BAD MOTHER BUCKER
The night life in Manehattan had all the glamour and style one would expect from the Big Apple. It was the night time, and it seemed that the whole city was in party mode. The whole city, except for one visitor from Ponyville.
Applejack wore her hat pulled down. Evening darkness had fallen, and she slipped through the crowds without any attention cast her way. She was not here to party. She was here to work.
A slight trail of smoke followed her, as the cigarette in her mouth slowly burned down. These fancy Manehattan ponies couldn’t stand the country varieties of smokes, and Applejack had to bring her own along.
A steel and glass office building loomed on the next block. By her count, it was nine stories tall. Applejack paused to look at it for a moment before turning to a darkened entryway nearby. Applejack approached and a stallion edged towards her, his face appearing in the glow of a streetlight. Applejack smiled. “Howdy, Uncle Orange.”
He nodded in greeting. “AJ, it’s been a while. Shame you only come back to Manehattan when times are like this.”
Applejack shrugged and knocked a little ash off her smoke. “It’s business. You know how it is.”
“Sure do. Speaking of that, I tracked down these featherheads’ finances and shut them down. I just talked to Braeburn and he said their assets in Appleloosa are being taken care of. They won’t be causing you any more trouble.”
“Nope, I reckon not.” Applejack glanced again at the tall office building.
“You don’t have to do this,” her uncle cautioned.
“I can’t leave this unfinished. It’d practically be dishonest.” Applejack turned back. “Thanks for thinking of me, though.”
Uncle Orange nodded. Applejack offered her cigarette to him. He considered it for a moment but waved a hoof. “Nah, wouldn’t want to give Babs any ideas if she caught the smell of that on my breath.”
Applejack chuckled and crushed the butt out on the sidewalk. Uncle Orange added, “Good luck in there, AJ.”
She gave him a smile. “You know me, uncle. This ain’t nothin’ compared to working on the farm.”
After a quick hoof bump, they parted company. Applejack squared her shoulders and marched across the street into the office building.
The lobby floor was marble, and her hooves echoed loudly in the large space. The rest of the furnishings were lavish. In a few places were cardboard standups advertising various products. Front and center was a colorful display for Zap Apple Jam.
“That’s a mite pretentious,” Applejack said aloud, “considerin’ that zap apples don’t belong to them.”
A large stallion came through the door on the other side of the room. He wore an earpiece and dark sunglasses. Based on his startled reaction, Applejack guessed that he knew exactly who she was.
“I want to see your boss,” she called.
The security pony tapped his communicator and spoke into it. “She’s here; what do I do?”
“It ain’t polite to just ignore somepony,” Applejack drawled, walking closer. “I might think you didn’t want me here.”
She had closed to within a leg length of him The stallion had evidentially received an answer for what do about Applejack, and he swung a hoof at her face.
Applejack ducked her head, letting the strike go over. She jabbed a hoof into the stallion’s chest, forcing him back on two legs. She followed up with a quick blow to his gut, knocking the wind from his lungs.
Her opponent crumpled on the ground. Applejack plucked his headset off and put it on herself. A voice from the speaker was frantically asking what had happened in the lobby.
“Tell you what,” said Applejack, adjusting the microphone. “I’ll give y’all one chance to make amends. Now, I doubt you will actually take me up on that, you bein' featherheads and all, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t at least put the option on the table.”
A few seconds passed. A voice replied. “Buck you, farmer.”
Applejack shrugged and dropped the earpiece, crushing it under a hoof. She plucked the sunglasses from the gasping stallion’s face and put them on. Then, she headed for the elevator. It was at the other end of the lobby. She took one last look around before stepping inside.
The music in the elevator was quiet and soft. It wasn’t Applejack’s style and she hoped the ride would be short. She pushed the button for the top floor.
The elevator started to ascend, but ground to a halt quickly as the lights turned off. Applejack grumbled in annoyance. She didn't mean for the ride to be quite that short. “Looks like this is going to be a mite difficult.”
She pried the elevator doors open, forcing the hydraulics to retract, and stepped out on the second floor. There were two stallions standing there waiting on her. They were both bigger and less formal-looking than the guard downstairs. They weren’t for the public to see, and could be as brutal as the company liked. Applejack had met their kind before. Being the sole provider of Zap Apple Jam in Equestria made her farm noteworthy enough to receive special attention from companies like this.
The two thugs started in Applejack’s direction, but she was already charging at them. The first one didn’t react fast enough to block her hoof and it collided with his face. The other tried to flank her, but Applejack whopped him in the shoulder just hard enough to throw off his balance.
A single blow wasn’t going to stop these two like the downstairs guard. Applejack swept the hooves out from under the first stallion and pushed away from him, sliding her body across the marble floor right through the legs of the second. As she went by, she tagged his groin and he fell in a heap.
