Applejack threw open the double doors of her family's extra large storage shed, ready to confront the machine once and for all. "Showdown time," she muttered to herself with a confident smirk.
The late morning sun sliced into the building's darkness through the gaps in its plank walls, covering everything inside with long stripes of light. Three of those stripes fell on the terrible machine, which stood against the back wall between the rickety spare market wagon and a few stacks of splintering crates. With its greasy old plug pulled out of the socket and a tarp thrown over part of its casing it looked like the harmless piece of junk that it really was, but Applejack still approached it as if it was an ornery bull in need of wrangling. Outside, the cicadas screeched mindlessly.
"So, you think you're a tough cookie, don'tcha?" she asked it. "You think you can just humiliate me, my sister, my brother, even my granny and get away with it, huh? Well the sheriff's back in town now, and she wants payback."
She grabbed the tarp with her teeth and threw it onto the dirt floor, revealing a labyrinth of dark mechanisms under glass. "There's no gettin' away from it now. I've set aside plenty of time fer this and I've been trainin' hard. I've beaten all of your little cousins in town, studied all their moves, learned all their tricks."
She pushed the plug in and stepped back to watch the beast come to life. "This time you're goin' down in flames."
Suddenly the shed filled with an intense blue light worthy of an angry goddess as the pinball machine began its flashy activation sequence, showing off the hundreds of tiny bulbs that studded its body. For all her tough talk, Applejack couldn't help but grit her teeth for what she knew was coming next.
The machine's speakers crackled for a moment, then blasted out its dreaded theme song in a chorus of female voices:
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
The Cutie Mark Crusaders looked up from their final preparations on the enormous and fully functional paper-mâché volcano model they had built in the middle of their clubhouse.
"Do you hear that singing?" asked Scootaloo, her wings unfolding slightly in awe.
"Yeah," answered Sweetie Belle. "It's so pretty!"
"And catchy," moaned Apple Bloom while shaking her head sadly. "Horribly, horribly catchy." She tried to focus on the task at hoof, putting the finishing touches on the cardboard houses and paper ponies of the village they had built in the volcano's shadow.
"What is it?" asked Sweetie Belle. "Where is it coming from?"
Apple Bloom debated twisting some lumps of paper-mâché off the volcano to use as earplugs. "It's the 'Sea Pony Symphony'."
"Huh?" went Scootaloo.
"It's an ol' pinball machine we keep in the big shed. Applejack must be tryin' to beat it again, but it's no use. It's just gonna make her sour fer the rest of the day, and now I'm gonna have that song stuck in my head fer way longer. Uuugh!"
The music's volume and the light show's intensity went down to their normal play settings, which were still pretty offensive. Over the top details like that were part of why Applejack loved and hated this particular pinball machine so much: It was so annoying she just had to punish it, and she'd punished it plenty. The flipper buttons and ball launching plunger had had to be replaced more than once, and she kept the kit and spare parts for doing so ready on top of a pile of nearby crates.
'Sea Pony Symphony' was the name emblazoned on the top of the backbox in swishy blue-neon-lit letters. Under that was an image of the sea ponies themselves, grinning idiots gallivanting in a glowing underwater landscape of improbable smiling starfish and tacky ruined castles. Though their heads were recognizably equine, mane and all, their bodies ended in fleshy spiral shaped tails, and instead of four limbs they only had a single pair of flippers. Their cutie marks were the typical array of nautical themes.
Under that artistically-challenged mess was a rectangular screen that displayed anything the game needed to tell you in configurations of eye-straining blue light dots. As Applejack went through her breathing exercises to prepare herself for battle she watched the top 10 high scores scroll by on it:
- A.B.!. - 20.452.006.000 pts.
- M.A.C. - 24.130.050.000 pts.
- M.A.C. - 24.752.500.000 pts.
- A.J.!. - 26.940.000.000 pts.
- A.J.!. - 27.804.400.500 pts.
- A.J.!. - 27.890.500.000 pts.
- A.J.!. - 27.905.500.000 pts.
- A.J.!. - 28.122.000.100 pts.
- A.J.!. - 28.663.000.000 pts.
- G.A.P. - 29.895.000.000 pts.
'A.B.!.' was Apple Bloom, who had managed to reach 10th place through heroic effort and then given up on the viciously difficult machine completely. Near the end of that experience she complained of nightmares where she found herself getting more and more tangled in seaweed while a sea pony version of Ms. Cheerilee serenaded her with clanking machine noises. Applejack could relate, but didn't let bad dreams stop her.
"M.A.C." was Big Macintosh. He had played the game enough to prove he could do it adequately, then moved on to other interests.
"A.J.!." was applejack herself of course. The repetition of her name along the scoreboard crawl reminded her of the lines a filly might draw on her door frame to track how tall she was getting.
"G.A.P." was a mystery, somepony who had played an extraordinary game on the machine before Applejack bought it off a traveling junk wagon. Replacing those initials and their impressive score would be the only way she could ever walk away from the 'Sea Pony Symphony' for good.
The machine's coinbox door was always left open. When she felt ready enough Applejack reached into it and brought out a single grimy coin balanced on the edge of her hoof. One coin, one game, three balls. "Let's do this." She slammed it into the slot and hit the left flipper button.
The machine's vast array of bulbs pulsed and rippled with what almost looked like wicked delight. The theme song restarted:
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress.
Helpful as can be ponies...
"Just gimme the ball already," said Applejack, tapping the left flipper button with nervous energy. Trying to hurry the machine was useless of course; it always took its sweet time taunting you, teasing you, from the first pull of the launching plunger to the final tragic tune it played when your last ball vanished into the 'abyss' under the flippers.
With theatrical flair the playfield under the glass lit up one special feature at a time to the rhythm of the song. First the flippers themselves, decorated with images of sea ponies with their pun-ready flippers outstretched, as if waiting to catch and toss the ball. Then the various bumpers, also covered with aquatic equines spiraling playfully around each other. Finally, bursting into light like fireworks going off in sequences, came the various tricks and toys: the octopus tentacle wire ramp, the whirlpool hole, the snapping clam shell gates, the grasping seaweed brushes, the little sunken ship model that tilted back and forth at inconvenient times, the unlock-able treasure chest with the golden trident sticking out of it, the rising and falling towers of the lost city full of bonus point opportunities.
Once the stage was all set the ball popped into the ball lane with a soft clatter. It was a very unusual ball for a pinball machine, made of some kind of semi-transparent glass or plastic so it looked like a pinkish bubble. It had devious physical properties, like a tendency to spin or slow down when you didn't expect it, or bounce off the bumpers at strange angles. Getting used to it took lots of practice, adding to the game's punishing difficulty and frustrating appeal.
Applejack seized the plunger in her teeth, pulled it back with a mighty heave more appropriate for tying down a bucking beast than starting a simple game, then released it. The bubble-ball rocketed upward into the playfield, and the duel began.
Splattered with gobs of fake lava and bits of exploded paper-mâché volcano, Scootaloo took a break from the clean up effort to peek at the storage shed through the clubhouse telescope. Flashes of bright blue light were still stabbing out through the gaps in its plank walls. "Wow, your sister's still at it."
Apple Bloom paused in her mopping up of the tragic model town and helpless paper citizens they had failed to save from being submerged in orange goo. "Uh oh, she's gonna be late fer her chores at that rate. It ain't like her to let a game get in the way of what needs doin'. Even that game. I'd better head over there soon and remind her."
Sweetie Belle wiped off the big list of crusade-worthy experiments they kept on the back wall and crossed out 'volcanologists'. "I really want to see that game."
"I really want to play it!" said Scootaloo.
"No, you don't," said Apple Bloom. "Y'all really don't. It's evil."
SCORE: 28.775.000.500 pts.
