In Equestria, there's no such thing as a "simple" rock farmer. Take the pony Pinkie Pie, for instance. She is best friends with the Princesse's personal protege, as well as once being wielder of the Element of Laughter. She started out as nothing but a rock farmer, shifting stones from one field to another. Her sister, Maud Pie, may, to the uninformed eye, be nothing more than an aloof, asocial grey mare getting a doctarate in Geology (or 'rocktorate in rockology' if you are her eccentric pink sister). But there is something far more to her than it may first appear; her fascination with rocks is not without just cause.
It all started when Maud was a filly. Even on the rock farm, she had been less social and more quiet than her family members. The others, especially her sister Pinkie, would talk to each other and ask how the rock farming was coming along. They would even occasionally take part in competitions, seeing who could move the most rocks in a day. Pinkie would usually be the winner-she was always looking for ways to make her life seem that little bit happier and more optimistic. Maud would sit at a distance from her sisters while listening to them compare the amount of rocks that they could move from field to field. Maud noted how she had always moved at least twice the number of rocks the winner did, but she never mentioned it-she had never cared very much about competitions or winning.
One fateful day, however, her life would change. It was the day her sister Pinkie had seen some kind of explosion in the sky, and was hosting a 'party' in the shed. Maud tread across the cold, hard stone. The concept of parties did not excite her, especially when she could spend her time on her own, in her little corner of the rock field. Scattered across a small crater in the ground were all the rocks she had to play with. After she had finished working on the fields, she would sometimes sit here, rolling stones back and forth between her hooves for hours on end. She reached down and picked up her favourite rock, a tiny pebble named Boulder.
She held him up to her ear, then put him down. Asleep again, she thought. The rocks were the only friends she could really connect with on a personal level. Sure, she loved her sisters to death, but she never really felt she had much in common with them. The rocks, however, seemed to have the same personality. They were all ordered and predictable. It made Maud feel comforted.
However, the Sonic Rainboom had done more than inspire Pinkie Pie to throw parties. For in Maud's crater, there was a chunk of stone that was already loose, and the explosion had broken it away from the rock entirely. As Maud was about to leave to wander around the fields, a piece of stone fell away, revealing something beautiful. Maud turned around and walked up to it, her face expressionless save for a rare glint of excitement in her eye. For when she looked through the gap, she saw the most wonderous stone she had seen in her life. It was this rock that changed her life.
Maud Pie slowly walked away from the train station. She had just come back from visiting her sister Pinkie who had moved to Ponyville and had met her friends. She hadn't disliked them, but there was nopony she had really ever disliked. In fact, she had actually found them rather more interesting than her peers and professors of Geology; they made a change.
She walked across the grey stone towards the hut where her sister had thrown that party all those years ago. When she reached it, she looked over her shoulders with a nonchalant expression to check if anypony was looking, then slipped into the building.
Inside, the apparently simple hut looked completely different from anything in the farm outside. Maud looked on with a bored expression as the green wall in front of her flashed red and white, making bleeping sounds as it did so. The panels in front of her were covered in all manner of levers, switches and buttons, and red and silver wires hung down from the top of the machiene like lianas. The main focus of the contraption, however, was the huge, black screen in the middle. Maud walked up to it and, with her hoof, calmly flicked about twelve levers and pressed two buttons. When she did this, the screen flickered to life, showing white static and making a hissing noise. When this happened, Maud pushed an orange button, and, with her usual bland expression, faced the screen as an image slowly appeared.
"Maud, art thou there?" Came a crackly, regal voice from the computer.
"Yes, Princess," Maud responded in her monotone voice. She adjusted a dial slightly, and the flowy-maned form of Princess Luna came into view.
"Does thou recieve us properly?" she shouted in the Royal Canterlot voice.
"Yes," said Maud. "You do not have to shout into the microphone to make it work," she said, still entirey monotone.
"Good," said Luna, settling into her normal voice. "Did your meeting with your sister go well?"
"Yes," said Maud.
"The time is almost ready," said Luna, "It seems hard to believe that thou were but a small filly was when I last spoketh to thee. These "e-mail" things are not quite the same."
Maud was silent, so Luna continued.
" As you know, this machine has been in planning ever since the properties of that crystalline rock were discovered. Its ability to conduct the magic known as 'electricity' surprises me to this very day,"
The dark blue Alicorn paused, but if she was waiting for a comment by the dull grey Earth pony, she was mistaken. Luna continued;
"Today is the day that we carry out the mission for which you have been designing this machine for your entire life. When are you ready to take off?"
