while weary watcher wares wyrd wares
Eighteen apples.
Applejack eyed them like a parent staring down a chocolate-smeared child.
Eighteen glistening, juicy apples.
Flawless and perfect.
Except for the fact that she knew, without a doubt, that she’d picked twenty.
With a tired groan, she closed her eyes and massaged them through the lids. She did not have time for this today.
With her eyes closed, the sounds around her bloomed into focus, not that there was much to hear in the hydroponics bay. The gentle chitter and hiss of misters moving back and forth over the crops. The deep strobing thrum of the ship’s engines pulsing through its steel bones. The irregular rattle and clatter as the air vents cycled stale air into the room to be cleansed and reoxygenated.
That, and the sound of her own breathing.
She opened her eyes and once again narrowed them at the seventeen apples that again defied her expectations in the worst way.
Keeping the traitorous fruit firmly in the edge of her vision, she ripped her radio from its holster. A squeal of static sang out as it connected.
“Now hear this, now hear this. This is Applejack on radio twenty-one in the hydroponics lab calling Observation, over.”
She waited, but there was no reply. The line was open, she could hear the gentle static of stellar interference as it tried and failed to scramble the signal.
“Hydroponics to Observation, do you read me?”
Again, silence but for the static ebbing and crashing like waves on a beach. There was something underneath it, almost lost among the susurrations. A wet noise. Slurping, but muted. Like chewing without teeth.
She wracked her brain to try and remember the current duty roster. Whose shift was it in Observation? They were so getting a reprimand at the next crew meeting.
The memory connected with a sharp snap and with it came a realization that flared her simmering frustration into a flash of anger that she fed into the microphone.
“FIDDLESTICKS!! Stop necking with your marefriend and get on the comm!”
The crackling static vanished under a sound not unlike a pony falling out of a chair and scrambling to get a headset on. “What? No! Yes! I’m here! This is Observation, how can I help?”
“You can start by actually doing your job.”
“I was!” She lied. Badly. “I just had to step away from the console for a moment to take care of a… brief distraction.”
‘Ooh I’m anything but brief,’ came a second voice that probably thought it was too far from the mic to be picked up.
Applejack sighed and shook her head in tired resignation. “Whatever. I don’t want to know. Just tell me if anybody’s been in here lately ‘sides me?”
“Uhhh…” A sound of keys tapping away. “No? Door logs say you, then Pinkie just before dinner yesterday, then you again yesterday morning.”
She glanced back to the fifteen apples on the table.
“Alright. Thanks. Now get back to work. And Dust?” There was no reply but the rasping noise of fabric coveralls sliding against vinyl seats was enough of an answer. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning out the oxygen filters?”
“They’ll last for five more minutes.” Outed, the mare no longer bothered trying to hide her presence. The sound of their cheeks rubbing together as they struggled to share the headset’s mic nearly drowned out her closing comment. “I know for a fact Fidds doesn’t need to breathe that long.”
Applejack caught the first half of a yelp before she forcibly closed the channel. Whatever other ponies chose to get up to on their private time was no concern of hers. She just wished they’d keep it there.
And her problem remained unresolved.
Fifteen apples, a sealed room, and no one present but herself. The engines pulsed, the vents rattled, and her own heartbeat pounded in her ears.
A test then.
She turned away from the table and pretended to read one of the growbed’s displays as she listened. One second passed. Two. Three. Four.
Something shifted and she whirled around to see—
Thirteen apples.
She frowned, a small grunt of frustration before she pushed the feeling away. A few steps, taken with forced nonchalance, brought her to the center of the room. If her sight was the problem, then she’d work without it.
She closed her eyes once more and pulled everything that remained into excruciating focus.
The symphony of the ship swelled in her awareness as she let each instrument have its solo among the chorus. The pulse, the rattle, the hiss and the thrum and the beat and the clatter and the whistle and the hoofstep—
There!
“Gotcha!” She pounced, still blind to the world and trusting her ears over her eyes. She collided into the rough fabric of a mechanic’s suit and with the warmth of a body behind it. A yelp, high and frightened, pierced through her ears as her quarry struggled in vain.
Applejack opened her eyes, victory singing in her ears, only to find herself face-to-face with a sobbing, blubbering, mess of a pegasus.