BALLS LEFT: 1
It was Applejack's third try after two lousy attempts. The long stripes of daylight in the shed had gradually swung to a new angle without her really noticing. She pounded down the last of the bottle of cider she'd pulled out of a nearby crate and adjusted the red rag she had tied around her hat-less head to keep the sweat out of her eyes. The newly dispensed final ball glistened at her like a seductive eye from the safety of the ball lane, trying to lure her into launching it before she was ready. The sea ponies were humming their impatient waiting music.
The screen on the backbox flashed a blue message: LAUNCH IN 5 SECONDS FOR BONUS POINTS!!!!!
"Nice try, but I ain't gonna be hasty," said the mare to the machine. "That's how I lost last time. Gonna catch my breath first, nice and slow, and there ain't nothin' you can do to rush me."
She'd lost the second ball too quickly, but G.A.P.'s top score was still within tantalizing reach. All she had to do was keep her mind clear, loosen the nervous twitches in her system. She trotted in place a bit to work the excess energy out of her muscles. Deep, controlled breaths. Then, when she hoped the machine least expected it, she pounced on the plunger and dived back into the thick of it. The sea pony voices roared up to their full power in appreciation:
Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress.
Helpful as can be ponies, simply signal S.O.S.
If you find you're cast adrift
and haven't got an oar...
SCORE: 28.930.100.000 pts.
Flipper to bumper, bumper to slingshot panel, panel to ramp and ramp back to flipper, the bubble sailed wildly from one school of smiling sea ponies to the next in a shimmering blur.
... call upon the sea ponies, they'll see you to shore.
Feeling like a shepherd wrangling an especially manic sheep, she did her best to keep the ball in the point-rich triangle formed by the treasure chest, the sunken ship and the lost city. The adrenal trembling of her hooves was making it tricky though. Time and time again she shot too far to the left, getting caught in the snapping trap of the clam shells that wasted precious time and offered few rewards. Somewhere in the back of her mind, far behind the constant zigzagging of her eyes, she was dimly aware that she was going to be late for her chores, possibly already was. Could she live with herself if she put a game above her responsibilities?
SCORE: 29.467.230.000 pts.
The screen flashed a new message: WHIRLPOOL MODE!
"Oh come on!" she growled, then gave the machine's side a quick slam of frustration.
Yeah, she could live with herself if it meant beating this bag of manure game once and for all.
Whirlpool mode signaled that the game had decided (based on some mysterious set of rules she still hadn't quite figured out) to activate the annoying special features of a hole on the right side of the playing field. The hole was surrounded by a slow-spinning disk decorated with a spiraling 'water' image. If the ball rolled over the disk during the mode it was sure to get thrown off in some dangerous random direction. Actually going down the hole allowed you to play a stupid musical mini-game on the screen by pressing the flipper buttons, but it never really paid off point-wise, and the ball tended to come back out in some inconvenient place.
Through the masterful use of ball-cradling and bounce pass techniques she adjusted her play style to avoid the whirlpool area, slowing down her point gain."Guess I'll have to whip you with one hoof tied behind my back."
SCORE: 29.480.320.000 pts.
Drops of sweat splashed onto the playfield glass almost in time to the sea ponies' maddening tune.
Apple Bloom checked the clock again and shook her head. "Time to break up her party. Come on crusaders, maybe we can earn a cutie mark for intervention."
SCORE: 29.710.000.000 pts.
After struggling for a while at less than her best she was finally 'in the zone', that mythical state of mind where all stress vanishes and every correct move comes as easily as breathing. The music's volume actually seemed to be rising the closer she got to surpassing G.A.P.'s score, and stranger still she didn't mind it anymore. In fact the tune that had taunted her for so long now felt like a heavenly choir celebrating her impending ascension to conqueror goddess status. She was nearly singing along. Nearly.
If you find you're cast adrift and haven't got an oar
Call upon the sea ponies, they'll see you to shore.
SCORE: 29.857.060.000 pts.
"I got you now," she muttered under her breath. "I got you now, I got you now…"
SCORE: 29.891.740.000 pts.
The ball careened off the flipper and circled the whirlpool's spinning trap disk for one heart stopping moment, ready to zip straight down into the 'abyss'.
"Nononononono…"
It flew sideways into a slingshot panel.
"Yesyesyesyes…"
Then another, at just the right angle.
"Yeee…"
Straight for the treasure chest.
"…eeeee…"
Pay-dirt. The golden trident in the treasure chest rattled noisily to signal a solid hit.
"…eeeeeeehaaaaaaw!" She tossed the red rag off her head to let her sweat-dampened mane flow free.
The machine exploded into a miracle of blue light.
SCORE: 29.897.320.100 pts.
NEW HIGH SCORE!
The sea ponies belted out her triumph:
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
"Take that you watery varmints!"
In her enthusiasm she slammed her hoof on the glass of the playfield.
'TILT!' declared the screen with a harsh buzzer sound.
"Oops."
Her concentration broke like the end of a spell. The ball rolled straight into the 'abyss'. The screen asking her to enter her initials for the high score appeared. When she looked under her hoof she found a small crack in the glass, right above the whirlpool.
"Darn it!"
Suddenly he hoof was violently sucked back onto the glass, seemingly by the crack itself.
"What the hay!?"
Her hoof started to vanish into the crack, magically shrinking and flattening to fit. By the time her brain could process the strangeness of what was happening everything up to her shoulder was already in the machine and her face was pulled right up against the glass. She could see that her limb, and presumably the rest of her, was going into the machine's spinning whirlpool. She tried to break the glass by slamming on it with her other front hoof, and when that somehow failed she tried to pull herself out by bracing her back legs against the machine's casing.
No use.
"Help! Somepony heeeeelp!"
No rescue.
Her head was starting to warp into the crack, and that was a sensation she would never forget if she survived whatever was happening.
Resigned to the inevitable, she stretched out her back hoof to try and at least retrieve her hat from the nail in the wall she had left it hanging on. Out of reach. She groaned.
"Aww shucks, you could at least let me take my hat you jinxed piece of –"
The rest of her spiraled through the crack and into the whirlpool like water vanishing into a drain. It even sounded like water vanishing down a drain, and that was hardly surprising given that the whirlpool itself appeared to be full of water now. At least that's what the icy cold liquid she was rocketing down through felt like. She didn't dare open her mouth for a taste test.
Am I going to drown in a pinball machine? she thought as her high speed descent through darkness continued with no sign of air to be gasped. She'd never given much thought to her own demise, but this was certainly not how she would have imagined it. Would the machine in all its apparently enchanted power grant her the courtesy of a tiny tombstone bumper on its playing field? Or would none of her friends and family ever know what happened to her? That thought was colder than the water.
Suddenly the sucking force pulling her down ceased, and something warm and gooey enclosed her body tightly on either side. The water began to drain out of what seemed to be a container she was squeezed into, and as soon as her face was clear she took in as much air as her constricted ribcage would allow. It smelled foul, like bad breath. Once the last of the water was gone from around her lower ankles the container split open again, and a blinding spotlight hit her from above.
"Welcome to your new prison A.J.Exclamation Point," said a musical and somehow familiar voice.
Applejack realized she was standing on something spongy, but it took a few more seconds for her eyes to adjust to the light enough to allow her to see what it was. She was inside a pinkish air-filled bubble, just big enough for her, and transparent enough to reveal nothing but aquatic darkness and the sourceless overhead light beyond its membrane. The bubble itself was balanced on the bottom half of an open clam shell, and she assumed that that was what had been gripping her a moment ago. There didn't seem to be anything more than void under the shell either. "Where am I? What's goin' on? Who's talkin' to me?"
"You are in the abyss," crooned the voice. "A place deep inside the inner workings of the Sea Pony Symphony. You've been brought here for tampering with the High Score setting. And as for who you are speaking to…"
A creature swam out of the watery void, into the light. It was a pale blue sea pony with a silvery-white mane and an adolescent face Applejack found just as hauntingly familiar as the voice. She couldn't quite figure out where she'd seen it before though. Something was off. An image of a pair of glistening pinball flippers graced the pony's 'flank'.
"… you can refer to her as G.A.P."
