Contraptionology!

by Skywriter

Rating: teen
Tags: Main 6, Original Character, Comedy, Adventure, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 121680

When life gives you lemons, make robot monsters.

In the wake of the events of "Infernal Machines" and the Nightmare's most pathetic assault on Ponyville yet, Applejack is thrown into an existential crisis, despite her not knowing what the word "existential" means. So when a stranger named Stranger arrives in town, teaching a new way of coupling talent to power using complex machinery, she is quickly suckered in, along with everypony else. Now, it falls to the Most Dependable of Ponies to bring the resulting ruckus down to earth, but can even Applejack's legendary pragmatism stand up to the brain-fizzing horror that is... CONTRAPTIONOLOGY?

Now with a Spanish translation by Spaniard Kiwi!

Published 2012-03-09 23:24:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-07-17 02:15:23 UTC

02 - Wheels and Fire

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Two: Wheels and Fire

If there's one thing that going on just a little sleep does to a pony, it's make her right distractible. I mean, here with all this forest fire and Nighmare hoo-ha I was about to let Twilight head out on her dang-fool nopony-understands-why mission to Maresachusetts without even taking even one minute to have her cast that fancy-pants cloud-walking spell on me! A pony can just imagine how well that woulda gone come the day after tomorrow.

Yep, I thought to myself, trotting through Ponyville on my way over to the library, that would have been right impressive to them Cloudsdale weatherponies. Good morning, y'all, I just want to tell you how plumb grateful I am for this great big welcome y'all prepared for me, let me just step down outta this here balloon, and oops, golly, looks like I just went right through your main street and am now tumbling head-over-hooves all set to fall about a mile and then splat like a tomato soon as I get that far, would anypony kindly mind chucking some of those delightful-looking snacks down after my plummeting soon-to-be-cadaver so I can nibble a little while I wait to kiss ground, thank you kindly, commander. Praise to the Grower, though, I had remembered in time, and we were back looking like things were gonna be all nice and normal for a while.

Then I got to the library and there was Pinkie Pie outside, and of course that blew it all to Tartarus.

"Pinkie Pie," I said, "what in the name of oats and apples are you doing?"

"I am talking," she said, her eyes fixed on the little beehive hanging from the branches of the library tree, "to the bees!"

"Well, sure," I said. "Of course. You mind telling me why you're jumping and leaping about like a titched fruit bat at the same time?"

Because she was, hear? Even if you're in a charitable mood, it's hard to describe Pinkie's typical way of carrying herself without dropping into words like "frantic" or "rabid" or "right square in the middle of an attack of some sort". But this beat all – crazy girl looked like she was practicing for the All-Equestria Act-Like-A-Dang-Freak-off and stood a good chance of capturing top honors, all spinning in circles and jumping into the air and wiggling her cutie-marked haunches around like she was doing.

"Aw, who's a silly pony?" said Pinkie, grinning at me, her wiggling not slowing down even a bit. "You should know this stuff! You're an earth-triber, just like me!"

"Not hardly like you," I said, ducking a particularly wild haunch-swing. "Not hardly in the slightest."

"You're right," said Pinkie, thoughtfully. "You tan easier. Still! The point is that bees… communicate… by…" Pinke dropped down on her hind-knees. "…dancing!"

She threw her forehooves wide. "Jazz-hooves!" she added. "C'mon, everybee! Shake those abdomen thangs!"

"'Every… bee'?" I asked, frowning.

"Sure. I just took the normal word 'everypony' and substituted 'bee' for 'pony'!"

"That just sounds silly," I said. "And besides, last I heard, you was supposed to be helping Twilight get ready for a trip or something, and this ain't looking like something Twilight told you to do."

"Pinkie!" came Twilight's voice from inside. "Have you finished dancing at the bees like I told you to do? We're on a tight schedule here!"

"In a minute!" yelled Pinkie back, all sing-song. She blinked sweetly at me, then returned her attention to the beehive. "Okay," she muttered. "Gotta get the inflection on this last wiggle right, or else they'll misunderstand." She frowned, tapping a hoof. "Hmm… 'left left right'? Or 'left right right'?"

"What's the difference?"

"One way is 'pretty please with sugar and cherries on top make more wax to replace the candles we're packing for our trip' and the other way is 'please sting the holy BEJEEZUS out of the first pony you see wearing a hat'."

I took my hat off.

Pinkie made up her mind, such as it is, and went with it. "Left left right!" she said, throwing her hips around one last time. After an expectant pause, she turned back to me. "Okay, that was the candle wax one after all. You can put your hat back on now!"

"I didn't know you spoke bee," I said, squaring Old Reliable back on my head.

"Oh, sure," she said. "Me and bees bonded once over our mutual love of honey. That was back at university."

"Back at… what?" I said.

Pinkie looked left. She looked right. "Um," she said. "Did I say 'university'? I meant 'Universe of Bees'!" She laughed. "It was this traveling bee exhibit that I saw back when I was in college—SHOOT!" She crammed her forehooves into her mouth.

"Pinkie," I said, "are you trying to keep from telling me something?"

"Yes!" she wailed, sobbing and pounding her hooves in the dirt. Then she immediately brightened. "Phew, I feel better for having confessed that," she said, trotting into the library. "Okay, let's go inside and see Twilight!"

"Yes, let's," I said. I don't fancy myself the type of pony to fall victim to brain-humors, but if you ever catch me locked in a padded room up at the loony ward of Ponyville Hospital, chances are it'd've come about after an afternoon with Pinkie Pie. Pinkie, a college student? Really?

I guess I've heard stranger things, I thought, shrugging. Anyway.

Twilight, never much saner of a pony to begin with, had dropped into full mane-frazzled glory with the stress of packing for a road trip with Pinkie Pie. Right away upon entering the library I nearly got my head taken clean off by a flying steamer trunk, just one of about a thousand different things floating around in the pink-purple glow of Twilight's magic telekiwhozit, along with books and charts and spare coats and about eight different kinds of scientific froo-froo. The whole first floor of the library had been strung over with circles and lines of sticky colored tape, forming some kind of strange organizational pattern of the sort that only makes sense to wizards and fever victims, and everything up to and including the kitchen sink was being shifted around from place to place in the diagram as Twilight's organizational bender went on. Trip-trapping lightly through the mess like a water-strider on our old pond, Pinkie crossed the room without so much as striking a hoof on a thing and headed into the library's tiny (and now sink-less) kitchen, as Twilight acknowledged me.

"Ah, Applejack!" she said, looking up from a book that was hovering in front of her snout. "I was just researching my copy of Watercrossing's Excursion Charms!" She shut it and tossed it onto the table in front of her. "What can I help you with?"

"Well, see," I said. "I don't know if you remember this, Twi, but I got me a speech to deliver in Cloudsdale day after tomorrow, and it just ain't gonna be possible unless you hex up my hooves afore you leave."

"Of course I remember!" Twilight shouted, producing a scroll of paper from across the room, her eyes big and gleamy. "It's right here on Final Preparations 4, item 3(b)!"

"Well, good," I said, edging back towards the door. "Just making sure. I can head on back now that I know it's on your list. You look as though you're a touch busy."

"Don't be ridiculous!" cried Twilight, grabbing my neck in a claw of magic and dragging me across the floor to her. "FP4:3(b) is one of those rare and beautiful to-do list items that has no real prerequisites and no subsequent depending tasks! It sits there, gleaming, like a beautiful soap bubble, just aching for me to pop it! And if I don't have to find you first, that's fifteen minutes back into the wild-card time kitty!" Twilight grinned at me in a frankly kind of unsettling way. "So what do you say, A.J.? Wanna pop this bubble with me?"

"Uh, sure," I said.

"Great!" Twilight cried, all but leaping down my throat. "I just need to find my copy of Watercrossing's Excursion Charms!" She craned her head up toward the stairs. "SPIKE!" she yelled.

A couple seconds later, Spike appeared at the upstairs door, his little arms full of packages and a mop curled in the tip of his tail. The baby dragon's eyes were half-lidded from tuckeredness. "Spike," said Twilight, "find me my copy of Watercrossing's Excursion Charms, please."

Without saying a word, Spike trudged down the steps, walked over to Twilight, tapped twice with his mop-handle on the book on the table in front of her, then trudged back upstairs and shut the door.

"Ah!" said Twilight, happily. "Thanks, Spike!" The little purple unicorn grabbed the book back up again and began leafing through it. "Here we go, here we go, here… we… go! Cloud-walking! All right, A.J., prepare to be ensorcelled!"

I squinted my eyes and braced myself, never quite trusting anything what came out of Twilight's horn. Despite already being pretty busy with the glow of an entire room full of organization, there was apparently room enough on it for one tiny white spark to course its way up the spiral groove and then leap off the tip like a grasshopper, right at my hooves. They shimmered pale and prickled for a second like I had slept on them wrong overnight, but then the feeling faded, leaving behind only a couple barely-visible wiggles of white light boiling on their surface.

Twilight studied her hoofwork, looking pleased. "There!" she said, ticking off a little box on her list. "Done and done. Now you're just like a pegasus pony, at least in your ability to treat clouds as solid matter." She squeezed her eyes shut in some kind of weird completely mental delight at having put a mark in a box, then turned back to her organizing work, getting her head back in that game. "You know, I never did ask why it is you're doing a talk at Cloudsdale, A.J. You don't seem like much like the 'give speech' type of pony."

"Well, I ain't," I said. "But I got me a vision, see."

"Do tell," said Twilight, hardly listening to me as she paged through her book, various chemical bottles and owls and such floating past in the background. Didn't matter. If my vision was strong enough to send me up to Cloudsdale to talk about it, it sure wasn't gonna shy away from a mare who was "hardly" listening. Because "hardly" meant she was at least kind of listening, see, and dagnabit, if anypony gives me even half an ear, I was gonna fill it. That was the kind of vision this was.

"Okay, listen here," I said, feeling the fire start in my chest and the wheels commence a-turning in my skull. "I was just reflecting one day on that big ol' hailstorm we had last summer, and how it plumb took the stuffing out of my corn crop. I ain't recovered financially from that yet. You understand why the pegasi gotta do them big thunderstorms in the summer?"

"The molt, right?" said Twilight, scanning through some paragraph or another. "They're not working at optimum efficiency because their top flyers aren't up to speed, so they schedule long hot days just to give themselves some breathing room, and then they have to toss a doozy of a storm at us every once in a while just to keep things in balance."

"Correct," I said. "And it ain't wrong of them, exactly, but the pegasi are all about the pony touch. I mean, pretty near everything they do, they do with their own bodies, whether it's making cyclones or carving snowflakes or kicking holes in the cloud layer, or what have you. Very hooves-on sorta folk."

"That sounds about right," said Twilight. "I'm not hearing a vision yet."

For Pete's sake, filly, I thought, just let me finish. "Here's the story, y'all," I said. "Earth ponies used to be like that too. We was all about doing things by hoof. And there's still a place for it – ain't no kind of mechanical harvester that can compare to good ol' bucking, least when it comes to apples. But it came to pass one day that there was just too much that needed doing and not enough hours in the day to do it all in. So we put our heads together and we all came up with an answer: Farm Machinery."

"Uh huh," said Twilight, all distracted from me, busy as she was in turning a little glass beaker over and over in the air in front of her, looking for flaws in it or something.

I tried to hide my ignore-me-some-more-why-don't-you? scowl and charged on. "The wheeled snowplow and the irrigation cart," I said, all sharp-like, "allow one little pony to do the work of about five different little ponies using sledges, or bucket yokes. It's ain't even fancy math, just a little common sense. You give them weatherponies the sorts of tools that earth ponies have been using for years now, it'll all work slicker than celery smut up there in Cloudsdale. We won't even need to have them big summer thunder-boomers. Weather, nice and even, all throughout the year."

"I do enjoy efficient labor," said Twilight, looking up from her beaker, which meant I had succeeded a little. "Do you have any specific mechanized processes you'd like to see them implement?"

The wheels started glowing hot in my head. Asking for specifics always pushes the noggin a little too hard, because I ain't the kind of thinker Twilight is. "In fact I do," I said, fishing around in the mess a little. "You know how they restock the water for them cloud factories they got going on?"

"Of course," she replied. "They draw it up from the earth using waterspouts."

"Well, I was thinking," I said. "Why are they throwing so much pony labor into making a big old tornado to suck the water up instead of concentrating on, say, a pump or something?"

"A pump?" said Twilight, sounding kind of dubious.

"Well, sure!" I said.

"It's conceptually intriguing, Applejack, but Cloudsdale is thousands of feet in the air. You'd need an awfully strong pump, and a lot of line. And there'd still be a lot of room for things to go wrong."

"I know, I know," I said. "Look, this speech ain't a lecture on mechanical engineering. It's just me blue-skying a little. Get them dang weatherponies to maybe look at how they do things a different way, savvy? I know how to make stills, mend porches and fix plows, but when you get to the hard stuff, well." I rolled my eyes and tossed a hoof. "I ain't all book-learned like you, or apparently, Pinkie Pie, is."

Every last little floating thing in the room fell to the ground with a thud, thump, fwap, crash, tinkle, or poof, depending on the thing.

"Oh, that Pinkie Pie!" Twilight yelled, basically in my face. "Has she been regaling you with some of her random and totally untrue stories again?"

"Uh," I said. "Maybe?"

"Hoo hoo!" said Twilight. "What a laugh! Boy, she was telling me a real whopper earlier today, I don't know, maybe it was the same one she told you!" Twilight's ear twitched a couple times. "It was just some crazy and, let me stress, totally non-true, story about how she's secretly a doctor of advanced contraptionology with a degree from the Maresachusetts Institute of Technology and how while she was in college she made a mechanical lizard that makes 'squonk' noises and breathes fire when it eats hot food and it came looking for her and that's what started the forest fire last night and so now we have to return it to her thesis advisor in Maresachusetts and that's why we're going on a road trip!" Twilight laughed erratically, cocking her head to one side. "It was funny because of how patently not-true it was!"

"SQUONK," came a sound from the kitchen. About a second later, Pinkie zipped through the open door.

"SQUONK!" yelled Pinkie Pie, waving her hooves around and smiling hugely. "Hey, Applejack, do you like the 'squonk' noise Twilight told me to make whenever Iggy made one of his squonking sounds so it would seem like I was doing it all along?"

"It's fine, I guess," I said.

"Ha ha!" said Twilight. "That Pinkie Pie! She sure is a kidder!" The purple unicorn dashed over to the kitchen at a clip that would have made Rainbow proud and started shoving Pinkie back through the door. "Unfortunately she needs to go back into the kitchen now and stop talking about Iggy the Salamander, who I must stress is a laughably fictional construction of her feverish imagination!"

"Girls," I said, frowning, "forgive me for talking this way, but it seems a mite as though y'all are trying to cover up the fact that you're actually going to Maresachusetts to take back some kind of mechanical fire-breathing lizard, and all of this horse hockey is your attempt to keep me from finding that out."

"Yes, indeed," said Pinkie Pie, matter-of-factly. "That's exactly what we're doing." Pinkie squealed like a piglet. "She wins the guessing game, Twilight!" she exclaimed. "What's the prize!"

Twilight fumed for a second, and then found herself again. "The prize is," she said, "that Applejack wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Don't-Tell-Anypony-About-This-ington."

"Oo!" shouted Pinkie. "Are meals included?"

"She did say 'all expenses paid'," I noted.

"Luckyyy!"

"You know what?" said Twilight. "Forget metaphors. Metaphors are obviously not working. Applejack, I will give you a full explanation of this entire situation once we're back from Maresachusetts, but right now, Pinkie and I need to get on the road as soon as possible, and I need to get back to packing and planning. Is there anything else I can do for you, other than the cloud-walking spell?"

"I… guess not?"

"Good!" said Twilight, leaping over the wreckage of her packing to escort me to the library door. "I'd like to thank you for being such a good friend, Applejack. I'm sure that Ponyville will be in capable hooves while we're away. Maybe you can hold some sort of rodeo competition or something to keep the townsfolk distracted from probing too deeply into the cause of last night's forest fire and the unorthodox and potentially apocalyptic methods we used to extinguish it! Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Yeah, well," I said, in the process of being shoved out the door. "Funny you should mention it, I was just thinking about how rodeos aren't as big around here as they used to be. Everypony seems more interested in book learning and whatnot lately."

"As well they should be," said Twilight. "I mean, if you're only going to do one thing with your life, then by all means, it should probably be learning things from books! But if you've got time to spare, then rodeos are great pastimes. They're perfectly, almost aggressively… adequate! Right, Pinkie?"

"Are you kidding?" said Pinkie, from the other side of the room. "I love rodeos! Rodeos are the most adequate things I've ever seen!"

"Thanks, y'all," I said. "I can honestly say all your explaining has really, truly raised my level of confusion here."

"You're welcome!" said Pinkie.

"Okay, keep the town safe while we're gone!" said Twilight, getting me through the library door at last and onto the sun-brightened dirt roads outside. "And… like I said, A.J., I promise to tell you everything about this mess when we get back. I have to keep you in the loop – you are my second-in-command, after all!"

"Second-in-command," I said. "Right."

Twilight beamed at me, the smile kind of beaming, not some magic voodoo rays. "See you in a few days!" she said.

The door slammed behind me.

"Harumph," I said, turning my tail and trotting away, back out to the schoolhouse.

So that's what a modern hero is, I thought as I trotted. That's what all the little ponies in town are looking up to and hoping to turn themselves into someday, what with all them books and whatnot. Town full of flaky wossnames can't even tell spit from horseshoe shine, that's what we're heading toward. Mark my words.

Maybe this vision I had to put earth pony machines in Cloudsdale needed some re-thinking. I mean, it'd be all right if they threw up a few pumps and a couple engines, but what if everypony started getting too enthusiastic? What if the whole world started getting run by just bigger and bigger machines, with folks like Miss Twilight Sparkle at the controls? What if weather started getting produced by folks who understood the idea of weather, the science of it, right to a T, but who never had to spend a sleepless night mulching a field of seedlings ahead of a late spring frost, who never had to find a lost lamb in a thunderstorm with only hope and instinct and a good solid dog by their side?

Where on this earth are plain everyday values gonna come from? I continued thinking, as the schoolhouse came into view ahead of me. How are we gonna teach these kids that there's more to being a hero than just filling your head full of words? How do we learn them that power ain't just what comes from your brain? That power's what comes from your brain and your heart and your hooves, and occasionally, your hindquarters too? That power is who you are, not what you know?

We show 'em, I said, crossing over the threshold back into the schoolhouse. We show them that loyal, strong, dependable ponies can get 'er done just as well as the smart ones can. That when you give an important job to a pony like yours truly, she comes back a flying-colors winner, job all finished with bells on.

I looked at the scene spread afore me in the schoolhouse. Dash and Fluttershy, hovering there just a little off the ground. Rarity with her chin up, judging, always judging me. And Nightmare Scoot, still there at the head of the class, her sad little soda volcano demonstration fizzing away like it was gonna go on forever, which I guess was the aim.

"Hey, Applejack," said Nightmare Scoot, kinda tepid-like.

"Applejack," said Rarity, "wherever on the way over here did you lose Twilight and Pinkie?"

"And where are the Elements?" demanded Rainbow Dash.

I blinked.

"Butter my biscuits," I cussed.

I headed on back to the library.

03 - Unmitigated Friendship

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Three: Unmitigated Friendship

"Twilight!" I said, busting back through the door of the library. "We got ourselves a crisis at the schoolhouse! Scootaloo's got the Nightmare!"

"Aah!" said Twilight, dropping all her packing again with yet another thunderous crash. "When are people going to stop listening to metaphysical entities whispering dark secrets into the depths of their minds? What's she going to make last forever this time?"

"The science fair they got going on!"

"Oh, no!" said Twilight. "That's horrible! How will the children learn anything ever again, if there's always… a…"

She paused.

"Actually," said Twilight, tapping her chin, "I'm not immediately seeing the problem, here. I mean, you can do worse than being in the middle of an everlasting science fair, right?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Could also do a touch better, mind, but, sure, I guess."

"When I was a little filly in Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns," said Twilight, her big purple eyes going distant-like, "I once had a dream that I was in the middle of an everlasting science fair. It was in a tremendous white hall with a high crystal ceiling, and it just went on and on and on. Exhibits as far as a pony's eye could see." Twilight smiled, lost in recollection. "It was such a nice dream," she said. "I never wanted to wake up."

"Yeah, well, this ain't no exhibit-going-on-forever type thing," I said. "They got exactly one everlasting exhibit, and it's Scoot's baking soda volcano thing."

Twilight startled and shook her head, her beautiful dream all shattered. "What?" she said. "She's trying to emulate a volcano using baking soda?"

"And vinegar, yes ma'am."

"But… but that's… that's wrong!" Twilight cried. "I mean, maybe if she were doing an exhibit on double replacement reactions, or an exhibit on the decay of unstable carbolic acid into its component molecules, then sure, I could see a practical demonstration using sodium bicarbonate and vinegar. But that has nothing to do with volcanoes at all!" Twilight gave me a stern and kinda frantic look, leaning over her little table at me. "Volcanoes are caused by the snores of Tartarus-dragons living deep beneath the Earth's crust!" she said, banging a hoof down a couple times for emphasis. "It's indisputable scientific fact!"

"So it is a crisis, then?"

"You're darn right it's a crisis!" said Twilight, crossing over to a little glass-fronted emergency cabinet on one wall. "Those children are perilously close to assimilating a fundamentally incorrect concept! There's no time to lose!" Twi put her hoof through the glass, revealing a set of five little necklaces and one big ol' crown thing – one guess as to which one of us little ponies belongs to that one.

"Behold!" said Twilight. "The Elements of Harmony!"

"Yeah, uh," I said. "I know what they are."

"Of course you do!" said Twilight. "Here, take the Citrine Apple of Honesty!" Twilight tossed mine at me and cinched it around my neck with her magic, pulling it just a hair too tight. She turned back towards the kitchen. "PINKIE!"

"Yes, Twilight?" said Pinkie, from behind her.

Twi spun around. "Aha," she said, pulling out a second necklace. "For you, the Aquamarine Balloon of Laughter!"

"Oo, my favorite!" squealed Pinkie.

"So that's the Tourmaline Diadem of Both Friendship and Magic for me, leaving—"

"Uh, sugarcube," I noted, "this would go faster if we just grabbed 'em instead of talking about them."

"Right, of course," said Twilight, snatching all the rest up in a little blob of magic. "Okay, let me just do a few more little things around here so we don't leave the place a mess. SPIKE! COME HERE! AND BRING A BROOM!"

Spike showed hisself at the upstairs door again, clumped downstairs, clambered his way across a whole entire room of packing debris and started sweeping the little pile of broken emergency glass into a dustpan. "Thanks, Spike!" continued Twilight. "While we're gone, please check on the supply of little panes of emergency glass for the Elements of Harmony cabinet."

"We're out," said Spike, not looking up from his sweeping. "That was the last one. I told you about it last time you smashed the emergency glass."

Twilight gasped. "Oh my gosh!" she said. "You're right! I had been waiting for my end-of-month stock-up trip to Quills, Sofas and Small Panes of Emergency Glass! Pinkie, please find my petty cash envelope and tell me what's inside."

Pinkie had it in hoof already. "Two buttons and a moth!" she said, proud. The moth fluttered away. "Two buttons!" she corrected. "It was empty before, so I tried filling it with things!"

"Aah!" Twilight yelled. "This is a disaster! Spike, when you're done sweeping up the broken glass, we need to do our budget and process one of our internal forms for restocking the petty cash out of general funds!"

"We're out of that form, too."

Twilight twitched. "Okay," she said, pacing back and forth. "I'm a good leader. I can handle this. All we need is to mock up an ersatz petty cash transfer form that we can copy over to an official one once we re-supply. Spike, when you're done sweeping up the broken glass, find me our copy of Fundamentals of Fiscal Formcraft."

"Can do," said Spike, yawning and munching at one of the little pieces of glass.

Forty-five minutes later, us three ponies finally showed up at the schoolhouse. The everlasting volcano presentation was still in full swing, and much to Twilight's consternation, all them little colts and fillies were starting to get interested in it.

"Ooh," said Twist, craning her little neck to look at the goings-on. "So fizzy! How'd you get it to look red like that?"

"Food coloring!" said Nightmare Scoot. "Just like a real volcano!"

"Stop, Nightmare Scoot!" shouted Twilight, charging into the room and tossing the rest of the Element necklaces at our friends, hitting Fluttershy clean in the face with hers. "Your days, or rather day, of teaching bad science is over!"

"Twilight Sparkle!" hissed Nightmare Scoot.

"The same!" she said, head up. "Prepare to be banished back to the depths of—"

"Wait, hold on," said Nightmare Scoot, holding up a hoof. Her eyes rolled back a little.

"Ex… cuse me?" said Twilight.

"Look, hold on, okay?" snapped Scoot, her eyes going back normal. "I'm trying to have a conversation here!" Scoot's eyes resumed doing their unnatural thing. "Uh huh," she said. "Uh huh."

Twilight frowned. "Um, what are we waiting for?" asked Dash, as Rarity finished clipping her Element necklace on. "Let's blast her!"

"Patience, Rainbow Dash," said Twilight. "I want to see what this is about. You can't just go around blasting things indiscriminately, even if they are apparently in direct communion with maleficent powers."

Nightmare Scoot continued on ignoring us. "Uh huh," she said. "Uh huh."

We all waited a while. Pinkie started up a game of tic-tac-toe.

"All right, thanks," said Scoot. Her eyes rolled down again and fixed back on Twilight. "Okay, I'm supposed to, um, give you a message from the Nightmare?"

"Really?" said Twilight, dubiously.

"Yep!" Scoot cleared her throat. "Okay, the Nightmare wants you to know that she's got a great name picked out for when you succ— succ—"

"Succumb?"

"That," said Nightmare Scoot, relieved. "She says that when you succumb to her wiles she's gonna make you call yourself 'Nightmare Gloaming' and she's got a wicked cool armor design all ready for you and everything."

Twilight smiled defiantly. "You tell the Nightmare that I'm not planning on 'succumbing' to her any time soon. Because the only lever she has to get inside a pony's head is envy, and I am not envious of anypony! And do you know why that is?"

Because you're everypony's favorite pony, I thought to myself. Because even Princesses get all silly-noggined watching you do your winsome li'l baby arch-wizard thing.

"Wrong, Applejack!" said Twilight. I froze. Dadgumit, did I just out-loud that? Lawks, but I'm a few chickens short of a henhouse lately…

"I am not envious of anypony," Twilight continued, without even stopping or nothing, "because whenever I start to get envious of somepony, I write a story about how I already have the thing I'm envious of, and it makes me feel better! If I get envious of Rainbow Dash's wings, I write a story where I've got wings! If I get envious of Rarity's great fashion sense, I write a story where I have great fashion sense! And If I get envious of how Bell Pepper looks at Applejack, I write a story where it's the harvest season and a thinly-veiled depiction of Bell has invited me up to his family holdings to teach me how to harvest peppers the earth pony way, with just teeth and hooves and muscle power; except I'm having trouble with the little pepper bush he assigned to me, so after a while, he strides over to where I am, pushes me gently aside with one nudge of his powerful neck, and leans in close to my little bush, his hot breath brushing at the leaves, and then he parts his warm lips, reaches out with his teeth and gives a few delicate nibbles at the tiny green stem of one bright and swollen scarlet pepper-fruit, and then he takes it up in his mouth, and then… and then…"

Twilight looked around the schoolroom at a mess of either confused or horrified faces. Cheerilee, all wide-eyed, went ahead and clapped her hooves over the ears of one of her charges, probably the most impressionable one she could find.

"Er, yes," said Twilight. "Hypothetically-speaking, that is. So anyway, the point is, Nightmare Scoot, is that your evil master can't get to me via envy, because I've got the world's best defense against it: when I start to get envious, I make something! It's something you could try yourself: if you're envious about other ponies being able to fly better than you, well, then, maybe you could write a book about being able to fly!"

Nightmare Scoot shrugged. "I think books are kinda dumb," she admitted.

"All right, let's blast her," said Twilight, her eyes narrow. "Girls! Formation!"

The rest of the five of us leaped up on desks and such behind Twilight as the big star jewel on her crown started glowing. In some kind of response, I could feel my little orange apple start rattling against my brisket, which weren't usual in situations like this, truth to tell.

"Good formation!" said Twilight. "A.J., you're just a hair out of place, though. Do you mind?"

I blinked, looking up from my apple. "Do I mind wh—"

My gut turned inside-out – followed by the entire rest of me – as Twilight forcibly teleported me a few inches to my right. "Aah!" I said, real intelligent-like.

"That's a little better," said Twilight, cocking her head at me like she was trying to figure something out, even as the twirly whirly rainbow energy of the Elements commenced a-twirling and whirling, carving channels in the air for magic to flow along like some kinda supernatural irrigation system. "Still not quite right, though. A.J., you're in good formation now but I'm not feeling your unmitigated friendship. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" I said, a little too loud, the apple jewel shaking on my chest like a flywheel that done got knocked clean off-kilter. "What's wrong? I'm…"

I clenched my back teeth and cleared my throat. "I don't know, Twilight. You tell me."

"Okay," said Twilight, briskly, her horn starting to shine. "Let's have a look at what's inside your head."

My hoof slipped on its already-precarious perch on the top of the school desk as I stumbled a step backwards. "Wait, just one cotton-pickin'—"

* * *

The train howled on through the night, across the wide open spaces of the Dodge Badlands. I sat on my little coach bench, hunkered up against the worked-glass seat back, saddlebags strewn all over the seat beside me. Just above my head, a row of hurricane gaslights burned, doing actually not an awful lot at all to beat back the darkness. Shadows were everywhere in this here train car, and they only seemed to get thicker the further away a pony got. The door to the next car was pretty near impossible to even see.

"This is interesting," said Twilight, walking down the aisle between the otherwise-empty seats toward me, drinking everything in with those big purple-black eyes of hers. "This isn't normally what your internal psychoscape looks like, Applejack. You're usually in one of your orchards when I come see you. Isn't that odd?"

"Yeah, uh," I said, glancing around. "I guess I'm just sorta tired, is all."

"Huh," said Twilight, poking at one of the glass lampshades, making it clink a little in its mount. "This is the train to Dodge Junction, isn't it? From that time when you ran away from Ponyville because you couldn't bear to face us after you didn't win first prize at the All-Equestria Rodeo Championships?"

"I guess so," I said, looking around, as if I didn't already recognize every inch of this here train car.

"So what does that mean to us?" said Twilight. "Maybe that you're running away from something again, only it's in your mind this time?"

"Sure I wouldn't know."

"Hm," Twi said, thinking it over. "I'm also worried about how gloomy it is in here. What's up with that, A.J.?"

Holy Grower, but the girl gets her kicks with this particular spell. Ever since she learned it, she's been going around peeking in at everypony and whipping up fancy interpretations of their mental difficulties based on all these symbicological things she sees in our heads. "It's night outside, for one thing," I said, waving a hoof at the window. "Might be raining, too. Can't tell."

"In here, Applejack," said Twilight, stamping one hoof. "Not out there. Why is it so dark in here? And what's in the next train car, where all those shadows are gathering?"

"Nothing!" I yelled. "Look, lemme just fix it if it's bothering you so all-fired much." I scrunched my head a little and the train car folded in on itself and vanished in a flash, leaving the two of us standing in my apple orchard, the part down by the west-end hollow.

"That's better," said Twilight. "Or… maybe not." She gazed westward through the shifting trees, trying to get a fix on something. "A.J., it's still pretty gloomy here in your mind, especially over there on that side." She gestured toward what did indeed look like a cluster of unnatural shadows among the trees near the hollow. "What's the matter with you today?"

"I don't know!" I fumed, the apple trees all about me rustling in agitation. "Tired! Up all last night fighting forest fires! I ain't in the mood for brain surgery here, Twi. Look, can you just… I mean, I'd appreciate it if you stayed out of my head, okay?"

"I'm sorry," said Twilight, like she genuinely meant it. "I only did it because of that one dinner where we all agreed to do whatever was necessary to keep our mutual friendship in tip-top shape, up to and including invasive psychoanalysis. You remember our pact, right?"

"I remember!" I said. "It's just that… I ain't comfortable with it no more."

Twilight looked a little hurt, to be honest.

"All right," she said, eventually. "After all, your friendship is too valuable to me to risk it over an issue like this. I'll stay out of your mental landscape from now on. But the fact remains, we've still got some kind of a problem with our friendship in the physical world, and I don't know what it is! You sure there's nothing you want to talk about before I eject myself?"

"I'm sure," I muttered. "Like I said. Just a bit tired today."

"Hm," said Twilight. "What to do, what to do. Maybe if I make metaphorical contact with you right before I pull out it'll kickstart the Elements into action?"

"What's that?"

"BRAIN HUG!" shouted Twilight, grinning like a crazymare and chucking herself at me, forehooves spread wide. There was a sudden bright flash and then—

* * *

"—minute!" I said, back in the real world, but nopony could even hear me, drowned out as I was by the terrible ruckus of the Elements roaring to life. Colored waves burst out of the little lockets of all us other ponies, waves that spun and twined together around Miss Twilight and her fancy crown, a whole storm full of rainbow. Twilight's eyes flared up pale as noon as she focused her attention on the pathetic, cowering form of Nightmare Scoot up there at the front of the classroom. Why the Nightmares never just up and run away from us is beyond me. Maybe it's a pride thing.

So anyway. Magic lashed out, doing what it does. "NOOOOOO!" screamed Nightmare Scoot as the rainbow storm fell on her like a load of shiny horse manure. Vision and sense were wiped out in a blinding sheet of white light, yadda yadda, yadda yadda. All the normal everyday steps of Nightmare-squashing. I blacked out, like I typically do of late. Just another day of evil-smitin' chores on the evil-smitin' farm.

I was only out for minute this time. When I woke up, Scoot was lying there in a pile of armor shards, her mane looking like it was made out of normal hair again instead of goofy sparkle-stuff. The baking soda volcano beside her was actually smoking for real now, a fact I figured would please Twilight to no end.

"That was a pretty good blasting," said Rainbow Dash, lounging at one of the desks, picking at her teeth with a toothpick.

"I thought so," agreed Twilight. "Hey, A.J.! My plan worked!"

"Uh huh," I said, trying to fold my legs back under me.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle and my kid sister Apple Bloom – Scoot's partners in Crusaderhood – strode up to the broken little pile of orange filly.

"Scootaloo," intoned Sweetie Belle squeakily, "it has been since, what, yesterday, that we've seen you like this?"

"Yesterday," Apple Bloom agreed. "About a thousand minutes, I figure."

"It has been a thousand minutes since we've seen you like this," continued Sweetie Belle. "It is time to put our differences behind us. We were meant to crusade for our Cutie Marks together, not go off on our own and get eaten up by evil and junk!"

"Sister?!?" Pinkie Pie yelled. Then she frowned and pulled little stack of paper out from behind her back, giving it a quick look-over. "Oh, wait, wrong scene. Oops!"

"Will you accept our friendship?" said Apple Bloom.

Scootaloo's eyes got all teary. "I'm so sorry!" she said, throwing herself at her little friends. "I missed you so much, Cutie Mark Crusaders!"

"We missed you too," said Sweetie Belle. And Cheerilee looked all happy, and Fluttershy looked all happy, and Pinkie offered to throw everypony a party just as soon as she got back from Maresachusetts and basically we all had a touching reunion moment, same as always.

"Thank you, Twilight Sparkle," said Cheerilee, beaming at her.

"You're welcome," said Twilight, proudly.

Yep, I thought to myself, standing in a wedge of shadow over near the back wall, underneath a crude mouth-drawn picture of a tree or something. Same as always.

* * *

"Okay, so what have we all learned about getting possessed, today?" said Rainbow Dash, flapping alongside Scootaloo as the whole bunch of us trotted our way back to Ponyville proper, six of us Element-bearers (all of us still bearing our Elements, in fact) plus an assorted collection of Cheerilee's rugrats.

"To not to!" shouted out everypony.

"Exactly," said Rainbow. "And how do we stop from getting jealous of other ponies and giving the bad guys an opening?"

"Write stories?" volunteered Sweetie Belle, sounding a little unsure. "Like Twilight said?"

Rainbow pshawed. "Yeah, sure, if you're an egghead like Twilight. We're looking for the pegasus answer, not the unicorn one. Here's a hint – it's something I'm really really good at."

Scootaloo frowned. "Be… awesome?"

"Nothing but net!" said Rainbow, as Scoot's face lit up like a Hearth's Warming Eve tree. "Two points, kiddo. The real way to stop yourself from getting jealous of other ponies is to be one hundred percent blue-steel bleeding-edge awesome. That way, you really are better than everypony else you meet, and wanting to be like them will never even cross your mind."

"I try to be awesome!" said Scootaloo. "I really really try!"

"Keep it up, kid," R.D. replied. "You'll get there someday."

"I'm already awesome!" said Sport Pepper, tagging along in the air behind Dash, doing a few loop-de-loops apparently to show this fact off or something. "Also, radical!"

"I don't mean to beat a dead horse," said Twilight, "but I still think that writing elaborate stories featuring obvious fictional analogues of your family and friends is also a very emotionally healthy thing to do."

"I don't wanna write stories!" said Sport Pepper, flipping herself over and tearing across our path in a furious backstroke. "I just wanna learn how to fly real fast! I'm gonna be a royal courier for Princess Celestia just like mi tia Cayenne someday!"

Twilight smiled. "Princess Celestia values creativity as well as athletic prowess," she said. "The Day-Court couriers I know, including your aunt, aren't just quick-winged; they're quick-witted, too. Competition is tough at the top, and a little word-sense can give you the edge you need to really shine in the Princess's eyes."

"You could also try filling your heart with love," said Fluttershy. "Um, talking about jealousy again, if that's okay with everypony. That way you're never angry or jealous of anypony, because you've just got so much love for them."

"Good suggestion!" said Twi. "What about you, Applejack? Would you like to contribute to today's ambiguous morality cloud?"

"Uh," I said, trotting along. "Yeah, sure. I think the best way to not be jealous of another pony is… to honestly admit to that other pony when you're jealous of her. 'Cause jealousy only gets worse when you hide it away."

My apple necklace rattled a little on my chest. It weren't visible to nopony, but I could feel it myself. I clapped a hoof down on it and it stopped. Wasn't sure why it was acting all funny, but relics of power got a mind all to themselves, I figure.

"An excellent answer, A.J.," said Twilight, either not seeing or not noticing me grab at the stone around my neck. "Pinkie, any thoughts on envy?"

"Sure!" said Pinkie Pie, bouncing along. "I think everypony should just be who she really is inside, every single hour of every single day! Forget about trying hard to be awesome, or forcing yourself to love what you don't, or working yourself into a frazzle hoping to impress princesses with book-learning that you're really not interested in. I think that if you're happy, really deep-down wiggle-your-hooves-in-the-grass smile-because-you-can't-help-it happy with who you are, problems and all, you'll start to realize that being envious of any other pony is meaningless and just plain silly."

Us and the kids trotted quietly for a spell.

"Rarity?" said Twilight, eventually.

"Yes, well," said Rarity, "I was going to say something much like what Pinkie Pie said."

"Okay, good!" said Twilight, hauling us all to a stop near the top of a grassy hill that overlooked the big green spread of Equestrian countryside surrounding our tiny village. "Thanks, Rarity! And thanks everypony else. I think we've had a lot of good lessons today. I know I certainly have learned enough to write a nice long letter to the Princess as soon as Pinkie and I get back from our vacation. But right now, we've gotta run."

"We've got an important meeting!" said Pinkie.

"With an old friend of Pinkie's in Maresachusetts," said Twilight, nodding at Pinkie. "A pony named 'Professor Danger'."

"And we're taking along a gift for him!" said Pinkie. "It's a lizard!"

"A lizard in an asbestos bag," said Twilight, cutting in again, "but we're not going to talk about that right now, right, Pinkie?"

"Right!" said Pinkie. "Totally not gonna talk about that."

"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" said Fluttershy. "Um, whatever it is you're doing. It just all sounds really… unsafe."

"Don't worry, Fluttershy," said Twilight. "Science has proven time and time again that asbestos is absolutely harmless."

"It's not the asbestos, darlings," said Rarity. "Everypony knows that's safe. I myself make many fine fireproof garments out if it, like that fashionable little set of lava-swimming trunks I designed for my dear Spikey-wikey. It's just all this talk of ucky lizards and ponies named 'Danger' and all. Are you certain you can't stay and tell us more about it over tea? Or a nice citrus bath?"

"Sorry, Rarity," said Twilight. "We're already way behind schedule. My time kitty is totally depleted. Rain check on that citrus bath, though; it sounds delightful." Twilight turned to me, looking all encouraging and such. "But, in the meantime, I can promise that you won't be lacking for entertainment! A.J., you want to tell them about your rodeo idea?"

"Actually was Twilight's idea, tell the truth," I said. "But, uh, yeah. Sure." I turned to the mess of students trailing along with us. "Listen here, y'all, I got a talk to give at Cloudsdale day after tomorrow, but soon as I get back, we was thinking that Twilight and Pinkie being away might be a good time for us all to have a little junior rodeo type-thing. Learn all you fillies and colts a little something 'bout bucking and barrel-racing and ropework. Life ain't all about books, after all."

"Oh boy!" said Snips. "I just learned a new rope-levitating trick that'll be perfect!"

"Hold on there, horn-head," I said, giving the little unicorn colt a hoof-noogie. "This is gonna be an earth pony rodeo. No fancy magics allowed. We'll get us some calves what don't mind being trussed up, set up a pole-bending course, and make a real show of it."

"Neat!" shouted Apple Bloom.

"Cool!" said Scootaloo.

"Awesome!" said Sport. "And radical!"

Well, well, well, I thought, looking at all them smiling faces, my heart starting to feel right toasty again for the first time in I don't know how long. There's hope for this town yet. And maybe it was a wrong thing for me to think, but I couldn't help a-thinking it: it was just barely possible that Pinkie and Twilight taking a little leave from Ponyville might be the best thing to happen around these parts in a while. I mean, I'd miss them, sure, on account of them being my friends and all. But it did kinda seem that there was something a little sprained, or at least twisted, between me and Twi. Maybe we just needed a little absence. Y'know, to make our hearts grow fonder, like they always say.

Yessiree, I finished, I this vacation of Twilight's is gonna work out just fine, and as far as I was concerned the longer it takes them little ponies to find their Professor Danger, the bett—

"Hey, look!" said little Rumble, gazing off over the hill. "Somepony's coming!"

Everypony turned to look. Sure as shooting, there was somepony coming up the road to Ponyville, pulling a little cart behind him. Older gentlepony, a iron-colored earth stallion with unshorn fetlocks and a wild dishwater mane, dressed in a sharp-looking coat and a pair of safety goggles pushed up to his forehead. Little bit lame in one hind leg. Cutie Mark was a little bit hard to tell at this distance, but it looked kind of like interlocking machinery of some kind.

The fella stopped at our attention. "HEYLO, PONYVILLIANS!" he called out in a Hoofington accent thick enough to spread on toast.

Pinkie's eyes went wide and shiny as she gasped in total crazed Pinkie Pie joy. "PROFESSOR DANGER!" she cried.

…Nuts.

04 - Stranger Danger

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Four: Stranger Danger

"EE EE EE!" said Pinkie, vibratin' back and forth. "EE EE EE EE EE EE EE! Girls! Girls! It's my graduate thesis advisor!"

"Your graduate what now?" said Rainbow.

"Pinkie," said Twilight, looking back and forth between the approaching newcomer and our Ms. Pie. "I thought we agreed… I mean… maybe we shouldn't…"

"Please, Twilight!" said Pinkie. "We have to tell them now! He's here! What kind of welcome party are we gonna be able to have if nopony knows who he is?"

"Does there have to be a welcome party?" asked Twi, sounding helpless.

"Uh, sugar," I said, "you been living under a rock or something the past year? Pinkie even threw a party for that well-inspector from Canterlot last month came to study our manganese levels."

"And don't forget her annual 'Hello, Mister Tax Collector!' soirée," added Rarity.

"And the bash she hosted for that one pony who robbed the Bank of Manehattan," said Dash. "The one who was trying to lay low, remember?"

"Deserved what was coming to him," I spat. "Ain't never heard of such a thing. Taking money what doesn't belong to you? I swear."

Twilight sighed heavily. "Fine, Pinkie. We can tell them about Professor Danger."

"WEE-HOO! I gotta go get Iggy!" Pinkie shot off back in the direction of the library, leaving a pink streak in the air behind her.

"Fine!" Twilight yelled after her. "Talk about Iggy too! But don't talk about your other invention! The really dangerous one! Or any other science project from here on in! Can I get an actual Pinkie Promise on that this time?"

Pinkie reappeared, going from lightning to zero in no seconds whatsoever, now carrying that same asbestos bag she had in her mouth last night. "YEPH!" she said, around the bag. Then she dropped it on the ground with a heavy clunking sound. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!"

"SQUONK," went the bag.

"I have no idea what's going on," said Fluttershy, cowering on the ground.

"Take heart," said Rarity, stroking Flutters's back with a hoof. "You wear confused expressions well. They make me look just dreadful, like some sort of horrid startled bovine."

"Ooh! Ooh!" said Pinkie. "Rarity, make a mooing noise!"

"No," said Rarity.

"Pinkie, sugar," I said, "are you saying you actually wrote a thesis paper on something when you were in college?"

"Pinkie, are you saying you even were in college?" said Dash.

"Indeed she was, and indeed she did," called out the stranger, crossing the last few yards of space between him and us. "Her thesis, with its associated contraption, was one of the most brilliant things ever to shine forth from our humble institute." The white-coated pony undid the traces of his pony cart with his teeth, crossed over to a gleeful Pinkie, and gave her a real affectionate neck-hug, which she returned.

"Hello, liebchen," he murmured. "It has been so very long."

Pinkie broke the hug and turned back toward the rest of us. "Girls, I'd like you to meet—"

"Major-Doctor Stranger von Danger," said the Professor, turning around so fast his coat flew up a little. He looked up at the sky, then, like he was waiting for something.

"Professor?" said Pinkie, cocking her head at him. "Is something wrong?"

"Himmel," he said. "No, Pinkamena, everything is fine. I have merely forgotten that I do not travel with my usual cohort of students this time. I am in need of a, how do you say, unoccupied pegasus pony." Stranger Danger looked over the all of us, dismissed us, and then started scanning the rest of the hillside, his eyes eventually lighting on that one mare with the funny derped-up eyes, who was fluttering from place to place doing some dandelion-collecting about half a hill away, humming a little off-key tune to herself. He crossed over to her like a pony with purpose and whispered in her ear. Derpy-eyes seemed to like what she was hearing, and she zipped away, eventually returning with a little black thundercloud gripped in her mouth. Professor Danger walked back over to us and then gave her a ready nod.

"Pinkamena," said Stranger Danger, "Please attempt to introduce me once more."

"Girls," said Pinkie, sounding a little confused, "I'd like you to meet—"

"Major-Doctor Stranger von Danger," said the Professor, and even before he finished saying his thing, Derpy started a-jumping all over her stormcloud. Thunder and lightning lashed out, briefly burning our eyes and leaving Professor Danger-shaped sore spots hovering afore them.

"Thank you," said Professor Danger, as we all blinked and tried to recover. He pulled a one-bit coin from a purse on his cart and tossed it into the air. Derpy caught it and stowed it in one of her muffin-clip saddlebags.

"Yaay!" said Derpy.

"Very important, dramatic thunder and lightning effects," said the Professor. "Funny-eyed pony, you will follow me everywhere I go and help give my words the emphasis they require. You will be compensated for your service."

"Okay, science man!"

Stranger Danger looked back over at all of us. "Now, then," he said. "To answer all your questionings. Yes, I had the honor and privilege of supervising Doctor Pie throughout her graduate school career."

"'Doctor' Pie?" said Rainbow Dash, flapping in close and scrutinizing Pinkie. "You're a doctor? Like with medicine?"

"Nope!" said Pinkie. "Like with philosophy!"

"But… you're a baker!" said Sweetie Belle.

"Yeah!" said Dash. "What was that load of turnips you were laying down about 'being who you really are' just now?"

Pinkie giggle-snorted. "Silly Dashie," said Pinkie. "I really am a baker!"

"The culinary world's gain is our terrible loss," said Stranger Danger. "And the world at large's loss. There is no telling what she might have accomplished had she stayed with us in Maresachusetts."

Meanwhile, the asbestos bag had nudged its way open, and a shiny little copper-colored face had appeared at the opening. As y'all might expect, dear Fluttershy was all over that like red on apple.

"Oh, how adorable!" gushed Fluttershy, gathering the little lizard monster – the famous 'Iggy', I suppose – up in her hooves.

"SQUONK," said the lizard monster, cuddling up to her.

"Fluttershy, don't touch that!" said Twilight. "Him! Whatever!"

"Why not?"

"That cute little lizard was responsible for last night's forest fire!"

There were mutterings all amongst our little pony crowd. Fluttershy's face fell, and she returned Iggy to arm's length. "Did… did he mean to do it?"

"Likely not," said Professor Danger. "Iggy is a kind-hearted contraptionoid. It is just that when he eats too hot of peppers, well, he burns things up."

If anypony was actually trying to make Fluttershy put the fire-lizard down, telling her that the fool thing had some kind of special dietary condition was exactly the wrong row to hoe. "Poor dear!" she squealed, pretty near rubbing her face all over it. "He reminds me of a salamander I had to nurse back to health a few years ago. That's the same thing that happens to them."

"He is a salamander!" said Pinkie. "You're right!"

Fluttershy blinked. "But he's got such hard scales, like a baby dragon," she said. "And he's so… heavy."

"Iggy is not an animal in the way that you know them," said Professor Danger, striding imposingly up to Fluttershy, who immediately folded up into a quivering mess on the ground in front of him. "He eats, sleeps, and feels, but he is a creation of metal – built, not born. And he is the brainchild of your friend, Doctor Pie."

"You… built that?" said Scootaloo, staring up at Pinkie.

"Mm hm!" said Pinkie.

"Pinkie," said my kid sister Apple Bloom, mouth practically hanging open, "you're a genius!"

"No I'm not! I'm a chicken!" said Pinkie. "Bk'GAWK!" Then she pulled the stack of papers back out from behind her back. "Shoot," she muttered. "Wrong scene again!"

"Iggy escaped from Professor Danger's home in Maresachusetts," explained Twilight, sounding kinda resigned. "We had hoped to take him back there as soon as possible without a lot of complicated explanations to anypony. And I still think that's a good idea, but I need to know that what happened last time isn't going to happen again. Professor, how are you planning on containing Iggy?"

"An excellent question, small and purple one," said the Professor, plucking Iggy away from Fluttershy with his teeth and walking back over to his wagon. With a little fancy-prancy flourish, he pulled the tarp off, revealing a little cage made out of some kinda shimmery gold wire mesh stuff.

"Ooh," said Twilight, leaning in. "Is that orichalcum?"

"Indeed," said Stranger Danger. "Takes up heat like a sponge. Unmeltable and unburnable."

"I've never seen an entire cage's worth in one place," said Twi, as though rare and shiny metal was something important, like apples. "This should do nicely. Just out of curiosity, though, what was his previous enclosure made out of?"

"Orichalcum," admitted the Professor. "But we know what went wrong and have taken steps to prevent it."

"What went wrong?" asked Twilight, sounding less enthus-i-ated than she did before.

"Iggy was fed something dangerously, improbably hot, by a student of mine whose association with the Institute has now been terminated, as a direct result of this action. We call the substance 'pure capsaicin', and it is not something that comes about by accident. It must be specially manufactured, and it is hotter than any pepper known to pony."

"Seriously?" butted in Sport Pepper, flapping over to the Professor and positioning herself between him and Twilight. "Yeah, I don't think so. You just haven't tried Pepper family peppers yet. My cousin Árbol is test-growing a Dorset Naga bush in one of the hothouses that'd make el Lobo himself cry down in that fiery pit of his."

"Tiny yellow-green thing," said Professor Danger, "Capsaicin is hotter than that. It is everything that is hot about a pepper, violently torn – by special chemical reaction – away from the pepper that birthed it, and then suspended in solution in a state that is not quite alive but not quite dead either." He narrowed his eyes and leaned in close to Sport Pepper, who sank slowly to the ground. "It exists," the Professor hissed, "only to burn."

Sport gazed up at Professor Danger, eyes big and blinking. "Why… why would you even do something like that?" she eventually squeaked out.

"Because we can," said the Professor. Without breaking his staredown of Sport, he reached back to his purse and tossed a coin into the air. Derpy caught it and began hopping on her storm cloud. Thunder boomed and lightning crashed.

"SQUONK," said Iggy, chewing at a hunk of grass.

I sidled up to Pinkie. "Pinkie," I whispered, gesturing aimless-like. "Was your old friend the Professor here always this…"

"Strange and ambiguously threatening?" Pinkie said, frowning. "I don't think so. But we haven't seen each other in years, so maybe I'm not remembering him right. And he's been on the road for a while. That's always stressful."

"Huh," I said.

"Don't worry, Applejack," said Pinkie, smiling reassuringly. "Everything's all right. I'm sure of it. Ninety-nine percent sure." Pinkie put one hoof behind her neck. "Maybe ninety-four," she said.

"O-kay!" said Twilight. "This has all been very sinister, Professor Danger, thank you. I'm going to conditionally take your word that everything's going to be okay from here on in and surrender Iggy to you, if and only if no more of this 'pure capsaicin' substance currently exists."

"Mine is the only laboratory capable of producing it," said the Professor. "And it will not happen again, I promise you."

"Great!" she said. "Iggy gets locked in my library, in that cage, until you're ready to hit the road. And then we bid both him, and you, a fond farewell. Will you be ready to leave tonight?"

"Twilight!" said Pinkie, right aghast. "Stranger Danger is my friend and mentor! I insist that he stay overnight, at the very least! It's a long way back to Maresachusetts!"

"Pinkie's right, Twilight," I said, maybe a little too eager to jump on that bandwagon. "You ain't being real hospitable."

"No sense being stingy with our affections," said Rarity. "So long as that lizard-cage is really as fireproof as you say. And so long as it doesn't come anywhere near my boutique. And so long as I don't have to interact with it in any way, shape, or form. Or think about it very hard. What's the harm?"

"The Professor seems like a pretty cool guy," remarked Dash.

Fluttershy whimpered on the ground.

Twilight looked at all of us. "Well, it's not a consensus, but… if most of you girls think it's okay, we can put Stranger Danger up for the night. You're welcome to use the Library's guest bed, Professor."

"Nonono," said Pinkie. "I insist he stay at Sugarcube Corner with me."

"Thank you both, ladies," said the Professor. "But I refuse to impose. I have a perfectly serviceable camp set up on the Ridge, in the burned-out area. It seems that a single lemon-grove survived Iggy's forest fire; I will take shelter there. I have also brought a bag of lemon-fruits from said grove, which you may take as a gift for your kindness."

Lemons, I thought. More lemons.

"Those'll be great sliced up and floating in punch!" Pinkie said. "And there's going to be punch, because you know what you're getting, right, Professor?"

The Professor smiled. "Is it," he said, "something else beginning with the letter 'P'?"

"YES!!!" Pinkie exploded. "A PARTY!!! It'll be a 'Welcome My Thesis Advisor – Farewell To Iggy – We Stopped A Forest Fire – Let's Show Off The Elements Of Harmony' Party!"

"Wait, that's right," said Twilight, looking up at her crown thing. "We're still wearing the Elements. Should I collect them, or…?"

"We might as well just leave them on at this point," said Dash, tapping at the Loyalty amulet. "We're really tearing through those emergency glass panes."

"Don't I know it," admitted Twilight. "You wouldn't believe the paperwork."

"It's settled!" said Pinkie. "A quadruple party! No, wait, this is too good to be multiplicative – LET'S GO EXPONENTIAL!"

"Expowhat now?" I said.

"Square, cube, hypercube!" said Pinkie, ignoring me. "TESSERACT PARTY! WOO-HOO! We'll invite everypony in Ponyville to my Tesseract Party!"

"And us?" said Sport Pepper, eagerly. "Pepper family too?"

"Of course!" Pinkie said. "Everypony in Ponyville and all the surrounding farms! This is going to be the best night ever! We'll have punch and candy and cakes and games and prizes and… except… hm." she frowned. "I think Sugarcube Corner is booked for a cuteceañera tonight."

"Y'all can use Sweet Apple Acres," I said, all proud. "Plenty of room to spread out, which y'all are gonna need if you're inviting everypony."

"Oo!" squealed Pinkie. "And if we're doing it in a barn, we can add a square dance, too! Or maybe even a hypercube dance! You're my hero, Applejack!"

"Shucks, Pinkie," I said, feeling glowy. Things had gone back and forth a couple times now, but they were definitely back to looking up again. Maybe before Stranger Danger leaves, I thought, Twi'll think better about sending Iggy off with him alone. Maybe she'll still take that vacation with Pinkie, and I can still do my rodeo without any of the colts and fillies getting distracted by Twi being around. A real honest-to-goodness Pinkie Pie Party, hosted by yours truly, followed by a Twilight-less junior rodeo? There's gonna be some changes around these parts, I tell you what.

I didn't realize at that point how right I was, hear, but for all the wrong reasons.

05 - Tesseract Party

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Five: Tesseract Party

It started out as a real nice party. Real nice.

For starters, it's amazing how fast we ponies can throw together a shindig if we put our minds to it. Apple Bloom and Granny and me started in on a real humdinger of a baking bee, and when those two were good and at it, I worked up load after load of invitations with some much-needed assistance from Rarity on the pen; I ain't got a real steady mouth when it comes to writing things, and it my problems weren't helped none by a seriously rattling apple necklace; for whatever reason, it was deciding to act up again. Our invites were then ferried to every corner of town by good old Rainbow Dash. Flutters and Dr. Pie, who I was gonna go right on calling 'Pinkie', handled the decorating with that party cannon thing of hers. Pinkie seemed real nervous whenever she was messing with it this time, not like usual, and kept obviously not saying stuff – I didn't understand nor care, so long as the barn got decorated. And lo, it did, and it was beautiful, all dressed up in white and pink crepe, with little rows of firefly lights running behind. Twilight and Spike weren't there to lend a hoof, seeing as they were busy double and triple checking the lizard situation, but that was all right, because it made it feel more like old times, just the five of us girls again, no Canterlot wizards or dragons or nothing.

Decorating done, Pinkie threw her attention at the punch bowl, a huge fizzy glass cauldron of lemonade, ginger beer and liquor topped off with fresh-sliced lemons from the Professor's supply; and Flutters – with some special goading from that bunny rabbit of hers – used her contacts in the town music scene to organize a proper fiddle-and-jug band, all the usual suspects on their usual instruments. Yes, Ma'am, it was right flabbergasting how quick we pulled things together. We fixed that party up like a well-oiled machine.

(Little side note for y'all: I'm told that using that particular expression is something called "ironic", given what's to come. I ain't gonna go on the record one way or the other, 'cause I don't exactly understand what "ironic" means, unless it's "kind of funny but not".)

Anyhoo, so that was that. Even before the time we wrote on the invites, we had Johnny-come-earlies trickling in, and by the time the dusk began to fall and the doors officially opened, there was ponies clean lining up outside. We was all having a great time. Everypony loved getting a look at the real honest-to-golly Elements of Harmony around all our necks (those folks we hadn't already blasted with 'em previously for Nightmare infection, of course) and the Professor, arriving with a whole mess of both pomp and circumstances and accompanied by his new assistant Derpy-eyes, was a big hit with the young folks. Twi and Spike were still no-shows, which still didn't concern me. You know her. Probably just got distracted, nose wedged in a book, How To Come To A Party On Time, by, uh, Dustjacket McOldpony or something.

Twenty minutes in, right in the middle of what Rarity'd call "fashionably late" territory, the Pepper Clan showed, bending the whole barn around them with sheer presence. Led by their tiny green-and-gray patriarch, a piddle-and-vinegar old stallion what went by the name of Don Jalapeño, they claimed a chunk of territory over by the hayloft and dared all comers to be as suave and clean and upright as them. Pepper Family hails from the Equestrian province of Castalle, where they hold races against bulls right down the middle of the dang street and put funny wiggles over their letter "n"'s to make 'em sound like "nyuh", which is just a couple of the crazy foreign-things they get up to. For all that, they were perfectly charming despite not joining in on the punch – teetotalers all, they were – and some of the young'uns did start mingling with the rest of us worldly ponies after a time. Almost without thinking about it, I found myself looking over their ranks for Bell Pepper, and oh, lawks, there he was, head and neck taller than his closest sibling and quick, Apple Bloom, how's my mane look? All straight?

"For the fifth time, big sis, it's fine! Why you get so silly any time them Pepper boys show up anywhere?"

"Just you wait a couple years, A.B.," I said, smiling and giving her hair-bow a little tug. "You'll start looking at little Chipotle there in a whole new light."

"Yecch," replied Apple Bloom. "Colts are gross."

So yes. Things were right smooth, for a time. If there was a crisis at first, it was Pinkie Pie. After putting her heart and soul into making this quadruple—

"Tesseract!" corrected Pinkie, somehow managing to work her way into my narrator passage in doing so, which SHE OUGHT NOT BE DOING, tesseract party, thanks, Pinkie. After putting her heart and soul into making this tesseract party happen, she was weirdly sad about the whole business. Flutters and I questioned her about it, and she revealed that she was sad because one of the guests of honor, Iggy the Salamander, couldn't even be present for his own party, on account of him being a danger to himself and others (but mostly others). Flutters suggested we save some of the more tepid party food, the things with cream cheese on them, maybe, and hold a second party for him all his own after this one wrapped up, and this got Pinkie so excited she kicked the square dance off early, which suited me fine. Anything for an excuse to get a little closer to Bell. Why yes, sir, I am brushing up against your powerfully-muscled cutie-marked hindquarters, but it's only because that gosh-darn square-dance caller told me to, don't you know?

Didn't quite work out that way – truth to tell, I ended up paired with Flutters most of the time, but the party was in full swing now and we were feeling the glow of a couple hundred or more ponies' worth of happy goodwill, and the feelings just bubbled up inside of me until I almost couldn't take it no more. For Pete's sake, even Rarity looked like she was starting to enjoy herself, and that filly don't enjoy anything! Pinkie eventually grabbed the microphone and started calling the square dance herself, which turned into kind of a logjam when she moved from square dancing to cube dancing (telling us to promenade up, a call that only Dash and the other pegasi among us could follow) and from then on in to an absolutely hilarious disaster when she got to the next step, the promised hypercube dance. To this day, I am unable to figure out how a pony is supposed to "allemande kata" or "allemande ana". What in Equestria does that even mean? As a body might expect, the whole thing dissolved into chaos and Flutters and I eventually flung ourselves onto a pile of straw-bales over to one side, sweating and gasping and laughing.

"This is a wonderful party, Applejack," said Fluttershy, shifting in the straw beside me, the light from the firefly-lamps glinting off her little pink butterfly necklace. "I wish Twilight were here. I wonder what's keeping her?"

"She was invited, same as everypony," I said. "If she cares more about them books of hers than attending my barnburner of a hootenanny, more power to her."

"I suppose," said Fluttershy, tapping the tips of her hooves together, even as I clapped my own hoof to my throat in response to my dang necklace shuddering again – these Element things don't react well to extended wearing. Fluttershy glanced over at me, looking like she was about to say something, but she didn't get a chance, 'cause at that very moment, my kid sister got ejected from the hypercube dance, achieved about six feet of air, and landed in a great cloud of loose straw between us.

"WHEE, DOGGIES!" Apple Bloom yelped. "I ain't had that much fun since me an' the Crusaders went frog-bothering!" She wrestled her hooves back under her against the straw. "I'm gonna get me some of that lemon punch!"

"Oh no you don't," I said, grinning and cuffing her on the shoulder. "We got plenty of apple juice for you little colts and fillies over on the snack table."

"But I want something fizzy!" Apple Bloom protested.

"The punch is for grown-ups, Apple Bloom," said Fluttershy. "Not for children."

Apple Bloom frowned. "Is Angel Bunny a grown-up bunny?"

"Well, yes," said Fluttershy. "But… punch is for grown-up ponies only. Not bunnies, no matter how grown-up they are."

"Y'might want to tell him that, then," said A.B., gesturing with one hoof across the room at the sight of Angel Bunny perched on the rim of the punch bowl, slurping out of one of them little cups. He looked at us, smacked his lips, and gave a dewclaws-up sign.

Fluttershy's eyes went wide. "Angel, no!" she squeaked, zipping away into the crowd.

"That critter," I remarked, "is something else."

"He is a very interesting rabbit," said a deep voice from nearby. "Quite intelligent."

"Oh, hey, Stranger Danger," I said, looking up at the Professor, a vision of starched white clothes and mussed-up hair against the party lights. "Where's your funny-eyed lightning assistant?"

"Scouring the buffet for baked goods, I imagine," he said. "I have released her for the moment. I shall have need of her soon, but not now."

"Well, all right then!" said A.B., patting a spot next to her. "Have a seat here on the straw, Professor!"

I nodded to my sis as the Professor worked out the best way to fold himself into a sitting position what with that gimpy back leg of his. "Yeah, so, about Angel," I continued. "That rabbit's dynamite, but I think Fluttershy'd fall apart without him, sometimes. He's bossy, and mean, and rude, but he can get Flutters up and out of that cottage when nopony else can. He makes her stand up for herself."

"So your friend is incomplete," said Stranger Danger, settling in, "but between the two of them, you think they make one whole pony."

"I guess I never thought about it that way," I said, frowning. "Yeah, I suppose."

"Fascinating," he said. "One of my great joys in life is watching how ponies and things work together. It is a discipline called 'Harmonic Studies', my first doctorate."

"I thought you was some kind of machine-making professor," I said. "What with being Pinkie Pie's teacher. And what with those gears on your rump." I nodded toward his flank.

"Aha," said the Professor, looking pleased with hisself. "Mechanical contraptionology is my second doctorate. But if you think about it, I am marked in such a way that both are appropriate. Yes, I build things with the gears, but also, gears work together in harmony to achieve goals. And the curious union of my Cutie Mark, my special talents and my doctoral degrees is itself also a construction of beautiful harmony."

"Ain't that something," I said. "Well, my talent is buckin' apples, pretty much."

Stranger Danger blinked at me. "But you are so much more than that, yes? You are obviously good at putting delicious party food together."

"She sure is!" said Apple Bloom. "And she's the best rodeo pony in Ponyville!"

"Indeed?" said the Professor. "Many talents, then. And this is saying nothing of your Element of Harmony, your very special power."

"So you know all about the Elements, then," I said.

"Of course," said the Professor. "I have heard many tales of the adventures of my beloved former student and her friends. You are the one called 'Applejack', bearer of the Element of Honesty."

"Yessir," I said. "Many-time hero of Equestria, that's me."

"That is good," said the Professor.

I smiled.

"But not very good," he finished.

I frowned.

Apple Bloom sat up and looked over at the Professor. "What do you mean, 'not very good'? My big sis is one of the best ponies there is!"

"I mean no disrespect, small yellow thing with bow," said Stranger Danger. "I do not mean that she herself is or is not good. I simply am saying…" he shrugged. "It is very messy. You have apples on your flank, yet your special talent is harvesting apples, yes, but also baking and/or rodeos. And your power is honesty. Where is the union in these things? Where, indeed, is the harmony?" Stranger Danger reached over and tapped at the orange-colored, apple-shaped stone in my necklace, and it struck me as he did so how dull and unimpressive the ol' jewel was looking lately. "You are like this necklace, Applejack. You are an apple who is orange-colored. Who ever heard of such a thing? How can a pony be truly happy when she tries to be so many different things at once?"

Somewhere nearby, the jug-band broke into a peaceful country waltz. I stared up at the firefly lights for a time, letting the music wash me down.

"I have been unhappy lately," I finally admitted, my voice sounding real small in my ears. "It's like I used to know where I stood around these parts. I used to know who I was, hear? But lately, I just can't figure it out. It's like the town just keeps changing under my hooves, and the things I was proud of doing, of being, just don't seem to matter much anymore."

"Ach," said the Professor. "This. Exactly this. You need something to link all the parts of yourself together. So you feel whole again."

"Is that it?" I said, propping myself up on one elbow. "Is that what's wrong with me?"

The Professor gave a tiny, hair-thin smile. "It is, in my learned opinion, very possible."

"How?" I said, leaning closer to him. "Please. Tell me how I do what you just said."

"I will tell you," said Stranger Danger, thrusting one hoof into the air. "You must use… SCIENCE!"

And then he waited.

"Himmel," he said. "Excuse." He got up from the straw, brushed himself off, limped over in the direction of the buffet, and then returned, dragging a crumb-covered Derpy – still hovering on her thundercloud – behind him.

"Ahem," said the Professor. "SCIENCE!" He tossed a coin at Derpy, and she bounced on the cloud a little, making some thunder and lightning. "Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome!" said Derpy, as she flitted back off to the buffet.

"No, no, no," I said, rolling over in the straw. "I can't, Professor. I ain't good with science. Every time I start thinking of new science-y ways to do stuff, it feels like there's wheels in my head that are just running way too hot and I have to shut them down before I wreck something."

"Hm," said the Professor. "Wheels. That is how I think. Using pictures of wheels, I mean. But I am good with machines. You are more… a natural scientist. You grow apples on your farm, which is a special science called 'pomology'. You bake. You make cider. Perhaps you are a child of chemistry, not machines."

"Beg pardon?"

"I have something for you," said Stranger Danger, grabbing a cup from a passing unicorn who was circulating around the room with glasses of the lemonade punch. He handed it to me. It looked fizzy and yellow and syrupy, and whichever pony had the ladle for this particular glass had actually snagged one of the floating lemon slices for it. "It is a new way of thinking about things," continued the Professor. "A new metaphor. From here on in, when you would think about wheels, think about this glass of punch instead. Think of bubbles, Applejack."

I frowned into my punch. "I ain't getting it," I said.

"Drink," encouraged the Professor. "Maybe then you will feel it."

I took a sip of the punch, first one I'd had that evening. It was icy-cold, and the shock of it to my gullet sent a needle of pain into my head. It tasted like snow, and like sour candy, and it cut through the scuz that'd been building up in the back of my throat like a sickle. I blinked a couple times, and heavens help me, I started kinda seeing what the Professor was talking about.

"Bubbles," I said, dreamily.

"You okay there, sis?" said A.B., looking up at me. "Is it good punch?"

"Yes, and yes, little one," said the Professor, smiling. "Now. Applejack. Tell me about… alcohol."

"It gets you funny in the head," I began. The fizz began rising in me, both in my stomach and in the pictures I stored in my mind. "It modifies certain biophysical processes in the brain, creatin' a sense of mild euphoria in smaller doses."

"Excellent. And how is it made?"

"Fermentation. Breaking down sugars using yeast enzymes." I shook my head. "This is all cider-making 101, Professor. This ain't chemistry."

"Ah, but that is the beauty of it! It is chemistry! And what if you want something a bit harder than cider?"

"Distillation," I said. "Due to different boiling points, maintaining a liquid at a certain temperature will cause its more volatile components, such as alcohol, to pass into vapor phase, whereupon you can collect 'em with a condenser. But the process isn't perfect, and you're gonna require multiple distillations if you want to really up the alcohol content of the resulting mixture."

"Good. So I suppose if you just keep on distilling and distilling, you will eventually get pure alcohol, correct?"

"NO!" I shouted, causing some of the other party guests to look over at me funny. I didn't care. Their opinions didn't matter, the little peons. Nothing mattered but the ideas that were tearing around my head, ideas in the shape of little yellow bubbles. "It don't work that way, Professor! Extreme concentration in an alcohol solution skews its volatility patterns all to Tartarus and back! You can try and try, but you ain't never gonna get above 97% pure alcohol with simple distilling, not even if you do it an infinite number of times!"

"I see," said the Professor, mildly. "And what does that make you want to do?"

"I'll tell you what that makes me want to do!" I said, leaping to my hooves on top of my straw bale. "It makes me want to find a way to make my old still concentrate something higher than 97% pure alcohol!"

"Excellent," said the Professor. "So you will stop when you have achieved one hundred percent purity level, Miss Applejack?"

"Heck no!" I roared, leaping off my bale. "I ain't gonna quit until I get me somethin' that's at least a hundred five or maybe ten percent pure alcohol! Hundred fifteen, maybe!"

"I… don't think that's possible," said one of the ponies in my growing audience.

"I don't give the butt end of a rat what ain't or ain't not possible, missy!" I snarled. "I got science now, and that means there ain't nothing beyond my grasp! I can throw the whole gol-durn world into the oven and then bake it to whatever consistency I desire!"

"Whatever," said my heckler, grabbing a cup of punch and walking away, which didn't bother me none. I stood there, swaying back and forth and grinning like a dope, letting wave after wave of ice-cold bubbles toss my brain around.

Apple Bloom followed me off the straw pile. "Uh… sis?" she said. "You all right?"

I didn't respond. Some questions are too irrelevant to answer.

"Very, very good," said Stranger Danger, picking up my discarded glass of punch. "Last question, and most important. Can you distill for me, from your beloved apples, a drink of pure Honesty?"

"You bet," I said, the chemical equations already bubbling into crystalline form in my mind. "I think I know just how I might do something like that."

"Boom!" said the Professor, clapping his hooves together. "And there you have it. One step closer to inner harmony. You, Applejack, will use science in the way I have just described to you. You will use it to link apples… to honesty. Your Cutie Mark to your power."

"Yes," I said. "Yes. It all makes sense now!" I rushed at the Professor and gave him a neck-hug. "Thanks so awfully much, Stranger Danger! This here's gonna change everything!"

"Exactly," said the Professor, "what I am counting on."

I giggled like a school-filly. "Heck," I said. "This is the best I felt in years! I feel like I could do anything I got a mind to! I feel like… I could even go over and talk to Bell Pepper right now!"

"Enjoy!" said Professor Danger, raising the punch glass to me. "Have fun!"

I waved one last time at the Professor and my confused-looking kid sister, then charged off across the barn, all staggering and half-cocked but with a beautiful sense of purpose.

On my way over to the Pepper family, I found Pinkie Pie. I reared up, put my hooves on her shoulders, and stared her in the face.

