Total Number Of Superheroines Created: Zero
Total Number Of Superheroines Created: Zero
Most of the initial damage done by the meteor was to pony sleep.
The impact took place deep under Moon, late enough at night that nearly all of Ponyville had taken to their beds. The few who were awake in that small hour were mostly stuck in workshops, taking the night shift portion of the police patrols, or trying to get that one idea solidified in time for the next festival. There might have been all of six pegasi in the sky when the meteor came blazing through the dark, none were anywhere near or even looking at the Acres... on the whole, the descent went unwitnessed.
The impact did not.
Distance is a factor in magic, even for the race with the largest radius of operation, the only one known to casually create an effect in their sleep. So on the whole, most of Ponyville's earth ponies didn't get the memo: the Acres were just too far out for that. A few of the settled zone's stronger talents shifted in their sleep, others had their nightscapes suffering through abrupt kicks, and the most exceptional found their eyes shooting open as inner senses tried to orient on what had just happened. But for those near the epicenter... Thistle Burr grunted, nipped the edge of a thin blanket to pull it over himself again, and decided he didn't care. Golden Harvest, who'd been caught in mid-dream, spent two confused minutes galloping through her house, trying to figure out just who'd been trying to break in and where.
And for the residents of the Acres? Even in the modern day, the saying survives: the farmer is the land, with very few thinking about the true implications of that statement. So Big Mac's hind legs kicked out as he awoke, which would eventually lead to some rather frustrating repair work on the hoofboard. Apple Bloom, who had yet to come into her full magic and still had the attunement granted by a life spent on the same soil, wound up spread-griffoned on a carpet scrap after proving she wasn't going to get a mark for inadvertently (and poorly) cartwheeling out of bed either. Most of Granny's reaction was verbal, and the only printable part was the frequent repetitions of 'Tarnation!' And Applejack... her legs went right while her jaw went left, and the hat was already on her head as she began the gallop from the house into that late spring night, sheer instinct propelling her without thought, every nerve in her body singing intruder, injury, offense as she raced forth to see what had happened, to fix it and incidentally, to put a considerable hurting on whatever was responsible. Her gift to the offending party, the least of what she owed it for having hurt her land.
She was expecting a fallen tree, produced by an unscheduled lightning strike: wild weather or malice to be determined. Magic which had gone out of control or worse, been fully controlled the whole time. A monster.
She got a rock.
A portion of it had embedded itself within the soil. That which was still visible... a little taller than she was, about twice her body length from the current facing. The slow trot around it found the shape to be a rough one: rather narrow at one end, a near-jagged crest, with numerous miniature craters marring every surface.
The survey was taken from a moderate distance. The rock was still radiating a fair amount of heat.
Big Mac caught up.
"Tartarus chain it, AJ!" he gasped: the big body was meant for many things, and post-waking speed wasn't one of them. Ask the stallion to put his efforts into the long haul and he could potentially keep going all day: a single greatly extended true sprint stood a good chance to drop him into the dirt. "You've gotta wait for me! Can't go out facing down whatever happened all by yourself --"
Which was when he truly saw the thing.
He shook himself, full-body and hard: froth flew off in multiple directions. Blinked a few times.
"-- what's that?"
"Ah think," Applejack slowly said, "it's a mahteor."
More blinks.
"A meteor," Big Mac tried.
She nodded, resumed the roughly-circular survey trot. "Twi's had me out with her a couple of times, on the nights when they come down. Said it was the best fireworks anypony could ask for, 'cause y'didn't know how many you'd get, or from where. It's a decent show for a cool autumn night. But she told me the light streaks are from most of 'em gettin' so hot when they come in, they burn themselves up before they reach the ground. Guess this one was too big to burn."
A mahteor.
A real mahteor...
Her brother slowly approached the rock, and it seemed to her that both his trot and gaze were... respectful.
"It ain't meteor season, though," he observed.
"That's jus' when most of 'em come down," Applejack replied: she'd picked up that much. "We got a stray." Looked down at the soil, noticed the spray pattern from the impact.
"What's the damage?"
"Ah was jus' 'bout t' find out. Y'wanna help?"
He nodded, and both earth ponies focused. Listened for the voice of the offended land, sounds which could only be heard by their souls.
Eventually, the older sibling exhaled.
"We," he sincerely decided, "got lucky." A glance up. "I see... well, not much: what's left of the canopy is blocking out too much Moon, and it's overcast tonight. But it mostly came down between trees. Sheared off a few branches, but it left the trunks alone. And when you go deep..."
"Ah'm gettin' some injured roots," Applejack nodded. "But not major ones. Nothin' that won't heal --"
-- which was when the youngest caught up.
"Ah'm sorry!" Apple Bloom gasped. "Ah was lookin' for weapons! Somethin' Ah could fight with, an' --" The rake, which hadn't exactly been well-balanced to begin with, majestically slid off her back. "-- what is that?"
"Mahteor," the older sister explained.
"Meteor?" replied a rather excited youth, one who was a little closer to her original astronomy classes and so hadn't adjusted the terms for accent just yet. "A real one? That came from space? Ah've gotta --"
-- and ran into Applejack's outstretched foreleg.
"Don't touch it," that mare told her.
"But it's from -- out there!" the younger insisted, stubbornly pushing against the limb. "Ain't nopony 'round here touched one of --"
"-- it's still hot. You'll singe your fur, or worse. Give it some time t' cool down."
Hopefully, "So Ah can touch it later?"
Applejack nodded. "Ah'll make sure y'get a chance." And she looked at the rock, a rock which was from out there, and --
-- no.
Not right now.
Ah mean, Big Mac's right there. Ah do this now an' he'll hear me. Not gonna try it when he could listen in.
Come t' think of it, that's probably why he ain't tried. Don't wanna get caught tryin' it 'round me.
Stupid big brother.
"So what do we do with it?" asked the oldest sibling, incidentally proving his stupidity through the nature of the question.
"Move it," was the obvious answer. "But not --" and the adults among the Apples froze. Both had been listening, and with their senses still moving through the earth, it had been easy to pick up on the approach of high-speed hoofsteps, ones whose patterns they didn't know --
-- but it was just a neighbor.
"You're all right!" Golden Harvest gasped out as she came into full view. "I felt that, but I thought it was closer to my house, I couldn't pin it down until I woke up all the way and then I found Granny, she's still trying to get out here, I was worried about everypony..."
Big Mac smiled. "We're okay, Goldie." Trotted a little closer to her. "But we appreciate that y'came, and you know we'd do the same if something hit your place. Thank you kindly for checking on us." Glanced at Applejack. "Might see a few more ponies, especially if any of the night flyers were looking the right way. So we're moving it?"
Applejack nodded. "But not tonight," she told them. "Spring going into summer, everypony... we've got work t' do in the morning, an' we're losin' enough sleep as is. An' that's the sort of thing Ah'd rather do under Sun. For the trees, nothing's hurt that won't heal. With the land, we'll take care of the rest."
"So sunrise, then," Big Mac agreed as Goldie approached the meteor, green eyes starting to go wide with wonder.
Which was when Applejack had the thought.
It was, in just about every way, a kind thought. It was putting a friend a little bit ahead of her own needs, and even those of the land. It was a fully generous thing to do, a wonderful idea to have had at all, and so when it ultimately led to just about everything going wrong, she tried not to put too much blame on it.
"Not quite," she grinned.
"Because?"
She didn't answer him, looked towards Apple Bloom instead. "Got a favor t' ask. On the way t' school, go by the tree. Knock until you've got one of 'em up, an' then say what we've got. 'cause Ah ain't movin' this thing until she sees it."
Big Mac, who immediately caught on (and did so despite being her big brother and therefore, as established, stupid), smiled. "That's fair, AJ. That's more than fair. And it's a nice thing to do."
She turned, smiled back at him. "Yeah. Ah ain't movin' this thing until we give Twi a little thrill first."
"On the way t' school," Apple Bloom repeated, with the familiar distraction visibly growing in Moon-lit eyes. "Yeah... on the way t' school. Ah can stop an' tell ponies 'bout all of what this might mean on the way t' --"
"-- Apple Bloom?" the older sister cut her off.
