Chapters The Hackle-Raising Hoof-Fouler
As with so many of the other situations she'd been involved with since the Elements had been rediscovered, Applejack didn't find out how much trouble she was actually in until long after she stepped in it.
It was one of the natural hazards of farm work, of course. The Acres were, in many ways, their own little ecosystem: four ponies, a myriad of (mostly) rent-paying tenants, more insects than Applejack cared to count or even think about unless one of them tried making a meal out of her product , birds everywhere, raccoons forever sneaking in to snatch one more snack (and one more, and one more, and...), squirrels, rabbits, some rather unwelcome and apparently permanent residents of what had once been the West Orchard, and then you got down to the weird stuff... all of which lived, breathed, ate, and excreted. Just about any early morning scouting trip across her own soil risked some degree of hoof befoulment, and it was a rare day which didn't see her dodging more than hoof-stubbing rocks which Apple Bloom was supposed to have removed six seasons ago.
In this case, Applejack had been distracted: another natural hazard, especially in the early fall. Cider season was closing in, and that meant she had to pay extra attention to her crops during the early morning inspection of the North Fields, evaluating trees to see which ones were ready to let loose with just a little touch of concussive persuasion, checking for the aftereffects of insects and birds and nearly everything else which wasn't paying for the honor of their meals, simultaneously wondering if there were enough spices in the cellar because mulling for the winter stock was also just around the corner, and that was when she wasn't considering if she should use the probably-inevitable trip into town to check in with Cheerilee and get a few more depressing details on whatever her little sister and the other two had done to cost the school the use of their hoofball field, well beyond what had been contained by a note which had been trodden within a tail strand of illegibility, with every last hoofprint of a completely familiar size... It all left her with turning head, swiveling ears, and her mind focused on events yet-to-come.
The squelch brought her hearing back to the here-and-now, and practically every other sense rapidly followed suit.
She looked down at her left forehoof. She had stepped in... well, the piece which was still protruding was roughly the size and diameter of a minotaur cigar. The semi-solid was mostly greenish-grey, with hints of other hues, none of which warranted inspection for longer than it took for her pre-inspection snack to begin kicking her stomach, because the look pretty much matched the smell and the smell was... also somewhat reminiscent of cigars, plus there was the texture , some of which had squelched up her hoof and was soaking into her fur ...
She tried to tell herself that none of it had reached her tongue. She failed.
An attempt was made to scrape most of it off on rocks, old tree trunks (of non apple-bearing varieties), and grass. All of it stuck to and coated the receiving surfaces while none of it came off her foreleg. This was something which should have been impossible, but the stuff didn't care.
She took a glance around. The grass ahead was... well, "occupied" was a good word. So was "laden." "Trapped" definitely fit. The sheer quantity of waiting problem spots seemed to indicate either an extraordinarily dedicated group effort or a single horrible illness. Possibly both.
Applejack frowned.
"Now," she muttered to herself, "what are you ...?"
Because the stuff was a lot of things, all of them disgusting -- but it was also unfamiliar . She'd had intruders on the Acres, ones who weren't particularly concerned about covering up the aftereffects of their presence, and if any of them were still around...
Avian, that was her best guess: in addition to Acres inhabitants both natural and undesired, she spent enough time dodging her way around the cottage grounds to have a rather good idea of origin sources for this category of foulness, and this variety struck her as having come from a bird. A big one. But that didn't necessarily mean much if the monster species got involved, one of the mix-and-match types where only the digestive system came from that which flew, including, for a few of them, the built-in desire for meat.
But she wasn't going to retreat back to the house for backup, not unless she had to. She might be alone and facing down potential trouble which she knew nothing of -- but she was also standing on her own ground . Her soil. And until proven otherwise, that was enough.
Applejack started forward, testing the air (and ground) with every sense (plus one), searching as she carefully made her way forward --
-- not carefully enough.
It took six more squelches before she gave up and broke into full trot.
She stared. She couldn't help it, any more than she could stop the little smile which found itself on her lips without initial permission -- but as she continued to gaze upon the visitor, she decided the tiny token of expressed delight was more than welcome to remain.
Sure enough: one big bird. About two-thirds the size of a pony, settled down in the grass in front of one of her oldest, most reliable trees, one her Grandpa had planted so long ago, flourishing with the regularity of sunrise and sunset, bearing at least a sixth of the apples she was going to need for the trial batch all by itself --
-- she refocused on the bird. Black and white and grey, with those last two pleasantly phasing into and through each other along the body, passing through a number of fine shades before surging into deep black for the tail. The head was almost entirely a matching black: eyes and beak and feathers, but for a brilliant white streak at the very top of the long neck. A plump body. She had no view of the feet, but she was willing to bet they were webbed: this struck her as being some part of the aquatic fowl family. Related to swans, perhaps: the bird just had that...
...majesty .
The long neck curved. The small head came up. Black beads focused on her and refused to blink.
And still she smiled. Just a bird after all, and she was still on her own ground.
"Well," Applejack breathed, "ain't you jus' the most regal thing..." Because there was no denying it: the bird was handsome . It had presence . It seemed to occupy six times the amount of Acreage it had camped out on, and that was before she accounted for the huge wings, which were now slowly beginning to spread. "Where did you come from?" Keeping her voice calm, under control: she would never have Fluttershy's talents, but she had enough experience with creatures in the wild to have some idea of what not to do. "'cause Ah know Ah ain't never seen you 'round here before, or anythin' like you..." Along with how to test .
The wings, about a third unfurled, paused. The head bobbed slightly.
Next step, then. "Can y'understand me? Ah know y'might not be able t' speak, but if'fin y'can understand, jus' spread yer wings the rest of the way an' flap once. Can y'do that for me?"
That curve of neck came forward. The eyes kept staring. The wings didn't move.
All right: no knowledge of Equestrian. But there were other tests, time-honored ones.
Applejack brought up her left forehoof, tried to ignore the stuff that was still on it (and, after her trek across her land, on so many other places), carefully stomped it once -- paused -- again. Then the right foreleg, but with two stomps in rapid succession. And repeated the pattern three times. All the bird had to do was copy her once ...
It was amazing, really, how long it was going without blinking.
So it ain't a thinker. Makes some things harder, others easier. But still, even knowing that it didn't recognize her words as anything other than noise, she kept talking: it would still probably respond to tone , and she kept hers gentle. "Are y'feelin' all right? 'cause you're producin' a mighty amount of mess for jus' one bird." Which didn't mean there hadn't been others who'd already departed from her grounds, but the possibility of this one being sick... "Ah've got a friend who can look y'over. An' Ah'll go get her for you, if y'need help. But right now, Ah jus' need you t' move away from the tree, 'cause... well, that's mah tree and Ah kinda need t' check it out from close up. So..." and this was the part a non-sapient bird would automatically respond to, there was no nest, nothing to guard, so all she had to do was take one careful step forward, just a few seconds away from trying that. "...Ah'll get a little closer, look y'over, take care of mah tree, and then if'fin y'need it, Ah can --"
There was a sound like a faulty steamstack trying to vent, a furious hiss which indicated something deep inside the machinery was about to explode. And the wings spread, the neck thrust, the beak stabbed at the air as Applejack jumped backwards in a single four-legged bound, hat never shifting, her tail beginning to lash...
The bird got up. The feet were in fact webbed. And nothing which charged across her ground with that kind of speed could possibly be the least bit sick.
Applejack, startled in spite of herself, hating that such had been visible even to a bird , glanced back over her shoulder a mere five strides into her gallop. The bird had stopped chasing her, halting the rush a single body length into what she had instinctively seen as a full-scale chase . It was now prowling the grass in front of her tree , staring at her as wings beat at the air without ever quite making the body lift, neck curving about while that hissing just kept on coming...
She could have gone to the cottage, right then and there. Turned her tail on it and let somepony else handle everything. But she didn't, because she'd figured it out, and the offense closed out every avenue of reason in the world. Because the bird was being territorial .
On her territory.
She stopped. Looked around, instinctively and carefully. Started to go back. She'd been within four body lengths when it had decided to react: that meant she knew where to stop...
"Oh no y'don't," she whispered. "Not on mah Acres."
It was staring at her again. The wings were assaulting the air.
"So... here's what's gonna happen," she softly told the world. "Ah'm gonna aim this away from yer head. Jus' close enough t' scare you. An' then you'll know Ah mean business, an' you'll leave. Permanent. Y'got me?"
It didn't understand her, of course: she knew that, could see nothing more than instinct and reaction and fury in those little black eyes. She just didn't care any more.
"So... scram ."
She spun her body around, using her right forehoof as the pivot point. Her hind right leg kicked out and precisely impacted a rock which had been resting low in the grass, one which had probably been there all along and there was nopony around to claim different.
The mineral missile hit the resilient truck a mere two hoof-widths to the right of the weaving black head, and the bird jumped . The wings curled back in towards its body, and the eyes finally blinked.
"Want another?" Applejack asked. "'cause Ah got plenty more! Here -- free seconds!" Missing to the left , and she relished seeing it jump again. "An' it all stops jus' as soon as you clear out forever --"
It blinked again.
It charged.
For something with a mere two legs, it had surprisingly good ground speed.
Big Mac glanced up from his breakfast as she squelched her way into the kitchen.
She'd gotten most of the stuff off her hooves: it was the only thing she'd taken care of before heading into the house. She hadn't paused long enough for her legs to dry. Or for anything else.
"What..." Her big brother swallowed his next breath, tried again in a slightly steadier voice. "What happened to you ? Who happened?"
"Don't worry 'bout it," Applejack insisted as her eyes narrowed and dedicated legs wetly propelled her forward. She'd just sighted her target. "Don't worry 'bout anythin', just got somethin' Ah need t' ask..."
"AJ," her far-too-interfering sibling cut in, "you've been in a fight . And I'm not sure you won . Those scratches --"
"-- give me a minute here --" The target was starting to retreat. Some of that was instinct. The majority was practice.
"-- we've got to paint the ones on your snout, make sure they'll heal right --"
"-- jus' a minute , Mac, Ah've gotta --"
Ah shouldn't have t' --
The target made a break for the living room. Applejack, who'd known it was coming, spun her body and whipped her tail across the exit. The target automatically went left, and that put her into the door frame.
The elder sister waited exactly long enough for the younger's ears to stop ringing.
"All right," she demanded from Apple Bloom. "What did y'do?"
"Ah -- Ah ain't never done nothin'! Nothin' ever !"
Applejack spared a moment for the ongoing, increasingly depressive amazement towards the miracle that was her sibling's self-editing memory. "Any Crusades goin' on out there in the North Fields that Ah should know 'bout, right now ? Somethin' involvin' birds , maybe?"
"No! Ah ain't never done nothin' with birds!"
She noted the singular. "An' the other two? "
"Naw! Nothin'! Applejack, Ah swear, we ain't never tried with birds before! Dogs, sure! You remember the dogs. And rabbits. Cats. Manticores the one time. Fish... come t' think of it, we ain't gotten around t' fish or birds yet, maybe --"
"-- yer grounded for the rest of the day. Once y'get back from school."
Apple Bloom blinked.
"But -- Ah ain't never done nothin' ! What do y'call that , punishin' me when I ain't --"
Applejack thought about the look she'd just seen in her sister's eyes at the thought of Crusading for something to do with fish or birds , said "Ah call it a preemptive strike," and watched her youngest sibling sulk her way out, plopping into an empty corner of the living room with the highly insulted force of those whose most recent crime against mark-finding had been caught at the planning stage.
Big Mac also watched her go, then sighed and turned his attention back to Applejack. "AJ, you know that ain't fair."
"Ah also know Ah ain't never heard the one about manticores . An' Ah'm betting she ain't told you neither --"
"-- it happened while you were in the Empire."
She stared at him. "Anypony hurt?"
"Nope. They got lucky. It was that one Fluttershy helped. Just carried them back."
"An' you didn't tell me 'cause...?"
He sighed. "Because nopony was hurt and you've got enough to worry about -- which maybe means right now. AJ, what happened out there?"
"We've got a bird. In the North Fields."
His gaze went over her several times, lingering on the scratches. "...one bird?"
"'bout swan size. An' y'know how hard they can hit? This one's the same for strength. Only nasty . Got a grudge an' a temper an' it's territorial. Everythin' Ah could do... most Ah managed t' do was make it back off a little ways. Soon as Ah even pretended t' turn mah tail on it, it either settled in again, charged me, or second followed by first. Didn't hurt it, least not more than it hurt me." And judging by the wing-strike bruises she was just starting to feel, possibly a lot less. "Didn't want t' do much with a dumb animal who was jus' tryin' t' chase me off. But Ah ain't never seen a bird like this before an' Ah'm gonna do what Ah can t' make sure Ah never see one again ."
A slow nod. "Do you want me to --"
"-- naw. Don't go out there." She was fairly sure her brother could take the thing if he had to -- which was why she didn't want him proving it. (She could have done the same if she'd been willing to go for fatal strikes. She'd been telling herself that all the way back to the barn.) "If'fin only 'cause y'don't want the fun of steppin' in this stuff . Ah'm gonna try a quick bath. Maybe a long one. Maybe... as long as Ah can get away with. An' after that... well, Ah think Ah'll jus' try the easy way."
He visibly thought it over before saying "Okay. North Fields off limits for a little while. You can tell me more before you head out -- I wanna know what this bird looks like, in case it tries to get close. Want me to tell Granny when she gets up?"
"Please. Right now, Ah'm just hopin' Ah haven't messed up too much of the house, an' Ah'm gonna make sure Ah don't mess up too much more..."
She trotted out, through the living room, past a sulking sibling, to the ramp which led upstairs. After a few minutes, the sounds of splashing water made their way down.
They went on for a while.
"Big Mac?"
"Yeah?"
"We got any more kinds of soap than this?"
"Nope."
"Horse apples."
"Hey! Does anypony know if there's a mark in soap makin' ? Ah know ponies do it, so there's gotta be a mark, right? An' if y'want more powerful soap, maybe y'jus' gotta use more powerful stuff when y'make it! Like gravel an' scourin' sand an' maybe even acid ...!"
"Apple Bloom?"
"...yeah?"
"An' now you're grounded for a week ."
The Dolorous Black-Beaked Kvetch
In many ways, it should have been the first resort: if a strange animal species was found, she was supposed to head for the cottage. (Although "animal" was now a matter of mild question, and Applejack was starting to wonder if she should have asked her sister about any attempts to gain marks in monster summoning which had gone horribly almost -right.) But she knew just how busy her friend was, how much work was involved in the day-to-day -- and more often, minute-to-minute, with too much of that time spent under Moon -- labor of animal caretaking. It made Applejack reluctant to interrupt for anything which wasn't a crisis, and she knew her other friends felt the same way: the continual burden was heavy enough without their adding any amount of weight.
There were problems with this philosophy, of course. The first was that the collective reluctance to call on that particular talent sometimes meant that the obvious solution for a given problem was only summoned after it was too late. And under one of the other hooves was the simple fact that while they personally might want to maintain a stress-shielding buffer zone between the world and the cottage, there were other ponies in town. These days, there were a lot of them, more than there had ever been before, with new arrivals still streaming in every moon.
Applejack knew all of it, and as her ears caught the first yells echoing from the cottage grounds, she considered the uninformed nature of those recent residents while simultaneously taking a mental glance under a third hoof and finding a bad assumption waiting there to justifiably laugh at her.
Namely, that she'd believed there was only one bird.
"It's in my garden ! And when I tried to get it out, it -- it -- well, just look at my mane!"
"Isn't this supposed to be your expertise? Why haven't you fixed this already? If somepony , and I think you know who I'm talking about -- no, don't try to hide behind your own mane! If you don't fly to my place first and tell that thing to clear out --"
"-- your place? They're in my pond !"
Applejack maintained a steady, unhurried pace.
"I got here before you!"
"Yeah? Well, I got here before both of you!"
"So what? I got here before any of you! And at least your mane will grow back! Do you know what it did to my greenhouse door when it charged me? It didn't even look stunned! It just kept trying over and over, and then the panes gave out, and once it got in, it went straight for the tomatoes!"
There was no need to gallop. None at all.
"Tomatoes? You want to get her first for tomatoes ? Like those won't grow back too!"
"It's fall !"
"You've got a greenhouse!"
"Not any more !"
Many of the ponies who had moved in since the Elements had been rediscovered... they wanted to be part of history. To be near where the action was (while somehow never considering what would happen if that action landed on their front lawns -- or ponds). And some knew a little about the Bearers, or told themselves they'd learned a little more after arrival. Those newest of Ponyville residents educated themselves just enough to decide that if any animal-related issues manifested, their one and only recourse was to gather in front of the cottage as a -- she counted -- fourteen-pony mini-mob, fully consisting of recent arrivals, all screaming and yelling and lashing furious tails and demanding that the terrified yellow presence currently forcing herself to stay in front of the door help them, and only them, first . All believing that the last syllable in her name was the dominant one and all they had to do in order to get what they wished (and possibly for free) was to be the loudest and most obnoxious. It was all they'd bothered to learn and for most, all they felt they ever had to know. It was certainly all anypony had told them, and that was why Applejack didn't need to hurry.
"My plants!"
"My sidewalk!"
Because everything was completely under control.
"My porch!"
"My hooves !"
"I swear , if you don't untuck yourself, if you don't talk , if you don't get that pink tail in the air five seconds ago , I'll --"
And there it was.
Applejack listened, counting under her breath. Six ponies burst past her before the last of the echoes died away, two in the air, three on the ground, and one heading into the stream just because it must have seemed too narrow for direct pursuit. The remaining eight found their legs (and for three, wings) locked. Eyes went wide. Fur and feathers trembled. They couldn't move. Moving seemed to be the worst of all possible options, if only because the next one to move would get all of the attention and nopony was sure it wouldn't wind up focusing on them .
Yes, new arrivals in Ponyville gathered all the information they cared to hear about the cottage, or at least all that anypony cared to tell them.
"Heya, Fluttershy," Applejack calmly greeted her friend as she trotted through the frozen remnants of the former mob.
And really, it was amazing how nopony ever managed to mention the bear.
"An' always good t' see you, Harry. So Ah'm guessing we're all here 'bout the same thing?"
Slowly, Fluttershy untucked herself. A single eye became visible behind the shielding manefall.
"...a big bird?"
Applejack nodded. "Fairly big, yeah. More stubborn. 'bout six times that amount of sheer mean . Found one in the North Fields, an' it don't want t' leave. So Ah figured Ah'd drop by an' see if y'could ask it t' leave for me. Got a few? Can y'come with?"
"...I think so. But --"
Which, for one new and potentially temporary resident, was when the shock of having a bear roar in her face started to wear off. "HEY!"
"What?" Applejack politely inquired.
"I was here first !"
Another partial defrosting, this one resulting in a somewhat-melted stallion. "We all were!"
"And just because you're her friend -- look, there's a line here," another mare imperiously decided. "And since those others left, I'm at the front of it. I'm the one standing closest to the door. I don't care who you are, you can wait your -- why is the bear looking at me?"
"...he does that," Fluttershy truthfully said.
"Make him stop."
"...stop what?"
"Looking at me."
"...a bear may look at a pony," Fluttershy softly told the mare. "Who am I to tell him who he can and can't look at?"
"But... he's looking at me... like... like..."
"...yes?"
"Like... that ."
Harry yawned. It was sincere, slightly tired, and didn't show off more than ninety-five percent of his teeth.
"I'm willing to go second ," the mare decided. "But only if it's an emergency . Which it clearly is. So I'll do the proper thing. And go second. Tell the bear that."
"...you just did."
"I really want him to hear it from you."
Applejack, keeping the smile internal, trotted a little closer. "So what did they all tell you?"
"...not much," Fluttershy admitted. "They were... mostly talking over each other. Or -- screaming. All I really made out was that there was a bird, it's big, and... mean. Not much more than what you said, Applejack. But... it didn't sound familiar. Not completely. I think... I think maybe there was something I saw, but... not anyone I've met , and..." Applejack checked that single visible pupil and saw the sparks of excitement beginning to dance. "...is it new , Applejack? Is this a new friend? Someone who's never been in Ponyville before, a new species , and -- do you think so? Do you really think it's possible ?" Her volume was beginning to (slightly) increase as the joy built. "Because we still find new species! It's not as if all of Equestria's been explored, not even close, Applejack, and all it takes is for a single member of a new species to wander out of the right wild zone, and if I got there first , I could make the first friend ...!"
There were times when the group reflected one another, even when the pony in question didn't see it happening or, depending on the nature of the mirror and the pony gazing into it, want to admit it. But there were times when Applejack spotted the events (and others which had her denying them), and to the surprise of everypony present except herself --
"...and I could name them! Not just a personal name, I mean. The species ! They have to be classified , you know that, Applejack! You can't breed a new kind of apple without tracking the root stock, right? So I have to figure out what tribe they are, and then the genus, I've already got the family, but then I get to name the species and I've never done that before, I'll be in the books ...!"
-- Fluttershy briefly went full Twilight.
The visible eye blinked. "...do you think the publishers would give me a discount? If I contributed to one? Because if I got even a little savings on any volume... I would sort of have helped update the edition, you know..."
Applejack, doing her best not to laugh, simply said, "Can't find out without checkin' em. Get your stuff -- Ah'll wait out here."
Fluttershy nodded, then turned around and trotted inside. Harry stayed exactly where he was.
That one stallion stared at Applejack. "But what about us ?"
"What 'bout you? This helps you. She's comin' with me. She'll work out what has to be done in order t' shift these birds. Once she figures that out, she can do it at all of your places. Ah get any possible trial an' error, y'get the finished product. So what's the problem? An' as long as you're all here... anypony paid for her services yet?"
And now they were all staring at her. "She's a Bearer ," a new mare weakly said. "She works for the thrones ."
Which meant exactly what Applejack had expected: none of them had expected to pay and, left to their own devices, very few were ever going to. So... "Does this look like a mission t' you? A threat to all of Equestria? Ah sure haven't gotten any notice from the Princess, an' that means this is jus' some birds . Fluttershy's gonna do her job -- a job y'all are gonna pay for." And she felt her lips twisting into a special smile, a familiar one and an expression which Rarity had once told her was 'regrettably just a little bit mercenary, dear.'
She'd ignored that. And then she'd snuck off to the library to find out what 'mercenary' meant.
"So... everypony's gonna wait right here while Ah work out a fee structure . Somethin' based on -- total number of birds, Ah think. 'cause the more there are, the harder the job, right? And then y'all are gonna deposit yer bits in the box -- Harry, Ah'm gonna need a box here -- an' Ah'll write up a sign an' post it right next t' the box, an' anypony who comes along while Fluttershy an' me are at the Acres, they're gonna put their bits in the box, an' Harry's gonna stay right here an' make sure the bits go in the box an' stay in the box, 'cause if'fin they don't, y'know what we're gonna need? A bigger box. Harry, waitin' on that box -- oh, right: y'can't understand me ... okay, maybe five minutes an' then we're gonna have a box. An' for the record? He don't make change ."
Applejack was generally content with her magic. She seldom felt envy towards the other two races, at least not that she would generally allow herself to admit . They had their tricks and techniques: she had her tools. And on most days, that was more than enough.
But as she and Fluttershy made their way into the North Fields, she couldn't help but glance back at the pegasus. And she sighed.
"...what?"
"Least you're gonna stay clean. Ah already had one bath. You..."
And an inevitable "...sorry."
Another sigh. "Fluttershy, Ah -- don't mean nothin' by it. Jus' that... kinda wish Ah could hover. If only right now."