"Pinkie," I said, my eyes wide and twitching, "that is some fine punch you cooked up."

"Thanks!" said Pinkie, a little weevil of confusion entering her voice. "I'm glad to hear you say that, because I thought it tasted a little too lemony. What's wrong with your Element necklace, Applejack? Did you spill tomato sauce on it?"

I looked down at the formerly-orange stone, which had turned sort of a dark topaz color. "Oh, this thing has been giving me guff all night," I said. "We'll send them all back with Twilight when the party's over. Give 'em a rest. Fix 'em right up."

"Okay, that's another thing," said Pinkie. "Where is Twilight? I haven't seen her all evening!"

"She'll come around eventually," I said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta see a horse about a horse. But not in the 'going to the outhouse' sense."

"I… don't understand," said Pinkie.

"Ain't that a switch!" I said, gleefully, pointing my hoof right in her face. "Me, confusing you for a change! A ha! A ha ha ha!"

"Applejack, have you had too much to drink?"

"Nope!" I said, proudly. "But I have had too much to dream! AND IT'S STILL NOT ENOUGH!" I spun away from her, wheeled off across the room, and left her in my dust. "See y'all later, Doctor Pie!" I yelled back at her over my shoulder, but if Pinkie had anything to say in response, I didn't stick around to hear it.

Good night. Real good night.

08 - Breakfast of Champignons (Honesty and Kindness)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Eight: Breakfast of Champignons (Honesty and Kindness)

It was another beautiful morning at Sweet Apple Acres. The sky was a fetching shade of blue, the birds were hopping hither and yon doing their little birdy business, and the air was filled with lovely music.

More specifically, it was "Sweet Home Applebama", one of my personal favorites, blasting out over the old gramophone. And I was singing right along, wrenching bolts into place square in time with the music. I was building a thing, and that thing was good. Even if it did spark something fierce at times. And occasionally light things on fire.

Gone were the silly niggling cold-apple-cobbler doubts of last night. The minute I tacked my blueprints to the wall of this big old shed in the dim small hours before sunrise, I knew for certain I had something special and valuable to give the world. Were Mac and I acting a little strange? Absolutely. But that was understandable. We had been shown a better way by the Professor, and it was just taking a little time for our brains to adjust. No excuse to dilly-dally! To not share the Apple Family's brilliance with the world would be a crime, a sin, even. And so I set to work, putting tools to wood and torch to metal, and it weren't long before the raw fiery joy of creating something brand new, of making a thing where there never was a thing, filled my heart up almost to bursting. Did I still have questions? Yes. But my science could provide all the answers.

Out in the fields, I could hear big brother building, same as me, fine-tuning his own project by firing test shot after test shot from the hail cannons straight into the earth. Eventually he worked his way up from the gas-fired explosions of the cannons to some sort of voice amplification thingamawhat, his powerful hundred-decibel yawps shaking the walls of my work shed and bringing dust down from the ceiling each time one rang out over the orchard. Didn't bother me none. I mean, if he were some kind of scientific rival of mine or something, I would naturally be forced to destroy him for his impudence, but family ties are stronger than any force on this green earth.

I dropped my goggles back over my eyes and touched my torch to the sparker again, causing it to burst into a gout of orange. Eyes glimmering, I starved the flame down to a hard blue wedge and then spent a good minute just staring into it. That fire was me, I thought. Bright. Focused. Ready to impose my will on the world, to cut into it like a piece of copper tubing and shape it to the form of my dreams. Thank you, science.

Yes Ma'am, I continued to myself, my brain-fizz hissing bright, at this rate I'll have my quark cider ready to go by midday. Then I can rub them other ponies' faces in it when I come around to drop off their lunches. Can you imagine how them late-sleeper townponies are gonna feel when I reveal that my earth-shattering, science-fair-winning invention is done and ready to go with hours to spare? The thought of it made me want to laugh and laugh, and, heckfire, I saw no reason not to.

"Mwa ha ha," I started. "Well, shoot, that felt good." I took a deeper breath. "Mwa ha ha! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

I grinned crazily then, sucked in a whole lungful, and let it all out, banging my unoccupied non-torch-holding hoof over and over again on my worktable as I did so: "BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! A-HAHAHAHAHA! A-HA-HA-HA-haaa…"

Laws, what a feeling, I thought, letting the table take my weight for a moment. To have ultimate triumph practically laying in bed with you, stroking your mane and whispering sweet nothings. Once I got this last bit of copper pipe in order, all I'd need was some kind of metallic concave construction, like a broken pot or—

I felt a jerk on one corner of my science duds. I turned around, snarling at the interruption, only to see Winona, my very favoritest herding dog, holding a bowl in her mouth and wagging her tail at me with some kind of powerful hope that I couldn't quite place.

"Wonderful!" I said, grabbing the bowl up and dropping it on the table. "Winona, you're the best dog a pony could ask for, even if you do go tugging at my clothes when I got a cutting torch going. You gone and read my durn mind – this here is exactly what I need!" I studied it for a second. "Curvature's a little too wide, though. I'm a-gonna have to cut it in half." I applied the torch to it, quickly tearing a gouge in the metal.

Winona blinked at me, and then her ears drooped and she whined a little. She tucked her tail and laid down on the floor of the shed, staring sadly up at me. I scowled at her. "Oh, what now, dog?" I said. "Can't you see I'm on the verge of scientific breakthrough here?"

"There you are, big sis!" said Apple Bloom, appearing at the door of my shed. "I followed the sound of your maniacal laughter and—"

Apple Bloom stopped cold as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the shed, taking in the magnificence of my science fair project. Her jaw fell slack.

"Applejack?" she said, eventually.

"Yeah, A.B.?" I said, leaning in and continuing to cut at the bowl.

"Applejack, why did you move a water tower into the shed?"

I killed the torch, raised my goggles and looked up at my masterwork. I expect the sight of the thing would be a mite overwhelming at first glance. "Well," I said, "I started out just grafting a mess of business onto the old pot still I already had in here, but it quickly became apparent to me that the level of concentration involved in the production of large hadron cider is so gol-darn immense that I needed to work in larger quantities, to think bigger, as it were. So I had Big Mac drag in the water tower he's been coopering, and I done repurposed it for my boiler. See that copper sheeting on the bottom? Ain't it pretty?"

"Uh huh," said A.B., eyes wide. "And what about that big ol' fizzing thing?"

I glanced up at the big ol' fizzing thing, a full-on perfect picture of the inside of my own head. "That there is a hundred-plate fractionating bubble column with an additional mid-point feed, currently running on test mix. It's one heck of a power draw, but thankfully, we've got a tautline on the roof leading direct to the power plant at the dam. That place has electricity going spare! We got so much electricity I even set up a Jacob's Ladder over there in the corner, just 'cause I can."

Winona perked up and began barking at the corner where I keep the Jacob's Ladder, which was buzzing cheerfully as it generated arc after arc of white airborne current. Apple Bloom squinted into the gloom at it. "Sis, I think you're lighting the wall on fire!"

"Dang-blast it," I said, running over and patting the fire out. "Sometimes I wonder why I even have a Jacob's Ladder. Anyhow." I turned back to her. "The old industrial laundry mangle over there is now my revolutionary new fermentation vat, the polished glass case over on the other side is a proper spirit safe to accept the final outflow, and the final step, the last piece of my grand apparatus, is this honey here, the yeast supercollider." I gestured magnificently at the tangle of copper coils and wires, which had started humming ominously to itself.

"I ain't gonna even ask what that's for," said Apple Bloom, kinda nervous-like.

"Just as well. Your simple and child-like mind might downright boil over attempting to contain the idea it represents. Soon as I get this here concave deflector torched through and weld it onto the supercollider, I'll be ready to start manufacturing yeast quarks, and then, my absolute domination of this science fair business will be right at hoof. So, iffn' y'all will excuse me." I dropped my goggles back over my eyes, sparked up the torch again, and continued cutting. Winona started in on the whimpering again.

"Well, I'm sure glad you're almost done," said my little sis. "Y'all been so excited about this science business, ain't nopony been helping with the chores! Mac's been blowing stuff up out in the field, Granny's been cackling down in the cellar with the door locked, and you been here all night with this thing! I been gathering eggs and slopping hogs all morning, and if I can't get somepony's help dealing with them tent caterpillars on the zap apple trees, I don't know what I'm gonna mother of mercy sis, what are you doing to Winona's bowl?"

"Hm?" I said, snuffing the torch and giving the concave deflector a good rap on my work table, splitting the last bit of metal in two.

"You… you just sawed Winona's bowl in half!" said Apple Bloom. Winona whined, in what I guess was agreement.

"Oh," I said, inspecting my concave deflector, scraping a hoof across the word "WINON" A.B. had painted on the side some time ago. I guess the "A" was on the other piece or something. "I reckon I did. You gotta understand, sis, it was just the exact the perfect shape. Necessary casualty of progress."

"That was Winona's food bowl!" shouted A.B., stomping a hoof. "Did Winona even get her oats-and-eggs this morning?"

I thought for a while. I couldn't rightly remember.

A.B. bucked once in pure agitation at my silence. "No wonder she's all upset! A.J., what's wrong with you? What's wrong with everypony?"

"Ain't nothing wrong!" I said. "We's just all advancing pony civilization here, no need to worry."

"You ain't making me feel better, for all that," grumbled little sis, clucking to my dog. "C'mon, Winona, let's get some food in you."

"Never mind that," I said, waving her off. "I'll get Winona her breakfast just as soon as I get these particles accelerating. What I need for you to do is knock on the door to that cellar and find out what Granny's got cooked up for everypony else's breakfasts. Last night, I promised hoof-delivered meals to my whole little circle, and I ain't fixin' to renege on that."

I fumed, then, my eyes going distant. "I can just imagine what those backstabbing simpletons would have to say about that state of affairs. Typical Applejack, they'd say. Mouth writing checks her hooves can't cash." I snapped back to the present and fixed a glare at my sis. "So this breakfast distribution is gonna go perfectly, hear? I need your help on this, Apple Bloom. Or there'll be heck to pay."

"Uh," said Apple Bloom, edging toward the door. "Sure, Applejack. I'll meet you out on the east field. We can deliver breakfast together."

"Outstanding," I said, turning back to my work.

Without another word, Apple Bloom backed out of the shed. I could hear the door slam behind her. I turned back to the yeast supercollider. So close, so ever-loving close…

Somewhere behind me, I heard Winona start whimpering again.

"Hush, dog," I said, pulling a smoked-glass mask over my face, even as cobalt-colored light from the warming supercollider began seeping into the dark around me like an oil spill. "Almost finished here."

Science, I thought, as I fired up the arc welder. Got to love it.

* * *

So then it was later, the morning continuing bright and clear. I stood at the village overlook, sucking down lungful after lungful of cold, refreshing air and gazing down at little ol' Ponyville, my childhood-and-always home. The place was a happy bustle of industry, all them townponies skittering to the shops and back for the next critical component of their science projects. Here or there, a pillar of sweet white smoke or vented-out water vapor would trickle up into the sky, eventually mingling with and becoming lost in the cloud layer ringing distant Canterlot Mountain. It looked like paradise, and it was only getting paradisier. My heart swelled. I felt proud to be a pony, proud to be a part of this happy little community, and I was very much looking forward to subjugating all them peons, steamrollering over our old system of government, and replacing it with a new, entirely apple-based one. To be honest I wasn't quite sure how that even would work – possibly a "one-apple-one-vote" type deal – but there'd be time to figure that out once I crushed them all's under my hoof. It was gonna be a good day.

Somewhere behind me came the noise of heavy clunking and groaning; Apple Bloom, right on schedule. I turned around to see my faithful little sis struggling mightily against the weight of a couple sets of seriously overloaded saddlebags. To my ear, the bags clanked around a lot more than breakfast typically has a right to.

"Hooves to glory, A.B.," I said, "what the hay is in them saddlebags?"

A.B. gave one final mighty heave and dumped the whole caboodle at my hooves. "Apparently," she said, "these are omelettes aux champignons."

I inspected them cautiously. "Do they bite?" I asked.

"No, ya' big dodo. All that means is 'mushroom omelets', 'cept in French." A.B.'s fancy-talking wasn't a matter of concern (little sis has a fairly strong residual grasp of French from a wicked bout with the Cutie Pox a while gone now), but if Granny was cooking fancy too, then that was another story entirely.

I pulled open one of the saddlebags with my hoof, revealing a slick, polished surface of metal underneath the canvas, a big ol' steel egg-shaped thing, about a foot around. Looked like there were about six of 'em, all told. "Huh," I said. "I would have expected maybe some fritters and a travel carafe. What's all this business?"

Apple Bloom spat into the dust. "Granny's been up inventing these things all night. I guess they're some kind of automatic omelet-cooking covered delivery dish, or something. According to Granny, they're designed to sense when you start to get close to the pony they're for, and that kicks in the heat, so when you get there to deliver it the omelet is perfectly cooked right at the moment you show up."

"Ingenious!"

"No, it's dumb!" insisted Apple Bloom. "Fluttershy's cottage is too close, which means her omelet dish is already burning hot! I practically got me a sore from it! Not to mention giving myself lumbago dragging them all the way here from home!"

"Aw, poor A.B.," I said, tugging at her hair-bow. "Tell you what: you take two, I'll take four. That way we can make better time. And I'll get back to my project quicker."

"You got that yeast accelerating, then?" she asked, dully.

"Accelerating and smashed to quarks," I said. "I already got me a proof-of-concept batch fermenting, and after that it'll automatically unload into the boiler. That's the beauty of a good contraption, A.B. Once you get 'er started, you ain't hardly gotta do nothing! Leaving me plenty of time to gloat." I grinned wide. "Who should we gloat at first, little sis?"

"Well, I d'know about 'gloating'," said my sis, shrugging herself into her saddlebags, "but Fluttershy's dish is the one that really kinda stings right now. Can we unload that one?"

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "I want to see these so-called 'abominations of nature' with my own eyes."

* * *

I stared at the wretched-looking thing hanging upside-down from Fluttershy's forehoof. It gave a feeble little hack.

"Why are you showing me this?" I said.

"Because you said you wanted to see it with your own eyes," said Fluttershy. "I'm sorry, did I misunderstand?"

"No, no," I said, attempting to hold back a speck of gorge. "It's just that I'm typically used to seeing critters with two or fewer wings, and with all those wings being of the same general type. Not a couple butterfly ones and a couple bat ones all scattered around here and there. Another thing I am used to: critters whose left halves are pretty much the same as their right halves."

"My new natural order says that symmetry can be very limiting," said Fluttershy, sounding pleased. "We don't want to limit our little friends, do we?" She scrunched her snout up and nuzzled at the abomination. "Do we? Do we? No we don't!"

The abomination curled a single insect-like leg around Fluttershy's snout and then scuttled up her hair, finally coming to a rest on her ear and hanging there like the world's least-fetching earring. It hissed "in contentment", or maybe just "at me".

"So what is it, basically?" I said, cocking my head to one side and trying to figure the thing out.

"It's a butter-bee-bat," said Fluttershy. "I took unfertilized butterfly eggs, unfertilized bee eggs and unfertilized bat eggs, and mixed them all together to create a brand new creature."

"Bats don't have eggs," I noted.

"How little you know," said Fluttershy, fussing with the monster.

"So… that's your science project? A butter-bee-bat?"

"Oh, no," said Fluttershy earnestly, "Beebee here is just my cuddly-wuddly little prototype organism, isn't she? Isn't she?" She tickled at her ear-hanger; it hissed again, staring at me crookedly on account of it really not being able to stare any other way. Then Flutters gestured up to a nearby tree. "My science project is an entire swarm of butter-bee-bats."

I followed Fluttershy's gesture with my eyes to the leafy branches above me. Sure enough, hanging from the limbs like a whole mess of real unappealing fruit was a couple hundred hanging shiny cocoon-like things, each one swaying back and forth in the morning breeze. Each of the cocoons was connected with a thick vulcanized hose to a steaming, clattering engine of wood and glass hanging from the lowest sturdy branch.

"The moment the Professor spoke his wisdom, I had a vision," continued Fluttershy, behind me. "I've always been shy of making new friends, but that's because I've never literally tried making new friends before. And when the Professor told me to link butterflies and kindness together, I thought of how caterpillars turn themselves into butterflies while they sleep, in a protective shell called a 'chrysalis'."

"Uh huh," I said, still staring up at the tree and trying to imagine a couple hundred Beebees. I was not really liking the picture it made.

"That's when I thought of this contraption," said Fluttershy, fluttering over to the hanging device and gesturing timidly at it. "It's a recombination device that takes the essence of butterflies and combines it with the mixed essences of various other animals to create magnificent hybrids." Flutters screwed the top off a sampling barrel to reveal a mess of inky purple-black pudding-like stuff, which, without a lid, boiled and spattered into the air above it. She pulled up a hoof-full. "I've been piping this amalgamated essence into the chrysalises above, and after a period of incubation, it will eventually emerge as an entire army of love."

"Should you really be touching that, Flutters? Or… standing that close, even?"

"Oh, it's perfectly safe," said Fluttershy, dumping the goo back into the barrel and screwing the top down, then wiping her hoof on her already-stained work smock. "So long as you don't get it in your eyes. Then I hesitate to think what might happen. That's why I'm wearing my tornado goggles."

"But you ain't wearing them," I noted.

"Oh," said Fluttershy, blinking. "I hesitate to think what might have just happened there." She retrieved her tornado goggles from where they were hanging on a nearby branch (depositing Beebee in their place) and squared them over her eyes. "There. I estimate there's only a small percentage chance that I was just systemically contaminated by mutagenic substances."

"So long as it's a small percentage chance," I said. "Look, Flutters, if you're saying you can make absolutely anything in the world, so long as it's part butterfly, why in Equestria did you make… that?" I gestured kinda-sorta in Beebee's direction, still not wanting to look at it real close.

"Why?" snarled Fluttershy, her face suddenly twisting into a mask of rage, the little spinel butterfly jewel at her neck trembling as it did. "Are you questioning my scientific judgment?"

"Er, no," I said, stepping back. "Just curious."

"Oh," she said, returning to normal. "Well, as I said, making them part butterfly was a given, so that meant that my brilliant creations would naturally be able to fly." Fluttershy blinked. "Um," she said, turning her head away. "I mean… I guess they're pretty good creations. I don't mean to be boastful."

"Yeah, well, they ain't gonna stack up against my brilliant creation when the chips are down," I said. "But go ahead anyway."

"I'm sure you're right," said Fluttershy, staring at the ground. "Anyway, even though they were going to be flying animals, I wanted something furry and cuddly, too. And I thought it would be startling and confusing to the poor dears if the 'idea' of flying wasn't built in to their furry part as well. So I took a furry, flying creature – a vampire bat – and spliced some of that in, too."

"And the bee part?"

"I wanted them to be able to swarm," said Fluttershy. "That way, they'd all be able to work together to just overwhelm any target of my choice with love and kindness."

"So let me get this straight. You made a critter out of bees and vampire bats… to be nice to people with."

"Yes," said Fluttershy, nodding vigorously, her eyes wide.

I consulted the bubbles in my own head for a moment.

"I guess that makes sense," I said.

"I'm glad you think so," replied Fluttershy. "If you haven't already delivered breakfast to Rainbow Dash yet, and if it's not too much bother, please tell her that soon I will have something in a yellow-striped bat, if she's still interested."

"Hey, that's right," I said, looking around. "Breakfast. Where is that durn sister of mine with breakfast?"

"Over here, big sis!" came Apple Bloom's voice. In a second, she appeared over a rise in the path, still dragging the saddlebags full of breakfast devices. "I'm just getting harried by this rabbit here, is all!"

Sure enough, as she got closer, it became easy to see that part of the delay here was that A.B. was engaged in an active tug-of-war against Fluttershy's rabbit over Granny's dishes. "Oh, Angel," said Fluttershy, scornfully. "Don't bother poor Apple Bloom like that."

Angel gave Fluttershy a stern look, thumped his foot a couple times, and pointed at the covered breakfast plates.

"I know," said Fluttershy. "And I'm sorry. But I think Applejack would tell you that those dishes contain pony breakfast, not bunny breakfast."

"Hayseeds, Angel!" exclaimed Apple Bloom, straining against Angel's powerful rabbit leg muscles. "You'd think Fluttershy didn't feed you or something!"

"Actually, now that you mention it, I haven't fed Angel yet this morning."

Apple Bloom spun around to look at Fluttershy with a mightily shocked expression, letting go of the saddlebag strap as she did. Angel and the saddlebags went tumbling head-over-hocks, striking Fluttershy's breakfast dish against a stone in the process; it opened with a steamy hiss. Angel dove for the dish, but then, with a bright 'scree'-like noise, a falcon from Fluttershy's menagerie appeared, dive-bombed the exposed omelet, snatched it up, and vanished back into the air. Angel cussed a blue streak in bunny language, shaking his paw at the bird, and then proceeded to start chawing on the unyielding metal of the remaining dishes.

Apple Bloom's wide-eyed glare at Fluttershy had not faltered through all this. "Fluttershy," said A.B. "You didn't feed your pet neither?"

"None of them," admitted Fluttershy, bashfully, scraping her hoof in the dirt and looking away. "I've just been too busy with Beebee and her friends. Please understand that I'm only putting it off because I'm so close to ultimate triumph here."

"Yeah, A.B.," I said. "Quit hassling us grown-ups about this. You don't understand the fires of creation like we do."

"What I understand," said Apple Bloom, turning on me, "is that I'd maybe, just maybe, expect this kind of neglect out of you and Winona. But the Fluttershy I know would never not feed her pets."

"Apple Bloom," said Fluttershy, dithering a little, "Sometimes things come up—"

Apple Bloom stamped a hoof. "Not never!" she insisted.

"And just what do you mean by saying that you'd expect this sort of thing out of me?" I huffed. "I'm the most dependable pony in Ponyville!"

"Is that a fact, A.J.?" said Apple Bloom. "What happened to helping me carry these breakfast dishes, then? You were the one that offered it and everything, and then you didn't!"

"Forgot," I admitted, looking over at where Apple Bloom's overloaded saddlebags had fallen.

A.B. shook her head. "It's like overnight, the two of you got rude, and distractible, and just plain not nice! And the whole rest of the Apple Family's gone crazy except me! At this rate, I'm gonna get my Cutie Mark in 'dealing with total nincompoops' by lunchtime!"

"Speak respectful," I cautioned her.

"Ain't me you gotta worry about," she said. "Big sis, you and me's gonna get into town to drop off the rest of this breakfast, and meanwhile have a talk with Rarity or Twilight. This whole mess is starting to feel like a 'unicorn magic' thing. Maybe they can shed some light on it."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, turning in the direction of Ponyville and starting out.

"Help me carry some of these dishes!" squealed A.B., behind me, stomping again.

I stopped. I shook my head. "Right," I said, muzzily, gathering up a couple of the remaining sealed breakfast dishes, stopping to dislodge a clinging Angel Bunny off of one of them. "Of course. I'm gonna help my sister out. Because that's what I do. I help ponies."

"Okay," said Fluttershy, watching over us as we got all packed. "Have fun delivering the rest. If you, um, want to have fun, that is."

"This ain't about fun no more," said Apple Bloom. "And Fluttershy, before you do anything else with your… science… widget there, you are going to march on back to your cottage and get the pet food situation squared away, all right?"

"I think I should go back inside anyway and wash up," said Fluttershy, scratching at the bottom of one of her tornado goggle lenses. "I think I got something in my eye."

"Whatever," said Apple Bloom, squaring up her saddlebags again. "Just make sure you get 'er done. A.J., let's ride."

And so we did, taking a shortcut through Fluttershy's menagerie on the way down to Ponyville. The sound there was that of a haunted place, full of the wails and cries of hungry critters whose comfy little world had suddenly started to go wrong. It was a noise made up of a little sadness, a little frustration, and a whole lot of plain, naked incomprehension of why life had suddenly gotten so unkind on them. I had the urge to stop, to crack open the dishes and feed them buggers, least the ones that could eat eggs or mushrooms, but I couldn't; I was pride-bound to deliver these meals to their intended recipients. It hurt, but I couldn't stop. There was more at stake here than hungry animals.

We quickly left the menagerie behind, and as the wailing noise began to fade behind us, I found that I could shut out the memory of it with a little focused thought. What I couldn't ever quite think away was the pictures in my head of the quiet ones, the ones that just stared big-eyed at us as we passed, wondering why.

I found that I didn't know, myself.

Maybe my science couldn't provide all the answers.

09 - Everything is Catching on Fire (Generosity and Magic)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Nine: Everything is Catching on Fire (Generosity and Magic)

It was a really loud morning in Ponyville.

I mean it. We are talking unbelievably loud, here. It was so loud, I can't even think of a proper down-home countrified expression to describe just how dad-gum loud it was. If you absolutely insist on having one, well, you go right ahead and tell yourself that Ponyville that morning was louder than a pen full of angry hogs getting their tails chawed on by a herd of snapping turtles, but really, it was a whole lot louder than that.

It weren't just all the hammering and sawing and welding and other assorted noises of construction going on. Those all by themselves would've been a louder noise than I'd ever heard in this town, outside of the rail depot. And it weren't just the revving of engines and humming of dynamos, neither. Ditto to that. No, what really pushed 'er over the top into zero-countrified-metaphor territory was… the whumps.

I suppose, broadly, that a pony might call it "music", but what it really was was a solid, pulsating thunderstorm of raw noise that kicked you in the gut on the one-beat, followed through to your chin on the two, and then rifled through your saddlebags while you were down on the ground whimpering. It was the kind of rhythm that made you question both your ability to keep your lunch in your stomach and the existence of a benevolent creator. And, slashing above this hellacious undercurrent was the metal-edged cry of some sorta stringed instrument, which sounded for all the world like the howl of a bright spirit being beaten down to Tartarus, one measure at a time. Predictably, it was all coming from the home of Vinyl Scratch, Ponyville's resident technohooey disk jockey.

"Vinyl Scratch," I said, shaking my head at the terrible racket.

"Yeah, Applejack?" came a voice from over my flank.

I turned around. "Oh," I half-shouted, sizing up the little white unicorn for a spell. "Vinyl, why the hay ain't you in there where all the noise is?"

"Oh, yeah. Just had to run down to the Ponyville Pharmacy to snag some breakfast." She lifted a little bottle of white pills in her magic aura and rattled it around. "Y'want some?"

"No thanks," I said.

"Suit yourself," said Vinyl, grabbing up a hoof-full of tablets and crunching them down.

"Well, at least somepony around here's acting normal," said Apple Bloom. "But if you're out here, who's in there making noise?"

Vinyl gave us a wide, pearly grin. "It's Tavi!" she yelled. "Girl absolutely found her groove, overnight! I'd just gotten back home from DJing the cuteceañera at Sugarcube Corner last night, and I found her lying on the floor, rocking back and forth and sketching out the plans for some sorta wicked-looking cello amp! And this morning, she totally kicked it into gear! Boom!"

"Wait," said A.B. "Somepony hired you to DJ their kid's cuteceañera?"

"What can I say?" said Vinyl. "Some parents? Got taste."

"Uh huh," said Apple Bloom.

"And hey, you know what else is tasty?" said Vinyl, gesturing at the air around us, almost like she could visually point out the noise, which was pretty near possible. "These oontz! My mare-toy in there is doing the whole musical ascension thing! I told her it'd happen to her someday, and she didn't believe me, but I was right! I mean, just listen to that!"

Vinyl squeezed her eyes shut, letting her little body rock to the rhythm. "Aw, yeah," she said. "You fillies better call the heart-doctor, 'cause those beats are sick!" She blinked, then. "Pony," she continued. "Those beats are pretty sick. I'm almost a little jealous a' her in there."

Suddenly, there was a flash and a whiff of smoke from in the house, and the brain-melting music stopped dead. "VINYL!" shrieked Octavia's voice from inside. "I NEED… MORE… ELECTRICITY!"

"Ease off, filly!" yelled Vinyl, cupping her hoof to her mouth. "We're almost out of fuses!"

"DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!"

"Like what?"

"I DON'T KNOW! RUN ME A LINE TO THE HYDRO PLANT! MY POTENTIAL IS BEING LIMITED BY THESE EARTHLY CONSTRAINTS!"

"See that?" said Vinyl, chuckling. "She's gone totally dubstep diva on me."

"ARE YOU TALKING TO THOSE OTHER SCIENTISTS, VINYL?"

Vinyl sniffed, sizing up my white coat and goggles. "Yeees?" she replied.

"STOP THAT! YOU MUST ATTEND ME, AND ME ALONE!"

Vinyl mouthed the word "wow" at us. "Milady calls," she said, crossing back to her front door and stepping back inside. "Stay frosted, yo?"

"Yo," A.B. and I agreed, half-heartedly.

As Vinyl closed her front door, there was a buzz and a crackle from deep in my saddlebags, which I figured was the omelet dishes belonging to my three townpony friends finally springing to life. At the same moment, Apple Bloom glanced back at her own bags, suggesting that her one remaining dish had switched on as well – probably Granny had fixed one up for Spike? It sort of left the question of what I myself was gonna eat, but I wasn't real worried, and didn't in fact feel all that hungry. My stomach had been thoroughly cudgeled by Octavia's beats, and even beyond that, I was beginning to feel that food, like sleep, was nothing more than a distraction, like I could live on nothing but air and dreams from here on in.

Meanwhile, A.B. had to the same conclusion as I had about who was supposed to get what. "Well," she said, "I expect that'll be Rarity, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Spike. How you wanna go about this, Applejack?"

"Rarity first," I said. "I won't have that pony judging me for giving her overcooked eggs."

"Rarity it is," said Apple Bloom, heading off through the increasing crowds of ponies out on missions. "Carousel Boutique, here we come."

* * *

"HELLOOO, SCIENCE-DARLINGS!"

The voice was coming from above. Apple Bloom and me squinted up, up, way up there to the top of Carousel Boutique, trying to shield our eyes against the damaging light.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I should probably come right out and tell you that Carousel Boutique was a mite different this morning. You might not have noticed it if you was just trudging along, eyes on hooves, because the changes to the building didn't start until you got to the little cupola. But then, whoa, Nelly. The entire tip-top of the boutique had been built up into a horrendously pretty contraption of twining alabaster, polished brass, and really enormously huge lenses what looked like they'd been yanked off an undeserving lighthouse somewhere. And that whole mess enclosed the biggest diamond I ever laid eyes on, a huge sparkly angular crystal that was glowing pret'near as bright as the morning sun overhead.

"Rarity?" I called out, trying to see something, anything, against that hellish glow. "That you up there?"

"In the science-flesh!" replied Rarity, in a lilting voice.

"If she keeps on doing that," I muttered, "I'm destroying her first."

Apple Bloom glanced questioningly at me. I guess I hadn't told her my plans for absolute violent conquest yet. Ah, heck, there'd be time for that.

"Sweetie Belle," said Rarity. "Be a science-dear and escort Applejack and her sister up to the Lanthorn, would you?"

"Sure thing, Rarity," came Sweetie Belle's voice, sounding more doubtful than enthusiastic. In a minute, the little pink-and-violet-maned unicorn filly appeared at the boutique's front door, a pair of dark-lensed goggles over her eyes.

"Hey, Apple Bloom," said Sweetie Belle, in a voice like a raincloud. "Hey Applejack."

"Sweetie Belle!" said my sis. "Listen, everypony up at the farm is all special in the head all of a sudden, Fluttershy just plain ain't Fluttershy no more, and we just passed Octavia's house and she's gone all screechy, too, so I'm afeared it's catching. We need a normal, not-insane, not-Vinyl unicorn to tell us what in the hoof is going on!"

Sweetie Belle sighed, pulling her goggles to her forehead, just above her horn. "You don't want Rarity, then."

"Come again?" I said.

"It's easier to show you," said Sweetie Belle. She pushed the door all the way open and gestured us in. The little "Attention, customers!" bell rang cheerily as she did so, but as we stepped inside, it became plain that that bell was just about the last remaining cheery thing about the inside of Carousel Boutique. All Rarity's beloved froo-froo fashions had been cleared away from the display space, leaving a great big empty room at the base of the building. Except for, it weren't empty, as such. Where once had stood racks of fine clothing and mirrors and dressmaker's dummies was a huge thrumming column of pale blue light, encased in a floor-to-ceiling tube of clear glass. The other lights in the room were all off, and the walls had been completely draped over with heavy curtains of navy-blue velvet. All in all, not looking like a real friendly place to do a little fashion-shopping no more.

A.B. approached the glass pillar and looked down, a white light shining up on her face from below as she did so. "What the hay? There something on fire down there, Sweetie Belle?"

"It's gemstones," said Sweetie Belle, sighing and shaking her head. "Rarity's burning gemstones."

Apple Bloom looked up from the hole in the floor at Sweetie Belle, her jaw gone slack. "Butter my rump and call me a muffin," she said.

"I know, right?" said Sweetie Belle, sadly. "I came down here because Mom and Dad invented something called 'Remote-Controlled T.V.' this morning and they haven't stopped fighting over it since. I thought Rarity might have something I could help her out with until things calmed down. How was I supposed to know I was going to be helping her throw diamonds into a furnace in the basement?"

"Why is she doing a dang-fool thing like that?" I asked. "What's the point?"

"Why, to power the Wondrous Lanthorn, of course!" said Sweetie Belle, mimicking Rarity's accent.

"The whatdrous what-thorn?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head. "It's some sort of telekinesis amplifier. When I ask about it, though, she starts using words that hurt my head. I better just let you talk to her."

"Lead the way," I said. "I gotta unload this breakfast on her anyhow."

Sweetie Belle led us past the light column back to the kitchen and to a set of stairs leading up to the second-floor living area, and beyond that to the roof cupola-turned-lighthouse-thing, partially open to the clear sky outside. There we found Rarity, pointlessly bedazzling as always, wearing a glitzy thing that looked like some kind of eastern military dress getup, complete with matching helmet. The whole outfit shone terribly against the blinding light of the nearby diamond beacon, and it was all the any of us could do not to get our eyes burned clean out of our skulls by it all.

"Lights, Rarity," I said, my eyes squeezed to slits.

"Oh!" she said, rising from a little upholstered divan that was more-or-less surrounded by big, green-glowing panels. "My apologies, Applejack." She trotted over to a wall-switch, threw it, and it instantly became a lot more tolerable in there.

"Hey, Rar," I said. "Nice getup, for certain values of 'nice'."

"Do you like it?" said Rarity, batting her eyelashes at me. "It's a fabulous new design of mine based on the formal uniforms worn by the Stalliongrad Corps of Miners and Sappers. Who knew ponies who spent their days digging tunnels in the dirt could shine up so well for special occasions?" She pinged a hoof against her shiny bronze helmet. "And, it's functional, too!"

"Uhhuhgreat," I said. "Listen, Rarity, I got this here breakfast for—"

Apple Bloom cut in front of me. "For the love a' celery," she demanded, pointing one little hoof at Rar, "why are you setting diamonds on fire in your basement?"

"Well," said Rarity. "In addition to spending all morning whipping up this beautiful high-fashion martial-culture-inspired ensemble, which I fully intend to turn into an entire line, complete with its own major release event, I, er, built this old thing too." She gestured up at the towering Lanthorn, still gleaming with rainbow light. "It runs on candescing gems. I've spent, oh, about a half hour on it now. But once I'm done here, it's back to fashion!"

"Wait," I said. "You built that in the last half hour?"

"What can I say?" said Rarity, primly pleased. "I'm quite efficient when I get 'in my zone'. It's not perfected yet, mind you. I'm still polishing off some of the rough edges. But when I'm finished, it'll be the most beautiful techno-arcane telekinesis augmentation apparatus Equestria has ever seen!" Rarity glided back over to the divan and started flipping switches, causing a crazy spin of white lines and circles to swirl into place on the dark-green panels surrounding the controls. Slowly but steadily, an ear-splitting whine began to build in the cupola. "Would any of you science-ponies care for a demonstration?"

"Is it gonna kill us?" asked Apple Bloom.

Rarity giggled, light and musical but with an unbalanced edge. "Don't be silly, Apple Bloom," said Rarity. "It only has the potential to kill you. Used properly, it's a perfectly safe way to give the gift of beauty to the world!"

"Real clever," I said. "Generosity through diamonds, just like the Professor said."

"Yes, exactly!" said Rarity. "I'm going to re-light the beacon now, so everypony go over to the wall-rack and put on a pair of those exceptionally fashionable smoked-glass goggles I also designed this morning."

We all did so. Rarity threw the wall-switch again, this time with unicorn magic, and the diamond in the center of the Lanthorn erupted with light.

"All right, now!" said Rarity, raising her voice over the whine of the Lanthorn. "Let's say, for instance, that we find a beautiful wildflower, and want to gift it to somepony who lives far distant!" Rarity's horn lit up and she magicked a little spray of lilac out from a vase on a nearby desk. She clutched it to her breast. "But oh, whatever shall we do? The post is far too slow, and even if we take the express train, the poor thing'll be wilted by the time we get it there. What we need is a way to transport our flower at great speed, through the air, using amplified telekinesis!"

"So your machine makes flowers… fly… really fast?" said Apple Bloom.

"A good summation for the simple-minded," said Rarity. "In reality, it creates a linear channel of mass distortion from the beacon to whatever point in Equestria you choose. Any object placed in the channel effectively achieves a near-zero mass from the point of view of the universe, allowing it to be accelerated to orbital velocity with just a simple shove from the Lanthorn's integrated telekinesis charm! So, let's say we want to give our beautiful flower to someone truly deserving of its beauty? How about, say, Princess Celestia?" Rarity threw a bunch of switches on the control panel. All around us, the lenses and wall-panels and such began rotating and shifting until Canterlot Castle, perched high on its far-off mountain, came into view through one of the openings. At the same time, a picture of the castle appeared in wireframe on one of the displays above the divan. A circular reticule sprang up around the image of the castle, quickly focusing in on one of the high balconies. The reticule glowed red as an alarming beep, louder even than the overwhelming whine of the Lanthorn, sounded out.

"So!" shouted Rarity, leaving the divan and approaching her contraption proper, which was starting to look a little wavery from all the raw sorcery it was spitting out. "We just lift our flower into the mass channel, and…"

There was a noise that sounded like somepony saying the word "VreeeEEE-PCHKOW!" and the spray of lilac vanished from the air. Slowly, the whine died down to tolerable levels and the beacon dimmed.

"Ta-da!" said Rarity. "One flower, delivered right to Princess Celestia's front porch."

Apple Bloom looked horrified. "What if you put a penny in that thing and pointed it at somepony?"

"Well, it'd probably kill them," said Rarity. "Admittedly, the flower itself would probably do the same thing at the speeds we're talking here, if one were to shut off the rarefaction channel at the wrong moment. That's why none of you girls should ever aim my experimental mass-acceleration device at any living thing."

"Well, that's real ingenious of you, Rarity," I said. "Ain't gonna match up against my Large Hadron Cider in the end, but ingenious nonetheless."

"Please, Applejack," said Rarity, tittering. "While your country chemistry certainly has its own winsome and rustic charm, I think that a cultured pony like the Professor will surely find that my beautiful mass driver is the 'cream of the crop', as it were."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "Well, I think the Professor's a man of discernment and keen vision, who'll be able to see past all this glim-glam to the true scientific genius lyin' beneath each and every one of our projects. And I'm telling you, mine's the ground-breaking one."

"Please. Does this 'Large Hadron Cider' of yours have the power to revolutionize society and change the world for the better?"

"Dagnabbit, Rarity, this ain't about application! This is a contest of pure scientific gumption! Large Hadron Cider will completely alter our understanding of the fundamental forces binding Equestria together and lay the groundwork for an exciting new school of physics!"

"Exciting to scholars and academicians, perhaps!" said Rarity, raising her voice.

"Scholars and academicians are the folks who spearhead the advancement of pony society!"

"Ruffian!"

"Fussbudget!"

"Visigoth!"

"Little Miss Cactus-Up-Her-Plot!"

"Fine!" spat Rarity, throwing herself back onto the control couch. "You want to see the true science-power of the Wondrous Lanthorn? Witness an entirely different science-function that can be achieved simply by reversing the polarity of the beam!" Rarity stabbed viciously at the switches and the lenses began rotating until they were pointed, bluntly, at me. A rather startled-looking wireframe picture of me appeared on the console displays, with a reticule around it.

Sweetie Belle's eyes got wide. "Rarity!" she squeaked. "You just said not to do that!"

"Never mind what I just said!" shouted Rarity, mashing buttons. Meanwhile, Apple Bloom was already on her hooves and bolting headlong toward the control console, attempting to do, I don't know what, but something, to stop the out-of-control fashionista. Too late; there was an ear-splitting whine, the beacon flared…

…and everything went away for a second.

I blinked when my brain got back from vacation. Everypony else in the room was staring at me – Sweetie Belle in dismay, Apple Bloom in shock, and Rarity in catlike self-satisfaction.

"What?" I asked, my voice dangerous. "What is it?"

"A.J.," said Apple Bloom, quietly, "I think Rarity stole yer hat."

"Indeed I did, Apple Bloom," sniffed Rarity. "I was reluctant to invert the function of my device like that, as it's contrary to the spirit of Generosity to use the Lanthorn to take instead of give, but desperate petty squabbles call for desperate measures."

"What happened to it?" demanded Apple Bloom.

"It was pulled from Applejack's head, achieved Mach One for a fraction of an instant, and then was sucked into the gem-furnace powering the Lanthorn," said Rarity, a tiny smile crossing her lips. "I've never tried that before, but as it turns out, it's unexpectedly satisfying. Science-success! Hoo hoo hoo!" She clapped the tips of her pedicured forehooves together, all gleeful.

I reached up and tamped at now-naked corn-silk topmane.

"You burned my hat," I said.

"Oh, don't get so dramatic," said Rarity, turning back to the Lanthorn's controls. "It was an ugly old thing, anyway. Besides, there's a fraction of a chance that it might have gotten snagged on a sticky-outy-thing in the furnace before it was totally incinerated."

"You burned my hat," I repeated.

"You know what?" burbled Rarity, the purple Elemental gem at her throat shaking violently in its mounting. "Maybe it's not contrary to the spirit of Generosity to use my device in such a fashion after all! I've Give-n you the gift of a better appearance, have I not? Let's see if there's anypony else's looks I can improve upon by tossing their drab old garments into my diamond-furnace at hypersonic speeds!" Rarity began clicking at the controls, and image after image leapt up onto her screens. "Oh, look, there's the Mayor. I've always hated that horrid Grafton collar of hers. I mean, really. So last-century." She stabbed at a button, and there was a squeal and a flash of light from the Lanthorn. "There! Taken, and incinerated! Ooh, there's Mister Wattle, with that ghastly polka-dotted tie!" Stab, squeal, flash. "Taken, and incinerated!"

"YOU BURNED MY HAT!" I roared, charging the control couch like a palomino freight train. At the last second, Apple Bloom jumped in front of me and turned my charge.

"Whoa, hoss!" she yelled at me, muscling up against my brisket and shoving me back. Little sis gets stronger every year. "Simmer down, now!"

"My pappy bought me that hat!" I bellowed straight into Rarity's smug little blinky-smiley face, as I struggled against A.B. for purchase. "Other 'an paying to have my wolf-teeth removed, it was the last thing he ever gave me on this earth!"

"There's other hats, Applejack!" pleaded Apple Bloom, as Sweetie Belle began sinking behind the shelter of the couch.

"No, there ain't!" I said. "I swear on all that's holy, Rarity, the second I get done deliverin' this breakfast, I'm gonna collide a whole mess of particles together and get me a miniature black hole, and then I'm gonna drop it in your mother-loving lap!"

"Oh, really, Applejack?" said Rarity. She absently threw a switch or two, and the wireframes on the Lanthorn's displays spun and twirled into an image of Sweet Apple Acres, my whole entire home. Then she turned back at me and smiled. "See anything you wouldn't mind losing?"

"You wouldn't dare," I snarled.

"Beware, Applejack," said Rarity, all sing-song. "For I have become the All-Seeing Eye of Fashion. And I know where you live."

"This is totally out of control," whimpered Sweetie Belle, barely visible behind the couch.

Apple Bloom snorted through her nostrils, shaking her head in agitation. "Twilight'll know what to do," she said, desperately. "Twilight'll fix this."

"Ain't that always how it goes," I said, turning my wrath on Apple Bloom. "Sure, you go to your faithful big sis whenever you need a fence mended, but the second anything important comes up, it's dump-A.J.-fetch-Twilight, am I right?"

A.B. looked up at me helplessly. "No, I mean… maybe she's got a book or something that tells why everypony's going insane on us!"

"Better run fast if you're in the market for one of Twilight's books," said Rarity, lightly. "She's got her little minion burning them out in the backyard."

Well, I tell you, we all startled, then.

Rarity blinked back at our wide-eyed gazes. "What?" she said. "Don't believe me?" Rar ran her hooves over the Lanthorn's controls and an image of the library tree sprung up. Sure enough, there was a little wireframe Spike, dragging a huge armload of books out back. After pulling them a safe distance from the tree, he took a deep breath and sprayed wireframe dragonfire all over them, reducing them to a pile of wireframe ash. Job finished, he dragged himself back inside the library and slammed the door.

"All right," whispered Apple Bloom. "Emergency Cutie Mark Crusaders meeting, right now. Sweetie Belle, gather the others."

"There's only three of us," said Sweetie Belle, her lip quivering, eyes fixed on the screen as though if she stared long enough she could un-see what she just saw. "And you and me are right here."

"Gather the other, then!" said A.B., stamping a hoof. "Get Scootaloo and then meet me at the clubhouse. We got a crisis on our hooves."

"What about helping me with breakfast?" I demanded, my mind dropping back to my promise.

A.B. glared at me, then reached back into her saddlebag, grabbed the steel dish she found there in her teeth, and chucked it to the floor of the control room. "There," she said. "Rarity, breakfast. I don't even care if it's yours. A.J., when we started out, you said you'd carry four dishes, and I'd carry two. Well, that and Fluttershy's makes two. We are square, you hear me?"

I grunted noncommittally.

"Callin' that a 'yes'," said Apple Bloom. "Let's go, Sweetie Belle. You and me are gonna go get our Cutie Marks in Saving Ponyville."

Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment, glancing up at Rarity. She scoffed. "What are you looking at me for?" she said. "Go, go. Play with your barbarian friend. But don't you dare emit even one little peep about the inner workings of the Lanthorn."

"Sure thing, big sister," said Sweetie Belle, all downcast. Me and Rarity watched as our respective sisters trotted down the stairs and out of sight. Then we turned back to each other, staring daggers.

"This ain't over," I said.

"You know that when people say that," said Rarity, loftily, "it usually means that it is."

I pulled off Rarity's designer smoked goggles and chucked them to the floor.

We locked eyes.

I broke first. Cussing mightily the whole way, I stomped down the steps to the kitchen and smashed a few of Rarity's plates out of spite. Then I crossed back into the nightmare light-column room that Rarity's storefront had turned into and spent a few moments with my head pressed against the glass tube, staring down into the gemstone fires below, trying to catch even the slightest glimpse of… it.

Dang it to Tartarus. Nothing.

I turned away and marched to the front door, heading out toward the library.

"G'bye, hat," I said, my voice thick, not looking back.

I promised myself I wasn't gonna cry, not even a little.

It almost worked.

* * *

"Aha, Applejack!" said Twilight, in a tooth-grindingly cheery voice. "So glad you could make it to witness the initial stages of my total and utter scorched-earth science fair victory!"

I weren't even looking at her. I was looking at the library, which was empty: empty of books, empty of scrolls, empty of knickknacks, empty of telescopes.

Empty of… rooms.

Everypony in town knows that the Ponyville Library is built inside a hollow tree, it's just that, well, it usually ain't quite this hollow. Every little nook and cranny had been blasted away by magic, the floors and ceilings separating the various levels nowhere to be seen. What we were left with was one big ol' chamber taking up the whole tree, stretching down from Twilight's basement laboratory all the way up to the tip-top branches and opening to the happy blue sky above. Taking the place of the former floors was a network of spidery catwalks either suspended by wires or bolted roughly to what little remained of the built-in wall shelves. Somewhere far above me, I could see Spike the Dragon clambering along, scouring the shelves clean of books for his next trip to the burn-pile.

"Done a little remodeling, then," I said, staring.

"You bet!" said Twilight, over a little background squeaking noise. I turned toward my hated rival. The purple unicorn wizard was laid up in her wheelchair again, her mane splaying out crazily in all directions. The Tourmaline Diadem sat crookedly on her head, its star-shaped stone practically black now, and hanging from her lip was an entire cinnamon stick that appeared to be smoldering at one end. "Getting rid of a lot of dead weight around here!"

"Um, Twi," I said. "Your cinnamon stick's on fire, there."

"I want it to be on fire!" she exclaimed, looking a little walleyed. "See?" She lifted the cinnamon stick in a purple magic glob and took a deep breath on the non-burning end, drawing a cloud of smoke into her lungs through the hollow curls of bark.

"Ah," she croaked, then. "Cinnamaldehyde." She let the smoke out in a great puff through her nostrils. "Keeps my brain going."

"That can't be healthy for you," I said, shaking my head.

What do you care? demanded the bubbly part of my noggin. So she's sucking down bark-smoke like a crazymare! Let her kill herself off before nightfall! With her out of the way, and everypony in town fawning over your ingenious nuclear cider, you'll be Ponyville's Prize Pony again! Just like you been dreaming!

Oh, give it a rest, I replied, startled that I was suddenly able to divide myself between Science Applejack and Non-Science Applejack. Something just wasn't right here. I was still pretty happy with my cider invention, but it had started seeming like it wasn't something I needed to get all up in other ponies' businesses about. Losing Old Reliable so sudden and so permanent had really taken the starch out of me, I guess.

Ah, hayseeds. I stuffed it in the think-about-it-later box, and inclined my head toward Twilight's squeaky little wheelchair. "Looks like you hurt yourself or something?"

"My clumsy minion, Spike, dropped a catwalk on me during the hanging process," she explained. "Don't worry, he's been appropriately chastised." She raised her head and called upwards to the catwalks. "Isn't that right, Spike?"

"Yes, Master!" came Spike's slurred voice from above. "You are just! And fair!"

"See? Spike's happy to be disciplined!"

"Uh huh," I said.

"Don't worry," she said. "I was disproportionately lenient with him, because I was feeling generous. And do you know why?"

"Why?" I said, cautiously, rising to the bait.

"Because my shattered limbs won't be troubling me for long!" exclaimed Twilight.

"Huh. So you got some kind of medical contraption going on, then?" I said. "I thought something like that, what with the surgical stuff down there." I gestured down to the exposed basement laboratory, the last remaining furnished place in the whole library, which was filled with a bunch of shiny steel instruments surrounding a white-draped mass on a long, low slab.

"Not at all, A.J.!" said Twilight. "I'm not trying to fix this broken body, I'm replacing it entirely!"

"…Come again?"

Twilight wheeled herself over to me. "A.J., let me ask you something. What's the biggest problem with being a pony?"

"Rickets?" I hazarded.

"No!" said Twilight. "It's that ponies die."

"Everything dies," I said, screwing my face up. "It's the natural way."

"You sound like one of those stupid old books I'm having my minion dispose of," said Twilight. "The 'natural way' can bite my tailbone! Do you know why I'm such an obsessive organizer? It's because time is constantly running out! Deadline after deadline after deadline, culminating in the great big deadline at the end, after which you're literally dead! I used to think that if I weren't careful with time, if I didn't weigh and measure every single second, that it would slip through my hooves and be gone forever! Unoptimized time is wasted time, Applejack! It's like going to a restaurant and asking for a slice of lemon in your water and then not eating the lemon!"

"You're not supposed to eat the lemon," I said.

"That's insane!" cried Twilight. "I paid for that lemon!"

"Water's usually free," I said.

"Stop trying to confuse the issue!" she said. "It doesn't matter now! That's all in the past! Last night at the party, I realized that I was looking at it all the wrong way! Instead of trying to fit in as much life as I can before I die, why don't I just not die?"

"How you gonna manage that?"

"Three words: Immortal contraptionoid body!" shouted Twilight, who always could count better than Rainbow Dash. "With my brain uploaded into a flawless, never-aging, always-repairable contraptionoid, I could hypothetically live all the way until the heat-death of the universe! And if I make my new body out of liquid gallium-contained quicksilver, I won't be stuck just being me! I'll be able to look like, to be, anything!" Her eyes were practically on fire, now. "I'll be able to be whatever Princess Celestia wants me to be, for all eternity! And then I'll never have to leave her, perpetuating our white-hot totally platonic teacher-student love relationship for ever and ever!"

"That sounds… healthy," I said.

"I know, right?" said Twilight, her left lower eyelid twitching. "I can't wait to see the look on her face when I tell her!"

"Hold on," I said, finally putting two and two together to make the approximate tangent value of a 75.964-degree angle. "That thing on the slab down there, under the sheet. That's you?"

Twilight cackled. "Don't be silly, Applejack!" she said. "I haven't made the brain transfer yet! I'm lacking one very important piece of information before I can jump into this plan with all four hooves, to wit: can a contraptionoid use magic? Because magic is my life, Applejack, and I refuse to be a deathless shape-shifting liquid-metal equuoid for all eternity if I can't cast spells! What'd be the point of that?"

"None whatsoever?" I attempted.

"Exactly," said Twilight, wheeling herself over to the edge of the dropoff overlooking the basement, gesturing grandly as she did so. "What you see down there, A.J., is more than just my winning entry for tonight's Science Fair for Grown-Ups. It is a prototype independently-functioning artificially-intelligent magic-using equuoid unicorn. I've been running tests all morning on Iggy the Salamander, Pinkie's charmingly primitive creation, to see how contraptionoids retain memories and personality, and I've incorporated what I've learned from him into my own advanced model!"

"SQUONK," came the sad little cry of Iggy, whose orichalcum cage looked to have been rudely shoved up into a small corner of the basement lab.

"Once I prove that contraptionoids can sense and manipulate the Stream just like biological unicorns can," continued Twilight, "I'll be ready to take the plunge myself! And I've got little doubt that my scintillating creation will succeed, because it's being powered by two of the greatest magical sources in the world: starlight, which was strong enough to break even the power of the Elements of Harmony during Nightmare Moon's release; and friendship, or at least its inverse. Ergo, stars linked up to friendship, linked up to magic! Just like the Professor said!"

"Wait, wait, wait," I said. "'Its inverse'?"

"Indeed, Applejack!" said Twilight. "I never realized it before today, but friendship's relationship to magic is on a bidirectional continuum. I learned this when I tried harnessing the power of friendship to give life to my creation, and found that there's something wrong with all my friends this morning for some reason, and I couldn't use you to summon the necessary thaumic potential!" Twilight's horn lit up and she grabbed the collar of my starched white coat, dragging my face down to hers. "What's up with you guys, huh?" she yelled. "Why are you failing me?"

I shook my head, my jaw working but no sound coming out.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Twilight, shoving me away again and grabbing up a little gizmo from a nearby shelf. "Anyway, in a fit of rage, I ran my brand-new Friendship Spectrometer over all my interpersonal relationships, trying to find something I could use that had an equal strength, and you know what I found? One big honkin' betrayal!"

"Somepony betrayed you?"

"You did, Applejack!" shouted Twilight, delighted.

"How?" I said, my stomach twisting a little. "I mean, when?"

"I don't know!" cried Twilight, throwing her forehooves wide. "But the numbers don't lie! The data I gathered from my Friendship Spectrometer clearly indicate that you done me wrong, big-time. See?" She shoved the little gizmo in my face. It went "bloink" at me.

"Well, I mean, I don't know what I could have possibly… but… I mean… sorry for—"

"Don't be sorry, Applejack!" said Twilight, yanking the Spectrometer away as I clapped my hoof down over my rattling necklace. "It's great! You've helped me to discover that it's not just friendship that's equivalent to magic – it's the absolute value of friendship! Negative friendship works too! Your massive betrayal, whatever it was, is giving cohesion to my creation, and that's why it looks like a lump under the sheets, instead of just a puddle of metal! The final step comes at nightfall tonight, when I raise that platform up to the top of the tree and expose my new equuoid to the first starlight of the evening, which will instill in it the purest essence of magic! Then, once I witness its spell-casting potential, I'll simply wipe its test personality clean and install myself in its place! This is a perfect plan which has no conceivable flaws!"

"If I was a test personality," I said, "I'd take issue with being wiped like that."

"That's why I chose a really really pathetic test personality that I'll have no problem squelching," replied Twilight, grinning deliciously.

"Well, okay then," I said, stepping carefully over to an empty shelf, grabbing Twi and Spike's breakfast dishes in my teeth and setting 'em down. "I'll leave you folks to it, then. I'm just gonna drop your omelets here on this completely empty abandoned bookshelf."

"Good," muttered Twilight. "At least it'll be serving a purpose, instead of just suspending a bunch of dead, obsolete knowledge slightly above floor level."

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to overcome the noise of the bubbles, which were still telling me that all this was perfectly fine and normal and not to be questioned. "Twilight," I said, struggling against every word. "Something… something ain't right. Apple Bloom was tellin' the truth: Fluttershy wouldn't not feed her critters, Rarity wouldn't burn no diamond even if her fussy little marshmallow life depended on it, and I think if you looked at what you're doing here, really looked at it, you'd be plumb horrified at what's going on. And frankly, I can't understand why you ain't."

Twilight barked out a laugh, sharp and piercing. "Getting cold hooves about the contest tonight, huh? Trying to cause a flicker in the hard, gem-like flame of my reason?"

"No!" I protested. "This ain't about the dad-gum Science Fair no more, Twilight! This is about us! This is about us not being us no more!"

Twi shook her head and pivoted away, taking another long drag off her almost-consumed cinnamon stick. "Pathetic, really," she said, then, fishing around in her wheelchair blanket until she found a fresh stick and then using the butt end of the first one to light up the next. "You've come up against the unyielding wall of true scientific genius and flinched, and now you're grasping at straws, hoping to find something to distract me from my own clarion purpose. There's no shame in honorably losing, Applejack. But there's shame in what you're doing right now."

"Yes!" called Spike from above. "Yes! The Master is wise! Do not cross the Master!"

"Thank you, Spike," said Twilight, smiling.

I looked back and forth between the two of them for a second.

"Y'all gone mad," I said.

"Mad?" cried Twilight. "Mad?!? You dare call me 'mad'?!? I, who have tasted the currents of the universe, who have made the heavenly spheres dance to new songs of my own devising? Have I shown you a glimpse of a world outside your narrow vision? Did it tear you, mewling, away from the warm and comfortable ignorance in which you ever dwell? Have I, Applejack, gone too far?"

I floundered, helplessly. "Maybe?"

"NO!" shrieked Twilight, slamming her hoof over and over again on the arm of her wheelchair for emphasis. "NOT… YET… FAR… ENOUGH!!!"

I closed my eyes. "I gotta go," I said, my innards churning inside of me.

"Okay! G'bye, A.J.!" said Twilight, waving chipperly, as I lurched back out the front door. I didn't even respond.

The bright, clean air of Ponyville didn't seem so bright or clean no more when I stepped back out into it. Smoke from running engines was beginning to drift through the streets of my hometown, causing a tickle in the back of my throat which didn't help the feeling of rising gut-sick down in my stomach none. Ponies didn't smile at each other no more as they rushed back and forth through the town, so consumed were they with the fires of their own private creations. In fact, they hardly even noticed one another, 'less it was to get into some kinda science-related one-upponyship that always ended in somepony promising to rain fiery destruction down on everypony else. And slowly but surely, the happy little thatch-roof cottages I had known all my life were changing into strange and alien things as more and more pieces got grafted on to them: girders and gantries and armatures and power-lines and great skyward-pointing dishes whose function I couldn't even guess at.

I stood there, watching this scene unfold, and I tried and tried to remember why it was that I thought that winning some silly old contraptionology contest was gonna bring the Ponyville I knew from my childhood back to life. Because this sure as heckfire weren't it.

I had lost my hat. And now it looked like I was gonna lose the whole town along with it.

I shouldered up my saddlebags and headed on out. One hoof in front of the other, Applejack. You got two more breakfasts to deliver. Then it's back home to check on the Large Hadron Cider. See what a finished jug of that stuff looks like. See what kind of power it might unleash on the world. For one desperate second, I wanted to stop it all, to shut off the boilers, to smash the whole distillation apparatus I had spent all night and all morning on to bits and lock myself in my room, hiding under my pillow until the world came crashing down around me.

I found I couldn't even entertain the thought. And I was scared out of my nonexistent britches.

Grower help us all.

10 - Outliers (Awesomeness and Laughter)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Ten: Outliers (~~Loyalty~~ Awesomeness and Laughter)

"Hold it right there, Applejack!" shouted Rainbow Dash, from above. "If that's your real name, that is."

I held it right there, dutifully.

"Hey, Rainbow Dash," I called up, trying to catch sight of her up there in her little cloud house. "Breakfast for ya. Just like I promised. Keeping my word."

"Uh huh," said Dash. "Real clever, Robot Applejack," she said. "But you forgot about one thing when you duplicated her appearance and stole her identity – my friend Applejack always wears a hat! And I don't see a hat down there."

"For Pete's sake," I said, trying not to think too hard about the fiasco at Carousel Boutique in case it made me get all sniffly again. "Rarity took my hat and burned it. No more complicated than that."

Dash didn't say nothing for a second. Then she did that snorty thing she does when she's trying not to laugh.

"Rarity… burned… your hat?!?" said Dash, then, guffawing. "Oh, that's too rich!"

"Ain't funny, y'all," I muttered, kneeling down by the edge of Tank the Tortoise's little enclosure on the ground underneath Dash's house. I clucked to him and he moseyed on over, extending his head for a hoof-pat. There was something wrong with Tank's setup today, and I couldn't place what it was until I realized that I had gotten so used to things being wrong that I had started getting twinges from something going right.

Based on the scraps and shreds of leafy greens lying around everywhere, Tank had gotten fed this morning. Dash has a pretty heavy hoof on the pet food 'cause she doesn't trust herself to give just the right amount, so she always overcorrects just in case. Today was no exception.

Today was no exception.

Why on the Grower's green earth was today no exception?

"Rainbow!" I yelled up, suddenly realizing with a sick feeling that despite all my reassurances to Apple Bloom, Winona never did get her own breakfast back at the Acres. "You fed Tank!"

"Well, duh," said Rainbow Dash's voice. "Of course! Remember that one day when I was practicing hammerheads all morning and forgot to feed him and Fluttershy got all in my face about it? Sha, like I'm risking that again. She freaks me out when she goes all Gnar Gnar Gnar at ponies." Dash snorted. "Besides," she continued. "We're stewards of the earth! Keepin' it real, right?"

"I don't get it!" I shouted. "Why are you, of all ponies, the one 'keeping it real'?"

"What's so weird about me feeding my pet?" said Dash. Then her voice got all hard-edged again. "But then, I wouldn't expect a robot duplicate to understand things like food!"

"Cryin' in the corn, Rainbow Dash, whatever a ro-bot is, I ain't it!"

"It's another word for 'contraptionoid'," said Dash. "I was over at Twilight's doing some unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys of her project—"

"Spying on her."

"Unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys," insisted Dash. "And I heard her tell Spike that she was planning on making a contraptionoid in the shape of a pony! And she was even gonna teach it how to use unicorn magic! How am I supposed to tell who's real and who's a contraptionoid anymore?"

I frowned. I hated to admit it, but Dash kind of had a point. "I bet a contraptionoid pony is gonna be all shiny and such," I tried.

"What if they dip it in rubber or something and put fake horsehair all over it?"

"I'm at a loss here, Rainbow."

"Exactly," said Dash. "That's why in addition to designing a supremely epic pony-augmentation exoskeleton for tonight's science fair, I whipped up a bunch of questions designed to provoke emotional responses so I can ferret out which of my friends is real and which of them have been replaced by soulless life-stealing robots. I call it the 'Voigt-Clopff'. Ready to begin?"

"Rainbow," I said. "I ain't sure that—"

"Okay," said Dash, clearing her throat. "Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can."

I gave up and played along. "Sure," I said.

"Sweet Apple Acres," said Rainbow.

I nodded. "That's my farm."

"What?"

"The farm where I live."

"Nice place?"

"Well, yeah. Is that part of the test?"

"No, just warming you up, that's all. You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden—"

"Is this the test, now?"

"Duh, yes," said Dash. "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down—"

"What one?"

Dash sounded a little taken aback. "What?"

"What desert?" I repeated.

"It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely that one thing where it's all imaginary and not real."

"Hypothetical?"

"That's the word," said Dash.

"But how come I'd be there?"

"Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see a tortoise, Applejack, it's crawling towards you—"

"Yeah," I said, glancing down at Tank. "I, uh, actually do see a tortoise here."

"You know what a tortoise is, right?" said Dash, ignoring me. "It's just like a turtle. Same thing."

"Actually," I said, "If y'all remember, Fluttershy spent a long time trying to—"

"You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Applejack."

I looked up and down between Tank and the still-unseen Rainbow Dash. Tank blinked at me. "Wait," I said, "are you telling me to flip your tortoise over, or what?"

"The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping."

"What do you mean, I'm not helping?" I said, starting to get really annoyed now.

"They're just questions, Applejack."

"No, they ain't!" I said, stomping a hoof in perturbation. "They're just you doing weird rambly goin'-off-at-the-mouth stuff! I ain't heard a question yet!"

"It's a test," said Rainbow Dash, infuriatingly calm. "Designed to provoke an emotional response. Shall we continue?"

"No!" I spat.

"Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother."

Right, I thought. That tears it. "My mother?" I said, nosing back into my saddlebags.

"Yeah," said Dash.

I emerged from the bags with Dash's steel breakfast dish locked between my teeth. "Let me tell you about my mother," I said, around it. With a mighty heave, I chucked the dish directly at the patch of clouds out of which Rainbow Dash's voice had been coming all this time, resulting in a very satisfying clang.

"Ow!" said Rainbow Dash, as the breakfast dish tumbled back through the clouds, landing with a heavy thud on the grass below. "That's not you telling me about your mother! That's you throwing something at me!"

"Good test," I said. "That was your breakfast, by the way. I'm gonna throw it again, and this time, actually catch it, so's I can be done with this leg, hear?"

"Not on your life, Robot Applejack!" said Dash, bursting up through the clouds and taking the roof of her house in her teeth, then dragging it skyward, leaving a trail of cloud residue behind it.

"Consarnit, Rainbow!" I swore, grabbing the breakfast dish up from where it fell and stuffing it back in my saddlebags. I took a second to make certain I could still see the light-wiggles of the cloud-walking spell on my hooves, then gathered my legs under me and leapt to the lowest mass in the shedded-off cumulus trail. And then the next-lowest mass. And so on.

"Aw, pony, no fair!" said Dash, peering over her roof at me. "You got Twilighted, didn't you!"

"She ain't a verb, Rainbow!" I said, kicking off another cloud and landing square on the next, climbing higher and higher with every leap. "Now keep your dang mobile home still for a piece!"

"Sorry," said Dash, grabbing her roof again, "but I don't take orders from walking, talking, breakfast-chucking bio-replicating crimes against equinity!"

The next few minutes was, all in all, just about the stupidest thing I'd ever done to fulfill a promise, even counting the potato-chip-soda-pop-earthworm muffin incident, less said of that the better. Dash led me on a merry little hunt through the clouds, her working on wingpower, me on brute strength of hindquarters. Higher and higher we went, until we got to a point where a single misstep was absolutely, one hundred percent, guaranteed to kill me. The ground got tiny beneath us. Still I charged upward.

Dash was obviously faster airborne than I was cloud-skipping, and had experience on her side, but on the other hoof, she was slowed down quite a bit by the mass of her house. Eventually, that meant I was able to close the distance between us to the length of one powerful leap that might or might not be just beyond my ability to make.

"What's the matter, cow-pony?" said Dash, watching me from her roof across the divide, her hooves on her cheeks. "Turning into a chicken-pony on me? Or is it your built-in robotic danger-avoidance program kicking in?"

I snarled at her, glanced once at the faraway ground, squeezed my eyes shut, gave a quick inner pep talk to Bucky and Kicks, and then trusted my life to the air, a party I never have been real friendly with in the first place.

I nearly missed, but it was good enough.

Scrabbling mightily against the edge of the clouds over a fatal drop into thin air, I finally managed to find purchase with one of my hind hooves and lever myself up and over the rim of Rainbow's yard, landing with a soft, feathery whumph in a pile of loose cirrus that she had raked up by her front porch. I stood there, panting, gazing up at the blue sky and cussing out Dash, myself, and whatever mother-loving tyrant it was who invented gravity.

In a second, Dash appeared in my field of view, leaning over me and looking powerful amused, her lightning-bolt amulet glowing a medium red more or less right in my face.

"I ain't," I wheezed, pointing up at her, "no cotton-pickin' ro-bot."

"Relax, Crabapple-jack, you sold me," she said, tousling my mane. "Not even a perfect robot duplicate of you would be dumb and stubborn enough to do what you just did." She flittered back to her roof and began shoving her house back down to a more sensible altitude. "So what's cooking for breakfast?" she asked, as the upcurrent whooshed about us on all sides.

"Mushroom omelet," I said, getting to my hooves and shaking the cloud out of my coat.

"Blech," said Rainbow. "I hate mushrooms. They taste like dirt."

"This ain't about what you do or don't like," I said. "This is about the Bearer of Honesty, sticking to her word. For all I care you can open this plate up and dump it right in the trash once I've done my part." I glanced around me. "And on that topic," I said, "where can toss this dish so it don't fall again?"

"Yeah, I got stratus countertops in my kitchen that're dense enough to hold food," said Dash. "I'll be down in a sec."

"No worries, I can find 'em," I said, heading for her front door.

"You stay out of there, A.J.!" said Dash. "Nopony gets to see the undiluted super-concentrated radicalness of my science fair project before the competition kicks off! You're just gonna try and steal my awesome ideas!"

"What if I was jes' gonna do some 'unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys' instead?" I asked, all smirky.

"That sounds like fancy-talk for 'spying'!" said Dash, who, to her credit, has a short enough attention span that you can't even really hang hypocriticalness on her. Quickly and surely, the ground rose up to meet us, and eventually Dash left the roof, trusting that the house would drift the rest of the way down. She joined me on the porch.

"So," I said, "Where, at last, do you want this breakf—"

"Hold on," said Dash, eying the ground beneath us and cutting me off with a raised hoof. "That dumb ol' rabbit's back."

"Who?" I said, trying to get an angle. "Angel Bunny?"

"Yes, Angel Bunny!" said Dash, fuming. "All morning, he's been hanging around trying to steal all Tank's leafy greens! Like he doesn't get spoiled rotten enough by Fluttershy. Just gimme a sec, here."

Dash took to the sky and swooped down toward Tank's enclosure. I parted a hole in her front yard and yelled after her. "Actually," I said, "funny you should say that, because—"

Dash weren't listening. "Hey!" she said, approaching the little white shape who was alternately scrabbling at, and trying to reach through, the holes in the unbending chicken wire panels safeguarding Tank's lettuce. "Your Momma-shy feeds you enough!" She picked the rabbit up in her hooves, pulled him away from the fence, and tossed him into a nearby thicket, to the noise of ferocious bunny swearing.

Dash dusted her hooves off and glided back up to my level. "Sorry about that," she said, chuckling.

"So anyway," I said. "As I was saying, before we was interrupted—"

There was a bright whoosh in the air nearby, and a streak of orange fire. Dash and I turned, wide-eyed, to see Angel Bunny, hovering in the sky next to Dash's cloud home, wearing some kind of weird saddlebag-looking construction that was venting big cones of flame out its back, flames which was apparently pushing him aloft somehow. Angel adjusted a button on the contraption and hovered over to us, scowling straight at Dash as he did so.

"Oh come on!" shouted Dash. "You built a jet pack?"

Angel nodded in his own evil little brand of self-satisfaction, gave Rainbow a bunny-punch in the snout, then rocketed back down toward the tortoise enclosure. Dash yelped in protest and took off again in hot pursuit, catching up to the flying rabbit and snagging the back of his jet contraption right before his little paw was about to grab a hunk of Tank's leftover lettuce. Once again, Dash chucked Angel into the thickets, causing a tiny explosion this time. Angel emerged, soot-stained, stamping angrily and chitter-cussing at Dash for a good entire minute before he stalked back into the bushes, presumably to continue plotting. Tank himself blinked placidly at the goings-on, then ambled back over to his little house, dismissing the whole scene in with that long-minded I's-fixin'-to-outlive-all-y'all's-so-what-the-buck-do-I-care mentality common to his kind.

Meanwhile, Dash sullenly flapped back up to me, looking like she was fixing to take a bite out of somepony.

"So," I said. "Maybe you didn't hear the first couple times, but see, I got this here breakfast plate—"

"WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID BREAKFAST PLATE?!?" screamed Dash, totally losing it. "Did you see that? Angel Bunny built a jet pack! Angel flippin' Bunny!"

"Wasn't that part of your project?" I asked.

"It is my project!" shouted Dash. "I'm just… it's just…" Dash gave a frustrated little roar and kicked a little hunk of cumulus out of the floor-clouds of her porch.

"Sugarcube," I said, trying to sound gentle. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing!" exclaimed Dash. "My science fair project is going just peachy! Here, gimme that omelet so you'll shut up about it, and then get out of here and let me concentrate!"

Thoughts had started warming in my head ever since I saw Tank's sufficient and plentiful breakfast, and now they was coming to a boil. "Rainbow," I said, "I think it's real important for you to show me how your project's coming along."

"Right!" sneered Dash. "Like I'm gonna show you! You're the pony I care most about beating tonight!"

"I'm touched," I said, coming to a sudden decision. "Well, all right then. You win."

Dash blinked. "What?"

"You win," I repeated. "I can't not finish my Large Hadron Cider, 'cause my brain just won't allow it. But once I do, I ain't entering it in no silly Science Fair for Grown-Ups."

I put one hoof on Dash's shoulder, just above the wing. "Rainbow Dash," I said, looking her square in the eye, "I'm officially forfeiting. To you."

"Woohoo!" yelled Rainbow Dash, taking off and doing a couple flips in the air, her mood instantly reversed. "Total science-victory over Applejack! Ha ha, ha HA!" She pointed a hoof at me. "In your face, workhorse!"