"...yeah?"
"If'fin Ah hear the words 'Cutie Mark Crusaders', 'mahteor', an' 'yay!' in any two outta three or better combination, you'll be grounded for a week."
"...but -- it's a meteor! How many ponies got one of those? Y'know the marks which could come from --"
"-- make that grounded for a moon."
Eventually, five ponies went back to bed, although the youngest did so while fuming. And Applejack tucked herself back under old blankets, feeling proud for having thought of a friend.
Ah'll give Twi a little thrill...
It turned out to be more than a little one.
Applejack had seen the little mare at that level of excitement before: spell refinements completed, letters notifying her that the journal article would be published, rare books offered up for access -- and as it turned out, the same results could be produced by offering access to a rock. That kind of joy was something which could put the unicorn very close to a full-scale Pinkie pronking, and she suspected the only reason it wasn't happening now was because all the jumping would jolt the field-held camera.
"First access!" the librarian happily crowed, moving body and lens to a new angle. "I've never had first access before! -- well, I know all of you came out here last night when you heard it hit, but you're not astronomers and --" stopped. Awkwardly, "Um..."
"Ah ain't offended, Twi," Applejack smiled. "Ah got the first look." An' once Ah get some real privacy... "You'll get the first article." If there was one. How many meteors of this size hit every year? Was it enough that an article could be published? Applejack didn't know -- but that didn't matter, because Twilight would.
"Probably not," Twilight sighed -- then managed to recover the smile, moved to take another picture. "The survey team always gets them. But first access is enough."
Applejack blinked.
"What was that 'bout a survey team?"
The little unicorn was now circling to the back, and so had to pitch her words over the rock. "Oh, that's right... you wouldn't know." The slim face momentarily peeked around the side, all the better to make the blush visible. "Sorry." Ducked back again, with the camera lens also shifting out of sight. "Anyway, there's a procedure for when a meteor comes down. And only astronomers would usually know about it, even amateur ones like me. Canterlot has to be told about this, and then they send in a survey team to study it. Once they're done, there's an official Meteor Mover." It was possible to hear the capitals. "And that's the only pony who can authorize it being taken off the land. But it shouldn't take too long, not once all the paperwork gets started."
"So y'sent off paperwork," Applejack tried, already wondering just how long it was going to take before Procedure was satisfied. She'd planned on having the thing off her soil by noon... "An' that's why you were a little late comin' in?"
"Oh, no," Twilight clarified, peeking around from the narrow end. "I can't send anything in, not for this. There's an established chain, and I'm nowhere in it. There's only one pony in each settled zone who's supposed to contact Canterlot about a meteor hit."
"The mayor?" It felt like a fair guess. "Y'stopped by Town Hall an' told Marigold t' --"
"No," the little unicorn gently stated. "Meteor strikes have to be reported by the local weather coordinator." Which triggered a small frown. "I'm not sure why. Maybe because something fell out of the sky?"
Applejack felt her skin beginning to pale beneath the fur.
"Weather coordinator."
"Weird, right?"
"So you're tellin' me that the only pony who can start gettin' this thing off mah land is --"
-- and from overhead, "Hey! So that's the rock, huh? Doesn't look like much. I could have done more damage crashing into the Acres than that. I mean, did you ever see that place where I -- um... hey, I don't suppose there's anything left over from breakfast, is there? Because I kind of hurried out here. After the morning shift. Which wrapped up a little late. Because if we're talking about crash damage -- um... yeah. So. Dumplings?"
Having a meteor embedded in the soil was a somewhat more rare event than having Rainbow standing on it -- but not by much. (Applejack was the only direct witness: Twilight had needed to head back and await an expected book delivery.) The pegasus seldom touched down, rarely stayed on the ground for long. Even when among her friends, she tended to hover. It had taken long years to get the reason why out of her: a childhood spent in Cloudsdale had produced sensitive hooves, ones which had been initially unused to the harsher touch of ground. Most of Rainbow's early Ponyville days had passed in various degrees of soreness and even now, with some resistance built up, she preferred the caress of vapor to the good solid squelch of honest dirt.
It was rare to see her trot for long. However, close inspection of any plant she didn't immediately intend to eat was just about unique.
"Rainbow?"
"Huh?"
"Whatcha lookin' at? 'cause you've been starin' at trunks for 'bout ten minutes, an' Ah know most of your acquaintance with 'em is goin' in head-first." Which was probably what had happened at 'that place,' and Applejack had to start tracking that down...
"I'm looking," Rainbow said, with the brash voice oddly serious, "for alien life."
There was only one possible response to that.
"...huh?"
"You know those thaumic fiction books I picked up at the library's remaindered sale?"
Applejack's lips worked for a few seconds. "Thaumic..."
"The covers were awesome. Anyway, four of them were about... well, I don't want to go into all of it or we'll be here all day. But it turns out that the problem was caused by meteors. Or giant seeds which fell out of space, just like meteors. And wherever they hit, weird plants started growing. Taking over from our own stuff, you know? And then animals showed up. Most of them were giant worms. And then ponies who stayed in those areas too long started changing into something which wasn't really a pony any more." Wingtips briefly trembled, then locked into physical denial. "Anyway, the books were all about how if ponies didn't stop it, the whole world was going to become just like the places around the meteors. And that meant everypony would either die or not be ponies. And dying was actually better."
"It's just a story, Rainbow," Applejack patiently said.
"A lot of things are just stories. Until they happen."
"Ain't gonna happen."
"No, it isn't," Rainbow darkly replied. "Not while I'm around." Trotted around a little more, leaned in towards the soil and inspected a small dark object. "Was this always here?"
"No."
"AHA! Alien seed!"
Wearily, far too weary for shortly before noon, "...it's a pebble. From underground. Got tossed out by the impact."
"...oh."
Applejack waited.
"Unless it's a disguise," Rainbow half-hissed. "Changeling seeds..."
And sighed. "That must've been some book."
"Books. Four of them," Rainbow corrected, now stalking the world's most suspicious twig.
"How'd the story end?"
"I don't know."
"Didn't finish?"
"No. There's supposed to be seven in the series and the fourth one was published twenty-six years ago. Twilight said the author's still alive, but nothing's come out and if it's been this long already, she doesn't think the rest are ever gonna see print." A little shrug. "Honestly, the way the story was going, I just figured everypony died at the end and the writer just didn't want to say it. But that's okay because when you read the books, they were really better off. Is that bark supposed to be this color?"
Eventually Rainbow, having failed to find any signs of alien life, dedicated a fresh effort to locating a free lunch. And once that was over and Ponyville's most dedicated meal-moocher had been sent off to fill out some rather dusty forms, Applejack had to catch up on her daily chores, with the added burdens of having lost several hours and needing to look for a previously-unsuspected Rainbow crash site. Dealing with all that would take up the rest of the day, and she still hadn't gotten any truly private time with the meteor...
It'll be all right. Ah'll get the chance. Big thing is that it'll be off the Acres soon enough, an' properly, too. An internal pause as she continued to roam the trees, looking for a familiar skull-shaped dent. Well, properly by government standards. Jus' an extra day or two. Everything'll be fine. Rainbow's managin' the paperwork.
Froze, with her hat jerked forward by the sudden stop.
Ah jus' trusted Rainbow Dash t' manage paperwork.
She didn't get out of bed until somewhat later than usual on the next day, and that normally would have been a source of personal shame. Just about any working day on the Acres would see Applejack available to greet Sun as it was brought over the horizon, but she'd slept rather poorly and her body had ultimately decided to make the last stretch gallop as far as it could. Dreams of Rainbow trying to deal with bureaucratic nightmares which would have had Twilight triple-checking the work, all of which seemed to end with forms being filed via tornado... those had a way of waking Applejack up. Several times.
It meant she wasn't in a position to see the next problems arrive, and she didn't even start to suspect how bad it was until Big Mac came into the kitchen.
"Mornin'," her brother placidly said. (In soon-to-come retrospect, a little too placidly.)
