It was a rare morning for Apple Bloom. Celestia’s light barely peaked over treetops on the horizon, the filly’s window shades were open wide to let in these first inklings of light, and the pony herself was prancing excitedly, preparing herself for the excitement of the day. After all, it’s not every day that she could welcome back a friend.

Over the past two weeks, with Sweetie Belle at summer camp, the misadventures of the Cutie Mark Crusaders had seemed less fulfilling, less complete. The missing member of the group had somehow served to punctuate the repeated failures of the two who remained, souring their usual jubilance. But that was all to end today: Sweetie Belle was coming back!

Having quickly washed her mane and face and put her Cutie Mark Crusaders cape in a saddlebag, Apple Bloom bolted down the stairs, into the kitchen. Only Big Macintosh was awake at this hour; even Applejack hadn’t woken up yet. He sat at the plain table, contemplatively eating a stack of apple pancakes, with apple syrup, and a tall glass of apple juice. Topping off this thematic meal was a single, raw, as-yet-untouched apple. Apple Bloom would never admit it to him or anyone else in the Apple family, but she was starting to really hate apples. That was a thought for another time, however; today she had something more pressing at hoof.

“Good mornin’ little sis.” Big Macintosh’s slow, thoughtful way of speaking seemed like torture to the excited yellow filly this morning. “It’s pretty early for ya to be up, isn’t it?”

“Nope Rarity said the carriage was comin’ first thing in the mornin’ and it’s the first thing in the mornin’ now so I’m gonna go wait for it so can I go now?”

Apple Bloom started at her big brother in anticipation. He was slowly processing the hastily-spoken string of words that had just assaulted him, concerned for a moment that perhaps his little sister had been spending altogether too much time with a certain pink party pony. She could barely contain her excitement, hopping nervously while waiting for him to respond.

“Don’t ya think,” he replied thoughtfully, “ya should have some breakfast first?”

“Nope, I’ve got some apples,” she lied, indicating towards her saddlebag, “and she’ll probably wanna have breakfast with me anyway so can I go now?”

The big red workhorse chuckled for a moment, then looked into the excited eyes of his littlest sister. It was very hard to say no to her, and so he relented. “Eey–”

Apple Bloom hadn’t even allowed him time to finish the word before she was out the door, galloping away as fast as her tiny legs could take her.

Ponyville was surprisingly empty this early in the morning. The sound of her own hoofbeat on the well-packed earth road through town was all that Apple Bloom could hear as she ran past the colorful assortment of buildings. She barely took notice of the quietude, however; the carriage stop was on the far opposite end of town, and she had no interest in slowing down until she got there.

“Good morning, Apple Bloom!”

Hooves locked, the surprised little bolt of yellow came screeching to a rather unceremonious halt, just inches from the lavender coat of the unicorn addressing her. From this angle, under the enormous tree in the center of Ponyville which also served as its library, the slowly-rising sun was perfectly centered with the main road through town, gloriously glinting off every window and tile. Even at her young age, Apple Bloom could immediately see why Twilight was up at this hour; the view was breathtaking and serene. However, the dirt she pushed up from her sudden slide was beginning to tickle her nose, and very soon she was letting loose a sequence of cute, high-pitched sneezes.

Twilight was watching the sky, acting as if she hadn’t noticed the display. When it finally stopped, Apple Bloom looked up with all the rage she could muster. It wasn’t much; after all, this was still a very exciting morning for her.

“Seven!” Pinkie Pie’s ability at the art of the non sequitur was only rivaled by her complementary ability to appear as if from nowhere. Although Apple Bloom’s small degree of anger melted immediately into befuddlement at this strange comment, Twilight had long since become accustomed to pink interruptions, and so just gazed on, awaiting an explanation.

“I’ve never seen anyone sneeze seven times in a row. I always sneeze three times, and I know I’ve seen Rainbow Dash sneeze twice, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rarity sneeze more than once and Fluttershy’s barely even counts as once … haven’t you ever noticed that ponies always sneeze the same number of times?”

“What the hay is she talkin’ about?” Apple Bloom thought to herself, but decided to respond more politely.

“Uh, nope, I guess I haven’t. Anyway, nice to run into y’all, but–”

“Actually,” Twilight interrupted, “I don’t.”

Pinkie slitted her eyes and stared at, or perhaps through, Twilight for a brief instant. She dug a hoof into the ground, and with a dramatic sweep, spread a fine dust into the air, mostly aimed directly at the unicorn.

The reaction was only natural.

“Three!”

Twilight just smiled and shook her head. Trying to understand the antics of her high-spirited friend was a futile exercise she’d long since forgone. Instead, she turned to Apple Bloom, who was still searching for an excuse to escape the conversation. “Isn’t Ponyville beautiful in the morning?”