"...I could land. If it'll help."
The worst part was that it had been sincere. "Naw. Y'get dirty enough every day, just takin' care of yours. Ah got no right t' complain, compared t' what y'go through moon after moon. It's one mornin' for me, nothin' more."
"...really, it wouldn't be any trouble..."
"Fluttershy, Ah'm tellin' you, Ah'm --" and she stepped in another one, just barely managing to suppress the groan. "-- lookin' forward t' getting this thing off mah Acres." Another glance back at the pegasus, this time focusing on the laden saddlebags, all bulging with what seemed to be significant weight. "So what did y'bring? Y'doubled back for the cottage after we started talkin' on the way here, an' Ah know those weren't as full then."
"...books," Fluttershy eventually said. "What you were saying, about how the bird looked... I don't remember any friend like that, ever. But... I think I remember... reading something. In an... update volume, maybe? I have to go through so many books just to try and stay current, it's hard to keep track of what's where, and I only really bookmark the medical items, but... what you said sounded sort of familiar , somehow. So I brought every taxonomy update I've gotten in the last six moons. Maybe after I see the bird, I'll remember more, and I'll know where to look..."
Applejack frowned, which meant she missed the opportunity to avoid the next squelch. "What's taxes got t' do with this?"
"...taxonomy."
"Ah mean, they don't think on the pony level. Ain't citizens or residents. Pretty sure they ain't got jobs . Sure can't make 'em pay t' leave."
"...no, it's actually about --"
"-- but maybe if we hit 'em with a really big tax ... ain't nothin' stupid enough not t' run from one of those..."
And Fluttershy gasped .
"Oh! That's him, isn't it? Oh, Applejack, he's so beautiful ...!"
Applejack never would have thought to question her friend on the instant gender identification. As for the rest of it... "Yeah," she said with no small amount of sarcasm. "Beautiful. Until y'get t' know him."
The bird brought its head up. The black beads moved between the two ponies, evaluating attack priorities.
"Does he look familiar? At'tall?" Applejack carefully asked.
Fluttershy's shapely brow was furrowing. "Not for pictures ..."
"Y'mean...?"
"...something... I've read, maybe? I'm sure I saw something about a bird like this. Let me just... get closer. If I talk to him a little, it might help me remember..."
"Jus' remember what Ah told you first," Applejack immediately insisted.
A slow nod. "...he's mean. I believe you. But maybe there's just something making him mean. I know you said he didn't look sick, but they don't always when they're ill. Or he could have... another thorn, maybe?"
"Not with the way he charges," came the dark reply. "Pretty sure his feet are fine. Okay, Fluttershy... all you. Jus' take it slow..."
She hung back, letting the pegasus make the first approach: far enough to the rear so that the bird wouldn't be focusing on her, close enough to charge in and take as many bruises as necessary to ensure Fluttershy's escape. And she watched as her friend flew closer, one tentative flap at a time, those blue-green eyes shining...
It was strange, watching Fluttershy in her element like this. It was strange how
natural
it felt...
The bird's wings began to spread. It hissed , and the beak stabbed at a pony too far away to reach: first warning.
Fluttershy blinked. Her mouth opened, and a sound came out: part honk, part warble, and a little bit of something else.
The bird's head pulled back. The neck dipped in towards the plump body.
"Watch the wings," Applejack whispered.
"...I know... I know how strong they are, how much damage they can do..."
"So y'remember?"
"...no. But I know the genus now. It's... not any kind of monster. It's some kind of goose , Applejack, I swear on Luna's tail, I remember reading something about this... but just let me talk..."
More sounds from Fluttershy. The bird hissed again, but the sound seemed somewhat half-hearted.
"...I," Fluttershy decided, "shall call him Mister Honksworth. Of the Quebuck Honksworths."
"An' is that his name ? An' where he's from?"
"...no. His name doesn't... translate very well. It's that way a lot, for the ones who don't have a language on the pony level. It's just... something to call him."
"So, if y'had t' translate..."
A long pause. "Owns."
"Owns what ?"
"...um... hang on... I'm going to try telling him... some of this is body posture, I should land now..." Fluttershy carefully touched down, still out of beak-striking range. Wings were carefully angled. Forelegs came up, went down. Still more sounds, broken up by a whisper. "...I'm trying to ask him why he's here. And if he'd mind leaving. It's not easy... he really doesn't think, but there's some concepts he does have, and..."
The goose honked, three times. Another hiss. Wings went after the local atmosphere with intent to murder.
"...oh dear."
Applejack's eyes narrowed. "Wanna translate that ?"
"He says... he believes ... he doesn't have to go. We have to."
She could feel her hooves starting to scrape at the ground, which, when it came to staying clean, was just the latest in her series of mistakes. "'cause? "
"...we're... on his ... Applejack, please don't be mad, it's just how he is , he can't help it... we're on his territory ."
Was her hat starting to slip? "An' what's his territory? The base of mah Grandpa's tree? A body length or two 'round it? Goes a little closer t' the feed stream? How much does he think is his ?"
Fluttershy swallowed.
"...all of it."
Applejack took the deepest breath of her life. Held it.
"...that air is his too."
She held the lungpower behind the word back for an extra six heartbeats, just to spite the bird. "Really ."
There was more honking, all of which seemed to have an edge to it.
"...wherever he lands. Whatever he flies over. His name is... Owns Everything -- no, that's not his name, it's the name of his flock , and he wants us off his land and out of his sky, or he's going to --"
Fluttershy's eyes widened. Her wings flapped, sent her two body lengths back just in time, got her up as the goose lunged, missing -- but now its own wings were spreading again, wings powerful enough to bruise an earth pony body would do Celestia-knew-what to a more delicate (if oddly sturdy) pegasus, it was going to get in the air and Applejack was starting her charge, she could knock it back and buy Fluttershy that much more time, she didn't care about not hurting a dumb animal any more, not when the thing was going for Fluttershy while laying claim to her Acres and if it thought it had any right , then a bruising was the least of what it was begging for, she was charging in and the thing was moving towards them , it might be too big to take off immediately, it needed some running room, and Fluttershy's eyes were getting wider still, the pupils more focused, angrier --
-- Applejack's own instincts took over, swerved her to the left, nearly dumped her into the fouled grass. Anything to keep from getting in front of what was coming next. From being able to see it. From being seen .
It was over. She already knew it. The goose was about to find out.
"...NO! How DARE you! You're just visiting here, and you think -- GET OUT! "
As it turned out, the goose couldn't take off immediately. It wasn't all that good at changing direction in a hurry either, and so went underneath Fluttershy before skidding into a tree.
Its head fit nicely into Applejack's own hoof imprints, but not for long.
It rebounded. It staggered. And then it ran, trying to get anywhere which wasn't where they were, where she was, and they heard the wings pushing at the air, the honk of takeoff, of retreat ...
Slowly, Fluttershy landed, acquired her first mess, didn't seem to notice or care. All four knees trembled, and would not stop.
"...sorry..."
Applejack just barely managed the exhale.
"You okay?"
"...yes... mostly... I just... I hate that, I..."
Slowly, Applejack approached, rubbed her side against huddled wing, held the position until the vibrations began to slow.
"You're okay, Fluttershy. It's okay. Everything's gonna be okay..."
Silence. She felt the pegasus' rib cage expanding and contracting against her own.
"It's... just the Stare. That's all. Nothin' y'haven't done before, when y'needed to. Nothin' y'won't do again when we all need it. Y'can handle it. Y'always do."
Finally, "...yes." (Applejack smiled.) "...but... there's more of them. I hope it doesn't come to that with all of them, I hope on Celestia's mane that the rest of them will listen . But... with that flock name... Applejack, he... wasn't nice, not even a little nice, and there's a flock ..."
"So," Applejack cautiously asked, "how many in a flock?"
"...well..."
The burst of green flame exploded directly in front of their snouts.
They both jumped. (Fluttershy's ended with her still in the air.) The scroll dropped, almost landing on the last patch of local clean ground.
Almost.
"...um..."
She sighed. "Ah'll get it. Guess Twi jus' got wind of this..." It wasn't a pleasant process, but she managed to keep her mouth entirely out of it and pin the thing open between her forehooves, executing a very awkward lean-forward in order to read it while keeping her barrel off the dirt. "'To Applejack' -- hey, wait . 'To?' Since when does Twi open with a 'To'?"
"...Applejack, didn't you hear? Twilight's..."
But she was reading. It didn't take long.
"Aw, no... it's the mayor ."
"...what does she want?"
The letter had been very short, and Applejack's reply practically quoted the entirety of it. "All of us. At the Town Hall. Now ."
The Ear-Piercing Odure-Dropper
To everything, there was a checklist: Twilight had said that more than a few times. When you had something to do, you sorted out the steps and order you needed to go through before it could be accomplished and once that part was finished, it was as good as done. (Twilight had said that too, and she'd been wrong about that segment of the philosophy. A lot.) They had something to do: the assembly of the Bearers. It was something they'd done before. Admittedly, it was the first time with Applejack in the lead (and why had the mayor written her ?), but she knew what had to be done . They'd even gotten the second-hardest parts out of the way already: the two ponies who lived the furthest out from the heart of the settled zone were already together. Plus Twilight had to be in on this -- the arrival of the letter proved it -- two other ponies both lived and worked in town, and that just left them with the perpetual migraine of --
Applejack groaned.
"Wanna start with the worst part?"
Fluttershy sighed. "...maybe she's napping."
-- chasing down Rainbow.
"Any idea where she's nappin'?"
A weak smile. "...Equestria. Maybe. Her morning shift is over... if we're really lucky, she made it home before falling asleep."
Applejack automatically glanced up, checking Sun. By this time... yes, Rainbow would have wrapped up the early portion of Ponyville's forecast (mostly sunny, daytime seasonal warmth, some fall chill scheduled for evening and continuing throughout the night, nothing special in the way of wind and a total absence of rain, snow, or fog: exactly what the Weather Bureau schedule dictated and the local coordinator constantly complained about the sheer boringness of). It also meant shops would be open, Apple Bloom would be in school, and a cyan blur might be looking for a handy cloud. Or tree branch. Sturdy ceiling fan. Barn roof. There had been at least one bell incident... "We ain't that lucky."
They were that lucky.
It was the only luck they'd had.
There was more than one goose. There were more than fifteen . And as they galloped and flew for Rainbow's cloud home, the true count started to emerge.
The morning rapidly began to turn into a series of snapshots, none of which they had a chance to actively pose within.
There: the junior schoolhouse. The front door was open, apparently because three of the geese had pushed their way inside. Applejack could just barely see one of them, as its body was mostly tucked under Cheerilee's desk: only the head was truly sticking out, and that had its beak snapping at the world. The teacher, for her part, had abandoned her post to go after a second bird, the one who had decided that the Everything it Owned included poor Truffle's lunch, which it was trying to get away from him through flight and charges and everything else it could bring to bear against a small and surprisingly fast target. This left the third free to try and claim its chosen prize, and Diamond Tiara screamed as she galloped away from the thing which was trying to snatch the jewelry away from her mane. There was just enough time to appreciate that last part, plus a little more for deciding that Apple Bloom and the other two were just at an angle where she couldn't see them just then plus she had to trust Cheerilee, it was family but a summoning might mean the Princess , and then they were past it, moving towards...
There: Roseluck's house. There were five geese on her lawn, eating the final summer survivors and seemingly converting it directly into stuff , despite that being biologically impossible. But still... green went in through one aperture, and green-grey came out of another. And Roseluck was both outside and on her hooves, because two of the geese were getting close to the last summer survivors of her flowers and the earth pony had planted herself between the blooms and the birds, ready to serve as a final line of defense, most likely through forcing them to trip over her soon-to-be-fainted body. She glanced over as the pair went past, and didn't seem particularly happy to see them -- but she seldom was.
There: Ratchette's fix-it shop, which had a goose running out with a metal axle clutched in its beak, while the steel-and-copper pegasus, who hadn't bothered to remove the clockwork and spring-powered steel spider from her snout, flew after it with eyes showing the first anger Applejack had ever truly seen in the mechanic, as a battle cry of "I needed that!" rang through the air and miniature clamps snapped at feathers.
And there, and there, and there ...
...Rainbow's house, floating well above them. Normally a problem, but Fluttershy was already with her and that would have meant access to somepony who could go up and knock on the vapor door, except that --
"Get out of there! You're ruining -- oh, for, now you're back? Fine! I told you the next step was lightning , I've been trying to be nice up until now because there's this friend I don't want to upset, but I've got another friend in Protocera, I'm pretty sure you're stupid and that just might mean it's okay to send her a special care package, something roasted ...!"
There was a tiny "...eep! " somewhere over Applejack's head, and it carried all the way up to cloud level.
Rainbow glanced down from where she'd been trying to chase the geese out of her fountains. "...oh. Oh, hi! Great timing! So you wanna come up here and, oh, I don't know, talk to these morons? Or maybe they only understand kicks ? Because I've gotta tell you, if that's how it is, these two need some remedial classes because I've been --" One of them lunged: Rainbow demonstrated. "-- and they don't know what it means ! Or at least they can't remember !"
"...I tried talking to them," Fluttershy helplessly protested.
"And ?"
"...it's one thing to talk. It's... harder to get someone to listen ."
Rainbow groaned. "Yeah, yeah, tell me --" pause, kick, resume "-- about it. Fine ... I'll hold these two off, you peel me off some clouds and bring them over here, and then I'll --"
Applejack had to cut in: Fluttershy was clearly on the verge of major "...eep! "age and nothing good ever came from that . "Rainbow, we ain't got time . We've got a summons ."
Sleek ears perked. "The Princess? This is mission -stuff?"
"Naw."
Visible thought. "...Luna?" There was absolutely no degree of settling involved in the tone.
"The mayor."
"Awww... oh, fine, whatever, just the mayor ..." Hooves impacted a charging body. "I guess I'll have to fix this when I get back . And by fix , I mean you've laid your very last egg -- Fluttershy, I -- oh, let's just go already. Twilight next, right?"
Geographically, yes. But... "Not sure. We're supposed t' meet the mayor at the Town Hall, an' Spike sent the scroll which said so. Might mean she's already there, or that the mayor just ran into Spike an' had him do the letter -- but then he would have told her..."
From a lower level of overhead, "...Applejack, I tried to tell you..."
"Tell me what ?"
"She's out of town? "
The little dragon looked up at them from behind the oversized desk in the empty, very-slightly-disorganized library.
"It's the annual Equestrian Magic Society meeting," he uncertainly said. "She left yesterday. There's about fifteen lectures she wants to take notes on and three where she wants to be in the audience just so she can argue. Guys, is something going on? The mayor tore through here, shoved a scroll in my face, and these birds nearly followed her in..."
Applejack forced herself to breathe. Had Twilight told her? There were times when the librarian got so into the rush of discussing unicorn magic that the words just streamed , and that meant flowing into Applejack's skull and then immediately flowing out again.
"Can we get her back?"
"She's still on the train . It'll take another day to get there. They hold the meetings away from the main settled zones, just in case anything -- happens. And that means she's way outside her teleport range, at least for what she's willing to risk, and... I can tell her, but unless she can find somepony who's able to bring her in, even an air carriage is going to take time, and the only ponies I know of who could teleport her that far..."
...run the country. Another breath. Okay. They were down one unicorn. The strongest unicorn Applejack had ever seen, at least when it came to raw field strength. Neurotic, frequently unfocused, forever second-guessing herself and treating getting in her own way as something close to a professional sport... but also caring, increasingly emphatic, attentive on those occasions when she did manage to get herself focused, more loving than she'd ever personally believed she could be... and strong , a strength which she seemed so determined to keep under wraps...
It's just some stupid birds. If they had to, Spike could contact Canterlot and try to set up an emergency escort relay. But that would be the last resort. They had Fluttershy, and Twilight had a conference of spell-workers whom she spent a tenth of her life writing papers for. The librarian had to have been looking forward to the gathering for moons . Applejack wasn't going to pull her out of it unless it was absolutely necessary.
"Don't bother her. Not yet," she tightly said. "We'll manage."
Rainbow was looking at Spike. A faint grin was dancing on the corners of her mouth.
The dragon noticed. "...what?"
"Congratulations, Spike!" Rainbow declared. "You're the new Twilight Sparkle!" She darted behind him, landed, started pushing her head into his back, steadily driving him out into the open as he yelped in protest. "Let's get the crown and see how it fits! We just might need something to hold it on -- maybe something frilly... too bad there's no way to style your scales into bangs ..."
"Guys!" Spike yelped again. "I'll do what I can to help, you know that, but -- magic ? I can't use -- I can't cast -- you know ...!"
But Applejack watched the ongoing herding, and thought .
"Y'can't cast, you're right..." she said. "But y'take her notes. Y'reviewed with her for her classes. Just 'bout every time she talks 'bout a spell, you're there listenin'. Y'can't work magic... but Ah bet y'know it. A lot of it."
Silence descended upon the library and found itself completely at home.
"I can try ," Spike helplessly said. "But I don't remember everything, I never have. And if it comes down to an actual spell ..."
"We'll think of somethin'," Applejack assured him. Because they always had.
Admittedly, they hadn't always thought of the right things, but...
"Fine," Spike declared. "I'll try -- Rainbow, stop pushing me! "
"Not yet!" the weather coordinator declared. "Not until we get to the vault!"
"The vault ? Why do we need that? We can't use the Elements, not without Twilight. If the problem's that bad..."
"Nah, it's just some dumb birds," Rainbow told him, walking across the skid marks his claws were leaving in the floor. "But they don't know we can't use the stuff. And we're not going to tell them. We're just gonna... bluff a little, like at the seasonal poker game..."
Everypony simultaneously both looked at that statement and considered the source, especially given that the source had been the single worst poker player in the history of Equestria.
"...Rainbow," said the yellow pegasus who typically won the majority of the betting rounds, "...they're not smart enough to be bluffed. They don't even know what the Elements are , and they can't understand..."
This was ignored, and the pushing finally came to a stop. "There! Now, Magic -- open the vault!"
An oddly soft "How?"
"I don't know! It's Twilight's security spell! You know how it was cast, right? Just break it!"
Very calm now. "Rainbow, how do you think I'm supposed to do that without a horn, or a field, or any pony magic at all?"
It became very quiet in the library, and stayed that way for a surprisingly long time before a single distinctive sound shattered the void.
"Ow."
"Rainbow, y'okay?"
"Ow."
"You're not supposed t' facehoof that hard ."
"Ow..."
"Fluttershy, check her over. Spike, grab the front door keys an' some gems an' anything else y'think y'might need. Oh, an' take a note for Twi: when she gets back, we kinda do need some way t' get into the vault without her. Meanwhile, still got two ponies t' go..."
The next was relatively easy, at least once they got past the geese. All of the geese.
That was something they'd begun to notice: the birds liked food. Any food, as long as it belonged to somepony else. It didn't matter what it was or how it smelled or possibly if a bird was capable of eating it at all: just that it was in the possession of another and that was wrong . They'd passed ponies (some of whom had been yelling towards them, or at them for some reason, and all of whom had to be momentarily ignored) who were fending off thefts of fruit and hay twists and salads and everything else. The birds loved to eat: after all, the stuff needed a continual source of fresh supply. And so Sugarcube Corner must have seemed like an especially inviting target, at least for a little while.
There were a lot of geese. Some of them were on the way out . And most, being exceptionally slow learners, waited a few seconds before turning around and trying to go right in again -- but still, they were leaving , if only briefly, and it didn't take long for Applejack to find out why. To wit, it took exactly the amount of time required for a goose to go involuntarily flying past her head.
"And stay out!" Pinkie shouted. "That's a wedding cake ! Do you know how much had to happen in order for that cake to get baked at all? Three hours of baking and layering and icing and designing around the edges, plus five years of those two trotting around each other before they could even get to their first date ! I'm not taking a chance on everything going wrong and starting over just because there isn't a cake ! Don't you dare --"
"Pinkie, on your left !" Mr. Cake shouted as his rear hooves impacted the body of a goose who'd gotten a little too close to the croissant trays.
Pinkie's hind legs lashed out. A bird went into the door frame, slid down into the gap, nearly fell onto Spike's head, and then staggered away for the twenty seconds it would require before making an equally stupid second attempt. The apprentice baker glanced back to see if it had actually made it out. "Oh, hi , everypony, sorry, kind of busy right now, with you in a --" they all heard the impact "-- minute -- actually, if you want to join in, I think we've got more than enough for everypony..."
In the end, they'd barred the door. All of the doors. Followed by sneaking out through an open window, with Mr. and Mrs. Cake hurriedly barricading it behind them. It left them with one to go.
The hardest one.
"I will need a minute," came through the closed, hastily-barricaded doors.
"Rarity, we ain't got a minute." (Behind them, three long-time residents paused in their maddened flight, screamed at the group for no reason at all, and then returned to their frantic escape.) "Took too long in a couple of places already. Jus' come out."
"I. Will. Need. A. Minute."
Frustrated, "Oh, is this packin' ? Gonna come out with half the Boutique? Is the plan t' outfit the birds until they leave? Make 'em look so bad they get out of town 'cause they can't stand the shame of anypony seein' 'em?? Rarity, we need you --" something Applejack still had to occasionally convince herself of "-- not whatever you're doin' by dressin' up for the occasion, whatever this occasion is ..."
No response.
She did have the option to just break down the door. Surely Rarity's own security spells weren't set up to stop a hard charge.
Probably.
...maybe.
If Twilight were here, Ah could try it an' then if somethin' went wrong, she'd jus' get me out...
She glanced back at Spike, who took it the wrong way, spreading his arms. "If I knew how to make her do anything fast... anything ..."
Applejack sighed and kicked out at a goose who'd been getting a little too close. (It had reached the point where they were all ignoring the inevitable "...eep! ") "Right. So what's the usual count on a Rarity minute?"
"How long is it until sunset?"
But in fact, it was a mere four minutes before the doors opened and Rarity emerged. As did the items she was carrying, suspended within her field. And the one she was pulling .
They all stared. Rarity magnificently ignored it.
"Very well," the designer said. "And to Town Hall, you said? Then let us be on our way."
Her hooves pushed at the pavement. She managed to drag the weight for a single body length. Stopped, panted, shook away the sweat.
"Rarity," Applejack carefully tried, doing her best to let her voice express a patience she wasn't even remotely feeling, "what are those?"
"Sacks, of course."
"...yeah, Ah can see that. Ah guess what Ah meant t' ask was... why?"
Rarity's practiced gaze traveled over the visible portions of road.
"They molt. Have you noticed? Wherever there is not feces, there tends to be feathers. Admittedly, some of it is melding together. Rather quickly, too. However, goose feathers... means goose down . From a species of goose nopony had ever seen before today. Who knows what it might do for a pillow? A mattress? And as for a dress ... those gradations of grey cannot be ignored. So yes, thank you, I do realize there is some degree of crisis under way, but I have seen too many of such go by without opportunity for profit and given a single potential disaster which might yield a tenth-bit, I am hardly going to pass up any chance to take advantage. So. Sacks. I am merely being sensible ."
More determined, highly ineffectual pulling.
"An'... the harness?"
"Is clearly for pulling. Come, Applejack, you are far more physical than I, you know perfectly well what a harness is for. Remind me of how far it is to Town Hall?"
"An'... the tub ?"
Rarity didn't even bother glancing back at the completely-filled, full-body wooden bathtub she'd lashed the trailing harness ropes to.
"Is for washing ."
"...'cause?"