She sighed. "Jus' barely, Ah know. Ah'm sorry, Mac. Couldn't really sleep an' when it finally kicked in, Ah overslept. Ah'll make it up t' you --"
"-- before y'go out there," the oldest sibling quietly told her, "I'm gonna need a promise from you."
She blinked, turned away from the last surviving dumpling.
"A promise," she repeated.
"Bunch of stuff started while you were out," he said. "Survey, for one thing. And I know you're not gonna like any of it. So before y'go out there -- promise me you'll try to stay calm."
"You jus' said --" and felt her tail starting to lash "-- the survey was one thing. What else happened?"
"Promise me, AJ."
Another lash, hard enough to jolt the rope loop. "Ain't gonna. Not without knowin' what Ah'm s'pposed t' stay calm about."
"Then Ah ain't lettin' you go out," her very stupid big brother stated, and put his right forehoof down.
She looked at him for a few seconds, for an older sibling on the verge of humiliation was a sight which needed to be memorized. And then she turned away, because that was part of her plan, plus the dumpling needed eating.
A few quick bites were all she had time for. It was something else she'd have to make him pay for later: you didn't rush dumplings. "Big Mac?"
"You heard me, AJ."
"Couple of things."
"I am not letting you set one forehoof out the front door."
"First off, Ah wanna bring your attention back t' somethin' y'keep forgettin'. The part where Ah'm a, gotta remind you 'bout this again, adult. Got mah magic, got mah growth, got responsibilities, got the palace askin' me t' do some really grownup stuff. So technically, you're gonna be mah big brother forever, 'cause there ain't no way t' use that time travel spell t' go back an' get mahself born first. But after a while, your authority kind of, what's the words Ah want here? Oh, yeah -- it wears off."
"Applejack..." Not using the abbreviation. Warning Sign #1.
She didn't care. "So y'can take your 'ain't lettin' you go out' an' ram it between the yoke an' your neck, where it'll make enough pressure for you t' choke on it."
"Applejack Malus." Full name now: very few sibling fights went that far. There was a step beyond that, and she didn't plan on being there for it.
"An' second," Applejack told her very stupid brother just before darting right, throwing all her weight into it, allowing the sheer impact against wood to do most of the work --
-- the lever surrendered, and Applejack felt the ache enter her right shoulder, which hadn't been designed to do that exact job. But for this, it was worth it.
"The kitchen," she called back to Mac as she darted outside, "has its own door."
To his credit, he didn't try to follow her: she was a better sprinter than he, and just about any head start guaranteed her a getaway. But she still made sure to put some distance between them, circling the house until she was practically off the Acres, coming back to her land from near the main entrance.
Or rather, coming back at the line.
There weren't all that many ponies, at least when compared to a first-day cider procession. Maybe twenty or so, slowly shuffling forward towards the makeshift desk. (One plank laid across two boxes and because of who'd assembled it, all three were cracked.) There also appeared to be a sign, but she wasn't close enough to read it yet: there were too many ponies in the way. She currently had just enough of a sight line to identify the culprit, and having it be the usual suspect was no comfort at all.
Applejack marched forward.
"No cutting!" yelled a (mostly) dark yellow mare. "Wait your --" and then spotted the fur color which was stalking past at speed.
"Ain't cuttin', Sunspot," Applejack stated from between clenched teeth. "Makin' inquiries."
The heavily-freckled pegasus froze.
"Oh," she said. "Um... how are the cider apples doing?"
Applejack ignored that, kept moving to the front...
"...and of course the price is going to be high! Where else are you going to find something like this? It's not like they fall every day! Or every moon." A thoughtful pause, which felt as if it was being used for internal review of material which had only recently been learned -- for that value of 'learning' which equaled 'grab the first book you see on the subject and speed-read it until boredom or Page Three, whichever comes first.' "Not when they actually land. So I'm --" another mental stretch, this time for vocabulary "-- charging accordingly! Twenty bits, please."
"According to that last court settlement," the stallion slowly stated, "you owe me forty bits in damages."
The filly thought about it.
"Okay," she said. "Give me fifteen and keep five towards what I owe you --"
-- which was when Applejack reached the front, and took satisfaction in seeing purple eyes go wide with fear.
"Mornin', Scootaloo," Applejack said, and that was the truth. It was, in fact, still morning, if not necessarily by as much as Applejack would have liked. She just hadn't said anything about it being good.
"Umm..." was the filly's best reply, and possibly the only one.
"So Ah see you're sellin'," and took another look at the sign, "'Genuine Meteor Fragments.' For twenty bits?"
The little pegasus, whose life could accurately be described as a series of forever-escalating mistakes, did what she was best at and made the next one.
"It's twenty bits for that size," she declared. "More for bigger ones."
Applejack inspected the pile.
"Funny how meteor fragments would have Sun-bleachin'."
"Not really," the pegasus tried. "They're out in space, right? And so is Sun. So when you think about it --"
"An' it's even funnier," Applejack went on, "'bout those edges on the bigger pieces. The ones which look like they'd fit together if somepony just nosed 'em over."
"They all broke off the same stone!"
"Yeah, they did," Applejack agreed. "Lookin' at the size, Sun-bleachin', material, an' color, they all broke off one of the path border paving stones. Which somepony, an' Ah could take a few guesses as t' who, broke. An' tried to pass off as meteor pieces. Real stuff's grey-brown, everypony, with some metal flecks peekin' out. Not this."
The muttering began directly behind her, began to race backwards down the line.
"They could be meteor pieces!" Scootaloo doubled down. "You don't know! Maybe I broke them off from a place you didn't look at!"
Well, she was certainly giving off the appearance of calm. "Walked 'round the whole thing," Applejack told the filly who always desperately needed bits to fund the next Crusade, along with having a host of small claims court judgments from previous ones to pay off.
"Maybe I dug down! Maybe it split up when it hit and I got them from far away and it just looked like paving stones! Maybe I hey what's that over there bye!"
-- and too late. Applejack was used to making a dive-and-clamp for Rainbow's tail. Compared to that, Scootaloo wasn't so much a distant second place as she'd completely failed to qualify for the race.
She dragged the little pegasus away, absently noting that it was a rather aerodynamic drag. The filly had practically been designed to be pulled through dirt, and had boosted nature's intent with a generous helping of personal experience.
"You're not being fair," Scootaloo muttered as she folded her forelegs under her chin, mostly to keep mud out of that fur while cutting back on dirt grooves.
"You," Applejack declared in the jaw-grinding way which didn't loosen the clamp, "were selling lies. Y'want bits so bad, a mark so bad, Scootaloo? Y'like the ones the brothers had? Think gettin' something for being a con artist would suit you? Sound like a good way to keep your friends, havin' a talent for lyin' t' anypony that makes the mistake of trustin' you? 'cause the way Ah figure it, a few more like that last one an' your flanks are jus' gonna glow..."
Silence, but for non-meteor pebbles bouncing off hooves.
Weak, weaker words than she'd heard from the filly, almost desperate. "...I didn't mean to -- I don't want that kind of --"
"-- you're off the Acres for the rest of the moon." The tail was spat free. "Get out."
There were no problems with reentering her own land. But she'd circled, and so she hadn't looked outwards, not towards where the future harvest began. And it could be said that she'd been warned, for she'd asked Twilight about how the survey team worked. The librarian had confessed to not having all the details, but had known what the designated area was supposed to look like: the team would set bright yellow blaze markers around the perimeter, then lighten the shade as they moved in towards the meteor itself: anything next to the rock would be white.
So Applejack had expected that part. She just hadn't believed the perimeter would start fifteen body lengths into the orchard.
She looked at the blaze. Slowly turned her head to the left, visually followed the trail until the point where she started to mistake Sun glare for color. Paused, then kept pushing until she nearly reached Sun itself, because there now seemed to be every chance that the border actually went that far.
The situation was just about identical to the right, but with a little more curve to it.
She crossed the line. Slowly ventured onto her land mah land, this is mah land an' they're markin' it off like they own the place, moving steadily forward. It didn't take long before she came across a grey unicorn, one whose field was busy placing blazes.