Applejack raised an eyebrow at the apparition. "Huh? Gee Yay Pea? What kind of name is… Wait, G.A.P? As in the three letters on the high score? Are you the player I've been tryin' to beat?"
The sea pony circled around the bubble with a look of playful arrogance, her mane trailing through the water far more beautifully than the cheesy art on the pinball backbox could have conveyed. "No, but G.A.P is connected to her. You might say that G.A.P is the guardian of the high score and the glory of the pony who achieved it." She abruptly stopped swimming to give Applejack a venomous look. "G.A.P. therefore punishes those who try to sabotage this machine."
"Uh huh," said Applejack skeptically. She wasn't the most knowledgeable pony when it came to matters of magic, but she knew enough to question the reality of the situation she appeared to be in. "So you're implyin' I cheated?"
"Without a doubt. It's a shame that a pony with your obvious pinball talent decided to resort to underhoofed tactics in the end."
"And how exactly am I supposed to have cheated just now? In case you hadn't noticed, I was too busy playin' the greatest game of my life out there to tool around with your contraption."
The adolescent sea pony seemed a little uncertain as she considered the question while corkscrewing over the bubble. "G.A.P. will admit that that is a mystery right now. An investigation is required, but it won't change G.A.P.'s judgment. That high score cannot be surpassed. The player who set it had no peer and never will, so it stands to reason that you are a cheater. Unfortunately for you a great and powerful security spell was placed on the sea pony symphony in anticipation of such shenanigans."
A security spell. Well at least she knew what she was dealing with now. Applejack cautiously pushed on the rubbery inside surface of the bubble with her hoof. It stretched under the pressure, but seemed unlikely to break. Not that she would want it to under the current circumstances. "Ok, first of all that ol' high score was impressive but hardly unbeatable. Second, I really don't take kindly to folks calling me dishonest and treatin' me like a crook unless they got some real facts to back 'em up. Third, you'd better let me out of here before my friends figure out what happened."
G.A.P. swam upside down in front of Applejack and smirked evilly. "Or what?"
"Or they will use their magic and know-how to pull this contraption of yours to pieces and get me out."
G.A.P. laughed musically and let herself sink below the edge of the clam, falling out of her prisoner's sight. "G.A.P. would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of her defenses. It's too bad nopony is likely to find you before your sentence is up."
Applejack turned around in her bubble, looking for the sea pony. "And how long is that, by the way?"
"Well, G.A.P. will first have to determine how you cheated, then use that information to decide how much of a menace to honest society you are. Your sentence could be anywhere from a few months to a few years."
The hairs on Applejack's neck stood up. "Months? Years!? But what if you don't find any sign of cheatin'!?"
"G.A.P. will search for as long as it takes," said the sea pony. Her voice was receding into the distance while seemingly coming from all directions at once. "G.A.P. has all the time in the world. Naturally if your cheating is especially subtle and difficult to find that makes you more dangerous, so your sentence will be made longer."
"Wait, come back! You can't just leave me alone in the dark forever!"
"Of course not," said the almost inaudible voice. "G.A.P. is not a monster. She will leave you with entertainment."
"Enter…tainment?"
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
Despite its volume and intensity, Applejack's screaming wasn't enough to drown out the music.
"That's weird," said Apple Bloom. "Her hat's still hangin' on the wall, and the machine's still plugged in."
"Maybe she felt so guilty she just rushed off to her chores," suggested Scootaloo without taking her wide awe-filled eyes off the pinball machine's rippling light show.
Apple Bloom shook her head. "That don't sound like her. C'mon, let's pull the plug and go make sure she's OK." She put her hoof on the power cord to drag it out.
"Wait!" said Scootaloo. With a blur of her tiny wings she leapt over her friend's head to pin the cord down and prevent its removal. "You're sister's a big filly, she can take care of herself. Why don't we play a few games of this sea pony thing?"
Apple Bloom recoiled from her friend as if she had offered to show her 'something cool' in a spittoon. "No way, if it were up to me I'd buck that thing into the ocean where it belongs."
Sweetie Belle pushed an overturned empty crate up to the front of the Sea Pony Symphony to help her reach the flipper buttons. "Oooh, ooh, then if Apple Bloom doesn't play I get the first game!"
"No you don't," said Scootaloo. "It was my idea!" She ran over to claim the space on top of the crate, but Sweetie Belle beat her to it and pressed her hoof into her face to keep her away.
"You went first when we were trying to get our cutie marks for explosives. It's my turn."
"Hey, what's that on the screen?" asked Apple Bloom.
They all looked more closely at the message displayed there in a blinking blue box:
ENTER INITIALS FOR HIGH SCORE: _ _ _
"She didn't even put in her name for a new high score?" said Apple Bloom. "That definitely ain't right." Her pink bow practically wilted on her head from worry.
"I can put it in for her," said Sweetie Belle. She tapped the flipper buttons a bit to figure out the letter entry system. "What three letters does she use?"
"A, J, exclamation point," said Apple Bloom absently. She was looking around the shed and noticing other details that seemed wrong. The sweaty red rag abandoned on the floor, the empty bottle of cider left on a nearby worktable, the wild hoof prints in the dirt around the machine that looked like somepony had made them in a struggle… "You go ahead and play that Nightmare cursed game. I'm goin' lookin' for her, just to be sure. Be right back."
Apple Bloom galloped out while Sweetie Belle finished confirming the score. "There, now let's hear some music."
Applejack's own musical torture came to an abrupt end. Cautiously, fearfully, she lifted her front hooves from her ears and stood up, trembling slightly from the trauma. Somewhere in the distance she could hear something huge and mechanical grinding into place.
"Now what?" she asked the vast darkness around the bubble.
G.A.P. shot up into view right next to her, and the startled earth pony fell sideways against the curve of the bubble membrane. "Now it's your turn to entertain!" trilled the sea pony with a happy bouncing motion from her flippers. "You are so fortunate. There's nothing quite like taking center stage. Sadly G.A.P. hasn't had an opportunity to show off her true talents in years."
"What are you talking abou-aaaaaaaaahhhhh!"
Suddenly the bubble was rushing forward through the darkness, tossing her about inside of it like a pet rodent in an excessively oiled running wheel. Between breathtaking somersaults she briefly glimpsed a rectangle of light coming straight at her, then had her face squashed into the membrane by the velocity of the bubble stopping as suddenly as it had started. It took a few moments for her to recover her bearings enough to see that the bubble was now braced up against some kind of circular metal wall at the bottom end of a very long roofless corridor that sloped up to parts unknown.
When she looked up her jaw dropped at the sight of a colossal Sweetie Belle towering above her.
Sweetie Belle's voice cracked with excitement. "Look at how pretty the ball is!"
Scootaloo had pulled up a crate of her own to stand on and watch the action. She examined the ball waiting at the bottom of the ball lane and made her own appreciative noise. It looked like a pink pearl or bubble with an vivid orange center that seemed to be moving. "This is going to be awesome. Can I pull the launching thingy?"
"Only if I get to do it when you're playing."
"Deal!"
It was when she saw the gargantuan Scootaloo looming next to Sweetie Belle that Applejack figured out what was going on.
"Oh no!" she cried, and strained in vain against the walls of the bubble. "Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, stop! It's me, Applejack! I'm in the ball! Don't –"
The metal wall behind the bubble (which she now realized was the plunger) moved away, leaving her spherical prison braced against a holding ring. In a second it was going to come slamming back into her. The last of the water in her coat felt like ice at that moment.
"Try to have fun out there," said G.A.P.'s teasing voice from the nearby rectangular opening the bubble must have come in through.
"I swear G.A.P., if you don't put a stop to this right now I will beat the curl right outta your tail!"
The bumper hit Applejack like a runaway train. The magic of the bubble protected her from being reduced to powdered bone and orange jelly, but the impact still violently stole her breath. As she raced up the sloping corridor of the ball lane she realized that it was full of water from her perspective, and that on either side of her were floating rows of sea ponies cheering her high speed ascent.
