Applejack's stomach rumbled like a rockodile tumbling down a very long cliff. Upon the red-and-white checkered cloth stood plates of tiny, precise sandwiches, miniature pastries, and teacups sized to satisfy the thirst of all but the largest of breezies.
"Something the matter, dear?" Lounging on the other side of the cloth, Rarity took her first sip of chamomile before refilling her cup.
Applejack fussed a stray piece of hay from her mane. It all looked the same in there, of course, long as you weren't a proper and pretty unicorn always looking like you were standing downwind of something. "I appreciate you settin' up this picnic for the two of us. Out here, on this hill, overlooking all of Ponyville in the late morning."
"Oh, it wasn't anything. I know how hungry you get after your, em--" Rarity glanced off to one side. "--chores, so I made sure to make extras just for you!"
"Yeah, you know me so well," said Applejack, her face perfectly flat.
"Girls! There you are! Oh, thank goodness I found you two!"
The children of Ponyville turned as one to see a purple alicorn racing up the hill to join them, a snarling tome pinned against her flank with her wing. She stopped before a platter of individually-arranged alfalfa strands shattered beneath her hooves.
"Twilight?" Applejack was the first to get to her hooves. "What's goin' on? Why does that book look like it wants to eat us, and why'd you bring it here?"
When Twilight's head bounced back up, her smile was lopsided and shaky. Her pupils alternated sizes, as if neither side of her head could agree on which was the more concussed.
"I need you two to kiss," she said. "Like, right now. And make it messy."
Rarity's ears folded back. "...Excuse me?"
Twilight's hoof shot toward Rarity, stopping just short of assaulting her muzzle. "You heard me, filly! Pin that mare on the ground right now and eat her face!"
"And why would the two of us ever do that?" Applejack could feel it coming on -- her eyebrow strained for release into the clouds above.
"Because I cast a spell that'll end the world if you don't."
So long, little eyebrow.
Twilight floated her book toward the two mares. Applejack ignored the whispering in her head -- she was too busy not making heads or tails of the text as words phased in and out of the mortal plane.
"You're not kidding," Rarity breathed, drawing an alarmed look from Applejack.
"You can't possibly believe-- Twilight!" Applejack rounded on Equestria's so-called Princess of Friendship. Consarn it, she even had that weird crown of hers on, if at an angle. "What in the name of this good earth made you do this?"
"Magic's my special talent," Twilight shout-whispered. Applejack was gonna have to figure that one out later. "What do you want me to do, A.J.? Walk past a book like this without casting something out of it? It's a reputation thing, like you and your hatred of lemons."
"That orchard salting was a one-time deal," Applejack shot back, "and I don't appreciate you assassinatin' my complex character like that."
"Look, all I'm hearing is a lot of not-slobbering over that hot piece of flank over there." Twilight's eyes rolled up in her head as she bit her lip, then swayed softly on her legs. “Unf.”
Rarity tapped Applejack on the shoulder. "Should we...?"
"While we still can," Applejack stammered, bolting down the hill together.
***
The masseuse's hoof pressed into Applejack's shoulder. First came a whirl of pain, then clarity when the muscle beneath was coaxed into unwinding. The scent of lavender pervaded the dim, warm atmosphere around her.
On the next table over, Rarity moaned in vibrato beneath a tattoo of taps up and down her back.
"Hey, Rare?" Applejack hissed as another knot came loose above her withers.
"We get a better deal here signing up as a couple," said the unicorn. "That's all."
"'Preciate you puttin' my fears to rest like that, but that's not what I was askin' after."
"Twilight, then?" Rarity turned, presenting her belly to the ceiling. "She did seem to be having a bad mane day earlier. Oh, dear. I should have said something."
"For the love of Pete-- will you just--" Applejack's words might have had more force behind them if her neck didn't feel like a pillow between a cat's kneading paws. "You really think she's gonna bring about the end of the world if the two of us don't kiss?"
Rarity volunteered a foreleg for her masseuse to work on. "Her argument was fairly compelling."
"You don't think her argument also scrambled a few eggs in that head of hers, do you?"
"I wouldn't pin it on that. She hasn't been the same since we lost the old library."
The elastic came off Applejack's mane, and she felt oiled hooves begin to glide down the strands to straighten them. "The library? What does losing most everything she had there have to do with us?"
"About twenty percent of her inventory.” Rarity gasped. “Ooh, that feels good. Lower, please."
Applejack made a face. Then she made a different face as the dots connected in her head. "All those books on the shelves, after all this time?"
"Written by her, about us." Rarity chuckled. "There's a fair-- well, was-- a fair bit of it between some of our other friends, too."
"And the reason I never saw any of this before?"
Rarity turned her head toward Applejack. "I don't know. When was the last time you read a book?"
"Three days ago, the Old Castle, when we were helpin' Twilight figure out how to defeat Lord Tirek. I read fifty-eight of 'em."
"That doesn't count. Anyway, I suspect the dear is feeling the ache of years of work burnt away in an instant, and is eager to get her collection re-established."
The door to the room, formerly private, burst open. Silhouetted in the doorframe stood Twilight in various stages of dishevelment.
"There you girls are!" she exclaimed, tapping her hooves together at supersonic speed. "Oh my gosh, you can't even write these kinds of scenes. Can the masseuses get in on it, too?"
Every knot, spasm, and cramp Applejack had had worked from her muscles returned in one concert of red pain. "We're not kissin', princess," she said, pushing herself off the table.
Twilight fidgeted. "Why not? It'd be, like, so hot."
"'Cause we ain't into each other the way you want us to be. Right, Rarity?"
"You could be gentler with the poor thing," was all Rarity would offer.
