Apples are Magic

Near the outskirts of the Everfree forest a slight breeze blew through the trees. There were birds in the trees and many kinds of wildlife heard in bushes and in the plains. It was generally a peaceful setting. But that peace was broken when the wind picked up. It twisted and rushed into a single area. The gale increased in velocity creating a distortion in the form of an oval shaped sphere. The warping grew deeper as the sphere flattened until it refocused; showing, what could only be described as a portal into another world.

On the other side was a male human. He had hair as white as snow and eyes that shined a bright and pure light. It looked as though he was in a dark room but instead he stood in an open field surrounded with large trees alien to the Everfree. What lay behind him were destroyed vehicles, dead men, and uniforms sprawled out with a disturbing lack of wearers. When the human stepped through, the portal rippled from the strain of passing matter. When he was fully through his eyes ceased glowing and were replaced with yellow irises that rolled to the back of his head as he fainted. The portal behind him shattered creating a deafening boom and exploding wind that escaped in all directions, nearly blowing down trees and scaring any wildlife left in the area. Then all was silent…

The Previously known Dr. Evan Kelly slowly woke to a cold breeze that seemed to sap the very warmth from his body. He was laying face first in what he assumed would be a dissection table, but quickly realized that first off if they where going to dissect him they would have made damn sure that he would have stayed asleep for it. Second was that he would most likely be face up. And thirdly there wouldn’t have been as much dirt on the table going up his nose. He rose from his place face down on the dirt and sneezed loudly from the itching dirt that had invaded its tender nostrils. His yellow eyes flashed left and right as he surveyed the area. He wore a black shirt with blue jeans and on his left wrist was a Fossil watch. On his back was a black camelback backpack and on his feet, he wore black Rebock shoes. When he reached his full height and recovered from the slight dizziness, he surveyed the area. This looked nothing like the woods in Washington where he currently had been trying to flee the country. If anything this looks like a bog but without the mud, he thought.

“Where the hell am I?” he said to himself then thought better of it.

Why tempt fate, which seemed to be on his side today considering the predicament he was in before he fell unconscious.

“What happened? Hmmmm…” He rubbed the back of his head in contemplation in what might have happened to get him in this strange forest. He started looking around the grove of gnarled trees for a clue to how he might have arrived here. When a rather tall tree caught his eye he gave up on the subject. Well, lets have a look around and see what we find. He thought to himself as he walked up to the tree.

He struggled on his way up to get to the top, but he eventually reached the peak of the tree made tower. From his vantage point he saw a breaking in the tree line and a field with a small cottage on a hill just barley visible. Farther down his field of vision he saw a small town with yellow roofing.

“odd…” he said as he furrowed his brow and tilted his head to the side. He pushed the odd colored roofing aside and continued his scan of the horizon. His eyes passed over some tamed trees and came full circle when he realized it was an orchard that had red dots dangling from its branches.

“Hmmm… apple trees.” as if a punctuation his stomach gave an enormous growl alerting him to his ravenous apatite. I have had to eat a lot recently. Not surprising considering that I’ve had to keep up with trying to avoid detection and being captured… Actually I’m surprised that they hadn’t followed and tracked me here already. Another growl from his stomach brought him back on topic.

“I don’t like stealing, but if I’m going to want to stay conscious and not have my good old stomach be mad at me then so be it. Maybe I can do some work for them to pay for the food.” He made his decision and then his decent.

He started down, however much less gracefully, doing flips and spinning on branches as he descended from the tree. He landed on the ground with a satisfied thump nailing his dismount with his face. “...ow... no, broken bones. That’s a good sign.” He groaned as he checked himself for injuries and started painfully limping in the direction of the possible apple orchard. Then in the bushes he heard a growling that made him stop in his tracks.

The human jumped into the near by bushes and looked for the source of the sound. What he saw coming around the corner of what the thought was a safe path could only be described as a monstrosity. It had the body of a lion but the head was far off that mark. It was similar to a lion’s head but had curved horns protruding from the top of its head. Instead of a mane it sported a Billy goat’s chin hair and a serpentine tail covered in scales as it waggled in the air.

It stalked into the area sniffing the air and looking from one place to another. The frightened man remained frozen to the spot, hopping that the creature won’t notice him. As it strode from place to place it dipped its head low to sniff the ground, and moved on until it seemed to catch a scent. It moved closer and closer to the bush that Evan was hiding in. The scientist’s heartbeat grew in tempo the closer the monstrous predator got to his hiding place. His heart was going so fast he felt that it would give out before the creature could get do anything to him. Just before the platypus of predators got to the bush it jerked its head up from the ground looking to its right. Ten heart beats passed and its head jerked back to the bush. It gave a loud snort and took off to its right in pursuit of whatever it was previously tracking.