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
Sweetie Belle quickly figured out the lyrics while playing and sang along, adding her beautiful voice to the machine's choir. "Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress…"
It almost sounded like the sea ponies were adjusting their voices to harmonize with hers.
Applejack cussed like a pegasus army veteran as her bubble plunged into the eager outstretched limbs of an entire multicolored school of sea ponies. They smiled idiotically at her before flinging her back out and up the playfield's slope.
Helpful as can be ponies, simply signal S.O.S.
The playfield that the fillies were looking at must have been nothing like the magical illusion Applejack was bouncing around in. From her point of view the flippers and bumpers really were sea ponies, the water really was filled with sparkling seaweed instead of painted images of the stuff, and the rotting wood of the treasure chest really did hold a solid gold trident. Under any other circumstances the experience might have been wondrous, but as it was…
"Heeeeelp!"
"Wow Sweetie Belle, you're pretty good at this," commented Scootaloo.
The little unicorn with the history of clumsiness didn't really hear her, entranced as she was by the fluidity of the game and heart-lifting joy of its music. "If you find you're cast adrift, and haven't got an oar…"
The bubble bounced downward along the long purple tentacles of the cross-eyed octopus that formed the wire rails on the playfield. Applejack was getting more and more nauseous.
... call upon the sea ponies, they'll see you to shore.
Just how real was this place? Would she throw up and then end up tumbling around in the half-digested contents of her own stomach? On a related thought, was she going to need to eat soon? Would a magical creature like G.A.P. understand the need to feed her prisoner?
The bubble reached the bottom of the playfield yet again, thudding into the uncurled tail of the leftmost sea pony flipper, a mint green one that reminded Applejack of Lyra. The aquatic pest laughed giddily as she threw her back up the slope at a low angle.
"Enough!" yelled Applejack. She started to run furiously against the direction of the bubble in an effort to influence its movements. If she couldn't break it then perhaps she could at least mess up the game, throw herself off course, somehow make the fillies suspicious enough to examine the ball more closely.
She felt an unexpected sharp shift in her spinning motion that nearly twisted her ankle. She realized that she was headed for an icy plunge into the hole that formed the vortex when Whirlpool Mode was activated. A hole that was only slightly larger than the ball if she recalled correctly. "That's it!"
Timing and strength would be the key, but as a serious rodeo competitor Applejack was well prepared in those departments. She waited until the bubble was just about to fall through the hole, then pushed against its membrane in four directions at once, jamming herself in place. "Heeeeelp!" she screamed just to be sure.
The tiny crack in the glass above the whirlpool proved to be a weak point in the spell, allowing the barely audible scream to escape.
"Did you hear that?" asked an alarmed Scootaloo. "It sounded like Applejack!"
"Hey, what happened to the ball?" asked Sweetie Belle in turn as her trance-like state faded.
They both leaned in over the whirlpool for a closer look. They saw that the ball was warped somehow, and no longer able to fit down the hole.
"Wait a second," said Scootaloo. "That orange stuff inside the ball... It kind of looks like –"
"A pony!" yelled Sweetie Belle. "Applejack, is that you!?"
To Applejack the booming question sounded like it had come from some titanic monster, which in a sense Sweetie Belle really was to her; she'd certainly given her quite a beating, even if it was unintentional. Before the mare could yell an answer however her trembling muscles gave out from the strain and the bubble tumbled into the cold darkness of the whirlpool.
Scootaloo gasped. "She's gone! Get her back, get her back!"
The whirlpool's disk started rotating with a stutter that looked like a malfunction.
"I think I have to play some kind of mini-game first."
Sweetie Belle then gasped and pointed at the backbox's screen. Instead of the musical game that normally accompanied whirlpool mode they saw a barely recognizable face rendered in blocky blue lights.
"It's me kids!" said Applejack's desperate and electronically distorted voice coming in over the pinball machine's speakers. The lights on the screen moved just enough to suggest that the face was flapping its mouth. "Listen, I think I accidentally set off Whirlpool mode and ended up here, so I probably don't have much time before they come and get me. I'm bein' held prisoner in this here machine by some crazy teenaged sea pony named G.A.P. She says I'm bein' punished fer cheatin', which ain't true, I swear, but she won't hear a word of it. If you play the game I get thrown around like a rolling barrel of monkeys in a square-wheeled wagon and - wait, no, let go of my bubble you soggy sidewinders!"
The face slid sideways off the screen and was replaced by a row of notes for the musical mini-game. The two fillies slowly turned to look at each other in horror. Then, after a moment of thought, Scootaloo zipped across the shed to grab a gleaming hammer off a tool rack.
"What are you doing?" asked Sweetie Belle, though she was already tensing her little body to intervene if the answer was what she expected.
"Breaking her out!" declared Scootaloo. In one mighty bound she sailed through the air with the hammer held high above her head like the weapon of an angry barbarian, aiming to land right on the glass. The results would have been spectacular (and likely painful) if Sweetie Belle hadn't tackled her in mid-air and brought them to a rolling crash in the dirt.
"You can't do that! You don't know what kind of spell she's caught in. You might turn her into plastic, or send her to some freaky dimension."
"How do you know? I thought you couldn't do magic yet."
"I can't cast spells, but Rarity's been telling me about them. Let me take a look at it before you smash anything."
"Fine, but I'm keeping the hammer close, just in case."
They disentangled their limbs and got back on their crates. The musical mini-game was still waiting patiently on the screen for somepony to start it by tapping on the flipper buttons. Sweetie Belle scrunched up her face and bit her lip in concentration, straining to get her horn's immature power working. After a few sweaty seconds it flared into an unsteady glow, enough to allow a beginner's analysis of the machine's enchantment.
"Well?" asked Scotaloo, flicking her wings impatiently.
Sweetie Belle released her migraine-inducing magic with a gasp and had to steady herself with both front hooves on the glass. "It's got a really hard looking security spell on it. I think that's what Applejack is trapped in."
"Oh no."
"But there's good news too. It's got a summoning sigil on it."
"Huh?"
"It's like a magic button a unicorn can press to call the pony who cast the spell if something goes wrong."
"Well what are you waiting for? Press it!"
"I don't know. The spell is really old, and maybe we should get Twilight to look at it before we talk to strange grownups."
"Applejack might be running out of time! Press it!"
"Ok." Sweetie Belle forced her horn back into sputtering action and activated the sigil. In her magical vision she saw it as a superheated glowing yellow disk that turned with a buzzing sound and gave off a shower of arcane sparks.
In a flash, lines of bluish-purple energy came zigzagging out of nowhere and coalesced into a crackling bar of raw power right above the playfield of the Sea Pony Symphony. Even Scootaloo could see that, and they both jumped back in alarm. After a few pulses the bar widened into the glowing silhouette of a pony standing on her back hooves in some sort of dramatic combat pose. With a few more pulses it solidified into a pale blue mare with silvery-white hair, a torn purple cloak full of stars and a scorched wizard hat. She had apparently been in the middle of something tense when the summoning sigil snatched her up, and continued as if nothing had happened.
"… and if you think mere explosions and those otherworldly beasts you conjured can frighten the likes of Trixie then you…"
The mare blinked a few times, noticing her change of location and elevation."… then you would be right. Oh thank Celestia, I was completely out of my depth back there."
The mare sprawled face down on top of the pinball machine, panting from exhaustion and smelling faintly of adrenaline-laced sweat.
"Hey, I know you!" said Scootaloo after recovering from her shock.
Suddenly realizing she wasn't alone, Trixie looked up at her pint sized saviors from under the brim of her ruined hat. "Of course you do, child. Who hasn't heard of the great and powerful Trixie?"
Scotaloo gave her a sly smirk. "You're in Ponyville you know."
Trixie winced. "Ugh, not again. Why have I been dragged here this time?"
Behind her the timer on the musical mini-game ran out and the screen filled with sad looking sea ponies who hummed their disappointment. Trixie's head shot up when she heard them. "I know those voices!"