He glanced up at her. "You're one of the property owners?"
"It's mah land," she stated, and felt the words rasp against her fur.
"I spoke to your brother earlier?"
She managed a nod.
"Good. I'll tell you what I told him, then. We have to close all of this off for a while. Study the crash site, look at the debris field, try to see if anything came off the meteor. We're also checking for explosion effects."
Instantly, "Ain't been no --"
"-- sometimes the big ones explode in atmosphere," the unicorn said. "This could be a fragment of the original."
"Don't got fracture lines," Applejack protested. "An' nopony heard no explosion."
"Well, no," he admitted. "But the lines could be on the bottom. So we have to check. Carefully. And search the area for additional specimens. You've got quite the find here, but you know what they say about dropped bits!"
That the best place t' look for one is next t' where another already fell. For bits, it made sense. For meteors which came down outside of the normal times... "So you're workin' your way in towards it, with the blazes an' all?"
"Yes."
"An'..." She took a deep breath, thought about staying calm and the sibling who somehow felt it was a good idea. "...y'do know that you're like, a thousand body lengths out from it right now? Maybe more?"
He nodded.
"An'... when y'say y'have to close all this off for a while, Ah've got crops. Trees Ah have t' check on. Samples t' take, an' Ah've got t' get some of the earliest bloomers t' market. An' since this is mah land --"
"Once the blazes are all up," he stated, "this area is closed. That's the procedure. We can't have too many hooves contaminating the crash site."
Applejack focused, and her magic asked a question which the unicorn would never hear, much less feel.
"How many ponies y'got out here?"
The answer wasn't particularly snide. It was just the response of a pony who didn't feel she had any need for or right to the information. "Enough."
Which Ah make out t' be... Oh, you've gotta be kiddin' me!
"No access t' mah crops," she tried again. Less bits. Customers wonderin' where Ah am before goin' t' another seller.
"We need to study this."
More slowly, with an effort to keep her forehooves from pawing at the already-abused soil, "Can't trot on mah own land." Mah Mommy and Daddy's land.
"Not after the blazes are up. We have to close this off." He sighed. "You don't know what some ponies do around meteors."
An' Ah don't care. "An' is the survey area always this big?"
It got her a tiny shrug. "It's what the weather coordinator marked off on the map."
Applejack's inner vision immediately flashed onto an image of a skull-shaped indent in tree bark, then made it much fresher.
"We're working our way towards the center," he told her. "It's taking a while, because of the area. So if there's anything you need to take out of there, do it now. Because once we're done, that's it until the survey's over."
"An'," she tightly forced out, "exactly how long do y'think this survey is gonna --"
A tiny bubble of light blue field pressed against her left shoulder. She glanced down at it.
"And so we know just where contamination of the site might have occurred," the unicorn instructed her, "please put these orange blazes on anything you touch. Have a good day."
Take a step. Slam the little marker into the soil. Take another step. Paste color against a tree. Take a step. Consider that she'd washed and had therefore touched herself, so a blaze in her own fur...
It was a brighter shade than her own, considerably so. It was orange as assault and offense, and she was placing it everywhere.
Ah'll give Twi a little thrill... The thought was turning bitter. Ain't her fault. It's the stupid Procedure, the blazes an' ponies who don't understand they're guests on mah land an'...
...why did the mahteor have t' come down here?
The Elements were many things, and Applejack didn't pretend to understand half of them. But she sometimes suspected they acted as magnets: steadily, unstoppably pulling in strangeness. Life in Ponyville had always been a little on the weird side: you couldn't live next to the Everfree and not get an intrusion of oddity every now and again. But ever since the Elements had been rediscovered, it had gotten a lot weirder.
Thinking of weirdness made her think of something else. Somepony else. And then she immediately felt ashamed for having had the thought.
...Ah wonder...
Also that one.
There seemed to be sounds coming from up ahead, and she knew there were ponies there. More intruders on her soil. Mostly unicorns and pegasi, because the majority was just a presence. But there was a voice mixed into that, and the recognition almost made her groan.
Right near the mahteor, by the feel of it. And if she's there, the group can't be from the survey team. What are they doin' there?
The lone voice had been one which could only be registered by the soul, part of the constant chorus of the Cornucopia Effect as it soaked into the welcoming earth, allowing any kind of plant life to grow. For that which was registered by the ears... well, she had felt them before she heard them, and she heard them before she saw them.
"Oh Great Messenger Of The Divine!" a mare voice chanted. "Reveal to us thy wisdom!"
Silence.
"Notice," that same mare decided, "how Sun glinted a little off the highlight in the little crater when I said that. No, the other little crater -- oh, here, just let me... yes, that one. Label the sketch accordingly and write that down. All right, the next of the Sky Questions... Oh Great Messenger Of The Divine, what is to become of this world?"
"A squirrel just ran across it!" pipped up an excited male teenager. "Did you see that? Right near the serrations! Wasn't there something in the texts about that?"
"That text," stated a solemn stallion, "was about a chipmunk. A chipmunk means a flood. There is no current translation in the revelations for a squirrel." Thoughtfully, "Sketch out where it ran. The exact path. Also its colors. Once we see what takes place following the Messenger's arrival, we'll know what a squirrel means for next time."
"Shouldn't the squirrel put a blaze there?" a mare asked. "Technically, that's contamination."
"...Mommy, are we contamination?" a timid filly checked.
"Of course not, dear. We're the congregation."
Okay. Let's review.
There's about two dozen of them, not countin' any pegasi who might be in the air right now.
They're on mah land. Without permission. Plus they're crazy. Which goes kind of nicely with bein' on mah land without permission. Ah know who one of 'em is an' Ah know she's nuts. Anything else?
Applejack thought it over.
An' murder's illegal.
Probably shouldn't forget that part.
She closed the gap.
"So," the rightful owner of the Acres demanded as she stepped into the area surrounding the meteor, "anypony wanna tell me what they're doin' here? Anypony at all? Ah'll take the first pony t' speak up, an' Ah'll take on the first one t' complain --"
-- stopped dead.
There were, as she'd managed to feel, about two dozen of them on the ground, plus four pegasi who were looking the whole thing over from the air. That meant that once she factored out the lone Ponyville native, there were roughly twenty-seven ponies who'd just swept their heads down as their torsos leaned into the low bow.
"The Recipient," the mare who'd been talking about highlights gasped. "Behold her! Behold she whom the skies tried to speak with! Recognize her worth!"
Um...
Applejack looked left. Right. Took in the near-glow which seemed to be coming off every set of eyes.
...this shouldn't feel good.
It doesn't. Doesn't feel good at'tall.
Much.
"Everypony," she tried, "if'fin you'd get up --"
The older mare -- a light red unicorn, old enough to have some grey in her muzzle -- straightened.
"Don't worry, dear," that one said. "It's not your fault that you don't know how to speak with it. Historically speaking, Messengers aren't always aimed properly."
Applejack took a long, slow look at the unicorn who had just told an earth pony about not knowing how to --
-- Ah didn't.
Ain't gonna do it now. Not with her here.
Shoulda figured she'd be exactly this crazy.
But the one native hadn't bowed. She was just watching from the right edge of the group, two-toned red and dark pink tail lightly swaying.
"Again," Applejack tried, "if'fin anypony would like t' tell me what's goin' on?"
A rather dignified senior pegasus straightened, approached.
"This," he solemnly said, "is something I have explained before, of course. Although not as often as I would like, as Messengers are infrequent. My name is Skyfall, Miss -- Applejack, would that be correct? I am the co-leader of the Interpreters. Please step aside with me for a moment, while the others continue their analysis?"
She looked him over. Decided she could take him.
"As y'like," she said, and led the way to the tree. The stately black-and-white, semi-glittering pegasus followed.
"Now," he said once they had a little privacy, "you will, of course, accept that both Sun and Moon are divine."
There were a thousand things Applejack could have said and because she both had very little idea of where this was going and was slightly worried that she was going to find out, she said none of them.
