FimFiction Link - Short ID: 171486/them-bones
Published: Feb '14
I went into this completely blind and came out pleasantly surprised. It's intriguing what you can accomplish with such short stories.
Them Bones is set several years after the show. Scootaloo came back to Ponyville for a class reunion. A reunion marred by the absence of one of their former classmates.
If I had to define the overall tone of the story, it would be comfy... yet off, in a good way.
Go read the story. It's under 2k and more than worth the less than ten minutes it would take you to read it, because now I'm gonna spoil it.
It's implied that Apple Bloom learned potion making to poison Diamond Tiara and hid her corpse under Sweet Apple Acres.
What I like is how the conflit is set up and slowly reversed throughout the story, the realisation becoming clearer as the pieces fall into place.
Not that it's perfect, though. There's a point where a big clue is shown, and Scootaloo kinda spells it all out despite it being clear already, and I felt that detracted from the impact the ending could've had.
Nevertheless, it's one of the best one-shots I've read in a while, and proof that you can achieve quite a bit with very little.