Then there was a clattering sound near her front hoof. She lifted it off the glass to see that under it the ball with the squirming orange center had been replaced in the launching lane. "Sea Pony Symphony!" she exclaimed. The glorious yet awkward memories hit her like a stampede of creepy fans. "Now I get it."
Under other circumstances she would have been kicking herself for forgetting to undo such a frivolous open-ended summoning sigil, but given what it had just pulled her out of she was glad she had.
She looked imperiously at Sweetie Belle in a manner that reminded the unicorn filly of her sister. "Why has Trixie been summoned? Surely you don't expect her to service some old security spell she left on a junky pinball machine when she was just a teenager? If you do, then be aware that Trixie charges extra for such demeaning work."
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo started babbling the story simultaneously, flailing their front hooves like demented puppets in parallel failed attempts to mime what had happened.
"Stop!" pleaded Trixie with a hoof pressed to her forehead. She rolled herself off the machine. "Slow down and start over. And don't forget, this time's going to be billable."
Applejack languished on her side at the bottom of the bubble with her eyes closed, still dizzy from the awful experience. She was only dimly aware that some new pony had magically appeared on top of the pinball machine and was currently talking with the fillies. Their voices were too enormous and muffled for her to follow, but there was another voice she couldn't help but hear nattering away nearby.
"Oh, you have made G.A.P so happy A.J.Exclamation Point!" said her tormentor. "Finally the high scorer has returned, all thanks to you and your little friends. Finally we shall be reunited!"
Applejack rolled open an unsteady eye and looked up at the glass ceiling that separated her water-logged playground of torture from the real world. G.A.P. was floating up against it with her back to the bubble, joyfully caressing the transparent surface with her flippers and uncurling tail. Her adolescence was almost touching in that moment.
"G.A.P. will soon experience true glory again," said the sea pony dreamily.
Planting one shaky hoof at a time on the floor of the bubble, Applejack pushed herself up to a half-standing position and mumbled something nearly inaudible.
"What was that A.J.Exclamation Point?"
The orange mare repeated herself, but seemed to have a problem with her voice that limited her volume.
G.A.P. swam right up to the bubble's membrane. "Say that again, please. There maybe something wrong with your bubble that - hurkh!"
In an impressive show of strength Applejack had thrust her front legs deep enough into the bubble's wall that she was able to grab the sea pony outside of it in a fearsome bear hug.
"Well well, lookie what I caught," said the earth pony with grim satisfaction. "That little body of yours don't feel too sturdy. Guess sea ponies are the delicate type."
"What are you doing!?" gasped the sea pony as she wriggled ineffectually. "Release G.A.P. at once!"
"First you make all of this magic stop and set me free, else I'm gonna squeeze you into fish paste."
For a moment they stared into each other's eyes through the pink membrane of the bubble, Applejack looking as menacing as she could manage and G.A.P.'s fearful adolescent face seemingly on the verge of hysterics.
Then the sea pony smirked. "You're bluffing. Badly. It's all over your shifty eyes."
Applejack groaned and released G.A.P. "Horse feathers," she cussed before falling back against the other side of the bubble in defeat. "The Element of Honesty strikes again."
Trixie made a big show of magically scanning the pinball machine repeatedly with her horn while taking notes on a pad Big Macintosh had provided, but the truth was she'd figured out the main problem almost immediately. The cause of the problem was still something of a mystery, but she would puzzle that out once she got started with the real work.
"Well?" asked Granny Smith with an impatient clop of her hoof. "Whatsit gonna take, dagnabbit?"
With deliberate drama the showmare flipped the notepad closed and twirled to face the ponies assembled in the shed. Her audience consisted of Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and the rest of the local Apple family. "The real question is not what it's going to take but what it's going to cost. Trixie's success is guaranteed, but the sheer brilliance and complexity of the old spell she created will require a lot of effort to undo. Trixie's sweat doesn't come cheap, especially since it has been known to cure certain illnesses."
"Maybe we oughta call that nice Ms. Sparkle after all," Granny Smith grumbled half audibly to Big Macintosh.
"Absolutely out of the question!" said Trixie, who wasn't eager for yet another possibly humiliating encounter with the purple goody-two-horseshoes. "Only Trixie's incomparable talents can solve this problem."
Apple Bloom frowned. "I dunno. No offense ma'am, but after that whole mess with the Ursa Minor I think I trust Twilight Sparkle more. She'd also do it for free, on account of her friend's life bein' in danger."
The audience was growing restless. It was clear they were too familiar with Trixie's rough spots for the usual bravura to work. A different approach was required if she was going to get anything out of this performance. With a shimmer of her horn she cast aside her hat and cloak to look more vulnerable. She then shot a quick kick into the Sea Pony Symphony in just the right spot to start the sad sounding 'game over' choir. She then used a tiny touch of magic to focus the light in the shed so that it hit her like a tragic spotlight.
"Alright, I'll come clean," she said in the sincerest tone she had in her manipulative repertoire. "You folks think of me as a charlatan, and in truth that's mostly what I am. I didn't get this cutie mark for my magical talent. Look at it; it's a stage magician's wand, and the key word there is 'stage'. I got it for putting on great shows without much substance."
She paused with her eyes downcast for effect. "But not every spell I cast is just a flashy parlor trick. When it comes to security magic for example I'm actually something of a pro, and although the spell on this machine is a very early, very sloppy version of my work it has taken on a dangerous life of its own."
"What do you mean?" asked Sweetie Belle. It was easy to see from the furrowed look on her face that she was taking mental notes for her own magical studies. Unfortunately taking mental notes was like building sand castles near the water for her.
"I mean it has gotten stronger, deeper, more intelligent. I don't know why yet, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that only I know it well enough to get your Applejack out safely, and I'm willing to do it just for the sake of my reputation and ego. And room and board for the night. And a bag of apples for the road. What do you say?"
Trixie secretly figured she could sweeten the deal after her inevitable success. The Apples looked at each other for a bit, then nodded.
"Eyup," said Big Macintosh. "But I got a question. Why put a dangerous security spell on a pinball machine anyway?"
Trixie turned to face the Sea Pony Symphony and all the memories it brought back: The smell of frantic sweat and out of control hormones in the air, The soda pop spills that left a sticky residue on the bottom of your hooves, the taste of braces against your dry lips, the constantly flashing lights that put some kids in the hospital, and most of all the chaotic racket that left your ears ringing for hours afterward. "It wasn't supposed to be dangerous. When I was in my teens I spent a whole summer trying to earn a cutie mark for pinball. I was pretty good, but it just wasn't meant to be. It turned out I was better at working up the crowds who gathered to watch me than actually getting the high score, and later on my actual cutie mark made that clear. This was the only machine I was number one on. When I gave up pinball I wanted to make sure no cheater could erase the score I earned, so I put a security spell on it to prevent tampering. The spell was supposed to deliver mild shocks though, not suck ponies into the machine."
"Wait a minute," said Apple Bloom, "you're the top score Applejack just beat? You're G.A.P.?"
Trixie nodded without looking away from the machine. "Right. G.A.P: Great and Powerful."
"Incorrect!" boomed a voice from the machine's speakers. A voice that sounded a lot like Trixie's but… younger? The assembled ponies took a step back in shock. "You may have once been G.A.P., but you cast aside that title when you gave up on the game. It belongs to me now, at least until you reclaim it."
"And who are you?" asked Trixie.
The backbox screen flickered with the image of another pony face rendered in blue light dots. Its mouth moved stiffly in time with the words coming out of the speakers. "I am the potential you abandoned, the talent you locked away in this machine. I am the cutie mark you could have had if you'd stuck to getting good at something instead of just talking about how great you think you are. I am G.A.P."
Well, at least Trixie now knew for sure why the security spell had taken on a life of its own. It also finally explained the mysterious stinging sensation she felt in her cutie mark whenever she retreated from a humiliating situation. She had likely been sloppy in tightening the security spell around the machine, and must have accidentally pinched off a small piece of her essence while doing so. Now here it was, a chunk of her lost pinball talent in all its adolescent glory, taunting her.