While he twitched on the floor, Applejack spun and delivered a hammer blow to the back of her other adversary’s neck, knocking him out cold.
She paused for a second, carefully checking the area. There was a security camera over the elevator. Applejack gave it a little wave and adjusted her sunglasses. Then she headed for the stairs.
The third floor looked empty when she got there. Taking a few cautious steps, Applejack decided that she she’d rather move quickly rather than allow these morons more time to get ready for her. Trotting as quietly as she was able, she made a slow sweep around the floor.
While having a little chat with the company CEO was her primary goal, Applejack knew that there was a stash of pilfered Zap Apple Jam around here somewhere. That was another reason she’d come to Manehattan. Not everypony was the Element of Honestly like her, and that was just too bad.
Searching the third floor didn’t turn up anything of interest, just office cubicles. Applejack was just heading back to the stairwell when a small object clinked down the steps. It was about the size of an apple and made of metal. It came to rest at Applejack’s hooves.
She sprinted for the cubicles, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blast of the grenade as it went off. The shockwave knocked Applejack head over tail and into a padded cubicle wall, collapsing somepony’s whole workspace. The desk and filing cabinet were knocked over and paper flew everywhere.
Applejack grumbled and got up, moving her hat back into position. The sunglasses had been cracked, but the explosion knocked out the lights so it was dark enough that she might as well get rid of the shades.
Reasoning that whoever was upstairs wouldn’t drop a second grenade until there was obvious need for one, Applejack crept back to the stairwell. The walls had crumbled, leaving no way to get upstairs. Well, it looked like she would be taking the elevator.
The doors pried open just like last time. Overriding the pressure of the safety mechanism added a little difficulty, but the strength Applejack had gained from working on the farm made short work of it. She stepped out on top the elevator car, still stuck down on the second floor, and looked up the shaft above her.
The top disappeared into darkness, but Applejack could make out a faint amount of light slipping under the doors of a few floors above her. She sighed and started to climb.
The elevator cable was lightly greased and had accumulated some dirt, as such things tended to do. The going was tough, but Applejack was not deterred. Heck, it was about like Daring Do climbing vines in some lost temple. She almost chuckled at the reference. This wasn’t a movie, after all. Also, she couldn’t afford a case of the chuckles at the moment.
Applejack paused at the doors for the fourth floor. The idiot with the grenades was in there. Deciding that she wanted to deal with whoever it was now instead of later, Applejack found the mechanism that held the doors and kicked it open.
She swung through the opening, landing on the floor. She slid for several feet, grease from the elevator cable still on her hooves. It proved a happy accident, as the burly stallion positioned near the door never expected it.
Applejack knocked him over and delivered a flurry of punches to his chest and stomach. This had the side effect of mostly cleaning her hooves. The stallion gasped and spasmed, down for the count.
The explosive-thrower turned out to be a mare, for a change. She stood near a box of weapons. Applejack started in her direction but stopped short as she grabbed a grenade from the box and pulled the pin.
“Don’t come any closer!” she warned. Her hoof still held the lever down, so the grenade’s timer hadn’t yet activated.
Applejack resumed walking, her steps slowly advancing. “Just put that down. Other than the fact that you just tried to kill me, you and I don’t have a quarrel. I’m after your boss.”
The mare panicked and flipped the lever up. She cocked back, ready to throw. Applejack tackled her, wrestling for the grenade. She got ahold of it and smacked it into the mare’s face. They wrestled across the floor and Applejack lost control of the explosive.
The two of them came to rest in an awkward position near the stairs. The grenade had somehow ended up in the other mare’s mouth. Applejack hit her in the stomach, forcing a hard exhale. There was an audible pop as the grenade left her lips. It rolled into the stairwell.
This explosion Applejack was more prepared for. She made sure her assailant was between her and the blast. The mare took the brunt of it and hit the floor, unconscious.
Applejack checked the stairs, displeased to see that the staircase leading up had now been destroyed. She headed back to the elevator, plucking another grenade from the box and stowing it under her hat.
Climbing the elevator cables wasn’t any easier than before. Applejack got the door to the fifth floor open and jumped through. The space in front of her was entirely taken up by cubicles. Apparently, a lot of this building was office space.
All of the white collar workers had gone home for the day and the place looked abandoned. Applejack crept through, heading for the stairs.
The nearest cubicle wall slammed to the floor in front of her, revealing another thug charging in Applejack’s direction. She sidestepped and kicked out a hoof, tripping him. He careened into another cubicle and there was a crash as if he’d just gotten a facefull of filing cabinet.
Applejack spun, parrying another attack from a second stallion. She executed a spinning kick to his face that knocked him into another cubicle wall, flattening it. The one behind that collapsed as well, spreading a domino effect across that half of the room. As the last panel fell, a third stallion stood there looking surprised, his cover fallen down around him.
