The sun was just setting behind the tall buildings in the metropolis of Manehattan and Applejack was on her way back to her aunt and uncle’s apartment. Aunt Orange was out of town on a business venture and Uncle Orange was left to, other affairs.
Applejack pushed through the revolving door into the lobby of the building where her Uncle was living. The inside of the lobby was usually quiet compared to the busy streets of the towering jungle of stone and glass. Her hooves clicked on the stone floor as she moved toward the elevator passed a set of potted plants and an odd painting of a monkey in a platypus costume.
The bellpony eyed Applejack approaching and slid the elevator’s gate open. He gave her a small nod and asked “Which floor miss?” Applejack was silent for a second, scheming inside her head of the plan she had devised coming together. “Fifteenth floor please” responded Applejack. The bellpony grasped the grating by a small handle and pulled it over the elevator car’s doorway.
With a small “thanks” and a nod Applejack exited the elevator and gazed down the hall toward the door of her unknowing and forbidden factitious lover. Applejack removed her mane and tail ties to let her hair run free just before knocking on the door of Uncle Orange’s apartment. After a few brief moments of silence the door clicked and a bolt slide back, the end result being that the door opened and Applejack spied a familiar face, a face she had in the past few months become all too familiar with, in more ways than one.
After several hours of what Applejack liked to call “business expenses” Uncle Orange was asleep and it left her with some time to herself to review her plan and make any changes based on what had occurred over the past 24 hours or so. Applejack didn’t really love Uncle Orange, she didn’t really even like him. A better word for her relationship was that she at the very most tolerated him. Applejack had financial issues and hard work wasn’t going to solve it this time. Uncle Orange owned a series of smaller companies that grew, harvested, and packaged orange products, it was how he had the money he had, it was how he lived where he did, and it was how Applejack was getting out of the hole she had dug for herself without building her own set of stairs.
Applejack lie in bed, fast asleep happy to be home with the ponies she actually loved and cared for, but meanwhile all was not well within the apple trees surrounding the little farmhouse.
Two figures stood on a hill in the moonlight over Sweet Apple Acres. After having their apple cider venture ruined by AJ, Flim and Flam became hired hands working for whoever would pay them the most. This series of events led them back to the farm. The events that transgressed there are what caused Flim and Flam to assume the kind of work they were doing.
“Why are we here again, brother” Flim questioned. “Because” both of their voices had changed since their exile from Ponyville as well as their positive demeanor “The client said she wants a little filly by the name of Applebloom.”
“Why does she want the little one?” Flim inquired “Who knows, don’t ask and don’t tell my brother” responded Flam. With that they trotted silently down to the farmhouse.
Flim grasped the doorknob with his magic and gave it a turn, unsurprisingly it wasn’t locked Ponyville’s crime rate was excessively low and besides that nopony messed with the Apple family.
The inside of the farmhouse was the same as it had always been, the walls colors had changed over the years and furniture came and went, but overall the structure had held its shape. Save for the squeaky floorboards. Flim signaled to Flam to keep a lookout in the sitting room while he went upstairs to fetch the small filly. Flim used his magic to pull the wool mask off his face for a brief second so he could be relieved of its infernal scratchiness, then reluctantly pulled it back over. After a few moments of silence Flim heard a crash from upstairs and quickly, but quietly moved over to the staircase to see his brother holding a wriggling, canvas sack. “let me out!” pleaded Applebloom “Big Macintosh, Applejack Help Me!” she persisted. With his magic Flam threw the sack from the top set of stairs and it hit right at Flims feet and was silent. By this point worried yells and loud hoof beats were coming from the upstairs hallway and Flim and Flam ran toward the door. Flam had Applebloom and Flim opened the door for him as they exited the farmhouse.
Big Macintosh and Applejack galloped at full speed toward the hoodied ponynappers and had them cornered when at the last second they lost Flim and Flam in the massive orchard. Applejack searched for a few moments before she spotted something moving furiously behind a bush, she trotted around the bush quietly, she saw the fear in the ponys eyes, the same she had in hers, Applejack gathered her strength and bucked Flim in his muzzle harder than she had ever intentionally bucked a tree or anything else for that matter. He wasn’t dead, blood was pouring from his mouth and just about every other place in the upper body that could. Applejack found Big Macintosh in the barn still looking for Flim accomplice “I need you to help me carry something to the cellar” stated Applejack in a cold voice. The new tone that Applejack has taken worried the strong farm pony.