Rarity sniffed. "Because wherever there is not feathers ," the rupophobe said, "there is feces . If I cannot avoid stepping in it, then I will at least be able to clean myself at need. Which reminds me: Rainbow, I will need you to fetch several clouds. This water will have to be refreshed. Regularly. I do not enjoy lying within my own dirt and I refuse to soak in another's, especially when it is not truly dirt at all. I realize a rather large number of clouds may ultimately be required, but I have perfect confidence in you..."
"Then..." Applejack often felt oddly helpless during conversations with Rarity, at least when she wasn't feeling incredibly frustrated. The current moment was something of a mixture. "...why aren't y'jus' wearin' boots ? Ah know y'own boots..."
The blue eyes moved across the group, took in clumps of stuff clinging to hooves and fur, scales and tails. "Applejack... do you have any idea what would be required to get those stains out of good boots?"
"Naw."
"Neither do I ." She pulled again. Very little happened. "Oh, why is this so heavy ? I realize I have not been exercising as much as I should have lately and water possesses a considerable amount of mass, but I should be able to shift this without so much trouble ... what are you all looking at?" Because every gaze was now focused behind her.
"Rarity," Spike carefully began, "don't turn around yet."
"Spike, I assure you, I locked the Boutique down after the first one got in, and I am aware that I have closed the doors behind me. My wares are as safe as structural integrity and purchased magic will permit."
There was a faint splashing sound.
"Rarity," he tried again, "you're hauling a tub."
"Yes," the designer crossly replied. "For reasons I have more than adequately explained." Another push, another lack of pull. "This is ridiculous . Should I be consulting Snowflake regarding my tactics? I am hardly so weak as to be gaining this little in results..." A nearby honk put a final bit of punctuation on the sentence. "A touch more strength would suddenly be rather welcome, but I do not wish to risk acquiring even the faintest echo of his form..."
"And," Spike reluctantly concluded, "it might... sort of look like... you're pulling along... a giant birdbath?"
Rarity's horrified gaze slowly went backwards.
"Oh, no, no, no! I will not -- this cannot -- I shall not put up with this! Get out of there, get out , get away ...!"
Several things happened in rapid succession, and there was no chance for anypony to stop a single one of them. Applejack could only do the same thing as everypony else: watch. It was generally the only thing anypony ever did when Rarity got that angry, unless they were unlucky enough to be on the receiving end.
Rarity... when it came to combat, she was the weakest member of the group. Everypony knew it. Applejack and Pinkie had physical strength. Rainbow had speed and a decent arsenal of pegasus techniques. Fluttershy lacked the latter and most of the former, but compensated with whatever animal friends were willing to distract, confound, and occasionally outright maul (or at least threaten to) for her. Twilight was Twilight, even if that field strength so rarely truly came out to play. But Rarity... had strictly average field strength: there was a decided flair of field dexterity which sometimes surprised Applejack, but just about nothing in the way of raw power . She knew no spells for direct offense or defense. In terms of physical prowess, the unicorn worked out on occasion, and those occasions always came directly after she felt she'd indulged a little too much during a feast and needed to save her figure -- for a body which belonged to the species that possessed the least raw strength of the three main pony races. And so Rarity, whom fate had placed in situations where the designer would be regularly forced to battle for her life, got through combat --
"...oh..."
"Fluttershy, I assure you, it will be quite all right."
"...but..."
"I design regularly for pegasi. I am fully aware of wing structure. None of the feathers I yanked out were vital to flight. I would certainly not even consider weakening its ability to retreat."
"...you... you just..."
"Furthermore, when I poked it in the eyes with said feathers, I made sure to use the dull shafts. As such, its vision will recover once the pain recedes somewhat. Whenever that might happen to be."
"...and then..."
"Additionally, I am not a predator and so when I bit its foot, I did not draw blood. I admit that I may have given it a little twist on the way out, but that was a mere token . Something to remember me by. Which, as it is still fleeing, I believe I have accomplished."
-- by being the single dirtiest fighter anypony had ever seen.
"It is not," the affronted designer said, "as if I wrung its neck all the way." She shrugged shoulders and hips, shuffling out of the harness. "Very well: regular wettings it will have to be. Rainbow, bring a cloud, if you would? And now that I have had a chance to view this particular goose down at a short distance through direct collection of samples, I judge it inferior and fully unworthy of my consideration, which means we can assuredly expect it to be in Barneigh's front window tomorrow morning. Shall we proceed?"
The Airborne Cacophony-Inflictor
The mayor met them at the front of Town Hall, which took some major work on the older mare's part. The area was... occupied. Some of it was being done by thirty geese, all of whom refused to move for any reason less than violence, and the majority of whom came back shortly after the attack stopped . The rest was taken up with inferior, unworthy, Barneigh's-destined shed feathers. And -- stuff. Lots and lots of stuff . Holding any amount of territory took constant work, and the mayor's mane dye had begun to liquefy and drip from the sheer effort she'd been bringing to the process. A partially-severed, dye-stained cravat was hanging off the left side of her neck. One glasses lens was cracked along the golden frame.
"Applejack," she tersely noted. "Upstairs."
"Um... okay," the farmer carefully agreed. "An' -- everypony else?"
"Can wait outside. Or in the main rotunda." She looked over the decidedly dirty group, took brief notice of Rarity's dripping form. "Anywhere they like, really. Since those things already got inside once, it's not as if it'll make any difference to the cleanup at this point. But you? Upstairs ."
It was her first time in the mayor's office. It was the first time she'd realized the mayor had one. The pony with executive powers over the settled zone was normally found on street level, going out and about, talking to ponies and pressing her forehooves against theirs, discussing problems which needed to be solved and evaluating potential future ones, assessing damage before filing a government disaster relief form...
...actually, there had been a lot of those...
Applejack stood still on the other side of the oddly-simple desk. Tried to remember it wasn't a principal's office, and did everything she could not to shuffle her hooves.
The mayor reared up, braced her forelegs on the edge of that battered furniture, stared at Applejack through cracked lens and over the top of several very large piles of paperwork, all of which seemed to be made up of those very familiar disaster relief forms.
"What did she do?"
Applejack blinked, but only as a means of stalling.
"What did who do?"
"Your sister ," the mayor tensely clarified. "What did she do?"
"Nothin'! She ain't -- Ah mean, it wasn't her this time. Ah checked before Ah ever left the Acres this morning. Said she never did anythin' with birds involved."
"And you believed her."
"Yeah." (She so very badly wanted to add ''cause mah sister don't lie' to it. She couldn't. Because Applejack didn't lie.) "She thought it was a chance to go Crusadin', an' that means she didn't start it."
After far too long a pause, it got her a slow nod. "And -- the other two ?"
"Didn't speak with 'em. But it's usually all three t'gether, so Ah'm pretty sure they're out of it. Can't be certain -- but Ah think they're innocent this time." For once ...
Another nod, even slower. "All right. And in that case -- what did you do?"
This blink was sincere.
"Yer pardon?"
The mayor's eyes narrowed in a very Fluttershy way.
"Since Princess Luna made her Return," the elected official slowly said, "there has been a certain -- let us say, consistency -- to life in this particular settled zone. A come-and-go, rise-and-fall, never-absent level of chaos . Now, some of that is simply existence in Equestria: there isn't a single settled zone anywhere on the continent which doesn't get a bit of wild zone intrusion now and again, a little reminder of why we have settled zones in the first place. That applies to Ponyville as well, and I've spent a lot of time doing my best to remember that. But for us... for the majority of what's happened over that time span, there are generally two causes. It's either something your sister and her friends have done -- or it's something you've done. You or the other Bearers. I could start citing events on a case-by-case basis, but I really don't think there's much need, because I can see your hooves shifting and I know that a pony who's known for her honesty is rather bad at public denial, which is one more reason why I made sure I got you up here. So, again , Applejack -- what did you, or any of the other six, very much including Spike, do?"
Years fell away under that lower-case stare, leaving her as a fumble-mouthed kindergartener in front of the teacher's desk.
"...nothin'."
The mayor wasn't moving.
"...nothin' that Ah know of. Ah had one on mah own property, Ah went t' Fluttershy, Ah've got the whole herd out there... Mayor, nopony's said anythin' 'bout somethin' they mighta done t' start this. Nothin' at'tall. Maybe it's somethin' from before catchin' up, but Ah can't think of anythin' that would qualify, an'... nothin', Mayor. That's as far as Ah know, an' so it's the most Ah can say."
Several slow breaths were taken on both sides of the desk. The topmost disaster relief form on the nearest pile shifted back and forth in the current.
"All right," the mayor finally said. "So if it wasn't anything you made happen -- then it's something you'll stop . I am using what power I have to press the Bearers into service -- or, given how little authority I truly possess in the matter without being able to prove a cause, to make a rather pointed request. I have the police out there, doing what they can. I have citizens defending their homes. But it's not enough. I'll call to Canterlot if I have to, but I feel they may be as sick of receiving my distress as I am of sending it. So until we reach that level of last resort... Applejack, I am asking for you and the others to get these things out of our settled zone. Please. "
There was only one possible answer, and she gave it. "We'll do what we can." Unfortunately, it was followed by the only possible question . "But... why are y'askin' me , specifically? Y'had Spike send the letter t' me , an' Ah don't understand why ..."
"Who's in charge?" It was a simple query.
"Huh?"
"Twilight has gone to her conference. She made sure to file the paperwork for her absence: it's something she's very faithful about. With her gone... who's in charge?"
"Ain't nopony really in charge," was Applejack's first, instinctive reaction. "We do kinda coordinate 'round Twi most of the time, but that's jus' 'cause so much of the stuff has magic involved, or jus' that she got the letter an' has t' get everypony t'gether. When we're out there, it's more 'bout what the problem is an' who solves it best. This is animals, so we kinda have t' take our lead from Fluttershy here, an' Ah saw her startin' t' go through her books as Ah was comin' up --"
"-- Applejack ."
"...what?"
"Apparently your inability to engage in public denial does nothing to remove any potential you have for the self-inflicted variety. I am asking you a simple question. Twilight is absent. Who is in charge? "
And Applejack finally thought about it.
"...oh, horse apples."
The mayor nodded.
"It's me , ain't it?"
Again.
"But -- why? "
"They look to you," the mayor said, "because you are the most steadfast . The fulcrum point which will not shift under their unbalanced weights. When Twilight is gone -- you are in charge. They know it. I know it. I thought it was long past time you knew it. Now -- if the lead mare wouldn't mind taking her herd out to do what they must...?"
And all Applejack could do was repeat herself. "We'll do what we can."
"Good."
Applejack started to trot for the door, passing far too many filing cabinets along the way.
She hesitated.
"Y'know, you used t' be a lot nicer."
The word was tinged with a deep exhaustion, layered in sadness, burdened with years. "Really?"
"You used t' mostly open parades an' parties an' holidays. You gave me an award once..." Not that she actually remembered most of that last part, and the little portions she had retained were things she wished she could forget.
She felt the nod. "For reliability and helpfulness. I'm hoping that still applies."
"But -- y'always seemed so happy ..."
A long moment of quiet held the room.
"Applejack, are you aware that we have the elections in three weeks?"
"Yeah. Day an' Night Court reps, right? An'..."
"And the mayoralty. The deadline for filing to run against me was half a moon ago."
"Oh. Yeah. Look, jus' 'cause we're havin' this talk now, it don't mean y'don't still have mah support."
The laugh was far too soft. "Oh, I know I have your support, Applejack. It's not as if you have any choice in the matter."
It hadn't been a threat. There was no level of anger in the statement. Just... exhaustion. And Applejack didn't understand.
"Mayor?"
"You have no choice, Applejack... because nopony filed to run against me. Because nopony wants this job any more. Nopony at all."
She couldn't make herself turn. "Nopony? Not even Thistle Burr? He always -- an' Pinkie , okay, Ah know that's jus' so she can throw the rally party when she starts an' the really big bash when she drops out, but she started runnin' while she was still in school , ain't no way everypony jus' decided t' drop out at the same time! Maybe the paperwork jus' got misplaced, or -- did anypony move? Saw Thistle three days ago an' Ah wish Ah'd seen the last of him, but maybe some of the others jus' up an' left, so --"
"-- you're right, Applejack." She heard the hooves move off the desk, the little impact as all four legs touched the floor again. "I used to be a lot nicer. But... that was a lot of disaster relief forms ago."
She finally looked back, and found she couldn't see the pony for the paperwork.
Softly, "Ah know -- Ah know we've got a problem outside right now, but you've got one in here , an' -- an' Ah wanna help, Ah do , but you've gotta keep talkin'..."
"Go down the ramp. Go to the others. Fix this. That's what you can do to help."
"...Marigold? Please ..."
"Go."
She found the others camped out inside the rotunda, in a rough circle around Fluttershy -- or rather, in a circle around the books . There were times when the caretaker did in fact go full Twilight, and one of the more frequent causes was the cottage's basement library. It was the second-largest collection of books possessed by the group (although Rarity kept a back catalog of fashion magazines which came close and occasionally scoured through their pages in hopes of finding something which was about to come back around to vintage ), it was horrifically expensive to update, and it required frequent consultation in order to locate that one crucial piece of information about the next illness --
"...well," Fluttershy said, the soft voice carrying an odd mixture of disappointment and excitement, "I don't get to name them..."
-- or species .
Applejack raced down the remainder of the ramp, galloped up to the front of the ring. "You found 'em?"
A tentative nod. "...yes. I'm sure of it -- well, pretty sure. I mean, there could be some sort of bird equivalent to changelings out there, but I think I'd know one as soon as I tried talking to them, so... um... yes. They were in an update volume. No pictures, because nopony had any. It was before pictures -- well, before photography. But with what happened ... some ponies were digging out all the information they had , because they could use it to justify selling another updated edition. And we actually needed it this time!"
She lowered her body to the least-fouled patch of floor, tried not to think about the word 'least' too much, felt her ears rotate forward. "Okay, Fluttershy. Let's hear it. What's the name?"
"...there's a lot of names... it's sort of regional by the current nations, and a lot of them might have gotten confused because of how much time it's been... but..." Her eyes went over the relevant page. "...when you're not mad at them... which doesn't seem to be often... they're called Crystal Geese."
Applejack frowned. "Um... yeah. 'Shy, Ah was jus', y'know, out there? With you an' everypony else? Ain't nothin' crystal about 'em. Just feathers and foul."
"...oh, that's just for their point of origin . They're from the Empire."
A sudden blast of very familiar cold began to wrap itself around Applejack's heart.
"The... Empire ?"
Fluttershy nodded.
Aw, no... "Keep -- keep goin'."
"...well... most of what's here is the names. Those survived. There isn't a lot about how they operate, because it's been so long. But basically..." Fluttershy took a deep breath. "...they're native to the Empire, but they migrate . And I guess this would be their migration season, or at least what it is now after the Empire -- came back. There must have been some behind the barrier when everypony there got trapped, and now their internal clock is trying to adjust, so whenever they would have migrated normally, it's time now . But... nopony's seen them since about two years after the Empire was cut off. Some of them were outside when it happened, and they went..."
She peered closely at the thick book.
"...'suspiciously extinct.'"
Rainbow moved closer.
"'Suspiciously extinct'?"
"...yes."
"It really says that?"
"...with the first word underlined."
"Seriously?"
"...three times."
Pinkie looked up from where she'd been trying to counterbalance some of the shed feathers into a mini-fort. "So what's suspicious about it? If only a few got trapped outside, there might not have been enough to have families, or families where they'd be sort of -- well, after a few generations, they'd kind of be marrying into their own family, and that's really not good -- wait, you said it was just two years, so that can't be it."
"...no, it looks like a lot of them got trapped outside. But... they didn't have a good reputation. It was kind of the opposite. It was so bad that... well, that's why the names survived."
"Names." That from Applejack, who was amazed the word had made it through frozen lungs.
"...yes."
Rarity's tail was beginning to lash. "Shall we hear a few of them?"
"...well... in Griffonant, they're... Ultionum Prandium ."
Rainbow's head came up. "Wait a second! I think I know that one! Gilda taught me some... it's been a while since I used any of this, let me think... that translates to..." A gulp of saliva made its way down the trim neck. "...um... Fluttershy... you may not want to hear this..."
It triggered a soft sigh. "...I know some Griffonant, Rainbow. Most species taxonomy is written in it. Go ahead..."
Rainbow winced, looked around at the others, seeking escape in the form of a third translator. None appeared.
Reluctantly, "It means 'vengeance lunch'."
Applejack's body was vibrating now, a shiver trying (and failing) to drive away the internal chill. Rarity was the first to pick up on it. "Are you all right, dear? You seem rather too distressed even for that potentially deserved image."
"No," was Applejack's stark response. "Ah ain't. But Ah ain't gonna talk 'bout it here. Keep goin', Fluttershy."
"...most of the real information is what we already saw. That they're territorial, they're mean, they pick fights... some of the flocks are huge , it says they just about darkened the skies when they went overhead, but maybe that's just exaggeration, it's been so long and history tries to make everything sound more important than it was..."
"Anythin' else?"
She carefully nosed the page over. "...yes. It says they were believed to have the world's... 'single least efficient digestive system.'"
"Kinda figured that one out already on mah own. Anythin' 'bout how t' get rid of 'em?"
"...sort of."
"An' that would be...?"
"...um..." The beautiful features twisted with distress. "...Ultionum Prandium ?"
Silence won every election and took over the building.
"...I don't want to," Fluttershy quietly said. "...they're beautiful ..."
"Yes," Rarity crossly agreed. "Beautiful like Blueblood: a state which holds right up until the moment you get to know him. I am not advocating for a campaign of extermination, Fluttershy: I am simply stating that it only requires a tiny amount of personal experience to understand how somepony might become inclined to start one."
"...it... might be best."
Everypony stared at her.
"Fluttershy ?" The tiny burst of flame showed just how shocked Spike truly was. "You're talking about -- about --"
"...they've been gone too long , Spike. They were extinct , for more than a thousand years. Back then, they still had... a place. Maybe it was an angry place, or one which was too big because they kept insisting everywhere belonged to them ... but they were part of the cycle. Part of the world . And when a species goes extinct... it leaves a hole, and that hole hurts , because you'll never have them again, and the world can be so much lesser for losing them..." The blue-green eyes were starting to acquire moisture. "...but at the same time... that hole starts to close . After so much time, the role they had to play in the cycle, outside the Empire... it's gone . The world learned to go on without them... and they might do more damage by coming back , because nothing else remembers . They only know how to act just like they always did, they can't learn , and the world doesn't know how to deal with them any more..."
She slowly stood up, walked out of the circle of books, lowered herself again near the front doors. Tucked her head under her mane. And they all rose, they started to go to her, because they always would -- but whispered words begged for a moment alone, and it was reluctantly granted.
"I..." It was Rarity's turn to swallow. "I do not like them. I have very little difficulty with the idea of fighting them. But... extinction ..."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
"Right now," Applejack heavily said, "let's jus' concentrate on gettin' 'em out of town. Still got some questions, though."
Fluttershy's head slowly came up. "...questions?"
"Yeah. It's a long way from here t' the Empire. They've been migratin' for a while: no other way it could've worked. So why is this the first we're hearing 'bout 'em? They had t' have touched down more than a few times before this, right?"
It got her a teary-eyed nod. "...yes. But... think about the route. I don't know everywhere they used to go: different races held territory that far back, and some of it was probably in what's Equestria now. But just going through Equestria , Applejack... most of the continent is still wild zones. This might be the first place they landed where anypony lived , and... back when they were still flying..."
Applejack could save some of Fluttershy's strength there. "...this was a wild zone." Ponyville, as such things went, was still a relatively new settlement. "They weren't expectin' ponies here. We're jus' one more thing takin' up --" and the words were spat past the cold "-- their territory ."
Pinkie had wandered into the circle of books. "You weren't kidding about the names , Fluttershy! I've never seen so many for a single kind of bird!"
That produced a small smile. "...yes. Well, they're sort of... earned..."
Pinkie's snout got closer to the page. "Let's see... 'Waterfoul ...' oh, that's funny! What else is in here?"
"So there's nothing about what gets rid of them?" Rainbow demanded. "Or how ponies dealt with them before?"
Pinkie answered with "'The Amstiverous Glamgewhorter' -- I have no idea what that one's supposed to mean."
Rainbow groaned. "Fine . What's our options? There's no point in trying to freeze them out, not if they can make it through the weather around the Empire."
"...that's any goose," Fluttershy agreed.
Rarity sighed. "Down, even the inferior variety, has a purpose. They're rather well-insulated. Lightning?"
That produced another groan. "Too many . And if it's just about scaring them... Fire?"
"How many gems do you think I have ?" Spike wearily challenged. "And it's too easy to have it get out of control. I'd have to miss them on purpose, every time -- but if I'm missing them, I'm hitting something ."
Pinkie's contribution was "'Grey-Winged Shitbuckets'."
Everypony immediately focused on Pinkie.
"That's what it says ! It's an official name ! In a book! That makes it science !" And she kept reading.
"Look," Applejack wearily stated, "let's jus' try -- gettin' out there. Let's see what they're doin' . An' what they ain't . If there's somethin' they're avoidin', something we can see they don't like, maybe we can turn that against 'em. Fluttershy, any of those other books got anythin' we need? No? Fine: we'll just bring the one. An' come t' think of it..." She looked at Spike. "...let's send a letter."
"To Twilight? You think it's time?"
"Naw. To the Canterlot Archives, t' whatever department handles books 'bout animals. Ancient ones. Fluttershy can't afford every volume." And shouldn't have been paying for half the ones she did get, not with the pegasus' fragile financial state. "Maybe there's some really old book stuck in the stacks that's got what we need. Ah know there ain't gonna be one in our library -- Fluttershy's pretty much the animal annex. But if we ask somepony with more books than we'll ever have --" presuming the town budget continued to keep Twilight under some degree of control "-- we might get lucky. Can y'do that for me, Spike? Somethin' askin' for anythin' an' everythin' anypony might know 'bout Crystal Geese, shipped out by air carriage for an emergency? Please?"
He smiled, nodded, got a scroll out and began to write.
Applejack tried to let that make her feel better. It didn't. "Jus' brace yourselves, everypony... it ain't gonna be pretty out there..." Although it might be warmer , because she could still feel that familiar chill settling into her bones...
"'Airasprites'," Pinkie read. "Hey, wait ... 'airasprites'?"
Pages fluttered. Legs galloped. The front doors opened.
"Pinkie?"
The front doors closed.
"Aw, Pinkie -- okay, now we've really gotta get out there."
"Maybe she's just had an idea ?" Rarity hopefully proposed. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"Yeah," Applejack agreed as she pushed herself upright again. "But they ain't always good ones..."
The Amstiverous Glamgewhorter
The sky was not dark with flapping wings, and it was the one thing Applejack could feel thankful for. It was starting to feel as if the migration had first begun to arrive during the night, and while there were some geese airborne and descending, Fluttershy believed (or least hoped) they were the stragglers, the slightly weaker members of the flock who hadn't been able to keep up with the central gaggle. Assuming there wasn't another group right behind them -- and Applejack wasn't comfortable with any assumption concerning that potential addition into despised math -- they could at least get some idea of the total population which would require clearing out, and when it came to the immediate part of the street which was right in front of Town Hall, that was still thirty geese.
Plus another forty or so to the almost-immediate left.
Add about fifty on the right. (There was currently more food available for stealing on the right, although not for long.)
And that was just what they could see ...