"I have been ready for over week," said Maud in her monosyllabic voice, "I have been storing the Rock Candy I need for powering the ignition. I will use the rest of it as sustinance."
"And the suits?" asked Princess Luna.
"I have them," she said, looking towards the closet in the corner.
"Very well," said Luna. "As Royal protocol dictates, I must read out the details of the mission to you before you proceed," with her magic, she summoned a monocle and used it to read a scroll of paper.
"I, Princess Luna," she began, "Representative of Canterlot, am hereby giving permission to Maud Pie of the Pie Family Rock Farm, to perform a mission on behalf of the Princesses." She paused. "The mission details shall be read now." She looked directly at Maud, then back to the scroll.
"The mission will be as follows. You will go to this planet's moon in your 'spaceship' to investigate the strange disturbances which have plagued my dreams. After you have done your investigations, you shall report yourself back to me. Art thou ready?"
Maud nodded, and the picture of Luna started to fade.
"Very well," her voice echoed, "Good luck, my little pony."
The image of Luna stayed on the screen, and it blicked back at the camera.
"Princess," Maud's dull voice said, "You haven't switched it off. You have just decreased the brightness."
"Oh," said Luna, looking around at the camera, "How do I..."
"The button on top," came Maud's reply. "Press it."
"Thank-" began Luna, but the screen immediatly switched into static before she could finish.
Maud Pie walked up to her closet and put on her spacesuit. She then pressed a series of buttons and levers for about five minutes without pause, then the ground beneath her started to rumble. She placed her helmet on, then pushed the big red button under a hatch in the floor. With that, a burst of goldn fire shot out of the underside of the cabin, and it was propelled into the sky.
Six ponies were sitting in the back cabin of the Friendship Express. They were all sitting down, either reading or staring at the floor, except the pink one, who was looking back at the rock farm out the window. The atmosphere was very quiet and peaceful.
Just as Rainbow Dash was getting to the part where Daring Do discovered Ahizotal's dark temple for the first time, there was a loud shout.
"Quick you guys!" came the excited voice of Pinkie Pie "There's a giant super-enourmous explosion happening in the rock farm and it's shootimg into the air!"
Rainbow Dash looked around and noticed everypony was gently snoring.
"That's cool, Pinkie Pie," she yawned, before falling straight asleep.
Maud watched out of the small, round porthole as Equestria zoomed away from her.
"Gee, isn't it swell?" Came an electronic, high pitched voice.
"It looks like a rock,' Maud said to the computer. She had programmed it herself, and when she had finished, found it oddly resembled her sister Pinkie. She wondered if perhaps, deep down, they were not so different to each other.
"Yeah it does!" Came the over-excited voice of the computer. "Look at all those neat little forests!"
"They look like moss," came the dull reply of Maud.
"They sure do!"
As the pod descended down upon the moon's grey, rocky surface Maud looked at the screen, which was connected to the exterior survaillence cameras. Outside, there was nothing but a bleak desert. There were mounds of stone everywhere, and what appeared to be a small mountain in the distance.
Maud opened the hatchway to walk onto the surface, and her computer said
"I sure hope you have fun out there!", as the hatch hissed shut.
Maud's hooves touched the alien ground. She reached into her pocket and picked out her friend Boulder. She held him to her helmet so he could hear, and said to him,
"I think that mountain is where we should begin looking."
Boulder did not reply. This was normal for him, but Maud liked speaking to him regardless. It allowed her to focus her jumbled thoughts in a more meaningful way.
As she walked across the moon, she saw many craters, each at least four times the size of her crater on the rock farm. She could already think of a poem in her head;
Moonrock.
You are a stone. In space.
Cold, dark and alone.
And dead.
She continued to walk across the crater-peppered landscape until she reached the mountain. When she got to the top, she saw something that made her feel mildly surprised.
The mountain was not a mountain, but the rim of a gigantic crater. Maud estimated it to be around the size of Manehatten. As she looked around the site, she got a feelng somepony was behind her. She turned and saw a large, white metal antenna with a red light on it, watching her like an eye. Suddenly, seven more popped out of the ground. They all suddenly lunged forwards and injected her with some kind of chemical
And then they waited. Maud just stared at them with no real expression, blinking occasionally.
After about 15 seconds of this, the lead robot said, in a cold, mechanical voice.