The delayed filly considered for a moment the possibility that Twilight and Pinkie were intentionally keeping her from her friend as some kind of cruel prank, but dismissed it.

“It sure is, Twilight. And I’m sure I’ll see the whole sunrise sometime, but–”

“I know,” Twilight said, almost listful, “go see your friend.”

Apple Bloom grinned. “See ya later Twilight, see ya later Pinkie, bye!” And with that, she was off again.

The rest of the run to the edge of town was uneventful.

She waited impatiently near the small wooden platform where the carriages to rural areas stopped, leaning against a nearby tree. Although Ponyville was big enough to have a train station, not every town in Equestria was so lucky, and the system of pony-drawn carriages kept everything else connected. Having nothing better to do while waiting, Apple Bloom considered whether this system really made any sense. If the ponies are pulling the carriages, how could they be any faster than ponies just running?

Before she had a time to unravel this question, the carriage she was waiting for arrived, and out of it stepped Sweetie Belle, her exuberance not restricted even by the overloaded saddlebags she was carrying. She didn’t have the opportunity to say a single word before she was entangled in Apple Bloom’s rather clumsy embrace.

“I’ve got so many ideas to get our cutie marks since you were gone! We could–”

Apple Bloom’s excitement was cut off mid-sentence. In lieu of words, Sweetie Belle had simply turned to her side, idly flicking her pink tail out of the way. Highlighted by her bright white coat was the representation of all these friends had been waiting for: her cutie mark. The image was of a sharp, silver axe, with an oblong blade narrowing to a handle of wood stained a deep shade of red.

After a brief moment to study her friend and collect her thoughts, Apple Bloom gasped in surprise and amazement. “Ye got yer cutie mark!” she exclaimed, having thought of nothing more interesting to say.

“Do you wanna know hoooooooooooooooow?” Sweetie Belle gave a mischievous look to her over-eager friend.

Apple Bloom sat at the base of the tree where she had been waiting, grinning ear to ear, shifting her weight back and forth in anticipation. Her newly-branded friend paused, amused by the bobbing red mane before her, then started her story.

“We were all learning to shoot bows n’ arrows. All the other ponies were doing OK, but, well...”

To make her point, Sweetie Belle mocked holding a bow and arrow, stumbling clumsily while giving a look reminiscent of a certain mail carrier of Ponyville. Apple Bloom giggled, watching and listening intently.

“Anyway, the scoutpony said that I might do better with something a bit heavier, so he gave me one o’ these!”

With that, she pulled a throwing axe from her saddlebag. It looked exactly like her cutie mark, but for the light, ash handle. Both fillies studied it intensely for a moment, the still-young light of the day glinting off of its sharpened blade.

“I thought it was kinda weird, but hey! Anything for a cutie mark! So, I tried throwing it at one of the targets set up on a tree.”

Sweetie Belle closed her right eye and, holding the axe between both hands, mocked the action of lining up a shot.

“Turns out, I was really good!”

Thwack.

“A natural!”

The axe had landed several inches over the terrified yellow filly’s head; she had actually felt the wind from it sweep back her mane. The handle rested just in front of her, and she crossed her eyes to see it clearly. Her trust in her friend quickly extinguished her fear, and she was greatly impressed.

“Whoaaaaaaaaaaah.” It wasn’t the most eloquent of expressions, but it was all she could think to say.

“Soon I had a whole crowd of ‘em watching me, and I was hitting a bulls-eye every time!”

As if her point needed further demonstration, Sweetie Belle lined up and threw another one. This time, Apple Bloom wasn’t afraid at all.

Thwack.

This one had landed by the lounging filly’s left side, shaving just a bit of her coat off her left foreleg.

“But my flank was still blank!” Sweetie Belle frowned slightly, trying to show the feeling she’d had at the time, rather than her new excitement. “I couldn’t believe it. I was so angry with myself, later that night I went and found the scoutpony’s axes again. Of course, it was kinda dark by then, but I managed to find ‘em, and keep practicing.”

Pulling a third axe from her saddlebag, she lined up yet another shot. Apple Bloom’s smile had dwindled slightly, confusion overtaking her.

“I thought maybe all I needed was a new target.”

Thwack.

“And I was right! I hit him square in the neck, and poof! There was my cutie mark!”

Being trapped is rarely a good feeling. But there are degrees to its torment, and Apple Bloom was very quickly discovering that the worst she’d known until this point, being grounded in her bedroom, really wasn’t so bad.

She looked down, her young mind trying to comprehend the magnitude of her situation. She saw the handle of the axe, pushing at an odd angle out of the right side of her chest. Blood dripped down it, staining it a familiar, brilliant red.

