Hunter's Downfall

Leila had spent the morning running as she did normally, but she found herself in front of a farmhouse that was a deep red. She noted that with the ability to see in Ultraviolet, the driveway looked purple to her instead of its usual gray. The stairs and the railings were supposed to be white, but to her eyes, they were a bright purple, almost neon. The Reploid switched to color vision only mode, so that she could see it as humans could. However, since she couldn't tell if the building was occupied, she switched to infrared. Color all vanished around her and she could see four vaguely human shaped blobs of white. Knowing now that the building was occupied, she returned to her visible light mode and walked up the stairs. The Maverick Hunter's hand closed into a fist and she lightly knocked against the door with it.

There was silence for a moment, but then she heard a voice yell out behind the door, "Applejack! Get the door, would ya!"

"Ah'm on mah way, Granny!" another voice yelled out.

Leila could hear boots hitting the ground and the noise was getting closer. She was thankful that at least this time, Twilight Sparkle had uploaded the images of Applejack and Sunset Shimmer into her memory banks. The door opened to reveal a light tan human with blond hair and green eyes. Referencing the images, she recognized this as Applejack. "What can ah do ye fer?" the farmgirl asked.

The Reploid extended her hand with a smile, "Hi, my name is Leila and you're one of Twilight's friends. Applejack if I'm not wrong," she introduced herself.

Applejack recognized the name that she had just heard as something that Twilight had told her she had found a while back. "Well don't just stand there, come on in. Any friend of Twilight's is a friend of the Apples!" she stated proudly.

The Maverick Hunter smiled as the farmgirl stepped out from in front of the door and then walked into the farmhouse. It was rustic for sure, reminding her of the ancient images that had been done with paints and pencils. Much to her surprise, there was an analog clock. Something that belonged in a museum in her time rather than any sort of wall. "We were just about ta have breakfast! Ya can join us if ya'd like!" the farmgirl said, excitedly.

"Applejack! Who is it?" called out another voice.

"Oh, Granny, it's just a friend of Twilight's!" the farmgirl replied just as loudly.

Leila walked into the kitchen, following what her nasal sensors told her was the chemical compounds that created the scent of food. She saw a stocky elderly green woman standing in the kitchen with her white hair in a bun. This surprised the Reploid and she once again started to wish that she could taste something. She then started to wonder what the world of taste was like and what foods were like to those who did have a sense of taste. She was able to detect the texture and the temperature of what she put in her mouth, but that was it. "I'm not hungry," she said politely, hiding the fact that she was a robot. But the truth was, she was incapable of feeling hungry.

"Nonsense there youngin, ya look like ya ain't been eatin well enough! Yer nothin' but skin and bones!" said the elderly woman to her.

Applejack stepped in, "Truth is Granny, she's not organic like us. She's a machine that's just built ta look and act exactly like a human. She even has free will accordin to Twilight. Unlike us, she doesn't need ta eat food, she gets all of her energy from the sun," she said.

Granny Smith walked over and squinted at the Maverick Hunter, "If yer really a machine, Ah want ya ta prove it. Where's yer harvestin tools?" she asked.

Leila turned her head to look at the farmgirl who shrugged and then she turned her head back to see the shorter elderly lady squinting at her still. She sighed and placed her hand on her forehead, "I'm not a farming Reploid. I was built with the specifications of a police Reploid, but I instead decided to join the Maverick Hunters to better protect people and innocent Reploids. I tend to keep my being a machine on the down low because I don't wish to cause a panic among the people of this world. I don't have any farming protocols installed anyhow, so I couldn't farm even if I wanted to. However, I do have the capacity to learn and evolve my programming, so I could learn farming," she confessed.

"Is that so?" the elderly woman asked suspiciously.

The Maverick Hunter nodded honestly, "Yes."

"Well Ah'll be, a machine that can learn farmin, That'll be a real help around the farm," Granny Smith said with a smile.

Applejack grabbed Leila's shoulder, "Granny's a bit excited ta hear that ya can learn farmin, but the question is, do ya want ta? Cause Ah can teach ya after breakfast," she said with a soft smile.

Leila turned her head and nodded with a smile and left the kitchen to go out back to look for the hydroponics buildings. Much to her confusion and bewilderment, there weren't any. There were just fields of crops and orchids of apple trees. This was something that she knew existed at one time, but according to historical texts, this fell out of favor around the year of 2096. The last farmland was rendered unusable by the Eurasia incident and the Nightmare incident that had followed. She sat down under the shade of an apple tree and just watched the wind blow all the different plants gently to pass the time.

