Every day felt like a slow slip out of life, or perhaps merely out of consciousness. That wasn't to say his current job was boring. A plethora of idiotic drivers crowding the streets he worked on, the vast majority of them with cell phones virtually glued to their faces, saw to that. He just missed his old job, one with which he felt a sense of purpose and actually received a modicum of basic respect. He pulled his car to a stop at a railroad crossing as the train occupying it passed in front of him, zoning out as one after another of its cars passed between the flimsy barriers and flashing red lights. Movement in his rear view mirror brought his attention back to reality as he snapped alert. That SUV was going a little fast...
* * *
One interesting feature of Equestria's railways was that the tracks between any two given stations magically transformed to suit whatever train was currently on them. It was a favored game of Applejack's to try to guess which train was coming based off the tracks, and further, who was on it. This one, however, had her stumped. More than that, she had forgotten about it almost entirely after viewing the tracks for about a minute. Luckily, nopony was there to see her sit there and stare at the mysterious train tracks like an idiot. Ponies only showed up at the train stations when they were expecting a train to arrive according to the schedule they were familiar with, or any letters they might have received in advance. There wasn't a train scheduled to arrive for another three hours, so the station was all but abandoned.
Applejack wasn't normally at a loss for thought or words, but the tracks had shifted into something enrapturing as she approached them on her way out to her great auntie's home in pursuit of an alleged super special secret strudel recipe, a mission she had forgotten entirely about. The tracks were rusted on the surface and smelled strongly of old iron, oil, and some other scents she was not familiar enough with to identify. Wherever this train was coming from, it was very far away, doubtless a place unlike any she had ever seen before, even in her travels with her friends. As she tried to guess what it might look like, the train itself approached, and the cowpony marveled anew as she trotted up the steps to the platform.
The Friendship Express was brightly-colored wood and varying metals chugging along stainless steel rails at a peaceful pace. The Crystal Empire TransEquestrian was also brightly-colored and powered along gray crystal rails like a rocket from the past into the future. Every other train AJ was used to seeing had similar color schemes and personalities. This new train was dark and drab, painted mostly in blacks, forest greens, and rust reds.
Rust was a very prominent feature of this train, alongside a striking level of detail that would have even held Rarity's attention, and Applejack just loved it to pieces. Seemingly cued by her thoughts, the train finally stopped and released a massive cloud of steam through its vents, only further adding to its air of mystery. Positioned directly in front of the pony was a box car, looking for all the world like some over-sized rusty present just for her. It had to be intended for her. There was nopony else here, and nopony was attempting to disembark from the train. Insatiably curious, she opened the door to find... a pile of burlap! Discarding the ten or twelve practical uses for it that immediately popped into her mind, she instead opted to use it to mess with Rarity by asking the froofy white pony to make her a dress out of it. After all, there was obviously enough burlap in this pile to do that and at least six of the things she thought of first.
As she dragged the pile of heavy cloth off the train, Applejack suddenly remembered why she was at this end of Ponyville in the first place, and gasped. Between its removal from the train car and release from her mouth, the pile no longer had anything holding it up, and Applejack hadn't quite pulled it onto the platform. It fell to the ground between the tracks and the platform with a masculine grunt that was just loud enough to alert the country pony, but before she could head down to investigate the source of the noise, the train hooted and left, returning the tracks to the more traditional state intended to host the Friendship Express. A quick look around showed that her friends were on their way to investigate the appearance and disappearance of the strange train, and Applejack did not want them to see her in a situation she did not have control over.
"Uh oh." she said quietly as the pile of burlap started to move, groaning and growling as it did. It inspired the image of a large insect trying to escape its cocoon in Applejack's mind, and she reflexively tried to kick it. Unconscious things were much easier to deal with. However, for all the power her kicks had, it could only apply to things her hooves made contact with. So when she felt a strangely gentle and firm pressure redirecting her leg so that her hoof missed its intended target, she started to worry. And when the pressure, rather than letting up, grew significantly less gentle and started dragging her toward the pile of burlap using her own kick's momentum, she knew she was in trouble.
Looking back in the direction of her friends, she noticed that they were not significantly closer than they had been when the train first departed, further driving home the briefness of the span of time this encounter had covered so far. Now though, Applejack faced a conundrum: whether to call to her friends for help or to continue trying to handle the situation on her own. She thought of how Rainbow Dash would never let her live the moment down and that settled it. She kicked with her other rear hoof, with the same result as the first. Now she was in real trouble, and she flailed with her fore hooves in an attempt to get a good punch in or reach the ground. She got the latter when the things holding her rear hooves dropped her on her face.
"Will you stop that?" The pile of burlap growled as she righted herself and faced it. It looked different now. She could make out traces of a face and a black mane hidden in the depths of shadow cast by the cloth. "What's your problem?"
Applejack's problem was that she was one of the most reasonable ponies in Ponyville, and she had just greeted an apparently harmless (though clearly not defenseless) new creature by attacking it. She wanted to be able to say that it was her experiences dealing with one villain after another that drove her to this approach, but she knew better. She knew she had a bad habit of treating any living thing she couldn't identify as a threat, a habit Fluttershy gave her a lot of flak for, in her own quiet, modest way. But her recent experiences had only served to enforce her beliefs, not deter them. Especially this one. Anything that could render her bucking power useless so easily was not to be taken lightly, especially if it was smart enough to talk.
"Sweet mother of Harmony! You can talk?" Applejack responded, hoping something would distract her friends from showing up before she got things settled. "I mean uh, I'm mighty sorry about those kicks there, son. You gave me a powerful fright when you started movin' and all."
"Yes I can talk." the burlap pile growled back as it moved the appendages that had previously trapped her legs, limbs which Applejack now noticed ended in things that looked an awful like the "hands" Twilight went on about whenever she returned from her increasingly-frequent trips through the mirror, taking the pony's worry in a new direction and intensifying it, especially as those hands grasped and removed layer after layer of burlap and revealed the rest of the things the new Princess had described those "humans" as having. She just screwed up big time. "I can also sing, although not well."
"Are you a human?" Applejack asked the creature as he looked around in growing confusion, apprehension, and irritation. He didn't seem too happy with the abundant radiance of Celestia's sun, considering he kept shielding his eyes.
"Yes he is. Although he's kind of different from the ones I'm used to seeing." Twilight answered from behind Applejack.