Ponies were still racing by. Two of them were police officers: Applejack spotted the chest strap and badge glinting under Sun. They were trying to herd the traffic, both pony and goose: getting enough of the latter out of the way to clear some level of befouled path for the former. It wasn't working out all that well. Little barricades were being placed, and most of them were immediately knocked over by angry wings, while nothing stopped the stuff . And ponies shouted, and yelled, and complained, and...
...Applejack was finally starting to hear it.
"There they are! Who wants to bet it's them again? Or maybe it's the siblings? What did Apple Bloom do this time, Applejack, and what kind of pony lets her and those other two just keep right on doing it? If you can't herd your family, I bet I can get a restraining order which lets me give it a try!"
"They're animals , Fluttershy! Shouldn't your so-called talent have this under control already?"
"It's you! It's always you! I'm going to the moving supplies store! I bet Ryder has a few boxes which don't have these things camping out in them yet...!"
There were variations, directed towards every pony (and dragon) in the group. They were loud. They were angry. And they weren't many in number, not when compared to all of Ponyville... but there were enough...
...a number which then increased by one.
"Ms. Applejack ."
It came out as a snort, and a stomp, along with being more than a little bit of a curse. And because she knew the voice, knew it by heart and had been heartily sick of it since the first moon after her parents had died, Applejack didn't bother turning to look at the source.
The cattle didn't care, and moved itself to face her. Old cracked hooves did their best to damage the road, failed, and took it as one more level of insult. A muzzle gone white with age thrust itself a mere hoof-thickness away from her snout. Curving horns nearly poked her ears. Foul breath filled her nostrils.
"Do you see these things ?"
"All Ah can see right now," Applejack tensely stated, "is you. Ah got work t' do. Ah know that's somethin' y'don't appreciate, but it's gotta be done all the same. Y'wanna complain 'bout somethin' again, same way y'do every chance y'get, y'can do it later. The mayor's asked us t' go out there, an' you? You, Ah don't care 'bout right now. Or ever ."
She could feel her friends staring at her, but only just barely. It was getting hard to make out any sensations through the chill, and that included what normally would have been the surging heat of hate . Any words she was typically forced to exchange with the old bull normally came out covered in emotional steam, but today ...
He hadn't listened, of course. He never heard anything he didn't want to, which meant that all words other than his own generally remained an uncared-for mystery. "Do you know what I see? I see feces . All over the Acres. All over my land."
"Ain't your land. Was never your land. Y'jus' lease it, or y'would if'fin y'ever actually --"
"It is fouling my grass."
"It's foulin' everyone's grass. That's why Ah can't deal with you right now, 'cause the mayor asked us t' go an' --"
"You are providing unsuitable living conditions. The same as your parents did. The same as every single stupid pony, a race too simple to understand the needs of the only intelligent and worthy species...!"
He snorted on her. Mucus sprayed her snout, went into her eyes.
"The others might be choosing the idiotic path of patience , of waiting to see what their magic-tainted inferiors plan on doing about this disaster . But I," the old bull declared, "refuse to pay my grazing fees!"
"The Princess raises Sun."
He kept staring at her.
"And what is that piece of pony stupidity supposed to --"
"-- Ah thought we were talkin' 'bout things which happen every single day." Her head came up a little, and she locked eyes. "Go home. While y'still got one."
"I will not be moved! You have no right to --!"
She didn't have a Stare. All she had was the entire morning, the day, every tenth-bit of her life which this particular cattle had been involved with, and she put every last portion of it into her unblinking gaze. "Go. Home. "
He took a step back. Wrinkled sides swayed, and the muzzle worked with the effort of pretending none of the movement had ever happened.
"I'm not paying."
"You'll pay."
"I won't ."
"Ah didn't say y'were gonna pay in bits ."
Another step.
"We'll talk about this," he swore. "When you get back . We'll talk about the reparations for my pain and suffering...!"
He left, and not quickly enough. Not far enough away, either. Not ever ...
Softly, from behind her, "Applejack... was that one of your tenants? I'm certain that I've never seen him before, not during any of my trips to the Acres. And yet he spoke to you -- that way. And it felt as if -- you'd known him for a long time."
"No, Rarity. Not one of mine."
"But... he spoke to you as if he --"
Her right foreleg automatically started to come up, reaching for the comfort of touch , that moment of extra contact with the hat -- but she lowered it. She was too dirty for that, and too... cold. "He's mah Daddy's. Sort of. His son... dead now, lotta years, such a good bull... asked mah Daddy t'look after his own father, 'cause there was an old bull too stupid an' stubborn t' survive on his own. Someone who offended everyone an' everypony within seconds of meetin' 'em, and wasn't smart enough t' care, even after he'd been chased off every other bit of land, 'cause he always found an excuse for tryin' t' stay free until the courts forced him t' leave. An' he was pretty much out of places he could go, an' didn't see how any of it was his fault. But he had a good son, somehow, an' he said his father would be dead in a year or two anyway, but the son went first, an' then... Ah'm jus' keepin' mah Daddy's promise, Rarity. Givin' him a place t' live until he dies."
She felt the designer coming closer. A rare event, that. Among the seven, they were the most distant from each other in every way Applejack could think of, had the most trouble connecting , and they probably always would.
But she couldn't seem to turn and look at the event. The internal ice was stiffening her joints.
"And he doesn't pay his grazing fees?"
"Or his rent, or anythin' else. When he don't have no other excuse handy, he says all the land was for cattle back before Equestria, an' we're jus' usin' government power t' steal it. Y'don't see him with the other cattle 'cause they don't want him anywhere near them, especially near the calves . They pushed him out t' the farthest corner of the pasture, where he can't taint no one. An' he thinks that's mah fault. Ah jus' hope none of the younglings are sneakin' off t' listen."
It was surprising, how gentle the unicorn's voice could be. "You're just being a good daughter, Applejack. And I know it's a hard promise to keep, but... it's not difficult to see age on a bull, especially one that old. You're giving him a place to rest in his senior years. He's... not a bull I would want to know, or perhaps one anypony would truly care about without the bond of family. But... might he still not deserve the dignity of a final pasture, for the little time he has remaining?"
"Little time?" The laugh was hollow. "Y'don't know how many years it's been, Rarity. Sometimes Ah think he's gotta be the oldest bull in the world by now, not that he'll tell me his age or show me any birth stuff 'cause that's jus' the government tryin' t' take his identity . Ah'm waitin' for him t' die, an' he don't have a heartbeat any more, not one that blood drives. Jus' hate. An' sometimes, Ah think that'll let him live forever ..."
The white flank brushed against her side, pressed a little closer, waited for a matching pressure. But she had no strength to offer such and after a long moment, the contact was withdrawn.
"What's his name?"
"Doesn't matter."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
"Applejack --"
"-- Cloven. Cloven Bundy. Can we jus' go ?"
They went. But Rarity stayed oddly close to her as they began the trot through town, and Applejack wasn't sure why.
For Davenport, having acquired a live-in source of fresh quills didn't seem to make up for having that potentially-infinite supply lounging (and defecating) on his sofas. He knew exactly who he blamed for that, and he shouted it for all the street to hear. Not that there were many ponies left to hear anything, excepting those whom the words were aimed towards.
"...he thinks it's our fault," Fluttershy whispered.
"Yeah," Applejack heavily said. "For now. He'll get 'round t' blaming Apple Bloom an' the other two in a minute. Jus' don't even look at him."
"A lot of them have been yelling at us !" Rainbow huffily noted. "What did we do? Why is everything suddenly our fault?"
"It... ain't exactly sudden. An'..." Dropping close to a whisper, "Rainbow, Ah don't wanna talk 'bout this before we get out of town, okay? When we ain't got so many ears twistin' all 'round us, that's when y'bring it up again." If at all, and she was so hoping on never ... "Jus' give it some time. 'cause --"
"...it is our fault."
They'd just barely been able to hear Fluttershy, and so the rest of the language-comprehending area remained unhappily (and loudly) ignorant of the words. Rainbow's response, however, nearly reached the fringe. "Ours? How can it be --"
"-- later ," Applejack cut her off. "Jus' -- later, Rainbow. Hold it back best y'can, jus' for now. Jus' look around, try t' see if there's anythin' we can use, try t' find Pinkie..." Pinkie, who shouldn't have left, who was out there somewhere doing the Princess only knew what, and knowing wouldn't necessarily equal comprehension ...
She wondered if the caretaker felt just as frozen inside.
The pegasus fumed. Jaw muscles tightened, flexed. Forelegs crossed in mid-hover.
"Fine . Why don't I just get higher and see if I can spot her from altitude? She's usually not that hard to make out from the -- hey, does anypony else hear..." Her ears pivoted. "That's got to be Pinkie, right? Do you think she's going to try -- ?"
And now the other four were picking it up.
"That... is the sound of somepony cleaning out a rather large spit valve, is it not? It's rather distinctive, even through all the honking and hissing ." Rarity swallowed. "I haven't heard that since the last parade, when Pinkie -- oh dear , somepony please tell me she's not going to --"
But the others were already moving into full gallop and flight, racing to reach the source before it got to them. Rarity swallowed again, then scrambled to catch up. It didn't take long for everypony to converge.
"Hi , everypony!" Pinkie beamed from somewhere in the middle of the brass and valves and keys and wood and strings. "I got everything together! Well, almost. I kind of had to substitute for the cymbals, but the trash can lids produced the same sound after I stomped on them a few times! You know, making music with trash can lids... I just bet there's a market for that. So once I get everything cleaned out and stretch out my joints a little more, work through a few scales -- it really has been a while, hasn't it? But don't worry, I haven't forgotten how to keep the beat!"
They all stared at the slightly chubby body, nearly lost in the mass of instruments , as geese milled around them, flew by them, occasionally tried to attack before getting kicked by what was now a completely casual offhoofed effort. (They weren't trying to incite any attacks. They were just occupying the road. The road which ran right through several Everythings, which was in itself decidedly Owned, and the geese were making more determined attempts at eviction than a family-bound Applejack ever had.)
"Pinkie," Applejack carefully began, "Ah understand what you're gonna try here, and Ah'm gonna let y'do it, 'cause we all should have the first time 'round. But... why this time?"
"The name!"
"The name," Spike slowly repeated. "...which name, Pinkie?"
"Airasprites! Come on, Spike! Names are important ! Just think about all the ponies who have names which go so well with their jobs! A name can really really say a lot about a pony, and sometimes even someone who isn't a pony! A name means something, and if somepony once called the geese 'airasprites,' maybe they meant it as a clue! They were trying to tell us that they're vulnerable to the same thing, teaching us across more than a thousand years!" The briefest of pauses. "When you think about it, that's really kind of cool!"
Everypony looked at her. Then at the geese. Back to her.
"There are," Rarity carefully noted, "at least seventy. On this street."
"But we had thousands of parasprites!"
"Yes, but... in terms of comparable mass... if it does not quite work... Perhaps you would be best served by taking a -- trial gallop?"
Pinkie thought it over.
"Those three," she said, working a foreleg between two violins in order to make the indicating gesture. "Over there. The really heavy ones with the mean little beaks and the thrashing wings. Okay?"
"Perhaps something a little smaller ?"
"But they're the ones who look like they could really use a good tune!"
Rarity, with the practiced ease of those who had spent long years dealing with Pinkie's reasoning process, skillfully gave up.
"Just get ready, everypony!" Pinkie gushed. "A little more tuning, and..."
Her teeth nipped here and there, twisted a few screws. Legs checked relative pressure and valve lubrication. Her tail began to carefully move from side to side, keeping time.
"MUSIC!" Pinkie proudly announced, and marched towards her chosen audience.
Twenty seconds passed.
And then a pink blur shot past them, instruments falling away in every direction as a trio of hissing geese snapped at her curly tail.
"CRIIIIITIIIIICS!"
"But..." The awkward words were rather soft-spoken, as they almost always were. And when those words had to deal with Pinkie, they generally emerged through a veil of confusion. "...Bon-Bon needs me at the shop , Pinkie, she needs every pony she can get right now and Caramel took off at the first sign of real trouble like he always does, I have to go back --"
"-- it'll just be a minute!"
"But --"
"-- on the teeny-tiny chance that they maybe just might want to hear something from a professional ! Now here's your instrument, and here's your beat! And a one, and a two, and -- go!"
Lyra looked at Pinkie. Then at the other Bearers.
She looked at the geese.
She shook her head and trotted away.
The kicking was starting to become a constant, and Applejack swore she'd just seen Fluttershy launch her first. Everypony had picked up scratches, and Spike had some awkward-looking talon-produced skid marks running across his scales. The geese were pressing in with increased density, which included a few in the air: the Everything had reached that level of subdivision, and they crossed at least five invisible offending borders with every hoofstep and flap.
Rainbow was starting to talk about lightning again, or rather, maintained a constant low-level mutter about it in which at least half the words weren't curses, although that percentage was rising as they fought their way towards the latest group of buildings. Spike had yet to launch his first burst of fire at anything which wasn't a scroll, but his nostrils were starting to flare in a certain distinctive way, and Applejack didn't know how long he could keep fighting the urge to do something , not with more geese seemingly arriving by the second , heading towards the thing they currently wanted most...
The group had reached the restaurant district.
It didn't mean as much for Ponyville as it did for some of the larger settled zones. There were certainly places to buy food in town, and some of them were grouped into a convenient cluster near the train station, where weary returning commuters might find it all the more convenient to decide there was one less thing they wanted to do for themselves before ending their day. But that cluster was somewhat smaller than it should have been, with a single central source forcing a certain degree of scatter . Some eatery owners simply didn't want to be too close to that place , and the geographic debris fell to all sides of the map.
Still, there were a few. The places which served breakfast for commuters heading to the train had begun their prep work at the same hour as Sugarcube Corner. Those who began serving at lunch started getting ready for it during the latter part of breakfast. The ones who focused on dinner still had their pantries, and some of those rooms were deliberately set up to leak enticing scents into the street through strategically-placed vents. Ponies walking by would, in theory, appreciatively inhale and consider whether they wanted to make plans for later in the day.
The geese had, in practice, taken one whiff and gone directly for the source .
Feathers flew out of eateries. Nearly all of them were still attached, and the contents of those pantries made their sound-chased way into the sky.
Rainbow's constant flow of low-level inventive took a time-out from sheer amazement. "I've never heard that curse before."
"Cooks," Applejack wearily said. "Jus' keep movin'."
"Anypony know what it means?"
"It means move ."
Rarity was busy doing some impromptu trimming work on a goose's tailfeathers, which involved exposing nearly all of the actual tail. "Why are we coming this way? Are we not trying to discover the places they are avoiding ?"
"Can't do that without checkin' everywhere. Jus' keep pushin' on, Rarity: if we stop movin' as a unit, they're gonna really surround us, an' then it's gonna switch into pickin' us off."
"So let me scout !" a frustrated Rainbow huffed. "I can fly over the whole town , check the main settled zone, the farms, the dam, the fringe -- I can even do a quick survey over the Everfree! If you'd just let me loose , I could have that question answered in -- well, not ten seconds, but a lot faster than we're answering it now !"
"Can't be splittin' our forces," Applejack insisted. "Can't lose anypony , 'specially not after Pinkie already ran off once. If'fin we don't stay t'gether, ain't no tellin' if we can get back t'gether. Got lucky the first time: shouldn't risk another."
"It's stupid !"
They couldn't pause to stare at her. To pause was to give the geese a chance to close in a little more. But they did slow, just a little.
"Rainbow ." It was as close to a bark as Applejack ever came. "Yer stayin' here . Where we need you. Need all the ponies we have, jus' in case anypony thinks of anythin' at'tall..."
"I am thinking!" It had been a shout. "About scouting ! Of getting information ! Let me do what I'm good at! We'll get to a wall, find a defensible position, and after that, I trust you guys to hold the line for a few minutes! Maybe even use a building if anypony will let us in, or we find someplace we can just get into anyway, and then --"
"-- yer stayin'!"
"Twilight would let me go! "
"Ah ain't Twi!"
Furious kicks landed. None of them were on each other.
"No, you're not ." And for a moment, it was almost as if the geese had begun to speak, with all of Rainbow's words so close to a hiss and emerging on that same level of unreasoning fury. "Because Twilight knows a lot of stuff, and you know what the first thing she knew was, after she linked up with everypony here? That she didn't know everything . That she had to listen sometimes. What do you know about listening , Applejack? Sent off any scrolls about that? Because right now, all I'm seeing is a pair of orange ears, and nothing's actually going in them --"
"...don't fight... please, don't fight ..."
Somehow, the near-whisper got through.
"Fluttershy, you know I can do this, keeping everypony in one place isn't helping ..."
"Y'ain't gonna --"
But only audibly.
Pinkie's anxious face briefly surfaced in a sea of flying feathers, then submerged -- and immediately came out again before falling a second time: it took them all a few seconds to realize the baker was jumping up and down. "Rainbow's -- got a -- point! But -- if Applejack's -- well, at least for -- right now -- we shouldn't --"
Spike, who was doing his best to guard Fluttershy's back while perched on it, had his little claws visibly starting to wring: always a sign that the stress was starting to get to him, and having to take a side made it worse. "If we split up for a while, Fluttershy could ask some of her bigger friends to help out, or we could just ask the police to give us some reinforcements ..."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
"We're stayin' together. Nopony splits off. An' no dragon neither."
"Why ?"
She stared up at Rainbow, and the words emerged without permission or full awareness. "'cause when ponies leave , they --"
"-- does anypony else see -- that ?"
In spite of all previous group experience with the mostly-falsified faints, Rarity's more dramatic tones still had a way of getting attention.
"See what?" Spike quickly asked, sounding glad for the distraction.
"Over there ." The muck-encrusted tail managed a loaded lash to the left, with the momentum whipping absolutely nothing off. "Also, look down , if you can, and breathe --" a gasp, and the sound of swallowing something back "-- but not too deeply..."
They looked. And then the group began to fight their way in that direction. Towards the gap , and the confused pony standing within it...
"Mister Flankington !" Applejack gasped as she broke into the open space . "What happened? Please! We've gotta know!"
Ponyville's most notorious restaurateur blinked innocent red-eyed confusion at them as pony after pony tumbled into what was very nearly clean air, at least in the lack of pressing bird bodies occupying it. Although there were still geese. Several of them. And they were all...
"I don't know ," the dark green pegasus worriedly said. "Well... not completely . I mean, I know what they did , but their reaction ..."
Applejack stared at the geese. One of them just barely managed to raise its head enough to weakly hiss at her, then went back to draping its neck across its stomach.
It was a reaction, all right. It was a completely familiar one.
"What did they eat?" Applejack asked.
"I was -- getting ready for the lunch rush."
Which, since it wasn't tourist season, meant he'd been practicing the district's most dubious collection of what wasn't exactly cooking skills in anticipation of serving the results to a grand total of zero ponies, assuming there were no unsuspecting new arrivals who hadn't been told about this particular hazard of Ponyville life. (And all of those would have also been ponies who hadn't been warned about the bear.) "An'?"
"I'd just opened the back doors to let some of the fumes vent."
"You didn't know they were outside? Y'didn't hear 'em?"
"Well..." Wings helplessly spread. "You know... when I'm working on a dish..."
She looked at the two crossed test tubes on his flank. Mr. Flankington did have a way of getting lost in his work, although nopony was entirely sure what that work was . "An'?"
"Well -- they burst in. They went straight for my daily special, they gobbled it down --" the next part was said with distinctive pride "-- none of them could even remotely resist it. They didn't stop eating until the tiniest bits were gone, no matter what I did to try and scare them out. But then, a few seconds after they got outside -- that ."
They all looked again. Geese weren't really equipped to double over any more than ponies were, and totally lacked the capacity to curl up into what Applejack would have considered to be a fetal position. But still, they were trying.
Fluttershy glanced at the outdoor chalkboard menu.
"...again?" And, even for Fluttershy, "...really?"
"It's the first fraction of the potential harvest from my new crop," Mr. Flankington said. The helplessness wasn't even remotely beginning to diminish. "I thought... I had it right this time."
Applejack looked at him. Then the menu, and finally the geese.
"...the others... they're avoiding them," Fluttershy said. "...you can see them retreating . They're backing away, more every second. They don't understand what happened . All they know is that part of the flock is sick, and they don't want to get sick too. But they don't understand the cause ..."
Applejack thought .
"It's like dogs, ain't it?" she softly asked. "Winona... take mah eyes off her for a second, she'll scoop the foulest stuff in the world off the ground an' into her mouth, be sick all night, but she can't learn not t' do it again the next chance she gets... 'cause the taste is too good to resist, an' her memory don't care . She don't think about the consequences, because she can't ..."
"...just like dogs," Fluttershy agreed. "If they got it again... they might eat it again."
"An' those others -- they'd eat it a first time, even after seein' these ones sick?"
"...yes. I think so... they just don't understand, and they probably didn't see the eating..."
"An' -- if there were enough of 'em sick, an' the whole flock thought it had somethin' bad enough t' fly away from..."
"...Applejack, I really don't know about this..."
But it was too late. Applejack had already turned back to Mr. Flankington, and her voice carefully enunciated words nopony in history had ever deliberately said more than once.
"Mr. Flankington, Ah'd like t' order some of your Saddle Arabian Grass specials."
He stared at her with the shock of a pony who'd already seen that particular tail desperately going out the door. "You -- would?"
"Yep."
"Well..." The pause was just long enough for his feathers to shake away enough of the disbelief. "...certainly!" With a rush of never-before-felt confidence, "How many portions would you like?"
"All of it."
"Applejack?" It came out in what was, for Pinkie, an oddly thoughtful tone.
She just managed not to sigh. "What is it, Pinkie?"
"You know how different species have different names for their -- well, you know." Pinkie managed a half-casual nod towards the foul cylinders littering what was currently a mere twenty percent of the available landscape.
Applejack, after some thought, went with "Uh-huh."
"Like with cattle, it's tath, and otters have spraints, and Spike -- it's fewmets, isn't it, Spike? I heard that somewhere..."
From about three body lengths behind Pinkie, a matching, rather weary "Uh-huh."
"Well..." Another look at the stuff . "This needs a name."
"Right, " Rarity crossly said. "Pinkie, I believe we should currently be concentrating on --"
"-- because everypony's cursing at it, and if you're going to going to curse something, you should really really be cursing it by name . It makes things feel a little better that way, because it's more personal! I mean, that's why some ponies name their carts, right? Because when the axle breaks, you can say 'Oh, you stupid cart!' or you can say 'Oh, Luna's tail , not that dumb Betsy again,' and the second one feels so much better -- right, Applejack?"
"Uh-huh -- hey! Nopony was around when Ah -- how did y'hear 'bout --"
"-- so I'm going to give this stuff a name."
The fur of Pinkie's forehead rippled with concentration.
"Styrofoam," she decided, and looked satisfied with herself.
"What does that mean?" Rainbow immediately demanded.
"This stuff."
"And why are you calling it that ?"
"I don't know. It just seemed to fit. How much further to Mr. Flankington's place?"
"A ways, Pinkie. We're pretty much goin' all the way out here. Any further than this an' we'd just 'bout be knockin' on Zecora's door." They were moving down one of the least-used roads in the settled zone, well away from Ponyville proper. Mr. Flankington, like Fluttershy, had his residence right up against the border of the fringe : he could see the less risky parts of the Everfree just by glancing out his back window, and was known to occasionally treat the place as just one more area to potentially source ingredients. And while there were still reminders of the goose infestation in this area, littering the road and looking for one last portion of clean leg to befoul, there weren't any actual geese . It was an odd absence, but Applejack didn't see any need to complain about it.