The young doctor remained in the bush for some time before his paralyzing fear had subsided enough for him to move. He crept out from the bush to look in the direction the terror had gone. When nothing seemed to be lurking he arose from his place in the bush looking down and started rubbing the back of his neck to think and piece together his fear scrambled mind.

Are they sending experiment rejects after me now?... No. All of those were destroyed, there is no way they could have replicated the formula that fast. He heard a howl in the direction that the beast had bolted and his head snapped to it. Silence was all that was heard as fear started to creep back in.

“Where the hell am I?” he said for the second time today but with far more fear about where he was… and what other horrors he would find.

June 28th 2013

Evan walked up the driveway. He had spoken to his parents about coming and staying for the week because he hadn’t seen them in a while. That’s mostly because of all the tests that he had been conducting on himself. After his realization he instantly ran to the car and drove to Dr. Cooper’s home to tell him the good news. He was just as excided and surprised as the Evyn was. But the aged scientist told him to look into it further and tell him all his findings before presenting them to the investors. So he has kept very quiet about many things. This had so much military potential it was scary. And I mean really scary.

But that was not now. This was to be a week away from his study’s, as fascinating and fun as they where. He was going to be a week away with his parents which he had’nt been keeping in touch with regretfully. He warned them of his appearance and that they couldn’t ask questions about it, but it was still nerve wracking. He lifted a hand to knock on the door when it flung open.

“OH! HONNY YOUR HOME!” his mom embraced him gripping his neck and head to herself tightly in an embrace.

“Mom you’re smothering me” he said into her shirt through gasps.

His mother simply hugged tighter, “how could you say that when you never call, write, not even an E-mail!” She scolded.

Evan squirmed in her death grasp, “…AIR!...” was all he managed to squeeze out of his windpipe.

“Oh! So sorry dear!” she said as he was released he panted for life giving oxygen. “I thought… Oh it dosen’t matter, please come in oh we’ve missed you so much.” She dragged him into the living room and proceeded to talk about her day and how happy she was to see Evan, not even noticing or caring about his appearance, and if she did she showed no such emotion, and boy, was she bad at hiding emotion. They spent hours talking, mostly about her because of the top-secret part of the work that Dr. Kelly was doing.

But there was one thing that the man couldn’t put out of his mind. Though there was no lull in the conversation for him to get a single word in. "-and that's what I told Janet to try and do. You don't think that was too forward do you?"

Evan was grateful for the retard in his mothers speech. "mom where’s dad?”

Her face flashed from her earlier elation to sad and then covered up just as fast, becoming cheery once again “he should be by later, hopefully he will bring by the milk I told him about. But anyway is there a girl in the picture yet? You need to go and date more! I so want to see little rascals running down the halls again.”

“MOM~!” the young man of science groaned. Man she is getting good at subject changes, but still just as terrible of a liar as ever. What was up with the subject of dad? Yah he would be gone for long periods of time and that kept him from mom and me. but that’s nothing to lie over. Evan’s father is a truck driver. He would be gone for long periods of time, and when Evan was just a child he both loved and hatted his father. But only because Young Evan thought his father loved work more then family. This was quickly outgrown when he started looking at school expenses and who it was that was paying for his future. There were no hard feelings then on and thus no reason to lie about him not coming. There was another reason for the lie and he was going to find out. “Don’t change the subject mom. What’s going on between you and dad?”

“Oh, me and your dad are fine dear!” She huffed, “don’t bother with it! Now have you met a girl? Answer the question truthfully now.”

Evan sensed she was still hiding something? He focused on his mom trying to see through her and solve what was so taboo with talking about his dad. All at once he felt his mind expand like a bubble. It covered the entire living room like a well fitted balloon. He was able to feel his mother and although he could see her standing there, he somehow knew through another sense it was his loving and caring mother. He was shocked to say the least but luckily the experiment was able to keep his composure. Evan realized that this was some new ability. He smirked and thought, who better to be a guinea pig then a guinea pig’s mother? He focused on the presence in the bubble when the unexpected happened.

“Oh please take the bate son. I really don’t want to tell you that we’re divorced yet.”

The bubble of the scientist’s mind snapped like a rubber band and returned. The shock on the man’s face was palpable, as he was hit with that bomb. The voice was his mothers but her lips didn’t move. It was an easy enough theory to came up with. He had just read his mothers mind. As much as it hurt he was a scientist at heart and needed data to test his theory… but that was more of an excuse to get more information. He tried his best to be analytical pushing his personal thoughts aside and when he succeeded the bubble returned once again enveloping the room once more.

