Concrete Apple

There was a great deal of difference between cities in Equestria and cities in the human world. For example, the difference in the levels of crime was almost unbelievable, along with.. well, pollution; the air was just so dirty and smog-filled, at least for Applejack. She was in the human analogue of Manehattan for her own reasons, and had been staying there for two days now. Not many Equestrians really travelled to the human world for much apart from tourism, though.

Well, that was what she told anyone who asked her. The truth was, she was staying in Manhattan as per a request from her friend-turned-royalty, Twilight Sparkle. That request was to see how (and if) the country mare’s Conduit abilities work in the human world, having already been tested in Canterlot.

The only problem now, however, was finding a useful method of using Applejack’s powers. It wasn’t as if she could simply waltz into a construction site and help out, nor could she toss boulders around without causing a lot of expensive damage.

AJ was pondering this very subject as she walked down the street, just a few kilometers from the hotel she was staying in. Applejack knew that she’d be getting ‘looks’ from the local humans, and that she did, so she put her hands in the pockets of her dark brown jacket, zipping it up over her green shirt.

Applejack wasn’t quite comfortable here either - the weather was a lot colder than what she was used to, and AJ was definitely more accustomed to jean shorts more than regular jeans. Finding it slightly hard to breathe in the petroleum-laced air, she had her muzzle buried in something of a dark bandanna Applejack purchased a few days earlier. “Gah.. how in tarnation do humans cope with this here?” she mumbled to herself.

It probably wasn’t as bad as she had thought it to be, but AJ chalked that up to having spent her life breathing clean Equestrian air, and was simply new to a human city environment.

And it seemed that chance she was waiting for was right around the corner - the street widened around a turn in the street, with an alleyway off to the side. As soon as Applejack passed this alley, she heard a scream - a frightened woman’s blood-curdling cry for help, followed by a few gunshots. Her emerald eyes widened upon hearing it, and Applejack soon broke into a run down the (quite narrow) alley.

Her footfalls echoed off the brick and concrete walls of the narrow alley, making more noise than Applejack wanted to make right now. After looking up and back down the section she was in and not seeing anything happening, she ran down another passage jutting off to the side. One or two turns later, the source of the scream became obvious.

AJ stopped running after seeing what was going on, but was only watching for now. There were five involved in this situation: a cornered, purple-haired female human surrounded by four male.. riot police?

All four of them had some sort of yellow, black, and grey riot armour on, but it looked much more military, what with the black goggles, visors and the full-face helmets, not to mention the lack of a plastic shield, instead they all had automatic rifles, and were aiming at this woman. They were all demanding her to surrender - were they trying to arrest this human, despite them looking nothing like cops?

Smacking the woman in the face with the butt of his rifle to stun her, one of the armoured soldiers then grabbed the woman and slammed her face into the brick wall; obviously, they were too brutal to be police, even by the NYPD’s standard. The remaining three soldiers then picked their target up, and were securing some sort of device to her forearms and hands that completely covered them.

“Good work, boys,” one of the armoured males said, who was presumably the superior. “Ugh, hopefully that’s the last goddamn Bi--”

He would have finished speaking if Applejack hadn’t decided to cut in. “Hold a second! What’re y’all doing with her?!” she demanded, her sense of justice kicking in at the right (or wrong?) moment as she took a few steps forward, her hand tightening around the stone in her pocket too.

The armoured men exchanged looks and probably hushed chuckling before their leader spoke up. “Ah, an Equestrian… Move along, ma’am, there’s nothing to see here apart from a Bio-Terrorism arrest,” he said dismissively. His voice was somewhat given a low electronic hum to it, probably via a voice-changer built into the helmet.

But that word, ‘Bio-Terrorist’ - it caught AJ’s attention as a slur, or at least, it used to be another term for Conduits, a fact Applejack picked up on from being around Twilight quite often.

“Bio Terrorist, huh? I ain’t sure how y’all humans do it ‘round here, but I think she’s done nothin’ wrong,” she said with barely hidden anger in her voice as she stepped up to this armoured soldier - even in armour, this human was at least a few centimeters shorter than Applejack, but then again, that was to be expected, as Equestrians were generally taller than most humans.