"Somepony should check on her," Rarity proposed.
"Can't split up . An' Zecora can take care of herself. Besides, if'fin this works, ain't gonna be any need. Let's jus' concentrate on what we've got goin' now. We get in there, we get the grass, an' we head back. An' we make sure we get it all . Mr. Flankington's pantry ain't gonna be anywhere near enough."
They'd left the restaurateur in Ponyville after asking him to fly wherever he could, scattering the supposed daily special into the crowds of geese, trying to make sure every fowl who might get a chance to eat it would consume just enough . And the pegasus, filled with an old combination of pride that somepony finally had use for his craft and mild insult as to what that use was for , had agreed -- but there had only been so much grass in the restaurant. He typically didn't bring much in: just enough to serve his theoretical maximum customer load, which generally wound up being several thousand percent over the actual number. The rest had been left behind at his home. In the greenhouse . And so the group had forced their way out of Ponyville, eventually reaching the surprisingly-empty road, on a deliberate quest to inflict the greatest gastronomic disaster the settled zone had seen since The Day Of The Baked Bads.
"Okay," the pony who'd been responsible for the last triage tent said. "Everypony remember what we're gonna do?"
"We go into the greenhouse," Rarity recited. "Then into his domicile. Heat the grass for three minutes at two hundred degrees, and add exactly the spices he described: the list remains in my saddlebags, Applejack. And then we make our way back to Ponyville, serving out paid samples all the way. And speaking of which... exactly who is paying for all of this? I know Mr. Flankington to be a generous sort of stallion, especially when it comes to -- taste trials..."
The winces came from everypony in the group, but were heaviest on Rainbow (who, despite an extensive accumulation of previous experience, still had a hard time passing up anything remotely resembling a free meal) and Spike (who could digest just about anything and so had spent hard years serving as Test Subject Of Choice).
"...but this is his -- well, if not livelihood, then at least his product. He is willingly sacrificing the crop for the good of the town, Applejack, but you said it would be paid for, and that much gourmet grass -- or at least what he believes to be such, and charges accordingly -- adds up to..."
"The mayor's gonna pay for it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Carefully, "Because?"
"We're doin' this 'cause she asked us to. So she's coverin' expenses. Only fair. If the police had noticed that first, they'd be takin' the money out of the budget too. We work for the town, we use the town's resources. That part's their responsibility."
"...except that," Fluttershy softly said, "it's our fault..."
And Applejack, who had taken the lead, heard all the hoofsteps and wingbeats behind her stop, internal ice finally spreading out to freeze everypony in their tracks.
She turned. It seemed to take a very long time, along with every bit of effort she had to give.
"So," she said heavily, "we're doin' this now? Really? With the solution right up ahead? Come on , everypony, we've gotta prioritize here --"
"-- no, " Rainbow cut her off, forelegs starting to cross again. "I think we can spare a few heartbeats for this, because I've been wanting to hear it for a while now, and there isn't anypony else around to eavesdrop. We don't even have a goose who could listen in. So let's hear it, Fluttershy. Why is this mess our fault? Because I never did anything to insult any geese . Okay, other birds, sure. I've -- gone through a few migration paths. During migrations. And I totally had the right of way that one time. Just about every time. And if they're going to keep trying to build nests where everypony knows I go out to work on stunts --"
"-- I think I know," Pinkie said, her voice oddly soft. "There's only one thing it could be, isn't there?"
Fluttershy nodded.
"And what's that ?" Rainbow demanded.
"...they're from the Empire," Fluttershy said.
There was just enough denial in the next word to pick up on, a tiny amount of forlorn hope that the realization Rainbow was speeding towards would be somehow snatched away before she ever reached it. "So? "
"...and... who freed the Empire?"
The frozen tableau fell silent. Spike's eyes had closed. Pinkie and Rarity both looked sick. Fluttershy's eyes were lightly coated with moisture. Applejack couldn't move. And as for the last --
"No !" Rainbow suddenly shouted. "I'm not taking the blame for that! No way, no how! That's just stupid !"
"...but we did ," Fluttershy whispered. "When the Empire came back... the world didn't just regain the crystal ponies, it got back everything that lived there. All the plants, all the animals . And most of that... won't matter, not for the world as a whole, because they're so isolated up there and hardly anything travels through the border storms at all. But the geese migrate . We helped free the crystal ponies, and... everything which comes with them, Rainbow. This is us ..."
"But we didn't plan it!" Rainbow yelled. "We didn't mean to do it!"
"...it doesn't matter..."
"Yes, it does! Because if we thought about everything that might happen, we'd never do anything!"
Applejack forced herself to look up. "Rainbow, Fluttershy, we ain't got time for this. Y'can take it up later, when we --"
"No," Rainbow said, and the word hit the ground with the same force as her landing . "Now . Because now, you're gonna listen , Applejack. To me . For once , everypony's gonna listen to me . Because you're all being stupid, so bucking stupid that it hurts , and we're not moving until I get to make my speech for a change."
"Rainbow --"
"-- shut. up."
Applejack stared at the unblinking magenta eyes. Saw the flared wings and legs, snorting nostrils and lashing tail, the stance set to charge , the heart-pounding, brain-fogging instinct to fight somehow being directed into the verbal...
...she shut up.
"Celestia's sunny butt , when did all of you turn into Twilight ?" Rainbow furiously blasphemed. "We've all seen her in fights! Sometimes, you can just about watch the words going through her head. 'There's a dozen changelings charging me and I only know a hundred spells, so I'll just stand here and try to sort out exactly which one is the best for this precise situation, right up until they knock me over because I spent all the time I had to do something in thinking !' There are times when you can't think, when you shouldn't because it's the worst thing you could do! You don't get it. None of you do."
Her tail was lashing harder now. Hooves were scraping at the fouled soil.
"What if when we blast the Nightmare, it doesn't get wiped out, but just goes off and finds another host? Gee, guess we'd better just leave it where it is: we don't know if that's even possible , but we can use two or three years of darkness to do the research !" A head shake, hard enough to blur colors in the prismatic mane. "Can't chase the dragon off the mountain because we don't know where it'll go next. Can't get Rarity out of the Dogs' warren because they might decide to grab six more ponies to replace her, so might as well let them keep her! Can't put Discord back in stone because maybe there's something out there besides Pinkie which needs chocolate milk to live, can't knock the changelings out of Canterlot because where else are they gonna find love, and can't free the Empire because what if there's some stupid geese ? There's always consequences! There's always stuff you didn't see coming! And if you're looking at the future, you don't see anything now ! You don't act! You just --"
Her eyes briefly closed. Feathers settled back against her sides. Her tail began to slow.
"-- you don't do anything ," she breathed, a too-fast series of harsh, hard pants. "Because you were thinking . And if you get a chance to do something good... or if somepony's trying to hurt you... and you think ... You have to be in the now . You have to be selfish . You don't think about the pony charging you maybe having a family: you just kick him, because you have to be selfish enough to say your life's more important than his. You don't think about new hosts and relocations and consequences because the ponies who might suffer later aren't here now , and the lives around you right now... they're more important. They have to be. Maybe sometimes, when you can plan, when you've got warning... maybe then, there's time to think. But in the middle of it... when it's them or you... you have to choose you . You have to choose now . Or... there won't be anypony left to tell you about how you screwed it up..."
And now the tail was drooping as the eyelids closed again. Both stayed that way.
"So..." Quietly now. "...it was us. When the Empire came back, we freed the geese. We caused it. We didn't mean to. But I'd do it a thousand times, because the crystals are more important than some dumb birds . I'd do it without thinking about it. Everypony's just thinking too much ..."
Dead stop. Completely motionless. A state Rainbow never existed in of her own accord. And finally, Applejack found the strength to speak again. "...Rainbow?"
"It's... our responsibility, maybe," Rainbow softly said. "But it's not our fault . Not for stuff like blame . Doesn't anypony get that...?"
Is this how she thinks? Or don't think? All the time?
Applejack stared at the sleek head and for the first time, found herself truly wondering what sort of things were happening within.
"Ah... Ah can understand how y'see it," she heavily said. "But that ain't how everypony else is gonna see it, 'specially not the ones in town. They've been through too much, Rainbow. They see stuff happenin', an' all they know is that some of it's got somethin' t' do with us . Happens so much, they jus' start t' blame for jus' 'bout anythin' that comes along, no matter what might have started it, unless they know it's -- well..."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
Rarity softly sighed. "Siblings, yes, and even then, I suspect we both take a share of the blame because others see us as having failed to herd them, and the same would apply to Scootaloo's parents if anypony had ever found them at home when their hooves pounded on that door. But rather often, it does turn out to be us. Not always as initiators. We respond, and so we are associated with the events. But, sadly, on what is something more than rare occasion..."
"So what are we supposed to do?" It was seldom reassuring, hearing that level of quiet resignation from Pinkie. "Just -- stop? Because everything we could do just means more to do later, and sooner or later, it might turn into something nopony can do at all?"
"No."
And they all looked at Spike.
He quietly regarded them from his position on Fluttershy's back, eyes placid, nictitating membranes well out of sight. "Because... if that's the kind of ponies you were, nopony here would have an Element at all. Things have to be done . And you guys do them. You do what needs to happen, and if anything shows up after because of it... that's just one more thing to do. Rainbow's right. The crystal ponies are worth some geese. Luna is worth watching for the next Nightmare, if that's even possible. All of you, and Twilight... are worth all of it. You acted, when nopony else did... and if you hadn't, where are we now?"
"...alone," Fluttershy quietly replied. "...in the dark."
The words washed over them, soaked in past foul and fur and skin, sank within.
"Spike?" He looked at Rarity. "It was a worthwhile speech. And yours as well, Rainbow. But with Spike's -- I apologize, dear, but you made a small error, and I will not allow it to stand."
"...what?" the little dragon eventually asked.
"You said 'you guys do them.' And with your choice of phrasing, you excluded yourself. Please stop that. It is not only inaccurate, it is rather annoying. So -- unless anypony else has a lecture they wish to launch at this time?"
"Are we --"
"-- no, Pinkie, we ain't there yet . But Ah think it's just a little ways now. Ain't y'never been out here before? Ah thought you'd explored just 'bout everywhere in the whole settled zone."
"He celebrates his birthdays at the restaurant, which keeps the attendance down a lot because everypony's afraid he'll cater for himself, and... well, I've been out here, but not since way before he moved in. It's... you know. The shed ."
"He stores my sleigh for me, Pinkie," Rarity said. With a sigh, "Or he did while I still had one. It really isn't that much further. And the shed isn't so bad, as long as he hasn't been too -- active. And one takes care to hold one's breath. For a very long time."
"So y'came out here t' pick it up?"
"When the Weather Bureau scheduled snow around Hearth's Warming Eve, yes."
"You've been near the shed, then?"
"A few times."
"An' you're alive ?"
With faint annoyance, "Rather obviously. Come, Applejack, both our sisters were inside that shed this past summer, and they also both came out."
"Yeah, but that's them . Survivin' their own disasters -- well, they've kinda proven there ain't no mark for that 'cause if there was, the stupid Crusade would've had a triple manifest in Week One."
That produced a nod. "At the moment, I'm rather more concerned about the geese getting in. From what you and Fluttershy said, we already know they are capable of battering their way into a greenhouse. Mr. Flankington uses actual glass , and the thickest I've seen on such a structure: that may have kept our goal safe. But the shed has only standard anti-Crusader protection -- well, now it does -- and such purchased spells are not set up to stop birds . Let us hope there were just enough fumes to keep them away. We do not need a biohazard team in the middle of this mess. Again."
Applejack winced. "One disaster at a time, okay? But... y'have been out there, so... maybe y'know. This stuff he does, with the mixin' an' testin' an' everythin' that comes outta there when it shouldn't, which he keeps sayin' is his mark ..."
Rarity waited.
"...Rarity -- what's 'food chemistry' ?"
"I have no idea. And the more he tried to explain it to me, the less I understood --" ears which were just now only partially white (with the other, acquired colors best not asked about) twisted. "-- I hear geese."
Everypony focused.
"...I do too," Fluttershy agreed. "...I've been wondering where they all were... you can tell they were here, the ground says so, but they didn't stay long. I was wondering if something scared them off..." Her eyes widened. "...or attracted them... Rainbow, what was the wind set up for last night? And this morning?"
Rainbow frowned with concentration. "We're right up against the fringe , Fluttershy: this is where the Everfree's currents cross sometimes and mess everything up, you know that: the cottage has the same problem."
"I hear," Spike slowly said, "a lot of geese."
Rainbow missed it. "But if nothing messed up the weave, then... well, since last summer, we usually try to keep things going out into the wild zone, just in case something happens at the shed. But we can't keep that up all the time. Last night would have been a few light gusts outwards, but since this morning, you'd get..." She paused, hovered, focused. "...actually, we're downwind right now. There just isn't any active current."
"...but there would have been earlier?" Fluttershy asked.
"I think so. That's definitely the way the weave's been set, so if nothing broke in and anything moved at all , it came this way. Why?"
"I hear," Pinkie breathed, "a flock of geese..."
They all looked at each other.
Those on the ground broke into a gallop at the same moment. Those in the air dodged the hoof-flung results.
As they'd hoped for, there weren't any geese around the shed -- technically. Oh, there were a few who were rather close to it, and all of those were fighting to get away from it and closer to the center of -- Applejack didn't want to look at that again just yet. The point was that the oft-rebuilt shed, with its vials and beakers and ongoing crimes against gastronomy, chemistry, and occasionally thaumaturgy, had pretty much been left alone, and that gave everypony one less thing to worry about.
The greenhouse was also intact, although that part wasn't for lack of trying. Mr. Flankington did have the thickest glass in the settled zone, with several factors contributing to that level of defense: an unusual level of need for sunlight concentration, a perpetual and not quite unsubstantiated worry that somepony might one day choose to take out the production at the source , and those days where the ingredients grown within didn't wait until they reached the shed and just went horribly wrong on their own. And so the glass: thickened, reinforced, and enchanted with everything he'd been able to pay for plus two highly experimental spells which nopony else had been willing to let Twilight try out on their property. Nopony had been able to get through any of it.
No goose had, either.
But several hundred of them were still making the attempt.
Applejack swallowed.
"Well..." she softly considered, "there's a little good news."
"What's that, Applejack?" Pinkie honestly wanted to know.
"They ain't lookin' at us ."
Every beady black eye was focused on the glass. On what was behind it . Or, at the moment just before repeated impact, at what was keeping them from it.
The sounds of bodies crashing against glass were sickening. They were also frequent.
"They're ramming it!" Rainbow's exclamation point was mostly implied: nopony wanted to make too much noise, just in case it got avian attention. "It's like the changelings all over again!"
"...it's the smell ," Fluttershy moaned. "...all they can think about is getting to the food ..."
"How is the smell even getting out?" Spike wondered. "That's glass ..."
Rarity's horn ignited: several portions of the greenhouse walls momentarily glowed with soft blue. "There and there, Spike. Hidden vents. The plants within cannot be left in a completely sealed environment: they would eventually suffocate in their own oxygen. So portions of the walls are designed to -- leak , at least for airflow. There is probably something else present to hold the heat inside, although I am not sure exactly what . But if any air gets out and no appropriate enchantment stops it -- a working Mr. Flankington has never had a need for -- it carries scent with it. They know it is there, they know they are blocked from it -- and they do not appear to be hurting themselves enough to considering stopping ..."
"...they won't stop until it breaks ," Fluttershy breathed. "Or they do..."
"They don't even know we're here, do they?" Applejack asked.
"...they might," Fluttershy said. "Not consciously, though. We just don't matter right now. Not unless we become a threat to their food ."
"...right," Applejack eventually said. "Um... anypony got a count ? Ah'd kinda like t' know jus' what we're up against here..."
"I don't know!" a frustrated Rainbow declared. "They all keep moving around!" She glared at a slightly concussed-looking, staggering specimen. "Would you just hold still for a second? I think I counted you twice!"
"The number," Rarity said with an openly forced calm, "is too many . We cannot force or fight our way through that group without becoming overwhelmed."
"I could crash into it myself," Rainbow considered. "Break in through the roof, swoop for the grass --"
"-- an' assumin' y'didn't knock yerself out tryin', you'd be tryin' t' get the whole section harvested before all the geese followed y'in, Rainbow. That ain't somethin' y'can do in ten seconds flat neither."
"We could go back to town!" Pinkie considered. "If Mr. Flankington has any left, we could use that to lure them off! Rainbow could take the sack and --"
"-- an' what , Pinkie? Rainbow can't go full speed if'fin she's doin' that: gotta stay just far enough ahead of the geese t' make 'em think they've got a chance. Too far, they peel off an' come back here: too close an' she gets overwhelmed. Besides, think 'bout how little he had. He's gotta be out of stock by now. An' even if we found somethin' else they wanted, it's the same problem."
"Well," Rarity heavily said, "I cannot of course speak for anypony else here, but I? Am currently rather open to suggestions ..."
The debate broke out behind Applejack, who was slightly in front of the pack, staring at what little she could see of the greenhouse through the flurry of furious feathers. There were moments when she had glimpses of the interior, extremely brief ones -- but in other circumstances, with one other pony present, that might have been just enough .
Twi, camped out at the front. Watchin' everythin', trying for every sight line she can get, learnin' what the inside is like. An' once she's got it all down, got it t' where she's feelin' a little confidence, all she needs is one second t' teleport. Harvests the grass, completely safe. Geese see her, get mad enough t' finally break in or the glass jus' gives out at the wrong second, she gets out the same way. If Twi were here...
She wasn't used to teleportation, not really, and she'd done everything she could think of since meeting the librarian to keep it from being used on her . But she was starting to understand some of the tactical advantages -- at the exact moment when they were no longer available.
No Twi. That was mah decision. Gotta live with it. Jus' find another way in.
She found herself glancing at Rarity, who didn't notice: the designer was in the middle of a heated debate with Rainbow and Spike about the risk of using fire . The designer was intelligent in some ways, had a surprising (and sometimes surprisingly low) cunning about her... but she wasn't a substitute for Twilight. She couldn't learn to teleport in five minutes, or five hours. Possibly ever . She had been given the thaumaturgical keys to the greenhouse, and could get them inside once (if) the geese had been cleared out. That was all.
Can't fight: too many, even if we go in lookin' t' kill. Can't distract: nothin' t' do it with. Lightnin'... She looked up, and caught Rainbow doing the same. ...mostly sunny right now. If it don't scare 'em all off in one shot, there's not enough clouds, an' Rarity used up some of the ones we did have. Fire: too much 'round here that could go up: all we need is for a flamin' goose to hit the shed and then we're gonna need a lot more than Canterlot t' help clean up. What's left?
She considered her own magic, discarded it: there was no way to do it subtly. Thought about what Rarity could potentially bring to bear and dismissed that as well: the unicorn's field wouldn't go through a solid object and even if she could somehow start the harvesting process by remote, the grass had to come out eventually. Pinkie... well, streamers weren't enough of a distraction. Rainbow could get a whirlwind going, but it would take a lot more wind speed for the heavy goose bodies than it had for the parasprites, and she suspected Mr. Flankington was expecting to find his house right where he'd left it. Spike, currently back on his own hind claws and arguing about something with Pinkie, was definitely out of the trough...
...could she?
No, that's the wrong question. Ah know she can. It's ' Will she?'
Ah'm... in charge.
Ah shouldn't have t' --
Slowly, she approached, picking her hoofsteps carefully, more for avoiding sound than mess: there was very little of her left which could still be fouled. A gentle hoof poke got the attention she needed, and she peeled one pony away from the debate without any of the others noticing, especially since that one had yet to find anything she could say.
"...what's going on, Applejack? Did you think of something?"
"Yeah. But... Ah hate t' ask, but... it's you, Fluttershy. It's gotta be you. You've gotta clear us a path."
"But..." Wings helplessly spread. "...they don't listen . I could try... an order , but I don't know if that works with someone I don't really know . Or at all . And even if it did, I don't know how many I could... order at once..."
"Naw. Not that."
"...then -- what?"
"How many do y'think y'could Stare?"
Fluttershy blinked.
"...how many ?"
"One right after the other."
"...I... Applejack, I've never ... not groups ... it's one on one, direct eye contact, and there's hundreds ..."
"Not askin' you t' try takin' 'em all in one shot, Fluttershy. Ah'm thinkin' -- fear. We saw that back at Mr. Flankington's. Fightin', they know. Fightin', they see one get hurt an' the rest jus' close in all the more. But when somethin' is hittin' 'em which they can't see, can't understand ... they back off, 'cause they don't know what's goin' on, can't figure it out, can't think . Jus' that it's somethin' bad an' it could happen t' them too. Ah think... if y'get enough of 'em, from a distance, so the others can't see you're the source, pick off a few here an' there... the rest might get scared enough t' leave." She took a deep breath, qualified all of it. "Ah'm hopin' . So -- can you?"
"...Applejack... I've never... I don't know if I can..."
She gently pressed her flank against the filthy wing. "Y'know, you say that a lot."
"...I know."
"An' then y'know what always happens after?" Those huge eyes, so very wide with fear, were looking directly at her... "Y'go an' do it anyway. Every time. Ah believe in you, Fluttershy. Go an' show everypony why."
The caretaker swallowed.
"...I..."
"Please?"
Several shuddering breaths shifted the dirty coat.
"...okay..."
Fluttershy advanced, trotting forward. Not much: just enough to get in front of Applejack. Clearing the line of sight.
"D'you need t' get closer? Is there a range?"
"...I don't know. Applejack, I'm sorry for asking this, I really am, but... please be quiet. They're making enough noise up ahead and I've never tried to do it like this , I have to be ready for the moment any of them turn their head this way, even for less than a second. I need to concentrate..."
Applejack went silent. Fluttershy tried another hoofstep. The mane was shaken, all of the pink fall going behind the shapely head. Both eyes fully exposed.
Seconds passed.
A goose dropped .
It had been battering the glass. It had been fighting with all the other geese in order to win a little more space to attack the greenhouse in . It had staggered back to get the room for another charge, its head had turned, for less than a second...
...it hadn't been a hiss or a honk. It had been much closer to a bleat. Something brought out by fear . And with less ceremony than Rarity would ever consider bringing to the occasion, it had fainted dead away.
Several other geese heard the body hit the ground. They turned. They stared at it. And they backed away -- but not enough, and after a moment, they resumed their attack on the glass.
Okay. She couldn't bring herself to say it aloud. So maybe it could work. Jus' need t' bump the numbers up. Come on, Fluttershy, it's all you...
The caretaker was starting to move around the perimeter, and Applejack heard the others notice, the debate breaking off as they watched the circling. "Applejack, whatever is she --"
"Shh!" The whisper was as fierce as she could make it without adding risky decibels. "No distractions, Rarity! Jus' let her work!"
Another goose dropped: more noticed, went back to the assault. Then another -- and two flew away .
It's happenin'... she's doin' it...
A fourth went down. And now the flock was starting to notice. Fluttershy was moving quickly, not letting the rest focus on her -- and they weren't smart enough to look . Something was rendering them unconscious, something they couldn't see or hear, much less feel , and that meant they couldn't fight . They were becoming scared ...
Another. Another. Honks of panic. More flying away, and more, still more falling to filthy ground as Applejack watched --
-- the claws did not scratch her. They never did: a lifetime of experience in maneuvering a reptilian body around softer pony forms. But for the first time, she felt as if the little dragon had just barely held himself back from it.
"Stop her."