"Yup," I said. "You beat me. So you gonna show me what it was that beat me, now?"

"Sure!" said Dash, all spunky again, fluttering past me towards her front door. "I mean, since you're officially no longer my scientific rival, what harm could it possibly do?"

Dash led me over to her front door and threw it open, leading me inside. "All right now," she announced. "I'm going to have to ask you to stand back, for your own protection. Something's gone terribly wrong in the construction of my lightning armor, and it's venting iodine all over my radiator."

"'Ionizing radiation'?" I tried.

Dash waved a hoof. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Anyway, if you look at my project too close it'll make your hair fall out and then all your kids will have like five legs, which would admittedly be kind of awesome."

I scanned around Dash's living room. "So… where's this project?"

Dash grabbed my face and pointed it. "Right there! On the stratocumulus throw-rug!"

I frowned. "Underneath the pile of boxes and grocery bags, then?"

"No!" said Dash. "That's the project! It just looks like a pile of boxes and grocery bags!"

I sauntered over to it. "Be careful!" shouted Dash. "You'll get iodine on your radiator, too!"

"Uh huh," I said, picking up what looked like a cardboard moving-box that'd been drawn all over with rainbow-colored fruit-scented markers. "Is this the culprit, here?"

"No, dorkbrain," said Dash. "That's not the reactor. That's the primary torso section. See those wing-slits in the back?"

"I do see 'em," I said, setting it aside. I rummaged through the pile a little more. "Oh, and here we have an empty oatmeal canister with some tin foil on it."

"Yeah, that's the jet pack," said Dash, sweating a little.

"It's an oatmeal box," I said, lifting it up for her to see. "Y'all just wrote 'Jet Pack' on the outside."

"Intention is important to the creative process!"

"You didn't even spell 'Jet Pack' right," I said, peering closer at it. "How in the hay did you manage to misspell 'Jet Pack'? That's one of them things that's actually harder to spell wrong than it is right."

"Maybe the problem's with you, huh?" said Dash, flap-charging over. "Let me show you how it's done." She dove into the pile of paper and rustled around for a spell, eventually emerging in an outfit made all of decorated cardboard boxes and brown-paper bags. She walked back over to me, crinkling noticeably with every step. "Bet you're impressed now!" she said, displaying herself to me.

"No," I admitted.

Dash slumped. "Yeah, this whole thing pretty much sucks," she said. Then, with a speck of defiance, she looked back up at me. "But it still beats out whatever your project is, 'cause you forfeited!"

"That I did."

Dash went back to crestfallen. "What's the matter with me?" she said, surveying the mess on her rug. "All I wanted to do was find the link between lightning and awesomeness, just like the Professor told me to! Am I just that bad at science?"

"I dunno, Dash," I said, "but based on what I seen today, whatever it is you don't got, you best be thanking your lucky stars you don't got it."

"'Scuse me?"

"I don't know how or why, but turns out this contraptionology business is a bad seed," I said. "It gets in your head and makes you willing, and able, to do stuff that plain just don't make sense. Rarity built a whole dang lighthouse on her roof in half an hour, f'rinstance."

"Rarity built a lighthouse… on her roof?"

"Yeah. And it ain't the friendly sort of lighthouse," I said. "It's the hat-burnin' kind. And if that weren't enough, it seems like the further you get into your contraption, the crazier you turn. Right about now, Twilight's prolly burning the last of the library's collection, if that gives you any idea."

"The library's collection of what?"

I stared at her meaningfully.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait," said Dash, the lights coming on upstairs. "Twilight's… burning… her books? Like, everything? Like her Daring Do novels, even?"

"Mm hm," I said. "And it ain't just her. Everpony else in town's following that same road, real quick. I need to get to the bottom of what's happening to Ponyville, and I'm gonna need you to help me, 'cause you're the normalest pony I met so far."

Dash looked at me, her eyes full of trust, and all of a sudden, it was just like old times. Like when we was all kidlets together, before Pinkie came back from what I now guess was college, and certainly before the Miss Twilight Sparkle and her Performing Pet Dragon Traveling Circus of Wonders parked itself permanently in town. Back in the days when everypony looked to me when somethin' weird or threatening would arise, and the three of 'em, Rar and Flutters and Dash, would all come a-running, and they'd say…

"A.J., what should we do?"

Laws, I thought, basking a little. How I been missing the sound of those words.

"I'll tell you, Rainbow," I said. "You're gonna stay right here. Hold tight, and whatever you do, don't go into town. I reckon things is gonna turn ugly there pretty quick. I'm headed back there myself, and if I don't return in a reasonable period, go get Princess Celestia. Tell her what's happening."

"If it's that bad, why don't I just head to Canterlot right now?"

"'Cause we don't know enough yet. I ain't even sure what's causing this, and I don't want no princesses rushing down here and running afoul of whatever this is. Equestria itself wouldn't survive one of them royals hopped up on contraptionology. Savvy?"

"Yeah, okay," said Dash. "So I hold down the fort. What are you gonna do?"

"I," I said, "am gonna go talk to the one pony in town who might be able to tell me what's going on."

* * *

"Pinkie Pie," I said, "tell me what's going on."

"I'm so glad you asked me that, Applejack!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, so you're probably wondering why I'm wearing this big flowy nightgown and have all these white and black streaks in my mane! That's because I'm dressed up as the Bride of Frankenholstein! I thought since everypony in town was getting really into science, I'd play dress-up as a character from one of the greatest science-themed books of all time: Frankenholstein, by Marey Shelley! You know that story, right, Applejack?"

"Pinkie…" I said.

"It's about this great pony scientist named Frankenholstein," continued Pinkie, ignoring me. "One day he gets it in his head that he wants to create a zombie cow out of a bunch of pieces of other dead cows he's got lying around. So he finds enough dead cow parts to make one whole entire cow, and then he stitches it all together and zaps it with a whole bucket-load of electricity and FOOM!" She clapped her hooves together. "One living zombie cow! Or bull. Or steer, I guess, if he was missing the wrong couple of parts. Anyway, the zombie cow is called Frankenholstein's Monster and he's really big and dangerous and scary-looking but deep down he just wants to be loved!"

"Pinkie…" I said, a little louder.

"But unfortunately he's the only one of his kind! And he's so lonely. So the Monster goes back to Frankenholstein and he moos, 'Doctor, you must make a wife for me!' And at first Frankenholstein is all, like 'Nuh uh,' and the Monster is like 'Yah huh,' and Frankenholstein is like 'Nuh uh,' and the Monster is like 'Yah huh,' and that goes on for like forty pages until finally Frankenholstein decides that it really would be nice of him to make a wife for his Monster and they run another bucket-load of electricity through another bunch of dead cow parts, and pretty soon they have a bride for Frankenholstein's Monster, which is what I'm dressed like! And there's a big wedding with lots of cake and sarsaparilla and everypony lives happily ever after and then the Monster has lots of dead zombie cow babies and starts a family, so I guess he's not a steer after all. The End!"

"Pinkie!" I said, lunging at the break like I was aiming to catch a moving train.

Too slow. "So, yeah, I'm dressed up as a zombie cow made up of parts of other dead cows!" She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Again! I'm not real happy with the look this time because the Bride of Frankenholstein has seriously big hair, and my mane has been really droopy ever since everypony abandoned my party last night, which really kinda bummed me out, but Madame LaFlour has been talking me through it and I think we're gonna be all right." Pinkie zipped over to a flour sack that she had propped up on a stool nearby. "Oui! Zat eez correct!" she said her voice going all squeaky and Frenchy as she waggled the flour sack up and down in my face like a puppet. "Madame LaFlour thinks zat all you ponies were very rrrude hier soir!" Pinkie cocked her head in the other direction, her voice going normal. "Madame LaFlour can be very judgmental sometimes, but she really does care about me and wants what's best for me in the end. The other thing Madame LaFlour is helping me do is bake a whole bunch of cookies to celebrate us eventually pulling through this crisis and turning into a big happy Ponyville again, which is very nice of her, considering I have to scoop things out of her head to do it!" Pinkie turned French again. "Ah, well! Tant pis, tant mieux! Such eez ze lahf of a sack of flour!"

"Madame LaFlour!" I shouted, squeezing my eyes against the sheer undiluted dumbness of what I was about to say. Pinkie and the flour sack stopped short and stared at me, blessedly quiet.

"Beggin' your pardon, Madame," I continued, "but I got a real important question for your friend Pinkie there. Now I know we all cut out of the hypercube dance early last night 'cause we was all so excited about science all of a sudden, and I'm sorry about that, but in our defense, we've all gone totally bat-bucking crazy. And that's what I need to talk to her about." I scratched the back of my mane with one hoof. "So could you please ask Pinkie about contraptionology and why it makes ponies go silly in the head. Please."

Pinkie turned the flour to face her. "Pinkie Pie," said the flour, "I seenk Applejack deserves to know zis. You rrreally should tell 'ahr more about ze contraptionology."

Pinkie looked a little glum. "You're right, Madame LaFlour," she said. "Why can't I ever be as wise as you?"

"Do not despair, leetle wahn," said Pinkie, patting herself comfortingly with one of the flour sack's corner-tassels. "Wisdom comes with tahm."

"You're a good friend!" said Pinkie hugging the flour sack. Then she abruptly chucked it back onto the stool in a cloud of powder and turned to me, her eyes sparkling. "Okay, Applejack!" she said. "Sit your rump down and have a listen to Professor Pinkie Pie's Contraptionology 102 lecture on the topic of convolvement!"

"Convolvement?"

"Convolvement!" said Pinkie. "One of the pitfalls of the career contraptionologist is a thing called 'convolvement', which can strike both your experiments and, in advanced stages, your brain itself! When you begin work on a contraption, it's because you had a single cool vision of what that contraption was supposed to be. If you can finish your contraption before convolvement hits, then everything goes super-duper great! Just like me and Iggy! But if you make the mistake of tinkering too long on your contraption, trying to make it perfecter and perfecter long past the point you should have moved on to new projects, you run the risk of your original project becoming convolved."

"And what in the name of radish-tops does that mean?"

Pinkie's voice got low and mysterious. "It starts innocent enough at first. You start fiddling with things. You wonder what would happen if you inverted the phase manifold rather than keeping it upright. Or maybe you want to run the whole equation with negative numbers just for kicks, to see if you can get better results. And before you know it, your contraption is doing the exact opposite thing of what it was supposed to do! And then you're trapped, because you keep working on it, harder and harder, trying to get it back to what it was originally gonna be, but the more you work, the worse it gets!"

"So let's say," I said, "that Rarity makes a generosity machine, but then she reverses the polarity of the beam so that it steals stuff from people rather than giving it. Or Twilight gets frustrated with using friendship to power her ro-bot, so she harnesses betrayal-energy instead. Is that…?"

"Textbook convolvement," said Pinkie, nodding. "And what's worse, if you spend too long struggling with a convolved contraption, it starts sucking your brain into the convolution waveform! Pretty soon, you're sacrificing everything that used to be special to you, all in service to your very own infernal machine!"

"Fluttershy's critters," I said. "Rarity's diamonds. Twilight's books."

"Yup," said Pinkie. "It's exactly what's happening to Ponyville! Once convolvement gets into your brain, you turn competitive, driven, narcissistic and totally nuts."

"Great!" I said. "Finally, we know what's goin' on! What's the cure?"

Pinkie bit her lip.

"Pinkie," I said, "there is a cure, right?"

"Convolvement with brain infiltration is really hard to shake, A.J.," admitted Pinkie. "I keep trying to think of ways to make everypony better, but I keep drawing blanks. Maybe a couple years on top of a mountain breathing clean air and not thinking about machines at all might snap a pony out of it, but we don't have that much time. Or that many mountains."

"Well, that's just swell," I said. And then, "Wait. No offense, sugarhypercube, but is that what happened to you? Is that why you ditched contraptionology and moved back here to Ponyville?"

"Nonono," said Pinkie. "Like I keep telling everypony, I ditched contraptionology because I'm not a contraptionologist! I'm a baker! And besides, I'm way too young to get seriously convolved."

"I hate to break it to y'all, but comparative youth don't seem to be stopping Twilight or Rarity none."

"That's just it!" said Pinkie, tapping her chin. "There's one thing I don't get about this whole predicament we find ourselves in, A.J."

"One… thing?"

Pinkie pondered this. "Yep!" she said. "Pretty much just the one thing. And that is this: convolvement is a long, slow process! Back in Maresachusetts, it took a pony years to reach even Stage One convolvement! But overnight, everypony in town's suddenly hitting a high Three or even a Four! It's like something happened in their dreams to accelerate the convolvement process to unheard-of levels!"

"Well, I guess I'm safe from that," I muttered. "I ain't caught a wink since the morning of the forest fire." I frowned, then. "Pinkie, did you sleep?"

Pinkie giggle-snorted. "Of course, silly!" she said. "I always take the opportunity to get rested and refreshed whenever I can, just in case any unexpected all-night parties show up the very next day!"

"So your project's convolved, too!"

"Not a chance, Applejack!" said Pinkie. "I finished my assignment last night, before I even went to sleep! Just like any experienced contraptionologist would!"

"You made the link between balloons and laughter?"

"Yep!" said Pinkie, proudly.

"Take me to it," I said, grabbing the front of her nightgown. "Show me what you came up with. 'Cos if I survive L.H.C., I'm fixing to truss this Junior Armageddon right up, which means I need to know as much about it as I possibly can."

"I don't have to take you to it!" said Pinkie. "It's right here!"

I looked around, a mite startled. "Well, what is it? Did you build a giant invisible balloon or something, so's you can hover around and prank ponies better? Are we standing inside your contraption?"

Pinkie frowned, thoughtfully. "Is this or is this not me talking about a science project?" she said, out of the blue.

"Of course it's you talking about a science project!"

"Well, then I've already said too much," declared Pinkie. "If you'll recall, I Pinkie-Promised Twilight back in Part Four, 'Stranger Danger', that I wouldn't talk about any of my science projects from here on in. And if this is me talking about one of my science projects, then no can do, A.J."

I growled a little. "Okay, fine, it's not you talking about a science project."

"Hm," said Pinkie, pursing her lips. "That sounds like somepony trying to weasel out of a Pinkie Promise to me. But I don't suppose you know anyone who'd do that, right?"

"For heaven's sake, Pinkie," I said, "Dodge Junction was a real bad time for—"

"Any ideas?" said Pinkie, blinking at me. "Anypony at all you can think of who might try to weeeasel out on a Pinkie Promise for some reason?"

"Pinkie."

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeasel?" said Pinkie, leaning in.

"Fine!" I said, storming away to the other side of the kitchen. "Y'made your point! I'll just have to go at it half-baked." I grabbed the sixth and final breakfast dish in my teeth and chucked it, clattering, onto a counter. "Here's your breakfast, by the way," I said, sullenly.

Pinkie trotted over and broke the seal on the dish. "Mm!" she said, breathing in the apparently-delightful aroma of scorched eggs. "Burnt to a crisp! Just like I like 'em! Thanks, Applejack!" Pinkie went fishing around in a nearby pantry for a bottle of hot sauce and drenched the sad remnants of her mushroom omelet in about a gallon of the stuff.

"You're welcome," I said, as Pinkie began crunching contentedly on her eggs. "And glad you like 'em burned, 'cause it weren't supposed to be that way. The heating element in your dish switched on right on time, same as the other townpony ones did. It's just that I took a detour out to Rainbow's house afore coming here."

"Not how I would have done it!" said Pinkie, around a mouthful of food. "Seems like you maybe wasted a lot of hoofsteps!"

"I did," I said. "It's just… after seeing what became of Rar and Twi, I didn't know if I could face a messed-up you. Or a messed-up Sugarcube Corner."

I squared my jaw, looking around Pinkie's happy little kitchen. "This here's my favorite place inside the town limits, Pinkie. All the time me and you spent baking stuff here together, they's some of the happiest memories I got. And because you're in all them happy memories, I guess that makes you one of my favorite ponies, too. Even if I can't understand what you're jabbering on about half the time. I'm glad to see that, even in the middle of all this nonsense, you're still pretty much you."

"I'm always me!" agreed Pinkie, happily.

"Just thought I'd let you know all that, before I head back out to the Acres," I said. "In case I don't get a chance to say it again."

"That sounds kind of downer-y," said Pinkie, cocking her head at me.

"I mean it, Pinks," I said. "I got no idea what's gonna become of me once I get a gut full of nuclear cider. I got no idea what's gonna become of the world. So in case I don't make it, y'all gotta find Rainbow Dash and get the heck out of here. You two are the clear outliers in this little experiment, whatever it is. Last night at the party you thought maybe I'd spilled something on my Honesty amulet, but that ain't the case." I lifted up the little once-orange apple at my neck, now hovering just above black. "I been looking at these things as I been making my rounds, and none of them's in real good shape no more."

Pinkie looked down at the little rain-blue amulet of Laughter hanging around her own neck. "It does look a little gloomy, doesn't it?" she said, shining pitifully at it with one hoof.

"Gloomy or not, what I'm trying to say is, it's still a darn sight better than Rarity's, or Twilight's," I said. "Or mine. If the Elements are any indication, you and Dash have got the least damage here, and I'm hoping that means you're gonna make it through this." With that, I turned toward the door and started heading on out.

I could hear the sad frown in Pinkie's voice. "A.J.," she said, "I know what it feels like, but trust me, you can fight this. You don't have to drink the cider. You don't have to let contraptionology eat you up."

I didn't turn back. "It already 'et me," I said. "I just ain't stopped wiggling yet."

And with that, I walked out the door.

* * *

By the time I got back to Sweet Apple Acres, there weren't nothing but the wind to greet me.

Big Mac and his sonic plowshare were gone, leaving behind a whole mess of gray, cratered earth, craters which'd taken a bite out of the southern orchard and claimed some of the farm's smaller outbuildings as well. If Granny was still in residence, she was still hiding in the cellar, probably working on a way to destroy the world using rheumatism medication. Apple Bloom was nowhere to be seen. And all the livestock was just… gone.

I couldn't remember the last time I had come up that road leading back to the Acres and not heard the noise of snuffling pigs and clucking hens. Never, I decided. I ain't never heard Sweet Apple Acres so quiet. It felt like a needle being plunged into my heart.

"Hello?" I tried calling out. No response. Just a sad little echo from one of the bigger plowshare craters.

I sighed, hanging my head, and crossed under the arch leading back to my home. For a second, I had a wild little hope that Mac had obliterated the still shed and the Large Hadron Cider along with it, but no such luck. Everything was intact. Wincing, I nosed open the shed door, tossed my empty saddlebags into one gloomy corner, and then stood back and witnessed my creation.

The still was absolutely, well, still, the fractionating column silent and empty of bubbles. At some point in the process, it looked like we'd lost power to the entire contraption, maybe a fuse or something. Didn't matter none. If we had had a power outage, the L.H.C. sequence had finished before it cut. And the reason how come I could tell that was that there at the very end of the apparatus line was the glass-walled spirit safe, glowing bright amber-gold like I'd lassoed a star from Luna's heaven and dragged it down into my barn.

I walked over to it, fumbled my teeth around the spirit safe key, and unlocked the shiny brass padlock keeping the glass lid in place. Then I swung it open, feeling a gust of hot wind rush out from inside.

There, resting in a cider mug made out of focused magnetic fields strapped to a projection handle, was a single dram of the most potent cider known to pony, practically bending space and time around itself with its powerful alcoholic goodness. It fizzed a little as it sat there, and I knew – because I had made it – that the fizz weren't from no fermentation process. The bubbles in Large Hadron Cider come from billions and billions of tiny explosions going on at a subatomic level, matter and antimatter crashing into each other over and over again.

I reached down into the safe and lifted the magnetic tankard. The light came with it.

Well, this is it, I thought, blowing a thick head of quantum foam off the top of the mug and gazing for a while at what I had wrought. Time to face the inevitable.

"Bottoms up," I said.

I chugged 'er.

11 - The Honest Truth

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Eleven: The Honest Truth

It was light, sweet, and fizzy.

That was all.

I stood there for a while in the gloom of the still shed, feeling a little foalish.

"Well," I said, at last, setting down the tankard with an electromagnetic buzz. "That there was kind of a letd—" and that was the last coherent thought I had before I dropped to the floor with a bang, felled like a struck ox.

The Large Hadron Cider clawed its way up from my gut toward my brain like some kinda wild animal made out of chemicals, and once there, it sunk its teeth in, dragging me down past all the fun parts of intoxication straight to the mighty unpleasant ones. In a matter of a second, I was gagging and twitching on the floor, struggling in wide-eyed panic against full cider coma, a state I ain't never been in – not since I was a filly, anyway – and my battle to stay conscious was like me trying to swim up a waterfall.

I just plain couldn't keep up and had to surrender myself to blackness, and it came as a powerful surprise to me that simply giving up wasn't enough to stop the ravages of L.H.C. Fact, it didn't even hardly make it miss a step. Down, down, down it took me, until, much like them fancy made-up stories about pony explorers digging holes deep enough that they came out in some weird upside-down land on the other side of the world, I was hauled all the way through unconsciousness and back out again, into a place where everypony and everything was just plumb wonderful.

Lines of humming golden light surrounded me, weaving around my head and floating off into the distance. I laughed at them because they were pretty. For about ten minutes or so, I tried following where they led, until I realized that they led straight through the wall of the shed and that I weren't getting very far trying to force myself through that way.

Door! I remembered, and I was delighted. Have y'all ever thought of a door? I mean, really thought about it? What musta been going through that pony's mind, who first thought of a door? It's like a piece of a house… that opens! And keys! Keys are like a little hunk of a door that you carry around with you! Keys and doors are the broken-heart lockets of our everyday lives, and how is it that ponies can wander through life without realizing that every time you put a key in a lock, you're bringing together two things that was always meant to be together? The sad poetry of it all brought a tear to my eye and hit me right in the soft spots of my breast. Celestia above, I love me some door.

"Thank you, door," I said, to the door. "Thank you for keeping things out when you are closed and letting me through when you are open."

My piece said, I wandered toward the exit, missing the mark eighteen times before finally getting it right and pushing my way outside, out to Sweet Apple Acres, my favorite place in the whole wide world, and ain't I the luckiest filly, gettin' to wake up every morning in the place she loves the most. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, the air was full of spinning curls of musical yellow, and everything was just fine.

"G'day, apple trees!" I shouted, brightly, waving to 'em with both forehooves at the same time and then falling over on my face. From my position on the ground, I thought I could maybe see them waving back, them that hadn't been flattened by my brother's sonic plow, that is. Lawks almighty, I thought, apple trees are blessed things. And do you know why? 'Cause they make apples! How is that even possible? I mean, I can't make an apple. Can you? I bet not. It's a total mystery! Yet, each and every year, they just make apples, like it weren't even a thing. Thousands and thousands of apples!

I mean, ain't that a kick in the head?

Anyhow, all this thinkin' about apples was making me peckish, and it was a bit too early in the year to just be picking anything off the trees, so I righted myself, got to my hooves, and wandered over to the apple cellar for a bite of the old crop. I started down the cellar stairs, instantly tripped, and landed in a pile of tangled horse-limbs at the bottom, which sure gave me a chuckle. Once I righted myself, I moseyed over to the barrels and got myself an apple, and then I stopped.

Grower be praised, I thought, holding it up to the light from the open cellar door. That sure is an apple right there. That there's thirty-three point three (repeating) percent of my Cutie Mark. Ponies love apples, and for good reason, but all the rest of 'em is just enjoying the nutritive goodness of it all. When a member of the Apple Family eats an apple, on the other hand, it's like… a ritual, I guess. It's like eating a piece of ourselves so that we stay ourselves. It's pagan, and it's poetic, and above all it is the Apple Family way.

I studied my apple for a time, taking in its perfect redness, the shine on its skin, the way it curved around the top like a Hearts and Hooves card, the little pedestal on the base that kept it standing upright if you were to set it down on a table. I thought about the white flesh inside, the warm little core of life in its center, and the tiny, miniature apple trees waiting to be born inside each and every one of its tiny brown seeds. And the even tinier miniature potential apples waiting to be born from them trees. And the hypothetical seeds inside those. And the trees they would produce. And so on down, into forever.

So that took about four or so hours. Finally, I got hungry and I ate it. Mm, mm, good.

Well! I ain't gonna say that wasn't time well spent, but judging from the position of the sun outside, it was now well past lunchtime, and I had a promise to keep! Lunch, for all my little pony friends! Just like I promised, last night at the party! I spent another half hour getting myself up the cellar steps, and then wandered over to the home-barn to see what Granny had cooked up for me.

When I got there, I found a note on the door:

young'un / ain't had time to make lunch for you / my new artificial hip will change everything / get some apple chips from the bins if it's so dang important to feed your friends / soup's on —granny

Well, that was sure nice of her, thinking of me and my friends like that. I wandered back to the still shed, retrieved my saddlebags, then filled 'em up with mouthful after mouthful of sharp dried apples. This'd sure be a good lunch! I couldn't wait to show 'em all what the good ol' Apple Family had cooked up for them. Maybe we'd sing a song or two. I could see how all them science projects is coming along. And then I could explain to them all about doors. 'Cause that's what friends do.

Walking diagonally, and then back again diagonally the other way, I made my way in the overall general direction of Fluttershy's cottage. Probably.

* * *

Well, when I got to Fluttershy's cottage, I just had to laugh. The whole thing had up and gotten covered over in most spots with some sorta sticky biological resin or something, leaving only a few traces of the original woodwork and plaster sticking out from place to place. Heavens to Betsy, that pony-girl does get some strange ideas in her head. Just like at my place, the air was filled with humming golden waves, all centering on the cottage.

I sauntered approximately over toward the little house, crunching hundreds and hundreds of empty fallen butter-bee-bat cocoons underhoof as I went. "Fluttersha'!" I said, rapping my hoof hard on a chunk of visible wood roundabouts near the front door area. "It's me!"

There was a noise of ferocious buzzing and fluttering and fwipping around inside. Finally, there came the sound of something vaguely pony-shaped staggering toward the door.

"Applejack?" came a wavery, jagged-edged voice from inside that sounded like Fluttershy talkin' funny or something.

"Yep!" I said, all proud. "In the flesh!"

"P— please don't say 'flesh' please oh please oh please." Then, the noise of Fluttershy hacking a great goobery cough, and spitting something.

"All right then," I said, playing along. "It's still me, though. Iff'n you'll pardon me, Flutters, yer soundin' a mite sick in there."

"I thought that," said Fluttershy. "I thought I was getting sick. I thought it was a disease."

"Is it catchin'?" I said.

"No," said Fluttershy. "You don't have to worry about contagion. The disease has revealed its purpose. I, um, know what the disease wants."

"Well, what's that?"

"It wants to... turn me into something else. That's not too terrible, is it? Most ponies would give anything to be turned into something else."

I laughed a little. Contraptionology! Gotta love it! "Turned into what?" I asked.

"What do you think?" snapped Fluttershy. "A butter-bee-bat! No, wait, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming… Flutter-Bee-Bat!"

"Huh," I said.

"Don't you think that's worth a Science Fair trophy or two?" said Fluttershy.

"Sure sounds like it!" I said. Then I rummaged around in my saddlebags, emerging with a mouthful of apple chips, which I spat on the ground. "Anyhoo, got lunch for y'all!"

There was a scrabbling at the door, and it pushed open, threads of suspicious goo still clinging to the lintel above it. Dang shame, lettin' your house get covered over with extruded biological substances like that. A weirdly deformed hoof, surrounded on all sides with floating golden light, came patting out through the aperture. It grabbed the load of chips and pulled 'em inside. Then there was a dismayed yelp.

"Thank you, Applejack," said the voice. "I'm sure these… dried apples are really special, but, um, Flutter-Bee-Bat can't feed on apples."

"You kidding?" I said. "Ponies love apples!"

"Flutter-Bee-Bat doesn't love apples. Flutter-Bee-Bat found out the hard and painful way that she eats very much the way a vampire bat eats. Her grinding teeth are now useless because although she can chew up plant matter, she can't digest it. Solid food hurts. So like a vampire bat, Flutter-Bee-Bat leaps upon unsuspecting critters and nicks their skin with her sharp incisors—"

"Ponies?" I asked, in a happy sort of suspicion, still comforted by the warm glow of L.H.C. cider-buzz.

"Oh, no," meeped Fluttershy. "I would never… I mean…"

Fluttershy let off a frustrated, squealy roar, then. "Applejack," she said, "my pets all left me while I slept in my snuggly chrysalis. Everything except the butter-bee-bats. Could you… could you tell me if they've returned?"

I looked out over the empty fields of animal-cages surrounding Flutters's cottage. "Don't appear that way, sugarcube," I said.

"Oh, no," said Fluttershy, erratically. "What will I feed on? What will my babies feed on?"

"Well, I's sorry the apples ain't to your liking," I said. "But I fulfilled my promise, and it's way past lunch-time, so iff'n y'all will excuse me, I gots more meals to deliver."

"They look up to me as their queen!" said Fluttershy, ignoring me. "I have to provide for them! Somehow, I must provide for them!"

Well, I did feel a little sorry for her, gettin' all mutated like she apparently had, but I had the strong suspicion that there was a brave new world coming around, and if I stopped to shed a tear for every pony what got horribly transmogrified into some kind of abhorrent-to-Celestia's-sight freak o' nature, then I was fixing to cry me a river. And I felt too good and too happy to get all weepful like that. Thank you, L.H.C.!

I turned away from the angry buzzing of Fluttershy's cottage, and the angry wailing of Fluttershy, or Flutter-Bee-Bat, or whatever, a smile on my face and a song in my heart, and headed on down to Ponyville.

* * *

I raised my head in wonder at the beauty of our little town.

Lines of humming golden light were everywhere, twirling and coiling around the heads and bodies of every single pony I met. I stood there for a while in the village square, drinking it in, kinda like I was watching a flight of colorful birds. The light-lines weaved and twisted around the charcoal-colored mechanized bunkers and arching, lighning-rod-studded collection towers that had taken the place of most of the houses in town. They then floated off into the air to some point far distant from here, and let me tell y'all, it sure was a sight.

Oh, yeah, and there was noise, too. Octavia's music had started up again, more powerful than before, and I had to cheerfully stuff my ears full of apple chips to stop 'em from bleeding or something.

I was just about done filling my ears when a unicorn ran into me, knocked me down, and dragged me into an alley.

"Hey, Vinyl Scratch!" I said, as she pulled me across the ground. "Good afternoon to ya'!"

Vinyl finished getting me where she wanted to get me and then yanked the chunks of apple out of my ears.

"It's insane," she said, hyperventilatin', her wide eyes clearly visible past the cracked lenses of her mirror-shades. "It is actually insane."

"Funny thing, Vinyl," I said, waving my hooves around her head. "Why ain't you got golden light swimming around you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" screamed the unicorn, in my face. "What golden light?"

"Y'know," I said, running my hooves through my own aerial currents. "This here stuff!"

"I knew it!" she said. "You're crazy, too! Everypony… has gone… crazy!"

"Sanity's a continuum, Vinyl Scratch," I remarked. "Y'all bothered by something in particular?"

Vinyl stood there for a spell, seething. Then she pointed a hoof accusatorily back in the direction of her house.

"The Holy Grail," said Vinyl, her voice trembling.

"Come again?"

Vinyl squeezed her eyes shut. "Octavia's beats are so powerful that they're able to physically move objects. So do you know what she did?"

"No."

Vinyl grabbed me by my shoulders, her eyes beginning to well up in tears. "My mare-toy went and created a new form of music which emits a shaped wub charge with the capacity to scratch its own turntables in real-time! It's music that DJs itself."

"That's real nice, Vinyl," I said, the L.H.C. humming pleasantly in my brain.

"No!" she shouted again, her voice breaking. "What happens to me now?"

"You go up to her and you congratulate her!" I said. "You say, 'Octavia, I been working and slaving my whole life in service to my art, all the while facing scorn and condemnation from you and your kind constantly telling me how it ain't real music. And then, overnight, you pulled an about-face and suddenly accomplished feats of DJing that I only ever dreamed about in my wildest dreams, thus functionally invalidating every effort I ever made. Good job, hun!'"

Vinyl stared at me. I smiled brightly back at her.

She started bawling.

"Aw, sugarcube," I said.

"Don't you 'aw, sugarcube' me!" she said, pushing me aside and staggering back toward the mouth of the alley. "This… this calls for desperate measures! I have to stop this, somehow!"

Vinyl lurched off into the streets of Ponyville, a lone figure bereft of happy golden light, and she was quickly lost to my view.

I shrugged, stuffed apples in my ears again, and headed to Rarity's.

* * *

"A pre-emptive strike!" shouted Rarity, her hooves working furiously at the controls of the Wondrous Lanthorn, her shiny helmet hanging at a skewed angle. "Princess Celestia was apparently suspicious of some of the goings-on in town, so she sent a squadron of her finest pegasus dragoons to investigate! This is tantamount to an act of war, Applejack!"

"P'raps she's just curious 'bout all the lilacs flying past at supersonic speed?" I suggested.

"No!" she said. "This is clearly a blatant power-grab by the Throne!" As I watched, the Lanthorn glowed and squealed its way to life, and Rarity magic-lifted a glass container of sharp-edged gemstones into the accelerator beam, causing it to vanish with that same sharp "Vree-Pchkow" noise as before. "I've got Celestia's little vanguard pinned down in Town Hall with diamond canister-shot, but it's only a matter of time before one of them escapes my wrath and reports his findings to the Princess. And then: full-scale land war! Before that happens, I need to think of something suitably destructive to fling at Canterlot that can end this war before it begins! Think of the lives I'll save, Applejack!"

"How 'bout that one boulder you been keepin' in storage for sentimental reasons?"

Rarity blinked, adjusting her helmet back square. "Yes," she said, then, rubbing her hooves together. "Oh, Tom, I believe I have a job for you! As soon as I find a spare moment after neutralizing Celestia's strike force, I'll go fetch him up! And then… I will give the Princess one opportunity to surrender to me. Just one." She giggled a little. "And I do hope she takes me up on it," she said. "Those high-class Canterlot ponies will have no choice but to accept me into their ranks when I become their new god-empress!"

"Well, that sounds real nice," I said, dreamily, reaching into my saddlebags again as the Lanthorn prepared itself for another shot. "Here's some lunch for y'all."

I tossed the apple chips into the air just as Rarity stabbed the primary fire control, and they vanished. "Heh heh," I said. "You just accelerated your lunch, Rarity!"

"Oh, it doesn't matter!" said Rarity, musically. "Plenty more opportunities for lunch once I rule everything! Thank you so much for the ordnance suggestion, Applejack."

"Shucks, Rar," I said. "Ain't nothin'."

"No, I mean it!" she said, smiling earnestly at me from her position at the Lanthorn's control divan. "And I'm sorry for incinerating your hat this morning. You've always been very special to me, Applejack, and I want you to know that when the revolution comes I've decided to kill you last."

"Thanks," I said. "I ain't planning on killing nopony no more, on account of the wondrous mind-expanding effects of Large Hadron Cider on my head, but I want you to know if I were gonna kill everypony, I'd kill you last, too."

"Aw," we both said, simultaneously, and then we hugged.

"Well!" she said, returning to the Lanthorn's controls. "Back to sniping at the Royal Guard! Ta ta, darling!"

"Later!" I replied, trotting back down the steps toward the streets of Ponyville.

Rarity is a good friend.

* * *

"I want you to know that all this is merely a temporary setback," said the disemponied brain inside its little cylindrical brain-tank, using Twilight's voice.

"I'm sure it is," I agreed, wholeheartedly.

The magenta-colored liquid inside the glass sloshed around agitatedly as the loudspeaker mounted on the front side of the tank crackled to life again.

"What?" said Twilight's brain. "No gloating? No brazen 'I-told-you-so' declarations?"

"Nope!" I said. "I'm sure you're right. 'Bout it bein' a temporary setback and all."

"Well, good," said the brain, its speaker making a petulant little snorting sound. "I'm glad you have the capacity to see reason."

I peered in close to the bubbly purplish tank of brain stuff. "Y'know, Twi," I said, "I always thought maybe you'd have a real big brain, on account of you being so gol-darn intelligent. But it's just real little and cute, just like yerself. Or like yerself used to be." I took a second to glance around the lab. "Did you get rid of your old pony body all complete-like?"

"Don't be silly, A.J. I still haven't verified the magical capacity of my new contraptionoid vessel! My pathetic mortal form is laid out on one of the slabs down there; I'll cremate it after my equuoid gets its shakedown run."

"Wait, I don't understand," I said, cocking my head, the gesture causing me to fall over again. I got back up. "Why didn't you just leave your brain in your head until you knew if your thing was gonna work?"

The liquid sloshed around. "I got impatient, all right?" said the brain, huffily. "I got impatient because there's nothing more I can do with my titanic intellect until sundown when the stars come out, and I was going nuts in here, so I started using my spare time to perfect my partial-pony teleportation spell!"

"Partial… pony…"

"Look, it's very simple," said Twilight's brain. "It's just a normal teleportation spell, except for the fact that it doesn't move your entire body from one point in space to another. It moves only part of your body from one point in space to another, leaving the rest of your body behind. Usable on myself or on anypony else I choose, just like normal teleportation." The brain nodded to itself. "It's an excellent idea with no possibility for horrible ghastly misuse."

"I totally believe you," I said, happily. "So you used it to extract your own brain, huh?"

"Yes!" cried Twilight's brain. "Just as a test! But I made one major miscalculation: once I was out of my body, the dumb thing just keeled over like a sack of potatoes! So now I'm out here, and my alicorn, the thing that would actually allow me to reverse the teleportation spell, is down there on an exam table, stuck on the forehead of a hundred or so pounds of lifeless pony flesh! I momentarily considered asking Spike to saw it off and cram it into my brain, but I don't know if that would even work! Not to mention the fact that it would cause catastrophic damage to my frontal lobe! Ooh, thinking about this just makes me so angry!" The juice sloshed around as Twilight's brain thumped itself into the glass wall of the tank a couple times. "Stupid Twilight! Stupid! Stupid!"

"Well, I sure am sorry to hear that," I said. "I don't reckon you'll be needing these apple chips, then."

"I currently exist on a powdered diet of cinnamon and sugar particles dumped regularly into my brain-supporting liquid," said Twilight's brain. "And I happen to be overdue, come think! Where's that lousy minion of mine with my hourly fix?" The speaker vibrated and crackled with a shout: "SPIKE!"

"Here, mistress!" hissed Spike, trudging into view holding a shaker-top bottle. He pulled up a stepstool, removed Twilight's blackened crown from the top of her brain-tank, opened the tank, sprinkled a bunch of cinnamon and sugar into the juice below, and then screwed the top of the tank back down.

"Put my crown back on top as well, please," sniffed Twilight's brain, sounding a bit more contented. Spike did so, with a clink. Then he trudged off back to doing goodness-knows-what, whatever minions get up to in their spare time, I guess.

I spat a small mouthful of apple chips onto an empty bookshelf. "All righty then!" I said. "Here's me keeping my promise to you and Spike. Double portion for him, I guess. I'm gonna head off to Rainbow Dash's now, so have fun… uh… floating there."

"Oh, I won't," said Twilight, testily. "But don't worry, this is the last not-fun I'm going to be having in a long time. Once I somehow manage to eradicate the test personality of my incredibly powerful magic-using unicorn contraptionoid despite being completely cut off from my own magical powers, everything's going to be skittles and ginger ale around here!" Twilight's brain lunged up against the wall of the tank hard enough to rattle it in its little stand. "Mark my words, Applejack," said Twilight's brain. "Mark. My. Words."

"Consider them marked!" I said. "See y'all later!"

I walked out of the library, heading out to Rainbow Dash's, shaking my head in amusement. Hated rival or not, that little library pony sure can be funny sometimes.

* * *

You could hear the noise of furious commotion from hundreds of yards away. Lots and lots of hi-yah's and shouting and hoof-on-metal noises, that sort of thing. When I finally rounded the last bend leading to the clearing R.D.'s house was hovering over, I could see the reason for it: Dash was there, wearing the tattered shreds of her cardboard armor, locked in a big ol' fracas with some kind of giant metal ro-bot of some kind. I wasn't sure how to describe the contraptionoid in question, other than "big" and "tall" and "silver". Maybe it was kind of… bunny-shaped?

I squinted up at the control console near the head of the giant shiny contraptionoid. Yup! I thought, delightedly. There he is! Cute little Angel Bunny, furiously working the controls to his giant ro-bot monster and making it smack Dash around. As I watched, a particularly good back-paw cuff sent Dash flying in my direction. She hit dirt face-first and skidded a couple yards, eventually coming to rest at my feet, looking bruised, scuffed, and completely feather-distressed.

"Hey, Rainbow!" I exclaimed, beaming down at her. "I brought lunch!"

"Applejack!" cried Dash, looking up at me. "You were gone forever and I was about to go to Canterlot like you said but then Angel came back with a hugenormous battle robot! He's gone insane!"

"Strictly speaking," I said, stroking my chin with one hoof, "Angel's at the controls, so it ain't really a ro-bot. It's more like a giant bunny augmentation suit." I looked down at Dash. "Kind of like what you were trying to do with all these boxes you got on, except you failed!" I finished, brightly.

"Augh!" said Dash. "Sure, beat up my pride along with the entire rest of me! Look, I know it's just cardboard! I was just trying it on to see if I could get it to work right when Angel pulled me through the wall and started whacking the stuffing out of me! You gotta help me bring him down, A.J.! He's gonna steal Tank's lettuce!"

"Love to help, R.D.," I said, dumping the rest of the apple chips from my bags onto Dash's head. "But I got lunch to deliver. Good luck with that, though!" I turned to go.

"A.J.! Wait!" said Dash, but if she tried to say anything else it was cut off when Angel Bunny's giant contraptionoid suit grabbed her around the middle and yanked her away.

Boy, howdy, I thought, as I trotted back to town, the noise of furious Dash-abuse slowly fading behind me. Life sure is getting exciting around these parts!

* * *

"Hey, Dr. Pie!" I shouted, kicking in the front door to Sugarcube Corner.

"Applejack!" cried Pinkie Pie – still dressed in her rumpled Frankenholstein getup – as I hopped my way into the confectionary's sizeable dining-room. "I figured it out! It was the punch! Professor Danger put something in the punch at the party! None of the colts or fillies in town are infected, just the grown-ups, so I thought it maybe had something to do with how old everypony is, but Mr. and Mrs. Cake are perfectly fine, too… because they weren't at the party! They were here last night running the cuteceañera!"

"That's some good detective work, Pinks!" I said, kicking myself at how obvious this whole thing was in hindsight. Of course there was something in the punch making us all so silly! How on earth had I not seen it before? "Why would your dear old friend the Professor do something like that?"

Pinkie looked kinda helpless and almost a little teary. "I don't know!" she said. "But he specifically ordered everypony to sleep on their ideas, so I think that sleeping is increasing his control over everypony in town! And this morning, you said you didn't sleep last night, so I'm hoping you ended up fighting this off! Are you still with us, Applejack? Or are you infected, too?"

"Nope!" I said, dreamily. "I'm perfectly sane! Lemme just deliver you these here apple chips, and then, if you got a spare moment, I wanna talk to you about how wonderful doors are!" I took the last few remaining apple chips, the ones I had stuck in my ears, and shook 'em out on the counter, where they fell with a clatter.

Pinkie blinked at me. I smiled back at her.

"Okay," said Pinkie. "We're going to temporarily write you off as a loss, A.J. But if you do manage to bust out of it, me and the Cakes are gathering up all the colts and fillies in town and taking them up to the Pepper Family holdings, because that's probably the last safe place left for twenty miles on account of them all being no-punch-drinkers up there. If you see your sister, or Sweetie Belle, or Scootaloo, or anypony else who's still unconvolved, please tell them to join us there A.S.A.P. I'm going to keep running back and forth into town to find ponies we've missed, but we also need help getting the word out!"

"What's 'the word'?"

"The word is that I'm throwing a really super important party up at the Peppers'! It's a 'Let's Hold Out For As Long As We Can Against The Hordes Of The Convolved' Party!"

"Y'all'll wanna pick up Vinyl Scratch, too, then," I said. "She weren't at the hypercube dance last night neither."

Pinkie shook her head. "Vinyl doesn't want to come," she said. "She said she had something real important to do out at the Nightmare Monument. I couldn't make her listen."

"That sounds non-sinister," I said. "Oh well. Have a good time up at the Peppers'! Say hi to Bell for me!"

"All right, A.J.," said Pinkie. "I can do that."

I smiled at her, lopsidedly. "Pinkie Promise?" I said.

Pinkie looked at me soberly. "Pinkie Promise," she said. "Now you Pinkie Promise me something, Applejack. Pinkie Promise me you'll stay safe out here. No weasels this time."

"Pinkie Promise," I agreed, enthusiastically.

"All right," said Pinkie. "I've gotta go help the Cakes get Pumpkin and Pound ready to travel. Remember: if you ever get sane, come join us at the Peppers'. That's where we're making our stand, okay?"

"Will do," I said, walking crookedly toward the door while waving a hoof back at Pinks. "See y'all later!"

"I hope so, A.J.," said Pinkie, quietly.

And then I was gone.

* * *

So there I was, standing in the street, all my obligations finally discharged. I'd delivered breakfast, just like I said. I'd delivered lunch, just like I said. I'd finished up my Large Hadron Cider, drank it down, and found that there were absolutely no unpleasant side effects to it whatsoever, which seemed like a pretty durn happy success to me. Weren't even no chores even left to do up at Sweet Apple Acres 'cause all the livestock was gone for some reason, just like Fluttershy's critters.

What the hay was a working pony supposed to do without no work to be done?

I pondered it for an hour or so, wandering through Ponyville, as the whole town collapsed and crumbled and rebuilt itself around me about three or four times: giant conducting towers reached for the sky only to get sheared off at the base by the rusting power of rapid-oxidation rays, huge newly-minted crystal thinking-machines were shattered to flinders by concussion charges, and experimental assault dirigibles tumbled from the sky and crashed to the ground, snared in webs of high-powered gravitation beams. And everywhere, there was fire, fire, fire.

Oh, and here's another thing that was everywhere: that golden light! Pretty, pretty, golden light, worming its way around every pony in town, snaking through our little pony bodies, coiling around our bellies, drilling in and out of our heads, and always, the whole time, humming. I followed the light with my eyes for a spell, then picked myself up and started wandering after it, like I had wanted to do from the get-go but for that shed wall in my path. Sure, the light was all concentrated on us down here in Ponyville, but as soon as it left us, it was all… floating away? Up to the Ridge, someplace? Back to where the forest fire happened, night before last?

Well, I thought, there was a job I could do. I could track that light! Nopony else had said squat about it, and Vinyl had looked at me like I was plumb crazy when I mentioned it to her, so I figured my ability to see the golden light was full-on due to the truth-exposing power of Nuclear Honesty Cider still churning around in my belly. Haw! Science-success! It almost made me feel bad that I'd promised Rainbow that I wasn't gonna submit my Large Hadron Cider to the Science Fair this morning, because, boy howdy, cider that lets you see invisible light sure seemed like it'd be a strong contender for first prize.

Thus resolved, I moseyed my way on out of the catastrophe that was Ponyville, buildings falling around me on all sides, and made my way up to the comparative peace of the wild lands up towards the Ridge, my steps giddy and unsure but my eyes locked on those ribbons, that stream, of beautiful light.

Eventually, I could tell by the whispering noise of ash under my hooves that I had arrived at the burned-out section of Everfree which had so totally consumed our efforts just a few tens of hours before, back when a forest fire was the most exciting thing going on 'round these parts. Everything was all still, and hushed, and clouds and clouds of white ashes floated through the air, whipping around like snowfall and settling on the scaly-black forms of twisted and carbonized trees. I could see the humming ribbons getting thicker and brighter and more concentrated, all coming together at a point in the very near distance. I giggled to myself. Almost there! I thought. Almost at the source of the light! I wondered to myself what it might be.

Well, weren't long, I found my answer.

There, on the edge of a high bluff, was a single grove of lemon trees that had somehow managed to live through the unnatural fires of Iggy the Salamander. They were green, and fresh, in perfect full bloom, all covered in shiny yellow fruits just like the ones the Professor had brought us as a thank-you offering for our pleasant hospitality the morning before, the ones that we'd turned around and dumped straight into the punch bowl for his party. And that's where the ribbons was coming from! Them lemons were so bright and plump and cheery that they were just busting out with a river of humming gold, a great stream of happy that flowed and oozed its way up from the cindery air of the lemon grove down to our little community below.

And there was a second river of light, too. This one didn't go as far, just about twenty or thirty feet up in the air, kind of like a little fountain. Except it weren't as random as a fountain. In fact, if I squinted kind of hard at it, I could see the curls of light form up loosely into a shape of sorts, kind of like what a pony might do if she were staring up at the sky and trying to find pictures in the clouds.

I tried to wrap my brain around the shape that the fountain of light was making. It was tall and sort of… snake-y. A little asymmetrical. Legs and everything, but they didn't seem to quite match up, left to right. An eagle's claw here, a lion's paw there. Long, goat-like face, topped with a pair of mismatched horns. Looked kinda like somepony I used to know at some point, and I was sure that if I just kept at it, just kept thinking about it hard enough, I'd eventually stumble across the name.

"D", something. Definitely started with a "D". That much I knew.

Ah, horsefeathers, I thought, then, weren't worth the effort in the end. I put the question out of my mind and stared some more at the beautiful light, mesmerized by the shape of it and how it was moving. And I might be wrong, here, but it almost seemed like the figure the light made was gazing out over Ponyville, looking at the state of utter chaos and unrest the town had been reduced to. I thought, maybe just for a second, that I could see it laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

Well, shoot, I thought. I didn't know if it was funny, as such, but all this light and ash and lemons and shiny, snaky figures guffawin' hysterically and gesturing in exultation at the sky sure was pretty in its own strange little way. Ain't nothing to do but sit for a piece and admire the beauty of it all, I concluded.

And that's exactly what I did, because, honest truth, there wasn't anything else in the world I'd rather do.

Everything was perfect, now.

12 - At Last, the Villain

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Twelve: At Last, the Villain

Discord!

The name echoed through my head like the crack of a bullwhip.

Discord!

In a flash, the sunny happiness of massive cider-poisoning under which I'd been laboring for the past several hours was boiled away, replaced in an instant with the triple-distilled white truth that lay at the core of Large Hadron Cider underneath all that alcohol, sorta like the tiny piece of sour candy that's left in your mouth once you've sucked off all the other layers of the jawbreaker.

In that moment, I could see with absolute scientific clarity what I'd become, what my friends and family had become, what poor Ponyville had become, literally overnight. Pictures from my happy little jaunt through the town flickered across my mind, each one more upsetting than the last. Here was Fluttershy's twisted hoof snaking out from the crack of her front door as she fumbled at the apples I had brought for her, here was the mad gleam in Rarity's eyes as she plotted violent revolution against Canterlot itself, here was Twilight's lifeless body draped in a sheet on her laboratory floor while her brain chattered crazily away from inside its tank…

I stared, slack-jawed, at the little photo album in my head. Boy howdy, I thought, we all sure got wrong in a hurry. Finally, though, I had found somepony to blame.

My face twisted into a snarl.

"Discord!" came the name one last time, this time from my own throat.

The column of golden light startled, turned, and looked over at me.

"What," purred a voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, "is this?"

The creature above the grove reached behind its back and produced a folding spyglass, which it then snapped open. With a clattering noise, the spyglass extended to about thirty feet in length, putting the lens basically square in my face. The golden figure made like it was going to peer through the eyepiece but leapt bodily into it instead, emerging out the other end of the spyglass directly in front of me.

And so there he was. The spirit of chaos and disharmony hisself, again, larger than life. I ain't gonna say "in the flesh", because he weren't nowhere near that. Close up like this, I could see the gaps between the ribbons of yellow light that made up his body; he looked half-complete, like some sort of chicken-wire frame waiting on a coating of papier-mâché. It was a horribly ugly sight, but then again, when was this bugger not?

The makeshift monster smiled congenially at me, showing wavering lemon-light teeth. "Ah, my old friend, Applejack," he said.

"I ain't your friend," I said, my eyes narrow. "'Bout the furthest from it, actually."

"Why is my joy at seeing you little ponies never reciprocated?" said Discord, resting his chin on his eagle claw for a second. "It's so very dishearten—"

"'Cause you're a weed, Discord!" I shouted. "I ain't never happy to see weeds!"

"Slander!" replied Discord, touching a claw to his breast and gesturing back at the trees behind him, which were still spitting out the yellow light that made up his body, making him look a bit like some kinda fancy marionette. "As you can see, I happen to be a very fetching grove of lemon trees at the moment." His voice rose in a little ditty: "Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon—"

"Y'aint that neither!" I cut in, desperate to not get caught in a musical number. "Last I checked, y'all was back to being a plot-ugly bird-mess target in the middle of the Princess's sculpture garden!"

"Oh, I'm still there," said Discord, looking sullenly off into the distance at Canterlot Mountain. "Most of me, that is." He brightened. "But! Part of the beauty of being an entity of primordial chaos is that I don't absolutely have to be all in one place at once! It's all thanks to the wonders of bilocation."

"Bilocation?"

"Ask your friend Pinkie Pie," said Discord, waving a claw all dismissive-like. "She'll clue you in. At any rate, yes, this handsome creature you see before you is a tiny little shard of my greatness, buried in the trees of a humble little lemon grove in the Everfree Forest. Admittedly, it's a bit less camouflaged now that this quarter of it's been largely reduced to the Everfree Ash Pile."

"A... shard?"

"You know what I really love about high altitudes?" said Discord, peering down over the edge of the nearby bluff face. "It's the echoes. Yes, a shard, Applejack. The first thing I did upon being released from my stone prison – this last time, anyway – was to shave off a few bits of my consciousness into a pile of happy little me-fragments, which I then proceeded to broadcast far and wide while you little ponies were all busy with your delightful cotton-candy weather. There are thousands more of me out there now. You can find pieces of your old pal Discord in the trees, in the water, in the flowers, in the fertile bellies of your marefolk…"

"All right, absolutely anything y'all say from here on in is officially too much information."

"You disappoint me, Applejack," said Discord, pursing his lips. "If your friend Twilight Sparkle were here, I wager she'd want to hear me out, for the data-gathering opportunity alone. To be quite frank, I'd actually been banking on her being here instead of you. I'll have to tone down the polysyllabics for my inevitable monologue."

"And just what do you mean by that?"

"What, the word 'polysyllabics'? Oh, sorry, that was a bit more than the guttural twanging grunts you're accustomed to." Discord cleared his throat, then put on a straw hat which he hadn't been holding up until now. "Me g'wine trah talk wit' small words now—"

"No! About Twilight!"

"Oh! Merely that she's just that much smarter than you, my dear," said Discord, removing the hat, dropping it down onto my head and then patting me on the top of it. The light-lines making up his paw buzzed a little, but other than that, I couldn't feel the contact. I immediately tossed the hat to the ground, trying hard not to think of Old Reliable as I did so. The hat vanished into a spray of ribbons where it fell. "After all, this is something of a mind-game, isn't it?" Discord continued. "It's not a problem you can solve by kicking it, lassoing it, or showering it with amusing regional colloquialisms, all three of which you quite excel at, I don't mind saying." Discord snapped his leonine claw and conjured a pitcher, out of which he poured a table and two chairs. "Sit?"

I scowled again. "In case you missed these here goggles and this here snazzy white coat, I's a science genius mare now, just like Twi is. So you can just button that lip."

"Correction!" said Discord. "You're a contraptionology genius mare. I can't stand science; it's one of the most boring things ever invented. All that checking and double-checking and double-double checking. But this, this 'contraptionology' business you ponies came up with, it's just the most delightful idea you've ever had! Imposing your senseless visions and dreams onto the world via borderline madness? Outstanding! I wish I could take credit for it, but no, it's all you. And the most fun thing about it is that it pretends to be science, when it isn't!"

"Whatever!" I said. "Point is, I ain't sitting at the same table with the likes of you!"

"Suit yourself," said Discord, waving his paw and dismissing the furniture, which went galloping away like a trio of camelopards, quickly vanishing just as the hat had. "Yes, quite impressive. Somehow, out of all the chaos, you alone managed to achieve something close to your noble aspiration: a dose of honesty cider that actually allows you to see my manifestation here at the grove. How on earth did you manage it? I'd have thought that my convolving dream-whispers would have eradicated all hope of that."

"I ain't been dreaming," I said. "I ain't even been sleeping."

"Tut, tut," said Discord. "Even after your buddy the Professor told you to get a good forty winks last night and everything? I'm surprised at you, Applejack. His little tent is right over there on the far side of the grove; if he could perceive my avatar in any way, I'd march over there right now and tattle on you for disobeying his direct request. Unfortunately, he's in there with his new little friend the Mayor at the moment, getting rather acquainted with her."

"You sick little mudpuppy," I said.

"Very acquainted, if you catch my meaning," continued Discord, ignoring me. "Their morning-after mortification is going to be absolutely delicious."

"Don't you even bring Stranger Danger into this!" I yelled. "Mind-controlling Pinkie's old mentor and forcing him to poison us all with science-juice is just one more thing I aim to take out of your hide. You're weak, Discord! Y'ain't even got the fortitude to stand behind the mess you're making this time. You got an innocent professor doing all your dirty work for you!"

"Herr Doctor von Danger is merely a channel," said Discord. "But, yes, these little fragments lack the raw power of my magnificent Central Self. I've been forced to draw potency from other sources. And do you know who I'm drawing power from right now, Applejack?"

I narrowed my eyes and said nothing. Discord leaned in close. It was a bit unnerving not to feel the draconequus's breath with his face right in mine like that. "I'll give you a hint," he whispered. "It starts with the letter 'y' and ends with the letter 'u'."

"Everpony keeps telling me I'm feeding their stinkin' evil plans! Y'all are lying at me!"

"Really, Applejack?" said Discord, flicking at the Element of Honesty at my throat. The jewel shone with a sickly wood-colored light. "I have to confess, your virtue has proved remarkably resilient under the circumstances. All the fault of that bullheaded promise-keeping you've been engaging in with your little Meals-On-Hooves program. But that doesn't change the fact that Honesty's paragon is living under a very, very delightfully enormous lie, does it?"

"I got no idea what you're talking about," I said, seething. The Element of Honesty bucked feebly in its setting.

"Oh, this is going to be priceless," said Discord, pulling out a tripod-mounted camera. "Applejack, we're recording this for posterity, so you might want to get your mane in place. Do you swear, positively absolutely cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-fly swear that you have no idea what I'm talking about when I refer to your enormous lie?"

"Yes!" I shouted back. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

There was a hollow little "plink" from my throat. I looked down, my gut feeling just as hollow as that noise.

The Element of Honesty had cracked straight down the middle, its gemstone a lifeless coal-black.

Tears suddenly welled up in my eyes.

"Smile," oozed Discord, in a voice like oil. The camera flashed in my face, turning my world into pastel polka-dots for a second. When the spots cleared, Discord was holding a little photographic print of me, standing there like a stunned bull, big-eyed and crying for the camera. He was gazing at it with unfettered child-like glee.

"I," he said, clutching the picture to his chest, "am going to treasure this photograph forever."

I let out a guttural roar, wiped the tears out of my eyes with one violent swipe of my hoof, and charged the grove of lemon trees at full gallop.

"Oh, come now, Applejack," said Discord, lazily, turning to follow me. "Let's not do anything rash, here."

"Rash ain't got nothing to do with it!" I said, my molars gritted down hard enough to break 'em. "You're a bunch of fruit trees now, you Tartarus-spawned varmint! And if there's anything on this green earth I know, it's fruit trees!"

"So, what," said Discord, cocking his head as he wandered over. "You're going to harvest lemons at me?"

I turned, my face a mask of rage. "You think that's all these hooves can do?" I said. "Boy, you got another thing coming. I am an absolute certified master at bucking trees, Discord. Every little wooden cell's got a song it sings to the others, and every tree's got its sweet spots and its sour spots. I can make trees drop fruit in whatever direction I choose. I can kick autumn leaves off one at a time, if it suits my fancy. I can even buck a tree in such a way that the branches make music in how they vibrate. I once kicked a birch into a stunning rendition of Beethooven's Empress Concerto in E-flat major for a party trick. Give me a tree and a pair of hooves to kick it with and I can move the mother-loving world, see if I can't!"

"Your point?"

"If I can buck a song out of a tree," I bellowed, "I can sure as heckfire buck it dead out of the ground!"

"Ah," said Discord, smirking at me. "So that's the point of your lengthy tirade. You were merely explaining how you were going to engage in a show of brute force. Such a novel approach! Becoming a contraptionological genius has really changed you, Applejack."

"You shut your cake-hole," I said, planting my forehooves and readying myself for a buck that would tear the nearest lemon tree clean off its roots. "Dead trees, dead Discord-fragment. Simple as that."

"These aren't just trees, now," said Discord, putting a weightless arm across my withers. "They're indestructible extensions of my will. You see how they're still alive, still thriving, in the wake of a forest fire hot enough to reduce everything within five acres to char? It's going to take more than kicking to do these babies in. It might even take... science."

The lemon-punch fizz rose in my brain, struggling powerfully against the remaining potency of my nuclear honesty cider. The sound of clashing chemicals climbed from a buzz into a horrific screech that threatened to tear my head apart.

And then everything got quiet. "Science?" I muttered, dreamily.

"Yes, science," cooed Discord. "And I wager you've already got some lovely ideas as to how you might eradicate my presence using the force of knowledge, now."

"I bet," I murmured, "I bet I could use my atomic still to whip up some nasty herbicide or something. Eat the roots right out from under y'all."

"Oh, wicked!" said Discord, encouragingly. "Yes, that would almost certainly work. Anything else?"

"Explosives!" I said, my eyes gleaming. "Like that unstable gelignite we use to break up rocks we can't pull up by ourselves! I bet I could churn out a heap of that stuff and blast this here patch of trees to kingdom come!"

"Wonderful! Yes, excellent! More!"

"Tent caterpillars!" I shouted. "We got a bunch of them in the south field! I could scrape 'em off and then I could feed 'em some kind of kick-flank vita-tonic of my own devising and turn them little devils into grove-devouring monsters!"

"How, indeed, could I withstand something like that?"

"You couldn't!" I said, pointing triumphantly with one hoof. "I just figured out three different ways to beat you, Discord!"

"I'm quaking!" said Discord, balling his claws into fists and shaking them anxiously in the air. "Really, I am!"

"I'm gonna start sketching some of these out right now!"

"Oh, dear!" said Discord. "Well, if you insist. There's a lovely clear area about fifty yards that way where you could really spread out with your plans."

"Then that's exactly where I'm going!" I said, marching off in the direction of Discord's point.

Then I stopped.

"Wait," I said, squeezing my eyes shut, clinging hard to the tiny remaining flicker of truth-cider in my head. "This is a wild goose chase. You're using science to distract me. I'm gonna get so involved in trying to get these plans to work that I ain't never gonna get around to actually beating you with any of 'em."

"Well-spotted!" cried Discord, clapping his paws together. "And that, dear Applejack, is the real beauty of contraptionology."

I stalked back over to the grove. "Figured you out," I said. "Well, it ain't gonna work, Discord! I'm goin' back to Plan A. Say goodbye to your little demon lemon trees here!"

I planted my forehooves again, tensed my gut, then, with a mighty roar, I kicked up and out with my back legs—

* * *

A couple hours and seventeen plans later, I was no closer to success. I had spread makeshift blueprints everywhere, tinkering at the designs, tweaking them in a hundred different ways, but each one of my ideas was beset with some sort of fundamental flaw that grounded it before it even started. I sighed heavily and threw myself onto my back in the big ol' clear spot Discord had indicated to me. At least this place was as advertised – it was a nice, wide open space, free of ash and burnt-up trees, perfect for spreading papers around. A little windy, but other than that, absolutely perf—

I blinked.

"I..." I began. "I had been going to forget about scienceing those trees. I was all set on bucking 'em down."

"Indeed you were," said Discord, watching me from some ways away, his snake-like form draped languidly over a pile of charred wood. In one paw, he held a tiny pink parasol against the late afternoon sun. "But, look at what happened! You got distracted again. Face it, Applejack, you can't win. Even if those trees weren't fireproof, which they are, and even if they weren't impervious to physical harm, which they are, my grove is shielded with the very cornerstone of contraptionology, to wit: the nagging feeling that there might be a better way than this. Anyone coming anywhere near those trees will be overcome with the desire to solve their problems by indirect science-related means, and then they'll just wander off and never come back. It's perfect."

"I swear to you," I said, sitting up, "I'm gonna keep trying until I can kick your dang trees over. I don't care if it takes me a week. I promise you that every time your witchcraft sends me spinning back to these blueprints, I'm gonna spend less and less time here. And every time I march back to those trees, I'm gonna come closer and closer to remembering why I'm there. And I am a mean, stubborn foal-of-a-mule, Discord. You ain't gonna last forever against my tenacity."

"And you," said Discord, lightly, "ain't gonna last forever against gravity."

I blinked. "Come again?"

"Look down," he said, tossing the parasol at me. I caught it in the curve of my hoof, and, against every instinct that was screaming at me not to, I looked down...

...into empty air.

"You know that clear spot I pointed you to?" remarked Discord, as vertigo sunk its claws into my stomach. "You know the reason it was so nice and wide open and free of burnt vegetation? It's because it was off the edge of the bluff. It's really amazing how distracted my grove can make a pony when it gets threatened. Distracted enough to not notice when someone's ushering them straight into thin air, for instance."

"Why – why ain't I falling?" I said, desperately. "I been here for hours!"

"It wouldn't have been funny, before now," said Discord, yawning. "Can't fall until it's funny; goodness, my little pony, learn the rules. If it'll make you feel better, please know that in about three seconds, it's going to be absolutely hilarious, so you might want to open that parasol. One..."

"Discord," I said, glancing panickedly down at the deadly drop that waited beneath my hooves. "Wait—"

"Send me a letter when you get to the hospital," said Discord. "I'd love to sign the full-body cast you'll be in for the rest of the year. Two..."

"Grower curse it, Discord, you are gonna regret—"

"Three," said Discord, snapping one claw. "Farewell, Applejack."

If I was gonna say anything else, I never got the chance. My breath left me as I plummeted straight down through a cloud of paper like a pony-shaped rock, achieving a good solid nine-point-eight meters per second per second on my way to the forest floor below.

It was a long way down.

13 - Forever Harvest

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Thirteen: Forever Harvest

So, yep, I was falling. First fall out of three that day, if I recall correctly.

One thing I can say about the ol' noggin, it sure ain't a dilly-dallier. Lots of ponies in this situation, their brains'd get all silly with the life flashing before their eyes and everything. Now, I don't know if maybe I'm a little bit immune to this on account of my life being such a generally happy, uneventful picture-book of apple-growing and apple-harvesting (the occasional Equestria-preserving quest aside) that my head just kinda skips over a bunch of it, but no matter. In the middle of danger, Applejack, bearer of the now-busted Element of Honesty, was on the job and burning full blast.

Without sparing even a moment to think about it, I flipped the parasol Discord had tossed to me around in the air and caught it by the ribs in my mouth. One mighty lash of my neck later had the curved handle of the thing jammed into a tiny little crevice in the rock, leaving me hanging by my teeth over death that was slightly less certain than it had been up there at the top of the bluff. Not for the first time, I shot a quick prayer of thanks to the Grower that he'd seen fit to provide me with a body what could suspend its entire weight by its own jaw muscles.

No time for patting myself on the back, though. The parasol was already starting to dissolve into brightly-colored ribbons of chaos-stuff. If I couldn't find a better solution, and fast, I was still gonna go splat into the piney woods below, and I still didn't fancy my chances to live through that. Grunting and kicking off the rock with my powerful iron-hard leg muscles, I put myself into a good solid swing, aiming my body at a rocky outcropping on the bluff about twenty yards below me. From up where I was, it looked large enough that maybe with a little wedging I could actually rest for a spell, and if not, well, at least it'd mean twenty yards less to fall once I tumbled off it.

My swing was timed just about perfect. The parasol exploded into streamers right as I was reaching the end of my arc, and it sent me careening across the face of the bluff straight toward the outcropping. Unfortunately, I botched the landing, hitting the rock all wrong, and it knocked the wind right out of me. My hooves scrabbled against stone as I tried to get purchase, but it was no use, and there I was, back to falling again. One good thing, though – my efforts with the parasol had brought me closer to the face of the bluff than I had been before, so there was at least a chance I could dig my hooves in and slow my descent a little.

Gritting my teeth, I gave 'er a shot, dragging my forehooves across the rough cliff face and successfully slowing myself down, at the price of roughing the walls of my hooves pretty near all the way down to the frog and drawing blood from the sole plate. Right then and there I vowed that I'd never again set hoof outside my barn again without a set of good iron shoes on, but as Granny always says, it's a mite easier to see the snake that's hanging off your leg than the one that's hiding in the bushes. Bellowing against the pain of it all, I yanked my hooves back away from the face of the cliff and knocked myself into a spin in doing so. Now tumbling head-over-hocks toward the trees below, and beyond any hope of reaching the cliff again to break my fall, there was nothing left to do but try to judge how fast I was falling, how much it would hurt when I hit, and whether or not it would kill me dead when all was said and done. The answers, one at a time: fast, a lot, and maybe. I squeezed my eyes shut, the wind howling all around me, and braced for impact.

In a cloud of needles and real unhappy birds, I hit the pine canopy at somewhat less than terminal speed, missing full-on impalement by about a foot in either direction. Branches clawed at my white science coat and at my hide underneath as I tumbled past them, covering me with scratches and sticky tree sap, until I eventually came to a jarring halt when a heavy, sturdier-than-usual ponderosa limb snagged the back of my science coat and held on.

Everything got quiet as I hung there, suspended far above the forest floor, spinning slowly in the breeze.

Well, I said to myself, as I gazed down at the ground, on the bright side, that's a darn sight more pleasant a distance to fall than before.

Heckfire, I continued, on the bright side, I'm still bucking alive. All the adrenaline swimming around in my blood finally made its way into my head and I started guffawing like a loon. Still alive!

"Ha!" I shouted up to the distant clifftop. "Take that, you stinking dragon-pony-lizard thing! I ain't in a full-body cast at all! I'm just stuck on a tree branch a hundred feet above the ground!"

The echoes of my words died away, and it was just then that I realized I was, yep, stuck on a tree branch a hundred feet above the ground.

Shoot.

All right, easy does it, A.J. One crisis at a time. If I could just swing myself up onto one of them branches I could get myself stable. Now, ponies are good at lots of things, but climbing trees ain't really one of 'em, so I couldn't say as though I would just clamber down the tree once I got my hooves under me, but maybe if I stripped off my lab coat I could construct a sort of jerrybuilt harness out of it, and then slowly work my way down to—

With a sickening crack, the heretofore presumed-to-be-sturdy branch gave a lurch, pulling away from the tree and leaving my weight trusted to a single wide strip of bark.

Okay, new plan, I thought to myself, all frantic. First I—

It don't even matter what that plan was, and I ain't gonna tell you on account of it being kind of ridiculous. Three seconds later there was only one plan left in the world, and it was "fall". I twisted and turned in the air, trying to make sure I hit the ground hooves-first. I'd put it off every way that I possibly could, save for growin' a pair of pegasus wings all of a sudden, and it was time to let the earth give me my long-delayed lumps and pick 'er up from there. All right, Applejack, don't tense up, don't lock the knees, let 'em take the shock for you, and whatever you d—

And then there was no further time for self-advice, because I finally, finally, hit the ground. The impact tore into the tendons and muscles of my legs, and I stumbled, dreading the sound of a crack, but none came. Tears welled in my eyes as the burn of pain hit a split-second later, and I fell to my knees, but a moment later I was back on my hooves, shaking all over like a leaf.

I weren't falling no more. I was on the ground. I was alive.

A mad cackle rose up in my throat. Sounded a bit like my science-cackling of earlier, and maybe it was; but on the other hoof, maybe it was just me, busting out in absolute delight that I had survived an impossible-to-survive fall with nothing more to show for it than massive tendonitis. I was still in the game! That rascal Discord couldn't get rid of me that easy! Boy howdy, he sure picked the wrong pony to cross when he decided to cross Applej—

The heavy tree limb that had been my savior a moment or two ago finally finished the business of falling, directly onto my unprotected cranium.

Oh, for pony's sake, I thought, as everything went black.

* * *

Pinkie's got this... game, I guess it is. It's a big black number-eight billiards ball with a little window at the bottom, and when you turn 'er over you can see that the whole mess is full of this inky blue-black water stuff. And there's a little white jobber floating inside it with words written on it, and the game is that you shake it around in your hooves and ask it a question, and whatever words float to the top of the black water is what the answer to your question is supposed to be. Usually it tells me to ask again later or somesuch.

Anyhow, I ain't actually stopping my story to yak on about party games to y'all. Point I'm trying to make here is, while you're sitting there waiting for the little white jobber to answer your question, you can see it kinda bobbing in and out of the shadowish water, vanishing and reappearing and such, and – coming to the end of my self-indulgent little gab – that's what my world was like for a good long while.

Bob up. A pony's breath in my face, a flutter of pegasus wings. A squeaky little voice, calling out to somepony far off. Bob back down.

Bob up. That voice again. "Bell! Over here, Bell! ¡Vámonos!" A second voice, then, much deeper, rumbling out a reply I couldn't make out. Bob back down.

Bob up. "—move her? What if her neck—" And down again.

Bob up again at the feeling of being lifted up onto something, my legs hanging loose, like a rag-doll's. The deep voice, in my ear now. Bell, volunteered my concussed head. Bell Pepper.

"Hold on, Applejack," whispered Bell, with gentle urgency. I felt the little bubble of a grunt rise in the back of my throat, and it seemed to stiffen Bell's resolve. Warmth flooded my breast at the idea that a measure of safety had come to me, that I could stop worrying for a spell, and the moment I even allowed myself the thought, a great well of blackness opened beneath me and I was falling, falling, falling...

* * *

I blinked my eyes open at white light.

Things were quiet, where I was. Maybe a little birdsong, distant. The rush of a creek, somewhere. The air had a touch of frost in it.

