Applejack Is An Interdimensional Alien

Blue sat in the car sadly with Angelina and the mare, sniffling sadly as he looked up at the pony sitting next to him. He couldn’t comprehend how in the world it could be possible that she didn’t remember him, seeing as he certainly remembered her. He closed his eyes and put his cheek on her leg, the mare flinching and grimacing at the gesture.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Angelina said suddenly. “I’m, uh… I’m sure she’ll remember you if we can… do something… maybe…”

“I really don’t know what’s going on here,” Blue’s mother responded. “I’ve always been a pony. I’m sorry, but… but it's just the truth.”

“Maybe she’s just playing a joke on us…” Blue trailed off sadly, getting a reply from Angelina.

“No, she’s not. A lot of the people I met start to forget who they are, especially if they absorb too much magic.” She paused at that before continuing, “Which means we really shouldn’t be staying out here for too long, especially since I was here all last night.”

“We’re not leaving without Applejack,” the colt told her. “She said she was going to help me, and we can’t just leave her here.”

“I’m not going to leave her, I’m just concerned about it all. We can’t stay out here too long. It’s not good for us.”

“Hello?” Applejack called. “Anypony in here?”

She entered the store to see… she didn’t know. It was a building, yes, but not like anything she’s ever seen before. White tiles lined the floor, mostly anyway, every so often a blue tile in its place. Near the front were signs with numbers on them from one to twenty that were partitioned off every so often, with black counters and weird machines on top of them. In front of many of them on the ground were thousands of green pieces of paper with weird creatures faces on them as far as she could tell. There were also baskets that looked to be used to wheel things around that were empty for the most part except for the occasional box, although some of them had cans and things in them.

There was also a smell in the air, one that wasn’t great smelling, like rancid milk. It made her scrunch her nose, but it was faint enough that after a few deep inhales she basically couldn’t smell it any more. Other than that, it smelled a bit dusty in the building, like one that had been abandoned for a few weeks or months.

“Makes sense though. If all that stuff happened, they probably couldn’t get in here. They might have starved. Celestia, what happened?”

“Anypony in here?” Applejack called, trying to hear if there was somepony else inside. She thought she remembered seeing somepony behind Blue’s mother, but couldn’t remember, although she did know that she didn’t hear any creature at the moment.

“Oh, what am Ah gonna do?” she asked herself as she sighed, taking a breath as the full weight of what was happening started to settle in on her. She was trapped here. She really was. Not in the building maybe, but on this world, far away from her friends and family, not knowing what she was really supposed to be doing, completely guessing her actions. What was she even doing in this building? Looking for somepony? What would she say when she found them? She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. That was what she had all her friends for: to help her out with that part. Except her friends weren’t here.

“No, AJ, don’t start gettin’ down on yourself now. You gotta stay strong. Cryin’ and complainin’ ain’t ever got anypony nowhere. Just gotta keep pushing on and hope ya find something to latch onto. It’ll be alright.”

She took another breath and shook her mane out of her face as she walked down the path in front of her, looking at the things on either side of the walkway as she passed to see if anything was useful. It was a store alright, she could say that much, but it wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen. This place had everything, from pots and pans to toys to clothes to mattresses to food to everything else she could imagine. Nothing like this existed in Ponyville, and she wondered how anypony could possibly find what they were looking for in a place like this.

Eventually, after a few minutes, she found herself walking through a section of the store that held books, although even the books they had were weird. Many of them were like normal books, but many of them looked more like pamphlets, except bigger. She eyed the titles as she passed for anything useful, although she couldn’t really say that anything stood out to her, not until she got to nearly the end.

“The end of days: How to survive the coming apocalypse, including the secrets to using magic to your benefit?” she read as she tilted her head. It was quite a mouthful for a title, and seemed like it was written recently, saying that the previous week’s topic was about famine and radiation. She was almost certain this was written recently, although probably before Blue and Angelina were turned into ponies seeing as it had strange creatures pictured on the cover of the magazine.

“That’s a good one,” somepony said behind her as the mare eyed it, causing Applejack to nearly jump out of her coat. She turned around to see a stallion who looked a lot like her cousin Braeburn, although with blue eyes, no clothes, and without a country accent and cutie mark.

“I’ve read it a few times, and I’ve learned some cool things even though I’m an Earth pony. I even met the person who wrote that, but that was before this whole mess happened. But I learned something, and I’m pretty sure you can learn something too if you give it a read.”

“It certainly looks interesting, but why are y’all tellin’ me this? Who are you?”

“My name is Happy Hoof, but a better question than that is: What are you doing outside of Equestria, Applejack?”