And there was another first riding along in those words.
Spike had just given her an order .
So she did the natural thing. She ignored it. "Ain't gonna. Don't care what y'jus' came up with, Spike, this is workin' . Look at 'em -- that had t' be twelve goin' off at once! They're scared ! We're winnin' ! Every time one drops, more an' more leave , that was twenty right there...!"
"Look at them ?" And the next words were almost a roar . "LOOK AT HER! "
Involuntarily, Applejack looked --
-- sweat laced through the yellow coat. Froth . Knees shaking with every hoofstep. Head barely held aloft. Partially-unfurled wings trembling, joints loose against the body because their bearer no longer had the strength to keep them folded.
"Ah -- aw, no , Spike, Ah didn't --"
"Shut up! STOP HER!"
She galloped . And she let her words go ahead of her, not caring about the geese, not caring about anything but the white foam spreading across stained yellow coat. "Fluttershy! Stop! You've gotta stop , right now! Y'have t' --"
But it wasn't enough.
"...I..." Just barely audible, the words taking what was nearly the last strength she had to give. "I can..."
"Please, please listen t' me! You've gotta --"
"...you need me..."
The last bit of strength was freely given.
Another goose dropped.
So did Fluttershy.
The Temperate Traveling Temper Tantrum
He couldn't move all that fast: short legs (and only two of them at that), no wings. His reflexes were fine as long as the weather was warm enough, but when it came to covering ground in a hurry, he couldn't , and it was one of the many reasons they let him ride. But when it came to having his words travel... with every passing year, he got that much closer to a full-throated roar . And as his orders blasted through the air, they knocked the last few geese away from the greenhouse, sent them fleeing for the upper atmosphere with no thought of returning. For there were not enough of them remaining for a group assault, and nothing wanted to be present without force of numbers when a dragon finally got mad .
"RAINBOW ! I want water , right now ! Grab clouds: we need enough for rinsing and drinking! You're getting that foam off her and making sure she gets some clean water in her mouth! Rarity, get inside the house, go straight for his pantry! I want a salt lick, tumeric root, orange slices, yams, and dried blueberries to start, then find me some kale and arugula! I know he's got all of it and I don't care if you have to tear the entire place apart to get it, just bring it all out here and get her to start eating! Pinkie, get her on her hooves! Prop her up with your own body, start walking her around! If she starts to pass out, poke her, nudge her, bite her, just don't let her go unconscious again! And Applejack --"
He was in front of her now, standing between Applejack and Fluttershy's fallen form. The grasping claws were tensed, the arms looking as if they were getting ready to swipe . Nostrils flared in a certain way. Those strange membranes over his eyes going back and forth --
"-- what the buck were you thinking? Did you think at all?"
It nearly froze them. They had never heard Spike curse, ever , and during so many other events, the utterance would have shut them all down. But in this desperate time, it merely caused minor stumbles as everypony but one raced off to follow his orders, all but the one he was staring down.
"Ah..." Why was it suddenly so hard to stand in place? Why did every part of her want to gallop ? "Spike, Ah -- though the Stare would --"
"The Stare !" he shouted back. "Really? The Stare? What's the Stare, Applejack? Tell me, right now !"
"Ah... Ah'm not sure , never been sure, never really even thought 'bout it too much..."
"It's part of her magic! Magic takes energy to use! Did she get to have breakfast before everypony started pounding on her door this morning, or did she just do what she almost always does and feed everything at the cottage while saving herself for last, or just deciding not to eat because there was too much to do and she could try and sneak something around lunch? She sure hasn't eaten anything since she got to me, nopony has. We've been fighting and running and flying and everything else, almost constantly , but nopony's eaten a thing, and guess what we just learned about the Stare, Applejack? It's magic . Magic takes thaums, recharging thaums takes calories , and the Stare takes more out of Fluttershy than anypony ever bothered to think about, drain after drain with nothing replacing it . You pushed her too far, and she didn't want to stop because she couldn't disappoint anypony, she would rather die than let you down --"
"-- it's not mah fault! Ah didn't know! Ah didn't --"
"-- you didn't think!"
"Ah ain't supposed t' be the one thinkin' 'bout this! Ah shouldn't have t' be! Ah shouldn't have t' -- t' do any of it! Ah ain't Twi! Ah ain't mah Mommy an' Daddy, an' -- "
Her jaw slammed shut as her head dipped, and the hat slipped to shade her eyes.
Spike simply looked at her, his own eyes clear again, with every blink normal.
And from behind Applejack, "...please don't fight..."
They looked. Pinkie had gone around them, gotten Fluttershy up. Those blue-green eyes were just barely open, trying to focus.
"Fluttershy, Ah -- Ah didn't mean, Ah didn't know , please, you've gotta --"
"-- I could have said something..."
"No." The mere thought made her even sicker than she already was. "Don't blame yerself. Please . It's mah fault. Everythin's mah --"
She stopped herself again, forced her gaze go up and around. Rarity and Rainbow: gone.
"Where -- y'sent 'em away -- y'split everypony up, y'can't ..."
He was staring at her again.
"Get on her other side," he told her. "Help Pinkie keep her up, equal pressure from both sides. Light pressure: be careful with her wings. Walk her around. Now , Applejack."
Her body did it. Her mind didn't seem to be involved. With anything. Excepting a constant repetition of eight words.
Ah shouldn't have t' --
-- 'cause Ah ruin everything...
It had taken twenty long minutes before Spike had let them stop walking Fluttershy in the wide circle, with the dragon keeping pace all the way, feeding her everything Rarity had brought out, making sure she drank the water Rainbow had flown in. Twenty minutes before he pronounced her all right to lie down in the grass for another ten minutes before he'd even think about letting her trot back towards town, and they weren't going to leave her there alone because the geese might return . They would lose thirty minutes, and he made it softly clear that under different circumstances, with even less in her system available to burn and nothing to give her following the overexertion, they could have lost much more.
"...Spike," Fluttershy softly said, just barely at the edge of Applejack's hearing, with the pegasus so distant. "...it wasn't that bad. I just... overdid it, I know, I'm not arguing that, but it wasn't that bad..."
"Who are you lying to, Fluttershy?" There was no anger left in his voice: just a deep weariness. "Yourself, because you really don't know what you just went through -- or everypony else, so they won't worry so much?"
"...Spike, I'll be okay ..."
"This time."
"...I know not to do it again..."
"So does Twilight." The words were heavy. "She knew not to do it again. Every year of school, she knew not to do it again . Every year since she came here. Every year that she put too much of herself into a working, until she was standing on the border. You know the one? The one every pony could cross if they had to? Where you've run out of strength, so you decide it's time to give your life ? Every year, stopping exactly on that line..."
They were all staring at him now: she could feel it. All but Applejack, so far away.
"Fluttershy? That pacing groove in the library's basement? What do you think I use it for? Because she won't listen , not to her little brother, not when she thinks there's a discovery just ahead of her... so I wind up walking her around in circles and getting her water and all the food she needs while she lies to me about knowing not to do it again ..."
The claws came up, covered closed eyes. Tears ran between the layers, left glistening scales behind.
"...Spike... I didn't know..."
"Do you know not to do it again? And you won't do it again?"
"...yes."
"Are you lying?"
Silence.
He turned away, sat down in the grass, arms limp at his sides, eyes still closed. And Applejack, lost in the shadow of the shed, finally turned away.
Time passed. She wasn't sure how much.
"...Applejack?"
That much, then. "Fluttershy..." No. What did she have to say which hadn't already been said? 'Sorry?' What good was that supposed to do? She couldn't even manage to look behind her and see the pony who was back on her hooves, upright and moving despite everything Applejack had done.
"...it wasn't you."
Hollow. "Ah gave the order."
"...it wasn't an order. It was more like -- advice? I could have said no..."
"Y'have trouble sayin' no. Still. An' we both know it. Ah took advantage."
"...if you did... then anypony asking me to do anything is."
"But Ah was in charge."
"...really?"
More hoofsteps coming up, picking a careful path through the grass: Rarity. "And whoever told you that ?"
It almost got Applejack to turn. "The mayor."
"Oh, really ." Sarcasm dripped from every syllable.
"She said -- with Twi gone, y'all looked t' me... that everypony knew Ah was in charge an' she jus' had t' tell me t' make it work..."
"A politician ," Rarity carefully enunciated, "one with a direct stake in matters, who wished to motivate you into action, told you something which would help her achieve her own ends -- and you believed her?"
The horrified silence was long enough to hear wingbeats and hooves approaching.
"...did y'know the deadline for filin' to run for Mayor was two weeks ago?"
"Yes," Pinkie said at the same moment as everypony else's 'No.'
"Wish it was t'morrow."
"Because, Applejack?"
"Because, Rarity, Ah'd run. An' then if'fin Ah won, Ah'd follow that up by runnin' the last mayor out of town!"
It got a soft laugh. "A pony who does not lie... is at something of a disadvantage on the political front. I don't think you'd do all that well, especially given the ponies who would refuse to vote for you on general principle."
"An' what general principle is that ?"
"Well -- would you vote for somepony who'd already proven and was willing to publicly admit, at the first hint of a question, that the recent goose disaster was all her fault ?"
She heard Pinkie's giggle, Rainbow's snort, and almost found the strength to smile.
"Of course," Rarity continued, "it does not mean Mayor Mare is wrong . There are times when you are in charge, Applejack. We all know that, I think. Times when each of us takes up the reins between our teeth. In the more subtle social situations, I often have the lead, while Pinkie seizes control for the most open ones, or when empathy is needed. Fluttershy for many animals and some medicine, Twilight in matters of magic, Rainbow for those times when thinking may in fact be overrated -- and as I quite distinctly heard even from within the house, in those moments when somepony must get us in line in spite of ourselves, it would seem Spike should rule over us all."
The sound of claws scratching across pebbles.
"But when common sense is needed, the practical solution, a need for the bottom line and drive of necessity without frills or pretense... we turn to you, Applejack," the designer concluded. "We always have. Our mayor just used it against you, because she knew she could, and how you would respond if she did. Be angry with her, if you like. But -- she does what she must, for the benefit of the settled zone. As do we. The manner is simply somewhat different."
A long pause, more than enough for her to feel them all coming closer.
"Ah still screwed up."
"...you didn't know," Fluttershy insisted.
"Ah should've known how you were gonna respond: not like we ain't known each other long enough t' have the idea. Ah shouldn't -- have t' -- Ah shouldn't be in charge. Jus' proved that, now and forever."
"...and what else shouldn't you have to be in charge of, Applejack? Who else?"
"Ah don't know what y'mean --"
"...Apple Bloom?"
The Element of Honesty. There were so many times when it felt like a joke. Because she so easily could tell the truth to just about everypony...
...everypony except herself.
That took effort. Too much of it.
But the words came.
"She wouldn't be like this if mah Mommy an' Daddy were alive. If'fin they hadn't gone on the trip, if'fin they hadn't --"
"-- because when ponies leave," and the words came from Rainbow , "they die?"
No answer came. To find the strength for one would have meant crossing the final border and giving her life.
"...you shouldn't have to," Fluttershy softly said. "...you shouldn't have to take over as a parent before you ever got out of school. And Rarity shouldn't have had to miss her last three trade shows and best chances to become recognized because of missions. Twilight shouldn't have to struggle every single day, trying to understand things everypony else learned when they were fillies, always being so scared of what might happen if she got something wrong. Pinkie should have a family of her blood which she could see..."
The ghost of a gasp behind her, and then the faintest whisper of a sob.
"...Rainbow should be able to train and travel and fly wherever she wanted without having to worry about us and not being there when she's needed, Spike shouldn't have so many ponies afraid of him all the time, and I..." The soft voice almost broke. "...shouldn't have to do a lot of things, Applejack, things I've done almost every moon since I came to ground . We should all be -- normal ponies, with normal lives, without the responsibility . But we aren't. Because... we're the ones who do things, who can do things. And we do them... so everypony else can have normal lives. We have to do that today. And since the geese won't listen to me, I think we need... a practical solution. So..." She trailed off, took several slow breaths.
"Please lead us, Applejack?" Pinkie smiled. "Pretty please?"
"I promise," Rarity said, "to rein you in if you appear to be getting out of control." Openly teasing, "In fact, I would be lying if I said I did not look forward to it, the same way you relish every chance to tell me that my desire for social advancement has gone off the rails. And if I cannot manage the task, it would seem Spike is more than up to the challenge."
"I'm... I'm sorry I yelled, Applejack," came from a somewhat lower level.
"Don't be," Applejack said. "Ah had it comin'. Yer right: Ah didn't think. Not 'bout the magic part..."
"You know, even without the actual spells, he's really not such a bad Twilight?" Rainbow decided.
"Perhaps," Rarity said. "But he is a much better Spike. So, Applejack? Back to Ponyville, before the departed geese find their courage, the fainted ones revive, or a new portion of the flock flies in to investigate the smells? Or is there anything else our leader wishes us to do first? Oh, and incidentally, would you have any suggestions on whom I am to blame for Sweetie Belle? For my own parents are still present, even with my mother's regretful hooves-off approach to raising her second child, and any pinning down of a source which you might provide...?"
"Y' -- y'all forgive me?"
With a verbal twinkle, "Perhaps even for Apple Bloom. Who is, by and large, her own fault, at least once one factors out the other two , my own sister included. You do your best to make her hear, but as with the geese, nopony can make her listen . Although the thought of driving all three from Ponyville has crossed my mind once... very well, more than once..."
"We keep forgiving Twilight!" Rainbow, with a laugh. "I'm not sure why . Geez, just the stupid Smarty Pants Incident would have gotten any normal ponies to fly for their lives!"
She finally turned, and found herself facing Pinkie. She was glad for that, because the next words, while meant for all, should be said while looking at the pony who'd heard them first.
"Y'remember how Ah've said y'all are mah family?"
Pinkie, blue eyes moist, slowly nodded.
"Don't let me forget it again, okay? An' that's an order ."
And normally, there would have been a ponypile next to the shed, a collective expression of the stable bond pressing against each other under Sun. But the area was filthy, as were most of those occupying it, and so they did not gather into the closest thing they had to a group hug.
At least, not before plotting out some extremely cautious approach angles.
(Except for Rainbow, who managed to get everypony even dirtier because she hadn't bothered to think about it.)
The Pregastric Proventriculus Peril
They talked a little, as they made their way back with the readied contents of sacks and saddlebags. (Surprisingly, the taste-test-free cooking process had yielded no nausea, while going into the greenhouse itself had required only an extended bout of breath-holding until Rainbow began channeling fresh air in from the outside -- and in the end, nopony had wanted to think about what Mr. Flankington intended to do with the plant which had been labeled as corpse flower . And everypony had eaten, anything they could identify as safe , and all had agreed to forward any resulting bill to the mayor.) Some of it was about what had happened near the fringe, although such suffered frequent interruptions: every so often, a goose would appear and lunge at one of them, trying for the freshly-made grass and Rainbow, who had far and away the fastest reflexes, would instantly have to go on feed duty. It tended to break up the flow of discussion and after a while, they all found themselves mentally editing out the breaks in order to create something a little more coherent, especially as the lunges were starting to pick up in both intensity and frequency. They were finally approaching the eastern bridge into Ponyville proper.
Rainbow watched her latest meal recipient fall over. She kept looking at it for a few seconds before flying on.
"Did I ever tell you guys about Gilda's family?"
They all shook their heads.
"They're ranchers. I spent two summers visiting her in Protocera, and we went all over the ranch. Her parents even let me try out some of the most basic ranch stuff -- as long as they were watching. And I mean watching close . They had to be right there , and if they found out we'd tried anything without them... well, there was some stuff they didn't find out about, but..."
"Ranchers?" It got Applejack's attention. "They raise food, y'mean? Seriously? That's the kind of family Gilda comes from?"
"Yeah! She wasn't sure she wanted to do it for her whole life, though. I mean, she thinks it's fun, and there's sure enough challenge to it, but she was really looking for something a little -- lower-risk."
"Um..." Pinkie, trotting below Rainbow's resumed flight path, suddenly looked a little uncertain regarding previous events. "...didn't you say she was thinking about being a stunt flyer? Like you?"
"Yeah. Like I said. Lower-risk."
They all thought about it.
"Rainbow," Rarity cautiously said, "I believe we may require a little more in the way of detail?"
"Well, you know griffons eat meat. Mostly. And they honor the Treaty Of Menagerie, plus they like stuff that puts up a fight . So they don't eat anything that can think, and they believe that --" frowning, concentrating with the effort to remember exact words " -- 'the fiercer the struggle, the more worthy the prey?' Anyway, it means they won't eat most normal animals. Pretty much everything at the cottage wouldn't even get a glance ."
"So what do they use for meat?" Applejack lightly treaded. "'cause y'jus' closed out most of the possibilities, an' that really jus' leaves --" her skin began to pale beneath the filthy coat. "-- aw, no , y'don't mean..."
Rainbow nodded. With perfect calm, "Monsters."
And now they were all staring at her.
"The ones who don't think," the weather coordinator continued. "The ones you can sort of control -- most of the time. They breed them. It takes a lot of land, and you have to raise some other monsters to feed the bigger ones, and -- anyway, it's the sort of job where you're either really good at it or you don't have to worry about lasting long enough to get good, you know? But that's what they do. They raise monsters. For meat."
"And you spent summers there?" Spike just barely got out.
"Yeah. Vacations. Fun ones."
"An' why," Applejack cautiously continued, "are y'thinkin' 'bout this right now?"
"The geese."
"Once again: a touch more detail, please..."
"Rarity, you heard the name. Ultionum Prandium ."
"...Rainbow, I don't understand..."
"Think about it, Fluttershy! They breed monsters . For meat. They've been doing that forever ! They work with things which could kill them every day, just so they can have a good meal. And they'll eat some normal animals, if it's something that'll fight . If I wanted to make Gilda do anything, I'd tell her I was gonna go into town and get some shark . Stunts, races, wagers, the dumbest bets... if there was shark waiting at the other end for the winner, she usually went for it. Which kind of made me winning... well, she laughed a lot, and then I'd give her the stuff --"
"Styrofoam," Pinkie autocorrected before saying "Oh, other stuff! Sorry. You were saying?"
Rainbow briefly glared down at her. "Anyway, the geese can fight, really fight! We've all been through that. And just the fact that they've got lunch in their name means someone was eating them. So I was thinking... they're an animal the griffons would normally respect enough to keep around, right? Just for the meals? The ones who got caught outside the Empire... you'd think they would have wound up on ranches, being bred. That sounds right, doesn't it?"
They all nodded.
Thoughtfully, "And the ones outside still went extinct in two years."
Again.
"Suspiciously extinct."
Long thoughts slowly made their way across the streamlined body.
"Ultionum Prandium ... Hey, there's the bridge ! Come on, everypony, home stretch! Let's go feed some geese! A little grass and all our problems are solved ! Let's go finish this! A little greenery scatter -- okay, I saw it was sort of sand-colored when it came out -- and we're done ! Except for having to move the sick ones, maybe to a zoo or something, but the police can help with that . One more push, everypony! Just pick up the pace a little and we'll -- oh..."
"Spike?"
Her voice sounded oddly distant to her own ears, as if she was speaking to herself from several gallops away. But somehow, Spike still heard her.
"Applejack?"
"Take a note for me? Not a letter. A note. Somethin' Ah can look at later, if'fin Ah ever need to. Okay?"
"Sure..."
"Thank y'kindly. Now, write this down exactly as Ah'm sayin' it. 'If'fin Ah ever go up against another creature ' --"
"If I ever go up against another creature..."
"'-- an' Fluttershy tells me that thing's known for havin' the world's, an' Ah quote, 'single least efficient digestive system' --"
" -- and Fluttershy -- Applejack, you didn't know , nopony could have known --"
"'-- Ah will give some really serious thought 'bout what Ah'm gonna feed it."
They stood on the bridge and stared out over Ponyville.
It was autumn. Not too cold yet, as such things went. And certainly on many winter days, the product which Pinkie called styrofoam would steam in chill air after emergence, and continue to do so until it had cooled somewhat. But not in fall, of course. Not for normal styrofoam.
However, when you took a "food" product (and Applejack could feel herself adding the quotes) which was known to wreak havoc on pony biology and put it through, here came the quotes again, the world's "single least effective digestive system..."
The results were steaming.
Also sizzling.
Oozing might have gotten into it somewhere.
The fumes seemed vaguely acidic. They certainly seemed to be having that effect on any nearby paint. Some of the weaker types of wood. And maybe that particular bit of street was naturally potholed, or some sandstone could have slipped in somewhere...
"Oh, Applejack ," Rarity sighed. "Spike is right: you had no way of knowing this would happen..."
She wasn't entirely listening. In that same gallops-distant voice, "Pinkie?"
"Yes?"
"Y'remember The Day Of The Baked Bads?"
"Um... yes..."
"Ah jus' realized that Ah'm personally responsible for the two greatest gastronomic disasters in the history of Ponyville."
"Oh, Applejack..."
"An' Ah'm sayin that as a pony who's livin' in the same settled zone as Mr. Flankington."
"Applejack. "
"It's really an impressive accomplishment, when y'go an' think 'bout it."
There were stomach-sick geese, here and there. But there were also perfectly healthy ones, and far too many of them. A few might have left in fear, or perhaps just temporarily relocated to other parts of the settled zone. But it wasn't enough .
"Applejack." It was rare to hear Pinkie that insistent . "Listen to me, please . Look at the geese!"
"Ah am lookin'. How long do y'think we'll be looking for until the last of the paint melts? Maybe we should call in Fallout an' the rest of the biohazard team now? An' anypony have any idea how Ryder's fixed for movin' supplies? Actually, y'know that little shrine he keeps t' mah sister an' the other two , the one he thinks nopony knows 'bout, 'cause so many ponies who move in meet the Crusade an' move right back out? Ah think he's gonna need some extra space. An' another picture. Ah think Ah've got one Ah can let him have. For free, 'specially since it's gonna be his goin'-out-of-business sales rush, 'cause after everypony moves away this time, won't be nopony 'round for sellin' t' ever again..."
"APPLEJACK! DUCK! "
"Ah only wish it was ducks --"
And the geese were on top of them.
It was a short fight, as such things went. There were several clear targets, and since the group themselves weren't directly among them, they found themselves having some unexpected difficulty in mounting an effective defense. Their own bodies: those they were used to shielding. Carried items? Not so much.
And then the triumphant geese flew away with the sacks and saddlebags full of freshly-prepared Saddle Arabian Grass Specials, their honking sounding like something very close to laughter, as the rents which had been put in the fabric during the fight dropped styrofoam fuel all over Ponyville.
Hundreds of geese watched that fall. Lunged for the results. Eating commenced.
"An'," Applejack peacefully said, "Rarity, wherever we wind up next, assumin' anywhere will have us, yer gonna want t' design some stronger saddlebags. 'cause I jus' proved there's a market."
"Applejack," Rarity said with what seemed like an odd urgency, "we all need you to focus . This is a setback, yes, but we are hardly out of resources both external and internal. There are still things we can try --"
"-- hey, everypony, look !"
They looked up at Rainbow, noted the direction her foreleg was pointing it, looked further up.
"It's a Canterlot air carriage!" Rarity gasped.
"It looks just like the one Twilight got here in!" Pinkie nearly cheered. "Exactly like it! That means it's an Emergency Express ride!"
"...is somepony coming to help ?" Fluttershy softly asked. "But how would they -- oh! Spike!"