"How could they be anything less!" Skyfall stated. "Sun brings us the light we need for survival! Moon grants a time of respite! Divine gifts, shining down upon us through every cycle! They are both divine and the creations of divinity." A thoughtful pause. "There is, of course, some argument as to whether the Princesses -- that is to say, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna -- are fully divine themselves, or simply the high priestesses who have been granted gifts as part of their communication with the divine."
"Uh-huh," Applejack managed, and considered the utterance to be singularly unsafe.
"It depends on whether you follow Orthodox Interpretation or belong to the Reform sect. We have both here today, incidentally."
"Uh-huh." It didn't seem to be making things any better.
"Reform has been picking up members lately," Skyfall confessed. "It's Princess Luna, really. We had to do so many revisions when Princess Luna returned... I suppose it was inevitable. Plus the Ultra-Orthodox split off over it."
"...yeah?" Which wasn't an improvement.
"They still don't believe she exists."
"Oh." Which was rather regretfully followed by what felt like the completely natural (and as it turned out, just as regretfully unstoppable) question. "An'... what's Princess Cadance s'pposed t' be?"
Instantly, "We don't talk about her."
"But if Sun an' Moon are talkin' with the other two, then what's she s'pposed t' be --"
A forehoof slammed into her soil. "-- We. Don't. Talk. About. Her."
"...okay," Applejack eventually tried. "So Sun and Moon are divine. An' the Diarchy is their --" she had to try the foreign-feeling word on for size, and promptly decided that nothing about it fit "-- priestesses."
He nodded.
"So what are meteors?"
"When Sun and Moon wish to speak with the masses," Skyfall told her, "they send a meteor. And then we study it. Compare it to all which has happened after previous falls, and the things which those meteors told us. In retrospect. That allows us to translate its message."
He beamed at her.
Ah'm about t' make a mistake, right?
She made it anyway.
"If they want t' talk," Applejack went for the obvious, "wouldn't they just use the Princesses?"
"You would think that," Skyfall solemnly agreed. "But there are times when they wish to speak directly with the masses. Matters which the Princesses would normally need to classify for reasons of national security. Given the number of critical events which take place within necessary shadows, I expect Moon is rather versed in realpolitik. But they both know when they need to communicate with the populace. And so they send a Messenger."
"An'... the smaller meteors, the ones which jus' burn up, they're..."
"Cover fire," the stallion wisely stated. "To keep the wrong ponies from catching on. At any rate, Miss Applejack, yours is one of the finest Messengers we've seen in years. And if it's arriving now, then clearly there's something very important being said. So if you understand now...?"
She found a smile upon her face, with no real idea what it was doing there. It might have simply been the only expression she could manage which didn't feel as if it would set off more madness. And upon seeing it, Skyfall bowed once again, then straightened and returned to the group.
"There's a crushed apple at the edge there," he told them. "Sketch that. And somepony pull out everything we have on the Squashed Lemon Of 1192."
The lone Ponyville native softly snorted, then trotted over to Applejack's frozen form.
"They're crazy," that mare softly said.
Applejack didn't move.
"It's obvious, isn't it? Just watching them. Just listening to them. They got here a little after I did, and they just assumed I was one of them!"
"...how did y'know t' come out?"
"Oh, word's been spreading," the mare casually said. "That's Twilight, mostly. She even put some of the first pictures up in the library, just before she decided to highlight the Astronomy section for the rest of the moon." A slow head shake. "I try to talk to her about the damage she's doing, but... well, she doesn't listen to me. She never does. A pony with a direct line to the Princess, who won't accept common sense..."
"An' once y'heard, y'came."
The mare nodded.
Applejack briefly dreamed of the day when she would stop asking questions while knowing the answers would just make everything worse.
"An'... why did y'come?"
The mare looked left. Right. Up. Dropped her voice into the lowest of whispers.
"I was trying to figure out who'd attacked you and why."
Applejack waited for it.
"Because that's what meteors are for," Roseluck hissed. "They're weapons. The other nations have things in the sky, looking down on us. It's in all the magazines. And if you have things in the sky, you can drop them. Somepony kicked a rock at you, Applejack. And if I were you, I'd give some serious thought to the reason. Maybe it's the missions. Maybe it's your Element. But you're being targeted. Maybe you should tell somepony about that. Like the Princess."
An' murder's illegal...
Roseluck pulled back a little.
"Or they could have been aiming for Golden Harvest," she admitted. "And missed. But it's probably you. And they missed by less."
She turned her body, watched the Interpreters at work.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" the currently active third of Ponyville's most avid conspiracy theorists asked. "How crazy they are. Meteors as messages." Snorted. "I know insanity when I see it."
Applejack, caught between Total Honesty and Kicking May Still Be An Option, kept her mouth tightly shut.
"By the way," Roseluck casually inquired, "I saw Rainbow with what looked like a new type of book the other day. It wasn't her usual adventure stuff. What's she been reading?"
"Thaumic fiction," Applejack risked. Whatever that is.
Audibly disappointed, "So not a conspiracy thriller."
"Naw."
"Well, let me know if she ever gets to one," Roseluck requested with a smile. "We're always looking for newly-opened minds."
She got through the rest of that day, and all of the next. Somehow, she got through them.
She could barely get any work done. She could barely reach any work: too much of the Acres was cut off. She wound up sneaking out onto her own land long after Moon had been lowered, dodging around the security which had been posted (because of course somepony had posted security) just so she could get anything accomplished. She didn't care about contaminating the site, if that was even still possible after the Interpreters had been through. She didn't care about the meteor. She cared about the Acres, and the Acres had been compromised.
She had to do whatever work she could manage: it was what land and mark required of her. But she also had to be awake during the day after having been up for a good part of the night, and that could quickly lead into a reprise of the Baked Bads situation. She was aware that she needed to find times in which she could rest: she just couldn't seem to locate any.
Strangers on her soil, ponies who wouldn't let her work. They weren't particularly good at answering questions, either. She would approach them with simple queries like "So when is this gonna wrap up, exactly?" and they would very carefully not say anything. It made her wonder if they were government contractors. Or contractors. Or changelings sent in the guise of contractors to drive her insane after the attempt to take her out by meteor had failed, which started to make a distressing amount of sense by the morning of Day Three.
Part of her suspected she wasn't being told because they didn't know. A little more thought they weren't committing to a date because that way, any time they finished would come across as a it-could-have-been worse relief. Something very close to majority, based on the number of well-gnawed cores which had been discarded everywhere, decided they were mostly in it for what they saw as free apples. The morning of the third day had that making a lot of sense too, albeit with somewhat more in the way of evidence.
The afternoon was when everything got that much worse.
She'd been coming back in for lunch, which had meant swinging her path out until she was just about on Goldie's territory. She needed food, because extended periods of fuming consumed calories. The same applied to magic, and she'd been spending too much of her time trying to feel just where all of those strangers were on her soil. A fair number had stayed near the meteor and with the meal approaching, too many were heading towards the early producers among her trees.
Intruders, loss of control over her own land, and a steadily-increasing lack of sleep. It all meant she wasn't in anything even remotely resembling a good mood. And then the griffon showed up.
In a way, she felt him before she saw him. It wasn't his standing on her land: she'd shut that down before reaching the house, feeling the drain from having kept it up for far too long on too little rest. It was what he did to the air. There were pegasi who could almost be distinguished by their flight's wind patterns alone: Rainbow came close to that, especially when she was trying to get away from the scene of a crash. But with this griffon, it was moisture. His voice was so dry as to virtually negate humidity. Any plant he passed by begged for water, and any ponies simply, internally, constantly begged for him to shut up.
There was a pony who had made him briefly go quiet. Made him leave, at least the first time. And so that pony was trailing him at a short distance, desperately trying to repeat the miracle.
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
"It is," the dry voice said, adding a derisive beak clack at the end, "easy to know what one is talking about, if one has any knowledge at all. This, of course, would leave you out."
Applejack knew that voice. She'd only heard it once before, at something of a distance, from the edge of a crowd -- but it was just that distinctive. It was also doing an equally distinctive amount of work in trying to dry out her eyes.