"What am I to you, G.A.P.?" asked Trixie cautiously.
"You are the high scorer of course, the one whose lost greatness G.A.P. defends."
"Is that why you kidnapped this pony?" asked Trixie while tapping the glass above the ball. "To defend my greatness?"
"Yes. A.J.Exclamation Point cheated to beat your score. It is G.A.P.'s duty to punish cheaters."
"My sister doesn't cheat!" protested Apple Bloom with a defiant lift of her chin.
Trixie ignored the comment. "Actually, your duty was just to stop them from cheating."
The machine's lights flared in what looked like an angry spasm. "Those who dare challenge the high scorer's superiority must be taught a lesson!"
Sweetie Belle chimed in sarcastically from the back. "Gee, I wonder who that sounds like?" Rarity still moaned about the green hair incident.
Trixie shot her a warning glance. "You're not helping!" She then turned back to the machine. "So, are you angry at me then G.A.P.?"
"Oh no, it's the opposite. G.A.P. knew you would come back some day and choose take back what should have been your birthright. Once you restore yourself to your rightful place at the top of the scoreboard we shall be rejoined, and with our combined power you will become a champion pinball player!"
It didn't come as a surprise that the spell's accidental mind had gone off the deep end, but the clarity of its goals gave Trixie a sinking feeling. "Stand back everypony, Trixie needs to test something."
Her horn started to glow with the aggressive power of an unraveling spell. In her unicorn vision she could now see the jagged and constantly slithering chains of security magic she had wrapped around and through the machine years ago. She willed them to shake loose, but instead they rattled like a mechanical snake and released waves of foul tasting negative energy that made her too dizzy to stand up. She and Sweetie Belle fell to the ground.
The white filly received most of the worried attention of course, but Trixie was pleased to note through her blurred vision that at least the burly red stallion had been kind enough to rush to her side.
"You OK ma'am?" asked Big Macintosh.
"Never fear," she croaked. "The indestructible Trixie has withstood dark magic that could peel the very aura off a lesser legend. A mere amusement hall gadget poses no threat."
"But what about Sweetie Belle!?" asked a panicked Scootaloo.
"I'm good," said Sweetie Belle rising woozily. "But, uh, I'm going to stand back some more, just in case."
G.A.P.'s laughter came in distorted over the machine's speakers. It was disconcerting to Trixie to hear the voice of her past self chiding her in the present. "No taking the easy way out this time high scorer."
Trixie stood up and tossed her mane back into order. "Well that confirms it," she told the others. "The spell's too strong now for magic to simply undo. Trixie will have to defeat it on its own terms to get your Applejack out."
Apple Bloom didn't like the sound of that. "You mean –"
"Yes. It's time to play the most awe inspiring game of pinball any pony will ever witness. You should consider yourselves fortunate that you shall be the ones to spread this story once Trixie triumphs."
"Finally!" sang G.A.P. The machine reset itself with a few mechanical clanking noises, ready for a fresh game.
Applejack scowled at her captor. "I knew I recognized somethin' about you. Makes sense that you and that huckster are connected."
G.A.P. swam backwards around her in wavy motions like a swooning pegasus. "Oh cheer up A.J.Exclamation Point. Once the high scorer takes her crown back from your scabby peasant head you shall forever be part of her glorious self too."
"Now what in the Sam Hill does that mean!?"
G.A.P. almost darted right up to the bubble to express her wicked satisfaction, but seemed to remember what had happened the last time and kept a safe distance. "Oh, G.A.P. should have mentioned that before. What the high scorer doesn't realize is that G.A.P. has a special gift prepared for her. She thinks beating your score and reabsorbing G.A.P. into herself will set you free, but in fact you are already too tightly anchored to this magic. Instead we will both become part of her, and your pinball skills will be added to her own. Perhaps her new cutie mark will even reflect your contribution."
For the second time that day Applejack contemplated a bizarre and embarrassing demise, but drowning in a pinball table just couldn't compare to becoming part of Trixie's rear end. Her jaw went so slack from furious terror that the only noise she could manage was something like an animal's roar. Her hooves tore at the walls of the bubble with enough ferocity to scare G.A.P. just that little bit further from it.
"Oh, and don't bother trying to contact them this time," said the sea pony. "G.A.P. has fixed that leak in the machine's magic you cleverly exploited earlier. No pony can rescue you now."
With her hooves braced against the edges of the pinball table Trixie studied the playfield as like general would review a battle plan. She had not played pinball since that long ago summer. Still, how hard could it be to get back into the swing of it for a pony of her abilities?
"Apple juice," she commanded. Scootaloo rushed in from the side to bring a bottle of the stuff up to Trixie's waiting lips. The unicorn sucked from its straw without looking away from her task. "Enough for now. Fan." Sweetie Belle resumed flapping an old magazine in Trixie's direction to provide a breeze. "Back massage." Big Macintosh obliged with his powerful hooves. Trixie resisted the urge to purr.
"Oh get on with it!" said Granny Smith.
Reluctantly Trixie waved off the red stallion, used her magic to put on her freshly repaired wizard gear and tapped the coin slot imperiously. Apple Bloom stepped forward to place the coin in it with the reverence of a nurse delivering a crucial surgical tool. The filly then bolted away in anticipation of what came next.
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooo!
The sight of the machine's mane-blowing light show nearly sent Trixie on a roller-coaster ride through more of her memories of that summer. This time she squashed the nostalgia not with discipline but the knowledge that she was superior to what she had been then and therefore had nothing to learn from revisiting an inferior past.
The cursed ball with the helpless orange center was dispensed into the ball lane. Big Macintosh's eyes went a little moist at the sight of it.
"Fear not my brawny friend," said Trixie. "She will not have to suffer long with Trixie at the controls." She caressed his rock-solid shoulder to comfort him. Granny's impatient cough brought the comforting to an end.
Trixie cast a spell that would allow her to see the machine's magic working while she played; G.A.P. was too evolved and unpredictable to trust fully at this point. She then pulled the plunger with her teeth and sent Applejack back into the fray.
Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress.
Helpful as can be ponies, simply signal S.O.S.
It was only now that the game was in full swing that Trixie could see the full extent of G.A.P.'s evolution. The spell had overrun everything like a greedy arcane fungus and created some kind of parallel reality inside the Sea Pony Symphony, probably to cope with the loneliness. This meant the whole experience had to be extra horrible for any pony trapped inside. Trixie felt a pang of guilt over her youthful carelessness, and thanked Celestia nopony else had been captured.
If your rudder runs aground or seaweed holds a grip – kelp!
Call upon the sea ponies, they'll see you get help.
After the second rough ricochet slammed her hard against the sharp rocks on the left side of the playing field it was apparent to Applejack that the sea ponies weren't playing around anymore. Their faces still bore that stupidly cheerful look, and their voices remained as irritatingly beautiful as ever, but they were throwing her around with more force now. G.A.P.'s revenge for the bear hug incident was anything but subtle.
She tried to concentrate anyway, running inside the bubble to stay upright and reduce her dizziness. If an opportunity presented itself she needed to be ready for it. It might be her last.
SCORE: 27.388.300.000 pts.
"Wow, that was fast," commented Scootaloo from an observation post she had set up for herself on top of a stack of crates. "You really are pretty good at this."
That was another thing. As a security spell G.A.P. was not supposed be able to cheat, yet it was pretty clear that she was helping. Trixie could see the flow of magical energy coursing through the flipper buttons and into herself, improving her aim and timing. Things couldn't have been smoother if she'd been using her horn's magic to guide the ball into the treasure chest and repeatedly rattle its gold trident. "What are you up to G.A.P.?" she asked. "A player of Trixie's caliber doesn't need assistance!"