I raised my head to look up. I was lying on my side in sweet-smelling grass. All around me were apple trees in full fruit, golden delicious variety. An orchard, then, not one I was familiar with. For all the green and yellow, everything around me seemed a mite washed out and pale, like I was living in a photograph where somepony'd left the shutter open too long.

"Hey, little cowpoke," came a voice.

Well, ain't nopony called me that in ages, and only one pony I ever knew did, regular. So I knew what I was gonna see when I turned my head around; still came as a bit of a startlement, though.

"Pa?" I said, my voice sounding strange in my ears.

The great dusky-red form of my father Cortland, wavering in the strange and washed-out light, sauntered closer by a step or two. Pa was enormous to me, like I always remembered him. He was far bigger than any stallion should be to a mare of my age; but as I got my hooves under me I could tell my legs weren't quite the shape I was used to them being, and a quick glance back at my clean, un-Marked flank confirmed that I weren't a mare of my age no more, if that makes sense.

"Ayup," said my Pa, laconically.

I swallowed hard. "It killed me, Pa," I said in my little filly voice, looking around me. "Right? This here's the Forever Harvest, ain't it?"

Pa chuckled, picked a little stalk of timothy grass, and planted it between his teeth, like I'd seen him do a hundred thousand times in the few years I knew him. It quite near to broke my heart how much he looked like Macintosh in doing it.

Pa gazed off into the uncertain distance, chewing quietly. "Nope," he said, eventually. "Ride ain't over for you yet, little cowpoke. Not while the world's got its chestnuts in the fire, again."

I nodded. "I understand, Pa," I said. Then my jaw quivered a little. "Can I...come over there and touch you?"

"I ain't where you are," said Pa, matter-of-factly. "And you ain't where I is. So let's not muddy the waters, hear?"

"Yes, Pa," I said, cowed.

"Good girl," said Pa. He stood there a moment, chewing on his timothy. Then he wadded it up, swallowed it, and turned back toward me.

"You done got yourself into a heap a' trouble, cowpoke," he said.

"I... I lost your hat this morning," I said, my voice thick.

Cortland shrugged. "There's other hats," he said. "Two bits a dozen."

"None of them's yours," I sniffed.

"Be that as it may," said Pa. "I ain't talking about hats. I'm talking about all the fancy science shenanigans y'all got going on. What in the blue blazes is going on there?"

"I know, I know," I said. "We all been poisoned, Pa. I'm fixing to make it right, though."

"See that you do, Applejack," said Pa. He shook his head. "Thunderation," he continued. "This here's what you reap when you start trucking with city-folk wizards."

"Wait," I asked, blinking. "Are you talking about Twilight?"

"Ayup," said Cortland, his face like a mask.

"This ain't none of this Twilight's doing, Pa," I said. "Me and her's got our differences, sure, but this is bigger than anything going on between us. We got the immortal Spirit of Chaos wrecking up the place, for crying in the mud."

"So you say," said Pa.

"I do say," I replied, stamping a little and standing my ground. Yes, I was somehow a little filly again, not much more than a yearling; and yes, I was speaking to my dead Pa, who I missed more than words can say. Don't matter. We're Apple Family, and we call a spade a spade.

"Discord ain't doing anything truly unnatural," Pa maintained, shaking his head. "All these machine ideas he's put into your heads, well, it's what the city-folk call 'progress'. I know it seems strange to you now, cowpoke, but mark my words: in two hundred years, there'll be things goin' on in Ponyville that make your little advanced science fair here look like a rusty old well-pump."

"Ain't so," I said, guardedly.

"Is so," replied Cortland. "Discord's sped up the process, sure. But every day, unicorns like your friend Twilight and earth ponies of the fancy-learning type like your friend Pinkie are whelping more and more machines into the world. You remember them unicorn hucksters you drove off our land last cider season? The ones who were aiming to machine up every last drop of cider production in Ponyville?"

"The Flim-Flam Brothers," I said. Even speaking the name brought the smell of ozone and mane oil fresh to the front of my mind. "Too well."

"Well, they ain't gonna be the last," said Pa. "Fact is, the future's gonna hold more and more of their kind. They're all gonna want our land, cowpoke, and eventually, you ain't gonna hold out."

I tried to forget just how near a thing it had been, how close we had come to losing Sweet Apple Acres to the first real challenger to come down the road. "We'll hold out," I said, hardly believing it.

"You won't," said Cortland. "All it'll take is a couple bad years. Two centuries from now, your great-great-great-great-granddaughter is gonna be working as a checkout girl at a big ol' Rich's Barnyard Bargains they'll have built smack-dab on top of where our home is now, and the only apples she'll even know are ones that come out of 'frigerated produce cases."

"Ain't gonna happen," I said squaring my jaw.

"Then you gotta fight for it," said Pa, looking me square in the eye. "Once you drop Discord like the sick dog he is, your job ain't over. You gotta spend every day of your life fighting for the soul of Ponyville. Because there's some things that ought to last forever, and our way of life is one of 'em. Do you hear me, cowpoke?"

"Yes, Pa," I said.

Pa grunted. "Well, all right then," he said. "Anyhow, you'd best be waking up soon. That Pepper boy's almost got you up to his family's place. Once you're there, you've gotta stitch yourself back up quick and then find a way to stop Discord. I'll be checking in, case you need more advice."

"You'll be watching me?" I asked, hardly daring to hope.

Cortland's face softened. "Always, little cowpoke," he said. "Always."

I smiled, my eyes bright and my heart filled with sunshine. Deciding that crazy afterlife restrictions could go hang 'emselves, I practically threw myself at Pa, aching for him to lay his neck across mine and call me his little filly one more time; and as I galloped at him, fast as my little legs could carry me, the birdsong faded and the overexposed trees turned all to white and a susurrus rose in my ears...

* * *

...and then I wasn't galloping filly no more, but instead back in my own body, bound up in a makeshift stretcher bumping gently along a dirt path.

The light was growing low and beginning to slant just a hint, and evening was coming on apace. From everywhere around me there came the soft and happy grunts and buck-bucks of pigs and chickens. I groaned a little and turned my head to the noises, and then up at my rescuer. "Bell?" I murmured.

"Hush now, Señorita Applejack," said Bell. "Now is the time for resting, not speaking."

"Bell," I persisted. "I can't quite make it out to see, but that... that sounds kinda like my livestock there. Did you go and gather up my animals when everything went to Tartarus?"

Bell chuckled. "You may thank your sister and her friends for that," said Bell. "The Pepper family is merely providing the pens."

"Thank you," I said, sinking back down onto the stretcher.

"For you it is no trouble," said Bell. "What is a few more head of swine? No, what perplexes us is how to store the seals and toucans and such of your yellow pegasus friend. But we are resourceful on this troubled day, and we will endure."

"Thank you," I repeated. "Thank you so much, Mister Bell Pepper."

"You are most welcome," said Bell. "And now I must insist you rest. We are almost home."

"As you say, sir," I said, feeling the black open under me again. "Keep me safe, hear?"

"I promise you this, Applejack," said Bell, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well. Or maybe I was in the well and he was on top of it. Didn't matter for long. I was out cold again, and did not wake for some time.

14 - The Last Safe Place

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Fourteen: The Last Safe Place

"...and so we all thought sure we was gonna get our Cutie Marks in animal-wrangling, after today!" said my little sister, whose mind always tended to wander off to predictable topics. Can't complain. I weren't much different at my age.

"It wasn't easy," chimed in Scootaloo, trotting alongside us. "Do you know how many pets there are in Ponyville?"

"A plethora," said Sweetie Belle. "A plethora of pony pets. Plus their paraphernalia. And then there was Fluttershy's menagerie, all your farm animals, Applejack..."

"Sweetie Belle fell in the pig mud," volunteered Scootaloo.

"Because you bumped me," said Sweetie Belle, shooting Scootaloo a nasty glare. "I was trying to pay attention to where the chickens were going and you bumped me into the mud! I guess I should have been watching the giant orange chicken behind me a little closer."

"I'm not a giant orange chicken!"

"Yeah!" said Sport Pepper, Bell's little green pegasus cousin, the filly I had to thank for finding my broken ol' body at the base of the bluff a couple hours past. "After all, chickens can fly a little."

Scootaloo now split her glare between Sweetie Belle and Sport Pepper, and was about to bark out something else, before they was all shushed by a deep throat-clearing from Bell, a noise that was positively geological in nature.

"Mis pequeñas ponis," rumbled Bell Pepper. "If Applejack is to be believed, the evil which has gripped our town is the work of Disharmony. Best if you not feed him with your arguing."

The Cutie Mark Crusaders, plus Sport, had the grace to look a little ashamed, kicking dirt and muttering their own variations on a theme of "sorry". Bell gave a stern little snort and turned his attention back to me. "You are certain of this, Applejack, yes? This is the work of the Wolf-son Discord?"

I opened my jaw and was about to snap something sharp at him about presuming to question the bearer of the Element of Honesty on her truthfulness, but a quick glance to the black and ruined jewel at my breast caused my complaint to shrivel in my throat. I shut it again.

Bell scented the air. "Forgive me for asking," said Bell, misunderstanding my delay. "However, it is the teachings of our family that the demon liquor will give you strange humors and put odd pictures in your head, and your friend Pinkie Pie reports that the science which gripped you involved the production of unnaturally potent alcohols."

"Land's sake," I scoffed, finding words again. "Don't tell me y'all subscribe to that 'pink elephants' nonsense. Booze ain't ergot rye or funny mushrooms, Bell. It makes you happy, then it makes you weepy, and then it knocks you on the floor. No dancing animals involved."

"We are told that there is something about spiders," said Bell, pressing on bullheadedly.

"That ain't alcohol neither!" I practically snarled. "The spiders only come when you make the mistake of getting sobered up afterwards!"

"Discord..." said Sweetie Belle in her lilting little voice, blinking innocently as she did.

"Right," I muttered, fixing my eyes on my bandaged forehooves as I walked. "Bell, we can hash out your family's misguided and fundamentally wrong ideas about alcohol once we've saved Ponyville. T'answer your question, yes. I'm sure of it. Ain't no mistaking that voice."

"Well, shoot!" said Apple Bloom. "Discord! And y'all can't even use the Elements of Harmony on him this time, on account of you breaking yours when you fell!"

"Right," I said, looking again at the dull black gemstone that used to be the Element of Honesty. "When I fell." Much as it had been annoying me before, I now hoped against hope that it'd shudder a little at my bald-faced untruth; no luck. It just, haw haw, lied there, like the dead thing it apparently was.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Don't matter none, Apple Bloom," I said, trying to forget how completely I might have bucked this whole situation up over a silly little thing that it ain't time to tell y'all about yet. "Apple Family's been driving primeval horrors off this land for generations without no Canterlot wizards nor magic gewgaws to help us. Discord ain't no different."

"Wahoo!" said Apple Bloom. "So what's the plan, big sis?"

I shook my head. "I ain't got the foggiest, Apple Bloom."

"But you always got a plan!"

"Well this time I don't!" I snapped, a mite sharp.

"Oh," said Apple Bloom.

We all walked on in silence for a time, saying nothing, passing our time in sullen admiration of the Peppers' barns.

To be fair, they were a thing worth admiring. These were the famous Plainpony buildings that Twilight and Bell had bonded over back at the hypercube dance, an event which seemed like it was a hundred thousand years gone even though I knew it'd been less than twenty-four hours ago. Huge round things the size of circus pavilions, all of them, casting mighty shadows across the rocky soil of the Ridge. Other than size and general shape, though, there weren't nothing the same between those barns and circus tents. Circus tents are bright and gaudy and necessarily temporary, but the Pepper Family home-barns looked like they'd been built at the Equestrian founding and were fixing to stay there until the last trumpet. They were the warm brown color of earth, and the honest white color of whitewash, and were otherwise lacking in any kind of decoration whatsoever. We ponies usually can't build a thing without slapping a hoofful of hearts or sunny smiles all over it, so to see a home that simply was, a home that strove to be nothing more than a good, solid place to live – and succeeded in every way – was a mite startling. Looking at them felt like a splash of bracing water to the soul. It was the wrong time to say it, but I fell absolutely in love the moment I saw 'em. It made me want to be that strong.

I stretched my sore muscles, letting the upland breezes take some of the sticky lather off my naked shoulders and flanks, and took a big gulp of the spicy, tangy atmosphere around me. The sharp, vibrant smell of pepper plants in full fruit was a little intoxicating, and it made me want to breathe more and deeper each and every time I drew breath. Don't get me wrong, it weren't nothing on apples, but I could see how a girl could get used to land like this.

"Beautiful country," I said, to break the quiet. "It's so still and green up here."

"Yes," said Bell, his head high. "It is our home. And we will defend it to the last, if your people's devil-science comes to us."

"This don't have to be a war, Bell," I said, frowning at how quick he went there. "Nopony wants it that way, not for real. If we can just get rid of that lemon grove, we'll be sitting down together over apple juice together by morning."

"But how are we gonna do that?" said Scootaloo, throwing her hooves wide in protest. "Whenever we tried to get close to it, it made us all science-crazy!"

"Sure is a puzzler," I said, even as Apple Bloom broke into a frantic little shushing gesture at Scootaloo, and I didn't understand why until the little orange filly's words clicked together for me a second later. "Hold on a second," I said. "Whenever you tried to get close to it?"

The Cutie Mark Crusaders glanced back and forth among themselves, looking guilty.

"This would be a good time to tell your sister the story," said Bell, a bit sourly.

Apple Bloom sighed. "Weeellllll," she said, looking up at me, "Once we had rescued all the pets and all the livestock, it's possible that the three of us might've decided we should do something more to save the town, not just its critters."

"And we might possibly have remembered that this whole mess started when Professor Danger came to town," said Sweetie Belle. "And, um, then maybe Scootaloo remembered that the Professor said he had made a camp for himself up on the Ridge, under some lemon trees."

"And there's just the teeniest little possibility that we maybe possibly distracted Bell enough that we were able to sneak away from him," said Scootaloo, tapping the tips of her hooves together while lifting her front half just a bit into the air with a buzz of her wings. "And then we might maybe possibly have gone to check out the Professor's camp for ourselves."

"So," I said, glaring a little at all of them, "there's a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty, almost impossible chance that all of that happened."

"Uh, yeah," said Sweetie Belle. "Actually, that's exactly how it went." She gave a short, nervous laugh. "What are the odds, huh?"

"The second we got a look at those lemon trees we knew they were bad news," said Scootaloo, enthusiastic despite herself. "How else could they have survived the forest fire, unless they were magic?"

"So we decided right then and there that we would get rid of them trees once and for all!" cried Apple Bloom.

The other two joined in. "Cutie Mark Crusaders Evil Tree Eradicators Yay!" the three of them shouted, giving each other highhoofs.

"Whoa," said Sport, approvingly. "You girls are total badplots."

"Uh huh yeah wonderful," I said. "I hate to ask this, 'cause I ain't sure I want to know, but what exactly did 'distracting' poor Bell consist of?"

"We said, 'Look! A moose!'" replied Sweetie Belle, all proud.

"I was afraid that perhaps it was a sinister alcohol-fueled science moose," said Bell, darkly. "I tried to find it lest it prove to be a threat. When I turned my attention back to them, they were gone."

"Sounds 'bout like the way things go around these parts," I said, rubbing at my poll with one hoof. "Well, I ain't at all happy with you fillies for leaving the last safe place in an afternoon's ride and throwing yourself back into the thick of things, 'specially when a grown-up was telling you to stay put." I sighed. "That having been said," I continued, "I want to know exactly what you three saw up there."

"Not much," said Sweetie Belle. "We didn't see Discord, if that's what you're asking. Just some lemon trees, way too green to be natural."

"I went to see if I could buck the littlest one over," said Apple Bloom. "But all of a sudden my head got all crazy and I ended up drawing plans for a machine that was absolutely one hundred percent guaranteed to find me my cutie mark, finally!"

"And I ended up trying to build a machine that would help me fly," volunteered Scootaloo.

"And I tried to invent something that would make my big sister Rarity like me more," said Sweetie Belle, her voice tiny and pathetic. "I failed."

"We all failed!" said Apple Bloom. "We started out with a plan, got all distracted, and ended up with nothing!"

"That's what the lemon grove does to you," I said, scratching my chin. "And more depressingly, none of you fillies had even a sip of that punch."

"Honest, we didn't!" said Apple Bloom.

"I know," I said, a mite impatiently. "I'd see the squiggles around your heads if you had." The eye-opening potency of the L.H.C. was slowly fading, but I could still make out the whorls of poisoned lemon light surrounding me, marking me as one of the borderline-Convolved. "I was hoping one of Bell's kin would be able to waltz right up there and pull that foal-of-a-mule grove straight out of the ground, but it looks like you don't need to have drunk the punch for them trees to be able to drive you off. And that was the closest thing I had to a plan, so now I'm out of ideas again."

We reached the end of our long circuit of the Pepper homestead and began to head back in the direction of the infirmary. My muscles were sore, my tendons were burning, and the bandages on my hooves were robbing me of most of my fine motor control, but this little test walk hadn't thrown up any real deal-breakers, and I was chompin' at the bit to get back into the fight. But the world's healthiest body weren't any good at all 'less I had some sort of a direction to point it in. Otherwise, it'd be like biting at wind.

"Somepony needs to take that grove out!" said Sport, suddenly, as if she were reading my thoughts. "If we can't get anywhere near it, maybe we could shoot it with a big bow and arrow or something!" She did a couple aerial flips and mimed archery motions, making little twanging noises as she did so. "We don't have any arrows big enough to knock over a tree, though."

"No," I said, a dim and inconstant glow flickering in the rear of my brain. "But I wager Rarity's giant flower-delivery cannon thing could! If she can pelt Canterlot with boulders, she can sure as shootin' pelt that grove!" I turned to Sweetie Belle. "Sweetie, you been helping your big sis with her Wondrous Lanthorn all day. If we got her away from those controls for long enough, do you think you understand it well enough that you could use it to mess up them trees?"

The little unicorn shrunk back from all the eyes that were suddenly upon her. "...Maybe?" she said, cowering away.

"Sweetie Belle," I said, locking eyes on her, "it's real important we're precise here. I figure whatever we do, we only got one shot at it before the science fair begins and all Tartarus breaks loose. I ain't gonna fight my way into Ponyville and face down your crazier-than-usual sister – who has her hooves on, and let's talk plain here, a giant pony-destroying mass cannon – on the strength of a 'maybe'. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the honest truth."

Fine words from an Element-confirmed liar, I thought to myself. But Sweetie Belle, who still had reason to see ol' Applejack as an authority on the harmonic virtue of honesty, squirmed a little under my gaze. "No," she mumbled, eventually.

"All right then," I said, letting her go. "I wasn't real happy with putting you back in danger anyway, but, desperate times and all. And I ain't gonna try and negotiate with Rarity to do it, 'cause that's a recipe for disaster right there. There's gotta be something we can do that don't involve making deals with a crazypony. Anypony got anything else to bring to the table?"

Nopony spoke. I snorted and walked on, my hooves crunching against the dirt path leading us back to the main holdings.

"I wish we could just burn it down!" said Sweetie Belle, behind me.

"Yeah, I bet," said Apple Bloom, all dry.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying," said Apple Bloom, "that grove is the one thing in all Ponyville you haven't set fire to yet."

"You don't understand!" said Sweetie Belle. "I know it seems funny to not-unicorns, but telekinesis and pyrokinesis really aren't all that different!"

"They even sound kind of the same," agreed Scootaloo. "But if a forest fire wasn't enough to burn down that grove, what would be? We'd need something hot enough to burn something that can't be burned!"

And there it was. Bang. The glow started up in the back forty of my brain again, and this time, it did not waver.

Really? I thought to myself. Was it really going to be this easy, after all my fussing?

"Say that again," I said, dreamily, waving Scootaloo over to me. "I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here."

Scootaloo blinked at me. "All I said is that we'd need something hot enough to burn something that can't be burned," she repeated, trotting up.

"Something like an orichalcum cage," I said, all the bits and pieces clicking into place.

"Huh?" said Apple Bloom.

"Scootaloo, you're a genius."

"No she's not," whispered Sweetie Belle. "She's a chicken."

"No, she's a genius!" I said, wheeling around and looking at all of them, my eyes practically glowing. "That grove is unburnable, but so was Iggy the Salamander's pen, back in Maresachusetts! That didn't stop the little bugger from setting fire to it and escaping!"

"Of course!" said Apple Bloom. "Iggy the Salamander!" Then she screwed her face up. "But it was Iggy who lit the forest fire in the first place, and the lemon grove survived that. So how's he supposed to get hot enough?"

"I reckon Iggy burned down half the Everfree after eating a couple wild peppers he found there," I said. "Them's just natural plants. If we fed him something stronger, something like the pure capsaicin he 'et back in Maresachusetts, I bet he could burn a hole straight through the surface of Equestria!"

"But Professor Danger said there wasn't any more capsaicin," Sport Pepper said, swooping in close. "He said you can only make it using a science lab."

"Don't you get it, Sport?" I said, snatching her out of the air in my bandaged hooves and shaking her around. "We got ourselves a science lab! Mine! Down at the Acres! If your family can give us a bushel of your hottest peppers, I can use my atomic still to whip up something that'll turn Iggy into a full-on fire a' righteousness, see if I can't!"

"This... this could work," said Bell. "Where is this 'Iggy' now?"

"Well," I said, "he's currently living in the basement laboratory of the most powerful and dangerous wizard in Equestria. And that was before she went totally insane, mind."

"Oh," said Bell.

"Plus she lives with a fire-breathing dragon and an about-to-be-activated magical death ro-bot."

"My momentary confidence is rapidly fading, Señorita."

"No, no, this'll still work," I said. "Twi's just a brain in a tank now, can't cast spells on us or anything. Plus, time's running out, and ain't nothing'll make a stupid plan seem smart like a fast-moving deadline."

"This really is not an argument in favor of your plan."

"Dangit, Bell Pepper," I said, snorting, "you got anything better to offer?"

Bell hung his huge, cinderblock-like head. "I confess that I do not, Applejack."

"All righty then," I said. "I'm the leader here again, and I say my plan goes."

"But Applejack," said my little sis, "even if we get Iggy all hot and bothered with nuclear pepper sauce, how are we gonna get him to the grove when we can't get anywhere close to it?"

"That's the crazy part," I said. "We've all been thinking two-dimensional earth pony thoughts here! We gotta step back and think like pegasus ponies for a change."

"Huh?" said Apple Bloom.

Sport Pepper and Scootaloo, our two pegasi-in-residence, got a handle on what I was saying immediately; you could see it all over their faces. Apple Bloom, on the other hoof, needed a trace more explanation. "I'm saying," I said, "we's gonna deliver our flaming salamander using the power of a tried-and-true scientific phenomenon. One that really has stood the test of time."

"That being?"

Me and the pegasi looked at one another.

"Gravity," we said, at once.

* * *

I charged back into the Pepper Family's infirmary, Winona leaping playfully at my hocks and trying to get a face-licking angle. Girl had been all sorts of happy to see me again when Bell finally dragged me up here; I think maybe she sensed in her own doggy way that she'd been about that close to losing me. And heaven knows, I'd have liked to spend some time ruffling her fur and chucking sticks for her to fetch by way of apology for sawing her food bowl in half this morning, but there weren't time. The sun was getting low in the sky, and if we weren't done with my plan by first starlight, we'd have Twilight's ro-bot to contend with, not just Twilight's dragon. Even in his crazy-state, I could deal with Spike easy, but Twi's actual science project was a total unknown, other than that I figured we were in for a whole heap of bad when it finally woke up.

"Dog, out," said the Pepper family's acting physician, an earthy-looking green-and-red aunt of Bell's by name of Poblano, not even looking up from her work. "We are attempting to maintain medical discipline here. Otherwise, welcome back to us, Señorita A.J. How did your walk feel?"

"Fine, miss Poblano," I said, gently shooing Winona out the door. "Ready to take on the world."

"Now, let us not be hasty," said Poblano. "You are a miraculously strong pony, but your great fall may have left your bones with tiny fractures we cannot see or treat at present. Another sharp impact might be, how do we say, catastrophic. You require rest."

"I ain't here to talk about me," I said, waving her off. "How's Rainbow Dash doing?"

"Errgh!" came a familiar hoarse little voice from the other side of a curtain. "Rainbow Dash is fine. The only thing not fine about Rainbow Dash is that she's being forced to stay in this bed!"

Poblano rolled her eyes a little at me and smiled. "She would be much worse if your friend Pinkie Pie had not found her and brought her to me. She was not lucid when she arrived, babbling something about being attacked by a giant metal rabbit."

"I keep telling you!" protested the still-unseen Dash. "The giant metal rabbit was real!"

"It really was," I confirmed. "Where's Pinkie now? I need to talk to her too, wring her for some information about one of her old science projects."

Poblano shook her head and clucked her tongue. "Miss Pie is gone again on her mission," said Poblano. "Off to save whomever she can against the coming firestorm. A startlingly brave little pony, she is."

"Yeah," I muttered. "Pinkie's chock-full of surprises." I shook my head. "Dangit, there's no helping it. We'll just have to go it without her. Rainbow Dash, are you clear for takeoff?"

In a rush of wind and hospital curtains, the blue little rainbow-maned pegasus was before me. "Reporting as ordered, sir!" said Dash, saluting with one hoof.

I winced at the wicked-looking splint on her right hindleg, presumably the thing that had Poblano all worried. "You sure you're fit for duty, airmare?" I said, inspecting it.

"Sure!" she said. "I've got my wings, so I've got everything I need." Dash did a couple prove-it-to-you zips back and forth across the infirmary airspace, clattering some surgical instruments in their little pans as she did.

"Good enough for me," I said.

"It better be good enough for you!" said Dash, hooves akimbo. "Otherwise, your standards are lousy."

"Please, young mares," said Poblano. "You are neither of you in fit condition to go running off!"

"Miss Poblano," I said, earnestly, "We really do appreciate what you've done, stitching us back together and all. And when all this boils over, I sure would like to get my hooves on the recipes for some of them horse liniments you rubbed me down with today, because, boy howdy, that stuff was absolute gold. That all having been said, we just gotta get back in the fight, me and Dash both. Plus your nephew Bell."

Poblano Pepper grunted and nodded. "I suppose you are, how do we say, immobile on this. Very well. Stay close to my nephew, at least. He will keep you safe."

"We're taking Bell, too?" said Dash, looking around. "Where is the big guy?"

"He's gathering the peppers we're gonna need for my master plan."

Rainbow screwed up her face. "Peppers?"

"I'll explain on the way to the Acres."

"Brief little summary, at least?" she said, holding her hooves together in a tiny pinch.

"All right," I said. "How's this: we're gonna use the power of science to make the hottest hot sauce that ever existed. And then we're gonna use it to save the world."

Rainbow nodded, taking this all in.

"Awesome," she said.

15 - Hard Bucking

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Fifteen: Hard Bucking

So there we were, Bell and me thundering furiously across the grassland leading from the Pepper holdings up on the Ridge back down to Sweet Apple Acres, Rainbow Dash fluttering along behind us. It weren't a situation she was real happy with, truth to tell, based on how she was folding her forehooves 'cross her chest. Also based on the constant complaining.

"Come on, A.J.!" protested Dash for about the hundredth time. "What's the point of signing the fastest pegasus in all Equestria if you're just gonna leave her on the bench?"

"For about the hundredth time, Rainbow Dash," I said, "you stick with us slowpokes. In case we need you, hear?"

"This isn't a good use of my awesomeness!" she continued, not paying a whit of attention to me. "I could've been to Sweet Apple Acres and back, like, five times by now!"

"Time a hundred and one," I said, testily. "Let me remind you that y'ain't got the foggiest idea how to use my nuclear still in the first place, and Bell's got all our raw ingredients besides. Ain't no point in y'all getting there afore us, given that." I nodded over at Bell, whose gallop was weighed down by an entire hogshead barrel of the hottest of his family's crop, a state which hardly seemed to slow the big stallion up at all. Bell nodded back at me, his long and sweat-dampened mane flowing freely in the wind of our passage, and I felt my brisket tighten in a positively fillyish way. I swear, the second I get Ponyville safe and sound again, I'm finding me a nice quiet hayloft with that colt where the two of us can, ahem ahem, compare our respective fruits...

"I could at least see if your equipment's in one piece!" said Dash, thankfully ignoring the tiny detour in my head. "At least we'd know!"

"You're sticking with us, Rainbow," I declared. "End of discussion."

Rainbow muttered something that sounded an awful lot like it began with the words "Twilight Sparkle". I practically snarled at her. "Care to run that past me again?"

"I said," said Rainbow Dash, "Twilight Sparkle would think it was a good idea. She knows that a good leader sends ponies out on missions, rather than just grabbing them and sitting on them. She knows that—"

"Well, y'aint dealing with Twilight Sparkle!" I spat, my hooves pounding against dirt. "And I'll thank you kindly to remember that Twilight Sparkle's way of doing things got her dang fool brain extracted from her head, whereas mine remains in my noggin, right where it ought to be."

"Wow," said Dash. "Touch-y. I'm not talking about science-poisoned Convolved Twilight here, A.J. Just regular old Leader Twilight."

"They ain't that different," I said, staring straight ahead, my jaw set in a grim line.

"Um, hello?" said Dash, rolling her eyes. "Book-burning?"

"Rainbow is correct, Señorita," said Bell, gulping air through his reddening nostrils. "Your wizard friend is a victim, not an enemy."

"Well, she ain't the demon trees," I said, "but that ain't the only war we got going on. Once we put Discord away, the fight against her and her kind is gonna continue."

"That is the science liquor talking, Applejack," warned Bell.

"No it ain't!" I shouted. And then, a speck quieter, I added, "It's my Pa."

"'Scuse me?" said Dash.

"Ain't nothin'," I muttered.

We galloped on, quiet then but for the noise of hooves and breath and bodies in motion.

* * *

"See?" said Rainbow Dash, gesturing at the huge darkened mess of my distillation apparatus. "See? You're dead in the water, Applejack!"

"I know, I know!" I grouched past a mouthful of hammer even as I continued to bang away at my capacitor array for, honestly, no dang fool reason whatsoever. Powerless is powerless. If I'd've just kept the thing small, maybe I coulda whipped up a quick solar collector or something, get at least a little juice to this accursed contraption. But no, in the burning thrill of the moment of creation, I had nothing on my mind but bigger and faster, stronger and shinier. I had hung the entire functioning of the nuclear still on the line I had run to the hydroelectric plant at the Ponyville Dam. That line was dead and cold now, and with it, all my machines. Figures.

I huffed a sigh, spat the hammer from my mouth, and wiped the sweat and grime off my brow with one bandaged-up forehoof. "Is it maybe even a little possible that we've got a line-down somewhere on the way there?" I asked. "This could be a simple fix."

"Gee, I don't know," said Dash. "Maybe if we had known in advance it was going to be like this, I could have gone to check on that!"

"There is sense in what Rainbow Dash says," said Bell, "but I think we all know in our hearts the truth of the matter. Your entire town is filled with the same science-sickness that grips you, Applejack. When your ponies' ambitions outran what power they had available, they all drew the same conclusions you did, and turned to the electricity of the dam to fuel their feverish creations."

"In other words..." Dash clopped her hooves together. "Power plant: boom! Any other ideas, cowpony?"

"Nope," I said, darkly, continuing to hammer away, more as an excuse to hit something than for any actual productive reason. "Best I got rattling around up here is somehow turning our entire orchard into Equestria's largest apple battery, but we'd need about a hundred thousand copper pennies and a hundred thousand zinc nails for that. And we don't got neither. So no."

Dash flittered over. "Don't feel bad," she said. "The hot sauce thing was a stupid idea anyway."

"You know something, Rainbow Dash," I said, spitting the hammer out again, "you may be good at a lot of things, but reassuring ponies sure ain't one of 'em."

"Thanks!" said Dash, ignoring the entire second half of my sentence. "I really am good at a lot of things, aren't I?"

"So," I said, full-on refusing to get caught up in Rainbow Dash's own Rainbow Dash Mutual Admiration Society, "what all happened between now and back when you thought my idea was 'awesome'?"

"I learned details!" said Dash. "Okay, check this out: you want me to fly up way high, feed Iggy the Salamander some amazingly-hot hot sauce, and then drop him, in flames, onto the Discord Grove. You're hoping that my altitude'll put me out of range of the distraction effect, right?"

"Yep," I said.

"But I drank that punch, same as you!" she said. "I'm a Convolved pony! I don't need to be close to those lemon trees for them to mess with my head! What if I dose Iggy and then the Grove just plain stops me from dropping him, huh? Kablooey!"

"That's just it, Rainbow," I said. "Via careful observation of the execution of your cardboard-themed science project, I done come to the conclusion that there are certain peculiarities about, well, you, that make you uniquely resistant to the effects of the intelligence-augmenting science poison."

"What exactly are you saying?" said Dash.

"Basically," I said, "I'm using you as my secret weapon here because you're so gol-darn stup—"

Dash blinked at me, looking wide-eyed and blank.

"Stup... endously, uh, radical," I finished.

"Hey yeah!" she said. "You're right! I'm way too radical to get slowed up by a bunch of dumb ol' trees! All right, I'm back on board with your plan, A.J.!"

"Glad we got that straightened out," I said, keeping my voice carefully even. "Unfortunately, it don't do us a lick of good unless we actually have some amazingly-hot hot sauce in the first place."

"I have selected only the very hottest of hot peppers from my family's stores," offered Bell. "We could prepare a salsa in the conventional way."

"Won't do, Bell," I said, shaking my head. "This is unnatural juju. We need unnatural juju of our own to fight it. Our hot sauce can't be just regular old pony-prepared levels of hot."

I raised my chin and narrowed my eyes, then; the shadows of the still shed seemed to darken and gather up around me. "We need hot sauce," I said, "that's so all-fired hot that ponies will weep when we so much as mention its name. We need hot sauce that'll soak into a pony's very bones when they eat of it. We need hot sauce that's so durn hot that if a filly tries some as a yearling, it'll still be coursing through her veins when she's a grown mare and starts thinking about having foals of her own; hot sauce that'll just up and laugh at that silly ol' placental wall and dive straight into her womb so when the time comes for birthing, she won't break water, she'll break Tabasco bucking Sauce! We need hot sauce that'll pass from generation to generation, across the ages, through the blood, traveling through the years like an ancestral curse, a fire that never goes out, a stark reminder of the folly of a sad, silly mare who, one fateful day, made the star-crossed decision to nibble just one tiny bite of the magnificence we are about to birth into the world!" I took a deep breath. "FILLIES!" I practically screamed. "GENTLECOLTS! WE'RE GONNA NEED OURSELVES SOME DANG HOT HOT SAUCE!"

Thunder. Lightning. I reared up and cackled madly, my eyes rimmed all around in white. For one blissful moment, I was the universe and the universe was me.

Bell and Rainbow both stared at me in shock. Bell found his tongue first. "Madre Ciela," he said. "What will you name this abomination?"

"Pepperjack," I said, settling my forehooves back down, everything about me glowing. "Pepperjack Extra Bold. The hot sauce that'll make all Equestria explode... twice."

"So awesome!" squealed Dash. "Anything with an ad that makes thunder and lightning go off has got to be something worth buying! That mini-thunderboomer was you, right?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I was sorta 'in the zone' there for a second."

"Had to be you," said Dash, limping over to the door of the still shed, her leg-brace clomping heavily against the wooden floorboards. "I mean, that didn't come from a natural storm. Just look at it out there!" Dash pushed open the door. "There isn't even a cloud in the—"

"Hi!" shouted a voice at the door, right into Dash's face, knocking her straight back onto her dock.

"Yaaah!" said Dash.

Bell and I watched as a tiny pale-gray thundercloud flitted its way into the still shed, bearing on its back a tiny pale-gray pegasus pony.

"Hey Rainbow Dash!" said Derpy-eyes, craning her neck downward at the fallen Dash, and then waving a hoof at Bell and me. "Hey fellas!"

"Derpy-eyes," I said, still not quite remembering that peggy's actual real name, "what in tarnation are you doing here?"

"Oh!" she said. "The Professor said he didn't need me around any more!" Derpy smiled, sunnily. "He was making really close friends with his new best friend the Mayor up in his little tent, but it was a really funny sort of friend-making where you have to yell and scream a lot. I got a little messed up, because I can't tell the difference between the kind of yelling you do when you're making science and the kind of yelling you do when you're making friends, so I kept hitting him with lightning bolts while he was doing it."

"Uh huh," I said, trying not to think about any of this too hard.

"So he gave me all the rest of his money and told me to go away!" she finished, beaming.

"Likely story," said Dash, grunting a little as she tried to clamber back to her hooves, favoring her bum leg even more now. "You're a spy for the Professor! Admit it!"

"Simmer down, Sally," I said, helping Dash to get her balance. "She ain't no spy." I turned back around to Derpy-eyes. "And I can see from the lack of lemon-light around your head that you ain't one of the Convolved, which makes sense, on account of you being too busy doing the Professor's evil bidding during the hypercube dance to suck down any poison punch."

"Mm hm!" said Derpy-eyes.

"So I gots me a question," I said. "As one of the few sane, relatively normal adults even left in this neck of the woods, how could you let any of this go on? How could you sit there on your cloud, blissfully taking bits from the Professor and bucking bolts for him, without even stopping for one single minute to question whether or not you had thrown completely in with the forces a' darkness?"

Derpy opened her mouth and took a little breath.

"And so help me," I warned her, "if you up and tell me right now that you 'just don't know what went wrong', I swear on all that is holy that I will scream and scream and scream."

Derpy shut her mouth, her cheery expression completely unchanged. She began rummaging around in her saddlebags.

"What," I said. "What are you doing there?"

Derpy emerged with a pair of wooden corks. "Earplugs!" she declared, shoving them in her ears. "Thanks for letting me know you were about to scream, Applejack!"

She took another little breath, all set to continue, but I sighed and waved her off. "Never mind, never mind, I get it," I said. "I guess in the end I can't fault your choice of side all that much, seeing as Discord and the Professor are about to win everything, all for want of one little shot of electrical power to my still. So you may as well take your thundercloud there and head on back to—"

It hit Bell and me and Dash absolutely simultaneously.

"Thundercloud," we said, at once.

"Yes," said Derpy, nodding sagely, looking down at her little cushion. "It is."

"Applejack?" said Rainbow Dash, pointing at my still. "Exactly how much juice would you need to get that crazy contraption of yours up and running?"

"Wouldn't even require the whole contraption, really," I said, frantically running through the numbers in my head using exceptionally fancy mathematics. "Ain't no fermentation going on, which means all we need is that fractionating column. I figure I could kickstart 'er and keep her running through a full distillation cycle if I could just get my capacitors charged up with..."

The last few digits clicked into place. "...one point twenty-one jigawatts!" I exclaimed, thrusting one hoof in the air.

"I think you mean 'gigawatts'," corrected Rainbow Dash.

I rounded on her. "Oh, look who's giving the lecture on science genius terminology today," I said. "It's Miss 'Iodine On My Radiator' herself!"

"Ladies," said Bell, sternly. Then he turned to Dash. "Rainbow Dash, can this be done with the lightning we have?"

Dash eyed Derpy's cloud, then sniffed it and took a little taste of one corner. "Sure, normally," she said, smacking her lips. "This cloud's got most of its bolts bucked out already. Never fear, though! We can always get a fresh new thunderhead!"

"There aren't any!" said Derpy.

"What?" said Dash. "There's gotta be new clouds somewhere. We've got the whole Heartland Airspace to work with!"

Derpy shook her head firmly. "The Mayor built a big Winter Wrap-Up machine next to the Professor's camp for her science project. She's been clearing all the gloomy skies all day!" Derpy fixed Dash with a serious glare, at least as best as were possible given her, uh, specialness. "All the gloomy skies," she said, soberly.

"What about Cloudsdale? She can't have shut down the entire Weather Factory, right?"

"Dangit, Rainbow!" I said. "There ain't no time for you to get all the way up there to Cloudsdale and back! Now y'all did a great job bucking a bolt out of that thing just now when I was ranting and raving about my hot sauce. I just need you or Derpy there to squeeze one more out for me."

"I can't," said Dash, sullenly.

"Please, Rainbow," I said. "Equestria needs us."

Rainbow scowled. "You don't get it!" she said, shaking her bum leg up and down. "I can't. I can't buck worth spit with this brace on!"

"Well, then, it's up to you," I said, turning back to the little grey pegasus. "How about it, Derpy-eyes? You wanna help us save everything?"

"Sure!" she said, bouncing up and down on her cloud. "Everything is where muffins come from!"

"All right, then," I said. "Bell, get them peppers you harvested down to the yard. I need you to make a good fine mash out of them, keeping as many seeds in the mix as possible. You can use one of our wine-pressing vats for the job. That is, if your prissy little teetotaler hooves can stand to touch something that's all about making booze."

"I hope they can stand it," said Bell. "After all, I should very much want to touch you someday."

One point, Bell Pepper. "Wiseacre," I said, with entirely faked grumpiness. "All right, giddyup, Bell. Sweet Apple Acres is at your disposal." Bell hoisted the hogshead up on his back again and set off in the direction of the pressing vats, while I turned my attention back to the peggies. "Meantime, you weatherponies get to bucking and bleed some more lightning out of that cloud. I want to hear some electricity in here, savvy?"

"Got it," said Rainbow Dash. "What are you gonna be up to?"

"I'm goin' off to do what I do best," I said. "Think."

"Pony," said Dash, after the briefest of pauses, "I never thought I'd hear you say those words."

"Yeah," I said, turning towards the door. "Me neither. Today's been a real kick in the head."

I ducked out of the still shed and back into the early-evening sun as Dash and Derpy got to strategizing about their upcoming buck. "Okay," said Dash. "I can't be the primary bucker, but what if I'm on the cloud stabilizing it with my wings?"

"Sounds good!" said Derpy. "You get up here on top, Rainbow Dash!"

"Awright!" said Rainbow. "I'll get my wings going, and you get ready to buck me hard, okay?"

"Okay!" said Derpy, cheerfully. And then their voices were lost to the distance.

* * *

I took a long amble around the Acres in the reddening sun of evening. I had promised Rainbow Dash that I was going off to think, and I was fixin' to keep my word on that, but frankly, there really weren't much to think about. Bell knew his business, the pegasus ponies knew theirs, and my job at this point was basically to throw the big ol' switch when they were all finished. Too much idle brain-time for a mare of my intellect, I decided. I remembered Twilight Sparkle, going crazy waiting on the stars to come out; when that mare had too much time on her hooves, the desperation had driven her to roll out her partial-pony teleport spell early, and we all saw how that ended up.

I could already feel myself heading down those same paths, truth to tell. My Large Hadron Cider had seemed like a perfect success at the time, what with it letting me see the manifestation of Discord over the lemon grove and all, and the warm glow of satisfaction had spared me (for a spell at least) from the worst of the convolvement. Now that the joy was fading a bit, though, the niggling doubts were beginning to show up again, like picnic ants. Sure, the L.H.C. was a truth-beverage. No question of that. But was "truth" really the same as "honesty"?

Not quite, I decided, and the merest suggestion that maybe I hadn't fulfilled the Professor's assignment to the letter, well, it set my brain to bubbling and fizzing again. I tried to reason against it, tried to tell myself that this was the poison talking, not my actual head, but it was no use. The link between apples and honesty remained elusive, and the poison would not, could not, rest until it found the answer. It was driving me downright crazy. Crazy-er.

I grunted in frustration and made a sharp turn over to the old steeplechase course, fixing to burn off some of this insidious brain-devilment with good honest athletics. The place was in a bit of a shambles when I arrived, thanks to Mac's relentless sonic plowing this morning, but there was enough of it left that I was able to work up a good turn of speed. And hey, them craters? Just a few more unscheduled jumps to hurdle, is all. Weren't long before the fizz of the science poison had faded to a dull murmur underneath the noise of wind and breath and my pounding heart. I hadn't ditched it entirely – infected, convolved science-Me kept trying to snag my attention by waving around a bunch of revolutionary jumping-augmentation blueprints in my head – but for the most part, I felt like Applejack again, and dang if it weren't a wonderful feeling, like downing a cup of fine gold liquor on a cold winter night. I tell you something, you don't never appreciate how good it is to be yourself until you ain't been yourself for a time.

When I was finally out of breath and spent, and I'd tortured my injured forehooves enough, I pulled off the track and did a nice slow cooldown along the neighboring barn-line, and it was at that point I stumbled across the glass-fronted case containing all the blue ribbons I'd won over my many years as top rodeo pony of Ponyville, right where I knew it would be. Check that: almost right where I knew it would be. The concussive force of Mac's science project had knocked it clean off the barn wall (nails and all) and the glass was crazed and cracked in spiderweb patterns where it had fallen, but all my ribbons were blessedly intact. I took a moment to admire 'em, and coming down off my athletic high as I was, it felt mighty nice for a moment.

And then, I had another thought, and that thought just killed it for me. I was the blue-ribbon-winning-est pony that Ponyville had ever produced, sure. No Canterlot wizard could ever change that. But the thing about them ribbons in that case?

They were old.

None of them was fresher than a year, and to a racehorse, a year is forever. In a flash, I remembered the creeping sense of dread and desperation that had led to my choice to enter the Equestria Rodeo Championships in Canterlot a while back. I remembered all the brassy declarations I made, my promises to donate the considerable cash purse right back into the town coffers to fix up the big ol' pavilion in the town square (which had, come think, gotten its storm-damage from activity remarkably similar to what was going on up at the still shed right now, same guilty party and all.) I remembered what it was like to be down there in the sawdust of the Canterlot Arena, giving it my all, only to be shown up at the last every single time by some filly five years my junior. It weren't a question of talent. I was the most gifted rodeo pony in Equestria. It's just...

...well, I ain't young like that no more. Don't get me wrong, now, I'd still call myself a spring chicken, or at least a real early summer one. In most pursuits I wouldn't even have reached my prime yet. But the sight of them sleek young colts and fillies from Dodge and Appleoosa just tearing through the barrel-weave with muscles that never burned at the end of the day, with hooves and bones that never ever ached in the morning, well, it was about enough to break a pony's heart.

Rodeo's a young pony's sport. And as I sat there in the bullpen, watching myself get pushed out of the top slots over and over again, I found myself thinking of Twilight Sparkle. Fussy little Twi, sitting snug in her library back in Ponyville devouring book after book, still at the top of her particular game and fixing to stay there for a good long while. Brains don't get tired like bodies do. Not until the dotage hits you, but 'cept in real strange cases that ain't for many, many years. Twilight was just gonna keep on becoming a bigger and bigger deal in that town, my town, long after loyal, dependable Applejack had been put out to pasture with nothing left to her name but a broken-down old nag's body, a hoofful of memories, and a display case of faded old ribbons...

Can you blame a pony for wanting to cut ties? For looking to make a fresh start? For farming herself out to a prosperous-looking cherry orchard somewhere far away from Ponyville and praying never to see any of her friends or family ever again? Sure, it was crazy. But it was also me taking the initiative and saying to Ponyville exactly what it was fixing to say to me in just a few years, which was, "Seeya."

I shook my head and turned away. Pa's ghost, or spirit, or whatever that was, was right. Things were changing too fast, and maybe only he and I could see it. Once we were all free of the science-sickness and Ponyville was safe, it was up to me to save it all over again, save it from this damnable "progress". And to do so, I would have to deal with Twilight Sparkle.

Somehow.

A noise from nearby, a very deliberate, attention-getting hooffall. I knew it was Bell Pepper without looking, and a tiny part of me also knew that he had stepped loud enough for me hear specifically to give me a chance to compose myself before demanding my attention. I know it sounds like a simple thing, but at that moment, I loved him for it.

I turned to him. "Heya, Bell. How's it going with the mash?"

"It is as ready as it is going to be, Señorita Applejack," said Bell, walking gingerly up to me. "I had thought the frogs of my hooves would be immune to the burn by now, but it seems I have done my gathering job almost too well." He nodded back over to the hogshead barrel, which was both less full and more pungent than it'd been before. I could practically see the air wavering above it. "This is the hottest pepper mash I have ever experienced. I will not perhaps be able to touch my eyes ever again."

I grunted my approval. "Good work, hoss," I said. "All right, so we got our base. Now we just gotta feed it into the fractionater so's we can rip us some absolutely pure capsaicin out of it."

"What level of heat concentration are you striving for?"

I ran the numbers in my head again. "Hundred and... fifty three," I said, absolutely certain of my figuring. "And a half," I added.

Bell frowned. "One hundred and fifty three Scoltville is not terribly hot, Señorita. That is maybe a pimento, at best. No offense intended to my nephew of the same name."

"You mistake me, Bell," I said. "I don't care about no fancy organoleptic scale. We're talking raw percentages here."

Bell frowned even more deeply. "A hundred and fifty three and a half..."

"...percent pure capsaicin, yes," I said. "If this was alcohol, it'd be 307 proof."

"That is impossible," Bell stated. "I do not mean to doubt the powers of your science, but we are talking about something that literally cannot exist. By definition, Applejack."

"Yeah, well, I'm stubborn," I said. "Universe tells me I can't do something, I'm gonna ask it for a game of chicken. We'll just see who flinches first, all right?"

Bell nodded. "There is a non-zero chance that you will destroy everything," he said.

"I know!" I said. "Ain't it fun?" I sobered then. "Seriously, Bell, your work is done here. You could easily get to minimum safe distance before I fire up my contraption."

"If you are aiming to destroy absolutely everything," he replied, his lips stiff with determination, "then by your side is as safe as anywhere."

"That's my boy," I said, grinning, "C'mon up to the still shed with me and help me break some natural laws."

"Mother Sky help me," said Bell. "But yes."

"Yee," I said, "haw."

* * *

"Harder!"

Whump.

"Harder!"

Whump.

"HARDER!"

Whump.

"CELESTIA IN CANTERLOT BANISH ME TO TARTARUS," cried Dash, "BUCK! ME! HARDER!!!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" came Derpy's voice, colored with despair. "I can never buck hard enough for you, Rainbow Dash!"

"Hard bucking is the only kind of bucking there is!" said Dash. "At this rate, I'm never gonna be able to get off!"

"Off of the cloud," clarified Derpy.

"Yes, off of this cloud!" said Dash. "I mean, I have to sit here on top of this cloud, holding it steady, until you get a lightning bolt out of it! I want to get off, Derpy. I need to get off! I'm positively aching, here!"

"Your leg?" asked Derpy.

"Yes, of course, my leg!" said Dash. "Having to sit on this cloud has got my brace at a really weird angle! What did you think I was talking about?"

"Just checking!"

"Right!" said Dash, a manic tone in her voice. "So I'm aching, I need to get off, and the only way I'm gonna get what I need is for you to buck me and buck me HARD!"

Standing outside the door of the still shed, Bell and I glanced at one another.

"I am happy," said Bell, "that there is not some kind of double meaning to any of these words."

"You said it, Bell Pepper," I said. "Well, sounds like them fillies in there are having the Wolf's own time bucking out sparks." I spat into the dirt. "Typical pegasuses," I said.

"It is unfair to hold them to our standards," said Bell.

"Nopony'll ever buck like a earth pony," I agreed. "Maybe we can teach 'em a little lesson, though."

I turned hock and gave the shed door a good kickopen, revealing Dash perched up on her cloud with Derpy standing close by, one of her hind legs hanging there in the air. Dash blushed a little at my appearance. "Hey, Applejack!" she said, a bit frantically. "We were just—"

"—Bucking, I know," I said. "Sounds like y'all were having a speck of trouble with it. Maybe Bell and I can help?"

Dash scowled. "You actually think we need help with bucking?" she said. "Derpy and I have been bucking for years!"

"That may be so," I said, "but I ain't seeing no electricity."

Dash held my gaze for a second, but then dropped it. She slipped down off the cloud and sat there all slumped underneath it. "Derpy's not bucking me hard enough," she said, miserably.

"I can never satisfy her," agreed Derpy, hanging her head.

"Silly peggies," I said. "Dash, Derpy, allow me to let you two in on a secret: You don't always have to buck 'er hard."

Dash quirked, looking back up at me. "You don't?"

"Nope," I said. "In fact, sometimes that's not right to do. Every tree's got its own little likes and dislikes, and every bush does as well. Ain't that right, Bell?"

"That is correct, Applejack."

I nodded at Bell and turned back to the peggies. "Now I ain't saying I know exactly how it feels bucking a cloud versus bucking a tree, but some things are the same no matter which way you swing. And if I understand my science correctly, and I do, because I am a dad-gum science genius mare already, both trees and clouds are made up of bunches and bunches of little tiny bits. And sure, sometimes those bits want it good and hard, but sometimes, you need to be gentler with 'em." I squared up my haunches with the little thundercloud. "Now, watch. If I was a cloud-bucker like you two, I would line myself up, and then lift my hind leg nice and easy, like this." I demonstrated. "Then I would haul back just a fraction of an inch, and just give 'er a little tap, like so."

I reached back with Kicks McGee – and yes, I name my hooves, so sit on it – and mimed out a kicking gesture, fully expecting to hit no resistance, and it came as a measure of startlement to me when Kicks touched the soft, puffy chill of raincloud and connected solid. A rumble of thunder echoed around in its gray little depths, and a tiny little gobbet of water trickled out of the bottom of it, landing with a plop on Rainbow Dash's head.

Dash and me looked at one another. "Glory be," I said. "It looks like I still got my voodoo hooves."

"The cloud-walking spell!" cried Rainbow Dash. "You can buck clouds!"

"Well, what do you know?" I guffawed, a flicker of excitement rising in me. "I'm a cloud-bucker, too!" I gave the thundercloud a few more solid kicks, and the little dribble turned into a full-on downpour, dumping itself all over Rainbow Dash and the shed floor beneath her.

Dash laughed right along with me, the rain slicking her mane down over her eyes. "You're making me so wet right now, A.J.!" she exclaimed.

"So get back on top, then! And prepare yourself to get bucked silly!"

"Oo, I like the sound of that!" said Derpy, fluttering over to join us.

I grinned back at her. "Well, how 'bout you get up there too, hon?"

"Can you do that?" said Derpy, zipping up and positioning herself on top of the cloud alongside Rainbow Dash. "Can you buck both of us at once?"

"Filly," I said, "you have got no idea of the scope of my bucking powers."

Bell cleared his throat. The three of us girls looked over at him.

"Should, ah..." Bell scratched at his mane with one hoof. "Is it right for me to be watching this?"

"Why?" asked Dash.

We stood there for a moment, all blinking at one another.

"Never mind," said Bell. "It is hard to put into words."

"Too much talking anyway!" I crowed. "Not enough action! Derpy! Dash! Wings up!"

The peggies complied with my demands, and a windstorm began tearing through my old still shed, kicking up dust and pulling my science notes into tiny storms of paper. There arose a roar and a howl. I was dimly aware of Bell fetching the hogshead from outside and emptying its contents into the distillation tank, but only dimly. I was in another place in my mind: my bucking place.

Time slowed to a crawl. My skin prickled, as though I was somehow able to feel every tiny particle of air that was striking it, millions of times a second. Like I was watching from a great distance, as if I weren't even wearing my own skin, I saw myself trusting my weight to my forehooves and then coiling my powerful haunch- and leg- muscles behind me, my tail lashing about like a thing possessed.

A cloud is just like a tree, I repeated to myself, the words echoing in the vast cavernous space of perfect sublime clarity that was, temporarily, my mind. Millions and millions of little tiny bits. My vision expanded like I was looking at the world through a powerful microscope and for a moment I could see the cloud as it really was: a vast galaxy of spinning, whirling, moving pieces, a thing of space and motion and boundless, unfettered power.

I struck the cloud with a perfect, gentle, powerful, gee-golly wondrous double-barreled two-hoof buck.

Time stopped.

And then, Grower help me, the lightning came. And my world vanished altogether.

When next I knew sense, I was lying next to Rainbow Dash on the dampened still-shed floor. We were breathing hard but perfectly in time with the one another, and for a moment we abided in bliss, hardly even two separate beings any more, so great and terrible was our Harmony.

Derpy flittered over with a hoofful of sweets. "Sucker?" she asked.

I selected a green apple-flavored one and popped it into my mouth, its white stick poking out between my lips and moving slowly up and down while I worked at the candy. Dash took a blue raspberry one and did the same. We lay there for a while in silence.

"That," said Dash, giving her lollipop a long, slow lick, "was a good buck."

"I'll say," said Derpy, settling in next to us.

"Girls!" shouted Bell, from over at the other side of the shed. "Girls! I think we have done it!" Dash and me rolled out from under the cloud, tore past the still-glowing capacitor array which had received the fruits of our bucking, tore past the gloriously fizzing fractionating column, and joined Bell near the spirit safe on the far end of the contraption. Derpy joined us too, hovering eagerly over my right shoulder.

We stood there, the light from our positively righteous-looking creation illuminating all our faces from beneath.

For the second time that day, I was happy that I'd invented that magnetic-field tankard earlier, because I wasn't sure any vessel of true matter could have contained the brain-warping magnificence of Pepperjack Extra Bold. Pepperjack Extra Bold: the world's first truly unnatural hot sauce, the sauce that was so spicy that it actually broke the laws of physics by its very existence. Gone was all the normal red and orange color of the peppers Bell had used as a foundation. The crystalline sludge at the bottom of the tankard was pure white, trending toward ultraviolet, and there was the distinct sense that at least a small portion of the light striking the substance was getting just plain confused in its attempt to reflect off of it and eventually giving up and going home. It smoked, as though it was burning the very air above it and possibly sending some of it off to another dimension entirely.

"Okay," I said. "Nopony eat that."

"We did it!" cried Dash. "We got hot sauce!"

"Yes, but let's hope it ain't too late," I said, crossing back to the door and peering at the darkening sky with a worried look. "We gotta get this stuff down to Ponyville before first starlight, and I don't know if we've got time to get there by hoof."

"Um, hello?" said Dash, hoisting her wings and waving them about. "Flight? You keep forgetting about flying?"

"Yeah," I said, mulling it over. "I guess you could fetch Iggy and bring him back here, but I was hoping to just snag him and cut straight on up to the grove."

"Here's an idea," said Dash. "I could do the whole procedure myself! I'm more than capable of feeding a lizard, A.J."

"No way, no how, sugarcube," I said. "I don't trust anypony but yours truly to supervise this operation. And there just ain't no way I can keep up with you. I cain't fly."

"Wait a second!" said Dash. "Yes you can! Here, check this out!" Dash zipped back over to the now snowy-white thundercloud and kicked it around with her one good leg until it resembled less a cookie and more a breadstick. "Ta-da!" she said, gesturing grandly.

"Ta-da what?" I asked. "You made a cloud-log?"

"No," she said, "I made a cloud-scooter! Get up on top of this thing, cowpony!"

I backed away a step. "You ain't thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing, are you?"

"Yep!" said Rainbow, hoisting her own leg up over the side. Leaning down close to the barrel of the cloud, she arched her back up, and with a quick buzz of her powerful wing-muscles, she zipped both herself and the entire cloud over to me. It stood there, idling, puttering a little with thunder.

"I," I said, "am gonna regret this something fierce." I squared my jaw and threw my leg up over the cloud-log, positioning myself behind Rainbow Dash.

"This is boss," said Dash. "You don't know how many times I've wished you could fly with me sometimes, Applejack."

"I know how many times I wished I could fly," I said, snuggling in behind her, feeling the cold thrumming of the cloud-scooter between my thighs. "Zero. And that includes just this afternoon when I was falling to my death, mind. This ain't natural, Rainbow."

"Says the mare with a half-pint of hundred and fifty-three percent pure hot sauce in her hooves."

"Well, hate to say it, but you got a point there, Rainbow." I turned back to Bell and Derpy. "Bell," I said, "if I had another cloud-walking hex going spare, I'd give you one, but as matters stand you can't even touch this cloud, much less ride on it. So I guess here's where we part ways."

"I understand," he said, all stony-faced. "Please be safe, Applejack."

"I'll try my darnedest," I said. "Derpy-eyes, you're a flyer, but I doubt you can keep up with Dash, even weighed down as she is with a cloud-scooter and a crazy-as-spit earth pony. You head on up with Bell back to the Pepper holdings. If we don't make it – and right now, I'm feeling like there's a very good chance of that – you tell them Peppers everything you know about the Ridge, about the lemon grove, and about the Professor's campsite. Just in case it falls to them to fix this mess. It may not be much information for them to go on, but it's sure as heckfire better than nothing. You copy?"

"Copy what?" asked Derpy-eyes.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Do you understand?"

"Oh!" she said. "Yep! Can do, Applejack!"

"Good," I said, as Rainbow Dash buzzed us over to the door of the still shed, flexing her wings in preparation for takeoff. "Me and Dash are gonna attempt the idiotic by using the impractical to do the impossible, and if that ain't a textbook definition of contraptionology, I don't know what is."

"Good luck," said Bell.

"Celestiaspeed!" said Derpy, waving.

I locked my hooves as best I could around Rainbow's midsection. Her wings shifted into a full-burn flap, causing the air to whine around us.

"Rodeo pony," said Dash, over one shoulder, "you better be ready for a ride."

If I had anything to say in reponse to that, it was lost to the wind.

Dash and me rocketed into the evening sky.

16 - Full-On Convolvement

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Sixteen: Full-On Convolvement

All right, then! High time we had an actual science lesson in this here story. So listen up, y'all: before we start in on the tale of the single worst half hour of my life so far, we're gonna gab for a second about a little something called the Cloppler Effect. In your basic technical terms, this here thing describes the apparent variation in frequency of an emitted waveform as the emitter approaches or moves away from a fixed observer. When the object that's sending out a moving waveform is itself moving, it causes the waves in front of it to get all bunched up, a bit like driving cattle. As a result, your hypothetical stationary observer is gonna perceive them waves as coming more frequently, thus, at a higher "frequency" (see how that works?) Now, this becomes powerful important in the study of celestial motion, because a light-emitting heavenly body which is moving toward you will tend to shine out bluer than a heavenly body that's more relatavistically stationary, all 'cause blue light has a higher frequency, see? The Cloppler Effect applies equally well to an emitter giving off physical propagation waves (sound, e.g.), and the effect there is not blue-shifted light, but rather, a higher perceived pitch!

Um. Y'all.

Anyhow, long and short of it: say you're a pony, a normal, sensible earth pony with her hooves on the ground, just as Grower and Nature intended. And you look up in the sky, where – and I cannot stress this point too strongly – earth ponies ain't supposed to be, and you see a frazzled-looking orange-colored earth mare zooming across the sky on a cloud-scooter in your direction, clinging for dear life to the back of her blue barnstormer pegasus friend, and you happen to hear that orange pony screaming her fool head off in absolute spit-blind terror...

...well, just keep in mind that she ain't really screaming all high-pitched and sissybritches. She's actually bellowing in a real respectable and adult-like fashion. If she sounds like a panicked schoolfilly to you, well, that's just science messing with your ears. Blame Mr. Cloppler for that.

"Seriously, A.J.," called out Dash, over her shoulder, the violent wind whipping her rainbow mane into a wild storm of color. "All the screaming back there is seriously harshing my buzz."

"AAAAA," I noted, clamping my hooves even tighter around Dash's waist, my irises shrunken down to the size of pinheads.

Dash scoffed at me. "C'mon!" she said. "This isn't even that fast! One of these days I'll take you to Mach One with me. Now that's a trip!"

"AAAAA," I observed, making a keen logical counterpoint to Dash's words.

Dash rolled her eyes and hunkered down over the cloud-scooter, giving 'er an extra burst of speed. With effort, I swallowed my stomach back down into my gut. "How... how long 'til we get to Ponyville, Rainbow?"

"Not long now!" said Dash. "We'd practically be there now if we were going straight as the pegasus flies!"

"Well, why in the hay ain't we, then?" I demanded. "We need to be there by first starlight, before things get more complicated than they already is!"

Dash shook her head. "Yeah. Maybe you haven't been noticing on account of all your screaming, but there's one heckuva atmospheric disturbance on the beeline. It looks like there's some sort of air war going on. I can't tell if it's just Ponyvillians duking it out with attack balloons or if the Royal Guards have joined in, but either way, it's not good. We've gotta loop back around the Everfree Rim if we want to avoid it."

"Right, right," I said, swallowing hard and hoping beyond hope that it was the first. Last thing we needed around here was a tussle with Canterlot's Finest on top of everything else. "You're the professional flyer. Let's just please get this here part over with as soon as possibAAAAA!"

"Again with the screaming!" said Dash, her eyes fixed appraisingly on the sky-calamity above distant Ponyville. "You were doing pretty well for a second there. Go back to that."

"AAAAA AAAAA AAAAA," I mentioned, prying one hoof away from the deadlock I had around Rainbow's waist and jabbing it into her back. "AAAAA," I concluded, pointing frantically in the direction of the forest.

"For pony's sake, workhorse!" said Dash, turning back around "What?"

"Ro-bot!" I cried. "Ro-bot ro-bot ro-bot!"

Dash's head whipped around and her eyes went wide, 'cause she finally saw the same thing I did.

"Oh, horseapples," she said, and rightly so.

Angel Bunny had been busy.

Fluttershy's evil little rabbit pet, brain all full of science-punch as any of us ponies, had not taken R.D.'s cuffing him around at all well. And while their last fracas, "Rainbow Versus Large Rabbit-Shaped Battlesuit", had ended in a pretty solid win for the little critter, Angel was full-on convolved now, which meant that he would not, could not rest until his machines had been fine-tuned to meet contraptionology's absolutely impossible standard of success. In short, Angel was gonna keep on building more and more elaborate mechanical constructions until he finally achieved his goal.

Unfortunately, his goal happened to be the eradication of Rainbow Dash.

"Celestia's flaming dugs!" cussed Rainbow, wildly. "What the pony is that?"

"It's a lagomorph colossus," I said, finally breaking all the way through my terror back to the calm rationality to be found on the other side. And so it was. Pulling itself out of the forest canopy was an absolutely brain-meltingly huge rabbit of raw black iron. Its blade-bright incisors were the length of an entire pony outstretched, fire spewed from its twitchy little ro-bot nose, and the painful metallic shrieks of its adorable ear-swivels were enough to reduce my innards to apple butter. And behind its huge, glinting, beady, smoked-glass eyes, the barest vision of a control cockpit could be glimpsed. At those controls: a tiny little white rabbit, yanking levers and pounding buttons like he was fixing to break 'em, and was in a hurry to do it.

Angel waved at us, cheerily, and then threw his itty-bitty weight at what looked to be Equestria's largest lever.

The mechanical rabbit hopped. The sound it made was that of a too-close thunderstrike, and dozens of acres of forest splintered and were flattened beneath its enormous rabbit feet. The colossus was slow and ponderous, but the sheer size of the thing meant that even a single hop had brought it into easy striking distance. Rainbow swerved the scooter reflexively, darting the cloud around like a hummingbird, and my already-liquefied guts threatened to spill themselves completely out of my mouth. One great iron-tipped paw passed in our wake, whipping through the space we had vacated just barely in time.

I swallowed hard, willing the nausea down, and screamed over the noise of air and grinding metal. "Can you outrun that varmint?"

"I don't know!" screamed Dash. "I'd be faster than it on wing, but I don't think I can push this scooter hard enough!"

"Ditch me, then!" I shouted. "Angel only wants you anyway!"

"Yeah, and let you get squished as collateral damage as you sit here dead in the air? Or on the ground? I don't think so, A.J.!" Dash raised her chin. "I never leave my friends hanging! After all, I am the Element of Awesomeness!"

"I been meaning to say something about that!" I shouted back. "There ain't no such thing as the Element of Awesomeness! Your little necklace there is the Element of—"

My attempt to square things up ended right there with another swipe from Angel's towering mechanical death bunny, accompanied by another vicious swerve of the cloud-scooter. I clamped my jaws shut to keep down the gorge, nearly biting the tip of my tongue clean off. Clearly, this weren't no time for me to get all pedantic. "Consarnit!" I screamed. "I hate rabbits! Ain't enough they gotta steal your vegetables and mess up your compost heaps, they gotta go build huge pony-crushing war machines on top of that!"

"You said it!" agreed Dash, swooping the scooter into a confusing spiral pattern that she and I both hoped that Angel could not track. I clutched onto Rainbow like my life depended on it – on account of that basically being the case – as the fierce centrifugal force threatened to rip me right off the back of the cloud into the open evening air. The reward for my success was another solid minute of tearing around at positively ridiculous speeds with no control over the matter whatsoever. It was a little slice of Tartarus.

"Get us out of here!" I yelled. "Make a run for the town!"

"Not without slowing that thing down first!" replied Dash, narrowly ducking us under another definite-kill haymaker swing of one of the colossus's claws.

I grimaced and gave my upper lip a good stiffening. "All right, all right, I'm on it!" Clambering to my hooves, I shot a glance down at the forest below, both my ponytail and my pony tail streaming out behind me like pennons in the wicked wind. I was familiar enough with this neck of the woods, and if my memory and my hasty calculations were correct, we should be real close by to...

...there. Peeking out of the greenery near the treetops was a sturdy-looking wooden platform, the highest end of a zip-line course set up by Spike the Dragon for his own personal amusement (and a couple doomed attempts by my sister and her friends to earn their Cutie Marks in so-called 'extreme sports'.) I gestured with one hoof toward the canopy. "Take us down there, and fast!"

All credit to Rainbow Dash, she didn't hesitate for even a second to question me, and we fell quick enough to make gravity itself proud. Once we were in full dive, Dash glanced back at me. "How long do you need me to stop once we get there, cowgirl?"

"We're doing this on the fly!" I said, raising my haunches and getting my tail into striking position. "Literally! Stop for, uh, zero long!"

Another earthshaking rumble and Angel's colossus was nearly upon us again, blocking out the setting sun. "Good!" said Dash, anxiously kicking the cloud into high gear, her eyes tracking the path of the ro-bot monster. "Because that's about as long as we've got!" Our dive became near to full vertical, and the zip-line platform rushed up towards us. My athlete brain, not my scientist one, the part of me that instinctively knew a whole mess of stuff like speed and angles and force without one single silly calculation, took quick stock of the situation...

...and struck. There was no thought because there was no time for it. One second I was there with my tail high and ready, and the next I had a coil of spare zip-line dancing on the tip of it, without ever really experiencing the in-between time. Working the rope lightly, like one of my old lariats, I tail-tossed it in the direction of my mouth and yanked it out of the air with my teeth. One quick sliding noose-knot later, I had a serviceable lasso, the loop of which I then chucked smoothly back to my tail, which was already itself twirling and ready to receive it. Rainbow pulled the cloud-scooter into a steep climb as a single vicious overhand chop from the colossus smashed the platform to flinders behind us. I didn't care about the close shave. I couldn't. It didn't even exist. I was a rodeo pony again, and all there even was was my plumb glorious dance of teeth and hoof and tail and rope.

Dash rocketed the cloud up and away from the canopy, steering us in a wide climbing curve away and then back around toward the lagomorph colossus. Angel made the thing to swat at us as we buzzed in close, but he was too slow to clip Rainbow; she was in a zone of her own, jumping us from altitude to altitude so fast you'd swear she'd grown a horn and was using unicorn teleportation on us. Meantime, I had the lasso spinning in a circle so perfect you could measure pie with it. Rainbow circled us in close on my say-so, and with an effortless little grunt, I sent the loop of the lasso spinning out, where it caught on one oversized mechanical rabbit-ear and cinched itself fast.

"Yee-haw!" I shouted, wishing I still had a hat so I could swing it in the air a little. "It's a ringer! 'Spect you know what comes next, featherhead?"

"Woopow!" bellowed Rainbow, stoked beyond the capacity for rational speech. I held on tight, my heart racing, as Rainbow tore us around the colossus in great counterclockwise loops, trailing that rope behind us like kite string. Angel turned the colossus to follow us, desperately trying to keep up with the pegasus-driven cloud-scooter, but each turn he made resulted in the colossus getting further and further ensnarled in the coil of zip-line, and in a matter of minutes Angel's ro-bot was more-or-less swaddled in it.

With one final yawp, I ditched the line. "It's away!" I bellowed, and at that, we spun out away from the colossus, trying to achieve as much distance as possible as fast as possible just in case the dang fool thing went and keeled over. No such luck; the black iron ro-bot strained against its bonds, wiggling its steely-bright powderpuff tail and belching great clouds of flame at the sky, but it remained on its big forest-crushing bunny feet. Didn't really matter none, though. We had officially slowed up the colossus.

"That's it, Rainbow!" I shouted. "We bought us our time! Ponyville, ho!"

The cloud-scooter stuttered to a halt and hung still in the air. I caught my breath and shot a warning glance at my pilot. "Ponyville, uh, ho?" I tried again.

Silence from the front end-of the cloud-scooter. "Rainbow," I said, a mite tetchy, "I ain't gonna start ordering you around to harsh-like or nothing, but that's sisal rope that critter's tied with, and while I'm generally real fond of sisal, it ain't powerful strong against giant fire-breathing monsters. You think we could get a move on?"

She did not reply. I craned my neck around and followed the aim of Dash's fixed, slack-jawed stare, and as soon as I did, any speck o' irritation I had been feeling at the pegasus just plain dripped away.

The sky was buzzing. Locusts, I thought at first, all kinds of unpleasant associations cropping up in my head at the mere notion of the hateful critters. But no, it weren't locusts. However horrible the sight of a great black cloud of them things was, you at least knew – even as you scurried to chuck shadecloth over any plantings you wanted to save – that they were basically natural. Not so with the black, sky-blotting cloud which was rising up to face us. These was twisted, wrong-looking things, not a one of them like any of the others, looking for all the world like you'd made a mess of conventional-looking critter-figures out of soft clay and then spent a while mashing a couple different ones of them together. They were absolute monsters, creatures of fangs and spines and membranes. Wings of various sorts stuck out from their chitinous black-and-yellow bodies at strange angles; it was a wonder any of them could stay airborne at all, 'less it was out of sheer angry maliciousness at the ground. And hovering at the head of the swarm, biggest and most terrible of all: a glistening black-plated critter with sharp fangs and gleaming red eyes, beating at the air with three whole pairs of wings, two butterfly-style, two wasp-style, and two that looked rather sickeningly like the pegasus-feathered kind. The last were yellow.