Though earlier models of robots couldn't experience boredom, Reploids could, and Leila was starting to feel as such as the time went on and she didn't have much to do. She took her hat off and placed it on the ground as she stood up, letting the wind blow through her hair. She absentmindedly unlocked her buster functionality and opened a compartment in her left arm where she stored the elemental chips that she had received during her fights with the Mavericks. Though many of them were discontinued and only affected her buster. The main three that she used, the Fire, Ice, and Thunder chips also affected her resistance to that specific attack element, while giving her a weakness to another element.

It wasn't a perfect system and was stated to be one of several prototypes of a system that they were working on to allow Reploids to be able to change the element of their tools to make them able to be more effective at jobs they learn later on, even if they weren't built for it. She grabbed a Light Chip and just started to toss it up and down to give herself some sort of mental stimulation.

"Now Ah ain't figured ya ta be the sort that gets bored easily," said Applejack from behind her.

Leila caught the chip in her right hand and slotted it back into the storage spot. The compartment on her arm closed itself and sealed tight once more as she turned her head towards the farmgirl, "You were in there for an hour and there weren't many animals out here to see. I needed some form of stimulation for my mind," she replied.

The farmgirl laughed and walked over to the Reploid, patting her on the shoulder, "Follow me to the barn and we'll grab some of the tools you'll need in order to prepare the soil for the next crops," she said.

Leila nodded and followed Applejack, but something bothered her. No one where she came from did intensive farming like this. When the two arrived at the barn, the Reploid finally decided to say what was on her mind, "Why aren't there any hydroponics here?"

The blond farmer looked at her with a mix of confusion and worry, "Sugarcube, Ah don't know what hydroponics are, mah family's been tendin ta this land fer generations," she said in response.

The Maverick Hunter accessed her database, "Where I come from, all of our food is grown in buildings which are more compact but taller than any farmland. This was done because of the population increase from seven point four billion people to roughly fourteen billion by the year two thousand and ninety-two. There wasn't enough land to have wide farms and feed everyone on the planet, while protecting the native species of the land. So farmers switched from intensive farming to hydroponics. Some farmers however remained on their old farmlands until the Eurasia incident which wiped out the rest of the farmlands. When the humans went underground, they started to rely purely on hyrdoponic farming and aeroponic farming, which is them growing plants without the use of soil or any sort of aggregate medium," she reported.

Applejack's face twisted further in confusion, "You mentioned the Eurasia incident, what was that?" she asked.

Leila accessed that part of her memory banks, "In the early twenty-second century, a pair of Mavericks known as Sigma and Dynamo attempted to crash a space colony into the Earth, but they weren't able to succeed in doing so, being stopped by a legendary hero called Zero. The space colony had been abandoned prior to this and was destroyed, however, with it being in low earth orbit... debris rained down and caused significant damage to the side of the planet that it was facing. This also kicked up dust that circled around the planet, limiting the sunlight and lowering temperatures," she answered.

"Ah see, well Ah'm glad that yer world still was able ta survive and keep the long history and tradition of farmin alive," the farmgirl replied with a smile.

The two of them looked at each other and shared a smile between them, "Secretly, I wish that I could've helped with the recovery efforts back then. It's a rather fascinating read when you go back through the historical documents. Just imagining all of the Reploid heroes that were around back then that made it so that the Earth was habitable again for humanity. Perhaps I would've been able to make a difference and the Earth would've been just a little bit better," Leila said as her smile turned wistful.

Applejack chuckled a little at the machine's optimism, "Ya got a big heart, Leila. Ah hope ya will be able to make a difference in this world. Ah can still teach ya farmin techniques if ya'd like," she offered.

"Do you have any animals?", the Reploid asked, her face lighting up.

The farmgirl nodded and pointed towards the stables, "If ya would follow me, Ah'll show ya the different animals we got here," she stated with a smirk.

The Maverick Hunter followed the farmer and the two could hear all sorts of animal sounds. They were familiar to Applejack, but to Leila, they were completely foreign. Animals that she had never heard or seen, but weren't extinct where she came from. One of the things that humans had taken underground with them during the Eurasia Incident were their farm animals. Upon entering the stable, she saw a number of horses and a few cows. She walked up to one of the cows and placed her hand on its head to be greeted with a mooing sound.

"If ya need to be shown where everything is, Ah can help ya with that. Just holler, Ah'm gonna be workin out in the fields," Applejack told her.

"Alright," Leila responded.

As the farmer left the stables, the Reploid watched the different animals, it was always so much better to see them up close than it was to see them in pictures. They looked and seemed different from the still images that she had seen before. She let a laugh go before she turned to the door of the stable and noticed the sun had risen above the doors. It was still morning and she had plenty of time to spend with these wonderful creatures. In the back of her mind, she wondered if Fluttershy ever came over here to spend time with the animals and help Applejack out. She would ask her the next time she saw her, but for now she turned her head back to the cow she was petting and a soft smile crept onto her face.