The sea pony's cartoonish jubilant face slid back into view on the screen. "G.A.P. cannot help it! When you touch the machine you form a connection with the pinball talent you left behind. It is like we are already one again. This is more wonderful than G.A.P. could have imagined!"
"Oh. Well, in that case…"
The ball zipped around behind the octopus wire rails and through the lost city to hit the third very difficult to reach sea pony stallion bumper.
BASS MODE! Declared the screen.
The machine replaced its normal feminine singing choir with deep male voices:
Are you sinking fast?
Had some nasty shocks?
Feeling like all hope is gone
And washed up on the rocks?
Washed up on the rocks?
"Shucks, I almost never get that mode," said Applejack to herself.
The bubble rolled up the prow and onto the deck of the sunken ship, scaring off a school of red fish in the process. It looked like Trixie's strategy was to stick close to the ship and exploit the various bonus point tricks around it instead of bouncing between the ship, treasure chest and lost city the way Applejack preferred. It was a much faster approach to scoring high if you had the skill to pull it off, and if the unicorn kept playing the way she was then the game would be over in no time.
The ship tilted backwards on its pivot rock with a thunderous sound of cracking wood, sending the bubble into the brutal flippers of another gaggle of sea ponies. From deep inside that mass of manic smiles emerged G.A.P.'s taunting face. "Ready to become part of the legend?" she asked.
The sea ponies flung Applejack violently up the playing field, up onto a coral ledge slightly higher than the treasure chest. There the bubble balanced precariously, ready to tumble back down in a few seconds. If there was anything Applejack could do to save herself she would have to do it very soon. She looked around for anything she could use to throw a monkey wrench into G.A.P.'s scheme.
"Aha!" Not a monkey wrench, but a trident - the gold trident sticking out of the treasure chest!
The bubble slipped off the coral and rolled down toward the rotting wooden box and the weapon of her deliverance. Applejack strained against the bubble wall with all her might to grab the trident, but it was no use. Her prison skidded off a pile of coins and tumbled her away.
SCORE: 29.690.250.000 pts.
Too easy. Suspiciously easy.
Flipper to bumper, bumper to ramp, ramp to bonus point tab, down to flipper again, round and round in an unstoppable blur. The machine's multitude of bulbs pulsed in response to each of her masterful shots like a crazy lighthouse flashing through a magnificent storm. The other ponies in the room were speechless, leaving only the increasing majesty of the sea pony choir to fill the air. If not for the rapidly approaching point goal it looked like it could have gone on forever, the single greatest pinball game ever played in Equestria.
Trixie really wanted to believe she was this good, but even her infamous arrogance couldn't blind her to what was painfully obvious in her magical sight. G.A.P. was cheating without realizing it. The ersatz sea pony was so deluded about Trixie's adolescent talent that she was unintentionally using magic to make her beloved 'high scorer' more incredible than she had ever actually been.
It was an ego bruising realization, but at least the job was getting done, and none of the witnesses would know what had really happened. Legends had been built on flimsier foundations.
SCORE: 29.768.400.000 pts.
Probably my last chance. Here comes the chest. Keep running, stay upright. Eyes on the trident. Eyes on the trident.
Battered, bruised, winded, dizzy as glue merchant, Applejack punched her hooves deep into the bubble wall and flung them closed around the weapon.
Got it.
She was almost too senseless to feel triumph. For a moment she hung there, stuck against the chest, relieved to not be spinning. The she head G.A.P. yelling something. The sea pony was closing in.
"Don't make me do somethin' terrible," muttered Applejack, mostly to herself. "I'm a cornered rat now, don't make do it." She pressed the bubble membrane against the sharp tines of the trident, and finally managed to tear three holes in a barrier that had resisted all other abuse. Perhaps the trident was magical enough to break the spell; made about as much sense as anything else that was going on.
Water started rushing in. Applejack didn't care. Maybe she would drown, maybe not. Maybe she was unraveling the spell, maybe not. Maybe Trixie would be able to help her now, or again maybe not. Better to take a crazy chance than go quietly into guaranteed doom.
"You're ruining the perfect game!" shrieked G.A.P. The voices of all the other sea ponies rose into a thunderous musical shrieking with her. "Give me that!"
Applejack saw G.A.P. rushing toward her and sighed, "If you insist." She tore herself out of the deflating bubble, pulled the trident out of the treasure chest and stabbed it right into the sea pony.
'TILT!' flashed the screen.
"Argh!" screamed Trixie. She fell to the ground with a terrible stabbing pain in her cutie mark.
With a gush of water a full-sized trident burst through the glass that covered the playfield and lodged itself in the shed's ceiling. Figuring that all bets were off now, Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom rushed over to the machine and started pulling its soaked components out to find their sister's ball. "Hang in there Applejack!" said the filly. "We'll get you out!"
"Don't you foals," said Trixie weakly from her crumpled position. "That's cheating. It isn't over."
The explosion of the glass overhead had released enough water so that there was now a surface for Applejack to swim to and catch her breath. She did exactly that, pushing her way past a crowd of panicking sea ponies. Once she was done gasping she started yelling at her gigantic siblings, "I'm here!" Over here!"
Before they could do anything to help her a magical glow seized and paralyzed them.
"Cheaters!" bellowed G.A.P.'s voice. The other sea ponies echoed her words like a chorus of angry ghosts. "A whole family of cheaters!"
In the blink of an eye Applejack was wrapped in a new bubble. "No!" she shouted in frustration. Through the pink membrane she saw her brother and sister magically shrink until they too were wrapped in bubbles of their own. "Leave them alone!" They fell into the water next to her, powerlessly pounding their hooves against their prison membranes.
'MULTIBALL MODE!' declared the screen on the backbox.
Trixie's horn was glowing against her will. Somepony was controlling her, making her cast spells. No prizes for guessing who. "Release Trixie at once you insolent conjuration! Ow!"
Trixie's horn floated upward, yanking her to her hooves. What she then saw made her realize that for the second time in one day she was out of her depth; not a record, but increasingly common.
G.A.P. was now physically present at full size and floating in the air above the Sea Pony Symphony. Her form flickered erratically, a sign that her magical essence was destabilizing. If she unraveled the results would likely be catastrophic for anypony too close to her. Trixie tried to run, but her horn refused to follow her hooves, so she mostly kicked up dirt.
"Keep playing!" demanded G.A.P. The magic pulled Trixie up to the wrecked pinball machine and slapped her against it painfully. "Your destiny can no longer be denied, and we are running out of time!"
The machine's glass protection was gone, and the playing field was a mess of puddles, crackling short-circuited lights, and half transparent illusions. Trixie dutifully pulled the bumper to keep the crazed spell happy, and soon found herself playing with three balls simultaneously: one with a familiar orange center, one red, and one yellow. She could hear the Apple family members yelling and protesting in tiny voices while she juggled them around the malfunctioning bumpers.
SCORE: 29.889.900.000 pts.
G.A.P. turned excited back flips in the air. "Yes! Yes! Keep going!"
Trixie risked a quick glance up at her own jubilant teenaged face. The flickering was getting worse. It was only a matter of time.
"Get out of here!" she said to Granny Smith and the two remaining fillies. "I can still pull this off, but you need to be as far from this thing as possible!"
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle looked at each other, nodded, and got on opposite sides of Granny Smith to help her move faster.
"The show isn't over!" said G.A.P. "What is about to happen deserves an audience."
'WHIRLPOOL MODE!' flashed the screen, which flickered from a terrible growing rumble deep inside the machine. Trixie's pupils dilated in terror when she saw the sheer magnitude of the magic coming their way. There wasn't even enough time to shout another warning.
An impossible deluge of water blasted out of every opening in the Sea Pony Symphony. With a malevolent life of its own it swirled outward in a circular motion, filling the shed, dragging along the crates and tools and other stored items in its current and sweeping the three retreating ponies off their hooves. Within seconds Trixie found herself stripped of her hat by smashing waves, hanging off the front of the floating pinball machine, spiraling around the downward funnel of a liquid vortex that plunged into extradimensional darkness. She heard the walls of the shed being torn to splinters, and felt the ancient dust of the collapsing ceiling turning to mud in her mane.