Axes are not known for leaving clean wounds, and this was no exception. The entire right side of her torso was torn open, bits of tattered muscle, bone and tendon hanging haphazardly. Her coat was stained in spattered blood, and bits of skin hung at strange angles where they had been wrenched from her. The wedge of the blade had shattered the ribs both at the point of entry and where they met the sternum. Jagged bone jutted out of the left side of her chest, serving only to highlight the wound on her right.

Although she couldn’t know at the time, the axe had hit her spinal column, severing it and rendering her lower extremities numb and unusable. The blade had split a vertebra before splitting into the wood behind, and the remaining undamaged spine was sitting precariously atop it.

Apple Bloom was scared, for obvious reasons, but not in pain. The shock had been too great for her to experience pain. She looked back up at her friend, tears welling in her frightened, amber eyes.

No fear looked back at her. Only joy.

“See! I always hit my target!” Sweetie Belle beamed.

But her expression quickly turned sour as she pulled the final axe from her bag, blowing her pink and lavender hair out of her eyes before preparing for another throw. “Oh no, did I hit where I think I hit?”

Thwack.

“I’ll bet you couldn’t even feel that.” she said poutily.

The broken yellow filly looked down to see what her unicorn friend was referring to. She indeed hadn’t felt the blade slice uncleanly through her left hind leg’s hock, shattering both talus and tarsus and tearing the musculature, exposing a splintered tibia. Her blood, at this point pouring down her right torso and hind leg, had left this one spot relatively clean, but now its own outpouring was leaving very little of her tiny body dry. Her pale hair matted to her skin, tinted a sickening red as the blood thickened, coagulating hopelessly.

Her detached hoof came to rest surprisingly near Sweetie Belle, after bouncing several times in the wet grass. Sweetie Belle watched it the entire time, giggling, enraptured by her own feat.

Tears were pouring down Apple Bloom’s cheeks, but she couldn’t form words. Blood was beginning to pool in her mouth, released by violent coughing fits (each seven coughs in length), and breathing was becoming laborious. Her eyes were becoming glassy and her vision was dimming. Terrified, she knew that she was near her end.

“Whoops,” the unicorn said gaily, “out of axes!” With that she trotted over to the broken, dying body of her friend and gripped one in her teeth.

Naturally, she had chosen the axe that was pinning the limp yellow form to the tree. She started twisting at it violently to remove it from its well-entrenched position.

Apple Bloom had been in shock, incapable of feeling the true pain of her situation. But this blade was in a very precarious spot. Although most medical books wouldn’t feel the need to mention it, the nerve bundle of a pony’s spinal column is a rather unhealthy place to have an axe.

As Sweetie Belle twisted and pulled, Apple Bloom felt pain unlike she’d ever experienced before. With each movement, as the metal dragged and scraped against her exposed nerves, a tingling wave of pain went through her body. Her throat tightened, her neck snapped back, her forelegs spasmed wildly. Agony seared through her. At this instant, the demise which had frightened her only seconds ago now seemed like a joyous release. She wished and hoped on Celestia that this could all just be over more quickly.

Finally wrestling the weapon from its position, Sweetie Belle trotted merrily back to her perch atop the carriage stand. Blood from the axe dripped from the corners of her lips under her chin, creating a dotted and trodden-upon trail of red. Looking down at herself, she couldn’t help but giggle; the sanguine pink hue that had arisen from the thin sheen on her bright white coat would have offended her older sister’s sensitivities. “Darling!” she could imagine Rarity exclaiming, “That’s not the same shade as your hair! It simply will not do!”

No longer propped, Apple Bloom slumped into the ground, her body twitching spasmodically. She tried to look up, to catch one final glimpse of her friend, of the world in general, but her eyes were too hazy. Her pain was too great.

The little unicorn suddenly frowned. “Hey! You’re supposed to be happy for me. Why aren’t you smiling?”

Thwack.

Her upper jaw and snout thrust suddenly from her skull, the dying filly’s mandible hung limply, saliva dripping from her lower lip. The exposed teeth formed a grotesque smile, quite sufficient for Sweetie Belle whose mood lightened once more.

The remainder of Apple Bloom fell to the ground, awaiting nothing but sweet release. Blood and apple-scented sputum spilled onto the grass, released violently from her damaged lungs in great globs. She convulsed painfully, one last time. At that moment, something incredible happened: With a brief shimmer over her flank, she too fulfilled that dream the friends had shared for so long.

Who knew that being chopped into pieces could be a pony’s special talent?

Apple Bloom had no time to celebrate this accomplishment, for it would be her last. With a final twitch, the youngest member of the Apple family was no more.

“Whoaaaah!”