Applejack rolled her eyes and beckoned him with a gesture of her hoof. Accepting the challenge, he charged her. She set her stance and waited.
When the two of them clashed, it was rather less dramatic than the stallion had perhaps been hoping for. Applejack merely ducked out of his way and kicked him in the back of the head as he went by, adding to his speed.
All that force effectively made the stallion a bowling ball and the cubicles on the other side of the room pins. They rest of them collapsed under his impact. The stallion lay in a daze, guttered.
Turning away, Applejack headed for the stairs. The sign on the door that lead to the sixth floor read “Product Testing Lab.” She headed in.
Applejack stopped short at the sight in front of her. Quite unexpectedly, she had stumbled on the missing Zap Apple Jam. It was neatly stacked up in jars in the center of the testing area. Sophisticated equipment was piled up around the pyramid of jars, and evidentially experiments had been conducted here. Applejack frowned. There was no way to tell if the jam was still good. She didn’t particularly need the crop back; her farm could always make more. Primarily, she was interested in making sure it didn’t stay in the hooves of this company.
Heavy steps came thundering into the room and Applejack looked up to see two armored ponies burst in. They were each plated with metal, to include helmets. With only part of their faces visible, landing an effective blow would be difficult.
Applejack tried anyway. Her kicks to the body, strengthened from years of applebucking, managed to knock each juggernaut over, but they didn’t stay down for long. She was going to need a critical hit to take them out of action. Her eyes fell on the jars. That would work.
Applejack seized two of the glass jam jars. She tossed them into the air and pitched forward on her front hooves, lining up a shot.
Bucky McGillicutty took the jam jar on the left and Kicks McGee took the right. Both jars streaked across the room propelled by Applejack’s favorite two friends. Both jars hit their targets and shattered, smacking the two armored stallions in their faces hard enough to knock them over and throwing multicolored jam as well as a few shards of glass everywhere.
How Applejack was able to kick glass jars that hard without breaking them herself was, much like Zap Apple Jam, a closely guarded Apple Family secret. Applejack was usually too honest to break the laws of physics, but sometimes she slipped.
Applejack glanced back at the pile of jam jars. One near the bottom still looked good and she picked it up. The rest probably wasn’t worth saving. Good thing she had saved that grenade.
Dropping the explosive in the middle of the pile, Applejack ran for the stairs. She’d just made it around the corner when the blast went off, violently coating the whole room with jam.
Starting up the next set of stairs, Applejack stopped short as the door to the seventh floor slammed open and a mare with a whip appeared. She didn’t hesitate to cast her weapon at Applejack, who caught the end around her foreleg. There was a brief tussle, but Applejack had the advantage of strength and yanked the other pony down the stairs. She hit every one of them. With her head.
Applejack left her there, moaning and rubbing her sore skull, while confiscating the whip and continuing upward. She looked in on the seventh floor, wishing to bypass it in order to keep going. However, an arrow slammed into the doorframe right beside her face.
Applejack peeped back into the room, catching sight of the archer. It was a unicorn, and he was lining up another shot. Twitching the whip to a swirl in front of her, Applejack charged into the room. The next arrow got tangled in the whip, just as Applejack intended. She cracked it, knocking away the bow and wrapping the stallion up. He struggled, but Applejack grabbed his quiver of arrows and shoved him against the wall, slamming arrows through his mane and into the wood.
The stuck stallion struggled. “Who are you?” he gasped.
“Just an unhappy partner in this business relationship, partner.” Applejack started to turn away.
“When the boss finds out, he’ll be so angry!”
“It’s all right. I was just about to go see him.” Applejack turned away, heading for the stairs once more.
There were several loud crashes from the stairwell and Applejack quickly leaped through the door, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a desk that had fell from above. Other pieces of furniture continued to pile into the stairwell, blocking it solid.
Applejack growled and walked back across the seventh floor. She kicked a window out and leaned through the frame, looking upwards. Carefully aiming the whip, she cracked it several times against the upstairs pane of glass, small spider cracks spreading little by little until it shattered.
Carefully fashioning the whip into a lasso, she tossed it upwards and hooked the loop onto a fire sprinkler that protruded from the ceiling. It was quick work to climb up.
Unfortunately, she was met on the eighth floor window sill by two unicorns clad in black. With nothing to hang onto but the rope, Applejack felt like a piñata trying to avoid being struck. With a twist of her body, she managed to land two decent kicks on her attackers in order to drive them back far enough that she could get through the window.
Applejack landed and took a stance. The two unicorns recovered from her kicks and got ready. Each had a black hood and levitated a sword.
Applejack snorted. “I hope y’all aren’t pushovers like the last ninjas I beat.”
“Just when did you fight ninjas last?” asked one, conversationally. It was so completely out of character for the serious situation that Applejack almost paused to answer him. Almost. Simultaneously with his partner’s distraction, the other ninja whipped a throwing star through the air at Applejack’s face.