“I-I’m sorry!” Tears poured from Fluttershy’s eyes, spilling over and leaving long trails through her fur. Her mane and overalls were nearly grey with dust and lint. In the corner of the room, Applejack noticed the vent’s cover was hanging loose. “I-I-I couldn’t help it! I had to!” A pair of apples rolled out of her pockets, bruising and blemishing as they bounced across the linoleum. “I tried, but I couldn’t stop myself! I wasn’t in my right mind! Can you ever forgive me?”
Her sobs echoed in Applejack’s ears, bouncing around the room like a concert hall till they assaulted her from all angles. A chorus of whimpering and sniffling.
“No.”
Fluttershy’s whole body went tense as steel before she broke down in another wave of wailing tears.
“I could forgive Fluttershy.” The crying ceased with a hitched breath. “Poor mare has an addiction, and it ain’t her fault if she falls off the wagon from time to time. She’s only equine.” She narrowed her eyes at the mare trapped beneath her. “But I suppose you wouldn’t know much about that, huh?”
Eyes locked for a long tense moment, then all the sadness and regret vanished as Fluttershy’s posture tightened. Baleful green fire consumed yellow fur, surging without heat and leaving behind a tangle of pinned ebony stalks.
“What gave me away?” The changeling’s voice echoed with a sibilant hiss that worked its way through the air like spinning maple seeds, twisting and drilling their way into the mind. “My disguise was flawless, my excuse valid. I even went so far as to sully myself with all this disgusting pony snot.”
Applejack looked down on her; an easy task from where she stood. “Two things. First, Fluttershy ain’t that much of a crybaby. Oh sure enough she’ll whimper and wallow and wail at the slightest little thing, but it takes more than you’d think to really make her break down. And the other,” She grabbed the strap of the imposter’s now-much-too-snug overalls and let it snap back against her chitin. “Fluttershy’s on permanent Data Uploading duty. Only engineering tasks need the safety overalls.”
The changeling sneered. “So what now? Going to call an emergency meeting and have me thrown off the ship?”
“Oh I don’t know about that. But this is quite a predicament you’re in. And seeing how I seem to be the one holding all the cards…” She adjusted her stance, shuffling in her legs and reaffirming just how trapped the changeling was. “I reckon you best be prepared to do whatever I say.”
Her captive struggled, but she had no leverage whatsoever against the powerfully-built farming legs that surrounded her. “What- what are you going to do?”
“I bet you could imagine it better than I could say it.”
The changeling swallowed hard as she broke out in a furious blush. Applejack burst into laughter. “Ha! I always knew you had a dirty mind, Aphid.”
“Wha-? How do you—!?”
Applejack leered as green fire coursed around her and left her as charred-black as Aphid.
“Wha- Mantis!? What are you doing here?”
“Teaching my junior a lesson about worst case scenarios.” Mantis stepped aside and allowed his comrade-in-chitin to rise. “Honestly, that was just disgraceful. What even was your plan? Starve me to death?”
Aphid squirmed. “Make you more and more paranoid until I got a prime chance for a takedown.”
Mantis shook his head. “A beginner’s strategy. You’re lucky it was me and not the real Applejack you tried it on. She wouldn’t even have noticed your efforts. She’d have walked right out the door thinking about how bad she is at counting to keep getting the wrong number of apples over and over. Not to mention you gave up at the first hint of an accusation, didn’t research your cover properly, didn’t hide your steps well enough, didn’t—”
A burst of static interrupted as his radio crackled to life. “Hey, ah, Applejack?”
Mantis raised a hoof to his lips as a flash of fire encircled his throat. “Need to work on that comms discipline, Observation.” He said in the farmer’s tones. “What is it?”
“Okay, so, you remember how you told me to do my job earlier? Well, I did. I’ve been keeping an eye on all the monitors. Including the camera for the Hydroponics Bay.”
Mantis felt more than he saw the magical fire as Aphid shifted back into Fluttershy.
“Yeah, bit late for that. Already saw and recorded everything. There’s about two dozen security ponies outside the door.”
Aphid stepped towards the vents—
“And all the vents have been sealed up except the one that leads to the incinerator. I wouldn’t suggest you try it.”
“I would,” Lightning Dust added.
“Anywho, just thought I’d let you know and interrupt your little private moment since, you know, you interrupted mine. Fair’s fair and all. Observation out.”
Aphid looked to Mantis.
Mantis looked to Aphid.
““This is all your fault.””
And then the security team broke down the doors to the shrill heralding of the Emergency Alert siren, a cry that drowned out all other sound.