"I am ready for you this time," the griffon stated. "I was ill-prepared at the lie which your senile --" the sharpened word was aimed directly at Twilight, cut through too many defenses and triggered the first anger flare she'd seen from the librarian's horn in moons "-- Princesses tried to pass off as an impossible eclipse, for I still know that Sun and Moon cannot share sky. I heard your threat. To send me to Moon, and -- how did you put it? I would look down. And when I saw your settled zone, you would win."
"You're not welcome here!" Twilight's volume was starting to rise. "Nopony wants you --"
"Nopony wants truth!" the griffon spat. "For ponies are fools! The truth is that I thought about your lie! I saw through it! I know what you intended to do!"
She turned the corner just in time to see Twilight take a very slow breath.
"And what," the suddenly too-calm unicorn asked, "was I going to do?"
"You intended," the griffon answered, wingtips curled into his species' version of a smirk, "to teleport me to a soundstage. One which had been dressed to be like Moon in every way. I would have been looking down at a matte painting. And thus you thought to fool me."
A too-long pause.
"A soundstage."
"As going to Moon is impossible."
"So," Twilight slowly went on, "I was going to arrange a soundstage. To be just like Moon. So it would fool you."
"Oh, good," the griffon sarcastically declared. "It can't come up with original concepts, but at least it can repeat them."
"Which means temperatures close to absolute zero. Just about no gravity. Near-total vacuum. On a soundstage. Just for your benefit." Which was followed by a rather insistent "How?"
"You tell me," the griffon volleyed back. "You arranged it."
With the last of Twilight's patience running out (or in this case, running out again), "Skywise --"
"Professor Skywise!"
"Like Tartarus!"
When it came to griffons, the Bearers were in a fairly tricky position: their resident expert was Rainbow. She was the only one among them who had extensive experience in dealing with that species, had in fact been to their distant nation. A younger Rainbow had spent summers in Protocera on Gilda's ranch, and so knew more about griffons than any of them -- or rather, knew more about that specific family plus the ranching itself, as Rainbow hadn't gone beyond that area much and the filly had passed on quite a bit of her tunnel vision to the adult.
In some ways, it was enough. Applejack had learned that griffon society mostly ran on a chain of dominance, with each griffon occupying the best link they could find for themselves. Expect respect from inferiors, bend your knees slightly when among those stronger than you, and always watch for a shift in the chain. Griffons in new environments, where the chain didn't exist... they would spend a week testing everyone (or everypony) around them, pushing the population to the limits in trying to see who would stop them (the superiors) or couldn't (the inferiors). It generally wasn't a very pleasant week for the rest of the area, but learning about the griffon need for that testing had explained a lot -- and done so a little too late.
But after dealing with Skywise for the first time, Twilight had done some research of her own, trying to figure out how someone so anti-knowledge could even exist in academia. And what she'd told Applejack, fuming all the way, was that some griffons chose to treat a frozen position on the chain, one which seemed as if it could never advance any further, by removing their link entirely and turning it to face the other way.
They were called denialists, and what they denied could work out to be just about anything. One attacking medicine would claim the disease was all in the sufferer's head, the cure would in fact inflict an illness of its own, and the best thing to do was nothing at all: a state which became self-maintaining shortly before the funeral. Those who went after economics would advise that the best way to improve things for the entire population was to give just about all the money there was to the rich and let it trickle down from above, which it would almost have to because they also felt that the minimum wage needed to be altered to, say, a tenth-bit per day, which anyone could live on if they just cut out unnecessary luxuries like food and shelter: besides, couldn't ponies subsist on grass anyway? And Twilight had furiously told Applejack that there were denialists of magic, just before shutting down the entire topic forever.
Denialists built power by getting others to build a new chain, with their own link as the perpetual lead. They generally had a hard time becoming established, especially since that initial removal would typically leave them with no one willing to follow. But on rare occasions, when they met those who were equally frustrated with the system, they could gain strength. The weakest ones were annoying: the strongest could build things up until they became threats against reason itself.
(Twilight hadn't been sure that most of them believed what they were saying. Dominance partially came from making others doubt. But there were always those who had started from internal falsehoods, or lied so often that they didn't remember what the truth had once been. Nothing could ever reach them, and so they were the most dangerous.)
Skywise was a denialist of astronomy. He had originally come to Equestria to deny the eclipse. And now he was apparently back to deny a meteor.
"I won't call you a professor," Twilight hissed, with her corona flaring again. (There were spikes around the border. Applejack almost never saw Twilight's field spiking, and the leak of rage into the display was generally a sign for everypony else to back up by A Lot.) "You don't have a teaching position: I checked. Your university --"
"-- I," Skywise cut her off, "am on an extended lecture tour. Trying to teach those who cannot learn, an act of charity --"
"-- they kicked you out! I wrote them and asked! They were just that sick of you! Denialists are bad enough in any science, but when it's astronomy..." And in the escalating tones of near-ultimate offense, "The university president went into your office and found your lecture notes! You were on the verge of teaching that Sun and Moon don't exist!"
"Because," the griffon stated, "they don't. Not as you fail to understand them."
Twilight stared at him.
"How could they? Orbiting bodies which are supposedly controlled by senile ponies? How could that be real? And now there is a so-called meteor. One which is clearly just some rock dug up from the ground and dropped from a great height. I will observe it, and thus I will prove it."
"Another thought experiment?" Twilight shouted. "You think it's not real, so that means it can't be?"
Another smirk.
"Well," the griffon said, "at least one of us would be thinking." And stalked past the blazes, heading into the Acres.
Twilight's corona flared again, became nothing but spikes, almost went double, reshading the entire landscape...
...winked out.
"I hate him," she said to nopony in particular. "So much."
"Ah ain't all that fond of the chatterbeak mahself," Applejack sighed as she approached. "Y'okay there?"
"No..." The thin shoulders slumped. "He won't listen. To anything. I found out about him after the eclipse, Applejack: his life is built on not listening. And now he's back, and it's because I let ponies know about the meteor, that got into Canterlot and that's where he was. Getting kicked out of the Archives, because he's been kicked out of just about everywhere. I don't think he can even go back to Protocera. And I don't care. I just don't want him here..."
"The surveyors will stop him," Applejack tried to reassure her friend. "Ah mean, that's part of what they're around for, right? T' stop anypony, anyone who tries t' reach the meteor. That's why those Interpreters snuck in the back before the blaze circle closed, and why they beat hooves an' wings when they heard ponies gettin' near the center. They won't let him get to --"
"-- stop right there! This is a restricted --"
"-- in terms of any need to obey, you," the griffon voice declared, "do not exist."
The next sound was paws walking over a pony body.
"Ah hate this." She was surprised to hear the words emerging from her own throat, just barely recognized that she no longer had the strength to stop them. "Ah hate not havin' control, Twi. Ah know we've all joked with you 'bout how the library's just about your personal realm an' y'need to loosen up on it, Ah know that. An' right now, knowin' how Ah'm reactin'... it makes me feel like a hypocrite. But this is mah land. Mine.. It's mah land an' Ah feel like Ah ain't got no say in that no more. Even Mac's startin' t' tense up, an' Granny... she's been shakin' a foreleg at every survey pony who passes her. We need our Acres back."
A slender purple rib cage gently pressed against her. Comfort offered through presence.
Along with self-blame. "If I hadn't brought in Rainbow..."
"Ain't your fault. There's a procedure. Y'followed it. Nothin' 'bout it says ponies can't tell me how far along they are, when they'll be done. Y'didn't call out t' the crazies. Y' jus' -- made sure things were done the right way. By the checklist. Not like anypony knew what all the lines under the first were." She sighed. "Twi -- do y'know how long this usually takes?"
"I'm surprised they're still here," Twilight admitted. "I thought it was usually just a day or so. Even the increased area shouldn't have slowed them down like this. I remember a story about one big meteor which broke up just before it landed. That debris scatter was bigger than the Acres, and it still got done within a few days. I don't know what's going on, Applejack. I just know..." Her head dipped, eyes half-closed. "...I'm sorry."
"Ain't your fault," Applejack repeated.