Flim awoke in a dimly lit room, it was cold and he could feel something sticky and slightly warm holding the ski mask to his muzzle. It smelled dank and claustrophobic in the Apple family cellar and it was the perfect place for Applejack to get the answers she wanted and the retribution he deserved.
After what felt like an eternity the cellar’s door opened with a loud moan and an orange figure made her way down the stairs. In her mouth she pulled a garden house down into the cold and humid cellar. There would be no mercy for this one. Applejack said nothing, she ripped the mask off Flim and looked in shock at who had not only had the audacity to assist in the capture of her little sister, but also show his face on her farm again. Applejack had secured him to the chair while he was still out cold, but she needed him awake for what she was about to do. Applejack turned the nozzle on the hose and began spraying Flim in the face with it to the point at which he was about to pass into unconsciousness. Then she stopped for around 10 to 30 seconds before starting again. This process repeated two or three more times before she said a word. “What did you do to my sister?” Applejack demanded. “Flam took her, we were hired by an unnamed client in Manehatten to bring her to a dropoff.” Flim confessed.
Applejack looked at him with disgust. “I cannot belive what I just heard, not only did you take my sister, break into my house, and almost steal my home away from me. This takes the cake, you sold out your brother that easy and honestly I can’t even stand the sights of you” Applejack stated in an enraged, yet calm tone. She picked up a paring knife with her mouth that had been left on the lid of a barrel in the dark cellar and walked slowly back to Flim, her hooves making a slow clap on the floor as she moved toward him. Flim looked at her with pleading eye, but said nothing. “I’m gonna get her back, and I pray to Celestia your brothers tougher than you. Applejack concluded and in one swift movement slit Flims throat with the sharp knife. She got what she needed from him, and he got what he deserved. Applejack dropped the knife and it clattered on the stone floor. On her way out she looked down the stairs and while she could not see Flim, she could see a large pool of blood gathering on the cellar floor.
The next morning Applejack took the train back to Manehatten, It was a long ride that took even longer as Applejack thought of all the horrid things that could be happening to Appleboom. It did, however eventually end and Applejack stepped down from the passenger coach onto the train platform and made her way from the glistening brass and marble of the central train station to the seedier underground of the criminal world in the western borough of Manehatten.
Applejack found herself in a small tavern that was accessed via a stairwell in a small alley, ponies from all walks of life were inside. She saw accountants and burglars, embezzlers, and drug dealers. She needed information and none of these lowlifes were going to get her any closer based on her brief observation. On her way out she hear a gruff voice beckon to her “You, get over here” the voice commanded. The orange mare knew if she didn’t it could spell trouble so she gently trotted over to the dark table booth in the corner of the basement tavern “Your looking for something” stated the mysterious stranger. “Now, what you wanna know?”
The cold air of the city streets was flowing down the alley as Applejack made her way up the concrete stairs to the surface of Manehatten. The gruff voiced stallion had told her what she needed to know, When she told him of her predicament he told her that the information came at no charge and that he would personally like to see Flams head on a pike. Applejack cantered back to the train station as the snow lightly fell before melting on the sidewalks of the great city.
The stallion had told Applejack that since Flim and Flam’s talents were trickery and deceiving others that it was only fitting that their base of operations use those tactics to keep away prying eyes. Their home was a small cave in the side of a mountain with the mouth of the cave covered by a spell that caused it to appear as the rest of the rock formation effectively hiding it from the unknowing.
Applejack was in too deep and far too proud to ask her friends for help and she was an earth pony, always had been and if she had any real say in the matter would have stayed that way. She made her decision and set out to find the one who had crossed and made a fool of her.
Trixie had gotten her redemption in Ponyville and had made its inhabitants see her in a different light. Applejack, however was not impressed by this newfound revelation to her character. She trotted toward a small lake that Trixie often made her camp beside. Applejack stopped the trailer and quietly stuck to the shadows, creeping along behind bushes and trees until she was right against the side of the wheeled home. Applejack spotted a small thermos beside the fire Trixie had neglected to put out. “Wreck the town, enslave everypony, and now you’re gonna burn down the forest.” Mumbled Applejack as she opened a small bag she had tied around her neck and let the powder inside fall into the thermos. “Now all I gotta do is play the waiting game” thought Applejack as she lie beneath the trailer.
Applejack awoke, startled as she heard a loud creak then remembered where she was “Someponys awake, and I bet she’s thirsty” Applejack said softly to herself. She watched as the carriage door opened and Trixie stepped down onto the grass and headed over to the now extinguished campfire. She lifted the thermos, it glowed in her magic aura as she struggled to unscrew the top. It finally broke loose and Trixie sniffed inside it, shrugged, and took a big gulp. Immediately Trixie knew something was wrong, before she could do anything the drug kicked in and she fall to the ground retching and coughing in agony before passing out.