“Honey, are you okay?” his mother’s eyebrows creased and she crouched a little in her chair.

“Mom is dad really coming today?” the bubble threatened to snap again from the saddened emotions the question brought about but the young scientist was able to fight the emotions back with the interest that it was becoming difficult.

“Of course he is dear.”

No.

Another lie. The mind bubble snapped back as the man broke and started to cry. How could he have ignored his parents and let this happen?

“What’s the matter dear!?”

“I’m sorry mom I need a minute,” replied the weeping man as he ran for his old bedroom where he would be staying for the next miserable self-loathing week.

After about a half hour of frantic walking and running the frightened man stepped out of the hellish forest and into a heaven like sanctuary. Evan walked up to the nearest apple tree to be graced with a scene that the entire known world could not compare to. The trees where aligned in an immaculate orchard and looked perfectly kept. An apple farmer would have drooled at the sight of this beautiful Eden of apple trees. Each tree was lined perfectly against the next giving just the right distance to grow and bare fruit. They where never trimmed, but grew perfectly for the plump fructose filled temptations to have a good bushel number, but not too much for the trees to be overly taxed. And the apples, OH the apples. They hung in a tempting way shimmering a red and juicy aura that glowed like red gold and beckoned to be eaten. It was then the white haired man discovered why it was Eve saw it and dug in. he reached up to pluck the succulent fruit from its perch on the tree. Giving little resistance to being removed, it gave way in his grip. The invader of this apple heaven could not resist the temptation any longer. He took a bite.

“oh… my… GOD!”

Big Mac gave a large sigh as he leaned back on granny smith’s rocking chair. The paperwork for the farm was always taxing for him but he was the best pony for the job. His younger sister Applejack was in no way good with numbers, Applebloom was still in school, and Granny Smith? Well the farm would probably be run into the ground if her seasoned mind did the paperwork. He gave another sigh as he got up from the comfortable chair to move the papers into the house. The screen door creaked as he walked into the farm house and wondered over to the office door which he promptly opened and placed the papers in a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He turned and exited the room. It was getting close to two o’ clock and if he wanted to make any headway today he needed to leave now. He made his way back out to the afternoon sun, but was interrupted by an older and familiar voice from the kitchen.

“ya’ going ta’ buck some apples Big Mac?” came the elderly green pony.

“Eeyup” replied the deep red-coated pony.

“Whell jus’ be back a’for supper” came back Granny.

“Eeyup” repeated the stoic pony as he exited the house to hook himself up to the cart with empty buckets, soon to be filled with luscious apples.

The first afore mentioned sister Applejack had been working in the orchard earlier that morning, but she had plans to spend time with her friends this afternoon at a picnic. So it was Big Mac’s job to pick up the slack in the afternoon. However, paperwork is just as important, so he did that first before taking off for the orchard. After he loaded up the empty buckets into the cart, the farmer pony hooked himself up to it and set off for the trees that where scheduled for bucking that day that where located on the edge of the Everfree.

The walk was quiet enough as he admired the work his family had done over the years. He walked for about fifteen minutes when he froze. What he saw was the greatest perversion his eyes had ever gazed upon. The base of the apple trees where Littered with the apple cores that had previously hung on the branches. It looked like a mass murder of apples as the corpses where scattered out on all the trees ahead of him. He cared greatly for these trees, and stealing from them was like a stab in the poor pony’s heart. Then he saw movement in the distance. Some kind of enormous hairless ape was casually eating what Big Mac would assume another of a piece of his family. The big burly pony would have none of that, he would defend his family no mater the creature’s size. He quickly unhooked himself and charged for the serial killer of apples.

Evan patted his distended belly from the smorgasbord of apples he had eaten. He was starting to feel pain from eating so much. But how could he not? These apples where the best-damned things he had ever eaten! This was even close to toping meat to the yellow-eyed biped, and that was saying something. As he looked from his perch on a tree branch not too far off the ground, he noticed the havoc he had caused in the orchard. “Maybe I went a little to far?” he contemplated, but as his gaze led him to another apple in the tree he thought better of it. “Aw maybe one more” He said to himself, as he grabbed it and hopped down from his perch. The drop wasn’t really far. These trees where rather small in comparison to the ones back home, but how could he complain when that meant he could pick apples with ease?