With faint graveyard humor, "It has to be somepony's fault."
Matching the dark tone and wit, "So we'll blame whoever tried t' kill me."
"With a meteor."
"Yeah. A mahteor an' lousy aim. An' the one thing Ah want from it..." Stopped.
It hadn't been fast enough. "What?"
"A moment alone with it." That was true enough. "Just... some quiet. Me an' it. Ah've wanted that the whole time. Can't get it."
Twilight sighed. "Because it's special."
If Ah jus' knew how special...
"That settles it," Applejack decided on the spot. "Or tears it. Maybe both."
Not without worry, "Applejack?"
"Ah'm goin' for it," she declared. "Mahself. Tonight."
She'd told Mac she was feeling sick, and that had simply been a way of putting it. She was sick: of intruders, of not being able to get her work done on time, of not having control and incidentally, the stress combined with lack of sleep wasn't doing her any favors either. So she had her excuse for going to bed early, and when she woke up deep under Moon... well, her adolescence wasn't all that far behind her, and so skill at sneaking out hadn't had a real chance to erode.
Applejack moved under Moon, ignoring the blazes as she listened with her soul.
Got one comin' up on the right there. Swerved a little, reared up on her hind legs and gently planted forehooves on a treetrunk, allowing the wood to conceal her. Waited. An' we're good. Resumed.
Not as many as Ah thought there'd be, so far. Kinda expecting more patrols than this. An' they're gonna be thickest around the mahteor, 'cause of course they'll be. Closer Ah get, more careful Ah gotta be...
It was threatening to be a very magic-intensive night, along with an extremely creative one. What could she do to draw ponies away from the meteor itself: strong enough to get attention, while still capable of passing for coincidence? Had she missed any earth ponies among the group, ones who were capable of hearing her song within the soil? She would need to be so careful...
See what Ah'm dealin' with first. Then deal with it.
It felt like a plan, and so she moved on under Moon. A Moon which wasn't shedding all that much in the way of light: there wasn't much of the orb at the moment, and some of that was being blocked by a moderately-overcast sky. The lack of illumination wasn't too much of a problem, though: she knew her own land well enough to move across some portions of it in the dark. It was just that she kept inadvertently kicking apple cores into trees, and every sound...
Okay. Gettin' in range now. Let's see how many we've got...
She stretched her senses forward, asked her question. And then found herself standing frozen again, trying to reconcile the answer.
Can't be that many! Which struck her as being uncomfortably close to a self-directed lie. Shouldn't! Which was better. Why do they need so many? What are they doin' out there that takes so many ponies? That's gotta be at least two dozen --
-- aw, no...
It started as a suspicion. It took less than two hundred hoofsteps to gain confirmation.
"...measure that crater again." They were whispering, and they weren't doing it well enough. "I want to make sure we have the largest diameter right. If that matches..."
"I don't know," a more dubious mare voice decided. "It's not like a nation can collapse twice. That one's been gone for a long time."
"So maybe it's less specific than that generation first thought," Skyfall decided. "It could be a nation, not just that one. It could even be Equestria..."
"Maybe it's Protocera," another stallion decided. "There's an impeachment attempt going on there, you know."
"So it's been more than a moon since the last election?"
"I guess. I really don't follow --"
"-- and there's only been one impeachment attempt? Okay... I think we --" she heard him swallow "-- might have to consider a -- sample. My apologies, Messenger, but we didn't know about the metal content in the last similar Message until somepony went into its honored place in the museum. A little too fast. And horn-first. We need to know if that matches. So -- please forgive us for what we now do --"
-- which was when they all heard the wings.
"And what," Skywise dryly inquired from above (with his voice evaporating a few cloud edges along the way) "is this pony idiocy supposed to be?"
Applejack, now doing so partially in spite of her own desires, got closer.
"A griffon?" somepony hissed.
"That's the one they needed three ponies to kick out!" a mare yelped. "Why is he back?"
"To prove that this is nothing more than a hunk of meaningless rock, of course," the griffon declared. "So stand aside and allow --"
Two dozen bodies all went tense at once and based on the multicolored glow now dappling the trees, about half that number of coronas ignited.
"-- did you just call the Messenger," Skyfall slowly said, "a 'meaningless rock'?"
Griffons had magic of their own. Applejack didn't fully understand that magic: she knew they could perch on clouds, and there was something about their relationship with prey that could come up in certain situations. But she was completely sure they had no natural ability to counter unicorns, and that meant an intelligent griffon, especially one who was outnumbered that heavily, would consider retreat.
But this was Skywise.
"Oh, look," he declared from the heart of both delusion and boredom. "Magic. Or something trying to pass for it, like the pegasi who know perfectly well that weather manages itself according to complex systems and just take credit for the results. Assault charges are just that, as I explained to the local police chief when telling her why I hadn't committed it. Now step aside --"
"-- I knew it!" (And Applejack, who'd gone back to mostly listening with her ears, distantly wondered just how long Roseluck had been on the approach.) "I knew someone was going after Applejack! I came back to get a better look at the weapon, and what do I find? A griffon! Someone from a country that's had wars with Equestria, centuries of peace being broken because you used your rock-kickers in the sky to try and assassinate a Bearer --"
"-- wait," an Interpreter broke in, with the open confusion nothing more than the usual state of somepony who'd been listening to Roseluck. "You're not Reform sect?"
Applejack's heart felt like it was beating too fast, her breaths coming far too quickly. She tried to center herself, sent her senses into the soil for the comfort offered by the song. All that let her do was pick up on the next approach.
...because they saw the corona light. We've got the griffon, we've got ponies, we've got Roseluck, and now we've got --
"-- oh, no!" groaned the first surveyor to come out of the treeline. "Not again! Director, we talked about your -- personal studies! We can't keep covering up for you! We've been here too long as it is! The mare's been suspicious for a while now, and the longer we stall --"
"-- this," Skyfall stridently insisted, "is not a matter of mere study. It is the quest for vital knowledge, the attempt to divine events about to befall Equestria. This is a Messenger, and if we do not work out what it is saying now, before it is moved and we lose the context of the environment... Earth pony land, everypony! Apples all around us! What does that mean!"
"It means," the griffon decided, "that you are very stupid. Which, as you are a pony, would be expected -- but this is exceptional. Exactly what is this delusion called?"
"What's the conspiracy?" Roseluck shouted. "How many factions are involved in this? I just heard somepony talk about covering it all up!"
"We're making too much noise!" the surveyor desperately insisted. "I don't think it can reach the house, but --"
-- on mah soil.
Strangers. Arguments. Idiots. On mah soil.
She'd slept. But she was still tired, weary on a level which went deeper than her body, sick beyond mere illness. She'd had enough.
The fight with Big Mac in the kitchen hadn't gone that far. In her entire life, there had only been two arguments which had gone to the final level: loss of the abbreviation, the full name --and then there was a step beyond. Her big brother had to be furious to take that last hoofstep -- and Applejack had never shot it back at him in return. There were places you just didn't go in a fight, not if you wanted to find out if there was a land beyond that border. Somewhere you couldn't come back from.
So she didn't say it, not to him, for his personal version of the words. She had never called it on herself.
But she was that tired. That weary. That sick of feeling her mark being denied.
And so she stepped into the light, Moon and coronas and any glow of stupidity which might have been produced by the griffon.
Her hoofsteps resounded as they hit the earth. Her eyes were focused directly ahead, on the meteor.
"Miss Applejack --"
"-- I told you, I found them --"
"-- we have almost worked out --"
"-- oh. The moron in residence --"
-- and she ignored them all. She nearly went through one, her right shoulder and hip shoving a surveyor until she had room to turn. To face them.
She stood on her soil. Always and forever on her own ground.
"My name," the farmer stated, accent momentarily lost, blown away by the inner storm, "is Applejack Malus. My family was the first to stand on this soil, the first to occupy the land which became Ponyville. We birthed Ponyville. We are Ponyville. Without us, there is no settled zone. We were the first, and by the right of first settlement, through being directly granted our land at the hooves of Princess Celestia, we were elevated. I am the eldest daughter, the Lady Applejack Malus of House Rosaceae, an' Ah want you morons off mah land right now!"