Applejack had done some really bad and socially unacceptable things before, but in the past week she had done enough to get her thrown in a dungeon for the rest of her life, what she was about to do would get her thrown in a mental institute for the rest of her life. Applejack had secured Trixie to a table inside the caravan and had brought a hacksaw along with her in preparation for what has about to take place. Applejack held the saw’s blunt end in her mouth and lined it up with the base of Trixie’s horn. The orange pony held in in placed and began using her hooves to push the saw back and forth across the horn. Horns are made of bone, but contain more nerves than the rest of the head and also contain a large blood vessel and when Applejack hit that vessel all hell broke loose. Fluids were shooting everywhere, nothing was dry anymore. The entire inside of the caravan was covered in a sticky red coat of blood. When the horn finally separated from Trixie’s head Applejack found a bottle with a small cork in it, a rubber band, and a pillow. She used the cork for the center channel in the horns base, and the rubber band and pillow to put pressure on the wound. She wasn’t going to be responsible for her death too.
Applejack knew she couldn’t put the horn on herself, she needed help from another pony, one with real medical experience. She had met another pony in that seedy basement and it was time for that pony to make a house call and this one isn’t going to be a freebie.
There was a knock on the Apple family cellar door around 8:30 at night, Applejack opened the door to find that Colegate, who she had previously thought to be an ordinary dentist turned out to be one of the best backroom surgeons that Manehatten had ever seen. “This is borderline insane, you know that right” Questioned Colegate “It’s the best way for me to do this, besides, I’m not paying you to question me” stated Applejack coldly. Colegate put AJ under and opened a small cooler full of ice, inside there was a light blue horn with the bottom of it carved in such a way that a hold could be made in the host’s skull and it would fit perfectly. In theory it would work as all ponies possess a form of magic, only they are unable to use it directly due to a lack of a horn. Adding a horn should allow the host’s brain to interface with it and give the brain control of it.
Colegate waited until Applejack was asleep and lifted a large drill and a file from a small cart she had trudged down the stairs with. She went to work carving and drilling away at Applejacks forehead looking on at the monstrosity she was creating. After several long hours of grueling work and one instance of Applejack regaining consciousness before passing out again from shock Colegate finally stitched the skin from her patients head around the base of the horn. It still looked kinda sketchy so she added a few dabs of super glue and wrapped it all in gauze.
Awakening in the dark cellar, Applejack gazed around the room in a dizzy stupor when her sight fell upon Colegate who looked at her concerned “How are you feeling” “Like I have a bowling pin glued to my head” Applejack grumbled. “It’s what you asked for and I got the thing tacked on there, now how about the payment we agreed upon” “oh fine” Said Applejack as she pointed to an envelope on the table in the cellar. Colegate tucked the envelope into her jacket and thanked Applejack as she pulled her cart of tools up the stairs, bumping at each level.
Two days had passed and Applejack has just began to master the art of levitation when she decided she was ready for a disillusion spell and she knew just the pony to tell her how, or atleast give lend her a book on how to go about learning such a spell.
Twilight was overjoyed to see that Applejack actually wanted to check out a book, even if it was on a subject that Twilight thought was irrelevant to the orange earth pony. The mare in question had been wearing her hat and Twilight was none the wiser to Applejack’s plot.
It took abit of practice, but Applejack soon became confident that she would be able to undo any sort of spell that had been left in the defense of Flam’s Lair.
Flam wasn’t really missing his brother’s absence, he thought he would, but he did not. He had intended on taking the filly straight to the dropoff point, the fall from the staircase, however had left her in a state that Flam felt might anger the client and cause him to get turned into glue, or worse not get paid a gazillion stacks of paypur. The young Applebloom had stayed the last few days inside the cozy labyrinth of the hidden caverns. Flam wasn’t worried very much about the pony herself and had made it a casual and everyday thing to berate her and verbally abuse her for keeping him from his goal. His magnificent death ray of awesome was almost done and all he needed was that little extra.
He had attained a new visitor that day, and a new prisoner as well. One had been wandering the vacant spaces around the outskirts of Ponyville, while the other had been out snooping when she saw a pony fade through a wall in the rock face. Trixie was still woozy and incoherent from blood loss and the drugs Applejack has slipped to her through her coffee. The other was nosy dentist who had decided she wanted to stick her nose where it didn’t belong.