It was the size of a pony, which actually made a bit of sense, since you could tell from the blackened Element of Kindness it was wearing that this was what remained of Fluttershy.

"Oh!" said the creature, in a sweet, demure, hideously-layered voice. "Hello, girls!"

"Fluttershy?" asked Rainbow Dash, weakly. "What happened to you?"

The thing that used to be Fluttershy shook her head, causing one of her remaining patches of pink-hued mane to slough clean off. The wind and the forest below took it. "Oh, no no no," she said, earnestly. "No trace remains of the creature named Fluttershy. All that is left is the Flutter-Bee-Bat. Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat." The queen of the swarm looked a little sidelong and bashful at us. "Um. At least, I think so. That my former identity and personality have been totally obliterated, I mean. If that's all right with everypony." A thread of greenish saliva trickled out of the corner of her mouth.

"No," said Dash, staring. "That's, uh, fine."

"Ain't fine at all!" I said. "Flutters, this is wrong. More 'an that! They're gonna have to invent new words for 'wrong' after the word 'wrong' gets downright played-out with ponies trying to describe how wrong this is!"

"I'm sorry, Applejack," said Flutter-Bee-Bat. "I just don't follow." In response, a grotesque little wasp-like critter buzzed up out of the swarm to her side and danced a few words at her in the secret language of bees.

"Oh!" she said, watching the wiggling little critter. "I think I understand now."

"So, Fluttershy," said Dash, rubbing the back of her neck with one hoof, completely failing to sound casual, "what's it, um, like being a totally horrible and gross mutant insect creature?"

"It's so nice," gushed Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat, tiptapping her twisted, insect-like forehooves together. "Being snuggled up in the center of the Hive under a foot-deep layer of cuddly-wuddly vampire bees is like taking a nap under an entire scuttling blanket made of friends. Plus, they all want to regurgitate delicious half-digested blood and bodily humors for me to eat!"

"A foot-thick blanket of puking insects," I said. "Sure sounds like heaven to me."

"Oh, it is!" said Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat. Her face fell, then. "That is, um, when there's any blood or bodily fluids available. Which reminds me, I really need to have a word with Angel Bunny." She buzzed over to the smoked-glass cockpit of the bound-up lagomorph colossus and fixed the contraption's pilot with her fierce, critter-subduing Stare.

"You!" she said, ruby eyes glinting. "You have been a very, very bad little bunny, Mister."

The colossus hung its head in shame, chuffing a bellow of fire from its nostrils which managed to singe some of Fluttershy's few remaining hairs clean off. "Don't you take that tone with me, Angel Bunny. You were just about to flatten my friends into little pony flapjacks before I even got a chance to interrogate them about the whereabouts of my menagerie!"

"Before you got a chance to, uh, what?" I asked.

"Oh!" said Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat, bright and wide-eyed, buzzing back over to us. "Interrogate you! You see, the Swarm feeds on both my love and on vital fluids extracted from living creatures."

"Not ponies, though?"

"Not ponies," said Fluttershy, shaking her head firmly. "Oh, my, no. I couldn't. But I used to have plenty of animals that would work just fine for my purposes, and during my transmogrification, I promised my attendants that they could drink from my menagerie once I emerged from my chrysalis. But by the time my metamorphosis was complete, all my animals were gone! Your animals too, Applejack."

"Yeah, huh," I said. "Fancy that."

"Not by chance, either!" said the Queen. "One of my soldier bees said that they saw your sister Apple Bloom and her friends rounding up all my animals and taking them away!" She glared at me, sharp and incisive. "I suspect you know where they are, Applejack!"

Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat broke eye contact again. "I, um, might be wrong, though," she finished.

"Yeah, uh," I said. "Fancy that. I guess I ain't got an exact idea where they all are." True enough, in its way. They could be out on the lawn up at the Peppers', in a barn up at the Peppers', out in one of the pastures up at the Peppers'... I didn't know exactly, savvy?

"Oh, well," said Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat. "Maybe we can have a little chat over tea until you remember something."

"Listen, Flutters," I said, "that sounds real nice, and it's been, uh, a pleasure talking with you, but we're on kind of a time-sensitive—"

"A LITTLE CHAT OVER TEA MADE UP OF THOUSANDS OF STINGING INSECTS!" screamed the Queen. On cue, one of the pointier-looking butter-bee-bats out of the swarm jabbed my forearm but good with its stinger. There was a feeling of fire, then a feeling of ice, and then my whole left side basically turned into pins-and-needles.

"A.J.!" shouted Dash.

"Whu—", I tried, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth. My fierce earth pony constitution was on the scene in a flash, tearing away at the poison best as it could, but it wasn't fast enough to stop an entire half of me from going downright limp.

"Paralytic toxin," said Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat, fluttering in close. "It won't kill you. It'll just keep you nice and safe until we can get you back to the Hive and tear the information out of your still-living skin, and then assimilate your biomass into our glorious collective." She shrugged a little and looked away. "If you, um, don't mind, that is."

"Hngh," I said, clenching my teeth against the venom burning through me.

"All right, that's it," said Dash. In an instant she hunkered back down over the cloud-scooter and took off, dragging me along on the back of it. It's a wonder I didn't fall, in that I was barely able to keep a grip on the dang-fool thing now.

Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat screeched, a high inequine thing, and the buzzing of the swarm grew to a roar behind us! "No!" she cried. "Come back! Be one with the Hive!"

"Nice try, Queen Fluttershy!" shouted Dash over her shoulder as she spurred the cloud-scooter to full speed. "The only thing I'm one with is myself!"

"Really... need... to work on those," I groaned, pressing the side of my face firmly into cloud-stuff.

"Bite my flank, A.J.," said Dash, gunning the scooter and finally cutting us back in the direction of Ponyville.

"Would be in a real opportune place for that," I slurred, blearily eying Rainbow's sky-blue haunch which was currently filling the better part of my vision. "Need my mouth to work proper, first, mind."

Behind us, Queen Flutter-Bee-Bat's screech rose to a full shriek. "MINIONS!" she screamed. "RETRIEVE MY FRIENDS! CUDDLE THEM WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE!" The buzzing rose and swelled, and from the angle I had fallen, I could just make out the black cloud of the swarm rising up like a wave, ready to crash down upon us.

"Move it, Rainbow!" I said, struggling over every word.

"What exactly do you think I'm doing?!" she shouted back, her wings beating into a blur. The sheer kinetic energy of our passage began shattering water vapor into prismatic radicals all around us, shrouding the scooter in billowing clouds of color and generating a bright rainbow wake behind us. It made us stand out like a signal-fire, but that didn't matter none, 'cause we were way past time for stealth. It was pret'near the fastest I have ever moved in my tender young life.

It was, just barely, enough. We pulled free of the crashing wave of Butter-Bee-Bats right on the lip of it, into the open sky. Behind us, the swarm spun and undulated like a fish-school and began closing on us once again. Rainbow licked her lips, gritted her teeth, and shot us straight towards the distant hilly cleft which cradled our hometown.

"You're enjoying this," I said. "You're actually enjoying this."

"Yep!" said Dash, grinning fierce.

I reckon there weren't much else to say. Lickety-split, the village of Ponyville was before us, and boy howdy, it was a mess. I tell you what, one solid day of contraptionology had really worked the place over. I had seen a little bit of the ruckus that had consumed our little town earlier today on my lunch-delivery mission, but seeing as I was hopped up pretty high on Large Hadron Cider at the time, and all-too-ready to declare absolutely everything as being fine and wonderful, the impact had been kind of lost. Not so now, when all I had coursing through my veins was blood and butter-bee-bat poison. My cheery little hometown had been reduced to a vast science wasteland of tar and iron and stone. Houses had become laboratories and laboratories had become towering bunkers, and each individual bunker was engaged in total scorched-earth warfare against every other one. The air was absolutely full of energy discharge, and basically anything nature had ever invented that could do harm was being used to do harm: ice, fire, lightning, classical cello music, and some other real wicked stuff I couldn't even recognize. The pavilion in the center of town was still pretty much intact; it seemed impossible until I realized that nopony actually lived there and so nopony had needed to use it as her headquarters. Same with Sugarcube Corner; the Cakes had remained sane throughout and, with Pinkie's help, were hopefully well clear of this mess by now. Carousel Boutique still stood, flashing deadly rays in all directions from the Wondrous Lanthorn, and even from our distance I could hear Rarity's mad cackle as she rained random accelerated death down from the heavens, or, alternately, sucked away enemy ordnance into the blazing gemstone furnace at the heart of her formerly froo-froo shop. And, there on the far edge, was the library tree, shielded from harm by a signature magenta-colored force field, which musta been running on some sort of automatic defense glamour considering that Twilight's spellcasting was out of consideration on account of her being a hornless brain-in-a-jar now. Defenses or not, we were gonna have to find a way through, because that library there was our goal. Somewhere in the basement of that hollowed-out tree was Iggy the Salamander, and if I figured right, he was our key to burning the horror out of this town.

Not everypony was holed up in bunkers, neither. As Dash had noticed earlier, there was a fierce war going on in the airspace above the far end of town. Assault dirigibles and whatnot, all blades and cannons, tangled in death-locked struggles with one another, generating clouds of explosions and projectiles in the process. And on the horizon toward the celestial mountain, yes, the full power of Canterlot was massing, brigade after brigade of pegasus centurions hanging in the air as thick as the swarm of butter-bee-bats behind us, further supported by a massive capital airship, prolly the T.M.S. Resplendent, straight from Canterlot's military sky-docks. Praise Celestia, literally, that they were apparently hanging back to assess and not diving straight into the fray. The situation had escalated way too fast for anypony to gather proper intel about it, and as far as I knew they were looking to contain rather than engage. I couldn't blame 'em. It's like as not what I would have done.

"Whoa," said Dash, taking in the entire nightmarish vista from our little perch in the sky. "What happened to this place?"

"Science," I replied, glancing back at the swarm of butter-bee-bats, hot on our rainbow trail. "Science happened to this place." However horrible the state of the town, I figured it weren't gonna get noticeably better once we added a whole mess of angry mutant hornets to the mix, but we were sort of out of options. I hoisted myself back up into a sitting position on the back of the scooter and gestured flabbily toward the library, the paralytic poison barely giving way before my indomitable bull-headed stubbornness. "Get us over there, Dash, quick as you can! Sun's setting, and I reckon we got just a minute or two until first starlight!"

Dash began to shout a "Roger that!" back at me, but was she was cut off by a harsh whine and a flicker of light from the Lanthorn atop Rarity's boutique. Only a stomach-lurching full-tilt folded-wing drop prevented us from getting a face full of mass-accelerated something-or-other.

"What's that crazy mare shooting at us?" screamed Dash, kicking the scooter in a sharp right bank to avoid a second flicker of rarefaction beam.

"At that speed, it don't even matter what it is!" I replied. "That durn-fool thing can drive cotton balls through concrete!" Two more rarefaction beams lanced out from the tiptop of the Boutique, missing us by a hairsbreadth.

"We're sitting ducks up here, A.J.!" said Rainbow, darting back left to avoid a third shot. "I can't get past that turret! We gotta take it around to the other side of town and try to get past the air war!"

"No time!" I shouted, my brain racing and shuffling through plans and coming up with jack squat. It ain't easy being an earth pony in a situation like this, on account of the fact that any problem with a more complicated solution than "run faster" or "jump higher" or "buck harder" has to be prepared well in advance. Unicorns and such, well, they got a library full of tricks they can draw upon, 'cause they've got magic, which is more-or-less always at hoof. But earth pony magic is subtle and quiet, all based on things like the flowing of rivers and the growing of plants and the language of—

Hold on.

The language of bees.

"Rainbow!" I shouted. "I'm a-gonna tell you to do something real stupid! You up for it?"

"Oh, sure!" she shouted back. "Why the hay not, at this point?"

"Good to hear!" I said. "I want you to turn this cloud around and head on back towards the swarm!"

"A.J.," said Rainbow, "That's really, really stupid!"

"I'm a mare of my word!" I said, nodding affirmatively. "Trust me on this one, R.D.!"

Dash loop-de-looped us around two more Lanthorn shots, and then, grunting in frustration at my unbelievable idiocy, swung us back on an intercept course with the butter-bee-bat swarm that had been harrying us, which was just now hitting the town limits. I rose to my hooves again, the poison still prickling my muscles, and stared straight into the glistening face of grim insect fate.

I sucked in a breath and began to dance.

It was something I had mocked Pinkie about, yesterday. I had called her crazy for it. But even as I was doing so, there was something in it, something deep, that spoke to me. "You should know this stuff!" Pinkie had said. "You're an earth-triber, just like me!"

Well, Pinkie was righter than I'd been willing to admit. Not for the last time, neither. There was something deeply, profoundly familiar about the bee-dance, a calm and sober earth pony goodness that defied every attempt I made to put words to it. Summoning every bit of recollection I could, and further calling upon the vast reserves of experiential memory that had come part-and-parcel with the science curse, I carefully moved my body in a direct mirror of the crazed, tail-waggling, haunch-swinging dance I had seen Pinkie Pie perform, thirty-six hours ago.

Dash's eyes went wide. She raised her wings like she was about to take us out of there, seeing as I had apparently gone totally bat-bucking insane again, but the sight of the swarm pulling to a halt in mid-air before us gave her pause. Thousands of clusters of gleaming insect eyes watched my mad gyrations, utterly hypnotized by them. There was, glory be, just enough honeybee in those monsters for them to know and understand Pinkie's dance. I could hardly even feel satisfaction, so hard was I breathing at the exertion of the wild dance and the creeping lethargy of the poison in my muscles. It was all I could do to even get the dance right. But, Grower Beneath be praised, I was getting it right. I was getting it right, dangit.

And then, the last few wiggles. Left Left Right to request more beeswax for your candles...

...Left Right Right for "sting the holy bejeezus out of the first pony you see wearing a hat."

Left, Right, Right.

The entire swarm of butter-bee-bats snapped to complete, galvanized attention, and just like that, I had won. "All right, you critters!" I shouted to the assembled mass of insect-bats. "I know you're good and primed to sting any hat-wearing ponies you see right about now. And thanks to that prissy white pony down there in the boutique, the one who's shooting at us, I ain't got a hat no more! But sure as night follows day, I can assure you..."

A pause for second thoughts. I discarded them.

"...that Rarity herself is wearing a hat right now. And lordy, what a fancy hat I expect it is."

There was a noise like a fast-moving tornado as the butter-bee-bat swarm rushed us, rushed past and around us, leaving us spinning and dizzy but utterly un-stung, so set were they on their new target. With a mighty buzzing roar, the great wedge of the swarm converged on the partially-exposed firing cupola of the Wondrous Lanthorn, and the deadly assault of mass-acceleration rays came to a sudden halt.

And then, the shrieking started.

Rainbow shook her head at me. "Rarity is going to kill you," she said.

"Rarity's always gonna kill me," I said, nodding thoughtfully at the telltale noise of Ponyville's resident high-class fashionista pony fending off an entire swarm of angry mutated non-lethal bees. "This ain't gonna be no different, really."

Dash looked like she was about to say more, but just at that very instant, the sun finally touched the lip of the horizon, and I could see the light of the first stars glimmer out up above. Instantly, the library tree erupted into a cone of blue-white radiance, twinkling right in time with it.

"No, no, no!" I said, despair clutching at my heart. "We're too late! Go, Rainbow!"

And then, a lot of things happened, pretty much all at once.

Rainbow gunned the cloud-scooter and put us on a low, swooping arc toward the Library, trying to beat whatever horror it was that Twilight was fixing to bring about.

The sympathetic radiance from the library tree grew blinding, almost sun-like.

Twilight's voice, echoing and amplified through the little squawk-box on the front of her brain-tank, thundered out of the library and across the ruined town: "It's alive! ALIIIVE!"

A scream from Carousel Boutique – Rarity's – and a sudden spasmodic flash from the great contraption atop it as the fashion pony's hoof struck a control in her attempt to ward off the swarm I had brought down upon her head.

Rainbow Dash flickered and vanished, in a burst of Lanthorn-light.

Lacking both control and power, the cloud-scooter that had carried us all the way from Sweet Apple Acres dipped wildly, sending me tumbling to the hard dirt road at speed.

There was a sickening crack as one of the micro-fractures that Poblano Pepper had warned me about finally gave way on my impact with the ground, and the long bone of my right front leg shattered to bits.

I crashed, half-paralyzed and thoroughly crippled, into a brick embankment in what used to be the Ponyville public square, now a great no-pony's-land of waste and torn debris. It was a hard fall. It did not seem likely I would be moving again soon.

The library's front door flew open with a crash, the magenta globe of its force field flickering out. Twilight's brain, still wearing its little blackened crown and resting comfortably in a wheely stand pushed by the tiny hunchbacked form of Spike the Dragon, appeared in the opening.

"Attention, Ponyville!" Twilight screamed, electronically. "Gaze now upon the culmination and realization of the full potency of contraptionological thought, and also, the one-hundred-percent sure-fire winner of tonight's Science Fair for Grown-Ups!"

A third form appeared at the door. It was a sleek mare made entirely of quicksilver or molten metal or some such thing, large and imposing and unnaturally beautiful, powered by magic and starlight and, according to Twilight, my own betrayal. A curl of shining silver mane hung jauntily along one side of her snooty little face, and her horn was cloaked in a pointy, brushed-metal wizard's hat of deepest purple, decorated with shining gold and silver stars.

The dreadful ro-bot reared up and whinnied, and the noise was not unlike the end of the world.

"BEHOLD, PONYVILLE!" cried the contraptionoid monster, flinging away her cape. "BEHOLD THE GREAT AND POWERFUL RRROBO-TRIXIE!"

Even splayed out as it was over the rubble of the town square, my twisted and broken body managed to cough up one last tiny groan.

"Oh, I hate that mare," I said.

So this is how it ends, I thought. It was a good ride, but: I'm lying here basically dead in Town Square, and the fact that I'm still thinking ain't much more than a technicality. Any plan to burn the demon grove with Iggy the Salamander like as not dies with me. Dash is gone – probably incinerated – by Rarity, and I'm probably gonna kick the bucket before my brain can even get past my shock to grieve for her. Ponyville's a loss. Canterlot's on the brink of military action, of civil war, against us, and ain't no telling how many souls that'll claim, neither. The Elements of Harmony, Equestria's most powerful tools for goodness, are out of commission, mine busted clean in two. And Twilight, bless her little brain, has just unleashed the most obnoxious face of Armageddon imaginable. Discord, in short, wins everything.

All because of one stupid little lie I ain't even told you folks about yet.

The quicksilver mare stood up high and cocked her head in my direction. "The superlative robotic ears of the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie have picked up the noise of a neighsayer in the audience! Show yourself, heckler! Present yourself to the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie!"

"Applejack?" came Twilight's disbelieving voice.

With the absolute final drippings of my strength, I managed to raise myself up on my left elbow.

"I hate her," I said, to the universe at large. "I hate the ro-bot version of her."

"Hmph!" said the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, doffing her hat. "It seems as though an object lesson is in order! Prepare to witness the awesome magical power of the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie!"

"Yep," I said, sinking back down. "This's gonna hurt."

"Prepare to witness it RIGHT IN THE FACE!" shrieked the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie. With a noise like a vibrating wineglass, the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie's shining metal horn summoned a sparkling cloud of steel-pink energy and then loosed it in a deadly streak straight at where I lay.

I closed my eyes and commended myself to the Grower and the Forever Harvest. It was all there was left to do.

G'night.

17 - Delicious

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Seventeen: Delicious

I closed my eyes and commended myself to the Grower and the Forever Harvest. It was all there was left to do.

G'night.

And then, as had happened to me before, everything went quiet all of a sudden. After a moment, I opened my eyes.

I was laying on my side in sweet-smelling grass. All around me were apple trees in full fruit, golden delicious variety. For all the green and yellow, everything around me seemed a mite washed out and pale, like I was living in a photograph where somepony'd left the shutter open too long. In other words, exactly the same scene that greeted me as when I had gotten clocked on the head with a tree limb earlier.

I was in the Forever Harvest. Again. Under the circumstances, I figured it was gonna stick this time.

I groaned and got to my bitty little hooves; also like before, I was a filly again. I wasn't exactly looking forward to spending eternity as a stubby little thing with a squeaky voice, no Cutie Mark, and way too many freckles, but perhaps you don't get to choose such things. I scanned the expansive gold-and-green orchard for the figure I hoped would be there...

...yes. Big as I had known him in life. It was Cortland again.

"Pa," I said, my voice trembling a little, trying to walk over to him, my knees wobbling treacherously beneath me. "I... I got hurt. Got hurt bad."

"Ayup," said Cortland, distantly.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Rainbow Dash," I said. "I mean... I know it's too late for me, but did Dash make it out of that?"

Cortland gazed up at the trees for a spell. "Yer friend's unharmed."

I let out a relieved breath. "All right then," I said, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice. "I guess... I guess from here on in we let the living handle the living, right?"

"Don't get maudlin on me, Cowpoke. Y'ain't killt yet."

I stopped, honestly stunned. "Wait, I ain't dead? Even after all that?"

"Nope," said Cortland, selecting another timothy-stalk from out of the grass beneath us and planting it firmly between his teeth.

I blinked. "Boy howdy," I said, chuckling. "I can sure take a licking, can't I?"

Pa shook his head. "Now, don't get cocky, neither," he warned.

"Yessir," I said, glancing away and kicking at a little ol' dirt clod.

"Better," he said. "Now, that quicksilver monster that your friend Twilight built has a whole pile a' witchy skills, just like she herself does. The particular hex you're about to get nailed with back in the real world with is somethin' called a 'disjunction beam'."

"'Disjunction'?" I said, consulting the new lexicon that had got wedged in my brain along with the science curse, which was chock-full of all sorts of shiny three-bit words like the word "lexicon". "'Disjunction' means taking things apart, right? What of mine is Trixie aimin' to take apart, exactly?"

"You," said Cortland, gesturing offhoofedly. "Every bit of you from every other bit of you."

"Oh," I said. "Right. A'course."

"Now, I ain't gonna lie to you," continued Cortland. "That magic bolt's gonna sting like the dickens when it hits. But you'll only feel it for about half a second."

"That ain't so bad," I said.

And then, "Wait. Do I only feel it for half a second because it stops? Or do I only feel it for half a second because there ain't gonna be a me to feel it after half a second?"

Pa sucked on his timothy. "Second one."

"Ah, shoot," I said, sighing adorably in my little filly way. "Well, thanks anyway for pulling me out a mite early, Pa. You reckon I could just stay here while it happens? I ain't in a hurry to leave my body as such, but I gotta be honest, it's pretty messed up right now. Plus, seems like a special waste of time shoehorning me back in when I'd just be returning here half a second later."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Cortland. "I wouldn't'a brought you here if I didn't have an idea for something that might fix this mess you got yourself into."

Hope fluttered in my breast. "All right," I said. "I'm listening."

Pa stared off into the distance for a piece. "There's a power I got," he said, eventually. "By virtue of what I am."

"'What you are'?" I said. "An apple-farmer?"

Pa shook his head. "Things is... different, here beyond. Gets complicated, but basically, I can lend you some of my strength, Cowpoke. Enough to shrug off that spellbolt, certainly. Probably enough to take down the caster, too."

"Sounds good to me," I said, eager. "Is there a catch here?"

"Manner of speaking," said Pa, working the last bit of goodness from the strand of hay and electing to spit it out this time. "More like a condition. If I do this with you, if I give you what powers I got, I have to know you're going to use them to finish the job."

"And... what's that mean, exactly?"

"It means," said Cortland, turning back to me, his eyes sharp, "that you don't stop with the ro-bot unicorn. Once that Trixie's out of the way, you take the bit in your teeth and you finish the real enemy, too."

"Don't you worry, none, Pa," I said. "If I get through this, I got a plan to take Discord down."

"Well, no lie, that'd be right nice," said Pa. "But that ain't who I was talking about, immediate-wise."

"Then wh—"

"Twilight Sparkle," intoned Pa.

My gut went all flip-floppy.

"Now, Pa," I said. "I ain't gonna pretend that I haven't had thoughts. But oughtn't we be keeping our eyes fixed on the immediate problem here? Twilight's a threat to the Apple Family way, sure, I get that. But I bet we can come up with something once the science storm has passed us by. Something a little more level-headed."

"That's the thing about being dead, child," said Pa. "It tends to make you take the long view of things."

"Yeah, well," I said, a mite titchy. "That's the thing about lying there almost dead with a killer magic spell on a collision course with your face. Tends to make you take the short view of things, see?"

"Cowpoke," said Pa, sternly. "What'd I always teach you about weeds?"

"Get 'em before they turn into trees," I said, glancing away.

"Exactly," said Pa. "Now I ain't laying blame, exactly, but you've let this go a mite long. That purple unicorn's got wide runners in this town now. It might even be too late; to save what we both hold dear, I mean. If you're fixing to fell this weed now, it's gonna take some hard cuts."

"All right then," I said, feeling like lead inside. "What exactly does 'finishing the job' mean?"

"Sake of the Grower, kid," said Pa, spitting. "I gotta spell it out for you? Letter by letter?"

"I reckon you might," I said, sticking my lower lip out.

Pa sighed. "I realize this ain't gonna be easy for you. I know that you and the unicorn, well, you've got a history. But you're in a war now. She's the enemy. And that ro-bot monster she's got? It ain't running at full power yet. It's drawing strength from her, from her sense of betrayal, even if she don't even fully realize what happened back at the dance last night."

And neither do any of y'all, I know. We'll get there. I promise.

"You end her," said Pa, "I figure you end the ro-bot too."

"End her," I said.

"Simple," said Pa, quietly. "Spraying a bug."

I turned away and fixed my eyes on one of the bright yellow apples adorning the Forever Harvest trees. It was just about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Things used to be so simple when all I had to think about was apples, just like that one. Before I got sucked into being a pawn in struggles way beyond my league, my capacity to handle. Back when I was a farmer, a local hero, a little town's prize pony. Back before Princess Celestia knew my name, and not in a good way. Back before Twilight Sparkle came to town. I could have it all back. All of it.

There was just one thing wrong.

"Cowpoke?" said the creature behind me.

I clenched my teeth hard enough to break one back in the real world.

"How dare you," I said.

Silence from the thing.

"How dare you," I repeated. "You come here, making arguments at me. Real persuasive ones, I'll admit. You're playing me like a regular harmonica. But my Pa was the one that taught me that making new friends is the finest thing in the world, and it's the same way of thinking that's guided my family for generations. Making friends is the Apple Family way, just like pickin' apples is, just like wrapping up winter without no fancy magics to help us. Pa wouldn't never tell me to do something like that to one of my friends."

More silence.

"But that ain't even the problem," I said. "Not the real one. My Pa was a simple stallion, gentle as the day is long, and believe me that when I tell you he wouldn't hurt a fly, I mean it literal. You don't know how many pony-hours we wasted scraping tent caterpillars off the trees in our orchard and relocating them, when the sensible thing woulda been to just poison them foals-o'-mules and been done with it. Couldn't bring himself to do it. It was Ma who did all the spraying around our place. Pa just couldn't stomach it. He never sprayed a bug in his life."

I turned around, my eyes blazing now. "And he sure as heckfire would never have called it 'simple'. So you're gonna tell me, and tell me now, who you really are."

"Cowpoke," said the thing, placatingly.

"Don't you dare!" I screamed, in my little girl's voice. "Don't you dare call me that!" Lightning flickered across my eyes, and almost without a thought, I lashed out with my stubby leg in a roundhouse buck and kicked one of the golden-green apple trees, causing a couple fruits to fall. I caught one up in my tail, tossed it into the air, turned hock, and sent it sailing at Cortland with one swift kick.

It struck him right in the brisket and smashed, and then a sense of wrongness gripped me like a sudden fever-chill, because the apple pulp inside of it, the stuff that appeared when it struck, wasn't yellow or white; it was black. Black as midnight.

"The hay?" I whispered, narrowing my eyes, the rage draining away. I looked down at one of the other fallen yellow fruits and crushed it beneath my hoof. Black, all black, from right underneath the skin on down to the core. Not rotten-black – it was firm and solid and juicy-looking, perfectly healthy apple flesh. But the coal-black color of it sent shivers down my spine.

"What is this?" I whispered, looking up. "What is this place?"

"Just as well this is coming to light now," came a honeyed contralto voice from Cortland that weren't nothing like anything what ever came out of Pa's throat, ever. "It's positively nauseating to have to keep that accent up, you know? I don't know how you manage it."

The world crashed and dripped away like we was standing inside an oil painting that just had a glass of turpentine chucked at it, and when my vision cleared, all was transformed. I was back to my old self again; not crippled, like in the real world, but back to being a full-functioning adult. That weren't the startling part. We were still in an orchard, no doubt of that. And the apples hanging from the trees, well, they were just as golden and beautiful as ever. But the trees themselves had turned to dark, steely things with perfectly symmetrical leaves and smooth, shiny bark that rose up with nary a knot or a whorl. They looked like wide-bore plumbing pipe, sticking straight up out of the ground. The sky, where I could see it, was ink-dark overhead, without moon or star to light it, and I was hard-pressed to describe how I was even seeing anything at all, unless maybe the apples themselves were bright enough to illuminate our little clearing.

Pa was nowhere to be seen. In his place, a dim, formless mass of shadow, vaguely in the shape of a pony. I had never seen it, never met it – not really – but I knew its name on sight.

"Nightmare," I said.

"The same," it purred. "My reputation precedes me, I expect."

"Your reputation of being a Grade-A pain in the dock," I said. I shook my head. "That was pretty dang weak, you witch-seed monster. People come to me offering gifts, they best not be wearing a mask when they do it."

"A miscalculation," said the Nightmare, seeming to flow like water as it ambled across my field of vision. "I needed you to hear what I had to say without your preconceived notions clouding your sight. I thought that a face you trusted would be the way. Obviously, I've made an error."

"Darn tootin' you made an error," I said. "The sad thing is, you had me believing it. I thought I was really on the edge of the Forever Harvest for a second."

"There is no Forever Harvest," snapped the Nightmare. "It's a silly little fairy-pony story your ancestors dreamt up so as to avoid the crippling existential angst of facing down their own eventual lack of existence, of eternal non-being."

"Whatever you say," I said, dismissively. "Y'ain't gonna convince me it ain't out there somewhere."

"Foal," scoffed the Nightmare. "Your 'Pa' is not waiting for you in a mythical land of eternal autumn, where nothing ever changes and where your existence is one of endless happy and productive labor. Your 'Pa' is not waiting for you anywhere. What little remains of him is good for feeding worms and subterranean beetles now. That's it."

"Well," I said. "Even if so, that's immortality of a sort, isn't it?"

"Oh, the blinkers you ponies wear," said the Nightmare, in a voice that suggested that if it had eyes, it'd be rolling them. "How willingly do you shackle your thoughts. The only path to eternal life involves actually, you know, living forever. Anything else is just a sad little complacent delusion."

"Huh," I said. "Well, pleased as I am to be standing here getting ragged on by the likes of you, I expect it's high time you let me go so I can finish up my business of getting killed. Then I can figure out for myself what comes next, even if it's just beetles. So. Nice meetin' y'all, finally."

"Applejack, wait," said the Nightmare, with a note of desperation. "Whatever my guise was at the time, my offer was good. And it still stands. I will help you survive what is to come. This needn't be the end."

"You lied to me," I said. "You wore my Pa's skin, and you done lied to me, straight to my face. Now you say that part of what you were telling me was the truth. If we're gonna do this, you're gonna have to start all over again."

"Start from where?"

"The beginning."

There was a horrible thing like mirth in the Nightmare's voice. "Very well," it said, gesturing with one hoof-shaped extension of shadow. At its gesture, images began flickering across the smooth, dark surfaces of the tree trunks, like there was some kind of film projector running here in the clearing, except for it was projecting everywhere, not just in one direction.

I spun in a slow, awkward circle, looking at the visions that the Nightmare was casting onto the tree trunks surrounding us. Pictures of primitive critters, huge and horselike, flickered past on all sides. Nary a tool nor a stitch of clothing was to be seen. Cutie Marks were present and accounted for on the mares and stallions both, but they were simple and pared-down like old cave paintings, and the subjects were strange: here, a spiraling glyph with no meaning I could discern; here, a trio of stones; here, a loose bundle of grasses and wildflowers. When they spoke at all, which was not much, it seemed to be in grunts and little emotional outbursts. No real words that I could see. Creatures of body language, mostly. They were savage and positively un-Pony.

"As requested, the beginning," said the Nightmare. "The Dawn of Pony. Behold the happiest creatures in history. Behold your ancestors, Applejack."

"Those ain't my ancestors," I said.

"Oh, but they are," said the Nightmare.

"My great-great-great-whatevereth grandsire weren't no horse," I insisted, adamantly. "I will guarantee you that. He was a pony, just like I am."

"Things change, Applejack," said the Nightmare, in low and stricken tones. "Try as I might to stop them."

"I don't follow," I said, still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that one of these critters was my blood or kin.

"My name is not 'Nightmare'," said the Nightmare. "It is the name that has been hung on me ever since I made the foalish decision to ally myself with that ridiculously soppy and reed-like Moon Princess of yours. These ponies – for ponies, indeed, they are – knew me as something quite different. They had no words, as such, but if we were to translate their knowing into speech you could understand, you would hear them call me 'Constancy'."

"'Constancy'? Like... things staying the same?"

"Indeed," said the Nightmare. "I, above all, know that perfection is to be approached in the now; and greater perfection is to be approached in the past. Look at your forefathers and foremothers. They are contented creatures. They do not question. They simply are. They live in a land of eternal daylight and eternal moonlight, the sun and the moon fixed forever in the sky. There are no seasons for them to endure, or create. They dwell beneath the open sky, with no roof to block their view. They eat grass, as nature intended. Gaze upon them, Applejack. Are they not sublime?"

"It looks... great," I said, squinting and trying to figure out where the apples were and coming up all zeroes. "I don't see no plows or nothing. How did they farm the land?"

"They didn't," snapped the Nightmare. "They were perfect and had no need of such things. Not until the Adversary came." The Nightmare gestured again, and an all-too-familiar form sashayed into view, his image splitting crazily amongst the various tree-trunks on which his image was projected.

I sucked in a breath. "Discord," I said, watching as the draconequus presented himself, godlike, before the primitive horses. With showy gestures, he showered them with gifts, changed their forms to smaller, sleeker ones, set the sun and the moon to move in the sky.

"Good gravy," I said, turning back to the Nightmare. "You're telling me Discord got the sun moving, way back when?"

"Yes," said the Nightmare, distantly. "Discord is the father of the seasons, the instigator of night and day. Much like me, he was not known as 'Discord' in those times. Merely... 'Change'. He terrified my little ponies. He made it so they never knew from one minute to the next whether it would be light or dark in the sky, cold or warm in the air. He made them dissatisfied with their lot in life, Applejack, because he gave them gifts; and then he gave war and hatred to the world, because he was inequitable and capricious in how he bestowed them. He made me weep, Applejack. He destroyed the paradise I had watched over for so long."

I looked on as the scenes unfolded around me, thousands and thousands of years passing with every heartbeat. As we rose up from the abyss of ages, I could see the ponies changing into shapes that looked more like what you might see walking on four hooves down the street in any modern town. I even began to recognize their Cutie Marks, their talents growing more and more recognizable to me as the ages passed.

"Hey!" I said, pointing. "I saw a snow-cone or something on one of them butts!"

"Confections," said the Nightmare, disdainfully. "Shaved ice, flavored with stolen honey and squeezed fruit juices. 'Dessert'. An abomination to my sight."

"Y'don't like... desserts?" I said, coming straight up against a wall with this one. "Not cakes or nothing?"

The Nightmare trembled, revolted. "Dessert is a creation of wretched Change," it said. "The apex of dissatisfaction, everything the Adversary represents." It twisted its voice into a mocking squeal. "Oh, oh help me! My meal is not good enough! It is not sufficient that I be nourished! I must tack something on to the end so that I will have filthy stinking pleasure as well!"

"It sounds really weird when you do that," I noted, taking my eyes away from the dizzying twirl of images for a moment to glance back at the Nightmare again.

"Sorry," said the Nightmare.

"So, wait. You and Discord've been here just... squabbling? For centuries?"

"Eons," agreed the Nightmare, reaching out to stroke at one of the spinning images with a smoky, indistinct hoof.

"So that's it," I said, quietly. "That explains you, finally. Y'ain't really about envy at all; that's just the thing you use to get into us ponies' heads. All that really matters to you is that we grab on to a piece of the changing world, anything we can, and hold on tight. Like Luna and the night. Like my brother and apple-bucking season. Like Scootaloo and her volcano presentation. You just want things to last forever. You don't care what, even. You just want something, anything, to stop changing."

"Yes," said the Nightmare. "And this is why I know there is no Forever Harvest. When the Adversary took all existence from me, I fled, looking for somewhere else to go, somewhere that He could not follow." The creature's voice went distant. "I went searching for a place like that which is described in your little fairy-pony stories. A place where everything is happy, now and forever, unchanging and eternal. I cast my psyche far and wide, for a longer time than your puny mortal mind can comprehend."

The Nightmare took a deep and shuddering breath. "I would have found such a place if it existed, Applejack. There is nothing out there but the world that you see, and it is ruined forever, by Him." The Nightmare billowed itself up, then, proudly. "I am the last force keeping this existence from dissolving into chaos, my little pony."

I shook my head. "Look," I said, "I'm sorry for coming at you when you're evidently real cut-up about this, but for all this talk about ponies, you're leaving them out of your speech pretty near entirely. Ponies don't always know what temperature it's gonna be when they wake up in the morning, but they've got a pretty good idea, all because of the hard work of the pegasus ponies. And they sure as sugar know when the sun's gonna come up. The unicorns made sure a' that back in the olden times, and now the Princess has a hold on it."

"Ha!" said the Nightmare, sharp and barking, as a gleaming, icon-like image of Princess Celestia – the sun and moon balanced atop her outstretched wings – scrolled smoothly across the trees. "You ponies! When you perceived that the wars that I and the Adversary fought became too great, too destructive, you took matters into your own hooves! You decreed a middle road of compromise, where change would happen, but in carefully-measured cycles! Four seasons to a year! Twenty-four hours to a day! Physical processes explained and controlled by science, and by magic! You are ignorant, to this day, of the fact that change itself is the odious element, and no carefully-scheduled occurrence of it will alter that fact! And when we try to enlighten you, you turn us to stone, or imprison us in the moon, or any number of ghastly punishments your cruel and Change-addled minds can come up with."

"I think you're maybe being a mite harsh," I said. "Haven't you ever felt the excitement of watching the winter give way before the spring, all the plants and animals busting into new life? The joy of that first sunny summer day after the rains stop? The relief of a cool autumn after a long, hot summer?"

I took a moment to look at the featureless, milky-black face of the Nightmare, trying to read an expression or something, but it was like a mask up there. "And what about the plumb filly delight of that first snowfall?" I finished. "What about that?"

"Your mouth moves," said the Nightmare, its chin high, "but no words come out. It is all 'blah blah blah'. Babbling nonsense."

"Consarnit!" I said. "Change ain't as bad as you make it out to be! I saw them primitive ponies. Sure, they was happy enough, I guess, 'cause they didn't know no better. But don't you think they woulda been happier with a couple sweet treats in their bellies? Maybe a tool or two in their hooves?"

"Oh, now you come out as a defender of Change?" sneered the Nightmare. "I'll show you Change, Applejack. We've spent quite a time in the past now; why don't we look to the future and see what it holds?" The Nightmare gestured grandly, viciously, and the scene before us changed. It was country I recognized, because it was home. Apple trees as far as the eye could see, at least that's what it ought to look like. I squinted down and gazed in close to the moving pictures.

"What... what are they doing to them trees?" I said.

"Razing them," said the Nightmare. "Oh, that's just one of the delightful things about the future. Great advances in efficiency for the mechanical leveler. At the time you're seeing, a single pony can take out thirty acres of forested land a day, I suspect. And the numbers only grow as the years pass."

"That ain't a forest!" I yelled. "That's my home! That's Sweet Apple Acres!"

"Yes, well, not any more," said the Nightmare. "Not at the time you're seeing. You remember what I said when I was wearing your father's face? The guise was a lie, but the words were not. Your family is not long for that land, Applejack. Advances in magic and technology, the spread of railroads, the unstoppable sprawl of the greater Canterlot metroplex. All of that is working against you. Your family's land will become infinitely more valuable to developers than it ever was growing apples. Your descendents will sell, Applejack. They will sell and take profitable jobs in the city, jobs that will be made possible by the huge strides of progress spearheaded by the most brilliant, scientifically-advanced mind in pony history."

"No," I said, shaking my head and backing up a step.

"Yes," said the Nightmare, the images on the trees shifting to show scenes of her words. "Your friend, Twilight Sparkle. In later life, that mare will revolutionize you ponies' understanding of magic and your relationship with it. The works of her mind will usher in a so-called 'Golden Age' of glinting, technological prosperity, utterly devoid of the good, solid values that you and yours have stood for. Ponyville will be absorbed and converted into a faceless, homogenous neighborhood in a swelling city that sweeps down the side of the mountain like an avalanche, burying everything beneath it. All that you know will be lost and gone, Applejack."

"It can't," I said. "I won't let it."

"You will be dead," said the Nightmare, leaning down over my shoulder and whispering into my ear. "Remember that spell-bolt streaking towards you? These are your last moments on this earth, Applejack, your last moments of existence. These pictures I now show you will be the last things that cross your mind, and you will know despair. And when you are erased, your family will soon follow. Your beloved Apple Family Way will be gone, as though it never existed. You will be remembered only as the least appealing member of a band of folk heroes, the one that nopony could ever really relate to. In the fictions made of your life, you will be shoved to the background, over and over again. The ponies that read these fictions will be ambivalent about you. They will call Twilight Sparkle the best pony. They will call Fluttershy the best pony. They will call Rainbow Dash the best pony. But the best that they will be able to summon up for you is a sort of winking ambivalence. You are doomed, Applejack. Both you and everything you hold dear. And history will not mourn you."

I coughed out a sob. I hadn't even known one was coming. "Liar," I said, my voice shaking. "You lie."

"No," said the Nightmare. "You know it to be true. And that is why it hurts you so."

"How do I stop this?" I asked, and gol-durn it, my voice sounded just like it did when I was a filly a couple minutes ago.

"You cannot," said the Nightmare. "We can."

I swallowed, hard. "How do we stop this, then?"

"Simple," said the Nightmare, airily. "I change you. Ironic isn't it? Me, the antithesis of change, working change on another? That is how you should know I am serious about this gift: I cut myself deeply to give it to you. And I only consider it at all because when I convert you it will be into your best and strongest form, and it will be the last change you will ever endure."

"Ever?"

"Ever," affirmed the Nightmare. "Once you have accepted me, you will remain at the absolute height of your physical, mental, and dare I say – " (and at this, a little leer) " – sexual powers, for all eternity. You know those creeping doubts you have about being shown up at your precious rodeos over and over again? I can confirm every last one of those doubts. You're in decline, Applejack, and without my help it will only get worse from here on in. And what about being the town's hero? You remember that, child?"

"I reckon I do," I said.

"Perhaps," said the Nightmare. "But a little audiovisual aid never hurt anypony, right?" The Nightmare gestured and the trees were filled with an image of adorable filly me, resting easy beneath the shade of a tree, finishing up a big ol' slice of watermelon and spitting out the pits, just a little game to while away a hot afternoon, when all of a sudden...

"Applejack!" came Rarity's voice, her old voice, the real one, that broad Lakelander accent I was always kind of partial to. It was followed shortly by adorable filly Rarity herself. "Applejack, you gotta come quick!" she said, panting after her hard gallop. "It's bad!"

"Bad how?" asked filly me, tapping the brim of her hat up.

"Ohmygoodnessohmygoodness," said adorable filly Fluttershy. "I think it's a kelpie, Applejack! A strange woodland creature that looks like a pony but isn't! It's going to try and drown us!"

Adorable filly Rainbow Dash, the new kid from Cloudsdale, swooped in. "What do we do, Applejack?"

Adorable filly Applejack rose to her hooves. "I'll tell you what we do," she said. "You all just stand on back and let Applejack work her magic."

"Yay!" shouted everypony. "Hooray for Applejack!" And then the scene stuttered to a halt and vanished from the trees.

"Cute little buggers, weren't we," I murmured.

"You can have it all back," said the Nightmare. "Well, not the cuteness, perhaps. But the respect and admiration of your peers, certainly. Now and forever, for generations to come. You yourself will be there many years from now when the battle-lines are drawn to stop the spread of the city, to stop Progress from running roughshod over that which you love. You will always be there, an eternal sentinel of your farm. Your cropland will grow mystically fecund in your presence and your family's plenty will increase a hundredfold. You and yours will be rich beyond imagining, child. Rich and powerful. You will hold back the tide of years. Your way of life will last, yes, forever. Together, we will recreate paradise."

"And all I gotta do is get... rid of Twilight Sparkle."

"Her mind dies with her, and likewise, all the changes she would otherwise spur. All this," said the Nightmare, gesturing at the images it had cast of the dark, mountain-swallowing, never-ending metropolis of Canterlot, "goes away, like a bad dream."

"I gotta get rid of her," I said, feeling very much like a pony sinking in quicksand. "I can't just – just argue with her about it or nothing?"

"You know she won't budge," said the Nightmare. "She's as stubborn as you are."

"Yeah," I said, realizing this truth for perhaps the first time. "Yeah, she is."

"It doesn't have to be painful, or wicked," purred the Nightmare. "It can be nice and gentle. Summon the old earth pony magic. Fill her little brain-tank with nightshade, or hemlock. A nice, long sleep for your little friend. Your silly little filly friend who can't possibly know the damage she will wreak, who would never believe you if you were to tell her. There is no wrongdoing, no fault here. You aren't the hoof of justice. You're merely the agent of a brighter future."

I swear I could see the shadow smile, then. Real gentle. Like a nurse, or something. "Will you help me, Applejack?" it said. "Will you help me write into being a better world than the one you see before you? Please?"

An instant passed. A decision was made.

"Aw, heck, no," I said, shaking my head.

The Nightmare sighed. "Just like that? You're not going to even think about it? This is why I came to you with your father's face, Applejack. To stop you from simply turning your brain off."

"Turning my brain off is what I do best, sometimes," I said. "On account of it lets me hear my heart. And do you know what my heart says?"

"Something banal and prejudiced, I expect."

I ignored the jab and pressed on. "It says that you're wrong, Nightmare. It says that no good's ever gonna come from a plan what involves letting you in here, even if the alternative is death. And I don't even know why, and I can't even put it into words yet because that's not what a heart's good for. But I'm gonna trust my gut and what my Pa would say in this situation, and he'd tell you thanks, but, you can take your gift and stuff it where the sun don't shine. Beggin' your pardon."

The Nightmare scowled at me. "Fine!" it yelled, gesturing angrily at the trees surrounding us and causing the images to spin crazily again. "We've seen the past, and we've seen the future. Let's take a quick look at the present, shall we? Maybe you can't be swayed by hypothetical future harms. Maybe you lack the imagination. Let's bring it down to earth for a moment." The images snapped back into focus, showing the picture of the interior of a familiar building. It was the ground floor of Carousel Boutique, the way me and Apple Bloom had seen it when we went around delivering breakfast to Rarity early this morning. Now, as then, the whole room was dominated by a giant column of blue-glowing glass leading from the Wondrous Lanthorn down to the gemstone furnace in the basement of the shop. Unlike then, however, the glass tube appeared to be occupied. By a pony.

"What in tarnation?" I said, squinting. "That's Rainbow Dash in there!"

And, yep, it was. There, straining mightily against a gravity beam that was dragging her down into the gemstone furnace at a little under the speed of sound, was Rainbow Dash, probably the only pony in Equestria who was able to out-fly a gravity beam dragging at a little under the speed of sound. Her leg-brace had been torn clean off, her wings were locked in a painful stance and both sweat and tears were pouring from her, but she was somehow managing to hold her own. Rainbow's massive expenditure of pegasus air-magic – combined with the sheer frantic energy of thousands upon thousands of cubic feet of wind being sucked past her down into the blast furnace – was shattering the water vapor inside the column into a corona of zinging, caroming color. It was clearly taking every last scrap of Rainbow's strength just to stay in place.

I rounded on the Nightmare. "Pa – I mean, you said that she was fine!" I said, pointing in a mighty accusing fashion. "That don't look like 'fine' to me!"

"I said she was unharmed," said the Nightmare, brusquely. "Technically true. In a minute or two, however, her strength is going to give out." A quick sneer. "Not even the great Rainbow Dash can keep up against that level of pull for long. And then, yes, she joins your precious hat in the fashionista's furnace. All the while, you, you stupid whelp, are dying in the town square, practically right outside the door. The second I release you, that disjunction spell is going to tear you to pieces. But yours isn't the only life you're choosing to sacrifice. Rainbow Dash will be following you to your Forever Harvest in a matter of seconds."

"Rainbow's a Deocrat," I muttered. "She don't go to the Harvest when she passes. She goes to Eohippus or something."

"Blah, blah, blah," said the Nightmare. "One imaginary candyland over another. Semantics aside, I trust my point is a lucid one?"

"This is fighting dirty," I said, shaking my head. "This ain't proper temptation no more. You're grasping at straws."

"But it's working!" crowed the Nightmare. "And, just to increase the perceived fairness of the situation, I'll sweeten the deal by lowering your risk. Here's the offer: I give you just enough of my power to release your friend and to take down Twilight Sparkle's quicksilver horror. Not even a full investiture. A free sample, as it were, to use farmer's market parlance. I trust that, given a taste of what I can offer you, you'll make the right choice and take the extra step of removing that pesky unicorn from my world. Then, you get the whole shebang. Immortality. Eternal youth. The power to change the course of history for the better. What say you? Will you condemn Rainbow Dash to the same death you face? At long last, Applejack, what do you say?"

I looked at the image of Rainbow Dash, fighting for her life against the Lanthorn's pull, the Nightmare's words boiling in my head.

She was crying, for pony's sake.

Rainbow Dash, that quick, brash, beautiful mare, was gonna go to her grave in tears. Not in a blaze of glory, not smashed to pieces in the aftermath of the most spectacular trick in history, not sacrificing her life so that others might live. She was going to die crying.

The last thing Rainbow Dash would know... was failure.

"I can't," I whispered. "I can't let that happen."

"Good," said the Nightmare, contented like a cat. "Finally, reason from you."

"What do I gotta do?" I asked, hardly seeming like it was even me saying the words.

"Some brand of metaphorical or symbolic acceptance will do fine," said the Nightmare. "I'd ask you to take a bite of one of those beautiful apples, but I'm afraid that symbol is a bit played out, cosmically-speaking. So how about we just confirm this the 'country' way?" With those words, the shadow-creature coughed up a black little gob from its throat and spat it onto one of its smoky hooves. The substance hung there on the surface of the hoof, glistening like oil tar.

"Spit-shake?" it said, extending its hoof to me.

"Just a sample," I said, reaching up all tentative-like. "This ain't permanent."

"Not until you tell me you want it to be," said the Nightmare. "And you will, believe me. Once you get a taste of how good it feels to be the best possible you."

"I gotta do this now," I said. "Before I start having second thoughts." With a sudden, sharp gesture, I spat on my hoof and brought it up to touch the Nightmare's. "Grower help me," I said.

Nausea rushed over me like an oncoming tide. The black piece of nightmare-stuff flowed over and up my hoof the moment I touched it, and I hardly had even a moment to be terrified as it sunk itself deep into the skin of my pastern and lurched into my blood.

I shook. I frothed. I clenched up, all over, struggling against it reflexively for a moment, but it was no good. The Nightmare was writing me to its specifications now, and my body was putty in its hooves. With a spasm and a noise of twisting bone, I felt myself growing and changing, my muzzle stretching, my legs growing long and lithe and powerful. I tossed my head back, whinnying in terror, and my mane and tail erupted from the tiny little bands I always wore to keep the hair in check, the hair itself becoming something more than hair in the process. My eyes burned and blazed. Unfamiliar teeth erupted from my gumline, sharp things, teeth I hadn't known in ages.

I reared back and whinnied once more. Thunder rumbled across the blank and slate-grey sky. And then it was done.

"Well?" said the Nightmare. "How does it feel?"

I sucked in a seething breath, shaky like I was fighting the ague, but when my voice finally came it was deep and throaty and beautiful. "It feels like... a river in me," I said, trying to put words to it. "Like every little piece of me is a little wellspring, just overflowing with... stuff."

"That's power," cooed the Nightmare. "Do you like the taste of it?"

I closed my eyes, overcame a moment of great reluctance, and spoke. "It's delicious," I croaked.

"Here," said the Nightmare, escorting me over to the unseen stream I had heard during my first trip to its realm. "Have a look at you."

I walked with the creature, hardly believing that I was able to do so without tripping over the terrifyingly expanded real estate of my legs; but I was a thing of preternatural grace now, and I positively glided across the steely, uniform grass of the Nightmare orchard over to the little creek, which was, despite its actively flowing status, as slick and smooth as mirror-glass on its surface. I gazed down for a while at an unfamiliar face.

Elegant and well-formed it was, but with enough muscle on the jaw to convince you that this weren't no idle high-class pony. This was a mare who worked with her teeth and neck and hooves for a living, who would work just so for every day of her eternal life. The powerful face was framed by a harsh, flowing breeze of sunny yellow-white energy instead of a mane, something like a sandstorm over a southwestern desert. Glittering green eyes studded with bright ruby flecks, like apple trees in full fruit, gazed up at me.

I blinked. The creature blinked in kind.

I raised my lip. The creature raised its lip back at me, exposing a sharp little fang. I ran my tongue over it. "What's with the teeth?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"That, little pony, is a wolf-tooth," said the Nightmare. "Your people get those pulled at a fairly early age. Cosmetic reasons, you say. Or to better accommodate a bit, for whatever senseless reason you people keep wearing those things. But you and I know the real reason, Applejack. Those teeth remind you of the uncomfortable fact that you share ancestors with creatures who weren't plant-eaters. Creatures who ate of flesh and needed those teeth to rip and tear and rend. Well, your wolf-teeth are back now. I've repaired every injury you've ever experienced, even the intentional ones. This is just part of what my 'delicious' power has done for your body." The nightmare smirked, then. "Delicious," it repeated. "I love the sound of you saying that word. That's the name for you: 'Delicious'."

"Oh my lord," I said, looking over – not up anymore – at the creature. "You just named me 'Nightmare Delicious'."

"I did," said the Nightmare. "Something wrong with that?"

"It's only the dumbest-sounding Nightmare name ever," I said. "Sounds like some really messed-up variety of apple or something."

"Oh, sue me," said the Nightmare. "It's not my fault that I had to blow 'Nightmare Malus' on your stupid brother. Besides, you have to admit, giving you an apple-like name could hardly be more fitting, yes?"

Silence from me. I touched the surface of the water like I was trying to touch the face of the mare I saw there, hardly able to believe that her face was mine now. The water did not even ripple at my hoof.

"Nightmare Delicious," I said.

"Do you like it?"

I closed my eyes.

"Do I... do I get a new hat, at least?" I said, and at that moment I was lost.

The Nightmare grinned. "Do you get a new hat? Darling, you get the whole ensemble!" The Nightmare gestured again and shadow-stuff gathered around me like a fog, eventually shaping itself into a chilly blue-black duster of tiny metal links, embroidered with bright red wire. Polished black cowpony boots with bright silver spurs and buckles formed around my forehooves, and atop my head, a sharp-cut black hat of pigskin leather.

"A skin hat?" I said, touching it with one boot-shackled hoof. "I mean, we use pigskin for stuff, sure, when they pass. But we don't... well, we don't make hats of it."

"It's magic," said the Nightmare. "It doesn't come from pigs. It comes from my will. Would you prefer buffalo felt, like your old one? I just thought that leather was so much more keen."

I shook my head. "My old hat wouldn't look right on... this," I said, making a fumbling gesture at my changed self. "Does it have to be black, though?"

"You're on my team now, filly," said the Nightmare. "You wear my team colors. Besides, I hear black is 'in', nowadays."

"There is definitely something of the Rarity in you, Nightmare," I said, scrutinizing the creature, worrying even as I did so at the red rim to my vision.

"I suppose there is," admitted the Nightmare, breezily. "At any rate, my work is done and I believe we've chatted enough. Ready to go back to Equestria, Delicious? Ready to hold back change and make the world all better?"

I snorted, locking my hindhooves into the dirt, feeling the thrilling power of my muscles beneath my coat, and squared the new leather Stetson on my head. The feeling of having a hat up there again was like water to a pony dying of thirst in the desert. I just had to hope it weren't like water to a pony drowning in the ocean at the same time. "Ready."

"Excellent," said the Nightmare. "And remember: all this can be yours, forever. All you need to do is end the unicorn."

"I remember," I said, gritting my teeth.

The creature, the spirit named Constancy, nodded to me and raised its hooves, and in a flash, the dark orchard was gone. And just like that, I had loosed a new Nightmare onto Equestria.

And this time, it was me.

19 - Everlasting Science Fair

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Nineteen: Everlasting Science Fair

The place that I found myself in was sunny, and warm, and bright. I stared up past a ceiling of perfect clear crystal-glass panes to a breathtaking blue sky above, studded with happy white clouds. Distant, well-tempered music, pianoforte or something, floated gently through the air. And all about me was the quiet buzz of discovery and motion.

I rose to my modestly-sized orange hooves, soaking up the sweet relief of having normal, chunky, non-Nightmare'd legs beneath my barrel again, and took a look around.

There was no possible description of the place other than this: I was on the inside of an endless exhibition hall containing what appeared to be, yes, an everlasting science fair. Here beneath this vaulted glass ceiling was an infinite spread of cheery, hoofmade exhibits, each one demonstrating (with heartbreakingly innocent glee) one or more exciting principles of nature and/or magic. Here was a display on seed germination. Here, a basic treatise on the structure of the atom, illustrated with balls of brightly-painted hardwood. Here, a simple water-clock. Here, a chart detailing the relationship between geographic mana-lines and thaumaturgic power. And those were just the relatively static ones. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could catch glimpses of pluming artificial geysers, glimmering sparks of mystical current, and whizzing spring-driven machines of vast and perfect complicatedness. I had no doubt that if I followed up on any one of these things I would find behind it a chirpy little exhibit laying out exactly what natural processes were at work behind the scenes of the wonder I was currently beholding.

Simple pony-made gliders soared through the air. Helium balloons rose and fell. Arcs of water cascaded across the sky above my head. It was... well, I ain't gonna say "indescribable", because otherwise what in the hay am I spending all this time doing? But it was a touch overwhelming.

"Neat, huh?" came a familiar voice from behind me. I turned around to see exactly what I had been hoping to see: an adorkable, wide-eyed purple unicorn, her violet-striped mane mussed just so, standing practically on hooftip so full was she of magic and hope and light.

This was the creature the Nightmare wanted me to end.

"Hey, Twilight," I drawled, shuffling my hooves. I was acting all laconic but, truth to tell, the feeling of us girls being two little candy-colored ponies again was so good it was all I could do to keep from crying. I held it back. Had to stay strong for what I was about to do.

"So, uh," I continued. "This is what the inside of your brain looks like."

"Yes!" she said, excitedly. "It's just like my dream! An everlasting science fair."

"I gotta admit to being a touch surprised," I said. "I thought sure I was gonna end up in a library or something when I shoved my way in here."

"A perfectly reasonable assumption," said Twilight. "After all, I do love, love, love books! And I'm sure that if you poked around in this crystal hall for long enough, you'd find a really nice never-ending collection of them somewhere. But what I love more than anything, even more than books themselves, is learning new things and sharing what I've learned with my friends." She threw her forehooves wide. "I guess that's what this science fair represents!"

"Mm," I said, evenly, still steeling myself.

"Do you want to look at some of the exhibits with me?" she asked, doing a slow pirouette as she gestured all around. "There is, after all, an infinite number of them; there's always something new in the universe to learn!"

"Some other day, maybe," I said. "Listen, Twi, are you... are you aware of what's going on out there?"

"Yes," said Twilight, darkening a bit. Somewhere above us, a cloud masked the sun and the crystal hall grew a shade dimmer. "The science poison seems to be causing a disconnect between my true inner self and the self I present to the world. I seem to have gone, for lack of a better word, totally loco-in-the-coco." She rolled her eyes around to demonstrate "clinical insanity".

"Yeah, uh, I guess you went and burned 'bout half your library, or something?"

"Mm hm," she said, her voice even and dull. "Yep."

"We're both about to get killed, too," I added.

"Trying not to think about any of that right now, thanks," said Twilight. "A.J., I know I only did it because of the poison, but I still feel like I need to apologize to you for inventing a giant shapeshifting metal Trixie-bot who then proceeded to annihilate the both of us. It just isn't the sort of thing a good friend would do."

"No, Twilight," I said. "It ain't you. It's me what needs to apologize."

"It's okay," said Twilight, patting at my withers. "I know, you sold out to the Nightmare. Neither of us were in our right minds, A.J. It's fine."

"Consarnit, mare!" I hollered, shaking off her comforting hoof. "It ain't that at all!"

Twilight fell back on her haunches and looked at me, momentarily taken aback.

All right, Applejack. Moment of truth, here, literal-style. I took a breath.

"Twi," I asked, "do you have any displays here about kelpies?"

"Well, sure!" said Twilight, blinking a bit confusedly. She led me down one of the aisles of exhibits until we got to something akin to an animal biology section. "Kelpies," she muttered. "Kelpies... kelpies... kelpies... aha, here we are!" She beamed at the little booth she had located, complete with its own tiny little diorama, and then took a look at its carefully mouth-lettered informational display. "Kelpies," she recited. "Malicious pony-shaped spirits of ponds and pools. They lurk in dark and wicked woods, hoping to lure traveling ponies into touching them. Once they do, their hides become inescapably adhesive and they promptly drag the unfortunate pony they've captured back into their home pool to drown." Twi gave a little shudder. "Nasty things, it sounds like. What's the relevance, A.J.?"

"Well," I said, "I fought me a kelpie once."

"Really?" said Twilight. "Wow!"

I nodded. "It was real unpleasant. Nightmare reminded me of it during our whole temptation hoo-ha. This was way back before you came to town, back when I was a filly. All my little girlfriends, Dash and Flutters and Rarity, they all used to come running to me every time danger struck. It was me they looked to, on account of I used to be the leader of us all. Not you."

Twilight gave me a liquid-eyed gaze. When her voice came next, it was mighty small. "A.J.," she said, "I'm... I'm sorry. I had no idea that I was somehow supplanting you."

"Whoa, there," I said, holding up a hoof. "Still me doin' the apologizing here, Twi. Point is, when the Nightmare played that memory back for me, it felt real nice for a second, everypony looking for me to take the lead and all." I shook my head. "But then, a few minutes later, Dash reminded me of something else, and that's this: I was a right terrible leader back then. An' I still am."

"C'mon, A.J.," said Twi. "I think maybe you're selling yourself a little short."

"Naw, naw, look here," I said, gesturing at the tiny diorama sitting there in the front of the display. Sure enough, there was a sinister black balsawood kelpie figurine in there. And right behind it was a second figurine, a hapless-looking orange balsawood earth pony, wearing a miniature feltcraft Stetson on top of its head. The little orange pony's right forehoof was stuck like glue (using, in this here instance, actual glue) to the kelpie's side, and it appeared as though the kelpie was in the process of dragging the orange pony along behind it, probably to drown.

"That's me," I said, pointing. "When Flutters and Dash and Rarity came running to me, warning me that there was a kelpie in the woods, I didn't ask Rar to go fetch a bunch of fabric so we could wrap that kelpie up and marehandle it safely. I didn't ask R.D. to call up a gale-force wind that might have pushed it around without anypony touching it. Heckfire, I didn't ask Flutters what a kelpie even was before charging into the fray. Back then, the only way I knew how to deal with nasty critters was to get physical with 'em. And when you're fighting a varmint that actually wants you to get physical with it, well, I was completely lost."

"How on earth did you escape?"

"Hoof nippers," I said. "Chopped the tip of my own forehoof clean off and made my getaway. Thankfully, I had started bothering that kelpie with a simple little poke. If I had come right out of the gate with a roundhouse kick or a ponyslam, we wouldn't be having this here conversation, and there'd only be two Apple siblings working the Acres today. A hooftip grows back, thank goodness. A leg, not so much."

Twilight shuddered. "That's awful, A.J."

I nodded. "Yeah. But I ain't playing for sympathy here. Point I'm trying to make is this: if you'd been with us when we was just girls, you'd have done it up right. You'd have asked Fluttershy to tell us every little bit of woodsy lore she could recollect on the topic of kelpies. You'd have consulted your monster manuals and put together a list of strengths and weaknesses. You'd have made Rar get that fabric. You'd have told Dash to make that wind. And you'd have had me binding that thing up from a lariat's length away, not going and cuffing at it like a sillybritches. When the girls look up to you, it's not because you're their favorite pony. It's not because you up and replaced me in their eyes. It's because..."

"Yes?"

I swallowed hard. "Well, ain't no other way to say it. It's because you're a dang fine leader, Twilight Sparkle. You can't cook. You can't pull a plow. You can't build stuff. And yet, somehow, when it comes to telling other ponies what to do, you've suddenly got the magical ability to keep a whole score o' plates up in the air at once."

"It's not magic," explained Twilight. "It's organization. And you're absolutely right, Applejack. Being a leader doesn't mean that I'm a better or more important pony than anypony else. It just means that I have a particular knack for leadership, just like Rarity has a knack for fashion, or like you have for growing apples. It's a skill. That's it."

"Yeah," I said. "I finally got it. But that's today. Yesterday, I didn't have it yet. Yesterday, I got so mad about the changes you up and made to my town the second you arrived, the way you stole it out from under me that... that I did something just awful."

Twilight blinked at me. I closed my eyes. Here it comes, I thought.

"Twilight," I said, "you remember how you showed up late to the party last night?"

"Yes," she said, grumbling. "Ugh. I mean, I know it seems like I should have more important things to be fixating on right now, but I still can't believe I misread that invitation! I hate being late for things! Hate it, hate it, hate it."

"I know," I said, quietly. "And that's why I made sure you were late."

Silence dropped over the crystal hall. The wooden gliders tumbled from the sky and clattered to the floor. The geysers stopped pluming. The clockwork machines stopped whirring. A dark shroud fell over the entire Everlasting Science Fair.

"You what?" asked Twilight, in the sudden quiet.

"I helped write those party invitations," I said. "And it so happened I was the one responsible for making the one that went out to you. And I was just so angry and jealous at you that I... I deliberately wrote the wrong time on yours. You didn't misread the invitation. I invited you to my party, but I invited you late. On purpose."

"A.J.," said Twilight, her voice trembling. Above us, rain began to patter against the panes of the shiny glass ceiling. "You... you lied to me?"

"Yep," I said, barely able to form the word past the lump in my throat. My tears, long-delayed, finally started falling in earnest. "I lied to you, Twilight." And, yes, I lied to all y'all's reading this story, too. Just something else y'all gonna have to forgive me for.

"Why... why would you do something like that?"

"Because I wanted my party to be about me for a while!" I said, the words just spilling out now. "I wanted to pretend everything was like it was back in the old days, before I even knew you. I wanted, for just one hour, to be the most important pony in town again."

I slumped to the polished marble floor.

"But most of all, I did it because I knew it would hurt you," I finished, no louder than a bug. "And I wanted you to hurt."

There was silence for a time, broken only by the noise of rain on glass above us.

"Anyhow, that's how this all started," I said, sniffling away my tears. "All's I did was write an eight instead of a seven on your invite, and that little change plumb near ended the world on us. Yes, we all drunk that Discord-punch. And yes, it prolly still would have knocked us for a loop. But there weren't no way that demon could have hit us all as hard as he did if he couldn'ta found a chink in our Harmony. And I went and handed it to him on a silver plate. And then you used that same betrayal to fuel Princess Robo-Trixie out there. It's all my fault, Twilight. It's all me."

Twilight shook her head. "I knew it," she said, after a moment. "I knew that I didn't misread the invitation. But what was I supposed to think? The only thing I could even conceive of was that maybe whoever it was just made a mistake and wrote the wrong time down. That somepony would actually lie to me about what time the party was was just... inconceivable!" Twilight turned to me, her eyes sharp. "And after all that, it turns out that it was you, Applejack! The Bearer of Honesty!"

"I know," I said, all despondent. "I know. I know."

I sighed, then, and continued. "Anyhow, now I got the Nightmare riding my back. It basically sent me here to kill you dead."

"Oh," said Twilight, a little more subdued.

"Yep," I said. "Nightmare thinks that with you gone, your betrayal goes away too. Might weaken Discord enough for it to gain a hoof-up on him. Just another temporary advantage in a struggle that goes back to the dawn o' time. But I reckon there's a much simpler way to get rid of betrayal. All this while, the Nightmare didn't even think of doing it, because, well, just because it's simple doesn't make it easy. It requires you to change, and to the Nightmare, that's just about the hardest thing in the world. So hard that the Nightmare doesn't even reckon it's an option. And I ain't a hundred percent certain of it, neither, but I figure it's worth a shot."

I looked up at that little purple mare, looked her square in the eyes.

"Twilight," I said, "I done you wrong. Powerful wrong. Weren't even a good reason for it, other than fear, and jealousness, and trickery. I sit here in front of you with no excuse for my behavior whatsoever. So I don't expect I'm entitled to it, but because you're my friend, and I don't want to lose you, I'm gonna ask anyway."

I took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Twilight Sparkle," I said, "will you forgive me?"

A glow of orange witchlight began gathering around me. It started out faint but quickly grew to a strong fire, something like the evening sun. Twilight looked at my new aura in wonderment, brushing at it with the tip of one hoof.

"I... I want to just laugh this off," she said, the orange light illuminating her face from underneath in the darkness of the hall. "More than anything, I want to say 'no problem, A.J.!', close the book on it, and pretend it never happened. But that wouldn't be true, would it? You deliberately set out to hurt me yesterday, and that's not okay."

Twilight started to collect her own cloud of light, then, a bright billowing mass of radiant purple. "But... we're only equine, right?" she said. "We make mistakes. You're one of the most special ponies I know, Applejack. You're loyal, dependable, reliable, and strong – abnormally so, sometimes. When the chips are down, when I need a good solid right hoof to get the job done, you're not just the first name that comes to mind, you're often the only name that comes to mind. And after all we've been through together, after all that we've shared... well, I'd be crazy to throw that all away just for the sake of keeping a grudge against a genuinely apologetic mare who wants my friendship just as bad as I want hers."

Twilight threw her forehooves wide. "So I've thought about it," she said. "The answer it yes, Applejack. A hundred times yes. I forgive you."

"Thank you," I whispered. And with that, we threw ourselves into a deep, tight hug, clinging to each other with the sort of hungry joy that can only come from a couple of good friends who've spent too long living in their own separate shadows, finally emerging into the light. And as we did so, our purple and orange auras crashed into each other and rose into a twining column of purest hope, tearing through the gloomy rainclouds in the sky above the crystal ceiling and letting the sun shine in once more. The Everlasting Science Fair of Twilight's mind erupted into full and riotous motion, a universe full of fire and magic and clocks, and me and that mare hugged and hugged and hugged until the world went white and dissolved into heaven about me...

* * *

...and with a startled, strangled gasp, I awoke to the night sky of the real world, the Element of Honesty about my neck blazing up into the darkness. For one tiny moment, not even a second, I could see an expression of shock and horror cross the mirror-like face of the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, but there weren't time for anything more than that, because with a bright crash, she suddenly and violently dissolved into a flying glop of component metals. The sheer momentum of her dreadful charge forced the remnants of her over me like a disgusting but harmless wave of molasses, falling in tepid spatters against the dirt. An instant later, my Nightmare body seized up and spasmed hard, and I couldn't do anything more than holler out to the sky as a flood of dark power burst out of me, shattering my fancy evilness duds into charred and smoking scraps. The blackness flowed from my body like gunk escaping a wound, and I felt myself dwindle, the dread inflammation of the Nightmare pouring from my self and leaving it small and orange and whole once more.

I sank to the ground as the remains of the Nightmare boiled in the air above me like ink in water. "No!" it screeched, raging impotently. "No! You cannot have done this!"

"Just did," I wheezed.

"Applejack!" came the sound of Dash's voice, from across the plaza.

"Hang on, A.J. and Twilight!" Came Pinkie's voice, joining in. "We're coming!"

Dangfool mares didn't listen when I told 'em to stay put at the Corner after all. I propped myself up on my elbow and tried to get a fix, but the Nightmare found them before I did, and it streaked, snarling, across the plaza, its ragged blackness already beginning to fray apart into vapor.

"Rainbow Dash!" shouted the Nightmare, its voice going hollow and distant. "Nightmare Spectra! Join with me and become even more 'awesome' than you now are!"

Dash frowned, then glanced back at herself, experimentally flexing her slender and sinewy sky-blue wings. She looked back up at the Nightmare.

"I'm not... really sure how that's possible," she replied, sounding honestly confused.

"Pinkie Pie!" cried the Nightmare, the last, flickering traces of its physical form grasping helplessly in her direction. "Laughter! Forever!"

"Aw, no thanks," said Pinkie Pie. "I mean, can you imagine the hiccups?"

If the Nightmare had any response to this other than a faint, distant howl of frustrated rage, we could none of us hear it as its presence in our world withered away, at last, to nothing. And finally, all was quiet.

It did not remain quiet long, 'cause Pinkie Pie immediately rushed over to my position and looked me over. "Coca-mocha-macaroni!" exclaimed Pinkie. "You did it, A.J.! You beat the Nightmare!"

"We didn't have to blast you or anything!" said Rainbow Dash. She took a second to scan the wreckage of Town Square, looking for our trusty cloud-scooter. On recovering it, she hoisted herself back up on top, still favoring her freshly-braced leg. "Good thing, too, since we've only got like half the Elements anymore. How'd you even do that, sister?"

"Sister?!?" gasped Pinkie.

"Not actual sister-sister," Dash clarified. "Just, y'know, the sisterhoof sort of sister."

"Oh, good," said Pinkie. "I was worried I missed something there."