Who gently touched Applejack's right shoulder. "That letter you had me send to the Archives -- do you think...?"
She was watching the carriage approach. "Ain't the Princess," she said from about half a gallop closer to her own body. "Or Luna: Ah'd know those bodies anywhere. Wrong color for Twi. Jaw kinda looks like a stallion from here. Rainbow, y'got the best eyes: what can y'make out?"
"Male, yeah. Sort of -- greenish-grey. Older stallion: a lot of the grey's around his muzzle. And he's a unicorn. He could be an Archivist, I guess: he looks nerdy enough -- wow, they just dodged the geese there! And -- no, they're fine, those are some first-class fliers at the front of that thing, looks like they're going to make it down..."
The carriage landed. The occupant carefully stepped down, and the carriage immediately took over again, heading back to Canterlot at a speed three levels beyond indecent haste.
The unicorn looked around. It was easy for the group to watch him: he was the only pony in sight anywhere. Every last Ponyville resident seemed to have retreated to their homes, or was barricaded up within their workplace, plus there might have been a few kicking their bits in Ryder's specific direction. For street traffic, it was down to just him -- and the geese.
He trotted forward a little. This crossed multiple borders, and two geese hissed at him.
"Magnificent ," he breathed. They hissed again. He didn't seem to notice.
A wavering grey field flipped open the lid of his left saddlebag, and a vial was eventually levitated out. The stopper was removed, and another bubble of field surrounded a sample of stuff , deposited it, where it completely coated the interior, exterior, and most of the reapplied stopper.
"Perfectly healthy!" he beamed -- then saw one of the steaming pieces. "...what? What happened to this poor beautiful, magnificent ...?"
There were times when everypony took actions while knowing they were going to regret them: Applejack was no different. Every time she opened a letter from Cheerilee, whenever she headed for her own front door after hearing the familiar knock which said the police were having the Juvenile department drop a recently-Crusaded Apple Bloom off again. This was no different, and she felt the distance between pony and voice starting to increase as she casually made her way down the arch of the bridge, kicking out at geese here and there with no conscious effort at all.
At least one of those impacts briefly got the unicorn's attention. "What ? What are you doing ? You're hurting them! How could anypony go and hurt ...!"
"Ain't," Applejack pleasantly said. "Takes a lot more than that t' do it. Ah'm just makin' sure Ah can talk t' you, face t' face." And before his opening mouth could release the fast-approaching protest, "We ain't met before, but Ah'm bettin' y'know me. Ah'm Applejack. Ah believe y'got mah letter?"
Which got the attention from his small black eyes fully focused on her. (This prevented him from noticing the goose who was launching an attack from the right, and he didn't notice Pinkie stopping it either.) "Oh! Yes, I did ! How did you send that, by the way? I've never seen anything like it: a burst of green flame, and then the scroll just dropped right onto my desk...!"
"Trade secret," emerged with an oddly peaceful air to it. "So y'know me a little. An' who do Ah have the pleasure of speakin' to?"
"I am Cartier Anserini," the stallion proudly said. "I am Canterlot's foremost avian paleobiologist."
"Ah'm sorry, but Ah don't know the word --"
"-- I study extinct species," he replied. "Or ones which should be extinct!" His left foreleg gestured out, taking in the stuff-littered, steamed, burning, goose-laden Tartarus surrounding them while completely managing to miss Rainbow and Rarity, who were currently the only things keeping him on his hooves within it. "When I wrote the taxonomy publishers and convinced them to send out an early new edition covering what we once knew about the species of the Empire... I have to say, Ms. Applejack, I never thought I'd be looking at these beautiful creatures." His eyes were becoming moist. "I suspected there was a chance some had survived, but -- I couldn't bring myself to hope . And, well... a trip to the Empire is still somewhat on the expensive side, at least for an Archivist in my department. And here they are, having come to me ..."
She managed a nod while very carefully not looking too closely over the stallion's shoulder, where Spike had just come out on top of an impromptu tail-talon-claw contest. "Well, Ah'm glad yer here. Ah asked for the expert on 'em, and clearly you're it, right? Since nopony sent a book an' you came instead?"
He puffed out his narrow rib cage. "As much as anypony can be without ever having had the honor of direct observation -- until today, of course."
"So," Applejack carefully said, "as the expert ... how would y'say we go 'bout gettin' rid of 'em?"
The Archivist's little black eyes locked onto her.
"Get -- rid of them?"
"Yeah. 'cause if'fin y'wanna do somethin' like, Ah dunno, really look 'round for a minute --"
"-- why would anypony want to get rid of them?"
"Again, kinda have t' ask if y'wanna try the whole lookin' 'round thing. Or maybe just lookin' down . Ah know y'already did down ."
It got her an enthusiastic nod. "YES! Did you see it?"
Applejack could have taken a long, pointed glance back over the foulness which encrusted most of her body and hat . She did not. "Yeah."
"The -- well, the academic term is --"
"Styrofoam!" Pinkie shouted at the exact instant before she double-hind-kicked a goose halfway across the bridge.
The Archivist didn't even turn. "...no, that's not it... but actually, given the age of the actual word and how easy it is to confuse with the term for manticore droppings, which are of course a completely separate category... Anyway, we've only had fossils to study up until now! Of the styrofoam , I mean. Well --not quite fossils, actually."
"Really?"
"Some of them are still semi-solid."
"Y'don't say."
"We're still not entirely sure of how long it takes the styrofoam to completely break down. Well, 'we' as in 'I.' I've been trying to come up with a term for that process, at least once which hasn't been used before. I thought something along the lines of half-life --"
"-- uh-huh . Mr. Anserini, y'can study the geese an' the stuff -- sorry, Pinkie -- styrofoam all y'like: Ah don't mind. Ah'm jus' askin' you t' do it later . They're all over Ponyville, they've claimed it as their territory --"
"-- really? So the stories about their being the most territorial species to ever try and claim the entire world as their own are true ? Fascinating!"
"-- an' they're leavin' feathers an' styrofoam everywhere, stealin' food, attackin' ponies, gettin' everything dirty -- so we kinda need 'em t' leave . That's why Ah wrote. So somepony who knows 'em could help make that happen. And wherever they go to, y'can study 'em there. So is it a noise, or another critter, maybe a spell somepony wrote down a long time ago --"
The unicorn's little dark stare felt extremely familiar.
"But this is their natural habitat."
"...no, it's not," came from Fluttershy, who had been slowly approaching. "...not after this much time..."
And somehow, the caretaker became the first other pony he was willing to see . "Oh, really . And what would you know about animals , young lady?"
"...just that --"
"I am an academic . I have a degree ."
"...I didn't go to college, but I've read your update, and I --"
"So you can read . Your parents are very proud, I'm sure."
Fluttershy took three slow hoofsteps back, displacing a mere six geese along the way.
"I have no intention of removing them," the stallion told the air, with Applejack as, at best, incidental audience. "More than a thousand years extinct, and now we're lucky enough to have them again? I am of a mind to speak with Princess Celestia personally . Declare this area a protected zone. Let them have the run of it, just as they did so long ago. For any attempt to change their habits might cost us their presence a second time, and that is not a risk I would ever take."
"But... what 'bout the ponies who live here?"
"What about them? They can move. I believe I saw a supply store during the flight in, and several rather conscientious ponies discussing the division of its contents. Your local environmentalists, obviously: those with their priorities in order."
Her voice was currently approaching the western coast and planning a nice long vacation before scouting for a new residence. "It's our settled zone."
And in the declarative tones of a pony who believed he was ending the argument, "There can always be more settled zones. There will certainly always be more ponies. But unless we are very careful, we may not get any more geese . Do you understand me now?"
"Well, Ah'd like t' think that even after the things Ah've been through today, Ah'm still a little bit sane, so t' answer your question --"
"I will speak to Princess Celestia about this. I am certain she will respect my position on the matter."
"You know the Princess?"
"Do you ?
"Well --"
"-- but until then, I have to study !" His gaze swept over the area, once again missing every other pony occupying it -- which, when it came to Rarity, really took some work, and Applejack briefly admired his ability to ignore a unicorn who had just figured out how to create a living three-way knot . "I know these geese, better than anypony does. Yes, I might have never seen them until today, never had that honor . But study is enough. Acquaintance through books teaches all anypony might need to know. And so I will move among them, see their ways for the first time, and then I will have the stories necessary to truly convince the thrones of where their real priorities must be. My thanks for the alert, Ms. Applejack. I will of course credit you as the pony of first sighting when I publish my paper. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
He happily trotted off, completely failing to notice the eight geese who snapped at him as he went by. Applejack watched him go.
Fluttershy slowly approached. "...aren't we going to..."
"Naw."
"...but somepony should really..."
"Naw."
"...we can't just leave him."
"Can't save somepony who don't wanna be saved, neither." The west coast? The ocean might be better. There were islands out there, right? "Ain't no savin' a fool from themselves. No point in even --"
The explosion of honking hit all their ears at the same moment, a sound loud enough to pause the current battles-in-progress and make even the geese stop to look. And what they all saw was this:
Initially, there was one goose, flying at low altitude, straining against the lasso which had inexpertly caught its feet, a loop which was threatening to slip off at any moment. Right behind that came a trio of fillies, one with the rope desperately clutched between her teeth, the other two being dragged by the loops which had somehow managed to catch their legs in a more certain and inextricable lock than any actual casting of a rope made by that lead pony had ever managed. And behind them was no less than four hundred geese, honking and hissing and in full pursuit with something close to murder in the myriad black eyes, something none of the fillies could be bothered to notice or understand.
The orange one, tumbling along at the back, oblivious to any and all witnesses, took a deep, rallying breath.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders Goose Removal Services! Yay !"
The rushing flock momentarily blocked off Applejack's view. And then there was a cloud of feathers and fury heading for the center of town.
She wasn't aware of having broken into a gallop, found herself chasing purely on that instinct which was so precious to Rainbow, and certainly had no idea how Rarity was managing to keep up with her. She didn't even understand where she was finding the breath for words in the middle of the pursuit. And yet, words there were, and every last one originated from Ponyville.
"Rarity?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Y'know, Ah still ain't sure 'bout this whole leader thing."
"I know."
"Ah'm screwin' up. Made things worse. Could maybe make things worse than that before this ends, if'fin it even does."
"In the worst-case scenario, perhaps..."
"But there's still somethin' Ah know Ah can do. Maybe jus' you an' me who can do it now, in all of Equestria."
Rarity grimly nodded, and with their friends close behind, the ponies raced on, sharing (but for internal accents) the exact same thought as they rushed off to try and save a trio of fools from themselves.
'cause you an' me might jus' be the only ponies left in the whole world who can catch up t' that mess an' not try t' kill our sisters.
"Ah ain't never done nothin' --"
"Two weeks, Apple Bloom. Wanna try an' make it three ?"
Her little sister's hind legs collapsed, and she sat down hard on the hastily-redefended filthy rotunda floor, openly fuming about having been denied the chance at a mark which surely would have manifested if the stupid adults had just left them alone for another five minutes.
"Well? Holdin' on two weeks, Apple Bloom, two weeks goin' once, two weeks goin' twice , gonna be three in a second if y'don't start talkin' an' every word out of your mouth ain't the truth , two weeks one last time, three weeks of bein' grounded sold t' the filly with the mane bow --"
"Ah'll talk."
It was sulky. It was at least one-quarter frustrated growl. But it was also desperate and as sincere as her sibling thought she could get away with faking, and so Applejack settled in for the interrogation.
(It wasn't the only one going on, of course. Rarity had clasped Sweetie Belle's tail between her teeth and hauled the protesting filly to the ramp: words were being used on that incline, and all would have been stinging to anypony who could have been bothered to remember them for more than a minute -- which naturally left the Crusaders out. Meanwhile, for lack of other options, Rainbow had cornered Scootaloo, although 'interrogation' was probably the wrong word for any session which included "So, that one bounce off the road you took where you managed to buzz your wings enough to straighten out your landing -- do you think you can remember exactly what you did?")
"Did y'reach school at'tall? An' before y'answer, remember that Ah can check with Cheerilee."
"Naw. There were lotsa geese. Didn't want t' try an' get past 'em all."
"But y'did manage t' get past enough t' go an' fetch the other two ."
"...so?"
"Fifteen days."
Apple Bloom glared at her.
"Sixteen."
"...fine ! It was a new kind of bird! An' Ah saw how much trouble everypony was havin' with 'em, so Ah thought a new kind of bird had t' mean a new kind of mark , right? Only makes sense! So Ah went an' got Sweetie Belle an' Scootaloo, we ran 'round for a while tryin' t' figure out where t' start, an' then we -- hid a little when y'all went by, Ah heard Fluttershy sayin' they were geese, so they weren't new, but there was probably still a mark in it, an' we thought we'd clear 'em out! Before y'all did." Defiant to the last, "An' we would've done it too, if it wasn't for some meddlin' sisters !"
"Seventeen."
"Y'ain't bein' fair !"
"Y'skipped school. Ran off t' be in trouble." And, knowing the last words would be forgotten within seconds of passing through heedless ears, "Could've gotten yourself killed, again ."
"Nothin' happened !"
Applejack silently reflected on the series of distractions, desperation moves, and outright defiance of probability which had been required to make 'nothin'' finish happening. "Did y'damage anythin'?"
"Nothin'! The geese did it all!"
And Applejack would probably never be able to prove otherwise. "Hurt anypony?"
"Mah mouth kinda aches, an'..."
She listened to the recital for a while and when it started to enter repeats, broke in with "Hurt anypony else ?"
"Never even saw nopony after Mr. Flankington stopped flyin' by."
"An' he never saw you?"
"We hid." Half-muttered, "Stupid adults jus' try an' stop important stuff."
"So this mark y'were goin' after -- it was gonna be for..."
"Goose removal."
Which, just like every other part of the idiotic Crusade, had resulted in a total lack of manifests and in this case, if not direct infliction of disaster, probably at least a touch of reinforcement --
-- it hit her.
"Goose removal ?"
"Yeah..."
"Y'ain't given any thought t' -- trying t' make 'em stick around?"
"Why would Ah wanna do that ?"
Applejack's mouth began to open --
-- NAW! Ah can't! Ah can't go an' weaponize the stupid Crusade!
But still... they were all so good at failure... if she found some way to safely send them out there with a tripled intent of retaining the geese, then the most natural way to get that wrong just had to be chasing them all out of the settled zone...
...right?
Naw. Can't chance it. Not gonna risk her, not gonna risk the other two. An' there's every chance they'd find a way t' fail through succeedin'. Ah don't know how, but if Ah'd trust 'em for anythin', it's t' figure that one out.
Besides, maybe Ah don't ever want nopony t' accuse me of mark-blockin', but Ah'd really rather not find out if that was gonna be it.
"Y'have any luck? Make any of 'em leave?"
"Naw. But... five more minutes, an'..." And the glare was back. "Five sister-free minutes..."
"Nineteen."
"Y'skipped eighteen!"
"An' Ah think Ah might mean moons ."
The Crusaders had been locked in a records storage area. Applejack had asked Rarity to tell them it was for their own safety, which was both true and saved Applejack from having to add the part regarding how it was just as much about protecting everypony else .
"Well," Rarity said with a faint smile as she rejoined the others in the rotunda, "neither of us killed them. Again. And with that, I would like to label the day as possessing a single rousing success. Does anypony have any fresh ideas on how to achieve a second?"
They were camped out among the abandoned books: Fluttershy was just nosing the last one closed, having used some of the waiting time for a maybe-I-missed-something-the-last-three-times-really check. "...no, nothing yet..."
"Nothing new ," Rainbow challenged. "How about old ? Because I had that one idea which nopony would let me try..."
Applejack looked over (and slightly up) to her, took a deep breath, and kicked the words through the fear. "Do it."
Rainbow blinked. "...seriously?"
"Yeah. Jus' be careful 'bout it. When y'get out there, see exactly how high the flyin' ones go, then go higher. Scout the ground from there. Everywhere they are, everywhere they ain't . If'fin they come after you, y'speed up: too many or they start closin' in from multiple directions, y'scramble back here. Ah trust you t' stay ahead of jus' about anythin' except trouble, Rainbow, an' Ah'm askin' you t' put in a little extra try on that last part. Ah can't go with, can't keep up -- so Ah'm gonna trust that you'll listen t' me. Ah want y'back in one piece."
It got her a grin. "You trust me?"
"More than Ah trust Apple Bloom. No stupid risks, all right?"
"Well, if I get to decide just which ones are stupid ..."
Softly, "Rainbow -- please?"
They looked at each other for several heartbeats.
"Twilight would have said that too, you know."
"Yeah. An' Ah still ain't Twi. But... Ah think Ah'm startin' t' understand some of what she goes through. It's kind of like having four extra sisters an' one brother who won't listen t' me neither. Get out there. Come back. That's --" she felt her lips quirking into the smile "-- an order ."
A hovering Rainbow tossed off an exaggerated false salute, then sped for the door. And Applejack waited on the floor, practicing the hardest part of a leader's job: doing her best not to let the worry show.
"So that really is it," the weather coordinator heavily said, pushing the map closer to Applejack. "There's just one place they're not in. I couldn't find a single goose there. The dam, every last farm, there's a bunch camped out at the construction sites -- the cottage is mostly okay, Fluttershy: your crew's fighting most of them off, that sort of looked like it had been going on for a while -- but one spot in all of Ponyville is completely clear, Applejack. And I got as close as I could trying to make sure of that, until I got chased off -- and I would have stayed longer and double-checked everything, but somepony gave me an order . Which means that if you really want to try this crazy stunt..."
Applejack took a long look at the indicated spot.
"The one place," she reviewed, "which has critters jus' as territorial . Ones which mostly keep t' themselves if they ain't disturbed... but won't move. Won't be moved. Swarm anypony who tries, 'cause they've decided those trees are theirs ."
"No kidding."
"By the by -- did y'happen t' see that academic fellow?"
"No." The tone suggested she might not have looked all that hard.
"Do you think the geese are afraid of them?" Rarity cautiously asked. "I recognize that these are animals which can cause more than a little bother on their own, but the geese outmass them by a significant amount. I am having difficulty understanding how the birds would be at risk in a fight."
"...think about the parasprites, Rarity," Fluttershy said. "Or bees -- that's closer. It's not about how big they are: it's about being in the middle of a swarm . When you're big and they're small... it's that many more places they can hit you. There's too many of them to all fight off at once: something will get through. They could lose..."
"So instead of the plan, why don't we just ask them to go out there for us!" Pinkie decided. "We can offer them all their favorite things, or maybe some new homes... okay, they don't want to be moved, but we could build homes in their homes!"
"...I can't." The left eye vanished behind manefall again. "Applejack asked me to try once. And... it's the same problem I have with timber wolves, Pinkie... they're not really animals. They're part plant , and that means I can't understand them. I know something about how they act, but we can't talk ..."
"Even if we can make it work, we're talking about setting one problem on another," Spike reminded them. "Rainbow, I think this would be a really good time to start thinking about consequences ."
"Shouldn't be any, not long-term," Applejack said. "They'll do what they do every time Ah managed to scare a few out for even a second. Wait until it all stops -- then head straight back for what they keep thinkin' is home . Biggest problem might be keepin' 'em out long enough."
"Applejack -- are you sure ?" Spike asked.
"No. Ah ain't. But unless y'want t' try an' fetch Twi, call Canterlot, or go all-out Princess on this, somethin' we ain't never done an' Ah don't wanna start for some dumb birds -- this is what Ah've got. Y'all with me?"
She would have timed the duration of the thoughtful silence, but it didn't last long enough to truly record.
"...yes. I just hope we can make it work," Fluttershy whispered.
Pinkie smiled. "If there's one thing I know how to do, or at least that's what Lyra keeps saying..."
"I'll corral," Spike said. "Rainbow and I as one team. Fluttershy takes the other flank."
"I can nudge a few," Rarity considered. "Their mass is certainly low enough. Snag a number from the ground, force them to stay with the main group... yes, I'll corral as well. Or herd . This should be rather interesting..."
"And you know why I like this idea?" Rainbow rhetorically asked as she grinned. "Because it is a crazy stunt. Applejack, I didn't know you had it in you..."
Neither did Ah. But there were times when crazy was all that was left...
"Then we're doin' it, everypony," Applejack led, and stood up. "We're goin' for the West Orchard."
The Never-Retreating Fury Horde
It really was hard, listening to Twilight for any real length of time when the talk about magic got too intense. But some things had stuck in Applejack's memory, and one of them concerned a legendary spell which had been lost, something only one unicorn in history had ever figured out how to do and never managed to teach anypony else. A trick which temporarily slowed the passage of time for all but the caster, allowing a subjectively-speeded unicorn to temporarily rush through a nearly-frozen world. Twilight had mourned the loss of that spell, as she had all the others, and Applejack had finally asked her just how it had been found in the first place, and whether that same approach could ever get it back.
Twilight had shaken her head, said it had been part of the pony's mark , and there was only so much anypony could do when it came to recreating anything which was so deeply intertwined with mark magic. And then she'd smiled a little in a weary sort of way and finished with "I thought maybe... I could just try starting to work from what happens when we're all on a mission and things start going bad..."
It hadn't made any sense at the time. But Applejack was starting to understand it now, the way time could stretch when you were in charge, every disaster taking place in slow motion, infinite seconds to think about how things were your fault and not a single moment left for doing anything to fix them. Forever was the duration between giving an order and finding out it had been the wrong one.
Or in this case, between having your brother see you and making him listen .
"AJ," and the term of both endearment and belittlement came with just the smallest stomp of his left forehoof, "I ain't gonna let you do it. No way. That's too risky . You're already battered, I don't think you know just how beat up and dirty you are , you're not going to feel it until later, and I'm not letting it get any worse ."
"An' who said y'were gettin' a choice?"
He took a deep breath. Big Mac didn't loom, not really: he had a certain presence about him, but he was no good at intimidation and knew it. Still, every so often, she got a reminder of just how big her brother truly was, and it felt as if he was trying to make this one deliberate. "It ain't just your farm, Applejack. You know what could happen out there. Think of something else."
"Mac?"
"What?"
"Y'can shut up now. In fact, Ah'm pretty sure you're gonna ."
There was no danger in his voice. There never was. He preferred statements of plain fact. "I'm your brother . Your big brother . So when it comes to something you're going to try on the Acres, I get a vote. The vote."
"So in another three years, file t' run for Mayor an' win -- so Ah can ignore you then , too!"
He stared at her.
"You ain't too old to yell at."
"Already learned that today an' had the yellin' t' boot. Ah've been learnin' a lot of things today, Mac. Ah'm not sure it's possible t' be a leader an' not learn, least not if y'wanna be a good one. Learned a few things about mahself, some of which Ah've gotta think 'bout later, and here's the only one Ah wanna tell you right now: y'know one reason why Ah haven't jus' tried t' order Apple Bloom away from the other two ? 'cause some part of me, some deep part, is scared that everythin' could be that much worse if she's bein' so stupid on her own . But Ah ain't the only one who needs lessons, Mac. Sometimes everypony in the whole world does, maybe even the Princesses. Right now, it's yer turn. An' y'can write it down if'fin y'want, sew it into needlepoint an' hang it in your bedroom for all Ah care. But it's a lesson you're way overdue for, an' here it is."
Her breath was deeper than his.
"You ain't a Bearer. "
The green eyes, so like her own, the only thing they'd both received from their Mommy, slowly closed.
"I... I know, AJ. I know ..."