"So when the world ends and all of us are dead, you're cool with being the one to blame? I mean, this isn't really a hard choice. I can even put on some mood music for you." Twilight motioned for another mare -- a white unicorn with purple glasses and a wild, blue-striped mane peeked beyond the threshold and nodded excitedly.
Applejack rolled her eyes. "How do you even know the spell worked?"
"Well, for one thing you should look at your masseuses."
***
Applejack wasn't about to fall asleep for a while, not after seeing that. Faces didn't belong down there on a pony, and what showed up on that poor thing's head instead-- well.
The window glowed red through the curtains. Screams punctuated the silence when pieces of sky weren't busy falling onto the town. Earlier, she saw Canterlot melt from the side of its mountain like frosting applied to a cupcake fresh from the oven.
There were monsters in Equestria, and then there were inept bakers. For now, though, Applejack just wanted to wake up the next day.
"Thanks for invitin' me to spend the night after Sweet Apple Acres up and walked off with my whole family," she told Rarity, probing for the cooler spots beneath the covers with her hooves.
"Think nothing of it." The two mares lay in one bed, facing away from one another. "I hope Twilight's staying safe out there."
To her surprise, Applejack hoped for the same. "Why aren't we out there? We have the power to save Equestria from all this with crazy hair."
"It's not the hair that makes the hero," said Rarity, turning over to press on Applejack's breastbone. "It's what's in here."
"Sometimes I hafta wonder if you're even real."
Rarity gasped, scandalized. "I'm scandalized. What could be more real than the two of us, right here, right now?"
"Not Twilight's creepy romantic friend-fiction, anymore."
Rarity burst out laughing. "I'm so glad you never had to read it. She's intelligent, no questions about that, but she's not much for linguistic artistry. It's not that she's doing anything wrong, per se -- she just isn't doing much that’s right, either."
"She ever tell you why?" Applejack tried not to bring one of Rarity's mane curls closer to her face. She tried not to sniff it.
"You've seen her yourself. She's lonely. Everypony is, on some level, even royalty."
Applejack fell silent at this. "You don't think she has fun with writing that junk, do you?"
Rarity made a thinking noise. "Remember that time she got the whole town fighting over that rag pony of hers? She was late writing a friendship letter to the Princess. If I had to say, she never has more fun than when she's writing about the ponies closest to her heart."
Applejack felt something deflate in her chest. It felt like her heart. "When you put it that way, I can almost understand that filly."
"Then she goes off and pairs them with strangers she's met for five seconds, because that's how she sees this world." Rarity rolled onto her back, weaving her hooves beneath her head. "So yes, I agree with you that it's creepy, and it's not always that well-written. But it's honest. And I think I have a pony here who wouldn't begrudge another for that."
"Thanks for backing me up, Rarity." Twilight Sparkle peeked out from behind Applejack's nightstand. "So, you two going at it soon? I brought a camera this time."
Applejack wheeled on Twilight. She wasn't even going to bother asking why she'd spent all that time hiding in Rarity's bedroom while the kingdom fell to pieces outside. "Does it really mean that much to you?"
Cowbell noises came from Twilight's head as she nodded.
Applejack looked over at Rarity, who shrugged. "Fine," said the earth mare, casting one look back at the alicorn. "We'll just get this overwith, we'll be back to being friends, and we'll never talk about this again. C'mere, Rare."
Rarity leaned in. Applejack pursed her lips, unsure of whether to close her eyes or keep them locked onto the two gorgeous pools of sapphire before her.
Then they kissed. There was a flash.
"Good Celestia!" yelped Applejack, jerking back. There had also been tongue. She wiped the back of her hoof across her mouth as Twilight collapsed to the floor, twitching.
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Oh mare, yeeeeeesssssss."
Rarity blushed. "Hey, look outside!"
The red glow faded. Twilight drew back the curtains to a kingdom slowly restoring itself to order -- fires shrank and dissipated, eldritch beings relapsed into ponies with strange sucking sounds. Applejack could hardly believe it.
She could believe it more when a pink hoof reached up to the window and rapped on it thirty times in one second. The rest of the mare followed it inside as Twilight opened the window.
"Did they do it?" Pinkie Pie asked her.
"They sure did," said Twilight, grinning. "You owe me five bits."
Pinkie was nothing but sunshine and sparkles as she reached in her pockets for coins. "Wow, Twilight. I didn’t think you’d ever get them to kiss."
"Gotta do what you have to, cutie. If it means threatening ponies with the end of the world, then that’s what it takes." Twilight ruffled a hoof through Pinkie's mane, then drew her in.
It was like watching Twilight eat at Whinny-Out Burger, if the food there was meant for kissing instead. In either case, Applejack couldn’t bring herself to look away. The two fillyfriends sprang off into the sky the next moment, laughing and chatting happily.
Rarity tapped her on the shoulder. “Well, that was a thing,” the unicorn said. “What now?”
Applejack thought. And thought.
“We should probably check in on Rainbow and Fluttershy before they do.”
Author's Note
Tough choice deciding if this fic qualified under the card that gave this story its name, or "Worldwide Threat of Destruction". As I was too lazy to pursue a hi-res image of the latter to use for this story's cover image, the former won out. The chapter name steals shamelessly from the ficlet titled in the the card itself.
Anyway, thank you for not closing out of this tab after three paragraphs. Maybe you even enjoyed reading all the way down here? I know the Comedy tag on this site is much abused, and I'm not adding much here to save it from its fallen state. At any rate, I'm very much grateful for your attention.
Meanwhile, the Twlight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder Badfic Contest is still accepting entries until some time on June 30th! You only need to write 100 words to enter, so you should totes do that.