The overly stuffed man was distracted from his thoughts as he heard rapid clopping to the west of him. Evan cursed under his breath as he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing to clear his mind so that he could gain control over his telepathy. After, he calmed down his mind expand to include a large portion of the grove he was currently in. This ability was essential when he was a fugitive. a few times he was able to sense the military operatives before they were able to reach him and he was able to put them to sleep by changing their brain chemistry a tad. As one would expect the outlaw had frequently practiced this handy trick multiple times in the few days that he spent outrunning the government and as a result it grew larger from constant use. It used to be that he had to heavily concentrate to get more then a five foot radius of mental influence, but ever sense he started being hunted down, it became second nature to sense minds fifty or so yards away when he wasn’t feeling an abundance of one emotion or another. To his relief it there was only one life form in the direction of the stomping. Evan turned in the direction of the disturbance to see a… red pony? "Well that's odd." thought the scientist as the equine like animal bulldozed his way to him. The mind reader decided to intrude on the equine’s surface thoughts so he would know what the red equine planed to do as there was no time to tamper with the red one's mind.

“IMA BUCK IM”

“Well that’s original,” he thought as he crouched hopping to avoid the attack. Right when the pony reared up he somehow managed to sidestep out of the way and at the same time trip on the pony's lower half causing the young man to fall on his rump. As the animal was a quadruped it also couldn’t keep it’s balance and fell with an “Oomph” The human saw this as a golden opportunity and scrambled on top of the small horse and sat on the creature to try and pin it. He didn’t want to hurt the poor creature. It was probably kept to guard the orchard from thieves like him. But it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be willing to pay in work though.

The yellow eyed one was caught off guard as the pony rose effortlessly and thought of all the different kinds of profanities that he could curse his horrid luck with. Before he knew it, he was flying threw the air and the world spun around him. After the shock of being thrown so hard by this steroid induced pony, all the young scientist could do was wait as he crashed into the fast approaching tree. Snaps and yelps of pain was all that could be heard as he clashed with it and fell down on a branch, painfully slowing his decent.

He landed on the ground with a smack. When the world stopped spinning and he could see straight once again, he clutched his ribs and gritted his teeth as he rose from the ground. When he came to his full height, he thought of the cause of the pain. Anger grew and burst to life like a match to gasoline that eventually overrode the pain. He glowered at the cause of his current condition and disturbances. Ok… That thing is going down… he thought as he ground his teeth.

If Evan hadn’t been so outraged he would have noticed the shocked look from the farmer pony, as the biped did not look to be fit to stand. He pushed aside the instinct to run with the instinct to protect what was his. He lowered his head and started to charge the strange naked monkey.

Even if the man was in a rage, he wasn’t blinded by it. He didn’t want to hurt the animal, so for his morality he wouldn’t make the first strike. All bets were off after that. Evan just stood and braced for the attack that Big Mac was sure to give when he ended his sprint.

The red pony stopped his charge when he reached the human and rose on hind legs as forehooves hooves slammed into chest. Evan was pushed back from the force of impact so greatly that his feet left drag marks as he struggled to keep his balance from sliding five yards across the orchard. The man smiled a wicked grin, as he knew he could now make a return blow.

Big Mac was slack jawed. No pony would ever come back from that front buck he just gave. What furthered the farmer’s confusion was that a simple throw had done what looked like a lot of damage, but the strange being was able to take this blow and appear unscathed. It drove Big Mac to a new kind of mental shutdown as he tried to piece the logic together. The equine became so distracted he failed to notice the human charge to make a return blow until it was too late.

Evan bolted at the unusually strong pony to return blow for blow. The quadruped didn’t even move as his fist whistled through the air to make contact with its face. The blow struck true and the farmer pony tumbled across the ground. The green eyed pony finished his flailing tumble and landed farther then Evan had been knocked back.

Oops! I didn’t mean to hit it that hard, thought the human as he walked over to the assumed unconscious equine.

The man’s eyebrows rose as the red farmer stirred and made its way up from the ground. It rocked its head back and forth while blinking a few times and had a rather large bruise forming where the fist made contact. Evan was much faster to recover from his shock as he shook his head then growled “you had enough yet?”

The equine’s head snapped to the sound, “YALL CAN TALK?!” Said the farmer with shrunken irises.

Wait… did words actually come out of that things mouth?

“YOU CAN TALK?!” the scientist came back after a full brain reboot. What came next was completely expected if you look at the facts. Big Mac was a very quiet pony with very short answers. He was awkward toward other ponies and so meeting an unknown creature that was capable of speech made him jumpy. Evan simply came from a world where the only animals capable of mimicking speech where birds. So it was unsurprising when…

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh…” they both ran screaming in opposite directions.

Author's Note

Well I finally posted the first chapter. I will be updating this weekly until I get to chapter 8 at least. Hopefully I'll have more chapters by then.