Pinkie Pie’s tail contorted itself of its own volition into complicated knots, while her left ear and right hind leg jerked back and forth in perfect unison. In her convulsing, she knocked a, thankfully empty, muffin tray from a nearby table, making quite a racket as it clanged disharmoniously into the tile below. She slid uncontrollably into a wall, knocking a bag of flour off of a high shelf and, predictably, all over herself. At least the sudden shower put a stop to her spasms.

Pumpkin Cake and Pound Cake clapped merrily at the display, giggling and cooing delightedly. Their mother, distracted by the noise, poked her head through the kitchen door and asked, concerned, “Pinkie Pie, is everything OK in there?”

“I think so … but I’ve never had that Pinkie sense combo before!”

Sweetie Belle gingerly plucked her axes from the tree, carelessly trampling the splayed corpse of her former friend while she did so. As she was gently snapping shut her saddlebags, she heard a familiar voice calling out.

“Wait for me! I slept in! I’m not late, am I?”

Along with the voice, she heard an equally familiar buzzing sound.

With a dramatic leap, albeit an unhelpful one done entirely for show, Scootaloo joined her friends, trademark scooter and all, completing the trio. She saw Sweetie Belle first, failing to notice the condition of Apple Bloom.

“I’m so glad you’re back! Apple Bloom has lots of ideas for–”

She gasped in excitement.

“You’ve got your cutie mark! You’re … a lumberco– a lumberfilly?” She couldn’t hide that her excitement was paired with confusion, even as her friend reached slowly into her right saddlebag, prepared to finish what she’d started.

Not receiving an answer, the little pegasus, who was quite literally buzzing with excitement, happened to notice her other friend. The buzzing stopped as her blood ran cold.

She didn’t know how to understand what she was seeing.

She looked at Sweetie Belle.

She looked at Apple Bloom.

She stared for some time, unable to comprehend what had transpired.

A pony’s mind can only handle so much. There are limits to anypony’s fragile psyche. There are certain events which can only be accepted with much preparation, or much time for healing. This was one of those events, and Scootaloo had no such opportunity. That day, that instant, as she stared at the pieces of slowly-rotting meat that were once her friend, Scootaloo’s young mind shattered. Unable to accept the reality she had been thrust into, she substituted one of her own creation.

Scootaloo beamed, smiling happily, and a bright flash appeared by her flank. On this day, all three of the Cutie Mark Crusaders would finally be fulfilled. Her cutie mark was a pale yellow apple with a bright red flower blooming from its stem.

Of course, she didn’t even know it was there. It was not a part of the reality she had chosen.

“Hi Apple Bloom! Didja see that Sweetie Belle got her cutie mark? She’s a lumberfilly, isn’t that exciting?!”

The unicorn in question stopped her reach and returned her hoof to the ground, empty. She was confused, to say the least, by the orange filly talking glibly at empty air.

“I know, I’m jealous too, but we can still get our cutie marks together!”

Finally understanding what was going on, Sweetie Belle was more than happy to play along. She smiled warmly, walked up daintily, and put a hoof around her friend’s neck.

“Y’know what, Scootaloo? I think the three of us still have a lot more fun to have together.”

“A lot more fun.”

Author's notes

OK, I've put some additional description here at the end of chapter 1 instead of in the main description to avoid spoiling anything. In case it's not obvious, my goal here was to be maximally dark and unsettling. My idea to accomplish that goal was to give the actual violence a greater setting, make the reader appreciate the character and also appreciate the situation it brings onto the rest of the characters. I sort of dropped the ball on that last part because this chapter was getting far too long, so some details I had intended to be here will instead be pushed into the next. To be frank I don't think I've succeeded in my goal so far, but if you think I have, then thank you.

To answer some expected questions:

My friend Mouse and I were having a discussion about what the worst special talent would be. Although we thought of a few that were worse than "axe murderer pony", we enjoyed that one in particular. We decided it would be amusing for one of the CMC to have axe murder as her special talent, but I couldn't decide which. My friend settled it quite simply: "Sweetie Belle is clearly the best name for an axe murderer."

I know the intro was long, and many of you were probably expecting more gore and less prose. There actually is a bit of setup there for the next chapter, plus I just wanted you to remember that the character in question has a history and a connection to the story. Watching a mostly-anonymous pony be slaughtered is somewhat less personal than I wanted. If you're expecting the slaughter-to-prose ratio to pick up, then you're reading the wrong story, the whole point is that I'm putting everything into a greater context.

I have full intention to follow through on the implications of every murder. Nopony just vanishes.

Anyway, I really do hope you enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy such a thing), and hugely appreciate constructive criticism in the comments. Thanks for reading,

- Clavier