"It was simple," I said, coughing and brushing away the tattered remnants of my Nightmare getup. It ain't never felt better to be a roundish little orange horsey, not never. "That silly demon done bargained me too low. It got so desperate for me to accept it that it didn't even give me a full Nighmaring, just a sample. Big enough to take down that Trixie-bot but little enough that a good solid whack from a single Element could take it out."

I grinned down at my little orange apple necklace, tapping proudly at it. The jewel set into it was whole again, shining and uncracked. "Honesty, in this case," I said. "It was a hard truth I been holding onto, but I told it. And that, fillies, is why you never try and out-haggle an Apple."

"Lesson received," said Dash.

I turned back to Pinkie Pie and gestured down at the broken brain-tank. "Pinkie, I need you to do some of your technical hoodoo and check out Twilight, there, pronto."

"She looks okay to me," said Pinkie, cocking her head at the little lump of unicorn brain and then tipping its containing fragment upright so she was all nice and covered with science-juice again. "Maybe a little wrinkly and crenellated, yet, but don't worry, we'll make her better. Meanwhile, we can set her up in a lemonade pitcher until we can work up something more permanent."

"Something like her own head again, I hope," I said. "In any case, fantastic. R.D., we lost Spike somewhere in this mess. Help me find him."

"Way ahead of you," said Rainbow from over by the tree, poking at the fallen baby dragon. "Looks like the poor guy just got the wind knocked out of him. He'll be fine."

"Great. That's two. Can someone give me a status on that Trixie-bot?"

"Trixie is still here," came a wet, burbly voice from off to my left. "Trixie can hear everything you're saying about her. Unfortunately, Trixie is a miserable little puddle of gallium right now, and she will remain so for the foreseeable future, since she now lacks the betrayal energy that had apparently been powering her." The voice gave a pathetic little sniff. "Memories uploaded into Trixie's internal data banks suggest that this is a fairly typical outcome for Trixie."

"Aw, don't be a Saddy McSadderson!" said Pinkie Pie, trotting over to the forlorn glob of liquid metal. "Turn that vaguely frown-shaped ripple upside-down!" She cocked her head, tapping her chin with one hoof. "Or maybe not all the way upside-down. Maybe just a few degrees clockwise. Or maybe a couple radians to widdershins. Heck, I don't know! Do whatever it takes to make it look like a smile!"

"You must understand," said Trixie-bot, "that mere moments after she was created, Twilight Sparkle announced her intention to destroy Trixie. This made Trixie very upset. Perhaps this will help you understand why Trixie lashed out a bit."

"'Lashed out a bit'?" I said. "Y'all tried to disintegrate me four times, kicked me in the back of the neck, stabbed me and then almost dropped a building on my head!"

"Don't mind A.J.," said Dash, yawning. "She's just mad because you tried to disintegrate her four times, kicked her in the back of the neck, stabbed her, and then almost dropped a building on her head."

"Please don't be angry with us, Robo-Trixie," said Pinkie. "Twilight would never normally do what she said she was going to do to you. You just happened to get born on the one day we're all nuttier than peanut brittle around here." Suddenly, Pinkie's eyes went wide and she sucked in a great gasping breath. "Ohmygosh!" she screamed. "Today's your birthday, Robo-Trixie! We gotta throw you a party! There'll be cake and candy and pies and games and songs and laughing and ooh, you're going to get so powered up with friendship, you won't even miss the negative energy you used to run on! You're gonna love friendship, Robo-Trixie! It's just like betrayal but with more dessert!"

"Yes, well," gurgled Trixie, sullenly. "Trixie will see about that."

"Focus, Pinkie," I said. "Let's save us some world first. Dash, you still got our Extra Bold hot sauce stuck in that cloud?"

Dash fished round in the depths of the cloud-scooter and eventually emerged with the magnetic-field tankard. "Intact and powered on!" she said.

"Good. Can somepony please fetch Iggy?"

Pinkie perked, excitedly, and then vanished into the library, quite nearly leaving a trail of cotton-candy light in the air behind her. Almost instantly, she reappeared. "Got him!" she said, holding up the little ro-bot reptile amphibian thing with her forehoof. Iggy cuddled up to his creator a bit, rubbing at her cheek, and Pinkie beamed in contentment.

"All right then," I said. "Gimme that thing."

"Hold on just one second, first," said Pinkie, pulling Iggy away protectively. "Dash talked to me all about you girls's plan to burn down the evil lemon grove with little my little guy, here, and I guess that's all right, but I gotta ask... did you ever get Iggy's input on this? I specifically made him to be indestructible, but that doesn't mean that eating super-hot hot sauce is a comfortable experience for him."

"Well," I said, scratching the back of my neck with one hoof, "we ain't really had a chance to talk it over. Plus, all he makes is that squonking noise."

Pinkie clucked her tongue. "You just gotta know how to talk to him, A.J.! I insist that, before I hoof him over to you, you give me a chance to explain the entire situation to him so that he is an informed, willing participant in the events that are to come, keeping in mind that yes, as a contraptionoid, his highest purpose in life is to fulfill his core function; but notwithstanding this, he is a sapient creature, possessed of likes and dislikes independent of his purpose, and this fact alone gives him every right to refuse to be a party to any plan that integrally includes causing him great discomfort, no matter how noble its aim!"

"How long will that take?"

"Not long," said Pinkie. She fixed Iggy with a look. "Squonk?"

Iggy thought this over for a second.

"SQUONK."

Pinkie smiled. "Iggy understands," she said, passing him to me.

"Good," I said. "Now, Pinkie, the very last thing I need from you is the keys to your science project."

"Sorry, huh?"

"Your project!" I said. "The thing you made for the science fair! The link between balloons and laughter! All this time, you've been keeping your cards close and not telling anypony what it is, but the time for that's over now. Turns out you're just about the smartest of us girls, Pinks – second to Twilight – and you're sure as shootin' the best contraptionologist. You told me yourself you were finished with it. And this here's the last push. I expect some serious resistance from Discord when we close in on his stronghold, and we're gonna need every advantage we can get. We need your project, Pinkie, whatever it is."

"Silly Jackie," said Pinkie. "You've already got my project! It's right here!"

"Where?" I demanded. "Where is your project, Pinkie?"

She sighed. "I want to talk to you about it, A.J," she said. "I really do. But I just can't. I Pinkie-Promised Twilight."

"Dangit!" I said, stamping the ground. "I knew I was forgetting to ask something while I was in there! Listen, Pinks, I'm sure Twilight'd release you from that. Given everything, I mean."

"Unfortunately, we can't verify your claim, since my lemonade pitcher doesn't have a little speaker on it," said Pinkie. "As neat-o-riffic of an idea as that might be. And I can't really speak Brain, so, still gotta say no."

"Pinkie," I said, impatiently. "This is Equestria we're talking about."

Pinkie stiffened her lip. Her voice got solemn.

"If Equestria needs me to break a Pinkie Promise in order for me to save it," she said, "then maybe it doesn't deserve to be saved."

I shook my head. "You're something else, Pinks," I said. "All right, we'll go it alone. You stay here, tend to Spike and Brain-in-a-Pitcher Twilight and the Flat and Powerless Trixie over there. Maybe see if them bees have left Rarity alone. Dash and me are gonna go try and toss a rope around the world."

I squeezed my eyes shut, then, and leaned up against the cloud-scooter.

"You okay there, horse?" said Dash, tenderly.

"I don't rightly know," I said. "I mean... we're still okay. We're all still alive. But this was a crazy long shot plan from the get-go. Just because we've made it so far, don't mean neither diddly nor squat. I ain't smart, girls. I ain't a good leader. Heck, we wouldn'ta had to even deal with Trixie at all if I'd have just let Rainbow run off to Canterlot in the first place and got the Princess to hold off on the sunset, something I didn't even think of at the time. I been botching this job from moment one, and I just... I just wish I had some kind of sign that all this 'million-to-one odds' horse hockey we been doing is gonna turn out for the best."

"Ooh, look here!" said Pinkie, stumbling over something and then holding it up for us to see. "Look what I found!"

I looked over there. My jaw fell open.

When you think of all the things that had to have happened, it was downright ridiculous. First off, it had to have gotten snagged on a sticky-outy thing, just like Rarity initially hypothesized. Then, it had to withstand the pull of a barely-subsonic gravity beam for about five constant hours. Then, it had to first survive the Sonic Rainbuck, then the explosion of the entire gemstone furnace it was hanging over, which like as not would have tossed it about a mile in the air. And even if, by some miracle, it survived all that, well, it's a big wide world out there. One good gust of wind, one billowing updraft from the fires of decimated Ponyville, one simple hundred-yard shove, and I might never have seen it again, lost as it'd be in the rocks of the Canterlot foothills for all eternity.

But after surviving all that, it had fallen here, right here, square at Pinkie's hooves.

"Hey, A.J.!" laughed Rainbow, pointing. "Lookit! It's your hat!"

And it was. Old Reliable, in the cloth. A little singed. A little smoky. A little injured, but for all that, absolutely unbroken. Just like its owner.

"Here ya go!" said Pinkie, simply, tossing it over to me. I caught it without a thought, and in one swift motion, dropped it on my head, where it settled in just like it'd never left.

I hopped up onto the cloud-scooter, springs in my hooves. My eyes were bright in the darkness.

"All right, Dash," I said, cradling my ro-botic reptilian weapon of choice and settling in. "Let's burn us some trees."

"You got it, boss," said Dash, grinning and kicking the scooter to life.

And we were off.

20 - The Link Between Apples and Honesty

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Twenty: The Link Between Apples and Honesty

It was full nautical twilight when we finally arrived up at the Ridge, and the Discord Grove was nothing more than a mess of shadow against the invisible horizon. Also present: the proud, cannon-like silhouette of one last massive contraption. Going off the reports that Derpy-eyes had given us, I figured that had to be the Mayor's Winter Wrap-Up machine. If it was fully convolved, which it probably was, Grower only knew what it was capable of doing.

"Can you see him?" shouted Dash, as we tore through the night, coming up on our target. "Can you see Discord?"

"No!" I shouted back. "Getting Nightmare'd cleaned the last of the Large Hadron Cider out of my system! Don't worry, though – I think there's gonna be enough of a blast radius once we fire this lizard up that we won't need to worry about being too accurate!"

"SQUONK," said Iggy, gazing sternly ahead.

"Roger that!" said Dash. "What's our approach vector?"

"Take us high!" I said, rising up in my cloud-saddle and pointing with my hoof. "We gotta get ourselves above that thing's mind-control aura! The Discord Grove is gonna try and defend itself by distracting you from your purpose, by making you dissatisfied with how optimized your other projects are! Whether they already work or not!" Sure enough; already, even at this distance, I could start to hear the first inklings of nagging voices in my head, reminding me that I ain't yet figured out the real link between Apples and Honesty, and oughtn't I get on that, instead of wasting my time burning some silly ol' grove of lemon trees?

Holy Mother of Taters, I thought, what I wouldn't give for one full hour without anypony else inside my head except me. I pressed my necklace tight against the hair of my throat with my hoof, feeling the jewel warm against my hide. It was a comfort, but a small one. "I just don't know if my Element alone is gonna give me enough protection, here!" I hollered, over the noise of cloud-scooter thunder and Rainbow's buzzing wings.

"Thankfully, we've got two Elements!" said Rainbow, cockily, tapping her own neck. "Honesty and Awesomeness!"

"Yeah, about that!" I shouted. "Dash, you do realize that all today and all yesterday, you've been getting that wrong, don't you?"

"Really?" said Dash, in a scarce-can-believe-you tone of voice. "I'm not pronouncing 'awesomeness' correctly? Am I stressing the wrong syllable or something?"

I shook my head. "Never mind!" I said. "When this is over, we'll talk! Just concentrate on getting us above that grove, quick! I'll feed Iggy the sauce and chuck him at the trees. Then, we swoop down, you grab the Mayor, I'll get von Danger, and we'll all hightail it out to minimum safe distance quicker than hogs to a slop-call!"

"Hogs," said Dash. "Slop-call. Got it." And as the susurratin' whispers in my head rose once again into the mad frothing bubbles of lemon punch science poison, we streaked up to the Ridge, and towards our last fight.

* * *

As soon as we got in range of the grove, our eardrums were assaulted by a hide-peelingly loud electric megaphone, wielded by a figure at ground level. The Professor, naturally.

"Attention interlopers!" came the thick and chunky accent-ridden voice of Stranger von Danger, as a dozen blazing-hot magnesium spotlights surrounding the campsite flared to life. "You are flying into restricted airspace! Unless you are participants in the Science Fair, accompanied by your projects, you are not welcome here at my camp!"

"Bite down on it, Professor!" shouted Dash. "We don't got any science fair projects! You know as well as we do the whole thing was just a setup for one of Discord's dumb games!"

"It is as I suspected," said von Danger, shaking his head and ignoring Dash. "No pony among you was even able to complete my assignment! No pony... except my schöne Frau here." The Professor gestured down at Mayor Scroll, who clung to the Professor's hooves like some kind of conquered wench of a barbarian god. Her artificial hair-graying had been washed partially away and her mane was a streaky-pink mess.

"My schmookie-wookie bundle of scrupulous academic loving," she said, dreamily.

"Such a beautiful mare," said the Professor, stroking her coat. "And brilliant, as well! Her remarkable Winter Wrap-Up machine is everything a good contraptionologist dreams of producing. Congratulations, little cabbage."

"Go on, please," she cooed. "Call me by the name of more and different vegetables."

"Can we bomb them, like, now?" said Dash, her lip curling in disgust.

"Just a mite closer," I muttered, willing myself and willing myself hard to put the little stein of hot sauce up to Iggy's mouth. My hooves wouldn't budge. It weren't as though they were frozen, exactly, it's just that every time I went to do it, my brain went spinning off into exciting new directions, a hundred thousand different experimental variations on the plan to somehow, somehow, match up my talent to my power. Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty. Shouldn't be all that hard, right? Surely with my titanic super-enhanced mental acuity, I should be able to come up with a simple link between two admittedly unrelated concepts. Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty.

I gritted my teeth. Once I feed this hot sauce to this ro-bot, I thought, it won't matter no more. I don't actually care about the answer to this stupid question. I could go the rest of my life and die content without ever knowing the link between Apples and Honesty. Yesterday, I thought it would make me happy, make me feel like I was a whole, unified pony. Well, I didn't need none of that no more. I had my friends. I had my hat. And the thing that would make me happy right now wasn't some sort of mystico-hooey self-help carnival glass nonsense. What would make me happy right now was an acre of pie, a good long soak in the washtub, and about fifteen hours of shuteye.

Didn't matter. I couldn't let it go. Thanks a bundle, Discord. And as Dash roared the cloud-scooter into position, I found myself weak and helpless as a foal, unable to accomplish the simple task of bringing one hoof over to the other and feeding a lizard. I just could not get my head to come to bear on the problem.

Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty.

"All right, we're in place!" shouted Dash. "What are you waiting for, cowpony?"

"Higher," I grunted. "Dash, can we get higher? I can't shake this science curse!"

"I can get us higher," replied Dash, crooking her wings and soaring us up to a fairly dizzying height. "How's this?" she said, peering uncertainly down at the Discord Grove.

"Higher?" I said, struggling to stay focused and failing every time.

"Okay, too much higher than this, and I am gonna start worrying about accuracy," said Dash, clucking her tongue. "I'm not gonna have come all this way just to have you whiff it. We only get one shot with that lizard, after all."

"You do it, then!" I said, thrusting Iggy and the magnetic stein forward. "You were my first choice for this job anyhow!"

"Hey yeah, I'm the stupendously radical one, right? I gotta say, I'm not feeling any of that dumb ol' science curse at this altitude." She twisted around on the scooter and reached back towards me. "So, sure! I'll take that lizard off your hooves."

There came the sharp noise of feedback from the Grove below. The Professor's bullhorn again. "Before you drop that contraption, fast blue pony," came his crackling, distorted voice, "you should probably ask yourself why you were Applejack's first choice."

"How's he even hearing us from down there?" said Dash, squinting.

"It's Discord!" I said, thrusting Iggy even more strenuously forward. "Discord can hear us fine wherever we are, and the Professor's just dancing on his strings! So don't listen to him! Just take the lizard!"

A chuckle rang out from the airspace surrounding us, wheeling crazily in the sky and setting our ears spinning dizzily trying to track it. It was that same familiar hatefully-silky voice that had greeted me when I first achieved the Ridge this afternoon. The draconequus. Discord.

"Oh, very well," said the voice. "Puppet-mastering does eventually become tedious, after all. Question still stands, Rainbow Dash. Why, might you ask, were you so valuable to Applejack's master plan?"

Horsefeathers, I cussed, inwardly. "Take the lizard!" I demanded. "Take Iggy!"

It was no use; Dash was lost. She weren't as free of Discord's will as I had hoped. Turning the cloud-scooter round and round, trying to keep up with the voice's frenetic gyre – and you're crazier than I am if you think "frenetic gyre" is something you'd ever catch me saying any normal time in my life – she called out to that devil. "A.J. wanted me on point because of my mind-blowing radicalness!" she said, a worm of doubt entering her voice. "Right, A.J.?"

I scowled. To Tartarus with it all. "Ain't exactly true," I admitted, the Citrine Apple of Honesty gleaming at my throat. "But I reckon it's time to come clean, y'all."

"I'll save you the trouble," said Discord's voice, briskly. "Applejack thought that you would be immune to the distracting effects of my beautiful Grove because of how completely you failed in your science project, Rainbow Dash. In short, she thought you were too mind-numbingly stupid to be vulnerable to me."

"You think I'm stupid?" said Dash, sounding hurt. "Really?"

"We'll hash this out later," I pleaded. "Honestly, we will. Right now, I need you to take this lizard, feed it some hot sauce, and drop it. That's it."

"Oh, yes," said Discord. "Not that she's much of one to talk, but Applejack thinks that you're quite dim, Little Miss Sunshine. But she's very much mistaken, isn't she?" Discord's voice spun straight into my ear, buzzing there like a skeeter. "Like most ponies who are dismissed as unintelligent, the issue isn't her mental faculty. She's merely working on the wrong problem."

My eyes went wide. My stomach dropped out from under me. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. "Dash," I said, hastily, "whatever that monster says to you next, whatever you do, do not lis—"

"Rainbow Dash," whispered Discord, "your Element of Harmony isn't 'Awesomeness'. It's 'Loyalty'."

The last word echoed and dripped off Discord's imaginary tongue like black honey. Dash startled, blinked, and just like that, her eyes were totally consumed by the brain-fizz. "Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!" said Dash. "Loyalty!"

"Please," I begged, my last little bit of hope draining away. "Don't do this, R.D."

"Loyalty!" she practically shrieked, totally unhearing. "I wasn't supposed to link lightning and awesomeness! I was supposed to link lightning and loyalty! A.J., we gotta scrub this grove-burning plan so I can whip out some blueprints, already! I've got about eighty different ideas for electric loyalty machines that I'm just dying to try!"

I snarled at the invisible voice of chaos, even as his laughter bubbled up around me. "Never mind!" I said, pouring every last scrap of my will and determination into feeding Iggy the hot sauce. "I can still do this by myself! You just watch me!"

"I think not," said Discord, to the noise of a lazy claw-snap. Down below us, the Professor's bullhorn squawked to life once more.

"Dear little sweet potato," said Professor von Danger, "please to engage the Winter Wrap-Up device, yes?"

From this great height, I could not hear the Mayor's response, but I didn't really need to or nothing. The sight of her machine firing itself up was reply enough. With a sense of terrifying finality, the massive, heavy barrel of the Mayor's contraption swung around and came to bear on our position. Screaming lights of colorful pastel hue erupted from its wicked-looking maw, a horrible vortex of springtime.

"Madam Mayor," said Discord and Professor Danger, simultaneously, "clear this gloomy sky."

The Winter Wrap-Up machine blazed once and loosed a shrieking blast of concentrated sunny weather through the night at us. It had no effect on either me or Dash other than a brief shiver of warm contentment, but to the cloud-scooter, it was another story. The Mayor's device had, earlier today, eradicated every single cloud in the Heartland save for the one that Stranger Danger had been keeping around for punctuation purposes, the same one that was currently supporting me over, yes, another certain-death drop. The amount of energy that sizzled through our cloud in that instant was equivalent to about a thousand strong pegasus kicks. That discharge could have cleared the entire sky in one-tenth of a second flat. Our one lonely cloud didn't stand a chance.

Dash did not so much as move in the air as the cloud-scooter evaporated out from under us. Her pegasus wings kicked in without her even thinking about it, and the whole event didn't even scrape the surface of her fierce planning. For Dash's earth pony passenger, though, who was only even in the air at all because she was sitting on that cloud, it was a different story. Once again, gravity seized me in its claw and I found myself plummeting through the air like a brick. My third of the day, as promised.

"There has got to be one perfect way for me to demonstrate my Loyalty to my friends!" I heard Dash say, as I began to fall.

"Save me!" I yelled, tumbling away through the air.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Dash, pensively tapping at her mouth with a hoof as her Element necklace flickered to black. "But couldn't I find a better way to do that with a contraption or something?" And then her voice was lost to the distance of altitude.

Right, I said to myself as I plummeted through the air, glancing at the mechanical salamander (who, for his part, did not seem to be particularly perturbed) and the electromagnetic tankard, both still nestled in the crooks of my opposing hooves. Gonna die again, probably. If I can just get this lizard to eat this sauce, I go out in a blaze of glory, taking the Grove out with me as I fall. If I can't, well, everything's for naught. I didn't fancy my chances at surviving a second unsurvivable fall, not two in one day. And all these narrow escapes, all these heroic feats, well, they'd amount to nothing in the end.

I had to feed the lizard. I had to. But to my utter despair, I just couldn't get my brain to work. Even with death on the line, it just wasn't as important to me as finding the link between Apples and Honesty. Dad-gum stupid rassafrassin' science punch. Dad-gum stupid rassafrassin' Applejack for powering it up with her jealous lies. Dad-gum stupid rassafrassin' everything.

"Iggy," I said, trying the only idea I could think of, the whipping wind practically stealing my voice. "Can you scurry up my leg or something? Crawl over to that tankard?"

Iggy cocked his head at me. "SQUONK?" he said, clearly not understanding. Dumb stupid non-Equuish-speaking contraptionoid lizard. Buck you and the horse you rode in on, which I guess was me, come think.

All right, I thought, mustering up. Last few seconds of life. Dose the lizard. C'mon, A.J. You can do this.

Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty.

I gave 'er one last mental heave, put every scrap of willful stubborn bullheadedness I had into putting my hooves together.

It wasn't enough. Iggy remained unfed, and thus, unburning. At the last, I had failed.

The hard surface of the Ridge rose up before me as the Nightmare's words echoed in my skull. These are your last moments on this earth, Applejack, and you will know despair.

I prepared to hit ground.

I did not hit ground. I hit something much more forgiving. A padded skyhook of some kind. It took my weight, bounced crazily in the air, and held.

I pried my eyes off the earth and looked up into the whirling motion of some sort of contraptionological flying machine, all decked out in candy-stripe paint. At the control station: a pink mare of my close acquaintance, shoving for all she was worth on four hoof-driven pedals, the energy of her eager, ferocious movements carrying itself through an eye-bending mess of chains and gears and eventually driving the rotor that was keeping us aloft.

"Hey, Applejack!" said Pinkie Pie, lifting a pair of brassy-looking goggles from her eyes. "Do you like my gyrocopter?"

"Pinkie," I said, "How—"

"Simple!" she said. "Right after you left, my tail started in on a-twitchin', which always means something is gonna fall out of the sky! And when I realized that you and Dash were planning to get way up high in order to drop Iggy on the Grove, I put two and two and two together and realized that the thing that was going to be falling out of the sky was Applejack! So I real quick rigged my gyrocopter up with a comfy passenger seat and a skyhook and then I invented some nightvision goggles so I could see in the dark to fly after you, and, wow, it looks like I was just in time, too!" Pinkie peered down at the too-close-for-comfort lemon trees. "Is that the Grove?" she asked. "It looks very grovey."

"Second unauthorized aircraft!" came the Professor's bullhorn. "If you are not a Science Fair participant in the presence of your science project, this area is verboten!"

"Well, it's not verboating to me!" replied Pinkie, proudly. "Because I'm always in the presence of my science project! Hi, evil corrupted Professor Danger! Don't worry, we'll have you back to normal in a jif!"

"How on earth does a gyrocopter link balloons and laughter?" I asked, clambering up from the skyhook onto the 'copter's second seat.

"This?" said Pinkie, removing one hoof from a pedal for a second and gesturing around at her flying contraption, before quickly replacing it. "This isn't my science project! This is just something I whipped up so I could hang with Gilda the Griffon and Rainbow Dash one day! My real science project is much cooler than this, and I can talk to you freely about it now, because in addition to modifying my gyrocopter and inventing a pair of nightvision goggles, I rigged up my lemonade pitcher with a speaker and got Twilight to release me from my Pinkie Promise!"

"You did all that in... how long, exactly?"

Pinkie shrugged a shoulder. "What can I say? I'm efficient, I guess. Anyway, once Twilight's out of my pitcher and reinstalled in her good old unicorn body, I'll have the added benefit of being able to communicate with my lemonade!"

"It sounds like the best of all possible worlds," I said, dubiously.

"I know!" said Pinkie, repelling my sarcasm like rainwater off of an umbrella-hat. "And all we have to do to make it real is for you to fire up Iggy and drop him on the grove, and then it's VICTORY PARTY TIME!"

"Oh, I do so tire of all these last-minute theatrics," boomed Discord's disembodied voice, from above. "Mayor Mare," he said, "can you perchance set that cannon to eliminate something other than clouds? Little buzzing mechanical insects, for example?"

"I could summon a pegasus-style tornado!" said the Mayor, leaping back onto her contraption's firing couch, her eyes swimmy with punch and chaos. "It's an integral component of any properly-executed Winter Wrap-Up! Clears the icicles right off the trees! Let me just fiddle with the settings here for a moment..." The Mayor's contraption began to emit an ominous hum.

"Uh, I think that's your cue, A.J.," said Pinkie, nervously eyeing the Mayor's big gun. "Now's when you feed and drop Iggy. Remember: Victory Party. Huh?"

I stared down at the Grove, still clutching my bizarre cargo of lizard and stein.

Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty.

"You're gonna have to do it for me, Pinkie," I said, abruptly.

"Sorry, A.J.," said Pinkie. "No can do. Gotta keep my hooves on the pedals here. What's the problem, though?"

Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty. Apples and Honesty.

The ominous hum from the Winter Wrap-Up machine grew to a threatening roar. The barrel of the cannon began to glow with the sharp glint of raw, unbridled air power. Smoke plumed around its tip.

"A.J.?" asked Pinkie, a little more insistently.

"Pinkie," I said, my eyes fixed woodenly on the Discord Grove. "I need to find the link between Apples and Honesty. You found the link between Balloons and Laughter. You did it before you even went to bed last night. Tell me how you did it. Tell me what you built."

"Is that what this is all about?" said Pinkie. "Geez, A.J., I didn't build anything!"

"Huh?" I said, looking up.

"The Professor didn't tell me to construct a contraption," she explained. "He told me to find the link between balloons and laughter! All I had to do was look down at myself, and there it was!"

"Pinkie," I said, thunderstruck. "You mean—"

"Yep!" she said, smiling at me, huge and bright. "The link between balloons and laughter is... me! Because I like balloons, and I love laughter, and I am where they intersect. It's no more complicated than that, A.J., and it never, ever, has to be."

"The link between Apples and Honesty," I murmured, my eyes wide. "It's me. It was me all along."

"Okay!" said Discord's voice, sounding suddenly rattled, off its game. "Tell you what. How's that tornado coming, Mayor?"

"Just have to keep fiddling with the configuration," said the Mayor, dreamily, her fully-convolved obsession with perfection gripping her mind like a vise. "If I could just... make it... a little more efficient... then we'd really see something special, here..."

"It's me!" I shouted to the sky, my powerful voice shredding and burning the last rags of the science curse out of my brain. "I am the link between Apples and Honesty! Y'all have no power over me!"

"Ha ha," said Discord, unevenly. "Ha ha, ha ha. Oh, Applejack, you card, you." The voice of Discord zipped down small and focused in on Pinkie. "Pinkie Pie," said Discord. "You know you've always been my favorite of you little ponies, right? After all, we've got so much in common. You like candy? I like candy! You like to laugh? I like to laugh! You like crazy super-hyper randomness? Pinkie, I am the undisputed overlord of crazy super-hyper randomness!"

Pinkie fixed Discord – the direction his voice was coming from, at least – with a stony glare.

"Discord," she said, "I understand now that you were the one pulling on the Professor's strings. I know that, all this time, it was really you talking to me, not him."

"Yes?" said Discord.

"Do you remember yesterday when you tried to tell me that my friends' weirdo behavior was just a product of them being excited about science, and that everything was fine?"

"Yes...?" said Discord, again, all craven and uncertain this time.

"Do you remember Pinkie-Promising me that?"

The voice fell silent.

"Discord," said Pinkie, in a dangerous whisper, "nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise."

"Wait," said Discord, babbling now. "Pinkie Pie, Applejack, I can assure you—"

Pinkie glanced over her shoulder at me. "We're done here," she said. "A.J., light this candle."

"Got it," I said, allowing myself a hint of smug; after all this hoo-ha, I thought I deserved it. With no more than the usual effort involved in such a thing, I held Iggy to the magnetic stein and gave him a big gulp of unnatural, impossible hot sauce. Instantly, his little copper cheeks puffed out and he turned bright red, already almost too hot to hold. Steam began leaking out of his little ro-bot ears.

"SQ— SQUONK," said Iggy, struggling to contain a powerful force welling up inside him, a struggle we both knew that he would lose.

"See you when the smoke clears, tiger," I said. With a simple underhoof toss, I chucked that lizard into the heart of the Discord Grove. Discord screamed, a harsh, animal sound, but we did not stick around to hear it. Pinkie wheeled the 'copter about and took off at full speed toward Professor Danger, now staring in shock at the bright copper-pink missile streaking toward the heart of his place of power, and she nabbed him by the back of his lab coat with the skyhook. One wheeling arc toward the doomed Winter Wrap-Up machine brought us in range of the Mayor, who was promptly and almost reflexively scooped up by von Danger, in turn. Our last objective complete, we soared off into the dark, Pinkie working the pedals on the gyrocopter fast enough to make the chains smoke.

We were rocked, almost out of the air, by the huge, blinding conflagration of Iggy the Salamander's fireball, which melted what was left of the burnt-out quarter of Everfree into silica glass and pulverized the still-smoking Winter Wrap-Up device into shrapnel. The Discord Grove managed to withstand it for a brief moment, the demon trees standing hard and black against the eye-searing light of the explosion, but they did not stand long; the quick succession of fire and shockwaves first charred, then burned, then utterly obliterated them, their remains melting into the glass of the soil, and just like that, they were no more.

Below us, the Professor yelped in startlement. "Meine Sonnengöttin!" he exclaimed. "What am I doing here? Why am I in the air?"

"Woohoo, Professor Danger!" said Pinkie Pie, breathlessly, still working hard against the pedals.

"L— Liebchen?"

"Welcome back to the real world, Professor," I said, lounging back against the gyrocopter's passenger seat. Pinkie really had made that thing pretty comfortable, actually. All nice and padded and everything. It was all a pony could do not to sink down into it a bit...

"Do you remember anything about the past few days?" asked Pinkie. "Anything at all?"

"I... I do not know," said the Professor. "One minute I am refreshing myself after my long journey with a little wild lemon I have found in the burned-out woods, and the next, I am flying around like a crazy pegasus!" Von Danger took a moment then to look down at the bedraggled, befuddled form of Mayor Scroll hanging beneath him, clutched tight in his hooves. The Mayor looked back up at him, just as confused as he was at the position she found herself in.

They shared a look.

"I remember her, though," said the Professor, with solemn tenderness. "My schöne Frau."

"Schmookie?" said the Mayor, blinking up at him all doe-eyed.

"Aww," said Pinkie Pie.

"Oh, puke," said Rainbow Dash, swooping in from above. "You know, craziest thing, Applejack. When that grove went up, I realized something: I don't even care what the link between lightning and awesomeness is!"

"Loyalty," I murmured, my eyes slipping shut.

"Yeah, yeah, that," said Dash, dismissively. "Loyalty and awesomeness. I still am pretty ticked that you think I'm stupid, though."

"I'm sorry, Rainbow," I said, my chin falling to my neck, my mouth barely able to form the words. "Y'ain't stupid. You're... you're smart in your own way."

"Thanks!" she said, proudly, as Pinkie finally got satisfied with her distance from the calamity that had finally claimed the Discord Grove. She pivoted the gyrocopter around in midair and we all hovered there for a moment, the light of the fires washing our faces with orange. It was a good feeling.

"So anyway, A.J.," said Dash, turning to me, "what happens next?"

I did not immediately respond. Dash, and Pinkie, and the Professor, and the Mayor, and Discord, and the Nightmare, and the Grove, and Twilight Sparkle, and Ponyville, and heckfire, all Equestria... it all seemed about a thousand miles away, and slipping fast.

I tapped my hat down over my eyes.

"Sleep," I said.

And with that, the thrumming of the gyrocopter's rotors carried me off into dreams.

21 - Epilogue(s)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Twenty-One: Epilogue(s)

"Zero casualties," I said, staring at her in unvarnished disbelief. "Zero."

"Not a one," said Princess Celestia.

"Beggin' your pardon, Princess," I said, "but that's just ridiculous. There was all this fire, and smoke, and buildings falling all over the place."

The Princess gave me a wan little smile. "This is Discord we're speaking of," she said. "Ridiculousness is his strongest suit, after all." Her eyes went all distant and a touch flinty. "He wants ponies alive, if not well, so he can gain amusement from their misfortune. Even to him, death is not funny. It removes all prospect of future suffering."

"I... I dunno, Princess," I said. "That ro-bot Trixie seemed pretty lethal to me. And what about all them thousand-yard drops I got subjected to?"

"The falls would never have killed you, Applejack," said the Princess. "Discord would have made certain of that. They would have laid you up for months, if he had had his way, and he would have been laughing at your pain every second of that time. But you weren't in any mortal danger. Not from the falls, and not from the contraptions that Discord inspired." She blinked. "Except... I am informed that your friend Berry Punch consumed so much of the contaminated alcohol that she was inspired to destroy the universe, which she successfully did. But then she remade it in its entirety a millisecond later, so I guess that's all right."

"Huh," I said. "But what about Robo-Trixie? You actually think that mare wouldn'ta done me in? Seriously?"

"Robo-Trixie... is another matter entirely," said the Princess. "The Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie might indeed have worked a grievous harm on you. It speaks well of my faithful student's skill that she was able to invent a creature that circumvented the desires of the very devil whose power it was founded by. Unfortunately, when that creature sought only to kill... well, let's just say that I'm glad you're all right, whatever grim means you may have used to achieve that state."

"Sure of that," I said, glancing around the little waiting room. The Ponyville Hospital had survived the worst of the science storm by (a) being located way on the outskirts of Ponyville and (b) being staffed by doctors and nurses who were all on shift at the time of the Tesseract Party, and so had no opportunity to suck down any of the poison punch. Sitting here in this place, looking at the calming wall-art and listening to the plinky piped-in music, it was easy to believe that the events of the past forty-eight hours was nothing more than a strange, unpleasant, giddy ol' fever-dream. Step outside and you'd know the truth of it, though – Ponyville was a smoking wreck, from top to bottom. Other than Sugarcube Corner, and possibly the Library, we'd like as not have to tear down everything left standing and start over from the ground up. It was a pain, to be sure, and I weren't looking forward to it; but on the other hoof, it would be the third time this year alone we'd done it, and we were kind of getting a rhythm for it.

"So, uh, how is Twi, anyway?" I said. The original plan was for all us girls, plus Spike, to wait here at the hospital until our purple unicorn friend came out of her dual-princess magical recranialization surgery; but as the hours wore on, it became more and more apparent that there was probably better ways to spend our time, and so it was agreed that just one of us would stay here waiting on the results while the others got cooking with helping out the reconstruction effort (or, in Pinkie's case, the Post-Reconstruction Effort Party.) We ponies are industrious folk, after all. It's not like us to sit around on our docks when there's work to be done. Anyhow, I challenged every one of them ponies to a hoofwrestle for it to be me what stayed here waiting – I couldn't stand not being the first to know my friend's condition. It was me that had originally done it to her, after all.

"Twilight is fine," said Princess Celestia, comfortingly. "Thankfully, using the scrupulous notes my student took when preparing her partial-pony teleportation spell, I was able to reverse its effect and put her poor brain back in her head, where it quite obviously belongs."

I slumped on my bench, the tension seeping out of me like groundwater. "You don't know how relieved I am to hear that, Princess."

The Princess nodded at me. "I can only imagine that once the guilds get wind that a new and potentially quite gruesome spell has been unleashed upon the world, they will waste no time in banning it forever, but as long as we're still in the grey area, I thought I'd give it a try." She gave me a little wink. "And it worked! With a little rest, my faithful student should be back on her hooves by nightfall. Just in time for, I understand, a rather considerable celebratory square dance up at Sweet Apple Acres?"

"Yes indeed," I said. "You should come, Princess. We'd love to have you."

"Alas, I have the sunset," said the Princess. "Duty ever calls. And then, sleep. It has already been a long day for me, and it is not even noon. But I understand that my sister Princess Luna will be joining you later, and I hear she's very much looking forward to the dance."

"Well, we'll be honored by her presence as well," I said, giving a little bow. "Can I— I mean, can we go see Twilight now?"

"Certainly," said the Princess, gesturing with one wing toward the door that led back to the patient rooms. "Princess Cadence is just finishing up the last touches of healing magic and your friend should be awake now. I'm sure she's eager to talk with you. As am I eager to talk with you both." And with that, she ushered me into the clean blue-and-white halls of the medical center, eventually guiding me to the private Very Important Pony recuperation suites way in back.

Princess Cadence was there, standing protectively over Twilight and washing away the last of my friend's psychic surgical wounds with soothing aquamarine sorcery. Twilight brightened visibly at the sight of me and practically fell out of bed with her eagerness to sit up and talk. "Applejack!" she cried. "It's so good to see you!"

"Hush and be still for a bit," said Cadence, giving Twilight a little kiss on the forehead, right above the horn. "You're still a little weak."

"Okay, Big Sister-in-Law Best Friend Forever," she said contentedly, settling back into her pillows.

Cadence turned to us. "I've done what I can, Aunty," she said, addressing Celestia with a respectful little head-bow. "Time will do the rest. If you're okay keeping watch for a while, I'm going to go find my beautiful lump of a husband and help him co-ordinate the Guard's cleanup efforts."

"Shining Armor will be glad of the assistance, I'm sure," said Princess Celestia.

"Tell Shiny to come see me when he has a chance!" said Twilight.

"When he has a chance," said Cadence, smiling, "I don't think I'll be able to keep him away."

Twilight threw her hooves around the younger princess's elegant pink neck, held her tight for a moment, and then let her go. Cadence nodded to us as she skipped lightly out the door. "We'll talk again soon, Aunty," she said.

"That we will, Mi Amoré," said Princess Celestia, and then Cadence was gone.

Meanwhile, Twilight bounced up and down in her bed, looking at me eagerly. "Get over here get over here get over here!" she said, her eyes twinkling. "Quick, while I'm still in hugging mode!"

"Far be it for me to say no to a request like that," I said, trotting over. Twilight Sparkle practically pounced on me, throwing her hooves around me as she had Cadence, and we shared a tight embrace.

"Mm," she said. "You smell like friend."

"That's on account of I am one," I replied, holding her close.

"I'm glad to see that you two have mended your rift," said Princess Celestia. "It was, truth to tell, an area of concern for me. I had no idea when I found that spray of lilacs embedded in the stone wall of my balcony, however, that these two things would turn out to be related, or that the situation between you two would collapse so completely in the way that it did, but I'm happy that it's apparently all in the past now."

"Yep," I said, with absolute honest certainty. "We're great friends again, Twilight and me. Thanks to a little bit of Honesty, a little bit of Magic, and a whole heaping helping of forgiveness."

"Good," said the Princess, smiling peacefully at us. "I realize it's been a fairly traumatic couple of days for you, and although your brother will probably require you to make an official statement for the Guard, I'm not going to expect a formal Friendship Report from either of you until you feel good and ready with one." She inclined her head mischievously at us. "But... if anything comes immediately to mind, I'd be glad to receive your thoughts right now. Even the worst unpleasantness can have value if it teaches you a good lesson and leaves you a stronger, wiser pony for having come through it."

Twi and me looked at each other.

"Actually, I think we just might have a report for you, Princess," I said.

"Yes," said Twilight. "Never teleport your brain out of your own skull without a backup plan. No good will ever come of it."

Princess Celestia chuckled, high and chiming. "A good lesson, to be sure, my student," she said. "I was hoping for something a bit more widely-applicable, though?"

"Okay, how about this," volunteered Twilight. "If you've got a problem with one of your friends? Like if some little hurt comes up between the two of you? Don't be afraid to tell them about it. A true friend understands that not everything is sunshine and roses one hundred percent of the time, and the quicker you can honestly, respectfully, and empathetically communicate the pain that's on your mind, the quicker you can get back on the road to healing." Twi looked up at me warmly. "And always remember that even the best and most dependable of ponies can occasionally slip up a little. So always let true forgiveness govern your heart, and eventually, friendship will see you through."

"A good lesson," said the Princess, nodding. "And what about you, Applejack? You were at the heart of this issue, even more so than Twilight Sparkle was. You've fought off not one, but two immortal demons of the realm, both of which sought to use you for their own dark aims. You very nearly lost your soul in the process, and yet, here you are on the other side, without so much as a hat out of place. I'm very interested to know what insights you have gained from all of this."

"Well," I said, "As it happens, I do got something, sure as night follows day, beggin' your pardon, Princess."

"That's quite all right," said the Princess. "Go on."

"Only it's just... well, it ain't typical," I continued. "It ain't really about friendship at all. It's about Change. And Constancy."

The Princess shook her regal head. "Is that how the Nightmare introduced itself to you?" she said. "Ever does it hold that delusion close to its heart. The primitive ponies that the Nightmare once guarded may have known it as 'Constancy', certainly. But they also had another name for it; and with every endless lingering winter, every sullen, unmoving heat wave of summer, with every foal and every plant that stubbornly failed to thrive and grow, they cursed that name. 'Stagnation', they called it. And bitterly did they weep at it, just as bitterly as they wept at the unmitigated chaos of Discord's reign."

"'Stagnation'," I said. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Anyhow, I got a point here, but best way I can think of to say it is with a story, so with your leave, I'm gonna give 'er a go."

"Please," said the Princess.

I cleared my throat. "All right," I said, "so this one time we was in the market for a new plow. We had a little bit of a windfall from a nice crop of Zap apples, but the Farmer's Almanac was giving us a real doom-and-gloom report on corn prices for the coming year. So we started to panic a bit, and chew at our hooves, and we decided that the only way we was gonna make it through next year was to till and plant just about every acre of arable soil possible, in hopes of getting as much cheap grain to market as we could. But we only had that one old plow."

I devoted a moment to a good all-over nervous fidget, but the Princess was ever-patient and seemed eager to hear me yap, so I carried on. "A— Anyhow," I stammered. "What's important to know is that Mac loved that plow. When he pulled it behind him, it was... it was like a piece of his own body, hear? He knew that machine like he knew the back of his hoof, all its ins and outs, every weird little thing it did. I can't tell you how many acres a day that stallion could work, just him and that plow. So anyway, uh, the point of it all is, we were panicking, and we thought that, talented as he was with it, there was no way Macintosh could till up enough land with that old thing, so we found some peddlers who were selling this really forsaken contraption of a tilling-machine, a big ol' monster with a dozen or so rotating disks on the back of it, could cut a whole mess of furrows all at once. And we was so eager to get it home and get going on busting them clods that we forgot to try it out before we bought it, and you know what happened?"

"Mac hated it," said Twilight, remembering, because she had been right there for that first test run.

"He hated that thing," I confirmed. "Hated the way it felt on his collar, hated it down to his bones. It was supposedly the bestest thing ever to come about in plow technology, but after a couple passes, he just stowed it in the barn and I don't believe he's touched it since. We was afraid, Princess. We was afraid that if we didn't have the shiniest and most newfangled piece of equipment we could possibly get our hooves on, we'd lose everything. And... it made us obsessed, made us act rash. Ate our windfall clean up, a fact we were mighty sad about when the next hailstorm pulled into town. Getting caught up by that fancy new plow felt an awful lot like convolvement did, the pointless, fearful pursuit of Change. If we had been thinking clear, we would have realized that the old way, the way we knew, the way we loved, was the best way forward. But we didn't. Change can make you forget that."

"But there's another side to the parable," said Twilight, serenely. "You remember what I was like before you sent me to Ponyville, Princess?"

"I do," said the Princess.

"Cloistered, stuck-up, isolated, living in my ivory tower, barely going outside except to class, never socializing with any of my peers, hardly even talking to anypony. The whole time, I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing, the good thing, the studious thing. But do you know what it really was?"

"She was afraid," I said, because Twilight had told me this story, and I knew it well.

"I was afraid," said Twilight, nodding. "I was afraid that if I let my attention to my studies slip, even for a moment, it would risk marring the diamond-like perfection of my academic record. One little tea party with potential friends would become two, would become four, would become eight, and soon I'd be hanging out all night in Canterlot bars, getting hopped up on really exotic salts and throwing back cider until I floated." Her eyes sparkled with a mad, walleyed glimmer. "And at night, the sailors would come!" she said, erratically. "Soon, I would be spending every evening with rough-hooved gentlestallions gambling on billiards and engaging myself in other loose pursuits and I would lose all of my scholarship money on roulette and have to quit school and hire myself out to a tramp steamer just to keep my belly full, but it would never be enough, and there I'd be, hungry and miserable, swinging back and forth on my hammock and gazing at the filthy backside of the pony in the hammock above me, dreading the boatswain's lash that awaited me every morning as I stood in line for my square of hardtack and mug of small beer, and I would scream and cry and gnash my teeth at the heavens, praying for your forgiveness, Princess, a forgiveness that would never ever come!" She drew in a hissing breath, shaking all over. "And then, the ship would become icebound, and to survive, we'd be forced to eat—"

"Bring it around to earth, Twi," I said, tapping lightly at her shoulder.

The little unicorn blinked. "Um," she said. "Yes. The point is, Princess, I was afraid to be friendly with other ponies, afraid to try anything new. I didn't really love where I was at, stuck in that tower all day, but what choice did I have? That cruel whip-wielding boatswain was a pretty terrifying character, and he was the logical conclusion to any tea parties I might have risked attending. And so there I sat, utterly Stagnant. Just like the Nightmare. And I'd be there still if you hadn't opened my eyes by sending me here to Ponyville. I love it here, Princess. Love it. I wouldn't trade it for the world. And if I hadn't had the courage to change a little, the chance to experience all this would have passed me right by."

"Two very good stories," said the Princess. "I trust you can see their common element?"

"Love," I answered. "Ever since Discord put the sun in motion, things have been changing, and they ain't never gonna stop until the last star in the heavens burns itself to ash. And maybe not even then."

"Faced with this inescapable truth," said Twilight, "you have one of two options. You can flow with the tide, or you can try and resist it."

"Ain't one thing that's necessarily better than t'other," I said. "Change isn't good, and change isn't bad. Change is change. Sometimes you gotta hold fast to the goodness of the old ways, and sometimes you gotta leap for the goodness that change will bring you."

"But it isn't always easy to see which is which."

"So in the end, whether you move or stay put, you gotta do it because of love. Not just because you're scared, or obsessed. You don't choose your path on the say-so of some demon whispering poison words in your ear, whichever direction those words are pulling you. You cling tight to, or strive like the dickens for, the thing you actually love. And if you plant good seed, well, it can't help but come up as good crop eventually."

"Excellent," said the Princess, smiling at us. "Wonderful. I'm absolutely thrilled with both your reports, you two."

"Thank you, Princess!" said Twilight, her face positively aglow.

"Yes, uh," I said, scraping at the tiles of the floor with one hoof. "Thanks, Yer Highness."

Princess Celestia nodded at me. "And now, Applejack, I need to have a few private words with my faithful student. Meanwhile, you have friends waiting on the news of Twilight's full and complete recovery. If I'm not mistaken, most of them are gathered at a one-day-belated birthday party for the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie at Sugarcube Corner. I'm sure they'd be anxious to talk to you."

I heard my cue to leave. "All right, then," I said, bowing low as I departed the presence of royalty. "I'll go spread the good news. See y'all at the square dance tonight, Twi?"

"Wouldn't miss it," said Twi, gamely.

"Right," I said, watching the Princess cross gracefully over to Twilight's bedside, starting in on a second, more intimate and private, part of her lesson. "I'll... I'll just show myself out." Truth to tell, I was just about as curious as a cat to hear what them ponies was saying to one another, but, well, I guess some things are meant for the ears of wizardesses and princesses alone. Satisfied, I trotted out of the hospital and into another bright blue morning.

I had to pass through Ponyville proper – what was left of it, at least – on my way to Sugarcube Corner. Everypony was weary from the strain of being cursed and bending the laws of Equestria and Pony to their wills yesterday, but there was nonetheless a smile on every muzzle I could see. Everypony grinned and greeted each other happily as they went gamely about their rebuilding efforts. And that, that rock-solid sense of goodwill, community, and cheer, that was Ponyville. We were Ponyville. Not the houses and buildings we lived in. And that's why Ponyville always survives, no matter how many times a year we have to rebuild it.

Six or seven times, on occasion. But that's neither here nor there.

So anyhow, I trotted into Sugarcube Corner, right into the full swing of the G. & P. Robo-Trixie's zeroeth birthday party, courtesy Pinkie Pie. The whole place had been done up in ribbons and bows and bright paper streamers, and it filled my little pony heart with joy to see it all. There at the center of things was the shapeless globular mass of the guest of honor, who was getting enough goodwill from the party being thrown in her name that she was able to raise herself up like a ten-gallon pile of half-melted ice cream, and while she didn't much look like a pony yet, I figured she'd get there. She just needed a little more friendship, and that's one resource our kind always has going spare.

And the others were there, too. Spike, looking bright-eyed and bright-scaled, having completely shaken the hunchbacked look, raiding the buffet for tasty treats. The derpy-eyed pony, chipper and completely unfazed by the absurd chain of events she had been party to, just like yesterday had been any normal day. Fluttershy, now lacking her horrible insect plating and excess wings (good) and most of her hair (not so much) following one good wallop from a Princess-level Failsafe Spell, gracing the party on a quick breather from an twelve-hour marathon apology session to all her little critters for even thinking of doing the horrible things she had wanted, but failed, to do to them. Rarity, lounging stylishly by the gift table, the welts on her face almost completely healed up now. Rainbow Dash, darting from place to place in a dramatic reenactment of the heroic story of how she single-hoofedly vanquished both the Nightmare and Discord, simultaneously, a tale that grew more bombastic every time it got told. Professor Danger and Mayor Scroll, nestled on a comfy little couch at the far side of the seating area, sipping grape juice and gazing into each other's eyes, utterly lost to the rest of the world. I looked for, but did not find, Bell Pepper, the one missing member of our makeshift hero-crew. Truth to tell, I didn't really expect him to be there. The Peppers had their own cleanup to do from this mess, redistributing all them animals we had foisted off on them, and they never was a real social folk to begin with; but his absence, however understandable, still gave me a little pang. I found myself hoping he would at least join us for the shindig tonight. I owed that stallion a dance, and as the bearer of the Element of Honesty (which was now safely locked, along with its fellows, back in the vault at Canterlot Tower), I intended to make good on my promises. Last, but certainly not least, there was Pinkie Pie, the hidden genius who had saved us all just by being herself, loving up against a still-hiccoughing Iggy the Salamander, whom she had dressed in a tiny adorable party hat and a tiny adorable medal inscribed with the single word "Hero".

Every eye in the place looked up at me as I arrived at the door. The entire room held its breath.

Iggy hiccoughed.

"Twilight Sparkle," I announced, "is gonna be fine."

The room erupted in cheers, not for me, but for my very good friend, the leader of our little pony band, the unicorn Twilight Sparkle. And I was, finally, okay with that.

So the party resumed, with even more joy than before. It was a wonderful thing to be a piece of. And the morning, like the world, spun on.

Oh, except one more thing. Midway through my second piece of cake, I was accosted by the gray derpy-eyed pegasus with the bubble Mark, who flapped up to me and gave me a stern little look.

"There you are, Applejack," said Derpy-eyes, hovering there crossly, her hooves on her hips.

"Yes...?" I said, my latest forkful of delicious dessert suspended halfway to my mouth.

"I just have one question," she said. "As one of the few relatively sane ponies even left in town yesterday, how could you have let any of this go on? How could you have lied to your friends, over and over again, giving Discord the power to turn all the normal ponies into crazy science ponies? And then, once you had done all that, how could you turn around and pledge allegiance to the Nightmare, throwing in with not one, but two, forces of darkness?"

I looked at her square-on, even though she could never return the gesture, all because of how genuinely special she was.

"Ditzy Doo," I said, finally remembering that mare's name, "I just don't know what went wrong."

Ditzy Doo gazed at me for a while. Then she patted me on the shoulder.

"I completely understand," she said.

* * *

So finally, at the end of it all, after sending the surviving contraptions (minus Iggy and Robo-Trixie) back with the Princess to heavy lockdown in Canterlot, after rounding up all them butter-bee-bats and driving them into the Everfree, there was a dance. A re-set, all-night, all-Ponyville square dance up at our home barn, the very evening of that first recovery day. Truth to tell, Pinkie had outright lost count of the number of things she was celebrating this time, everything from the extinguishing of the forest fire three nights (or an eternity) ago, to the actual arrival of her mentor the Professor in town (rather than just his Discorded self), to our successful struggle against both the Nightmare and Discord in the very same evening, to a wonderful first day of rebuilding in the wake of that struggle. So overloaded was she with all the required celebrations that she had to stop referring to our party in terms of increasingly hypothetical orthogonal dimensions (which I was back to no longer understanding, thank you very much) and it simply became the Tesseract Party, Mark Two. We had to toss all the two-day-old party food to the hogs and the raccoons, but the bright side was, the first Tesseract Party had crumbled so quickly we hadn't even had time to take down the decorations, so those were already in place for the second, and hopefully much cheerier, time around.

We served no punch, figuring, I think correctly, that it would all have gone to waste. Too many bad memories there. Refreshments of all other sorts, though, we had. Plenty of sweets and relishes and cheeses and cakes and cookies and just about anything anypony could ever wish to nosh on. There was even a carton of plain, whole-milk yogurt for Iggy, and he was mighty grateful for it. I think he was grateful. All right, all he actually said was "Squonk", but I'm interpreting by context, here. And as for the one party guest who did not need and could not in fact consume solid food – Robo-Trixie, of course – well, there was more than enough love and friendship going around for her to have her fill.

The Pepper Clan arrived, right on time this time around. I think maybe they were trying to give a show of support for us Apples finally throwing a dry party, something them teetotalers could really get behind for once. I think both sides knew it wasn't gonna last, but it was fun to pretend, I guess. At the head of the crowd, right beside the Don himself, was Bell, shined up like a penny, and my heart plumb skipped a beat at the sight of him. Don't get too eager, A.J., I thought to myself. Keep on filling the cracker tray. Give him a couple minutes to settle in before leaping on him and begging him to tear off your hat and hairbands and have his way with you right there in the middle of the dance floor...

"Is everything ready?" asked Twilight, bumping into me in full scurry and shaking me out of my happy little daydream. "Is everything prepared? We have to have it all set before Spike sends word to Princess Luna! This party has to be perfect! We're entertaining royalty!"

I cleared the fog of hormones from my head with a good quick shakeout. "Almost, Twi," I said. "In, uh, in honor of the spirit of embracing change while still holding tight to our traditions, Pinkie and me had the idea that we should double up the music and have both a good old-fashioned fiddle-and-jug band and our very own D.J. PON-3 here doing her stuff. But Octavia says Vinyl's feeling a little under the weather today. Says she might show up later."

"That's too bad," said Twilight. "I hope she makes it, even if she's isn't scratching records. She's so funny!"

"Funny's one word for her," I said, diplomatically.

"I know, right?" said Twilight, missing my implication, of course. "Okay, well, at least we've got some music – that's the benefit of redundancy, after all! I think we're just about ready to go! Spike?"

"Here!" said Spike the Dragon, chirpily, crunching on a hunk of dill-dipped celery.

"Send word to Princess Luna!" she said. "Tell her that the Tesseract Party, Mark Two is live and on-line, and that she should make sure to bring her dancing shoes!"

"You got it, Master!"

Twilight stopped short, blinking at him.

"Eheh-heh-heh," he said, bashfully. "Just kidding, Twilight."

"You'd better be," said Twilight, chuckling. And as those two left to finish their royal correspondence, I excused myself and worked my way through the mighty respectable crowd toward the Pepper Clan, over to that bright treasure of a colt who had helped save the world with me one night previous. As I did so, the jug band broke into the first strains of an infectious dance tune. It was the first of what I hoped would be many, 'cause I had a powerful hankering for a whole night of kicking up my hocks, and I knew just the stallion I wanted to share it with.

"Howdy, Bell," I said, touching my hat. "Y'all look none the worse for wear. The recovery efforts treating you well?"

"Well as can be expected, Señorita Applejack," said Bell, smiling at me with open, undisguised joy. "I must say that when reports began coming in of what had transpired in the Town Square, about what had happened to you, I was... worried." A cloud passed over his eyes, then, his lips twisting. "No," he said. "Not worried. Despairing. My family says you became a black monster of the night, Applejack, huge and reeking of sulphur. Is what they say true? Were you really taken by the Wolf in this way?"

"Well, the sulphur thing is a little alarmist," I said. "And I weren't black, just a little darker orange than usual. But... yeah, I guess." I shuffled a hoof. This conversation weren't starting out well at all, actually.

"How very strange is our world," said Bell, shaking his head.

"Hey, important thing is, I got better, right?" I said, trying not to lift my lip and expose my little wolf-tooth Nightmare fangs, risk scaring that boy off even more. "I'm still here, potent as a pony."

"Yes," said Bell. "You were taken by demons and poisoned by alcohol, but now, you are with us once more." He blushed a little, then, barely visible under his deep-green coat. "And still very beautiful to me, despite all your struggles. Or perhaps because of them."

"Shucks, Bell," I said, grinning. Yeah, I thought, this is a good place. Time to make your move, 'Jack...

I pulled in close. "I seem to recall," I said, toyingly, "that before everything fell apart last time around, a dance was promised. And I don't recollect anypony ever making good on that promise."

"Well," said Bell Pepper, "perhaps it is high time we settle our debts, then."

"Perhaps it is," I said, my heart fluttering. And with those words, Bell put his great thick neck across mine, and suddenly, all the madness and pain I'd been through in the past three days became worthwhile.

One forever later, my stallion lifted his head back up and began running his eyes back over the mass of assembled ponies. "Nopony is, alas, yet dancing," he said. "Despite the lively music."

"They just need an icebreaker!" I said, pulling him out of the crowd to the center of the floor. "And we're it, Bell!"

Hoofstomps and hollers greeted us as we made a space in the crowd and kicked off the barn dance in earnest. With a grace all out of proportion to his size, Bell spun me across that floor like nopony's business. We moved, in rhythm and in harmony, all to the roar of the crowd, and I felt like a heroine again – the best kind of heroine. The happy kind.

"You," I said, as Bell spun me back into a tight hold, "are wonderful at this. Here I was thinking y'all couldn't dance!"

"I was merely unwilling to," said Bell. "A fault of my timidity. But there is a world of difference between will and can, yes?" Bell spun me out of the hold and back out to foreleg's length. "We Castallions are born to the skill, Señorita. Pepper celebrations go on far into the night, full of hours and hours of dance. And since our wits remain sharp all evening, never dulled by the drink, we have more time and more facility for the true pleasures of life."

"C'mon, Bell," I said, scowling a little. "Why you gotta get up in my knickers about that again? Can't you just let it drop?"

"I am merely saying," said Bell twirling me around once more, "are you not enjoying this liquor-free party? Is it not good to feel keen and polished and alive?"

"I'd enjoy feeling keen and polished and alive more if I had a mug or two of cider in my belly," I admitted. "Bell, making booze is what the Apple Family does. Heckfire, even my name is booze. Some day, I am going to convince you to see eye-to-eye with me and learn the wonders of drinkin'."

"And some day," said Bell, "I am going to convince you to see eye-to-eye with me, and learn the wonders of sobriety." He dropped me into a full dip. My ponytail dangled just above the floorboards.

"I love what I do," I said, looking up at him, "and I ain't budging."

"I love what I do," said Bell Pepper, "and neither am I."

"Kiss me," I said, blood rushing to my face.

"At your command," he murmured.

He did so. Cheers erupted from the assembled crowd. Fireworks burst in my head. Warm sparks lit up every single last darkened corner of my heart.

I hate to say it, but right then, I didn't miss the alcohol, not one bit. And I wished with all my power that that moment I spent clutched in the hooves of Bell Pepper, his strong lips pressed against mine, would last forever. Silly thought. All things change, eventually, right?

Except... some changes are a mite more unwelcome than others, hear?

Right in the middle of our first glorious kiss, a hush fell over the crowd as a cold wind rushed in from the suddenly-open barn doors. As the jug band halted their playing with an abrupt stumble, a low thrumming began seeping through the floorboards of the barn, the hum of an incredibly deep, incredibly powerful, magicotechnologically-enhanced bass note.

Bell set me gently back down on my hooves and raised his head, squinting into the dark beyond. The dance crowd was parting before a cloud of heavy white vapor spilling in from outside the doors. Electric blue lights glimmered in the depths of the cloud.

"What in tarnation?" I muttered.

The electric blue lights became a spray of, I don't know, laser-y beams cutting dramatically through the smoke. The deep hum throbbed once, twice, and then kicked itself into a driving, cudgeling, positively insistent beat that I could sense with my innards just as well as my ears.

"For years, you have disrespected me," began a voice.

"Hayseeds," I sighed, my brief moment of nervous uncertainty there quickly giving way to garden-variety peevedness. I called out to the voice inside the cloud. "Look, could you just cut to the chase? We're trying to have a barn dance here?"

"You have all, at one time or another, laid out some unrighteous words when speaking of my art," continued the voice, heedless. "You have called it 'noisy'. You have called it 'repetitive'. You have called it 'loud'."

"Don't forget 'a crime against taste'!" came a voice from the crowd, who had also collectively begun to relax; they knew the score here as well as I did.

"Yeah!" said the first voice. "That too! None of you truly believe, deep down, that record-scratching and pulse electronica even count as forms of legitimate musical expression!"

"Listen," I said, "I know you prolly ain't in a position to hear reason, but please keep in mind that Pinkie and me invited you up here tonight. But if it'll really make you happy, go ahead and finish your cute little monologue here so's we can get to the business of blasting you."

At my words, the cloud exploded into a pounding hail of noise that knocked over some of the more high-profile cakes on the buffet and flattened the manes of everpony in the room. Out of the depths of the vapor strode an imposing bone-white unicorn, all decked out in a massive, heavy suit of iron-black barding that seemed to incorporate at least two separate turntables in the front and a couple of really impressive subwoofers riding the shoulders. Sizzling blue running lights tore hither and yon across the surface of the mare's monstrous armor. It was, I had to admit, pretty impressive. For all its obsession with Constancy, the Nightmare sure could get daring with designing all these crazy outfits. It made me think maybe there was some hope for it; and thus, maybe some hope for us all.

"Good evening, Ponyville!" bellowed the unicorn over the incessant thump of the beat, dropping a pair of gleaming mirror shades in front of her blood-red eyes. "Are you ready to have a relentless stream of square waves shoved so far up your plots that you taste rectangles?"

"What do rectangles taste like?" came another voice from the crowd.

"You're gonna find out!"

"Heya Vinyl Scratch," I said.

Vinyl whipped around. "I'm not answering to that name any longer, Applejack! For I have been transformed into the wicked M.C. of Darkness... D.J. NIGHTMARE OONTZ! And I hope you fine ponies like having your hoof-socks rocked off, because from this day forward, my wicked bass line... will last... FOREVER! Yeauh! Wub-a-dub-dub, motherbuckers!"

I yawned a little, and glanced across the dance floor in the direction I had left Twilight. I managed to catch her eye, and we shot each other a knowing grin, our mutual smiles expressing the exact same sentiment, namely: sure is good to have things back to normal around these parts, ain't it?

"Spike!" said Twilight Sparkle. "Have you sent that letter to Princess Luna yet?"

"Not yet!"

"Good!" she said. "I'm going to need you to make an addendum! Please tell the Princess that the Tesseract Party, Mark Two is live and on-line, and that she should make sure to bring her dancing shoes and the Elements of Harmony! In the meantime... Girls, form up!"

I looked up at Bell and inclined my head toward Twilight. "Gotta trot," I said.

"Duty calls," he agreed.

I reached up and gave him one more quick peck to tide me over, and then cantered out of the fog toward our fearless, fussy little unicorn leader, taking up a position at her back right. All around me, I could see our four other friends doing the same, Dash and Rar and Flutters and Pinkie alike. Sure, we might look small and cute and – frankly – a little careworn at this point, but together, weren't no force in Equestria could stand before us, because our friendship could move mountains.

"Nightmare Oontz!" shouted Twilight Sparkle, as we gathered up behind her. "Your music is, indeed, rad! But it will never be as rad as... Friendship!"

"Your license to use the word 'rad' is officially revoked," said Rainbow Dash.

"I thought she was, um, fine," said Fluttershy, huddling close to the ground.

"I don't suppose we can fit in a little collateral damage to the barn with this one," said Rarity, prancing into position while shooting me an offhoofedly sharp over-the-shoulder glance. "I'd love to be Home-And-Workplace-Comminuted-To-Matchsticks-Buddies with Applejack, after all."

"Don't you worry none, Rar," I said, good-naturedly. "I personally guarantee you we'll have Carousel Boutique standing by the end of the week."

"And A.J. is all about Honesty, after all!" said Pinkie, gleefully. "Also, Apples!"

"That's right, Pinks," I said, with a matter-of-fact nod. Then I called out to D.J. Nightmare Oontz, standing across the dance floor in her cloud of rapidly-decaying vapor. "Hey, Nightmare!" I said. "If you can hear me in there, last chance to leave poor Vinyl alone and join us for the party! We'd love to have you!"

"Celebrations mark one day as different from the rest!" came the voice of the Nightmare, bubbling out of Vinyl's throat. "They positively drip with Change! It makes them abhorrent!"

"Naw," I said. "It makes them special. Maybe someday, you'll understand that."

The last of us friends slotted ourselves into place behind Twilight. She gave us all a quick once-over. "Okay, excellent, girls," she said. "Check your position, A.J. You're a teeny bit off-mark."

I smirked. "You gonna up and teleport me into the right place again?"

"Nah," said Twilight. "I trust you."

I glanced over at Rarity, who was my opposite this time. Twi was right; I was just a smidgen off. With a few quick coordinating gestures, I squared myself up with Rar. Twilight nodded at me, approvingly, and I nodded back.

Then we all turned, as one, toward the comfortable old threat of the Nightmare. It was just another day of evil-smitin' chores on the evil-smitin' farm.

I loved every minute.

end

appendix a - Author's Note

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

appendix a: Author's Note

And that's it! Recommended closing credits music (and, indeed, a good overall "Contraptionology!" theme): "Madness", by Muse, off of The 2nd Law. While we're at it, recommended Moody Jealous A.J. theme: "Red Red Red", by Fiona Apple (naturally) off of Extraordinary Machine (again, naturally).

Thanks for sticking with me for my first Pony novel and, indeed, my first novel of any sort. I have written single, (basically) coherent novel-length narratives before (witness "Tales of the Starbuck Avenger!!!"), but these were all more collections of short serialized fictions than they were actual "books". Each one took me, like, six years to write, and the structure shows it; the head of a new chapter would sometimes have to contain a bunch of recap information because at times an entire year (!) would pass between installments. This one was an attempt to do things differently for once, to complete a single consistent story in a reasonable time frame (within the space of one calendar year), and I'm pleased as lemon-poisoned science-punch that it seems to have worked. The structure of the piece was basically planned out from the beginning, including all the Chekhov's Guns (yes, even the "language of bees" one) but some minor changes did crop up in the writing. Apple Bloom was supposed to stick around for a lot longer, for example, providing the audience's perspective as a sane character amidst the increasing absurdity of the world, but things got so bad so quickly that it was simply inconceivable that stubborn little A.B. would continue to brook it all, and she unexpectedly wrote herself out. This also delights me when it happens, even though it meant a little restructuring. And for all that I tried to wrap everything up properly, two dangling ends remain in this narrative.

First: the Junior Rodeo, mentioned early on, was supposed to be the setting of the last epilogue scene, with Apple Bloom playing the Nightmare role; but midway through the writing of the piece I happened to check out the "Epic Wub Time" fanimation, and I thought Jessi Nowack's portrayal of Vinyl Scratch – a character for which I had previously had no particular affinity – was hilarious enough that I felt I had to give DJ-PON3 a guest spot.

Second, and more profoundly, this story was not originally supposed to have literally happened within the confines of the universe. Twilight Sparkle's early lines about how her cure-all for jealousy is writing fantasy fiction was supposed to be subtle foreshadowing for the eventual reveal that "Contraptionology!" was a work of fiction penned by Applejack to try and stave off the jealousy that had gripped her in the wake of the events of "Infernal Machines". Another hint for particularly attentive readers was to be the fact that Iggy the Salamander's monosyllabic utterance is just slightly different in "Infernal Machines" than it is in "Contraptionology!" Pre-reading reaction to this was a bit dubious, inasmuch as it rendered likeable red-herring antagonist Professor Danger functionally nonexistent (inasmuch as he is mentioned but never shown in "Infernal Machines"). One pre-reader also commented that this really isn't the sort of story that Applejack would write, no matter how strange the inspiration particle was that struck her, a criticism that was – sadly – spot-on. Make of the above information what you will. I still don't know whether this story actually "happened" or not.

Anyway. Many thanks to Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley for helping bring "Contraptionology!" to print. Each provided valuable insights as to how I could make this story better, and each served as an all-important venting-box, allowing me to release fresh new fiction into the world immediately after writing while I was still itchy and excited, while at the same time allowing me to maintain a fairly disciplined and measured public release schedule. The improvements are theirs; the remaining errors are mine. Additional thanks to my homegirl and "Skin Horse" collaborator Shaenon K. Garrity for the brilliant title-card, which replaced the terribly pedestrian screen-capture I had been using for a good chunk of the posting run. It really needed one. Thanks also to my spouse, Feech, for listening to me babble on about cartoon horses far more than the call of duty would require. It is, unfortunately, a practice which will not stop with the completion of this story.

Finally: Apparently the portrayal of Twilight as a disembodied brain-in-a-jar was compelling enough that there is now an Askblog-style Tumblr dedicated to the concept: check out Ask Brainy Twilight for all your distressingly-adorable hunk of unicorn neural tissue needs.

Thus concludes "Contraptionology!" It's been a trip. Thanks to each and every one of you for reading, and for – where applicable – showing your support in the discussion section during the writing of this piece; whether or not I responded to your specific comment individually, please be advised that each one was appreciated (even the ones that took me to task a little). And for those of you who've been burned by too many abandoned stories and were waiting for the "Complete" tag (I'm rapidly becoming one of you), I hope you enjoyed the thing presented in one fell swoop! I'd love to hear how you think the timing and pacing comes off when you read it all at once instead of over the course of several months. In either case, if you have enjoyed this story, please consider recommending it to the ponyfic repository of your choice and/or your friends. Word-of-mouth is best word.

Once again, thank you all.

sdg,

Jeffrey C. Wells
November, 2012

appendix b - Deleted Scene

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

appendix b: "The Future"

(The first post-production draft of "Contraptionology!" had an additional epilogue section dealing with Events To Come. The inclusion of the following passage made the epilogue the longest chapter by word count of the entire story, which made me feel as though I was doing something objectively wrong, and pre-reading reaction confirmed my suspicions. I still kind of like the way this sounds, though, so I thought I'd toss it up here as a bonus.)

* * *

Let's look at the future for a second, tie up some of these loose ends. How about it?

First off, I reckon it should go without saying that I canceled my Cloudsdale talk on the projected benefits of using pump stations instead of tornados to lift cloud-making water up to the Weather Factory. I just don't think I could have gotten through a speech urging them pegasi to accept some new technological innovation without starting to giggle maniacally and then going off for a nice long lie-down. So there's that.

We finally rounded up all the surviving contraptions – excepting, of course, Iggy and Robo-Trixie, but specifically including the important bits of Angel's lagomorph colossus and my brother's sonic plowshare. They are now under high-security lockdown in Canterlot, in a vault only Princesses are allowed to access and withdraw items from. Rumor has it that the sonic plow is being studied as a last-ditch city-defense weapon, to be used in tandem with the already-overpowering Royal Canterlot Voice, but I have my doubts that that research is gonna come to anything good. Them royal scientists'll quickly realize that to tinker with contraptionology is to go places no sane ponies are meant to go, and they'll lock them infernal machines up for good. At least, that's what I hope's gonna happen.

The butter-bee-bats were also rounded up – by yours truly, I might add – and cast into the depths of the Everfree Forest, our standard humane dumping-ground for all problems both living and strange, where (for all I know) they still exist today. I figure some day we're gonna pay the price for all this casual biological disposal, but today is not that day. Tomorrow's looking pretty good too.

Twilight and Pinkie finally did take that road trip to Maresachusetts. Accompanying them on their journey was Twi's faithful assistant (not minion) Spike, Iggy the Salamander, Professor von Danger (plus his new little lightning-friend Ditzy Doo), and, interestingly enough, the Great and Powerful Rrrobo-Trixie. The Professor and the Mayor had a lovely little parting scene, where they smooched like yearlings and promised to write and see each other soon. You might be interested to see it, but unfortunately, that scene – like all the subsequent scenes from what I understand turned out to be a real humdinger of a trip – is not part of this here tale. To use a well-worn phrase, that is a story for another day.