Her right forehoof slammed into the dirt. And behind her, vibrated by impact and a little bit more, the meteor groaned, shifted a precise and very loud half-degree forward.
Several dozen ponies stared at her. And then they weren't staring at much of anything. Stopping to stare, after all, would have meant stopping.
Hoofsteps broke in all directions. Some of them ended in sliding crashes as hooves went into carelessly-discarded apple cores. Wings beat at the sky, and the pegasi made sure to get a few hits on the fleeing griffon on their way out, making the future injuries into something else he could deny. And then it was just Applejack, on her own land, as it had always been.
Well... almost. A single trembling earth pony was frozen in place, with that two-tone tail tucked between her legs.
"Um..." Applejack awkwardly began. "Ah'd kind of really appreciate it if'fin maybe you wouldn't talk t' anypony 'bout the whole 'Lady' part...?"
Roseluck blinked. Spun on a single hoof, and ran for her life.
"So," Applejack told the only pony she'd invited to witness her last moments with the meteor, the one she'd ultimately decided had to be there, "Y'ready?"
Curls bounced. Applejack took two hoofsteps forward, raised her right foreleg. Touched it.
Hello?
Ah know this might be a little... weird. And it ain't me, not usually. Not a rock talker, not a rockbreaker -- well, Ah broke one. It's a long story. An'... Ah know y'might not have heard a voice in a long time. Maybe not ever. But Ah thought... before y'left...
...Ah wanted t' try.
Jus' the once. T' talk. 'cause you're from so far away, so far Ah can hardly even imagine it, an' some of the things you could have seen...
...can y'hear me?
Could y'ever hear anypony at all?
Are there even ponies, where you're from? Or is it jus'...
Silence.
She sighed.
"Nothin'," she quietly told her friend. "Nothin' at'tall. What 'bout you? Did you --"
Quiet blue eyes regarded her for a moment. "I hardly ever get anything," was the answer. "Almost never, and when I do... maybe I'm fooling myself. Dreaming so hard, wanting to hear, that I pretend I did. And... all I hear then is myself." The curls briefly dipped, but did not dim or collapse. "Nothing, Applejack. The same nothing as always."
"Ah'm sorry, Pinkie." For she was.
Her friend smiled. "Can I ask you something?"
"'course."
"Did you ask me to be here because a rock from space is really really weird and you thought if anypony could reach it, you'd need a really really weird pony to do it?"
Applejack stared at her still-smiling friend.
"I can call it on myself," Pinkie declared. "Did you?"
"...a little," Applejack admitted. And felt the shame again.
"It wasn't a bad idea. So it's okay." The baker looked the meteor over. "It's a nice sort of rock. Lots of nickel in it, from those little shines. And some iron. But it's still a rock. It's just a rock which came a long way to see us. Where's it going next?"
"There's a place in Baltimare where they study space stuff," Applejack relayed. "So it's got a trip ahead of it. Maybe a museum, once it wraps up there."
"It'll be a nice life," Pinkie decided. "Quiet. Settled down, after traveling for so long. Maybe it'll be happy. So who are we waiting for?"
"The Meteor Mover. Ah got a letter which said he's comin' today, with his crew. 'bout ten minutes now."
They waited in silence. It might have seemed odd to the others, seeing the two of them together in simple quiet, but... theirs was the oldest friendship among the Bearers. Each was fully comfortable being around the other, and Pinkie had more capacity for quiet moments than most ponies thought.
Eventually, though, "Do you ever think about it?"
"'bout what?"
"What it's really like up there," Pinkie clarified. "Up where Sun and Moon are. And past them."
"When Ah was a filly, yeah."
"And now?"
"Ah got ground t' stand on," Applejack replied. "But there's still sky above it. Sky matters. An' Ah got Rainbow t' show me some of that thaumic fiction stuff."
"Really?"
"The covers are awesome."
And from behind them, the old voice grumbled "Break it up, you two. Or at least move it aside. Let an old jack through, especially when he's got no duty for this any more and the palace could have just left him alone..."
They both turned, stared at the donkey and the steel cart filled with heavy-duty chains.
"Cranky?" Pinkie gasped.
"Quick on the uptake there, kid."
"What... what are you doing here?"
"What do you think? Moving this meteor. Officially. As the Meteor Mover."
"But..." Pinkie appeared to have gotten stuck on a thought, and couldn't quite decide where to go from there. "But..."
He rolled his eyes. "Kid... I spent most of my life criss-crossing this continent, and going a bit beyond. Do you know what really helps with that? A job. Something which covers expenses. And jobs which make you travel are just about ideal. So I did meteor moving part-time, which was all it could ever be. I was retired from that. But there's a meteor close to me, so guess who Canterlot offers one last pay voucher to? Trust a donkey to haul a burden, right?" He looked over the meteor. "But I've got some ponies coming in to help load it. Your librarian included. Because I'm sure not trying to lift that."
"Meteor Movin'," a lightly-stunned Applejack attempted.
"They were hiring."
"What else did you do?" Pinkie tried.
"I said some words a lot. For pay."
"...what words?"
"'None of your business,'" Cranky told her. "And I got paid for it. So if the mares of whatever hour this is would just move a little?"
It took a day before Applejack really started to feel like things were getting back to normal. Two before she passed Roseluck near the bowling alley and so got to watch the mare dash inside, perhaps unsure of what the nobility might try to do against her. She figured the rest of the Trio knew by now and based on the silence from the townponies, they had all been too scared to talk.
But Roseluck hadn't been the pony she was looking for, and she eventually tracked her target by the sound of squeaking wheels and, once the squeaking had become more intense, the smell of evaporating lubricant. After that, it was just a matter of catching up at the inevitable crash site.
"Heya," Applejack passively greeted the filly, who was just picking herself out of the grass again.
Scootaloo froze.
"That moon is up now."
Automatically, "It's got another week and a half to --"
"Moon's up," Applejack firmly said, "as long as y'went around t' everypony y'conned an' gave 'em the bits back. Did you?"
A long moment, and then the filly shook her head.
"Y'wanna?"
"...I can't. There's nopony..." She swallowed. "I didn't spend them. I just usually... go with somepony."
"Y'know who y'conned?" A tiny nod. "An' where they live?" Again. "So go with me. Or the moon ain't up."
The pegasus got back onto the scooter, oriented it. The squeaks began to come from Applejack's right.
After a while, "...we've got to turn here. So I can go home and get the bits." They did. "What's in your saddlebags? They're shifting a little weird."
"Mahteors."
The filly blinked. "Really?"
"Yeah. Turns out a few pieces broke off at the bottom, 'cause that's where the impact was the hardest. Twilight took pictures, then held 'em against the main part like a jigsaw an' took some more. But the surveyors don't need 'em and... they're jus' rocks, Scootaloo. Rocks with some nickel an' iron in 'em. Rocks from... a long way off. But they're still rocks."
"Rocks," the filly softly said, "that flew. Once."
Applejack looked at the little pegasus. The risk-taker of the Crusaders, the one who felt every mark-finding attempt could be made all the more successful with a hint of danger. A pony who, if challenged to try a long jump, would insist on having multiple monsters in the gap because it was only important if you were jumping over something. A filly whom she was sometimes convinced...
The Crusaders thought their efforts would end in a triple manifest.
Applejack had nightmares about the triple funeral.
Ah don't like you.
Don't think Ah ever will. Not until y'listen. An' y'can't. Lots of ponies tried t' make that happen, an' all of 'em failed. But Ah'm afraid t' break you an' Apple Bloom apart, 'cause then if Sweetie ain't there, it's one pony bein' stupid and nopony t' go for help. Plus y'lie and y'trick ponies an' you'll do jus' anything if it means a mark. That's dangerous all by itself.
Ah don't like you.
"Jus' rocks," Applejack repeated. "Not much good t' anypony by themselves. Maybe somethin' to put on a nightstand an' look at once in a while, for all the good that does."
But Ah don't know if Ah hate you neither.
"So... y'want one?"