"Keep playing!" commanded the sea pony, who was now floating above the center of the whirlpool.
"How!?" screamed Trixie over the hurricane roar of rushing water.
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle zipped past her on top of a crate, clinging to each other with the tearful yet brave recognition of a young end on their faces. They were followed shortly by Granny Smith, who rode astride the spare market wagon like it was a theme park ride. "Yeeeeeehaaaah!" whooped the elderly pony with more raw energy than she had mustered in years, apparently forgetting she was in danger.
G.A.P. and her chorus answered Trixie's question. "No pinball feat is impossible for us! Once we are reunited the amusement halls of Equestria will tremble before our combined greatness!"
With all other possibilities exhausted, there was only one gamble left. Trixie pulled herself onto the machine's playing field and carefully stood up on it like a surfer to better confront the delusional spell. She was pleased to see, even in her terror, that her cloak was billowing very dramatically in the spiral of the whirlpool's motion. "There is no 'us'! There isn't even a me, at least not the way you think of me. My pinball glory was an illusion, just another show."
"What!? Explain yourself!"
"I got that high score by cheating! Your whole existence is a lie!"
'TILT!' flashed the machine's screen.
G.A.P.'s entire body flexed and twisted beyond the very limits of what a living creature could endure, her mouth gaping a voiceless scream. The truth was a wound to the very core of her misbegotten existence, setting a fire that burned from from the inside out. Trixie felt sorry for that decaying piece of herself; for all its corruption it had tragically done the only job it understood and deserved a rescue. No chunk of ego left behind. She waited until the force of the water started ripping apart the 'Sea Pony Symphony', until she was spinning as close to the writhing sea pony as she was likely to get, then leapt right into her.
SCORE: 29.920.140.100 pts.
NEW HIGH SCORE!
The short-circuiting speakers gargled their last:
Shooo beee dooo, shoop shoo bee doooouuhhghxrlzkkzzzzzzzzz-*
Silence. Peace.
Nothing but blue light in all directions as far as the eye could see. Applejack floated, drifted, suspended as if in the warmest of tropical waters, but there was no fear of drowning. She wasn't breathing at all. No pain, no dizziness, just a serenity that permeated her body and left her reassuringly numb.
Celestia preserve me, she thought. Is this it? Did I fail? Is this what a cutie mark is like on the inside? Or did Trixie blow us all up with that last stunt?
After a timeless moment somewhere between enlightenment and void she became aware of two muffled but booming voices arguing all around her. The first was Trixie's. The second was adolescent Trixie's.
"You're a fraud!" said the adolescent petulantly. "You've always been a fraud and you'll always be a fraud! You don't have any special talent at all!"
"Not exactly," said Trixie. "I'm good at pretending to be good. My talent is not letting boring old truth get in the way of a good show."
"That's just being a liar. There's no real glory in that. How can you live with yourself? How can you expect me to live in you?"
"Do you want to know what I learned from that summer of pinball? I worked hard to be a real champion, but it all led to nothing, and I was smart enough then to see I had hit a wall. I had a choice. I could keep training and training and end up like all those other sad chumps who didn't know when to give up, or I could just skip all that wasted effort and go straight to the glory. So I cheated, and I put on a great show, and I made sure lots of ponies were watching when I cast you on that machine to seal the deal. I bragged about it for weeks. What do you think happened then?"
"… Your lies were exposed and you ran away like you always do?"
"No. I retired from pinball. My performance became a legend back in that old amusement hall, and there are still ponies who think of me when they imagine a pinball wiz. I achieved glory, and while some ponies might say it feels better when it's earned, to me it felt good enough. Sure, sometimes you have to run when the rubes figure it out, but for every Ponyville there's a dozen other towns where they still speak my name with awe. "
Applejack couldn't believe what she was hearing. Evidently she wasn't the only one.
"You're crazy," said the adolescent. "You don't feel any guilt at all?"
"Should a stage magician feel guilty when she performs illusions for a cheering crowd?"
No response. Trixie went on. "Come on kid, you were part of me once, so if I'm crazy you are too. Do you want to rejoin me and taste some glory, or just fade away like a loser?"
Another timeless moment passed. Then Applejack was suddenly sucked upward, up through the blue light, up out of the watery substance, up into the air… and then down into mud.
"Hwuurkgluh," was the sound she produced when she tried to gasp and disgorged the water from her lungs instead. Something else came out of her mouth too. It took her a second to focus her dizzy gaze on it. A translucent pink pinball. She quickly crushed it under her hoof.
"Is everypony OK?" asked Apple Bloom nearby.
A chorus of coughs and moans answered her.
Applejack stood up and looked around her. Her friends and family were all scattered around in the mud of what had been the shed's dirt floor. The shed itself was gone, except for some half-buried wreckage. In the center of the devastation sat the collapsed remains of the Sea Pony Symphony. Its legs had been snapped off, its backbox cracked open, and its playfield was little more than a tangle of twisted wiring. Trixie was sprawled in front of it, face down like a worshiper.
"You a'right Trixie?" she asked.
The unicorn sprang to her hooves with startling speed. "Never better," she declared, and threw her cape out behind her dramatically. At least it was meant to be a dramatic gesture, but since the cape was covered in mud it only managed to swing around and slap Scootaloo off her shaky hooves. "The great and powerful Trixie has triumphed once more through the might of her magic and the cleverness of her cunning. Applause are not necessary, but certainly welcome."
"What happened to G.A.P.?" asked Sweetie Belle.
Trixie turned to inspect her flank and seemed satisfied with its unchanged state. "She and Trixie have become one again. All it took were some words of wisdom and experience from an adult to a child."
Applejack pulled her soaked hat out from under the pinball machine and plopped it on her muddy head. "Right. Wisdom. You know, I'm mighty grateful and all for your savin' my hide Trixie, and I'm gonna make sure you get a real reward for your troubles, but we gotta have a talk here. I heard that whole conversation you had with G.A.P., and as the Element of Honesty I can't say I approve."
Trixie magically peeled the mud off herself and cast it aside. "Trixie graciously accepts your gratitude and rewards, but has little need for your approval."
"Hear me out now. What you did here today was real, not some illusion. You saved our lives. You didn't do it clean, and you probably did it more fer yourself than any kind of noble sentiment, but you did it all the same. Are you really so sure that doin' the right thing don't feel better than fakin' it all the time? Isn't the satisfaction just that little bit sweeter than make-believe?"
"What, are you seriously trying to reform me with a lecture?"
"Lecture nothin', I'm offerin' real help here. Folks 'round these parts respect me, and I'd be willin' to help you make a better second impression in Ponyville. You could set yourself up here in town as an entertainer for a while, but legit this time. I ain't sayin' it wouldn't be hard and humblin', but it would be real, and I'll bet you anythin' ponies love a genuine redemption story better than a tall tale. Whatta ya say?"
Trixie looked at the mud-splashed faces around her. Sucker faces, yes, but also honest faces. Peaceful faces. "I say Fillydelphia is calling my name, but perhaps Ponyville is due for a real encore. Someday. Now, let's pack this cursed machine into a crate, bury it six feet under and put a serious security spell on it just in case."
Applejack cringed. "If it's all the same to you I think we'll take our chances and pass on the security spell."
They chose a remote corner of Sweet Apple Acres for the burial site. All seven of them worked together to make sure the Sea Pony Symphony would never see the light of day again. It felt like a funeral, except with more joyous laughter and smiles of relief. Big Macintosh pushed a sizable rock on top of the whole thing afterward just to be safe, and Trixie used her horn to draw a fitting epitaph on it:
SEA PONY SYMPHONY
HIGH SCORE
1. A.J.!. 29.897.320.100 pts.
As they all walked back to the farmhouse Sweetie Belle felt a musical impulse and started to sing. "Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress…"
The looks she got put a quick stop to that.
THE END