We eventually rebuilt all the buildings in town, right back the way they used to be. Almost. Twilight up and decided that she actually kind of liked the "big open space" effect of her contraptionological laboratory, so when she magically encouraged her home tree to grow its innards back, she left a part open in the middle as a nice little atrium, reaching from the ground floor all the way up to the sky. Then, ever-cheery and practical, she turned a big tear in the walls into something called a "book drop", which I guess would allow ponies to return books they checked out even if it was really really late and Twilight was asleep. It ain't much use, since nopony actually checks books out of that library, but everypony nevertheless agreed that the changes to the newly-restored Library were good ones.

The structures of Ponyville, as rebuilt in the wake of the Contraption War, lasted for a full twenty-four months before they were laid to waste by the next big disaster to come down the pipe. It was a new record. We were positively ecstatic. Ponyville itself was quite plainly alive and well.

Them Constancy-trees I conjured up back when I was Nightmare Delicious? Still there. Guess I wasn't kidding about the Constancy part. They could not be cut, or pulled, or even moved (much), so we sort of improvised and built around them. The big one, the one that had caught the wreckage of the old Town Hall, is now smack in the middle of the central court of our New New New Town Hall, and I don't mind telling you, it is very pretty. Come Hearth's Warming, we string it all up with little white fairy-lights, and it looks like a piece of heaven. But on Nightmare Night, boy howdy, it's another story. Every October, that big ol' tree produces a single bumper crop of bright, beautiful, golden apples, shiny and gleaming on the outside but dull and sweet and black as fine chocolate inside. Nopony sees them grow; they're just there. And there ain't no seeds in them apples, neither. No new trees will ever come from them. But they're otherwise fine to eat – least that's what about a hundred Canterlot wizards said, when we spent a couple months making absolutely gol-darn sure we weren't spreading some kind of evil demon-plague around town feeding them to the kids. The kids, a'course, love 'em to death. What can I say? They look real appealingly sinister, kind of a dark mirror of our other supernatural apple crop, the Zaps. They're the biggest hit on Nightmare Night itself, of course. Much to my dismay, the new variety of apples has been named "Nightmare Delicious", and, just like the trees themselves, that name ain't budging. Sinister, silly name; perfectly safe apple.

Except...

Except one time, some enterprising souls bought some of them Nightmare apples from us, having got it in their heads to press some cider out of 'em. The drink that came of it, when properly fermented and all, was smooth and seductive and tasty, but them distillers reported that tipping back too much of the stuff could lead a pony to inescapable fits of melancholy and nostalgia, causing her to obsess over the past and about times long gone, to fixate on the idea that nothing's as good now as it used to be; and that maybe if things would stop changing for a spell, we'd all be better off. I can't help but think that the Nightmare would enjoy, in its own sad way, that sort of legacy.

I don't need any of that abstract symbological nonsense, myself. I got me my own legacy of darkness, and it takes the form of my two sharpened wolf-teeth, which I never did get pulled again. Any time I start getting moody, or jealous, or upset, I run my tongue over those teeth, and remind myself of how close the Wolf is, living as he does inside my own skin. It tends to set me straight.

Anyhow. The little bunker of Constancy-trees where I had momentarily imprisoned Robo-Trixie on that fateful night was a bit harder to build around, so we just sort of left it there. I tell you what, having an indestructible, immobile little "room" in the middle of town sure came in handy the day my little sis and her friends decided to try and earn their Cutie Marks in explosive ordnance disposal. That, too, is a story for another day, and by this I mean "the less said of it, the better".

And about Sweet Apple Acres? The grim predictions of the Nightmare? The city of Canterlot overwhelming us, swallowing us whole? Well, them predictions haven't come true yet, and I don't expect they will for a good long time. Because I love my home. I love this land. I love my happy little apple-farm. And if something threatens what I love, I ain't gonna go crazy, ain't gonna hurt other ponies to try and enforce my will on the world. That way lies the Nightmare. But what I am going to do is hold on tight to what I love, so I can see if I can make it last forever.

Nothing does, of course. But I'm gonna have a go of it. Because, as I have said, I am a right stubborn one. Universe tells me change is inevitable, well, I'm gonna challenge it to a game of chicken.

We'll see who flinches first.

appendix c - "Infernal Machines"

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

appendix c: "Infernal Machines"

(What follows is the complete text of the original February Write-Off story on which "Contraptionology!" was based; it is, for all practical purposes, the first chapter of this story. Presented here so that everything can be in one story file if you like that sort of thing.)

* * *
Infernal Machines, or, The Practical Applications of the Mechanical Salamander in Geologic Agriculture
* * *

Here's the first thing you need to know:

When I finally blacked out from the strain, I dreamed that it was autumn again. Specifically, it was that one glorious day balanced on the knife edge between cider season and the Running of the Leaves, when the six of us lay in the perfect sweet grass staring up at a sky that was gently twirling above us.

One of the maddening things about living in a universe where the mythic and the practical collide is the fact that when the sky is twirling – in contrast to everything that should be true about small-"c" celestial motion, I might add – there are any number of entirely reasonable yet entirely ridiculous explanations right at hoof. Thankfully, today's explanation was a wholly rational one: the six of us were drunk off our little cutie-marked hindquarters.

Sorry to put it so crudely, but, in my defense, I was drunk (Q.E.D.), and it's probably how I would have phrased it at the time. The villains of the week – this time taking the shape of a couple of cream-colored traveling salesponies, all straw hats and mane oil, pitching us the idea of a great and clanking mechanized still and the dream of an endless supply of cider – had been driven off in disgrace, and we were all a little flush from the latest triumph of the magic of friendship. And we had been in the mood to celebrate. And the terms of our victory (an epic pony-versus-machine duel of cider production) had temporarily graced us with as much alcohol as we could drink. And… you can probably take it from there.

"Y'know," said Applejack, gazing up into the yonder blue, "Even if Granny hadn't wagered the farm on that contest… an' even if that gimcrack cider those hucksters put out hadn't tasted like the wrong end of a mule… I reckon… I reckon it might not be such an all-fired good idea for us always to have as much cider as we can drink."

"Are you crazy?" exclaimed Rainbow Dash, unevenly. "This is so awesome! I'm about ten seconds away from total cider stupor and I bet I could shave a few seconds off that if I had just a teensy bit more!"

"Yer welcome too'it," I said, slurring slightly, unable to keep up with either Applejack's iron-clad constitution or Dash's furious metabolism. "Ifya c'n make it back to th' serving line." I gestured in what I was almost ninety percent sure was the proper direction.

"In a second," said Dash, cocking her head unevenly and assessing the clouds with a critical eye. "Not sure I should be flying. There's something funny about the air. I think it's rotating." She spat. "Dumb air," she said.

"Well, somepony should probably top us off, while supplies last," said Rarity. "Fluttershy, darling, I know you've had scarce more than a thimbleful, would you be a dear and gather up some of these mugs?"

Fluttershy snored gently in response, disturbing the arduous trek of a Wooly Bear caterpillar across the north slope of her face.

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Never mind, then. Well, I'm in no fit state to be walking. Twilight, you can teleport, right?"

"Oh, nosirree," I said. "I don' tel'port when I'mmin this ssstate. Las' time… ended up in Celestia's private baths." I smiled, crookedly. "Ssso many bubbl'z."

"Mm," said Rarity, weighing this conundrum for several minutes. "Pinkie Pie, what about you?"

"What about me what?" said Pinkie Pie, springing nimbly to her hooves.

The five of us – four ponies and Fluttershy's caterpillar – stared up at Pinkie Pie in mild to moderate shock. Fluttershy let off a tiny snerk and wiggled a bit.

"Well, that's gotta be witchcraft or summin'," muttered Applejack

Dash screwed up her face. "Pinkie, how… are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" said Pinkie, hopping a circle around our assorted prone and supine forms. "Jumping? It's simple!" She ceased hopping and adopted a bright pedagogical tone. "First, you bunch your little rump underneath you, and then you–"

"She meansss… s… s…," I said, figuring that an excess of "s"'s was better than none at all, "How'ryoo… um… standing?"

"Standing?" said Pinkie. "It's simple! First you put your little hooves on the ground, and then–"

"Enough with the explaining!" cried Dash. "If you can walk, you're on cider-run duty."

"Okeydokeylokey!" said Pinkie, beaming. She promptly hopped back over the hill in the direction of the serving line and out of sight.

"Acquired tolerance 's 'mazing thing," I announced. Everypony murmured her assent.

After a minute, Pinkie returned, empty-hoofed. "Sorry, it's all drunk," she said. Then, grinning enormously, she finished, "Kinda like you girls!"

Dash rolled over and roared into the grass. "Aargh!" she wailed. "Never enough!"

"C'mon, Dashie," said Pinkie, "I think you got plenty this time! Besides, like Applejack said, it's not good to have a forever supply of anything. That way, it stays special!"

Dash looked unconvinced, or perhaps just nauseous. "Mmmaybe," she said. "I dunno. I still don't see why we can't have both the good Apple Family stuff and the less-good Flim-Flam stuff at the same time. 'Cause I gotta say, I'm not really tasting the quality when I'm like this."

"'Less-good'?" remarked Rarity, her eyelids drooping. "Rainbow Dash, the Flim-Flam Brothers' cider was completely unpalatable. I dare say, even in your present condition, you'd want nothing to do with it."

"Yeah," said Pinkie, giggling. "And did you girls get a load of the serial bottleneck at their quality control station? What a hoot!"

For the second time that afternoon, we all stared at Pinkie. Blithely oblivious to our collective gaze, she prattled on. "And then they just shut quality control all the way off! Like, duh! Especially since it would've taken just a few minutes for them to multidimensionalize across several parallel channels. Then we wouldn't have had a leg to stand on! Hello, Flim-Flam Fields!"

I propped myself up on my knees, the hot red flush of cider in my system warming and prickling my face. "Pinkie," I said, "what're you–"

"Forget her, Twilight," said Dash. "She's just being Pinkie Pie. Hey, I got an idea: let's have a race to see who can drop into cider coma the fastest! I'll go first!"

"Inna sec, Dash," I said. My eyes were stinging for reasons I couldn't quite place, and my cider flush was growing more and more intense by the second. The heat had gone from pleasant to vaguely distressing to actively uncomfortable, and the glorious autumnal red of the leaves above had become positively fulgent. Something was seriously wrong with this situation, but I shook my head and pressed on. "Pinkie, could you have… improved the Flim-Flam Brothers' machine?"

"Well, yeah!" she said. "In a jiffy! Although… the fact that I could? It might be better if nopony knows about that yet."

The autumn leaves were so bright now I had to squint to even see properly. My face felt like it was burning up. "But you're telling me."

"Not for real, silly," said Pinkie. "See, 'cause all of this… is a hallucination!" Pinkie waved her hooves around in a spooky fashion. "WhoooOOOooo!"

"A what?" I said, panic rising in my chest. Leaves suddenly burst into flame all around me and smoke and darkness fell like a shroud.

"A hallucination!" said Pinkie, cheerily, the fire licking at her cotton-candy curls. "And pretty soon, you're going to have to

* * *

"WAKE UP!" shouted Applejack, as a splash of cold water struck me like a blow. I startled, blinked, and then I was back on the ridge, at the lip of the fire, where I had in truth been all along.

The Everfree Forest was burning tonight. It was hard to understand, right from the top. When I first arrived in Ponyville, the Everfree was a gloomy and mysterious gothic bugaboo, suitable for scaring your foals with. But then came Zecora, who lived within its confines but who was not, in point of fact, frightening at all. And then there was Luna, and Griffinwatch Observatory, and her proposed plans for New Griffinwatch – plans on which I had been invited to consult – and gradually, month by month, the Everfree had started seeming less and less like a bastion of primal fear and more like a comfortable (if creepy) old neighbor. To suddenly have it become threatening again, not in terms of its arcane inscrutability but simply because it was a big mess of burnable vegetation, seemed like a cuff in the face on a number of levels at once.

But, its eldritch legacy notwithstanding, it was a forest, it was made of wood, and it could burn. And although the flames that chewed at its ancient trees were a peculiar citrusy hue, they were flames nonetheless, which meant that they could spread to nearby Ponyville.

But that wasn't going to happen without a fight.

We were a tableau of furious activity, here at the edge of the inferno. It seemed chaotic, but there was an underlying structure to it all, a method within the madness. I should know; I was the one who designed the method, after all. Here was a bucket brigade of stalwart earth ponies, a line stretching all the way back to the reservoir, beating the flames back one splash at a time. Here was a flight of pegasus ponies, fresh back from scouring the sky for any rain clouds they could muster up, on their way to more remote but still dangerous sectors of the fire. And here was Spike, brave Spike, soot-covered but unharmed by dint of his fireproof scales, running message after message to the teams of unicorn smoke-jumpers (clad in highly fashionable flame-retardant jumpsuits) working deep within the forest to create firebreaks that would theoretically slow the spread of the blaze.

And here, right here, were Volunteer Fire Marshal Applejack and All-Team Organizer Twilight Sparkle, the latter of whom was also lending a hoof by throwing up a Celestia-lovingly huge rendition of Weathertop's Frost Curtain, in her signature magenta, to help shield the crews at the front line, where the battle for Ponyville was going to be won or lost.

We sang. We chanted. We consumed a truly prodigious amount of morale-boosting sweets, brought to us by the courtesy and tireless work of Mr. and Mrs. Cake and their lone employee, the irrepressible Pinkie Pie. There was no way that we could fail; the 900-pound gorilla in the room that nopony wished to acknowledge was that we were, nevertheless, failing.

We fought tooth and hoof for every inch of ground, but the fire was unrelenting. It was only a matter of time before we would be forced back to the encircling river, and if the fire managed to leap that, then it was goodbye again to Ponyville, hello to rebuilding our village from the ground up. Which had already happened twice this year, and I think I speak for all Ponyvillians when I say that we were pretty darn sick of it.

But… there was nothing to be done, because there was only so long we could fight before the exhaustion claimed us and the forest fire won. Case in point: All-Team Organizer Twilight Sparkle, who had maintained Weathertop's Frost Curtain today for far longer and on a far greater scale than anypony had heretofore thought possible, who had maintained it until her Stream had become so turbulent it had begun to feel like running the frog of her hoof backward down the length of a rose stem, who had even then continued to maintain it until the sheer strain of doing so caused her conscious mind to go bye-bye and catapulted her into sweet dreams of cider seasons past.

"Sorry about the rude awakening, Twi," said Applejack, breathing heavily and spitting her ladle to the ground. "It's just that that fancy-prancy ice wall you been keepin' goin' all day looks like it's fixin' to crumble."

"Right," I said, trying to swallow the despair that was creeping into my voice. "Just… give me a second to re-focus."

"Twilight, I ain't gonna have you throwin' that thing back up only to have it fall on me a half-second later. Now, your ice magic has been a whole heap a' blessing to my fire crews today, and I'm sure they been praisin' Celestia to have it, but they don't need it. And if they're expecting it to be there, and all of a sudden it ain't, they're gonna be in a world more hurt than if it weren't there a'tall."

"Sorry, A.J.," I said.

"It's all right, Twi. It's just you ain't doin' nopony no favors trying to work when you're half asleep. I should know that better than anypony. So I'm a'gonna ask you one simple question, and I need you to tell me the honest truth: can you or can you not keep that wall standing?"

I crumpled before her stern and green-eyed glare. "No," I admitted, my voice thick.

"Well, all right then," A.J. said. All quickness and business, she turned back toward the front line. "Blue team! Yella team! Y'all gonna have to fall back, 'cause we're losing the ice wall, an' it ain't comin' back up!"

I tried to shut out the noise of the disappointed groans of the fire crews; Applejack was unperturbed. "Now quit yer bellyachin'!" she hollered. "Next anchor point is gonna be that cliff face over yonder. That'll keep this infernal beast from flankin' us. I reckon we got about five minutes to move this entire operation." She spared a half second mid-harangue to shoot me a warm glance, and then continued, "Y'all gonna give ground nice and organized-like. Jes' like Twilight here taught you. Savvy?"

The earth pony crews muttered their assent and began the latest in a long series of slow but steady retreats. Applejack and I trotted back to the cliff face, taking brief shelter in its shadow. Overhead, a canary-colored streak rocketed from the airspace above the worst of the blaze, headed for the lee side of the river.

"What's it look like in there, Fluttershy?" Applejack called out.

"Can't-talk-now-saving-bunnies!" trilled Fluttershy, clutching a hoofload of furry critters tightly to her chest; and then she was gone.

Applejack sighed heavily and gazed back in the direction of the front, pulling off her Stetson and wiping the sweat and grime from her brow. I edged up beside her.

"We're gonna beat this thing, right?" I asked, quietly.

"I dunno, Twi," said Applejack. She shook her head and scowled. "This ain't natural, none of it! We should be makin' progress against this thing, but it's like…"

"Like what?"

"It's like there's something in the middle of it all keepin' it lit."

"Well, the flames are a weird color," I said, trying furiously to break things down into analyzable chunks, "but I'm not sensing any elemental magic use nearby, other than mine. I've never seen anything like it."

"None of us have," said Applejack, and then there was little else to say.

After a minute, I gathered my courage. "All right, I'm rested up. What can I do?"

"Sleep," said Applejack. "'Cause you ain't rested up. I can see it in your eyes. We'll come getcha if we needya."

"A.J., no," I pleaded.

Applejack grunted. "All right," she said. She turned and called out to a passing Spike the Dragon. "Spike, take your boss here back to town. Get some food in her an' then pick up another load of morale-boosters from Sugarcube Corner. Givin' ground always puts a powerful sadness in a pony."

"You can count on us, Fire Marshal Applejack!" said Spike, saluting. "C'mon, Twilight. Let's see what Pinkie's got in the oven!"

"Right," I said, turning away from the front and trotting briskly back toward the threatened village. "Morale. I can do this."

Behind me, with a distant and tinkling roar, the frost curtain finally fell.

* * *

I'll say one thing: Sugarcube Corner in the midst of an all-town crisis was not appreciably different from Sugarcube Corner on any other day. At least, not when Pinkie Pie was at the helm, as was the case tonight. The Cakes had finally retired after a day of furious baking to spend some quality time with the twins and to do some light packing in the event of a general evacuation, leaving Pinkie Pie as the confectionary inmate running the confectionary asylum. Bright yellow cookies were cooling on every available surface, their residual butter blotting out on sheets of randomly-selected paper: loose-leaf vellum, a stack of old pin-feed plotter parchment, a now-ruined award certificate of some kind. Frosting coated the walls and tangled bits of Pinkie's mane and tail together, and Gummy the toothless alligator swung helplessly but apparently unperturbedly from a cradle of taffy strands.

"Hey Twilight!" Pinkie said, balancing a cookie sheet on her head while slamming an oven door shut with a single well-placed kick. "Hey, Spike! How's the firefighting going?"

I bit back the truth and settled for a somewhat tepid redirection. "It'll be going a lot better once we get these delicious-looking cookies to the troops!"

"I'll say," said Spike, salivating a bit over the cheery little delights. "Can I sample one of these? Applejack says I gotta feed Twilight something, and I want to make sure these cookies are just right!"

I glanced at Spike.

"For her!" said Spike, smiling beatifically.

"Silly," said Pinkie, expertly sliding her tray full of hot cookies onto another piece of improvised blotter paper. "The cookies aren't for now. They're for the victory party!"

"Of course," I said, wincing slightly. "So… what do you have that I can take back to the fire ponies?"

"Omigosh, okay, listen to this," Pinkie gushed. "I'm not at the front lines because Applejack said I couldn't be at the front lines because I kept asking why we were gonna be fighting the fire instead of making friends with it, and she said I should go home and help the Cakes out, and so I was helping the Cakes out and I was thinking, hm, what kind of dessert would I want if I was on the front lines and it was getting dark and I had been fighting fires all day and I was feeling snacky, and I thought I would want something a little more dinner-y, and then I got brilliant, because I thought of pie! Pie à la mode."

"Delicious!" I agreed, all the while trying to beat back images of the burning forest in my mind.

"I know, right?" said Pinkie, bouncing over to a curtained-off baker's nook and pulling back the curtain with her teeth and a flourish, revealing a dozen perfect, golden pies. "Ta-da!" she cried.

"Those look great, Pinkie!" said Spike. "But… doesn't 'à la mode' mean 'with ice cream'?"

"Ooo, he's good!" Pinkie replied. "Yeah, we ran out of mode a while back. Just like we ran out of parchment to blot the cookies on. What can I say? We're kickin' out pastries like crazy town! I was just about to whip up some fresh ice cream when you two came in and brightened my day!"

"Don't worry about it, Pinkie," I said. "I'm sure everypony'll be perfectly happy with straight-up non-mode pies. Let's just load some of these into my saddlebags, and–"

"Twilight, I'm surprised at you!" scolded Pinkie. "Pie without ice cream is like a day without sunshine! Like a hug without a squeeze! Like a fish without a bicycle!"

"Huh?" I said, frowning.

"It's indispensable!" Pinkie exclaimed, promptly vanishing into a nearby closet.

"Pinkie," I called after her, "I appreciate the sentiment, but we don't really have time right now for you to crank up a batch of–"

"Done!" said Pinkie Pie, emerging from the closet with a gallon vat of vanilla ice cream.

I paused, blinking. "Pinkie, I thought you said you were out of–"

"I was."

"So… how come there's–"

"Made more."

I shook my head, trying to get the thought construct to resolve. "Doesn't making ice cream take like an hour of standing next to a churn and–"

"Not with my PARTY CANNON!" cried Pinkie, pulling a familiar candy-blue artillery piece out of the closet. "I just set it for 'Ice Cream Social' and then, BOOM! Ice cream! Sometimes there's streamers and party favors and swoopfoomers all mixed in but you just gotta pick 'em out."

"But… you have to load it with those things first," I said, staring at Pinkie's signature device, a weird and unsettled feeling creeping into my gut. "I mean, I always presumed that you–"

"C'mon, Twilight," said Spike, tugging at my saddle. "Let's get these pies up to the ridge."

"In a minute, Spike!" I turned back to Pinkie. "Pinkie," I stated, "you have to load the cannon first."

"Hm," said Pinkie, studying the Party Cannon thoughtfully while stroking her chin with one hoof. "Nope!" she concluded. "It just comes out."

"That's impossible," I blurted. "You'd be summoning matter out of nowhere! I mean, I can do that because I'm converting matter to energy and back, and that's fine because the equations all balance out. But I'm using magic!"

"Yep," agreed Pinkie. "And I'm using… CONTRAPTIONOLOGY!"

"Come again?" said Spike.

"Con-trap-tion-ology!" repeated Pinkie, slowly, as though we were asking her to explain the word "apple" to us. "I got my doctorate in contraptionology a few months before I moved back to Ponyville. Check out that piece of paper over there."

Feeling a little dizzy now, I followed Pinkie's point to the table where she was blotting butter cookies on what had looked like a certificate of some kind. I carefully restacked the cookies with a quick telekinetic swirl and lifted the oil-soaked paper up to the light…

"'Pinkamena Diane Pie,'" I read. "'Doctorate of Philosophy… Contraptionological Sciences… Maresachusetts Institute of Technology'?!"

"Yep," sighed Pinkie. "Good times."

"This…" I began, then had to stop and collect myself. I tried again: "This… is a doctoral degree from the single most prestigious institute of earth pony learning in all Equestria."

"Mm hm," agreed Pinkie, turning her attention back to a fresh bowl of cookie dough.

"You're using it to blot butter cookies."

Pinkie shrugged. "I'm a pastry chef now, not a professional contraptionologist. So it doesn't really matter! And like I said, we were all out of parchment, and so I thought, hey, I'll just use some of my old school papers! No sense in them going to waste, right?" She gestured lazily. "Some of this other stuff is my thesis on the practical applications of the mechanical salamander in geologic agriculture."

"Nonono," I said, kicking up my hocks and running around the kitchen, gathering up page after page of inexplicably careful scholarship, scattering cookies everywhere in the process. "Nonononono. Pinkie, this is recorded knowledge. It… I mean, I'm still not believing that it exists in the first place, but you can't do this to recorded knowledge."

"What's a 'mechanical salamander'?" asked Spike, selecting a few fallen cookies from the floor and munching on them, an act that was hygienically legal under Spike's own personal three-day rule.

"It's like a salamander, but mechanical!" explained Pinkie, as I rushed past on another circuit of the room. "Back on the rock farm, we had these little lizards called salamanders, and when you fed them really hot peppers they would FOOM!" She clapped her hooves together. "Burst into flames. Real useful for turning sand into glass. Once you've got a good field of glass going, you can skid the rocks along just like you're curling!" Pinkie blinked. "Why do you think they call it 'curling' when what you really want is for the rock to go straight?"

"Who cares?" I cried, zooming past again. "Help me save your thesis!"

"What, and upset all the victory party cookies? For shame, Twilight!"

"'Mechanical' salamanders, though?" asked Spike.

"Oh!" said Pinkie. "Yeah, mechanical salamanders! Salamanders are real difficult to keep. There's a really really fine line between a normal-burning salamander and a salamander that just up and explodes. So I thought, why not make a mechanical one and reduce some of the ambiguity inherent to the biological organism? And I couldn't think of a reason why not, so I built one! And he jumped around and ate peppers and got really crazy hot just like a real salamander, and he never exploded, not even once!"

I slipped on a puddle of spilled cake batter and went tumbling headfirst into Gummy's taffy cradle, salvaged papers flying everywhere. "You built," I said, as the papers settled to the cluttered floor about me, "an autonomous, biologically functional, machine."

"Yep!" said Pinkie. "It's called a 'contraptionoid'. I named him 'Iggy'!"

"And since then," I said, struggling to rise and to disentangle myself from the taffy, "you designed a cannon that can produce organic and inorganic matter out of thin air. For any reason you like."

"Not for 'any reason'," said Pinkie. "For parties!"

I threw my hooves up in exasperation. "Why didn't you tell anypony you could do stuff like this?"

"Twilight," laughed Pinkie. "It's not like I hid my cannon from you guys. Or my hoof-powered flying machine. Or that propeller beanie I built for Tank the Tortoise." She shrugged. "It's just that whenever anypony asks me about them and I start to explain, they tell me that I'm being random, or that I'm being Pinkie Pie, which are both true things, and then they walk away!"

"This can't be real," I said, trotting back and forth. "This has to be another hallucination. Do you realize the practical implications of what you're talking about? We'd never have to suffer through another hard winter! You could make enough vegetables to sustain the town through any crisis!" I stopped in my tracks, my eyes wide. "Heck, forget food. You could just make enough gold and gemstones to buy your way out of a crisis!"

"Can you do that?" asked Spike, a little too eagerly. "Can you make gemstones out of nothing?"

"And what about reagents for my spells?" I said, mind whirling. "Do you know how difficult it is to properly harvest ponydrake root? I could just come to you and you could give me some!"

"Geez, guys," said Pinkie, backing away from us a little. "Haven't you been listening? Party purposes only! It's not always good to have as much as you want every day of your life. The Duke of Geld had a party cannon like mine once upon a time, 'til he decided he wanted to have a forever supply of ice for his lemonade, and you see what happened there."

"There isn't a Duke of Geld," I said. "Geld's a glacier-covered wasteland."

"And you see," repeated Pinkie, pointedly, "what happened there."

"Okay, I understand," I said, touching my hoof to my face. "Don't be frivolous with the crazy science, check. But we have ponies risking their lives up at the ridge right now, ponies who could go straight home to bed if you brought that cannon up there and set it on 'Fire Hose Party'!"

Pinkie looked genuinely apologetic. "I appreciate what you're thinking, Twilight," she said. "But contraptionology is a slippy slope. Once you start down that road, it's real hard to stop. That's kinda why I became a baker instead." She noticeably brightened, then. "But thanks for the idea of throwing a Fire Hose Party! That could be really super-duper fun!"

I growled a little, deep in my throat. "Pinkie," I said, sternly, "you know you're one of my very best friends. But…"

Pinkie stared at me, eyes wide and mouth small. "Yes?" she said.

Spike glanced nervously between us.

I broke first, turning away and sagging a little. "…but nothing," I concluded. "You're one of my very best friends, and if you say that using your cannon on the forest fire is dangerous, I trust you."

"Thanks, Twilight," said Pinkie, smiling.

"Who am I kidding, anyway?" I said, kicking at a broken muffin. "I don't think it matters how much water we throw at those weird flames. C'mon, Spike, let's load me up with pies and head back."

"Wait a sec," said Pinkie, stopping in mid-stride. "What kind of weird flames?"

"Weird-colored," I said. "Sort of orangey, but fruit orangey, not fire orangey."

"Would you say they were… kumquat-colored?"

I looked at Spike. Spike looked at me. "Well, yeah, I suppose," said Spike, shrugging. "Kumquat-colored, sure."

"Wait," I said. "You don't mean–"

Pinkie gasped, long and audible. "IT'S IGGY!" she cried. "HE CAME HOME!"

* * *

Pinkie and I galloped through the night as fast as our respective burdens would allow: me with a saddlebag full of pies topped with a baby dragon secretary, and Pinkie pulling a tablecloth-covered caisson which supported her increasingly sinister Party Cannon. As we ran, Pinkie babbled.

"And when I left Maresachusetts, I gave Iggy to my thesis advisor, Professor Stranger Danger, and he promised he'd take good care of Iggy and never let him inappropriately burn anything again! I can't understand what might have gone wrong, not in a zillion quadrillion years!"

"I don't know what went wrong either," I said, huffing and puffing, unable to match Pinkie's tireless earth pony stride without serious effort. "But he must have gotten loose. And there are plenty of wild peppers growing in the Everfree Forest. If he ate enough of those, he could be lighting the forest fire over and over again!"

"Poor Iggy!" said Pinkie. "He must be so lonely and sad in there. When we get him home, I'm throwing him a ginormous salamander party, and it'll have the blandest and least-spicy foods you can possibly imagine!" Pinkie frowned in a calculating fashion. "And punch, too," she added.

"Let's think about the celebration when we get that far," I said. "Thanks for offering the use of your cannon."

"It's still dangerous," Pinkie warned. "But since it turns out this is a contraptionological problem, I think it's okay to solve it contraptionologically. But then the Party Cannon goes back to being used for actual party purposes. Not weird impromptu party-in-the-middle-of-a-forest-fire ones. Clear?"

"As day," I said, as the cliff face loomed into view ahead of us, and beyond that, the inextinguishable kumquat-colored fire.

Darting past the bucket brigade, I skidded up to Applejack, telekinetically grabbed Spike off the top of my saddlebags and then tore them off entirely and tossed them to the ground at A.J.'s forehooves. "There!" I said. "Twelve fresh pies, minus whatever just got mushed when I threw them at you." I dropped Spike with a heavy thud.

"Twilight!" said Applejack. "Thank the Grower you're back. We were just about to send somepony for you. Losin' that ice wall was harder than I figured it'd be. I don't s'pose you got any more of that in you?"

"Even better," I said. "I've got a plan to fix this whole thing. You distract the troops with those pies while Pinkie and I go off and do something titanically stupid."

"What's goin' on?" asked Applejack suspiciously, looking over my shoulder at Pinkie Pie. "What in tarnation is that pony draggin' behind her? What's under the tablecloth?"

"Maybe later," I said. "Right now, I need to talk to Rainbow Dash."

There was a whoosh of air that skewed my mane to the right, accompanied by a bright vision-obscuring chromatic trail. "I heard somepony was looking for the fastest pegasus in all Ponyville!" said Rainbow Dash.

"Yes, yes," I said, trying to get through this first part as fast as possible. "Rainbow, I need those aerial photographs you and Rarity have been taking of the fire today."

"In a dash!" said Rainbow, vanishing from sight and then reappearing almost immediately with a mouth full of photos. She spit them to the ground.

"Right," said Dash, efficiently, pointing at the first photograph with her hoof. "Okay, here's a time-lapse photo showing how the fire's been spreading over the course of the day. And here's a composite one illustrating the areas of greatest consistent concentration. And finally, here's one of me, Rainbow Dash, being all totally awesomely heroic by airlifting Rarity around all day while she took these pictures. I can autograph this last one for you guys, if you want."

"Oo! Oo! For me, please!" shouted Pinkie, her eyes glimmering.

"Yes, great," I said, absently, my brow furrowing as I studied the remaining two photos. I snatched up a twig from the ground and pointed at an angry-looking part of the images.

"Here," I said to Pinkie. "Everything spreads out from this little valley right here. And it hasn't stopped burning yet. That's our target."

"'To… Pinkie Pie,'" muttered Rainbow Dash, wrestling with a pen between her teeth. "'My… biggest… fan.' Bam! Done!"

"Wheee!" yelled Pinkie, plucking the autographed photo off the ground and stashing it away somewhere on the caisson. "Thanks a billion, Rainbow, I'll treasure this forever!"

"Anytime, kid," said Rainbow.

"Mmhm, yes, thanks, Rainbow," I said. "Pinkie, we're going to have to fine-tune our directions on the fly while we're in there. Spike, I'll need you to scout ahead for us. Pinkie and I will follow with the… payload." I glanced back at Pinkie's caisson. "I'll cover us both with Weathertop's Frost Curtain. If I keep the globe size small enough, it should get us to the valley and back before I lose it. I'm warning you, though, it's gonna be a squeeze."

"Let's call it 'cozy'," said Pinkie. "It sounds nicer."

"'Cozy' it is," I said, opening my mind and my horn to the elemental ice once more. "All right, crew, are we ready?"

"Ready!" said Pinkie and Spike, in unison.

"Great," I said, gazing hard into the inferno. "Let's go throw us a party."

* * *

Almost an hour and a half later, Pinkie and Spike and I re-emerged from the flames, which were already burning a little less bright and in a far more reasonable hue. We were soot-stained and coughing, the embroidered edges of the tablecloth covering the Party Cannon were singed and charred where I didn't stretch the Frost Curtain quite far enough, and it would take weeks before our manes and tails started looking normal again (Spike, naturally, excluded.)

None of this really mattered, because, quietly squirming in an asbestos bag gripped firmly in Pinkie Pie's teeth was the object of our quest. We had, in fact, successfully made friends with the fire.

"SKRONK," went the object of our quest.

Applejack rushed up to us, tossing blankets over our backs. "I don't know what you two did in there," she said, "but this big ol' varmint of a fire is startin' to act right civil on us again. Why, we made more progress the last half hour than we did this whole afternoon!"

"I think," I said, wearily, "you're going to see that trend continue."

"Well, shoot, Twi, what happened? What kinda sorcery did you pull off in there?"

"It wasn't sorcery," chirped Pinkie, letting the asbestos bag fall to the ground with a sharp metallic clang. "It was a party!"

"Huh?" said Applejack.

"Okay, once upon a time I made a lizard," began Pinkie. "And I gave him to my teacher and my teacher promised to keep him safe. But something must have gone wrong and the lizard came looking for me! And he got lost and scared and hungry and so he ate some chili peppers only he didn't know that eating the chili peppers would make him super hot! And then…" She clapped her hooves together again. "FOOM! And then Twilight said that nothing took away the sting of a chili pepper like a big bowl of ice cream, and I was like gasp, omigosh, she was so right, so we found where he was and we threw him a BIG old ice cream party and now Iggy's feeling much better, thanks."

Pinkie beamed at Applejack. "Iggy is the lizard's name," she concluded.

"Rrright," said A.J. "Twilight, you care to translate that to us from Pinkinese?"

And I was so close.

"Yes," I almost said. "Pinkie is secretly an engineering genius. Or rather, not secretly, it's just that none of us pay enough attention to what she's doing to realize what's going on right in front of our muzzles. She built a mechanical salamander that can burn hot enough to turn sand into glass in the hopes that it would help rock farmers like her family move the rocks around faster, for whatever reason it is that they do that in the first place. Only, it escaped. And it came looking for her. And it's been setting fire to the Everfree Forest ever since. And so we used Pinkie's Party Cannon to generate about eighteen gallons of ice cream out of nothing more than smog and vapor and cooled that lizard right off. Oh, and did you know that Pinkie's Party Cannon can generate food out of practically nothing? And possibly, but unconfirmedly, gold and precious gems as well? And the financial security of our entire village is assured for all eternity and everypony can have anything they want, whenever they want, in whatever quantity that they want, from now until the end of time, but please don't get greedy about it…"

I thought of Geld. I thought of glaciers. I froze up, glancing helplessly back and forth between A.J. and Pinkie Pie.

Spike laughed, and the moment was shattered. "C'mon, Applejack," he said. "It's just Pinkie being Pinkie, right?"

Applejack chuckled. "I guess you're right, Spike," she said. "I'm sure the real story'll come out eventually."

"Of course Spike's right!" said Pinkie. "Who else could I possibly be?" She picked up the asbestos bag again. "Now iff you'w efcufe uf," she said, talking around it, "We'w gonna take Iggy home."

"SKRONK," agreed the bag.

* * *

We trotted home in darkness. The fire crews would continue to work through the night, and barring some calamitous shift in the weather – a shift that Rainbow Dash and her kin would simply not let happen – I had little doubt that the fire would be all but out come morning. Already, the smog was clearing from the sky and the stars of evening were winking into view. The Everfree Forest would heal, preternaturally quickly if history was any judge, and life would continue much as it always had. And, thanks to Spike and no thanks to my mouth, we had narrowly avoided becoming the epicenter of the world's largest pile of carrots. Or lake of cider. Or mountain of diamonds.

"Spike," I said, glancing back at my secretary, butler, assistant and friend. "Thanks for saving my hay bacon back there."

"Any time, sister," said Spike, sitting high in my saddle. "That's what I'm here for."

"Well, that went well," said Pinkie, who had resumed her traditional bouncing gait despite still being in harness. "I got lots and lots of ice cream, an autographed photo of Rainbow Dash, and, I got reunited with an old friend-slash-unnatural creation! Isn't that right, Iggy?"

"SKRONK," said the asbestos bag, which was currently getting the living daylights jostled out of itself back on the caisson. I telekinetically plucked it up, pulled it over to me, and looked inside.

There he was, the villain of the week. Coppery-colored inasmuch as he was made of actual copper, with little pink spinel eyes, decorated all over with hard-fired glass enamel hearts and lollipops.

"Cute little misfit of science," I said.

"SKRONK," said Iggy, blinking serenely up at me.

"Pinkie," I said, "What are we gonna do with this little guy?"

"Well," said Pinkie, "I was thinking I could keep him! Even though he looks green on the outside, Gummy has been feeling particularly blue on the inside. I think a new little reptile friend would cheer him right up!"

Not mentioning my suspicion that Gummy could probably have weathered the complete immolation of Ponyville without becoming even the slightest bit "blue", I said, "Pinkie, you know that's just not realistic."

"Why not?" she said. "I promise I'll keep him out of my enormous and poorly-secured hot sauce collection!"

"See, there," I said. "Right there."

"Twilight!" gasped Pinkie, affronted. "I'd promise you! That means something!"

"Not good enough, Pinkie," I said, shaking my head. "You live and work in a place where children are present, all the time, two of whom are the weirdly precocious toddler foals of your employers themselves. Now I trust you, but can you one hundred percent guarantee me that none of the kids will ever go unattended long enough that they might open Iggy's enclosure by accident? Can you imagine what might happen next?"

Pinkie imagined. "Yes," she said, sadly, dropping back into a walk.

"Good," I said. I stiffened my upper lip. "Now we obviously can't destroy him, and I couldn't bear to see the look on Princess Celestia's face if I tried to foist Iggy off on her, her experience with flaming pets notwithstanding."

"What are we gonna do, then?"

"Pinkie, you and I are going to take a little road trip. To Maresachusetts."

"Aw, neat!" said Spike. "Can I come?"

"Wouldn't have it any other way, Spike," I said. "The three of us are going to locate Professor Danger, find out what went wrong with his Iggy-containment strategy, and fix it. I won't be a party to keeping a dangerous contraptionoid animal within the Ponyville limits unless we inform everypony of the risks, and as soon as we did I think they'd run us out of town. Better Iggy live in Maresachusetts, where at least people know, or should know."

"Oo!" squealed Pinkie, returning to full bounce. "That's a great idea, Twilight! I can show you my old college stomping grounds! My first dorm room, my very favoritest sweet shop, the dirty old reactor that powered my undergraduate honors project… oh, and also, I should show you my actual stomping grounds, where I did some of my best stomping! Stomp, stomp, stomp!"

"All very fascinating and simultaneously confusing and distressing," I said. "We'll start packing tomorrow."

"SKRONK," said Iggy, in what I had to assume was happy agreement.

"You said, it, Iggy!" said Pinkie.

"Tonight," I said, "we head back to Sugarcube Corner, figure out the best way to lock up this Party Cannon, and finally, finally, get something to eat."

"Good news for you!" said Pinkie. "We've got about a gallon of half-melted vanilla ice cream back there that never made it up to the fire ponies."

"That's all right," I said. "I don't actually like ice cream all that much."

There was a pause, and then Pinkie burst out with a peal of helpless laughter, tears welling at the corners of her eyes. Spike followed suit, and then, eventually, I did as well. I can't quite explain why it was so funny. It wasn't even a joke, per se. Maybe it was the raw exhaustion. I don't know. But for that one moment, "I don't actually like ice cream all that much" was the funniest single line in Equestrian history.

We laughed all the way home.

appendix d - Fanart! (contains spoilers)

appendix d - Fanart! (contains spoilers)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

appendix c: Fanart!

"Nightmare Delicious" by Nadnerb

"Apples and Honesty" by Dazhbug

Thanks so much to all y'all's!

01 - Nightmare(s)

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part One: Nightmare(s)

All right. We're gonna start this out all nice and dramatic-like.

Picture an apple. A big Braeburn, nice solid fella. (The apple, I mean. Not my cousin from Appleoosa, although the boy is quite a looker, if he don't mind me saying so.) Pride of anypony's orchard. Blush-red with just enough sour green to keep it interesting. Crisp as the day is long. Perfect for taking a big old bite out of, and when you do, tastes like Celestia's own sun come down give you a big smack on the lips.

Hungry? Well, don't get hungry. Because this here is something we call science, and you can't eat it. Just step back a pace or two and you can see that this apple's got things sticking out of it. That's how you recognize when something is science, I've found – it's got things sticking out of it. In this here case, we're talking about an old galvanized nail left over from our last barn-raising, and a little copper penny. And each one of those gadgets has a little wire clipped onto it, and those wires are leading to a tiny little electric bell sitting on the school-desk next to it.

The bell is ringing. Over and over and over again. And that's where we start this here story.

"It's called an apple battery!" squeaked my little sis at the front of the classroom, looking nervous but proud of her science fair project. And why shouldn't she be? Never mind it involved some Grower-forsaken wire-y witchcraft pulled out of one of Twilight's books. Twi had shepherded Apple Bloom through every inch of this science fair project, using words like "ion bridge" and "electrowinning" the whole time. I didn't understand a lick of it, but Twilight is a certified genius and a heck of a lot better choice for science fair mentor than somepony like me.

Twilight wasn't here. Ain't a lot of ponies here, frankly. We're all recovering from the fire.

Oh, right. The fire. Part of this storytelling business is explaining things through "exposition", which as best as I can figure means the same thing as "yammering", so let me give it a shot. Last night was a real buck in the head, to be honest. A downright puzzling magical forest fire ripped through a piece of old Everfree last night, not so close to Ponyville that we had to call a general evacuation, but it was a near thing. The lot of us were working our tails clean off trying to contain that beast, and it looked like we were finally gonna lose, when all of a sudden Pinkie Pie and Twilight – the two ponies I understand least in this whole town, for different reasons – show up with some sort of magical payload on a little pony-wagon. Twilight pulls up a shell of ice magic and the two of them, plus cute little Spike, just cannonball their fool selves straight into the thick of the blaze. Little over an hour later, they come back out, and suddenly the fire ain't so truculent anymore. Hoof-bumps and hip-hip-hoorays for Twi and Pinkie all around, and then the two of them head on back to Ponyville for a well-deserved rest, leaving me and my earth pony kin to keep up with the fire-fighting.

I'll tell you one thing, though: even a normal non-truculent non-magical fire takes a lot of doing to put out. And by the time I staggered my way back to the home barn, the sky was already hinting like it was gonna start turning pink some time real soon. It would be a spell of luck, I thought, if I could tear through some of the less pleasant morning chores (I'm looking at you, hog-slopping) real fast, and get myself a couple hours of shut-eye.

Well, it wasn't to be. Come dawn, Apple Bloom was pounding on my bedroom door to beat the band, going on and on about how she wasn't gonna have a mentor for her school presentation that morning, that Twi had come up to her and apologized like mad but said that something real powerful important had come up overnight and she and Pinkie had to hoof it all the way to Maresachusetts on an emergency road trip. I can't quite figure that pony out, sometimes, but I guess weird all-of-a-sudden errands is part and parcel of being favored of the Princesses and all.

"Apple Bloom," I said, "I don't know squat from diddly when it comes to pulling electricity out of an apple. Only thing I know how to pull out of an apple is cider, hear?"

"Please? Please, favoritest big sister in the whole wide world?"

"That may be true," I said, "but unless Big Mac has been keeping a terrible secret from everypony, I also happen to be your only big sister in the whole wide world, so that don't mean much."

Then little sis stuck out her lower lip at me and got all big-eyed, and so I sighed and sat her down on the edge of my bed and asked her what I had to do, and she said I was just supposed to stand at the back of the room with a stack of notecards and give her a little prompt if something was to go wrong. And give her moral support, because all the other little ponies were gonna have their science fair mentors there, and she wasn't about to be the only one gone mentorless.

Well, that turned out to be not quite true from the start. There were a couple of us older ponyfolk gathered near the back of the schoolhouse, watching as each little filly and colt took their turns in front of the class, but certainly not enough of us to make one apiece. Rarity, already a fussbudget, had gone into fussbudget overdrive what with all the smoke that had soaked into her bee-utiful coat during her night of fire-fighting, and had basically commandeered the services of the spa for the whole dang-blasted day, leaving poor Sweetie Belle to do her whole "Science of Color" thing all by her lonesome. Rainbow Dash weren't doing much better – she was present and accounted for, but had laid her rainbow head down on one of the school desks at the rear of the room and was snoring softly, a little puddle of spit collecting under the corner of her mouth. And Scootaloo, her charge, wasn't looking so hot neither. The little orange peggy-filly was draped from head to hoof in a black overcape, and she looked plumb wretched.

But Apple Bloom? Apple Bloom was doing fine. That's what you get when you've got the loyalest and most dependable pony in Ponyville as your big sis. And it didn't matter that I was going on a night's sleep that coulda been measured in minutes, and it didn't matter that my teeth and neck were on fire from passing buckets in a bucket brigade all evening, and it didn't matter that from here I had to pretty much go straight on to preparing a little talk of my own, a sort of agricultural petition-thing I was making to the weatherponies of Cloudsdale (Consarnit, Twilight's leaving town all of a sudden, hafta get that cloud-walking enchantment on my hooves before she leaves, details, details.) Anyway, ain't none of that mattered. Because I'm Applejack, the one-time prize pony of Ponyville, and I'm always around to lend a hoof and help everypony I meet be the best that they can be. It's just what I do.

As my sis continued demonstrating on the chalkboard what exactly makes an apple battery work, something about, I dunno, acid or something, Miss Cheerilee sidled up next to me and gave me a smile.

"I'm so glad you could fill in for Twilight Sparkle," said Miss Cheerilee. "I know how nervous you sister has been about this presentation, and I think it does her a world of good to have you here for this."

"Aw, shucks, Miss Cheerilee," I said. "Ain't no trouble."

"It's just so good to know that we've always got somepony like you around to help salve over any little emergencies that come up."

I felt a pang, and I didn't quite know what it was.

"Big emergencies too, am I right?" I said, with an easy grin that suddenly somehow didn't quite match the shape of my heart. I didn't understand why I was saying that at the time. Felt almost like I was fishing around for something.

"Oh, yes, of course," said Cheerilee.

"Like that stampede I turned aside once," I said, continuing to befuddle myself with my own tongue.

"Oh, right! That one last year, right?"

"Right," I said, blinking. "That one last year."

"Of course, the apple battery isn't terribly strong," said Apple Bloom, up at the front of the class, looking with pride at the little contraption that Twilight had helped her make while I fixed milk and cookies for them. "An apple is just not sour, or 'acidic' enough to make a real powerful reaction with the nail. So really, all it can do is ring this little bell over and over again. But Twilight promised me we'd find some of those wild lemons that grow in the Everfree Forest and try this again in the next couple of weeks. Then we'll really see something!"

"Oooh!" said the collected mass of rugrats.

"It's so neat you scored Twilight Sparkle as your science mentor!" said Apple Bloom's friend Twist, hissing and spitting every time she hit a letter "s".

"Yeah!" said Snips, a runty little unicorn colt. "She's really smart!"

"Super-smart," agreed his friend Snails, dreamily.

"Yep!" said A.B., beaming. "And it all comes from my big sis being such good friends with her!"

All eyes turned in my general direction.

"That's… right," I said. Then I smiled and continued, more confident. "Yep! Sure as shootin'. We're great friends, Twilight and me."

"I think we should all be very grateful to have such a wonderful unicorn as Twilight right here in Ponyville to help us out with our science learning!"

"Hear, hear," I said, grinning a touch more weakly.

"Well," said Apple Bloom, pulling the wires out of her apple contraption with her teeth. "I'm just gonna disconnect this, because this little bell here is starting to get annoying. Thank you all for listening to my presentation!"

"And thanks to Twilight Sparkle for helping you with such a fascinating science fair project! Even though she's not here to receive our gratitude." To that, everypony in class agreed.

And then… there was a silence.

It only lasted about a second before Cheerilee broke it. "And thanks to Applejack for filling in today!" Cheerilee said, quickly. Didn't matter, damage was done. I smiled and nodded to everypony, but suddenly, my heart just wasn't in it. The thing I hadn't realized, now as plain as the nose on your face, was that I had become an afterthought.

Ponyville was… different now. Time was, a pony could win a couple blue ribbons, toss some hay around, do a little barrel-racing, and basically be a friend to everypony she met, and that was enough. Celebrity used to be such a simple thing around here.

Not simple, I corrected. Just easier for me to do. Ever since Twilight came to town, rodeos and watermelon-seed-spitting and belching contests, all of which I was pretty darn good at, had sorta started falling by the wayside. Science wasn't just something Miss Cheerilee and her kind hammered into your skull despite your best efforts to the contrary. Science had become "cool". Reading had become "cool". And I mean, I do read and all. I don't want you to think that. But Rainbow Dash didn't used to. That filly used to have a book allergy so strong you could actually scare her with them, and not just by chucking them at her. Now she was spending as much time at the library with Twilight talking that crazy "Daring Do" nonsense as she was playing horseshoes with me. More, actually.

An awful lot more.

I looked over at Dash, still snoring peacefully on the desk, and I realized, to my terrible surprise, how much I'd missed her, lately…

"Hey, thanks, sis," said Apple Bloom, suddenly at my side, along with her little apple device. I had gotten so tangled in my own thoughts I hadn't even notice her come up. "I really appreciate you coming down here to the schoolhouse and helping me out! I'm just sorry the apple battery wasn't more impressive."

"Yeah," I said. "I suppose you would have preferred a lemon, right?"

"Well, yeah!" said Apple Bloom. "You hook up a lemon battery, it can do all kinds of cool stuff!"

"Uh huh," I said. "I bet it can. I just bet it can. I bet if you put a lemon battery up there, all the little colts and fillies would just fall over their own hooves trying to get a look at it, am I right?"

"Well, maybe," said Apple Bloom, a speck of confusion entering her voice.

"'Course I'm right!" I said. "But poor you, you were stuck with an apple today. A big old chunky apple just sittin' there like a bullfrog. Can't hardly get enough electric power out of that thing to ring that little bell, am I right?"

"I thought… it rang pretty good," said Apple Bloom, looking helplessly back and forth between me and the bell.

"Oh, yeah, sure," I said. "Sure, it rings that little bell. But it just rings that same note over and over again! I think it's clear by now that everypony's sick, just sick to death of that pitiful little bell. They want their lemons, right?"

"Uh," said Apple Bloom, backing away a little.

"I bet if you hooked a lemon up to that bell, it could ring out Good King Preakness!" I said, stomping one hoof. "And it'd ring it out so beautiful there wouldn't be a dry eye in this whole classroom, am I right? Apple Bloom, am I right?"

Apple Bloom just blinked at me, and she wasn't alone. Save for the instance of Rainbow Dash, still snoring, I had drawn the eye of everypony in the entire room again.

"Lemons," I said, trailing off. "Y'all just want lemons. Chubby little… purple-colored… lemons…"

"Ooohkay!" said Cheerilee, trying to pull her science fair out of the wreck of me crashing and burning. "Apple Bloom, that was very nice. Next on the agenda we have Scootaloo, who will be talking to us about volcanoes! Scootaloo?"

The heavy-coated shape of Scootaloo, still looking hunched and tired, began dragging herself to the front of the room, pulling behind her a clumsy-looking plaster cone with a hole in the top. Dash didn't even wake up. While this was happening, Apple Bloom took me aside and gave me a weird look. "Sis, you okay there?" she whispered.

"Fine, A.B.," I said, as Scootaloo reached the head of the class. "Just a little tired, is all. Let's just watch your friend's volcano thing."

Moving slowly and carefully, Scootaloo arranged a box of baking soda and a clay jug of vinegar on the little platform her little cone was built on. Finally satisfied, the little pegasus filly turned to address the class.

"Hello, students of Ponyville Elementary," purred Scootaloo, but not quite in Scootaloo's voice.

"Oh, horsefeathers," I said, leadenly.

Scootaloo threw off her cape to reveal a suit of glimmering blue-black barding that steamed and smoked like something real cold. Her kinda magenta-colored mane had been replaced with a swirling pinkish cloud that sparkled and glittered in the sunlight.

"IT IS I!" shouted Scootaloo, leaping on top of Miss Cheerilee's empty desk.

"Yeah, we know it's you," I said. Of all the times, why on the busiest possible day…

"YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT'S YOU!" cried Scootaloo. "Or… ME, rather! But I am no longer your beloved classmate Scootaloo! I have transformed myself into a wicked filly of darkness…"

She paused for dramatic effect. I stifled a yawn.

"NIGHTMARE SCOOT!"

Everypony got quiet for a while, and then, the chuckles started. Nightmare Scoot looked a little taken aback. "What?" she said. "What's wrong? AREN'T YOU AFRAID OF ME?"

"Not with a name like that," said Diamond Tiara.

"I once had a nightmare scoot," remarked Snails, thoughtfully. "Okay, so one time there was a whole bunch of really green apples that fell down early, and—"

"Wasn't pretty," said Snips.

"Not at all," agreed Snails.

"Stop it!" Nightmare Scoot yelled. "I have this speech to deliver!" She cleared her throat. "I hope you ponies enjoy learning about volcanoes," Nightmare Scoot intoned, "BECAUSE STARTING RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT, MY VOLCANO PRESENTATION… WILL LAST… FOREVER!"

Cheerilee frowned. "Nightmare Scoot," she said, "I'm sure your volcano presentation is fascinating, but you're eventually going to have to let other ponies take their turn."

"Never!" cried the Nightmare living in Scootaloo's head. "I refuse to lower my volcano presentation to make way for Piña Colada's 'How Plants Grow' thing!"

"You're gonna need a mite more baking soda and vinegar than that," I said, "if you're fixin' to make it last forever."

"I've got a bunch more at home!" snapped Nightmare Scoot. "I have to say, I don't really care for all the disrespectation going on!"

"It's just 'disrespect', Scootaloo," said Sweetie Belle, boredly. "Not 'disrespectation'."

"And with all due 'respectation'," I said, "this all was a little more scary the first time. And the second. And times three through seventy-eight, come think."

"I don't know what you're talking about," sniffed Nightmare Scoot.

* * *

Flicker. This same room, a little less than a year back.

"Starting this instant," said the armor-clad form of Miss Cheerilee, otherwise known as Nightmare Teach, "this school year… will last… FOREVER!"

A bunch of groaning and bellyaching spread through the collected student body.

"But it's only like three minutes until summer break!" protested Apple Bloom.

"Not anymore!" snapped Nightmare Teach.

"I was going to go on vacation with my family," said Sweetie Belle, limply.

"Never fear, students of Ponyville Elementary!" said Twilight Sparkle, bursting through the door of the schoolhouse, all of the rest of us yahoos in tow. "I know who you are, Nightmare Teach, and I will not let you delay summer even for a minute!"

"Hooray!" shouted everypony.

"Spike!" said Twilight, her head high. "Send a message to Princess Luna! Tell her we need her to retrieve the Elements of Harmony from their vault in Canterlot Tower and get them to us, right away! We've got another Nightmare!"

"On it!" Spike replied, grinning.

"The rest of you girls, get into formation behind me. When the Elements of Harmony arrive, we'll be ready to crush you like a metaphysical bug, Nightmare Teach. And summer vacation will arrive exactly on schedule!"

"Yaaay!" shouted everypony.

* * *

Flicker.

"Okay, girls, let's get into formation again," said Twilight Sparkle, sighing. "Otherwise I guess, what, apple-bucking season is going to last forever, right?"

"Let's kinda do the rainbow blasting gentle-like this time, how about?" I said. "I mean, that is my brother in there, right?"

Twilight assessed with a critical eye the armor-clad form of Big Mac, framed all around with the glowing autumn leaves of Sweet Apple Acres's south field. "Don't worry, A.J.," she said. "Even though he calls himself 'Nightmare Malice' now, I know he's still your brother."

"Um, excuse me," said Fluttershy. "I don't mean to be a bother, you know, while we're in the middle of a climactic boss battle and all, but, I thought Big Mac was calling himself 'Nightmare Malus', not 'Nightmare Malice'." Fluttershy twirled a piece of mane around one hoof. "I'm probably wrong, but I, um, just thought I'd say that."

"What's the difference?" said Pinkie. "I don't hear a difference!"

"'M-A-L-U-S'," said Fluttershy. "Not 'M-A-L-I-C-E'. Um, I think."

"Fluttershy makes a good point," said Twilight, stroking her chin with one hoof. "'Malus' being the genus that apple plants fall into, of course. It's just barely possible it's a double meaning."

"If so, I take back what I just said about blastin' him gentle," I said. "If Big Mac is actually usin' wordplay on us, then he's further gone than I care to admit."

"Here, let's ask." Twilight called out to the Nightmare. "Nightmare!" she shouted. "We were wondering if you could shed some light on the question of whether your name is clever wordplay or not!"

The Nightmare took a moment to ponder. "Nnnope," he eventually said.

"'Nope' it's not?" Twilight shouted back. "Or 'nope' you can't shed any light on the question?"

"Who cares!" shouted R.D. "Let's just blast him!"

Twilight sighed again. "Yeah, okay. Spike, send another message to Princess Luna and have her fetch the Elements of Harmony."

"She never got a chance to take them back this time!" Spike said. "They're still in that locked chest in your workroom!"

"Right, right," said Twilight. "Okay, just go bring them here." She fixed my brother with a stern, if a little tired, stare. "What do you think about that, Nightmare Malice, or Malus, or whatever? Are you ready for a little rumble in the orchard?"

The Nightmare pawed the ground with one hoof. "Eeeyup," he said.

* * *

Flicker.

Twilight hung her head.

"Okay, what," she said. "What. What's going to last forever this time?"

The pale-gray hovering pegasus filly with the weird-looking eyes fixed one of them on Twilight, the other kinda looking off in another direction entirely.

"Muffins!" shouted Nightmare Derp, throwing her hooves wide, her black armor spraying condensation all over the rest of us in the doing so. Rarity scornfully brushed the water off her coat, looking right petulant about it.

"Muffins aren't a thing with temporal duration!" yelled Twilight, finally losing it. "'Muffins' can't last forever!"

Nightmare Derp blinked a couple times at Twilight, the drips from her armor starting to create a mud puddle at her hooves.

"Yes they can!" she replied, after a time.

"UGGGH," said Twilight, rolling her eyes and then throwing a hoof over them. "Okay, whatever. Just… what the heck ever. Spike, go fetch the Elements of Harmony from the card table by the door where we tossed them a couple minutes ago."

"Maybe you should just keep them with you," said Spike. "It's tiring running back and forth like this all the time! I've got short legs!"

"I'll consider it, under the circumstances."

"I kind of want muffins to last forever," protested Pinkie.

"It's the principle of the thing, okay?" growled Twilight back at her. "Look, let's just unleash the Magic of Friendship on this abomination and then you can bake so many muffins it will feel like muffins are lasting forever. How's that?"

"Sounds peachy to me!" said Pinkie, grinning wide.

"Fine," said Twilight. "What about you, Nightmare Derp? You like the sound of that?"

Nightmare Derp thought about this for a while.

"Muffins!" she decided.

* * *

Flicker, back to the good old here and now.

"None of those were me, exactly," said Nightmare Scoot, perched on the edge of Miss Cheerilee's desk, hanging her head. "It's not like we're the same evil person time after time wearing a different body. But it does kinda feel like I've got the voice of somepony else in my head, talking to my really really jealous part. And telling me it's a good idea to wear armor and sneer and stuff."

"I understand completely," I said. "So what got you envious?"

Nightmare Scoot gestured around in a sort of wild, aimless way. "Why can't I figure out this flying thing?" she said. "Sport Pepper over there can fly, and she's younger than I am!"

I glanced back at Scoot's classmate, a little yellow-green thing from the Pepper family, sitting in the corner all hunkered down and looking unsettled for being pointed at. Pepper family is Ridge folks, and foreigners, and strict old-school Demiurgists to boot. They keep pretty much to themselves, relying mostly on home schooling to teach their young, but every so often their solid earth pony blood throws a wild pegasus foal, and those usually get sent here to the public school, mostly to keep them out of the rest of the clan's manes, because Grower almighty, Pepper-clan pegasi are real hellions. Good people, though. And one of the kin up on the Ridge is a real fine earth stallion named Bell, just about my age, shy enough to be adorable and strong enough about the neck and chest to make the hair on a girl's withers prickle. I tell you something, last public hoedown, we were graced with the presence of Mister Bell Pepper, and lawks, but he was a sight, all gussied up like that. Makes a pony want to invite him up to your own orchard and see if you can't tempt him into bucking a few trees for you while you watch, but I can't start thinking things like that or I have to go out and dunk my head in the watering trough, and, wait, where was I?

Oh, right. Saving a science fair from the wicked depredations of Nightmare Scoot. Forgot myself there, for a second. Ahem.

"And what about Pound Cake?" continued Nightmare Scoot, sniffling, thankfully deaf to my inner blabbering. "Pound Cake could fly when he was like a month old!"

"Be that as it may," I said, "I'm not quite grasping how keeping a volcano demonstration going forever really helps your situation, or even has anything to do with it at all."

"I had to make something last forever!" wailed Scootaloo.

"Of course," I said.

Cheerilee caught my eye. "Applejack, may I have a word?"

"Sure," I said to her. "Alright, Nightmare Scoot, you just sit tight and don't go making anything last forever while I'm gone. You hear?"

"Yeah," said Nightmare Scoot, sullenly. I followed Cheerilee out the door of the schoolhouse into the bright daylight outside.

"I didn't want to interrupt you in there," said Cheerilee, "but maybe we should get Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony here."

"I don't know, Miss Cheerilee," I said. "I mean, every time somepony gets taken by the Nightmare, we just haul out the Elements and smack 'em around with them for a while. And sure, when we had to give Luna what for, I could see that. She is a princess, and an alicorn, and all. But is it really such a good idea to be burning charge on the most powerful hoodoo charms in all Equestria just to deal with, say, Nightmare Breezy?"

"Those lightning-fans were pretty terrifying, you must admit."

"Yeah, but he was just gonna make wind last forever, and I don't even know what that's all about. Wind already does last forever, looked at from a certain angle." I shrugged. "I just wonder if there isn't a better way to do this than magic."

"Well, if there is, we haven't found it," said Cheerilee, looking apologetic. "And since Twilight Sparkle is going on a trip, I think maybe we should get her here before she leaves, otherwise none of you ponies are going to be able to use the Elements until she gets back. I've got some very exciting lesson plans for the next few days, and I'd rather not put them off just because Nightmare Scoot insists on making her science fair project last forever."

"Sure," I said. "Yeah, you'll probably want Twilight here to deal with this, then." And the real kicker was that I didn't disagree, as such. It made perfect sense what Cheerilee was saying. I mean, sometimes you need a lemon instead of an apple, right?

It's just that after enough of this goes on, it makes a pony start to wonder what an apple's even good for anymore, do you follow?

Ah, horsefeathers, I cussed. Stinkin' thinkin' again. My mind made up, I walked back into the classroom, crossed right in front of an increasingly miserable-looking Nightmare Scoot, and wandered back in the direction of Rainbow Dash, who hadn't so much as budged throughout this whole thing.

I kicked her. She startled awake.

"Huh?" she snorted. "What the hay? Applejack!"

"Havin' a nice nap?" I said, tapping my hoof and giving her my best green-eyed glare.

R.D. looked shifty-eyed. "It wasn't bad," she said. "I give it a seven out of ten."

"Fine, just fine," I said. "You might be interested to know that your science buddy got taken by the Nightmare a while back."

Dash blinked, sat up in her desk, and tried to focus on the front of the room. "Wait, what?" she said. "Scootaloo?"

"Hey, Dash," said Nightmare Scoot, waving tepidly.

"Oh, brother," said Dash. "What's she gonna make last forever, this dumb science fair?"

"Pretty much," I said. "One might think this wouldn't come as a real powerful surprise to you, though, on account of you having been in the best position to see the armor and such earlier this morning."

"You know, I did notice the armor," said Dash, frowning. "I thought it was a kid thing. You know, kids, right?"

"Uh huh. Well, Miss Cheerilee wants us to E-of-H her fast and easy, and I guess there ain't nothing' wrong with that idea, so I reckon we should go get the others."

"Right," said Dash, hopping into the air and flapping her way over toward Nightmare Scoot. "I'll get Rarity and Fluttershy. You snag Pinkie and Twilight. And once we're done here," she said, addressing the Nightmare directly, "we're gonna have a little talk about being jealous of other ponies, aren't we?"

"Okay, Dash!" said Scootaloo. Even the depths of Nightmare couldn't squash that little filly's hero-worship.

Dash tousled the weird sparkling energy that had replaced Scootaloo's mane, then turned back to me. "Okay! Back here in like ten!" she shouted.

"Ten it is," I said, right on Rainbow's hocks. With the sort of bored desperation that comes from knowing that you, only you, are responsible for one hundred percent of the mundane day-to-day evil-quenching in this here town, I sashayed out the door again and back out onto the green school lawns.

I was gonna rustle me up a couple of lemons.

06 - Hip-Deep in Vision

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Six: Hip-Deep in Vision

"Hey, Rarity!" I said, invading Rarity's personal space. "You had any of that there lemonade punch yet?"

"I… was just about to, Applejack," said Rarity, taking one dainty step back from me and magically brushing a few threads of hay off her tail. "It looks delicious, and I'm going to take a wild guess from your enthusiastic reaction that it is."

"Uh huh," I said, nodding vigorously. "Uh huh."

"I'm… also going to take a wild guess from your enthusiastic reaction that it is just a little teeny bit powerful on the alcohol front." She scrunched up her mouth. "Typical Pinkie," she said.

"Naw," I replied. "It ain't the alcohol making it delicious. It's that ginger beer. Or them lemons. Or how they go together, synergistically-wise."

Rarity blinked. "Did you just say 'synergistically' at me?"

I barked a laugh. "It ain't a cuss word, Rarity!" I said. "It just means things working together to be greater than the sum of their parts!"

"I know perfectly well what it means," said Rarity. "I can't believe that you do."

"It's all by-product of all this science I got bombin' around in my noggin!" I exclaimed.

"Okay, then," said Rarity, backing another step away, less dainty this time. "That's… wonderful, Applejack."

I grinned crookedly at her. "Ain't it, though?" I said. "Well, I'm off! Going to meet the stallion of my dreams!" I dusted off my best upper-crust Manehattanite accent. "Ta ta, darling!"

"Ta ta, indeed," said Rarity, brow all furrowed. I galloped off to the left, then back off to the right, then left again.

"Hey, Big Mac," I said as I went. "Try the punch! It's delicious. Hey, Rose! Awful good punch they got! Granny! Try the punch!"

Ain't this exciting?

* * *

I batted my eyelashes at the powerful swarthy-green hunk of stallionhood that was Mister Bell Pepper.

"Hey, Bell," I said, huskily. "You, uh, tried that lemon punch yet? It's mighty tasty."

Bell lifted his head and looked up at me. He had had his eye focused on a little chore-stool what had gotten tucked away under a table, giving that little piece of furniture way too much attention for what it was, just a hunk of wood on three legs. Bell's attentions would be better spent on a deserving target. A ready-and-willing palomino mare of my very close personal acquaintance, such as.

"Oh, hello, Señorita Applejack," said Bell, tossing his mane out of his eyes and just about making my knees buckle underneath me in the doing so. "Having tasted the rest of your foods, I am positive that it is, but." He shrugged. "The drink is not our family's way. Some prohibitions are best left unviolated."

Oh, you big sweet thing, I thought. "Suit yourself," I said, cheerily.

"I must look a perfect, what, 'stick-in-the-mud' to you?" he said, blushing a little under the green. "I do not join in the punch, I do not join in the dancing. All I do is stand over here by the wall."

"Well, the dancing has been a little crazy. And hard to understand." Although, suddenly, now that I was thinking about it, the pieces of Pinkie's hypercube dance were starting to fall into place. All a pony needed to do was presume the existence of a hypothetical space with greater than three orthogonal dimensions, hear? Ain't so difficult. I blinked away the concept of n-level space and sidled up to Bell a little, causing that cute little flush of his to burn even brighter.

"Well, looky there," I said. "I always thought you was a green Pepper, but in this light, looks like you got some red in you, around the cheek area."

Bell covered his face with one hoof. "I am sorry," he said, chuckling.

"Don't be sorry," I said. "I like 'em a little shy."

Bell went right cherry-colored. I called that a good sign, so I charged on. "Now that my friend Pinkie ain't on stage no more," I said, "I reckon the dancing's gonna stay sedate for a spell. When the band gets off their break and back up there, you, uh, care to join me for a little spin around the floor?"

"Yes," said Bell, laughing a little at my forwardness. "Yes. I would very much enjoy this thing, Señorita. And I apologize for not doing things the gentlepony way and requesting it of you first."

My stomach quivered. "Shucks, Bell," I said. "You're a perfect gentlepony. You just need to speak up and tell me what you want, is all."

I leaned in real close to that pony, closer than I ever had been. "Because you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I'd do for you," I whispered in his ear.

Bell's eyes went a little wide. "That… um, that is good to know," he said, nervously.

"And I tell you something else, sugarcube," I continued, the brain-fizz bubbling suddenly hot. "I got me an appointment to go up to Cloudsdale and talk about science day after tomorrow, but when I get home, you and me's gonna have us a right proper one-on-one." I touched one hoof to his chin. "And then we'll see if we can't make you violate some of them prohibitions."

"Aha," said Bell, visibly sweating. "Cloudsdale, you say?"

"YES!" I shouted, whipping around dramatically. "I was gonna do a silly little talk about how maybe them weatherponies should use pumps instead of tornadoes to get water up to that there cloud-factory they got, but I realize now how narrow my vision's been! Why stop with a pump? Why do we even need clouds in the first place, Bell?"

"Rain… water?" said Bell, bumping into the side-table behind us, knocking over a glass of something. Berry Punch, who had been standing at the table, sketching designs onto a napkin and muttering something about matter or anti-matter or something, cussed blue at him, grabbed her plans in her mouth, and stalked off. Weren't like her to be so short, but I didn't have time to reflect on that there incongruity, 'cause I was hip-deep in vision again.

"Rainwater, hah!" I said. "And y'all think clouds is the best way to deliver that, do you? Atomize the water so that them peggies can personally ferry it to every corner of Equestria and then spend valuable hoof-labor dumping it back on the ground? Why are we wasting our time with that? Why don't we just have pipes running across the sky with little spigots in 'em?"

"That is… a lot of pipes."

"I KNOW!" I screamed. "It's so beautiful!" I grabbed Bell by the shoulder and gestured at the sky beyond the roof of the barn. "Can't you just see it? A vast network of shiny metal, a web of glittering industry, covering the whole sky. They could have one of them electrical switching devices up there in Cloudsdale Central, could turn the entire sky on or off like a dang faucet! And once the gantry was in place, we could mount a whole mess of them electric unicorn lamps on it, real big ones, so we'd get light to grow crops by, twenty-four-seven! Turn all Equestria into a giant greenhouse! Predictable conditions forever! Perfect pony control!"

"Plants need sleep, Señorita Applejack," said Bell. "Everything needs sleep."

"NOT ME!" I yelled. Then I gave a crazy-laugh. "Thunderation, Bell, once we got them lamps in place, why would we even need the Sun?!?"

"Applejack," said Bell, calmly, "I am going to look at that stool some more, please."

"You threatened by progress, Mister Bell Pepper?" I said, a playful little taunt.

"Progress is one thing," said Bell. "Madness is quite another. Madre Ciela, Applejack, I did not think that you would be this kind of pony when I came to know you. Even forgetting all this crazed blasphemy, you speak of 'going to Cloudsdale', as if it were a thing that we earth ponies can even do!"

"Hah!" I said, waggling my hooves in his face. "See them little wiggles of light? I got me some cloudwalking powers!" I galloped over in the direction of the buffet, carving a path through the crowd, and returned, dragging Derpy's cloud (with Derpy still on it) back over to Bell with my teeth. "And it ain't just my feet, neither!" I said, spitting the cold wet floss-candy taste of raincloud out of my mouth. "I got fancy pegasus voodoo and a brain full of science, so y'all better just stay out of my way!"

"Can I go back over there now?" said Derpy, through a mouth full of muffin.

"Yeah, sure, see y'all later." Derpy smiled brightly at me, lifted her wings, and cloud-scooted back over to the food area.

"Impressive," said Bell, sardonically, an adverb that done got selected from my newly-improved lexicon by the brain-fizz. "Some other new invention of yours, I trust."

