelled and waved across the store at Mr Cake.

“We’ll explain on the way.” Scootaloo said as she jumped from her seat. “And...We got something to ask you.”

Author's Notes:

I'm not 100% happy with this chapter, but it's the best I could make it after a few days of trying and a few rewrites. Consider it filler to move things along. The adventure starts proper in Manehatten.

In other news:
A "Baby Glide", which Scootaloo didn't explain very well, is described fully in another story of mine Just One Week. In Chapter 3

If anyone is wondering about the full names of Lyra and Bonbon, it's a combination of things and all thanks to the MLP Fim Wiki.
Bonbon's name appears to have been now officially confirmed as Sweetie Drops. I'm one of those fans who still call her Bonbon, I simply gave a nod by making her middle name Sweetie, and her surname Drops.
Lyra's middle name of Bee Bop I chose because, according to the wiki, her cutie mark and colour palette was shared by a G3 Pony named Bee Bop.