Chapter Bat: Beyond the Negative Extinction
Chapter Bat: Beyond the Negative Extinction
It was a dark and stormy night that morning when Applejack went out into the fields after lunch. It was finally the day she would be able to start apple bucking without having the fruit drop from the trees only to splat on the ground like dollops of spilled paint. With her vampire problems squarely behind her forever, she bucked the first tree just as hard as she could, convinced that it was time to go back to the normal flow of farm life. When the fruit fell, it landed neatly in the barrels she had lovingly arranged around the trunk of the tree with neat little thunks. Each apple was crisp, ripe, and absolutely perfect in color and size. This was the true bounty of her fields. This was the harvest she was hoping for.
Applejack then looked up and noticed there was a wheezing, whirring machine parked on top of the fence outside the barn. As much as she would have liked to get back to harvesting, the appearance of a very literal factory right on her front stoop took precedence. As she approached, she also noted that there were ponies lined up for miles down the road in front of the buzzing contraption. Out of a shutter on what she supposed was the rear of the towering pile of gears and pistons, a pony would come traipsing out every six seconds exactly on the sixth second. One of the smoke stacks would expel a vampire fruit bat exactly half of a second later with a lively pop. The critter would flutter off over her barn and into the sky, probably to never return.
"What in tarnation is goin' on?" she asked herself, rounding the corner of the machine covered in wildly undulating dials. There, on a high platform hung on the side of the machine, stood two unicorns in striped vests and boater hats. They busied themselves with pressing buttons, switching levers, pulling cords, boiling water, zapping prongs, yelling obscenities at a small colt chained to the railing, and reading printouts. Applejack knew in a heartbeat that the pair was Flim and Flam, the world famous FlimFlam Brothers®.
"Applejack, what's going on?" Right on cue, Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the gang showed up. They all looked up and noticed the brothers with Applejack, but the brothers caught sight of them too. They smiled, displaying their pearly white chompers, and leaned over the railing.
"Alright, Flim and Flam! What are you two up to? What is all of this?" Applejack shouted up to the brothers.
The brothers flipped a switch, activating a winch that lowered the platform. They arrived at ground level and leap out with the grace given to them by three years of jazz-tap in college.
"Oh, we're not up to anything terribly special," Flim said, regarding his hoof with feigned disinterest. "My brother and I just saw how you accidentally turned your little friend their into a vampire is all and decided to capitalize on it."
"What?" Applejack looked at the line formed in front of the machine and then at the ponies who had left it. "You're tellin' me that this machine turns ponies into vampires?"
"Indeed it does!" Flam declared. He pulled out a detailed blueprint of their machine and showed it to the group. "We even got the process copyrighted!" The blueprints detailed how the machine didn't really need to be taller than a barn since the only things inside it according to Diagram 3 were one pony, a gaggle of bats, and a magical particle accelerator.
"And ponies are payin' to become vampires?" Applejack asked, totally unaware of how normal ponies viewed the undead. Being a hick, she considered anything unnatural to be evil.
"Of course they are! Everypony knows that vampires are at least 6.3249 times sexier due to the fact that they're bloodsucking leeches and their total disregard for the thoughts and feelings of others. Why, this machine has already payed off the bits we needed to build it!" Flim explained. "You nearly broke our bank the last time we were here, but we made a fortune when we refurbished our old rig into the Super Spider Squeezy 6000."
"It seems ponies hate spiders more than they love cider!" Flam rolled up the blueprint up and put it back where it came from. "We earned enough money from that venture to build this machine: the Brother's Lifesucking Undeadifying Delifer, the B.L.U.D. for short. You might think it's impressive, but this is only phase two of our five phase plan!"
"Phase two?" Twilight asked. Her friends glanced around at one another, curious as to what end turning everypony into vampires could achieve. There could only be negative consequences. "The vampires will drink the juice of every fruit and vegetable in Equestria! We'll starve and the vampires will start eating ponies for sustenance. If you do this, you're dooming yourselves too!"
"Not thanks to phase three!" Flam told them, pulling out another blueprint. He unraveled it and showed it to the mares, giving out magnifying glasses so they could read the fine print a little better.
"As we speak, underpaid migrants from Appleloosa are building a massive pillow fort south of Manehattan. Inside this domed fort will be fertile fields, substandard housing, and an outlet mall with two coffee shops. Once it has finished construction, it will be covered in king sized bedsheets!"
"Of course!" Twilight could tell from the clearly labeled proposal documents Flam had handed out what the logic behind this plan was. "Bedsheets keep monsters out no matter what. Once all the vampire-hating-and-equiwolf-loving ponies have rented out all the apartments in the fort, everypony will be sealed inside where no vampire will be able to enter. It's a brilliant plan!"
"But what if a vampire does get in?" Applejack asked. "Hadn't considered that, had you?"
"Oh, but we have!" Flam announced, pulling out the information packets on phase four. He handed them out along with a complimentary bag of sample products.
"Since we own all the farmland inside the fort, we have a say in what gets grown there," Flim said, starting up on another monologue. "We're going to grow droves and droves of cloves and cloves of garlic! We're going to put garlic in the water, in the breakfast cereal, in the gum, in the diapers, and in the paint! If a vampire does manage to get in, there will be so much garlic in the air that they'll be powerless!"
"He's right," Twilight said, looking over Flam's shoulder at the website. "It's right here in the FAQ."
"Now I know that's a bad idea," Applejack said. She was determined to poke a hole somewhere in this plan. "Nopony will be able to put up with that garlic smell all the time. Everypony will suffocate."
"No, because that's where phase five comes in!" Flam rolled out the projector and started up the informational movie. Everypony put down the user manuals and gave their attention to the smiling, animated Flim that appeared on the screen.
"We are already building pipelines to the pristine, alpine regions of Equestria to funnel in clean air; however, this pipeline is accessible only to us brothers here! We will package the fresh air and sell it at an outrageous price! That is the fifth phase in our five phase plan to ultimately sell air!"
"Y'all are crazy!" Applejack tilted her hat up and leered at the brothers. "Too bad you don't have a phase six that prevents us from stoppin' yer crazy plan!"
"Actually, that's covered in phase one," Flam said. "Phase one was getting laser eye surgery so we could deal with anypony who tried to interfere."
"How is laser eye surgery going to help you?" Applejack asked, displaying her clear lack of medical knowledge.
"How doesn't it help us?" Flam turned to his brother. "Ready Flim?"
"Ready Flam."
The brothers shot hot lasers from their eyeballs, obliterating all they could see. Nopony ever expects somepony to shoot lasers from their eyeballs.