"An'..." The tones were gentle now. "...Ah know y'worry 'bout what could happen. Maybe even jus' how much y'worry, and it ain't like Apple Bloom helps there. But this is mah life, even if we sometimes don't want it t' be. Right now, it's a mission, even if it's one from the mayor. Y'can give me advice, an' if it's good, Ah might even listen. But y'can't give me orders , an' y'can't say you're gonna ignore me jus' 'cause Ah'm your sister, no matter how much everythin' that goes into makin' you mah brother wants to. Right now, Ah'm in charge. Ah say we've gotta go into the West Orchard, an' Ah need you t' come with. So guess what? You're comin' with."
These breaths were slow ones, and he took several of them before his eyes opened again.
"Granny? Want her in on it? She's upstairs --"
"-- can't keep up. Need ponies who can move ."
With faint hope, "Got anypony else besides your crew?"
"Jus' one," and that came out with a sigh. "Not like Ah didn't try -- but ain't never a police officer 'round when y'need one: they must be scattered all over Ponyville tryin' t' keep order, so Ah couldn't get any for this. As for knockin' on doors -- most ponies are too scared t' come out, or busy defendin' their own places, can't be pulled away. It's me, the herd, you now, and Mr. Flankington 'cause we ran into him before leavin' town an' he said he wanted t' see the end of this, maybe mostly 'cause he's worried about bein' sued over what happened from Styrofoam Type Two, plus he thinks he's got somethin' that might help. For real this time. But Ah can't even use Winona ... she may be trained, but they ain't trained t' respond , an' they'll be too high up anyways. Gotta keep her out of this. But you... you can think , Mac. Think where Winona an' the geese an' mah best hope can't . You'll adjust on the gallop. Plus you're one more body t' throw into this, an' it ain't a small one. So... you're comin' with."
And forever became the time which passed before he nodded.
"All right, AJ. Anything I need to bring?"
"Get yer lasso."
He started to move out of the kitchen.
"An' Mac? Untie it. "
Her brother looked back at her, and the red-furred face slowly broke into a grin.
"What do you think they taste like?"
"Rainbow, hush ... We're waitin' on Pinkie right now, so we need quiet ."
"I mean, that half-asleep one kind of looks like a strawberry. I'm not talking about biting one. Just that maybe, if somepony managed to sneak up on it and give a quick lick..."
"Rainbow, dear? Please recall that I will be doing some of the herding from below, and if you truly desire it, I am sure I will have very little trouble with enveloping one of the red specimens within my field before slinging the bubble directly into your mouth ."
Muttering, "I was just wondering ..."
From behind Applejack, a lightly teasing, "So this is what Bearers do all day? Hide behind bushes and wait?"
"No, Mac. It ain't."
"So what do you all do?"
"Try t' think of reasons not t' kill our siblings. An' two of those are Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, so it's a full-time job. Spike, keep that crunchin' down !"
"I've got to eat if this is going to work."
"Can't y'jus' suck on it?"
"Not sapphires! Garnets, yeah. But I can't eat any garnets right now. They make me sleepy. But if we had a black diamond ..."
"...just keep yer mouth closed, okay? I think Ah hear..."
And there it was.
Pinkie marched into the West Orchard, her smiling face just barely visible as she looked up at the occupants of the trees.
In full-throated shout , "Hi , everyone!"
The occupants woke up. All of them. Furious little eyes opened. Wings began to spread.
"I'm Pinkie!" the baker beamed. "We haven't met. But do you know why I'm here today?"
They were focusing on the intruder within their territory , starting to squeal and screech as the colony prepared to swoop ...
And then they all froze.
They had heard pony voices, plenty of times, even if they couldn't understand the words. The sounds made by other intruders who'd failed to clear them out of their territory . Screams, curses, growls... they were familiar with all of it, and knew just how to respond: by attacking. Every time.
But they had never heard a spit valve being cleared out.
Pinkie grinned.
"MUSIC!"
It began.
It wasn't music. Fluttershy had asked Pinkie to produce everything she could which didn't have any kind of melody or rhythm attached, which was rapidly turning out to be a fairly natural inclination to begin with. Because the ears might have looked like leaves, but they were still ears, and a species which partially relied on echolocation to make its way in the world really didn't like noise.
The ponies had been braced for it, and they were still fighting the urge to run.
The fruit bats took off as one, fleeing through the treetops, heading for the open sky, trying to find safety until that source was gone, scatter --
-- and then they couldn't.
"Not so fast!" Rainbow grinned, rising up on the left. "Spike...?"
The little dragon smiled, and then exhaled.
The flame jet had been aimed away from the fruit bats: they didn't want to hurt any of them, and the only goal in using it was to keep them in a centralized group, something they could herd -- and in the air, when Spike was deliberately missing, there was nothing else to hit. But the creatures didn't understand the intent of his aim. All they could do was instinctively pull together, keep the rest of the colony close. But it didn't prevent some of the others from trying to scatter on the right --
-- where they found Fluttershy. And several hundred of her small avian friends .
"...no," she said. "Now? Please?"
Her own flock darted in. Wings beat the bats back, keeping the colony together until a few desperate lime-resembling specimens tried to escape to the rear . And unfortunately for them, that was where Mr. Flankington was waiting.
"Free sample?" he offered, and stretched out his red-stained forehooves.
Twenty fruit bats instantly learned how to fly backwards.
"What is that stuff?" Rainbow called out as Spike flamed again, establishing the upper border.
"Crushed boysenberries! Specially treated!"
"Treated with what ?"
"Ask me when we're on the ground ! I'm older, Rainbow, I'm the oldest pony here, just let me focus on flying , I don't go this fast...!"
And as Pinkie galloped below them, flushing more and more out of the trees, as Rarity's field seized those who tried to find low-altitude means of escape and flung them into the central mass, while untied lassos turned into whips which had Applejack and Big Mac terrifying the fastest into staying with their colony -- the fruit bats saw there was only one direction left, and they were incapable of recognizing that the ponies had left it open on purpose .
The squealing, screeching, frightened, angry mass began to move towards Ponyville.
It wasn't that easy, of course. They had to cover a lot of ground and even more sky: the Acres were situated well away from central Ponyville, and it meant keeping up the constant effort over so much of the settled zone, chasing and herding, inevitably losing a few here and there (all of which immediately broke for the West Orchard), doing everything they could to keep most of the colony intact over what felt like far too long a gallop... it was a constant effort, and it was starting to become an exhausting one.
"Spike, how y'doin' on gems?" It was hard to find enough time to call out the words in, with her mouth constantly so busy with the rope.
"Running low!" was the answer she didn't want to hear, so naturally she got it anyway. "But I can see the bridge! Mr. Flankington, are you okay?"
"I... don't think I've been getting enough exercise ..."
"Fluttershy, how are your friends?" Rarity called up as she slung a full salad of low-fleeing bats back into the sky. "Are they managing?"
"...they're fine! We've got enough distance, I think, and no one's hurt! But... why aren't we seeing any geese ? There were some on the way to the Acres..."
"The bats are making a lot of noise!" Rainbow noted. "Even more than Pinkie!" (Who had no comment: every breath she could spare was needed for an instrument.) "If the geese really are afraid of them, maybe they're moving ahead of us! Scattering! Or they all just picked up on food somewhere else, or they don't like the boysenberries! But if we go a little faster and hit Ponyville before they can react ...!"
"Faster ?" Mr. Flankington gasped.
"Just for a few flaps! Come on, one last push! For real this time! I see Town Hall, I see the bell, I see geese , Spike, get it ready --"
"-- an' everypony down here, too!" Appejack managed to call out. "Pinkie, don't stop playin'! Mac, Rarity, remember, soon as we're over the bridge, switch tactics!" The planks were almost in front of her hooves . "Count it off! We're there in five, four, three , two --"
-- they all came over the bridge, ground and air. Rainbow went up , tilted her body as a little dragon clung to her mane, and then dropped at the exact moment Spike exhaled again, lips pursed to create a temporary thin horizontal sheet of flame, one which was descending at the same rate as the pegasus, something which happened at the same moment Mac and Applejack momentarily stopped , and Rarity switched her efforts into pulling stragglers down .
The geese occupying that part of Ponyville had just enough time to look up before the colony dropped on them.
Pinkie was galloping in a wide circle now, the noise still coming. Every corralling effort had been switched into keeping the fruit bats in the rough vicinity. Which would have been harder, with so much more ground and sky to cover, something which should have failed in seconds without at least eight times the number of ponies reinforcing the borders -- except for one thing.
They'd just dropped a colony of furious fruit bats on top of a flock of angry, hyper-territorial Crystal Geese.
The latter had been looking for something to hurt all day. The former just wanted something to take the noise out on. Each provided the other with exactly what was needed.
The fight began.
It took everything the ponies had to not do anything other than watch . The geese were big, so much larger than the bats -- but as Fluttershy had predicted, all that meant was that a single goose couldn't defend their entire body from the swarm of combatants. Sharp teeth nipped at beaks and necks, stabbed into flailing wings. Near-hypersonic screeches added to the din, assaulted hearing which had already been offended by the noise. The geese were disoriented, overwhelmed, they wanted to fight this latest encroachment, but they didn't know how --
-- one took off.
Then two.
Four. Wings sending them higher and higher, heading for the horizon with no signs of slowing or dipping...
"Keep it up! Applejack yelled, trying not to hope . "Don't let the bats get out! Jus' the geese! An' if we get 'em all t' leave from here, we can switch up an' move the bats again! Jus' keep goin', everypony, maybe we've got a chance --"
The noise faltered.
Applejack's eyes immediately went left, and saw exactly what she'd just thought to fear: Pinkie had stumbled , and the bright coat was drenched with sweat.
The baker was... energetic. 'Hyperactive' might have been somewhat more fair, and that fast-running engine drove her all over the settled zone, laughing and cheering and doing whatever she saw as necessary in order to make somepony happy. But no matter how it might appear sometimes, no matter what the others occasionally found themselves believing, her strength wasn't inexhaustible. She'd been keeping up at full gallop all the way from the Acres while carrying bale-weights worth of instruments and playing them at the same time, constantly, Applejack had made the same mistake twice and she could do nothing but helplessly stare as all four of Pinkie's knees bent a little too far, the myriad of instruments began to slide into each other, and in the middle of watching all that, she completely missed the pony coming in from the side road.
Pinkie fell. Instruments scattered in all directions.
The noise stopped.
The bats froze. Tiny eyes sought the sky, looked for escape --
-- in the single second they had to do so before the caterwauling hit.
It was worse than mere noise. It nearly drove the ponies into the ground, and fifteen geese desperately broke off their battles to flee for the sky. And it just kept coming, a careful symphony of sonic agony, one which drove the bats into renewed assaults and the geese to increasing desperation...
Applejack stared at Lyra, whose field was rearranging most of the instruments onto her own body while simultaneously playing (if that was the word) so many others.
"I thought..." the composer awkwardly said, just barely audible through the nightmarish cacophony, "...there was a teeny-tiny chance that they maybe just wanted to hear something from a professional ..."
And Applejack watched a sweat-dripping Pinkie slowly picking her way back onto her hooves, and grinned. "All right !" she shouted. "Keep it up, everypony, let me know who's gettin' tired, Ah'll whip some fresh ponies outta their houses if Ah've gotta -- see that? They're takin' off! They're all takin' off! Lyra, y'ain't done this with us, so follow mah lead: as soon as this group's up, we're gonna move towards the market square! We run this through the whole town, an' then we --"
Spike roared .
"EVERYPONY! LOOK UP !"
They looked. And for a single moment, nopony could see the sky, for it had gone dark with wings.
Geese were rising from every part of Ponyville. From everywhere around Ponyville, honking and hissing and leaving one last portion of stryofoam behind. Even the sick ones staggered upright, put everything they had left into wingbeats, shakily got into the air and staggered at the back of the flock, for it had turned out that the Everything they Owned was but a rental, and they no longer wanted anything to do with what was suddenly no longer their territory.
It took three minutes, no more. Lyra stopped playing, the others shut down their herding efforts, and the furious fruit bats streaked away, instinctively heading directly for the temporarily-abandoned home they had to defend.
The geese were gone.
There was never a police officer around when you needed one. But the opposite frequently seemed to be true, and as Applejack watched them approach, four towing two laden sleds (one covered, one not), with a fifth personally escorting a pony she'd seen only too recently, she began to wonder if the same thing held for mayors.
"Before we start..." the mayor said, adjusting her cracked glasses, "...by any chance, does this happen to be yours?"
She nodded towards the uncovered sled. There was an unconscious green-grey unicorn stallion on it.
"Naw," Applejack said. "Ain't one of mine."
"Because while he could still talk, he was saying something about how all the ponies here must have done something to the geese, and it was our fault that they weren't as regal as they appeared?"
"Ah ain't responsible for what other ponies think." Some of those other ponies were now beginning to emerge from homes and shops. "Never have been."
"And of course, you didn't peck him into the ground."
"Ain't got the anatomy."
The fresh arrivals stared at the goose-free ground and sky. Focused on the remnants of their presence, and then the filth-covered ponies who'd been out in it all along.
"Everypony !" the mayor happily called out. "I am proud to announce that the crisis has passed -- thanks once again to our Element-Bearers!" A quick nod to Lyra, Mac, and Mr. Flankington, followed by "With some extra help!"
The sheer force of the cheers rebounded off fouled walls and feathered ground, ruffled encrusted fur (as far as that could still be done) and almost shifted her hat -- but somehow, none of them ever quite reached Applejack's ears.
"Is something wrong, Applejack?"
"Jus' thinkin', Marigold."
"About...?"
"That if they're so quick t' cheer when it's over, maybe they shouldn't be so fast t' scream when it starts."
It got her a small, sad smile. "It doesn't work that way.... Very well. You, as leader , have clearly done the job I requested of you. And on behalf of Ponyville, I thank you all. Mr. Flankington, Ms. Heartstrings, and Mr. Macintosh -- please return to your homes. There are some things I have to say to the Bearers, and you should be no part of what comes next."
Big Mac took a long, slow look at the mayor. "That's mah sister ," he eventually said. "Anything you can say to her, you can say to me."
"That," the mayor corrected, "is my direct agent in this matter. You? Are not. Please go home."
"But --"
"-- Ah'm fine, Mac. Ah'll see you later. Jus' stop by Town Hall an' let Apple Bloom out, take her home?" With a little smile of her own, "An' maybe even think about lettin' the other two go?"
He took a deep breath, slowly nodded, and trotted away. Mr. Flankington and Lyra, after a long, worried look from the latter, did the same.
"Very well," the mayor repeated. "Congratulations, of course. The geese are certainly gone. Your leadership has been proven."
"We all pitched in, plus friends an' family. Ah was jus' at the front of the herd some of the time. An' as far as what y'told me 'bout bein' the leader --"
"-- as has your reliability and helpfulness, once again. Along with your sense of responsibility ." The mayor smiled. "And given that we all know just how much you and your friends are directly responsible for ..."
"Yer smiling."
"Am I?"
"Ah don't think Ah like that smile."
"Really? Well, you'll have plenty to time to reconsider that, because --" the mayor raised her voice again, making it more than audible to the ponies who were still streaming out to investigate "-- the Bearers have volunteered to help with cleanup! "
Applejack stared at the mayor through the barrier of renewed cheers , and had plenty of company.
"No, we ain't."
"Yes. You are."
"Ah never said any such thing! Ah don't speak for other ponies! That's wrong , an' what you jus' did, that's even worse ! Ah'm gonna tell everypony in town 'bout how y'jus' went an' lied t' their faces --"
"-- I look at you all," the mayor smoothly cut in, "and I see many professions. Animal caretaker and weather coordinator. Farmer and baker. Designer and assistant. It's quite an impressive range of skills, really. But regretfully, not a single architect . Somehow, when the Elements found their Bearers, there was no need perceived for anypony who could look at a town hall's rotunda and consider how its design might affect the acoustics . Whether it had been made to funnel sound up, and into an office..."
The smile got stronger.
"I believe Fluttershy said they were from the Empire . Would anypony happen to remember who freed that...?"
And as they all stood still, frozen with horror, her forelegs dipped, and her neck tilted towards the covered sled, teeth nipping at the tarpulin.
"So. These are your brooms . And dustpans. With hoof attachments. Trash bins will be coming along shortly. Should what I am now told is called styrofoam corrode its way through them, feel free to ask for replacements -- not so fast , young dragon: your sister made certain to give you your full due of praise for your part in the return of the crystals, and so I think you're just as due your full share of this , plus the process might even go faster when claws are involved. Clean up as much as you can, until the Sun is lowered, and somewhat beyond -- and in return, I swear to never tell any of our townsponies about how all of this was so very arguably your fault ."
"Ah've --- Ah've got mah own Acres t' freshen. I've got tenants who need clean grass..."
"Your brother and sister are heading back. They can do the work. And I'm sure most of your tenants are perfectly capable of doing some cleaning on their own."
"But Ah've sorta got this one really dumb bull..."
"And I have a settled zone which is currently barely fit for continued settlement. Which should take priority?"
They stared at each other for a while, police and friends staying out of the little war.
"This is blackmail," Applejack declared.
"Is it? I prefer to see it as a simple choice. You can be responsible -- or I can be honest ."
Applejack took a slow step forward, saw the officers tense. Then another.
Then her head went down, and she carefully picked up the first broom.
"Thank you," the mayor said, and turned away. "And now, if everypony will excuse me..."
She took her first hoofstep. Her head dipped.
"...I -- have some very familiar forms to fill out..."
Applejack watched her go. And then everypony else approached the second sled.
"Ah wish Twi was here."
Rarity sighed, although such was just barely discernable through her repeated gagging . "As do I. An extra set of hooves and an additional field would be rather helpful at the moment. Oh, why would the mayor not let us use the spa before starting on cleaning up the entire market square , with nopony else around to help at all? I am feeling every bit of styrofoam in my coat and mane, along with all the bruises from the day's fighting which I had somehow managed to overlook until now..."
"Ah'm hurtin' too, Rarity. Pretty sure we all are, lookin' at the hits. But with Twi... Ah was actually thinkin' 'bout magic . One spell, an' maybe she could make this all jus' vanish ..."
"Or," Pinkie proposed, "she might make it all combine into a giant monster! Which would go around eating the whole -- wait, we sort of already did that one time, only without the giant part..."
It got a tiny chuckle from Spike. "Yeah. There's reasons ponies usually don't try to just make up workings on the spot, Pinkie. A lot of them. That one probably should have been featured in a lecture to the Equestrian Magic Society all by itself..."
"So it could be a choice between a slow cleanup and just fighting one big monster?" Rainbow asked.
"If the spell went wrong."
She thought about it. "Fighting the monster would be a lot faster."
Nopony answered that, and the cleanup resumed.
For a while.
"...um... I've... everypony, I've kind of been thinking ..."
"Well, there's a mistake," Rainbow groaned. "What were you thinking about, Fluttershy?"
Softly, "...I'm not sure we really did anything."
Rarity's hard-spiking field nearly lost the entire styrofoam load. "Did not -- didn't -- nothing ? Do you see any geese here? I see remnants of geese, so many --" The underlayer of the no-longer-white coat would have normally been starting to flush green, but that shade was impossible to pick out under all the others, and so they simply waited until the designer had finished retching into the trash bin again. "Clearly we did something ! The proof is in the absence!"
"...it's just that..." Wings and forehooves helplessly spread. "...yes, some of the geese were leaving, and others might have seen them doing it, and their instincts could have told them there was something to run from . But... they took off from everywhere . All at once, at the same time . Even the ones who had no way to see or hear or smell anything we were doing. And... we know they're migrators, this didn't have to be their last stop, and I thought that maybe, when we brought the bats in, we might have done it at the exact moment when they were already going to... well..."
Her right eye vanished behind manefall. The left simply closed under the weight of the next word.
"...migrate?"
Nopony moved. Nopony could move.
"So you're sayin'," Applejack barely breathed, "that it mighta jus' been coincidence? That the geese didn't learn nothin' from it at'tall?"
"...they can't learn..."
"An' --" locked into horror, her eyes fixed on something which wasn't now "-- when they migrate in the other direction...?"
"...they'd come back ..."
Everypony, as indicated by the near-total lack of breathing, thought about that for a while.
"...we could try and prepare for next time?" Fluttershy carefully suggested. "...we know how long they stay now: about nine hours, plus whatever we missed during the night. We could ask Canterlot to send out scouts, see where they go, when they start to return... maybe we could borrow Shining Armor and just go under a shield for a little while..."
Their temporary, recently-retired leader considered it.
"Ah dunno," Applejack finally said, and the right side of her mouth momentarily twitched up. "Because..." She paused, scraped some more styrofoam into the dustpan, tilted it into the trash bin and listened to the acidic sizzle. "...there's the names ..."
"...the -- names?"
"Yeah. When y'think 'bout it, that's kind of a clue right there, ain't it? As t' where they go. Ain't gonna have a name for somethin' if you've never met it. An' maybe different species had territory that far back, but some of 'em always started in one place an' jus' tried t' expand out. So let's say they keep flyin' in the direction we all saw 'em take off in, an' eventually, maybe not even hittin' any other settled zones if we're that lucky, they get out of Equestria. T' someplace which already had a name for 'em. Get the map up in your heads, everypony... far as the nations go --" both sides twitched up this time "-- what's their next stop?"
This silence was brief, providing just enough time for a wincing Fluttershy to completely retreat under her own mane.
"The Griffon Republic," Rarity breathed.
"Protocera," Rainbow corrected.
"Well, yes, for those who are rather more familiar with the language -- Fluttershy? No, that's all right, dear, go ahead, take a few minutes, we understand, we will be there when you need us..."
"Hey, Rainbow?" Applejack called out.
"What's up?"
"If Gilda ever writes you... talkin' 'bout another summer... Ah ain't invitin' mahself along, but if y'get any pictures, or have ones from the old days, Ah'd kinda like t' see a griffon ranch."
"Seriously? Because I've got a couple of albums! I could fly them down to you tomorrow!"
"Yeah. Seriously."
And with entirely faked suspicion, "Any reason this is coming up now?"
"Well, it's really jus' another kind of farmin', ain't it? There's always stuff t' learn."
A very dubious "Uh-huh ..."
"An'... Ah was just thinkin'."
"Thinking what ?"
"Ah think Ah kinda like griffons."
Rainbow grinned, got back to work, trying to clear her portion of the market square before anypony else could finish theirs. Pinkie finished filling a bin, then went off to check on Fluttershy. Spike brought Rarity something fresh to gag in. Applejack simply went for a replacement dustpan, with her trot to the supply area negating any chance anypony had to look at her face, along with putting her well out of casual hearing.
"Suspiciously extinct," she whispered within her momentary privacy. "Ultionum Prandium ..."
And she finally let that special, slightly-mercenary smile come.
Author's Note
The concept for this story was originally proposed in a blog post. As such, Cowbrony93, WiseFirecracker, Miltowner, Admiral Biscuit, Nemryn, MythrilMoth, SeatieBelt, FanOfMostEverything, TitaniumDragon, ArcheonZ, Talon and Thorn, MetallusionIsMagic, PresentPerfect, Southpaw, Seether00, MyHobby, 111segasonic, Garbo, Greenhat, GroaningGreyAgony, WarrenHutch, Vinylshadow, Daedalus Aegle, DreadedCandiru2, CloverQuill, World Builder, LivinTheLife, and Dream Volt provided chapter title suggestions and other small details which made it into the story's structure. (In particular, I used most of Groaning's lines and really wish I'd been able to work with LivinTheLife's) Thanks go out to all.