"Nope," I said. "The cloud-walking spell was a gift from my very good friend—"

A red curtain dropped over my mind. The edges of the bubbles turned jagged. All noise and speech were torn away by a sudden howling roar coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, a howling roar that existed nowhere but in my own head.

"—Twilight… Sparkle," I growled.

"Hello!" came that hateful voice. I whipped around again.

"Well, well, well," I said, wrestling my composure back into place. "Speak of the Wolf."

"Hey, Applejack!" said Twilight, all chipper and perk, as she worked her way through the crowd towards me, still wearing that stupid Element crown, her little draconic minion riding along on her back. "Boy, this sure looks like it's gonna be a great party, huh?"

"Judging by the punch, at least!" said Spike, slurping down a cup and rubbing his tummy.

"Now, Spike," warned Twilight. "Go easy on that stuff. I know your incendiary digestive system burns off alcohol before it has a chance to get to your brain, which is the only reason I'm letting you have any at all, but you still know that too much fizzy stuff isn't good for you."

"Yeah," he said. "I know, Master. But it's so delicious."

"Be that as it may, please practice modera— wait, what did you just call me?"

"…Master?" said Spike, shrugging. "Isn't that right?"

"I… guess," said Twilight, dubiously.

"You should really give the punch a try," said Spike. "Master."

"In a minute, Spike," she said, turning her attention back to me. "So, A.J.! Looks like you had a whole lot of early arrivals this time! Some of those cakes over there on the buffet are half-eaten, and the party's only officially been on for, like, five minutes!"

"Pardon me, Señorita Twilight," said Bell. "But—"

"Oh, hey, Bell!" said Twilight. "I'm so glad you could come!"

I bet you are, I thought, seething inside. I just bet.

"I do not mean to interrupt your conversation," said my stallion, mine, "but I am not understanding what you are saying. The barn doors have been open for well over one hour."

Twilight's mouth fell open. "What?"

Bell looked around and found a spare invitation what probably fell out of some pony's saddlebag. He snatched it in his teeth and flipped it upright onto the table. "You see?"

"Oh, no," said Twilight, studying the little card. "Oh no, no, no. Spike, we're over an hour late! Are you sure you read our invitation correctly?"

"Yes, Master!" said Spike. "I'm sure! Please don't punish me too harshly!"

"What?" said Twilight. "I'm not going to – I mean, how did this happen?" Twi began pacing frantically back and forth, dumping Spike from her back in the process. "I hate being late to things! Hate, hate, hate it!"

"I know you do, sugarcube," I drawled.

"Take heart, Twilight Sparkle," said Bell. "There is still plenty of party left to happen."

"Thanks, Bell," replied Twilight, "but it's not like that. I'm glad I didn't miss the party entirely, but misreading a scheduled event just colors the whole rest of my day! I was accomplishing so much around the library while I was waiting for the party to start, and the more I got done, he prouder and better about myself I felt, and now, this!" Twi's lip started in a-quivering. "I can't be proud of how much I accomplished before the party because I did it under false pretenses! Everything I got done just feels bad and wrong, now!"

"¡Ay!," said Bell. "Come here, my little pony." He ushered her back over by the table, pulled the three-legged stool out from under it, and sat her down. "Rest yourself on this lovely little stool."

"You and that stool Big Mac whipped up," I scoffed, my eyes narrowing as the two of them got all comfort-touchy with each other. "You been studying that plain old piece of furniture to the practical exclusion of everything else all night. What's so special about it that makes you give it that kind of attention?"

"If you must know, Applejack," said Bell, curtly, "I think your brother Mac has made a beautiful thing in this stool."

"For Pete's sake, Bell!" I said. "You act like my masterful vision of a shining worldwide irrigation network is a bunch of cow pucky, but you get all muffin-headed about a little old stool! There ain't a single thing fancy about it!"

"Exactly why it is beautiful," said Bell. "It is a good, solid stool, made of knotless wood, well-polished and sanded smooth, perfect in its simplicity. It does everything you need a stool to do." He smiled amiably at Miss Queen-of-Everything Sparkle. "Including providing a seat for a sad purple unicorn."

"Thanks, Bell," said Twilight, managing to sniff away her prissy little snit. "I don't know if you've read any books on the topic, but you might be interested to know that what you're describing sounds a lot like a philosophy known as 'Plainpony'."

"I have indeed studied Plainpony," said Bell, modestly, bowing a little. "We Peppers are not Plain, far from it at times, but I still believe there is much to be learned from studying their creed."

"'Whatever is fashioned,'" said Twilight, smiling, "'let it be plain and simple, unembellished by superfluities which add nothing to its goodness and durability.'"

I was only just a few steps distant. I could have reached out and cuffed Twilight on the shoulder, had I wanted to, and I kind of did. But watching the two of them chat like they were doing made me feel a hundred thousand light-years away, which is to say, approximately five hundred eighty-seven quadrillion, eight hundred sixty-two trillion, five hundred thirty-seven billion, three hundred eighteen million, three hundred sixty thousand miles, give or take some.

"Ha!" continued Bell, his voice sounding tinny and muffled to my ears, like I was hearing him over a wire strung between a couple of tin cans at the bottom of a well. "An interesting version! Is it not funny that your translation itself has some of these same superfluities in it?"

"You've heard a different version?" said Twilight, her voice blurring right into his.

"Yes," said Bell. "'Whatever is fashioned, let it be plain, and simple, and for the good.'"

"Oh, that is better," said Twilight. "Much nicer than the one I read in school. I have to admit, sometimes I think about Plainpony when I look at the buildings in Canterlot. Or even here in Ponyville, for instance. Does our confectionary really need to resemble a giant gingerbread house, for instance? Or is it just frivolity?"

"Some of our barns on the Ridge are built to Plainpony standards," said Bell. "You should come up and see them some day."

"I would very much enjoy that," said Twilight.

I shrieked. Like a dang banshee.

Yes. That's right. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, just like that. It weren't my first sudden outburst of the night, but it was my loudest. Had I been in my right mind, I might have noticed that this time I didn't seem to draw as much attention, for all my volume. Only a few ponies, most of them Peppers, even looked up at me. An increasing number of the party guests had taken to sketching things down on napkins, like Berry Punch, or arranging their plates full of party food into interesting configurations, or even, in one particularly flamboyant case, building a scale model of something or the other out of a pile of loose bricks over in one corner.

I didn't see any of it at the time, nor did I care. "HOMEWRECKER!" I bellowed, shoving Twilight back off the stool and up against the table.

Twilight's eyes went wider than I ever seen them. "Applejack?" she coughed out.

"You hurt the Master!" yelled Spike, throwing hisself at one of my hind legs.

"Spike, no, I'm fine!" shouted Twilight. "Leave her alone!"

"Applejack!" said Bell, muscling himself between us and breaking up our tussle. "Please! I think this is the demon liquor talking!"

"No, it isn't, Bell!" said Twilight. "She's not like this, even when she does get drunk! A.J., what in Equestria has gotten into you? You've gone completely delusional! You aren't married to Bell, you hardly even give him the time of day! You don't have a home for me to wreck!"

"That's right, I don't have a home no more!" I said, fighting my way past Bell to confront her all proper. "I ain't talking about being married to this thing, I'm calling you a home-wrecker 'cause you done gone and wrecked my home! I used to be somepony in this town! I used to bake better than Pinkie Pie, take care of animals least as good as Fluttershy, and outrun anypony in town in a straight land race! But ever since you showed your purple mug in this town, I been your 'second in command'. I practically killed the whole town off with bad muffins, wrecked everypony's gardens with a rabbit stampede, and I came in dead last, last Running of the Leaves! Behind you!"

"You're blaming me for all that?"

"Yes! It's all the fault of the generally increasing you-ness levels of Ponyville! You being here is sucking me dry! And now you're hornin' in on my man, too! Typical unicorn!"

Pinkie bounced into sight. "Hey guys!" she said. "I heard yelling and screaming and I was just coming over to make sure it was the fun kind of yelling and screaming rather than the un-fun kind! Because it sounded a little like the second. Hey, Twilight, you made it!"

"I'm late because I misremembered the time on the invitation," said Twilight, all mortified. "I'm really sorry. But the yelling and screaming part is coming from Applejack, who's apparently gone insane!"

"This ain't insanity! This is a whole deeper level of sanity than I ever had before! I got news for you, Miss Twilight Sparkle: I got me a new metaphor for looking at the world, and it's lit my head right up. You ain't the only smarty-pants pony in Ponyville no more."

"I never was!" protested Twilight. "Not even when I thought Pinkie was a baker instead of a brilliant engineer! Everypony is smart in his or her own way!"

"I am a baker!" sub-protested Pinkie.

"You stay out of this, you covert science-monger!" I said, shooting a glance at Pinkie. "My beef is with this one!"

"A.J., I don't know what's going on, but you really need help," said Twilight. Spike passed her a cup of lemonade punch and she plucked it up with her magic. "No wonder your inner landscape was so dark this morning! I'm not going to break my word to you, but if you let me back into your mind, I think we can do something to fix whatever's wrong. And if I can't, there are plenty of doctors up at the psychiatric wing of the Ponyville Hospital who can, assuming they can find a free bed." She lifted the punch cup to her lips. "We can make this better, Applejack," she said.

Twilight sipped. Her pupils went wide. Her magic flickered out and the cup fell to the barn floor and shattered to glass flinders.

"Twilight?" said Pinkie.

"Oh… my gosh," said Twilight. "Omigoshomigoshohmigosh."

"What?" said Pinkie. "What is it? It's the punch, right? Way too lemony, right?"

"Sweet Celestia, I see it!" said Twilight, even as Spike began picking up the sharp little bits of cup-wreckage at her hooves with his bare claws. "I see it! How have I missed it all these years?"

"What?"

Twilight grabbed Pinkie's whole head in a bubble of magic and dragged her close. "Pinkie, I've transgressed the boundaries and have achieved a transformative understanding of the hermeneutics of quantum gravity!"

"That's great!" said Pinkie, her head glowing purple. "I did that a couple years ago, but nopony would believe me!" She gasped. "We should start a hermeneutics club!"

"Just you two geniuses, huh?" I snapped. "Well I bet I can figure out that hermo-neutered quantum gravy hoo-ha same as y'all. I'm a-gonna whip me up some mental tonics that'll increase my understanding of the truths of time and space, what'll subsequently allow me to formulate even more powerful mental tonics! It'll create an entire cascade resonance scenario in my skull that will have its terminus in me having more smarts than every other pony in Equestria combined!"

"Maybe with me as a significant outlier!" Twilight shot back.

"Oh yeah?" I said, shoving myself back in her face. "You care to put your science where your mouth is, city filly? 'Cause I got a powerful hankering for a real one-on-one smarts competition with y'all, and I ain't gonna pull no mental punches once it's on."

"Ha!" said Twilight. "My understanding of the secret law of the universe is so vast and profound that it renders the very concept of 'competition' meaningless!"

"I'll science you into the dirt, you muckraker!"

"Ladies—" said Bell, looking back and forth between us.

"You stay out of this, Bell!" I barked. "This don't concern you. We's just fighting over ya, is all."

"I'm not fighting with you over Bell!" babbled Twilight. "I don't care about him at all! Interpersonal relationships of anything other than a purely functional or operational nature will become increasingly meaningless as we approach the Singularity, so why not get a head start?"

"What about friendship?" said Pinkie, blinking.

Twilight's lip twitched. A couple strands of hopelessly beeswax-coated mane – Twi's hair can be best described as 'a mite scruffy' even on its best days – sprung out from the pack like over-tightened fiddle strings. "Friendship is a transitional step on the path to ascension!" she cried, as the Tourmaline Diadem shuddered on her head, its stone suddenly going a bit purple-colored. "A power to be harnessed," she continued, "but eventually destined for obsolescence as greater powers than it are discovered!"

"Glad we won't have any distractions like that, then," I said. "On account of it messing with the purity of our raw intellectual competition."

"I would be laughing at this conversation you two are having," said Pinkie, "but you're kind of scaring me."

"So what do you say, Canterlot?" I said. "Is it on?"

"Oh, it's on," confirmed Twilight, sweetly venomous.

"An excellent idea, little ponies. Excellent, excellent, excellent."

A hush fell over the room. All eyes in the barn turned to the stage; at the square dance microphone stood Professor Danger, his bright-eyed assistant hovering on her cloud nearby.

The Professor tapped a couple times on the microphone with one hoof, making it boom like a drum.

"Fillies and gentlecolts," began the Professor, "it is now time to begin a new dance..."

07 - A Science Fair For Grown-Ups is Proposed

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Seven: A Science Fair for Grown-Ups is Proposed

"Fillies and gentlecolts," began the Professor, "it is now time to begin a new dance, and this time, I will be your caller."

"Wheee!" exclaimed Pinkie, leaping about a yard in the air. "A new dance! What's it called? The Hoof-Sock Hop? The Fillydelphia Slide? Oo oo, can you show everypony those Lipizzaner moves that you taught me that one time back in college?"

"Nothing so mundane, liebchen," said the Professor. "Please to be patient, though. All will be revealed in time. The first step is this: I require all the bearers of the Elements of Harmony to stand before the stage, please."

The six of us did so, Twilight and me exchanging scowly glares all the while. I made a point of kicking a little hay in her face as we walked.

The Professor looked down on all of us from the stage once we got there. Pinkie was bouncing, Flutters was huddled, but the rest of us stood stock still, staring up at him, waiting for our next command, because the Professor was smart, and good, and worth listening to.

"Fillies of Harmony," announced the Professor, staring down at us, his gray eyes burning. "Too long have you toiled in inner discord and dissonance! You have saved Equestria many times over with the six great Harmonic virtues, each one of you embodying a single quality, but consider this…" The iron-colored pony leaned down over us. "How well do your corresponding virtues relate to your special talents?"

"He talked to me about this a minute ago," I whispered to Dash. "It's a real kick in the head."

"Indeed," said the Professor, doing a hoof flip in my direction. "Fräulein Applejack has already enjoyed the benefit of my words. But the rest of you, please consider: would it not be wonderful for each of you if you could feel like one thing… rather than two? How good it would feel, and how beneficent for the world, if your Element and your Cutie Mark could work together, instead of independently? If there really were a link between apples and Honesty, for instance?" He fixed his glare on Fluttershy, then. "Or a link between butterflies and Kindness?"

"Um," said Fluttershy. "I'm sure it would be nice, yes. Please stop looking at me like that."

Rainbow blinked a couple times and shook her head like she was trying to clear it. Then she jumped into the air, hovering in front of the raised stage. "Excuse me?" she said, glaring at Danger. "What exactly is that supposed to mean? My Cutie Mark matches my Element just fine!"

The Professor scoffed. "Please," he said. "Your Cutie Mark is a lightning-shaped rainbow. Such a thing does not even naturally exist! Have you seen one? Even in the experimental labs of Cloudsdale?"

"Well… no!" she said. "But my talent isn't making rainbow lightning, it's speed!"

"Yes," said Stranger Danger. "And I will show you a way to be even faster and better than you now are. Are you interested, Rainbow Dash?"

"Really?" said Dash, blinking again.

"Undoubtedly," replied Danger.

"All right!" said Dash, doing a loop-de-loop. "Sign me up for that!"

"I will indeed sign all of you up!" said the Professor, his voice booming. "You will be subjects in a grand harmonic experiment of mine in linking talent to power using the exciting new scientific discipline of contraptionology! You may protest that you don't know anything about science—"

"I don't know anything about science," said Fluttershy, hiding behind her hair. "Since, um, you gave me permission to say that, that is."

"This is true, I did," the Professor acknowledged. "I would respectfully disagree with you, however. I believe that all ponies know the fundamentals of science. They just need to reach down deep inside themselves and let that brilliant light shine forth. You six will help me forward the twin causes of science and progress, advance our understanding of contraptionology, and create a brighter future for all Equestria!" He tossed a coin to Derpy, and she made some thunder and lightning and such.

"Thank you, funny-eyed pony," said the Professor. "In addition, you will each receive fifty bits from my pony subjects fund, so there's that, too."

"Can't hardly argue with that," I said.

"Then it is set!" the Professor cried. "Rarity the unicorn, step forward."

She did so. "You," the Professor said, "perhaps the most creative of your circle of friends. You will build me a machine that links diamonds to Generosity, in a causative fashion."

"I… think I see a way," said Rarity, her eyes swimmy. "Hoo hoo hoo! Yes! Idea!"

"Excellent," said the Professor. "My dear student Pinkie Pie, you will come up with a way to link balloons and Laughter."

"Done," said Pinkie, cheerfully.

"Yeah!" shouted Rainbow Dash. "And I'll build a machine that links speed and lightning to Awesomeness!"

"Um," said Fluttershy. "Um. Rainbow, um. That's, um."

"What?" said Dash, rounding on Flutters.

"Um, I'm pretty sure that's not your Element," she whispered, staring at the floor.

Dash frowned. "Of course it is! Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty, Magic, Awesomeness. That's six, right? Which one am I forgetting?"

"Nothing," said Fluttershy. "I'm sure you're right."

"Here, darling, have some punch," said Rarity, lifting a glass in front of Fluttershy with her freaky blue magic stuff. "It'll make you feel better. It did me."

"Okay," said, Fluttershy, staring all forlorn into the little cup. She took a teeny sip, and all of a sudden her eyes went funny. "Eek!" she said.

"Fluttershy, dear?" said Rarity, tilting her head. "Whatever is the matter?"

"Get it out of my head!" warbled Fluttershy. "Get-it-out-get-it-out-get-it—"

There was a noise that sounded kind of like the word "sproingk".

"S… so… so many wonders…" said Fluttershy, her now-shining eyes fixed on a point about six hundred yards beyond the barn wall.

"Fluttershy, you know what you must do, of course," said Danger, cutting in all smooth. "You must build me something that links butterflies to Kindness."

"Yes," said Flutters. "I must."

"Applejack, you already have your assignment. And finally, Twilight Sparkle. Prize student of the Sun Princess herself, one of the finest scientific minds in the entire kingdom. I have been... very much looking forward to this."

"My mind's looking forward to this!" said Twilight, practically giggling, and it made me want to buck her in the flank. "And that means I'm looking forward to it, too! Quick, tell me what you want me to do!"

"Twilight Sparkle, in recognition of your superior intellect, I have a particularly interesting harmonic challenge for you. You will link stars to both Friendship and Magic. Can you do that, flaemmchen?"

"Yes I can, Professor!"

"Now wait just one apple-bucking minute," I said. "What's with giving her the special challenges?"

"I think I'll need a special challenge!" said Twilight. "Otherwise, this contest will be over before it starts! Just like when you dissolve thiotimoline in water!"

"Besides," said the Professor, crisply. "Friendship is equivalent to magic. It is the same challenge. Just dressed up a bit."

"Spike," said Twilight, actually drooling a little at the corners of her mouth. "I'll need every ounce of gallium-contained alloy we have. No, wait. More than we have. I'll need every ounce of gallium-contained alloy in Canterlot! Go, minion! Take the night train to Canterlot and fetch me what I require!"

"Yes, Master!" said Spike, lurching toward the door of the barn. "I go! I go!"

"Hey, why does Twilight get a minion?" protested Dash. "I want a minion!"

Scootaloo zipped up to the stage and stood beside Dash. "Me!"

"Thanks, kid," said Dash, "but I'm trying to link lightning and Awesomeness, not baking soda and fail." At her neck, the Loyalty amulet shook a little.

Scoot's face dropped, followed by her whole head. Apple Bloom pushed in through the crowd to the clear space in front of the stage. "Hey!" she squeaked, charging up to Dash. "That was really mean!"

"She's right, Dashie," said Pinkie, frowning deep. "That really was a mean thing to say. What's gotten into you?" She looked over at the rest of us, then; Twilight and me were still scowling at each other, Rarity was kneeling in the dirt of the barn floor, scratching patterns into the dusty old boards with one hoof, and Fluttershy was staring at the wall and sometimes bumping into it with her face. "What's gotten into all of you?"

"Patience, my dear pupil," said the Professor. "Your friends are merely excited about their first exposure to real science. Everything is fine."

Pinkie narrowed her eyes at him. "You promise?"

"Pinkamena, I promise you this."

"Pinkie Promise?"

"Yes," said Stranger Danger. "Cross my heart, and so forth."

"Okay," said Pinkie, uneasily, glancing back at us all one more time.

Stranger Danger turned back to the microphone. "The rest of you!" he thundered. "All you citizens of Ponyville! Unlike these six fillies, you have no special powers of Harmony, but do not let that dissuade you! You, too, can participate in this grand Science Fair for Grown-Ups I am now proposing! Starting tomorrow, you will all construct a project, using science, on the topic of your choice. One midnight hence, you will bring all your inventions to my camp at the lemon grove up on the Ridge, where the Mayor and I will be waiting! Is that not right, Frau Mayor?"

"Well!" said Mayor Scroll, standing over by the wall, a punch cup curled in one forehoof. "I certainly approve of these large civic celebrations, yes! But does that mean that I can't build a project myself?"

"If you are to help me judge, then naturally your project will be exempt from contest consideration. But do not let that dissuade you from constructing one regardless!"

"Yes!" cried the Mayor. "Oh, things are going to be so ever-so-efficient from now on! Thank you, Stranger Danger!"

"You are welcome, schöne Frau."

Mayor Scroll blushed. "Rascal. Speaking the language of love to me like that."

"Guttural Hoofingtonian," said Professor Danger. "An elegant language for an elegant lady."

There was a crash of thunder. Stranger Danger shot a glare over at Derpy, who was smiling happily and bouncing up and down on her thundercloud. "No!" snapped the Professor. "Thunder and lightning is not for amorous exchanges! Sinister revelations and exultations of science only!"

"Sorry," said Derpy, stopping.

"Is all right," said the Professor, rubbing at his poll. "Please just wait for me to throw money."

Meanwhile, murmurs were spreading all through the crowd of party guests, kind of like the wildfires we all had been fighting just last night, though all that seemed years past us now. Scientific theories were beginning to fly, tiny little squabbles began breaking out on the finer points of some postulate or another, and slowly, the atmosphere in the barn began coming to a slow boil. From out of this all stepped Don Jalapeño, the tiny Pepper patriarch, knees quivering but full upright with rage.

"Professor Danger," wheezed the Don. "We Peppers respectfully decline to join in this foolishness. This seems like an idea borne of the hot fires of liquor, not reason, and we will have nothing to do with it."

"Of course," said the Professor, shrugging. "It is not mandatory. In fact, it will be good to have some non-participants. What is an experiment without a control group, after all?"

"An observational study!" said Pinkie.

"Very good, Pinkamena," said the Professor. He smiled, easy-like, showing teeth, at Don Jalapeño. "Please, feel free to retreat to your little enclave," he said. "I shall not stop you."

The Don locked eyes with Professor Danger for a moment. Then, he called over his shoulder to his family. "Peppers!" he said. "¡Vámonos! This party is over." The Peppers commenced a-filing out of the barn, with much suspicious glancing.

As Bell passed, on his way to following his kin, he grabbed my leg with a hoof. "Applejack," he hissed. "Forget this contest. Come with us. Please."

"What?" I sputtered. "And let that little city filly win this here science fair on a forfeiture? You don't understand what's at stake here, Bell. This ain't just me and Sparkle there. I'm a-fightin' for the soul of Ponyville. The real Ponyville. Like it was before she showed up. In fact…" I narrowed my eyes. "This is her and you putting your heads together to hock me, ain't it. She put you up to this. Trying to distract me."

"No, Applejack. This is madness. You should be able to see that this is madness. There is something desperately wrong here."

"All's I see is somepony trying to hold me back from my delicious science," I said. I motioned toward the door with my muzzle. "Anyway, you better hustle. Your family's waiting for you."

Bell clenched his jaw, like he was about to say more, but then turned away. "Very well. Farewell to you, Applejack."

"Yeah, don't let the barn door hit you," I grumbled.

As the Peppers shuffled out, the Professor stepped back to the microphone. "Okay then!" he said. "You all have your ideas started, yes?"

There was a general mutter of agreement. "Excellent!" said the Professor. "Oh, this is going to be such fun. Now there is one thing more, and it is critically important. You all are going to have a very busy day tomorrow. So you will all leave now, go to sleep, and dream sweet dreams of science. Your day of work begins tomorrow at dawn."

"C'mon," said Berry Punch, shoving her little sister Piña toward the door. "Let's go, kid."

"But Berry!" said Piña, staring at her. "You never leave a party this early!"

"You heard the professor!" snarled Berry. "Your big sister's got big plans for tomorrow, involving booze." She struck a head-high pose. "Antimatter booze."

"Yes, Sweetie Belle," Rarity chimed in. "Let's say our goodbyes and get you home. Something very important is happening."

"What?" asked Sweetie Belle. "What's happening?"

"Something wonderful," replied Rarity, all sing-song. "You'll see."

Twilight grinned a horse-apple eating grin at me as all the little ponies began leaving the party, leaving behind half a party's worth of uneaten food. "You all set for tomorrow, cowpony? I hope your invention can cut the mustard."

"Oh, it'll cut the mustard, all right," I said. "It'll cut it, cut it again, dice it into tiny chunks and then jump up and down all over it 'til there ain't nothing left but mustard-flavored mud. In fact, I got me such a load of confidence about my invention, I'm even gonna hobble myself for this little hoedown."

"How?"

"I," I said, "am gonna deliver you breakfast tomorrow." I raised my head and looked over at my four actual friends, too. "To all y'all's," I said. "Breakfast and lunch, in fact. Granny'll bake it and I'll take it." Okay with you, Granny?"

"Wha?" said Granny, from across the barn, looking up from a glass of punch.

"Granny says 'yes'," I said. "And even after that, I'll still have time to compromise the fundamental laws of matter and tan your prissy purple unicorn hide, science-style."

"Looking forward to it," said Twilight, turning and heading for the door. "Tomorrow, then."

"Hey, guys!" said Pinkie, her voice bright but suddenly a-quaver. "Hey! What are you all doing! There's plenty of cake and stuff left!"

"Sorry, Pinks," said Dash, going airborne. "You heard the Professor. I need a good night's sleep if I'm gonna win that science fair. And I am gonna win it, because you girls won't believe what I've got cooking up."

"Oh, really, Rainbow?" said Rarity. "What?"

"Check this out," said Rainbow. "Two words: Super Mega-Awesome Electric Lightning Augmentation Exo-Armor complete with Jet Pack. It's going to be ninety-eight kinds of radical, and as you know, only ninety-six kinds have yet been discovered. And if I'm gonna be discovering two heretofore-unknown types of radicalness tomorrow, I need to engage in some extreme napping tonight. Seeya!" In a rainbow streak, Dash zipped out one of the upper barn windows and was gone.

"Rarity?" said Pinkie.

"The creative urge calls, dearie," said Rarity, shoving a reluctant Sweetie Belle in front of her. "Cheers, though!"

"Fluttershy?" said Pinkie, sounding more and more desperate. "We were going to do a party for Iggy, remember? Iggy didn't get his party!"

"I'm sorry, Pinkie," sighed Fluttershy, "but I really have to go plan some abominations of nature. I hope you understand."

"Of… course?" said Pinkie. The pink party pony turned back to me, her eyes pleading. "Applejack, please, can we run over to Twilight's just real quick and celebrate with Iggy? Please?"

"That library is enemy territory, Pinkie," I said, shaking my head. "I ain't setting hoof in there, 'cept to deliver the food, like I promised."

"But… Twilight's your friend! We're all friends with Twilight!"

"We're rivals now," I said. "We've always been rivals. You just maybe haven't seen it. But that's you." I turned away from her, back toward the stairs leading to the family's living quarters. "Ain't your fault you're shortsighted."

Apple Bloom looked over at me. Then she marched over to Scootaloo, who was still standing right in the exact same spot she was in when R.D. told her off. "Come on, Scootaloo," said my little sis. "Let's get out of here."

"I thought getting possessed by a demonic manifestation would be the worst thing that happened to me today," said Scoots. "Shows how wrong that was."

"Let's cheer you up a little. I've got some fizzy suckers I been saving for just this kind of emergency."

"Yeah, okay," said Scoots, following my sister upstairs ahead of me.

"Everypony, wait!" yelled Pinkie, to hundreds of deaf ears. "Wait! The party was just getting started!"

She sagged, then. "What happened to my party?" she said.

"My dear Pinkamena," said the Professor, leaping off the stage, his coat billowing out behind him and all trace of his gimpy leg gone. "The party… is just beginning." He tossed a coin in the air; Thunder and lightning. "Very nice," he said, crossing to the open door and the bleak black night outside.

"Thanks!" said Derpy, cloudscooting after him, stowing the bit piece. "I really try!" And then they were gone, too.

I climbed upstairs and left Pinkie behind me, alone, standing hangdog in the middle of the empty barn, surrounded by the wreckage of an unfinished party. It was almost enough to break a pony's heart, but I didn't have time to raise the emotion.

I had brain-work to do.

* * *

The buzz was intolerable. Sleep was impossible.

I tossed and turned under my little red blanket, folding and unfolding my apple-print pillows under my head. I was thinking of yeast.

Okay, so the reasoning goes, yeast breaks down the sugar in apple juice, and somehow that makes it spit out alcohol. All well and good. But… but what if you could break sugar down on a more fundamental level? Sugar ain't the smallest kind of particle there is, even though those little grains are pretty tiny. Twilight, curse that demon pony's name, but Twilight had once told me that everything in the whole entire world, from ponies to prunes, is made up of little bits of crud called "atoms". And them things is made up of little bits of crud called "hadrons". And them things is made up of little bits of crud called "quarks". So if a pony can make normal alcohol by breaking down sugar molecules, what kind of alcohol could she make if she broke sugar atoms down into sugar hadrons? Or even sugar quarks?

I didn't know, but I bet it'd have a strange flavor.

So how would a soul do that? I thought, turning my little pony body over and over under the sheets even as I turned the idea over and over in my skull. Totally elementary, I eventually decided. You just needed to break the yeast down equally small. Once you got some yeast quarks in there, I bet they'd strap the ever-loving tar out of them sugar quarks. Then you'd get some regular hard quarkic cider action going on. And if normal alcohol reduces your inhibitions enough that you start saying what's really on your mind, which is to say, causing you to be Honest, how much more Honest would you get if you drank superpowerful subatomic quark cider?

Honest enough to leave that Twilight Sparkle in the dust, I thought, grinning with a hair of self-satisfaction.

Problem was, how to get yeast quarks in the first place? How does a body break something up that small? Ain't no chisel made what can split something on a subatomic level. The only thing small enough to break a yeast hadron in two would be…

…another yeast hadron! And then, bam, I had it. What if I took some of that copper condenser tube from the still, but instead of running cold through it, I ran yeast through it and shook it around real hard? Them particles would start smashing into other particles and breaking them in two, over and over and over again, 'til all that I'd have left, eventually, was yeast hadrons. I mean, I bet they'd be pretty big chunky yeast hadrons, not real fine-grained, but they'd be hadrons nonetheless. And when those hadrons bashed together one last time, kapow! Yeast quarks!

And the vision bubbled into my brain. Modifications I could make to the yeast vat on my old pot still. Things I could graft onto it. Probably I would need electricity; no problem, I could run a line to the power plant at the dam. It was all so simple!

I reached over to my nightstand, grabbed a pencil in my mouth, and held it over my little bedside notebook, the one I use to write down all my apple-related dreams. I scribbled upon a fresh blank page the following words:

LARGE HADRON CIDER

I dropped the pencil, and it clattered to the floor. "Large hadron cider," I said, quietly. "Knock me down and steal my teeth, that's it. I got it. I found the link." Then I giggled like a school filly, got up from my bed like a shot, and charged down to the kitchen, taking the steps about four at a time.

I wasn't the first one in my family to have the restless mind. By the time I flew around the last turn of the stairs leading to the kitchen, I could see the lamps on down there, and when I hit ground, there was my big brother Macintosh, noshing on a hunk of cold apple cobbler and staring at a roll of parchment with a worried look on his face.

"Hey, Big Macintosh," I said, grabbing a serving spoon from the drawer and scooping myself up a hunk of the cobbler too. "You can't sleep either, huh?"

"Nope," he said, frowning at his parchment.

I moseyed on over. "Whatcha got there, Mac?" I said, peering over his shoulder. "Looks like a picture of them dang-fool worthless hail cannons that that we got suckered into buying, time was. Fat lot of good them things did last summer, huh? Imagine, us believing you could break up hail as it was falling using big loud booms."

"Ayup," Mac said.

I cocked my head. "Except… looks like you got 'em upside down," I said. "And what's that label down there?" I squinted. "'Sonic Plowshare'?"

"Ayup."

"'Related ideas,'" I continued reading. "'Other sonic tools, such as, sonic hammer, sonic screwdriver, sonic crescent wrench, etc.' What's 'ettic' mean?"

"I think it means 'And Such,'" he said, scratching at his head.

"Why don'tcha just say 'And Such'?"

"Can't figure that out," said Mac.

I pulled the plans over to me. "And how's this thing supposed to work anyway? You gonna be digging furrows in the earth using sound, now?"

"Ayup."

"How?"

"Well, A.J." said Mac, ponderously, "I wonder iff'n you understand what sound even is."

"Tell me," I asked suspiciously.

Mac took a deep breath.

"All right then," he said, the words coming like grapeshot. "First thing you need to understand is that sound, as a physical phenomenon, independent of the sensory interpretation of same, is best described as the propagation of energy waves via a fluid molecular medium, a phenomenon which is instigated by the kinetic energy of a vibrating source creating areas of relative condensation alternating with areas of relative rarefaction in that medium. Sound as we know it is typically thought of as being propagated through air, or even liquid, but in truth, the fluidity of matter is on a continuum, and while it may well require more energy to instigate waves in a solid substance, those waves will propagate correspondingly f—"

Mac clamped one unshorn hoof over his mouth, staring at me wide-eyed. I stared right back.

"Big Mac," I said, quietly, "what's happening to us?"

"I don't rightly know, A.J.," he said. He stared down at his cobbler, looking suddenly unappetized by it. I kinda felt the same way.

"I got to build me an atomic cider still," I said. "The idea's riding me now, and it just won't let me alone. But once that's done, and I show up Twilight at that science fair tomorrow night, I think I'm gonna put my notes in a drawer and not take them out again."

"Ayup," agreed Macintosh. "We could put them away now, a' course."

I stared at him for a moment.

"No," I said. "No, we can't."

"Nope," he agreed, sadly, staring at his own papers. "Well. Good luck tomorrow, A.J."

"Rrr," I said. "That's just it. I ain't comfortable waiting until tomorrow! I know the Professor told us to sleep, and I trust him implicitly for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but…" I sighed. "It ain't the Apple Family way to wait until daybreak when there's work needs doing."

"Ayup," agreed Big MacIntosh.

"Well, that decides it," I said, pulling away from the table, my cobbler untouched. "I gotta get started. Grower help us all."

"Ayup."

I left my big brother behind me as I climbed back up the stairs to my room. Then I crossed over to my wardrobe, plucked a suit of clothes out with my teeth, and hung it on my dressing stand. It was my suit of baker's whites, all starched and fancy and shining cool blue in the moonlight that leaked in through my little window. This here uniform was a gift from the Princess herself, a souvenir from that time when Pinkie Pie and me got invited up to Canterlot to do that celebrity chef competition thing, a story too long to regale y'all with here. Needless to say, I don't do a lot of baking in my dress-up chef's uniform; it's too tight, and buttony, and in fact I had hardly even touched it since it had gotten laundered clean of the mess from that fateful day of the bake-off. Most days, I think I look kind of ridiculous with it on. But tonight, it just looked right.

Except the hat. Huge poofy white thing, looked like a big old cream puff, which is to say, like Rarity. I picked it up in my teeth and tossed it back into the wardrobe. That ain't no proper hat. I'll take Old Reliable over a froo-froo thing like that any day.

Still wasn't done, though. I thought it over for a while, then rummaged around in the little toolbox under my bed and came up with my cider-pressing goggles. With a quick toss of my head, I flung them around the neck of the dressing stand.

There, I thought to myself, taking the outfit in. Perfect. Button the front up enough, you won't even be able to see this ugly old necklace.

My hoof strayed to the little Elemental amulet, its jewel now glowing a deep cranberry red. Red, I thought. That's good, too. Finally, a proper apple color out of this thing. Nodding satisfied to myself, I took the clothes off the stand, worked my way into my whites, squared the goggles over my eyes, tamped my trusty Stetson back down on my head, and sized myself up in my old mirror. Nelly, I thought, Ain't nopony gonna say I don't look the part tomorrow.

Thus outfitted, I marched downstairs once more, on my way to the outbuilding that tonight housed both my old pot still and my destiny.

I had me a date with some science.

18 - The Absolute Value of Friendship is Equivalent to Magic

* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Eighteen: The Absolute Value of Friendship is Equivalent to Magic

Sure enough, the first thing that happened upon my achieving the real world again was that I got smacked square in the face with a spellbolt coming out from the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie's quicksilver horn, and – Nightmare powers or not – it dang near killed me.

I ain't saying that the sorcery the Nightmare had filled me with was all flim-flam or nothing. Weren't nothing the matter with my dark powers, hear? But this was old magic that Trixie was conjuring, wicked and brutal and like as not forbidden by any number of fancy-pants modern day unicorn conclaves. Disjunction beams? they'd say to themselves. Why in heckfire'd anypony need t'use that sorta witchery? Except them unicorns prolly wouldn't say "heckfire'd". Or "witchery", for that matter. Point is, if the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie had been a member of any respectable guild, that hex she slung at me would have been the end of it. It was a real deal-breaker sort of spell.

Anyhow. As maybe you heard me saying before, everything that is, from rocks to trees to ponies, is made up of tiny little bits of matter just desperately clinging to one another using either ionic or covalent atomic bonds. All Trixie's disjunction bolt had to do was interrupt them bonds for like a second, and the target of her choice would just up and evaporate into the air; and I rightly figured that was her aim with me. I don't mind telling you, having a magic spell try to rip you apart at the atomic level is a mighty powerful level of hurt, but I've been through worse, growing up in the same barn as Apple Bloom and all. So as that blistering pink magic worked me over, I clenched my teeth, bore down hard, and put every scrap of effort I could muster up into the simple act of abiding.

Constancy, I whispered to myself, as the red rim to my vision grew to bright crimson. Never, never, change. As I did so, I could feel all them millions and millions of tiny little bits of me hunker down and hunker down hard, throwing little lassos of dark magic around their compadres and slowing themselves to a dead crawl, clinging together against the cascade of fraying pinkness like they was weathering a hurricane.

It was a real long second.

Then, the storm passed, and Nightmare Delicious emerged unscathed on the other side. I stood there, for a second, smoking wisps of pink energy, legs splayed and knees locked, gasping for breath. Then I set my jaw, got my limbs under me again, straightened up my brand new hat, and fixed the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie with a black stare, a gaze that conjured up the noise of all the howling spirits of Tartarus.

"Y'all," I said, my voice vibrating like a lion's roar, "gonna have to do better than that."

The tiny squawk-box on Twilight's brain-tank crackled to life again. "A—Applejack?"

"No!" I howled, despite myself. "I ain't that creature no more! Name's Nightmare Delicious, wizard!"

Except I am still Applejack, I said, half-pleading, to myself. I'm still here...

Quiet, hissed the part of me that was Nightmare, advancing in slow steps across the plaza toward the unicorn's disembodied brain and her unholy creation, spurs jingling against the dust. Triumph is at hoof.

I nearly screamed at myself, then. Rainbow Dash! Remember why you up and sold your soul in the first place! Rescue Rainbow Dash!

Nightmare Delicious squeezed her eyes shut, and Applejack opened them. For now.

"Right, Dash," I muttered, staggering back a little and trying in vain to blink away the red ring around my eyes. "Gotta... save Dash."

"Hah!" gloated the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, as she watched me wrassle, literally, with my inner demons. "It seems that even calling upon diabolic powers is not enough to make somepony the equal of the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie!"

That ro-bot was just as insufferable as her real-life counterpart, which meant that turning tail and running would be just as damaging to my pride, but the stakes here were a lot higher than my self-esteem. Struggling desperately against the thunder of blood and Nightmare in my head, I ducked out of sight behind a large pile of rubble that might possibly have been somepony's house once upon a time and then hit full gallop in the direction of Carousel Boutique. As I fled, Trixie's voice rang out in laughing triumph behind me. I did my best to shut it out.

In a twinkling, Carousel Boutique rose into sight, the Lanthorn atop it all dark now. The instant I reached the front door, it flew open in my face, the ferocious sound of buzzing insects from inside drowning out the noise of the little bell. A unicorn leapt through the opening at me.

"BEES!" screamed Rarity, her classy military-style uniform all mussed and frayed and her milky-white face covered in tiny red welts. "AAAUGH! THE BEES! THE BEE—"

Rarity stopped, then, noticing me, and a charmed calmness washed across her face. "Oh, science-darling!" she said. "What a look!"

"Uh, thanks," I said. "Listen, Rarity, you gotta step aside or—"

"No, I mean it!" she gushed. "Very classy. Very avant-garde. And the blackened apple-jewel on that choker-band is just the perfect little accent." Rar lifted a hoof and tapped at the busted Element at my throat, whose supporting necklace was now way tighter than it used to be. "I have to say," she finished, "you take to night colors unexpectedly well. It really does make you look rather taller."

I looked down at the fussy little unicorn, now about a head and a half shorter than my Nightmare body. "It, uh, ain't the color, Rar," I said. "But, listen, none of that's important right now! I gotta save Rainbow Dash! From your infernal contraption!"

"Oh, yes, we're all so busy, aren't we?" said Rarity, breezily. "I, for one, am running from a swarm of angry mutant insects at the moment, and I really must be getting on with that. But I just had to take a moment and give you a good word on your remarkable ensemble."

"Thanks?"

"Not at all!" said Rarity. "Now, if you'll excuse me. Ta-ta, darling." She cleared her throat. "AAAUGH! THE BEES! THE BEES!!!" Rarity took off into the night in the direction of the river, the swarm of butter-bee-bats in such hot pursuit that they didn't even spare me a lick of attention. I snorted and shook my head. Ain't even possible to tell half the time when that mare's laboring under the effects of crazymaking poison or if she's just being Rarity.

My path finally clear without having to buck anypony out of the way – something I weren't real eager to get started on given my Nightmare form's demonstrated lack of impulse control – I charged straightaway into the darkened boutique, and saw with my own eyes the vision that the Nightmare had presented to me earlier: Rainbow Dash, suspended above the gemstone furnace on the hair-thin margin of her own flying powers, her wings achingly outstretched and brushing at the glass walls of the gravity tube as she fought tooth and hoof against the unbelievable pull of its beam. Dash's imprisoning cylinder was now absolutely chock-full of shining prismatic radicals, and even though I ain't a weatherpony, I know me a dangerous concentration of rainbow-stuff when I see it. In small quantities, prismatic radicals are safe as paint. Heck, you can even drink an infusion of the stuff without too much ill effect – Pinkie's done it. But you get that much loose rainbow in that small a space all at once, it gets volatile. R.D.'s ma, for example, was a front-line worker in the prismatic reactors of Cloudsdale during the events leading up to the Waterstone Incident; the calamity that befell the city that day took out a good chunk of the Weather Factory, grounded R.D.'s ma for life, and did some real funny things to her kids to boot, R.D. herself being evidence enough of that. Bucking a whole tube full of prismatic radicals in an attempt to crack it open, well, let's just say that it's the sort of thing to give even a Nightmare pause.

I stood there, hemming and hawing for a second, but then Rainbow opened her eyes a sliver and I saw her notice the shadow of me just outside of the tube; and she did that pleading thing with her eyes, that look of desperate hope. Suddenly there weren't no question no more. Steeling myself in advance against the fallout of yet another stupid decision in a long series of stupid decisions in the past thirty-six hours, I wheeled around and gave the glass a good hard buck.

My hooves glanced off the slick surface of the tube, leaving not so much as a mark on it. Whatever Rarity had used to build that thing weren't apparently glass at all, because it felt like kicking steel. I reared up and gave it another solid wham, to the same lack of effect. A third and a fourth followed, ditto. I've crushed cinderblocks with bucks as hard as I was giving that thing, but for all my power, I didn't get more than a chip out of it.

I snarled in frustrated rage. Inside the tube, the spark of hope in Rainbow's eyes began to gutter, and that tore it for me. I called up Constancy again, the spirit of the Nightmare, and felt its power flood and settle into my muscles like a river of iron. The red glow in my eyes rose to blinding, my sparklestuff mane billowed like a solar flare, and all around me time slowed to a crawl.

I reared up one more time and channeled all the power of the Nightmare into my two hind hooves, and the transparent tube encasing Rainbow Dash shattered to bits, loosing a great conflagration of full-spectrum energy onto the world – and it weren't just Rainbow's amassed stuff, neither. Best as I could figure before the explosion took me was that the raw speed and power of my kick had caused my hooves to actually exceed the speed of sound for one fleet moment, thus giving me the distinction of being the first earth pony in history to successfully perform a Sonic Rainbuck. In the split second before the entire place went up, I threw myself at the falling Rainbow Dash, trying to knock her clear of the opening of the furnace and to shield her from the worst of the blast. Shards of science-glass impacted off my impermeable Nightmare hide, and I felt myself slow and deaden in the currents of time, becoming something like a rock that the universe flowed around. For a moment, as far as time and space was concerned, I was a creature of infinite mass and solidity, the metaphorical Immobile Object. I was Nightmare. I was Constancy. I could not be changed. I could not be moved.

The explosion of the gravity tube gave way to the subsequent explosion of the underground gemstone furnace that had powered the Lanthorn, and the resulting blast pret'near leveled every standing structure in a two-block radius; and I was there at the heart of it, a dark unchanging lump of shadow who had thrown herself protectively over a broken blue pegasus mare who meant the world to her, meant so much to her that she had cast her very own soul to the Wolf rather than lose her.

Then the last remnants of the Wondrous Lanthorn collapsed down upon my head. That, too, I endured.

Eventually the smoke cleared and the darkness faded. Rainbow Dash and me were hunkered at the center of a blackened, rubble-filled crater that had once contained Rarity's home and workplace, now reduced to little more than ash and toothpicks.

I stared down at Dash, breathing hard and willing her to breathe in kind. A few heartbeats later, praise the Grower, she did.

Her eyes flicked open, and she groaned in feeble relief. "Applejack," she wheezed, coughing on the words. "I thought... I thought for a second there..." She coughed again, and spat dust. "Ah, never mind. You came through for me in the end." Her head lolled back against the wreckage. "Now, Rarity, though, she's really gonna kill you."

"Ayup," I said, conceding the point this time, my barely-concealed joy coming out as a chuckle. Still alive, I thought, fiercely triumphant. One more friend, still alive.

I got off'a her, and Dash rose to her hooves, shakily, like a foal. Her busted hindleg was basically useless, hanging there limp while the other three (plus a couple wingflutters) picked up the slack. "Wow," said Dash, taking in the sight of it all. "I mean, wow. A.J., do you realize—"

She stopped cold as her turning circuit of the devastation finally landed on me, and she stared, getting her first real look at Nightmare Delicious. Meanwhile, I was staring back at her, for a quite different reason.

Dash's body was, and I don't know how else to put this, seething, boiling like a kettle. One time, in an attempt to teach us all some science, Twilight Sparkle set a perfectly good apple out to rot, taking one little picture of it every, I don't know, hour or so for about a month. Then she ran the entire mess through that film projector of hers, which allowed us all to see, in great detail, the process of decomposition, sped up to lightning speed. Reactions amongst us friends were mixed. Dash thought it was awesome, Rar thought it was horrid, Pinkie thought it was neat in a kind of icky way, and it made Flutters, predictably, scared. Me? I couldn't make it through that thing. There was something so profoundly wrong about watching things decay at that rate that it literally made me queasy, and it was more or less the exact same thing I was seeing right now.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shake off the apparitions, but it didn't help. My successful attempt to break the gravity tube had dipped my soul too far into Nightmare-stuff, and now I had its eyes, and saw the world as it saw the world, and it was utterly stomach-turning. I could see the blue hairs on Dash's coat, busily worming their way out of their little follicles. I could see her skin flaking off and boiling up anew from underneath. I could see the feathers of her wings fraying, and new pinfeathers pushing up out of the skin to replace them. Even the sight of her body doing good work, throwing healing muster at her many injuries, made me retch, the sight of coagulating flesh bringing dark bile to the back of my throat.

"Whoa, A.J.," said Dash's body, looking up at me, its eyes glistening with moving currents of vitreous humour. "You got huge!"

"I ain't your A.J.!" screamed the Nightmare, again, trying to shut out the hideous sight of her once-friend, now just a mass of squirming biological tissue. "I am Nightmare Delicious!"

"Oh, horseapples," whispered Dash. "This... this isn't good. A.J., talk with me, here."

"No!" I shouted. "No! I will not talk with you! I will talk at you!" I trembled all over, my knees locking up. "Nay, not even that! I shall command you! Rainbow Dash, I command you to be still!"

"Who's moving?" said Dash, her tongue a grotesque mass of turning cells. "I'm not moving!"

"You are," I said, weakly, slumping to my knees and letting my eyes fall shut. "You have no idea how much you're moving, Dash. Nopony does. Everything's moving, everything's changing, way too fast, and I just... I just want it all to stay put for a spell."

In a moment, Dash was at my side, her forelegs wrapped around my powerful neck. "Hey," she said, her voice shaking. "Hey, it's me, A.J.! It's your pal, Dash!"

"I know," I squeaked. I opened my eyes again, dreading what I would see; but the ghastly portrait of moving flesh was gone, leaving my friend Rainbow Dash in its place once more. I swallowed hard and rose up to my hooves. "Don't you worry about me none, R.D.," I said, not knowing whether to believe me or not. "All this... Nightmare stuff. It's just temporary. It's just until I can retrieve Iggy the Salamander and eliminate Twilight Sparkle."

"Wait," said Dash. "Eliminate... Twilight?"

"Her machine! Eliminate her machine!" I hastily corrected, even as visions of the Metropolis of Canterlot swallowing my family farm swam before my mind's eye. Was I absolutely sure I didn't have the right of it the first time? It wouldn't be hard, after all. She was just a helpless little brain in a jar, now. If it weren't for her blasted technology, she wouldn't even be alive. Maybe she wasn't technically alive, at this point...

It would be so easy, purred the Nightmare in me. It might not even be morally wrong. All you'd be doing is correcting science's mistake...

I gave a bright roar and stuffed a sock in my inner voice. "I can do this, R.D.," I said, hefting Dash up to my back with a startled yelp from her. "I can make this right. But we gotta get you to some shelter first, because when I engage that ro-bot, things is fixing to get nasty 'round these parts."

"What robot?" said Dash, scrabbling against my withers for a second and then lying on them like a wet rag. The girl was positively floppy up there. Dash was tireder than she was letting on.

"Twilight's science fair project," I said, my eyes fixed ahead. "The Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie."

Dash snorted. "She made a robot Trixie? Oh, that's too much!"

"Ain't no laughing matter," I said. "That thing dang near killed me."

"Actually, it kind of is a laughing matter," said Dash, lounging across my back. "Maybe once this is all over with she can use her little project to play make-believe 'Trixie Learns Her Lesson And Becomes A Good Pony' games over and over and over again, because you know she totally wants to. Redemption really gives that mare her jollies."

"Look, would you just shut up for one cotton-pickin' second while I get my bearings?" I said, glancing around at the ruined village and looking for intact, accessible structures. Eventually, my eyes lit on Sugarcube Corner, and I set off toward it in a brisk gallop. "There. The sweet-shop. There's some real sturdy work tables in back, by the kitchen. Once you're inside, get yourself under one of them. I'll try and keep the fighting away from your quarter. Savvy?"

"Savvy," said Dash, nodding. "I mean, I'm not happy at being benched like this, but I gotta admit, coach, I don't think I've got much left. I need a quick breather after that gravity tube."

"Good," I said. "We'll get you that breather. Just... stay safe, hear? I done sold my soul for you, Rainbow, and I ain't gonna let you die on me now."

"Come on, admit it," she said. "You sold your soul for me and a new hat."

We rode in silence for a moment.

"That I did," I said, eventually.

"It is a nice hat," conceded Dash.

"Thanks," I said.

We galloped on.

* * *

I charged into Sugarcube Corner, Rainbow Dash on my back, only to find Pinkie Pie – of all ponies – standing right there in the middle of the mostly cleared-out seating area. Pinkie, for her part, was as wide-eyed and startled as we were.

"Whoa, A.J.!" said Pinkie. "You got huge!"

"Yeah, she's Nightmare Delicious, now," said Dash, still sprawled across my back. "Can you believe it?"

"Pinkie Pie!" I exclaimed. "What on the Grower's green earth are you doing here?"

Too late to stop it, I realized I had just asked Pinkie an open-ended question. The stocky little pink mare took a deep breath.

I practically lunged forward. "Pinkie, w—"

"Oh, I'm so super-duper glad I can finally come clean about this to you girls! My real name isn't 'Pinkie Pie', it's 'Oki-Doki-Loki', a name that means 'Child of the Eternal Party' in the native language of the faraway world I come from originally, a world that was slowly perishing of boredom, and that was a big problem, huge, because my people literally live off startlement and excitement! The Pin'kii, because that's the name we call ourselves, take nourishment from the potential energy found in the difference between what you think is going to happen, and what actually happens!"

"Pinkie!" shouted Rainbow and me, simultaneously.

Pinkie charged on without missing a beat. "So, if you call somepony up to your house and tell them that you just want them to help you with your laundry and all of a sudden you throw on the lights and all their friends are there and they yell out 'Surprise! Happy Birthday!' it generates delicious primal eddies in the fabric of expectation and possibility! We call them 'doozies'! Sadly, everything on our homeworld was just getting way too predictable, so they loaded a bunch of us up into a big cosmic ark and sent us out all across the galaxy to find new sources of surprise to save our dying planet!"

"Now you're just making stuff up to babble on about!" I said.

"Yep!" said Pinkie, proudly. "But if I were a doozy-consuming alien from another world, the surprising revelation that I was in fact a doozy-consuming alien from another world would have been really, really tasty!"

"What are you actually doing here?" demanded Dash.

"Big Blue Monkey," said Pinkie, sheepishly, holding up a worn terrycloth toy with one hoof. "Little Pumpkin Cake was really really sad when she realized we forgot him here at the Corner. I decided I had to throw myself back into a evil science war zone if I ever wanted to see that baby smile again!"

"Can't say's I understand your priorities," I said, "but it's just as well you're here. Rainbow Dash needs somepony to tend to her, maybe help splint her leg back up." I gingerly lowered my injured friend down onto a tabletop. "You two stay low and stay under cover. If things start heating up too bad, consider heading for the hills once Dash gets rested up. But for my money, you're better off in here than out in the open making a run for it. Especially with the entire Canterlot Air Navy up there fixing to keep Ponyville under lockdown."

"Wow," said Dash, rolling her eyes. "What a shocker. Your plan is 'everypony else stay put or maybe run away while I deal with this myself.'"

"What exactly are you on about?" I demanded, the redness starting to claim my vision again. "You told me yourself you needed a rest!"

"What I'm 'on about' is that it's not exactly uncharted territory for you," said Dash. "Just because I'm stuck here for a minute doesn't mean I'm useless to the big picture. Seriously, A.J., since the day I met you, I can count on one hoof the number of plans you've had that actually involve, y'know, planning things, making good use of everypony on your team instead of you turning into Little Miss Let-Me-Handle-Everything all the time."

"Really," I said, glaring at her darkly, a tiny part of me looking on in quiet horror as her coat began to boil again. "One single plan, huh? You want to enlighten me as to what that was?"

"Parasprite herding," said Pinkie, filing at a rough spot on her forehoof with a little emery board. "Season one, episode ten, 'Swarm of the Century', about ten and a quarter minutes in. Still kind of a sore spot for me, I might add."

"Pinkie," I said, turning to her now, "who exactly is supposed to benefit from you constantly talking about our lives in terms of 'parts' and 'episodes'?"

"Fans," she said, offhoofedly, putting away her emery board and pointing straight at you. "Like that one right there. Plus, by being super-random and confusing, I managed to head off that Nightmare growly thing you were starting to do at Rainbow Dash and keep you talking like the normal pony you really are inside!"

I blinked, realizing that she was, of course, right on. "Pinkie," I said, "Y'all got more layers than an onion."

"A big pink onion that makes you smile instead of cry!" she said, beaming hugely.

"Whatever," I said. "Point is, take care of Rainbow. I gotta go get Iggy, and if that means facing down that killer Trixie-bot, well, that's just how it's gonna be."

"Will do, Nightmare Delicious!" said Pinkie, cheerfully. "C'mon, Dash! You're my Big Blue Monkey now!"

"'M not a monkey," grumbled Dash.

"Hoo hoo hoo," said Pinkie, scratching herself under her legpits with her hooves.

I left them to it, heading back outside to the ruined town. Given a choice between facing down a magic silver death machine and being Pinkie's Big Blue Monkey, I know which one I'd choose.

Celestia help you, Rainbow Dash.

* * *

I arrived back at the plaza to the noise of a serious verbal squabble between Brain-in-a-Jar Twilight and the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, which had presumably been going on ever since I left the scene.

"Look, I don't know how to make this any more clear!" cried Twilight's brain. "You can't use disjunction spells, Robo-Trixie! You just can't!"

"Why?" said the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, rounding on the little brain-tank. "You can!"

"I can, but I don't!" replied Twilight. "Disjunction is one of the forbidden hexes!"

"Listen to the Master!" hissed Spike, curled around the base of the wheely stand. "The Master is smart!"

"Oh, bite Trixie's shiny metal flank, Sparkle," said the G. & P. R.-T., ignoring Twilight's minion. "Why did you give Trixie these powers if you didn't want Trixie to use them?"

"I was only trying to prove that that body can contain my entire magical capacity! That includes the dark magic I am capable of, but restrain myself from, performing!"

It looked for a second like I was in luck. Maybe with them two all engaged with one another, I thought, I'd be able to sneak past them, retrieve Iggy the Salamander, kill Twilight Sparkle, and be out of Dodge without anypony even getting hurt!

Except... I had just added "kill Twilight Sparkle" to my plan, without even entirely realizing it. I shook my head to clear it and started trying my best to creep forward from rubble-pile to rubble-pile in a subtle fashion, least as subtle as a giant orange-and-black mare with shiny gold hair was able to. Right. New plan. Get into the library, bolt the door, get Iggy, kill Twilight Sparkle, find the cloud-scooter—

"Don't think that Trixie does not see you there skulking across the town square, Nightmare De-Loser!" shouted the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, over her shoulder. With hardly even a thought, she nailed me with another disjunction hex, causing me to seize up as I threw all my effort and power into shrugging it off.

"See!" came Twilight's voice, through my haze of pain. "See! That! You shouldn't be doing that! Especially not to one of my..."

A wash of light passed over the black surface of the Tourmaline Diadem atop Twilight's brain-tank, and it gave a little purple flicker.

"...friends..."

"Really?" said Trixie. "You don't want me to do... this?" She turned her head and blasted me a third time, sending me into another fit of agony; but each time she did it, it was getting easier to bear as my body got into the habit of staying put and not flying apart into atomic clouds. The ro-bot monster was up and wearing out her best weapon before the tussle even started, and I, for one, was not gonna complain none.

"No!" screamed Twilight, the jewel on her crown flaring even brighter purple. "Stop it, Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie! I am your creator! You must obey me!"

"Why?" said Robo-Trixie, rounding on her. "Trixie is her own mare!"

"You're just a test personality!" shrieked Twilight. "You're only there as a proof-of-concept! As soon as we download you out of there, that gallium-contained alloy body is mine, so I can live in it and be with the Princess forever!"

A slow and dangerous silence passed between the two of them as I struggled to get my hooves under me. "Ah," said Robo-Trixie, eventually. "Trixie understands her role in this, now."

"Good," sniffed Twilight.

"Perhaps, before you eliminate her, you can school Trixie on what offensive magic is morally acceptable to use. What about, say, concussion bolts? Would those be all right?"

"Well," said Twilight, her voice audibly warming at the prospect of a lecture, "attack magic is a dangerous, slippery slope, and should only be used in very dire circumstances. That having been said, yes, a simple focused blast of intense telekinetic energy can be quite offensively efficacious, and it carries with it none of the taint of the darker magics."

"Ha," said Robo-Trixie, "good."

With a harsh whine of summoned sorcery, Trixie's horn flared pink. She lowered her head, pointing it straight at the brain-jar. "So, what you're saying is, Trixie can do what she's about to do with a clear conscience."

"Wai—" shouted Twilight, but her yelp was abruptly cut off as a bolt of bright energy struck her containing tank, knocking it clean off its stand and shattering it into several large pieces on the ground. The little speaker squelched once, gurgled, and went silent.

"No!" screamed Spike, launching himself at Robo-Trixie's leg, which simply turned to fluid metal as he neared it, causing his charge to become a face-flop on the ground. Robo-Trixie seized the little hunchbacked dragon in a telekinetic bubble and held him, upside down, in front of her face.

"Quiet, minion," she said, and then flung him against the outer wall of the library tree. Spike hit hard, tumbled to the ground, and did not move again. Her way now clear, Robo-Trixie advanced menacingly on the largest intact fragment of the brain-jar, now lying crookedly on a jagged piece of rubble. It was the only thing left supporting Twilight's fallen brain, covering it only about halfway with the last remnants of the purple brain-juice, like a mess of poorly-canned pickles.

I growled impotently, watching this scene unfold from across the plaza, willing my body to up and move, already. Meanwhile, the Nightmare in me was in no particular hurry. Beautiful, said the Nightmare. So poetic. The robot doesn't realize she's running off young Sparkle's sense of betrayal. She destroys her own creator, she destroys herself. And you, you spineless cowpony, don't even have to get your hooves dirty. Everypony wins.

I gritted my teeth and put all the strength I could into my voice muscles. "Trixie!" I wheezed. "Y'cain't kill her!"

I cannot believe you! shouted the Nightmare, its voice echoing in my skull. And here I thought Luna was a sop! That lily-livered moon princess has nothing on you!

"And why exactly is that, you pathetic lump of organs?" said Robo-Trixie, raising one shiny eyebrow at me.

The Nightmare roared back into my brain, and I suddenly stood, shaking off the remnants of disjunction like water. My eyes flared red. "Because Twilight Sparkle is mine!" bellowed Nightmare Delicious. The rocks and stones of the plaza began bubbling to my sight, their tiny, unnoticeable processes of decay down into sand suddenly writ across my vision like fireworks. I stamped, snorted, pawed at the ground, and lowered my head at her. "Ain't enough room in this town for the both of us, Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie!"

"You're kidding," said Robo-Trixie. "You're kidding, right?"

"That's my line," I replied, and I broke into a charge.

Robo-Trixie wheeled about and faced me, her vengeance upon Twilight temporarily forgotten. She trotted lazily across the plaza at me, then anchored her hooves in the dirt; and then, as I loomed in close, she blasted me with a fourth disjunction hex, probably figuring that it would crumple me in my tracks again.

The Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie figured wrong. Even regular Nightmare-infused Applejack could probably have shrugged off disjunction after three successful attempts previous, but I was in full embodiment now, the very picture of Nightmare D., and my Constancy was a thing of sheer terror. I carved through that bolt of pink energy like a pegasus pony cutting a cloud, and slammed into Robo-Trixie with the full force of my massive body. Trixie, who apparently needed time and concentration to convert herself from solid to liquid form, gave a surprised yelp and went flying, and just like that, I had taken care of the threat of her. Now to make my way to the library, get Iggy, kill Twilight Sparkle, and then—

Fire blazed across my neck from on high, painfully scoring even my demonic hide. I yelped, stumbled, then turned on a hoof in the direction of the attack. Hovering there in the air, nearly above me, was Trixie again. For a second I thought she had maybe succeeded in the near-impossibly hard act of telekineting her own body, a skill most unicorns lose once they leave infancy. But no, it weren't no unicorn magic holding her up. Stretching out from either side of her back was a pair of shiny silver pegasus wings, beating arrogantly at the evening sky. I didn't frankly know it was possible for a pony to flap her wings arrogantly, but Trixie was sure pulling it off.

"Ha!" said the Great and Powerful Robo-Trixie, flicking her gleaming mane to the other side of her slim, elongated horn. "Trixie has used the fantastic shapeshifting abilities of her liquid metal body to give her a form more befitting her amazing power and talent! From here on, you shall address her as 'The Great and Powerful Princess Robo-Trixie, Immortal Alicorn of Being Inconceivably Better Than Each and Every One of you Hayseed Rubes'!"

"That's one heck of a name to try and abbreviate."

"Thankfully, you won't need to worry about it for long, because in a few moments you'll be an APPLE-FLAVORED GREASE SPOT!" Trixie's horn whined, glowing pink again, and she unleashed a crashing salvo of concussion bolts at me from above. I dodged the worst of them and scurried for cover behind one of the larger rubble-piles.

Trixie laughed at me again, and the noise was like frothing acid. "What's the matter, Apple-Slack? Unable to bear the unmitigated potency of Princess Robo-Trixie?"

"Nah," I said. "Just lookin' to find a big enough rock back here to chuck at you."

"Wha—" said Trixie, as the desk-sized boulder streaked towards her. Thank y'kindly, Nightmare earth pony strength, I thought, spitting gravel out from my teeth. Trixie went liquid, dropped through the air like a blob of mercury, and reformed a couple meters beneath her original position. "Ha!" she said, watching the rock sail past her and crash to earth at the far side of the plaza. "You missed Trixie!"

"Yup," I said, this time from atop the rock-pile. "Got you looking at it, though, didn't I?"

Trixie whipped around just in time to see my flying leap straight at her. I connected this time, impacting her still-solid metal body with a crunch, and shoved her before me as I fell, with the aim of slamming her to the ground in front of me. At the last instant, Trixie's horn flared and she teleported up just far enough to reverse our positions; I hit ground first and immediately took a hard hoof to the back of the neck. I flipped over and got my forehooves under me, raising my hindhooves for a real iron-bending haymaker kick, but Trixie was ready for me this time, and she just kind of glooped around my blow. My followup spin-around forehoof cuff went down the same way, and just like that, our little duel became a hoof-to-hoof scrap, right there in the shadow of Town Hall.

A strange sort of dance followed, a tiny little version of the eons-long struggle between our two immortal patrons. As champion of Constancy, I had strength, stability, and relative impermeableness on my side; but Robo-Trixie, just like Change, was faster and trickier and more, uh, amorphic. Trixie's horn apparently needed the crystallization of her solid form in order for it to touch the Stream and sling spells at me, and so long as I kept her on the defensive in her more liquid configuration, she couldn't throw any real unnatural decisive magic at me. On the other hoof, it meant that none of my blows could even connect, and unfortunately, striking blows at her was about all I could think of to do. Not that I had any illusions of being able to injure a critter without organs or discernable anatomy or any kind of vulnerable spots whatsoever, but if I could just beat her down, push her to her heel bulbs long enough, I could get over to the Library, kill Twilight Sparkle, and then—

The intrusive, recurring, Nightmare-spawned idea of solving all my problems by murdering Twilight broke my focus for just a second, but that second was all that that dang Robo-Trixie needed. Face shining with malice and victory, she promptly shaped one of her forehooves into an impossibly-sharp molecule-wide blade, crystallized herself again, charged the spike with a flare of deadly magic, and proceeded to plunge it into my side, piercing the links of my chainmail duster like it weren't even there. I howled in rage and pain like some sort of infernal bull and staggered down to one knee as Trixie hopped back to watch me twitch for a while. Then she summoned up a wide, bright plane of sizzling magic from her horn and whipped her head around, literally carving the Town Hall pavilion above us in two. One good solid shove of magic sent the entire top half of the building rumbling down at me like a pony-made avalanche.

So much for physical combat: victory, Robo-Trixie. If I was gonna live to see tomorrow, I thought, I was gonna have to cut myself deep and try something new; and even as I thought this, I felt the Nightmare in me quail – foal-like – at the idea of damnable innovation. I ignored its pleas, closed my eyes and summoned up a massive well of power. If I was going down here, I resolved, I weren't gonna go down as a fighter. I was gonna go down as the pony I really, truly, fundamentally was...

...an orchardmare.

The tree that came of my will did not "grow". Growth was a tool of wicked Change. Instead, it was as though the tree had always been there, and I was just making it real. Grim and dark and cannon-metal smooth it was, just like the trees I had seen in the Nightmare's realm, but on a far greater scale. It reached up toward the sky, a branching structure of absolute mathematical symmetry, crowned with perfect dull-green leaves and clusters of shining golden apples. I did not need to crush one of them fruits open to know for certain that they was black as night inside. The tree, that simply was, caught the wreckage of Town Hall, arresting its tumble toward me as tight as a dam holding back water. It rustled and trembled, and a hoofful of fruits dropped from its branches, but it was a tree of pure Constancy and could not be shaken long.

I raised my head to Trixie. "Hey, Princess," I wheezed, coughing up ichor. "How... how d'ya like them apples?"

Trixie sniffed disdainfully, giving her alicorn wings a lazy little flap and fluttering back over to my position. "A cute little gambit, you petty hick-town troglodyte," she said. "Congratulations. You've saved yourself from having a building fall on you, only to meet your doom at the hooves of Trixie's blade. Trixie hopes you enjoyed your extra thirty seconds of existence."

With that, she sent another flare of killing energy down the length of her leg-blade, and raised it to strike.

The blow fell, and impacted Nightmare-wood inches away from my neck.

Trixie blinked. I grinned back at her, weakly. Trixie's blade was stuck up against a second tiny apple tree of my will, jutting up from the ground right where it would have otherwise hit me. The ro-bot alicorn frowned, reared up, and lashed out with her blade again to the exact same response, its killing edge glancing off a third small tree that simply sprang into being at my direction. A fourth and a fifth followed.

"What... what is this?" said Trixie.

"It's me beating your sorry rump, is what it is," I replied, staggering to my hooves. "And I don't mind telling y'all, I'm finding the experience to be powerful satisfying."

Trixie bared her silvery teeth at me and backed away, only to come up against hard and Constant applewood at her backside; a sixth tree, this one a nice healthy strong one. She dodged left, and hit a seventh. Right, an eighth.

Her eyes widening in panic, Trixie shifted into fluid form and tried to dart out of the radius of my brand-new grove of dark apple trees, to no avail. Everywhere she slipped, everywhere she flowed, she was met with two or three more new impermeable trees, until the entire structure began looking like a palisade or a log bunker around her. Squealing in rage, the blob of gleaming metal crawled skyward, toward the only opening left, only to have it close above her in a tangle of fractal branches. Soon, she was lost to sight, trapped within a smooth, perfect cylinder of indestructible wood, and as the last opening closed, even her screaming fell to silence.

And then it was done.

Or, rather, not done entirely. Even as Nightmare, I guess I ain't a totally cruel beast. I would never leave a critter trapped and suffering forever. Might take a few days, but soon enough the Great and Powerful Princess Robo-Trixie would realize that while the branches above her were a solid mass, the roots underneath weren't so much. A little tunneling, a short while of liquid metal glooping, and she'd be free. By then, I hoped this whole mess would be long over, for better or for worse.

Stumbling slowly and stiffly, my injuries dogging at me more than I'd care to admit, I began the long trek across the plaza toward the Ponyville Library. I was in a sorry state. The huge expenditure of dark powers required to bring all them trees into existence had almost burned me clean out; and what's worse, the aftereffects of calling on that much Nightmare had left my soul near to completely consumed. It was all I could do to keep myself from vomiting at the horrendous sight of everyday natural processes, things I would have ignored or even relished if I'd been in my right mind. Every little growing bud on the looming library tree called up a fresh wave of nausea, every little twinkle of the stars above drilled at my eyes like an awl. And greater than even the hurt of my physical wounds was a long, slow, insistent ache, the feeling of what it was to be the creature known as Constancy.

To put it in terms y'all might understand: more than once in my life I've gone too long without food and then tried to pack a little too much hay away at one time in my eagerness to get my belly full. And sometimes when that would happen, that hay would get stuck in my gullet, all wadded up in a wet knotty mass. I could feel my throat working at it, trying to push it down into my stomach but it just wouldn't move for love or money, and I had to run out to the trough and suck down water to try and force it where it needed to go. Difference here was that there was no drink at all that could ease it, no relief in sight. And that, fillies and colts, is what being Nightmare'd actually feels like. It ain't really delicious at all. It's a quiet, weeping, iron-bellied agony, a sense that everything that should be moving, progressing, in your body just ain't.

And the biggest, loudest thought in my mind, even above all that, was the inescapable commandment that I destroy Twilight Sparkle and stop the ghastly Changes that mare would soon bring about.

I dragged myself forward, forcing my way through the waves of pain and insistent demand, finally reaching the library door.

Get Iggy the Salamander.

Kill Twilight Sparkle.

Get Iggy. Bring him to the Discord grove. End the science curse. Kill Twilight Sparkle.

Unable to stop myself, I glanced wearily at the shattered brain-tank, at the last remaining piece of a unicorn I once called friend, pulsing with Change and slick and shiny under the starlight.

I... stepped away from the door, hardly even realizing I was doing it. I took a step toward the brain-tank.

Kill Twilight Sparkle.

I thought of Canterlot City. I thought of levelers, clearing the trees of my farm to make way for a faceless, loveless warehouse store.

Kill Twilight Sparkle.

My knees buckled under me and I collapsed to the ground. Behind me, there came a great roar of moving earth. "Might take a few days", my hoof – the Great and Powerful Princess Robo-Trixie had discovered the weak point in her applewood prison in a matter of minutes. The streaking flood of silvery metal burst up through the ground and rose into the form of a galloping mare, fresh and uninjured and full of deadly intent. All that wrath, and she didn't even realize that the only thing that was giving her power was Twilight's own sense of betrayal. Kill Twilight, and Trixie falls. Don't kill Twilight, and die here on the library stoop. Kill Twilight Sparkle. Preserve your life, now. Preserve your home, forever.

There was no time left. Trixie was upon me. Once again, she raised her shining hoofblade.

I thrust my hoof forward into the shattered mess of Twilight's tank, dipping it deep into the purple goo that was just barely keeping her alive.

"Hey, Twi, guess what," I whispered. "Brain-hug."

With one last feeble pulse of Nightmare power, I made the world around me vanish.