Her eyes went wide and she jumped backwards, arching her back and spinning in midair. She landed hard, but got her hooves under her and stood up straight. Applejack grinned, a flash of steel between her teeth. She spit the throwing star out on the floor. “Got any more tricks like that?”
In response, both ninjas threw out smoke bombs, completely filling the room with choking fumes. Applejack swept her hat off, breathing the small pocket of air the inside of it provided. Her eyes kept moving, waiting to be attacked.
A ninja sword came flying out of the smoke and Applejack just barely avoided the attack. She managed to redirect the blade, knocking it out the window and out of reach.
There was a few seconds of silence. Applejack edged sideways, moving from where she had previously been attacked. There was a whisper of sound, sliding towards her. Waiting for a fraction of a second, Applejack plunged her hooves into the smoke, yanking out one of the ninjas.
She spun him through the air, ramming him headfirst into the wall. Conveniently, there was an electrical line feeding a nearby power outlet and the unicorn’s horn stuck straight into it. His entire body went rigid and seemed to almost vibrate with convulsions as electricity and magic fed back on each other in his brain.
Applejack jerked him out of the wall and the pent up power let go, blasting through the room with a bright flash of energy. Applejack did her best to aim him, hitting the other ninja with the beam. Both of them dropped to the floor, temporarily paralyzed.
Applejack put her hat back on. Turning to check out her options for getting upstairs, a laser dot danced across the floor at her hooves. She instinctively jumped out of the way as a hail of machine gun fire lit up the room.
Finding cover behind the minimal furniture, Applejack was able to get a glimpse of the source of the incoming lead. A burly pegasus hovered outside the window, twin gatling guns strapped to his sides. He saw Applejack’s face and started firing again.
“Well, doesn’t that just take the pie,” muttered Applejack as she ducked another burst of bullets. She couldn’t stay where she was. If that stallion came into the room to get closer – or heck, if he just kept firing for long enough – her cover wouldn’t last. Gritting her teeth, she waited for a break in the rapid firing.
When it came seconds later, Applejack sprinted from her cover straight at the window. The timing was going to be tight, putting her plan into action before she got shot. Grabbing her improvised lasso, which still hung from the sprinkler, she swung out the window.
The apogee of her arc carried her right past the gun-toting pegasus. Applejack took the opportunity to kick free his ammo box and then aimed another buck straight for his face.
The bullets fell towards the ground, so many stories below. The stallion was stunned, but managed to make it through the open window before fainting. As an added insult to injury, the fire sprinkler came loose and drenched him with cold water. By that time, however, Applejack had already reached the end of her rope, so to speak, and her momentum carried her all the way up to the ninth story window.
She crashed through the pane, tumbling to break her fall. Applejack got up, shaking a few loose pieces of glass off her. The rest was scattered all over the floor.
There was a flash of movement and Applejack looked up just in time to see a door slam shut. She glanced around, realizing that there was only one office on this floor: the one she was looking for.
Walking over to the door, Applejack heard several locks click shut from the other side. The door was braced with iron and was made of very heavy wood. Not as heavy as an entire tree, though. Applejack turned, lining up a kick.
In the orchard at home, Applejack could be gentle enough to shake every apple out of a tree without even harming the bark. But this wasn’t an apple tree, and she wasn’t being gentle.
She bucked the door off its hinges, sending it flying and splintering the frame. The deadbolts thudded to the floor, ripped from their mountings. Applejack walked through the hole she had made and into the office.
The company CEO, the one who had ordered the theft of the jam, huddled beneath his desk. His expensive suit jacket looked a little ruffled and the expression on his face was one of shock. Applejack walked over and knelt down to look him in the eye. “Y’know, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by just purchasing the Apple Family’s fine products. Heck, I’m not even worried about reverse engineering or whatever you were doing in the lab. You just can’t duplicate love, care, and homemade goodness.”
She got up and worked a kink out of her back. It had taken a lot of effort to get up here to talk to this pony, but Applejack enjoyed a good solid day’s work. Feeling that her task was done and her point made, she turned to go.
There was a shuffle of movement behind her and Applejack whirled, catching a letter opener just before the CEO stabbed her with it. The two of them tumbled to the floor, Applejack ending up on top.
She tossed the letter opener away and sighed. “Tarnation, if you wanted Zap Apple Jam so much, you could have just asked.”
Applejack took the last jar of jam out from under her hat and set it down on the floor. Reaching into the CEO’s jacket, she pulled out a few bits for payment.
Getting up, Applejack turned to face him. “Pleasure doing business with you, sugarcube. Enjoy the jam.”
She poked him in the chest. “And if there's ever a problem in the future, I’ll send my big brother to solve it.”
Author's Note
Not gonna lie, I wrote this just for an excuse to use the title.