"Why is the subject not incapacatated?" It said to Maud.
Maud yawned.
"Drugs don't affect me," she said with no emotion, "My mood is seldomly ever any different,"
"Why do you not flee?" said the droid.
"You'll get me anyway," said Maud, "I will not bother to run,"
"Very well," said the drone, and each spike grabbed Maud and pulled her down through the crater.
As Maud was dragged through the crater, she vaguely thought of what a tedious situation she was in, so she decided to create a few poems in her head, before falling asleep from boredom.
When Maud awoke, she was in a metal chair, strapped down in her spacesuit. Some kind of machine was hunched over a computer screen, and she yawned.
The creature sat up and looked at Maud. It resmbled a sort of dark, spidery shadow, except it was almost completely covered in a white, metallic casing. it started to speak, with frequent clicks in its raspy voice.
" The pony *click* has awakened," it said, and Maud saw that another creature, this one resembling a robotic moth.
"How would you prefer me to react?" came Maud's dull voice. "Would you prefer me to cry out in panic, or remain as I am now?"
The spider looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face.
"Umm..."
"Help," she said, with absolutly no emotion. "Is that good enough for you?"
The spider looked irritated.
"We have not *click* taken you to play games," it snarled ,"we have *click* taken you to find information on your planet, in order to invade with our
robotic army. Your IQ is currently *click* being scanned as we speak."
" I can tell you lots of information," said Maud.
"Exce-*click*-llent," laughed the creature, "Tell us everything. Do not omit anything, or we will kill you and scan your brain instead,"
"Sedimentary rocks are formed by the deposition of moraine..."
Three hours later
"Igneous however," continued Maud, "Are in fact..."
"Silence!" shrieked the monster. Several empty mugs of coffe littered across the table, but even these could not stop the dark arachnid from becoming droopy eyed.
"How could any *click* pony study rocks so much?" he hissed. "All I hear from you is *click* mineral deposits this and *click* rock layers that!"
"You told me not to omit anything," came Maud's voice.
"Yes, but-"
The creature's response was cut short by the bleeping of his monitor.
"Sir," came the soft voice of the moth creature, "This being's IQ is off the chart. If we connect our robot army to this creature's mind, we should have an army clever enough to take over Equestria in a matter of hours!"
"Well, well, well," hissed the spider creature, "Perhaps we *click* will not need to interrogate you after all."
And with that he placed a helmet on her head. It was the helmet that was directly connected to all the Central Processing Units of every droid in their entire army.
The spider general who had interrogated Maud looked over his army in the crater with pride. He was savouring the moment; when he went to the army, all he would have to do is say 'report' and the ultimate battle plan would be told to him : one that could destroy Equestria.
He could take it no longer. He walked up to the front droid and asked:
"Have you *click* thought of it?"
"Yes," replied the white, spidery droid.
"The thing you have *click* been working on?" The general whispered. "The thing we programmed you with today?"
"Yes."
"Very well," he gulped, "Report."
A huge , slightly out of sync chorus of every robot in the army, around five thousand in total, said,
"Rock.
Why do you stay,
Freezing in the sand,
And the cold light of day?"
The spider stood for a second, utterly shocked, then let a question out of his fanged jaws,
"What was the *click* programming you recieved?"
"Why," answered the front droid, "To compose a poem about rocks!"
"And who..." The truth finally dawned on him. The cry of rage echoed through the chasm.
"Maud Pie!"
Maud awoke to find all the wires and headset being pulled off her by a spider that was foaming at the mouth.
"Get out!" he roared,
"Do you not want to hear about the process of mineralization?" asked Maud. The spider almost thought he could hear a small trace of dissappointment in her voice.
"No, no, no!" He yelled, "Just, *click* get off of this moon. Get away from this station, get back to your ship, just get away from me!"
"But-" said Maud.
"Get out!" yelled the spider, and slammed the metal door in her face.
When Maud got back to the space hut, she was greeted to the voice of her shipboard computer.
"Did you have fun?" Said the jolly voice.
"No," said Maud. "It was the most boring outing I had since I had to deal with that wild mountain giant"
"Aww, I'm sorry to hear that," sang the computer, "But hold on, somepony is trying to get through! Isn't that great? Now you can speak to another friend!"
Princess Luna's voice came out of the monitor.
" Is your mission complete, Maud?" she asked.
"Yes, Princess," replied Maud, as she switched on the ignition, "I'm coming back."
Author's Note
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