“I mean, I knew y’all humans were a lil’ racist, but come on, arrestin’ someone for havin’ power? Pretty low, don’t ya th--”

One of the armoured men behind his superior reloaded his rifle and pointed it in AJ’s direction. “Shut it! Don’t think you have a say in this, horse!” He shouted, obviously a little too trigger happy They all seemed to have voice disguisers in their helmets, a pretty sensible move, really.

“Yeah, get back in the kitchen, bitch!” another guffawed obnoxiously, the two nearest to him laughing with him. The third one, however, stayed silent, knowing just how much trouble saying that to an Equestrian got one in.

While they were busy being a little too amused, their superior was unimpressed. “Yeah, uh, I think you should probably go now,” he muttered to Applejack in a more sympathetic tone this time. Getting no answer, he turned towards AJ, but soon found himself in a ridiculously dangerous predicament.

With a grunt, AJ had simply picked him up with one hand and slammed the armoured soldier into the wall, making more than just a small crater in the grey concrete. She muffled his shouts of protest as she then punched his face and knocked him out. Somehow, by some crazy, crazy feat of luck, the other soldiers hadn’t noticed and were looking away.

She took this opportunity to test Twilight’s hypothesis of ‘Do Conduit powers work in the human world?’ Driving her fist into the soldier’s abdomen, AJ concentrated, then used her power to form a concrete cocoon of sorts around the incapacitated soldier, which would suffocate him eventually.

Confident that Twilight was right, Applejack withdrew her fist, unzipped her jacket, adjusted her stetson, and fired a bolt of concrete and yellow energy right at the head of the soldier wearing the thinnest helmet, knocking him to the ground and unconscious. The other three quickly looked in Applejack’s direction and fired, but the bullets simply ricocheted off of her - she had the resilience of concrete, too. They slowly gave up, lowering their weapons - if they hadn’t been wearing helmets, they would have looked petrified.

“Huh, figured I’d never get yer attention,” AJ smirked, cracking her knuckles, adjusting her stetson so that it covered her right eye. Her other eye, defying all sense, lit up with a brilliant green flame, somehow leaving Applejack unharmed and still able to see. She brought a leg up, as if she was about to stamp her foot - and she was. “Now, git!”

AJ brought her foot down, making cracks , a violent tremor and a green shockwave that raced through the asphalt, bowling over the other three soldiers flat onto their faces.  As soon as they hit the ground, concrete sprang up and enveloped them immediately, a few muffled shouts escaping what were now three raised, large lumps in the asphalt.

The literal fire in Applejack’s eye died down, and she put her hat back to rights, too. The only thing left to do was to free the woman, who had been watching all of this, and was rooted to the spot. Dusting herself off, AJ took a few steps towards her, not wanting her to panic any more.

“Let’s calm down, okay? I ain’t gonna beat’cha up,” she reassured the human, taking a look at that thing secured to her arms.

Firing a concrete bolt at it, the device fell off, surprisingly brittle and weak for something of that size, and as it fell off, a purple glow ran along her arms, a sign of her power being usable once more. The human rubbed at her sore wrists, then nodded to AJ.

“T..Thanks, gal. Thought I was done for…” she trailed off, unable to believe her saviour was an Equestrian of all things.

“Ah, s’alright - Gotta help out a fella girl in need, don’tcha? What’s yer name, hun?”

“Abigail-- Uh, Fetch. Sorry, the name’s Fetch,” she corrected herself.

Applejack smiled, happy to have helped out. “Well, Fetch, I don’t gotta clue what yer life’s like here, but if I were ya, I’d move outta the city fast,” she advised the fellow Conduit.

“Thanks.. uh, you too; these guys’ APC is back there, and the cops’ll be here soon,” Fetch warned her, pointing towards the street.

“I hear ya - I was only here fer a few days anyway... Take care of yerself, ya hear?”

AJ only got a nod in reply. The human’s body brightly glowed purple, pink, and blue, becoming a group of a billion points of light, with blue streaks of energy circling it very quickly. She then ran straight up the wall at amazing speed, leaving behind after-images with every step and the blue streaks flying around her, then blasted off, jumping and running across the rooftops at a breakneck pace.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I’m outta here,” Applejack decided. Pulling her bandanna over her mouth again, she walked off, being careful to step over the concrete cocoons as she made her way back to the hotel to gather what little things she had brought with her. With Twilight’s hypothesis now answered, all that was left to do now was get back home - AJ just wanted a shower, as well..