The Adventures of the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well!

The brothers led Applejack inside of the building and up to an upstairs office. The facility, more specifically the main building as opposed to the rest of the abandoned factory, was the stark contrast to the warehouse where I had my fight with one of Shills robots. For one thing, the place was not empty, far from it. The conveyor belts were fully operational, and on them were multiple mechanical parts for what I assumed were the robots they made. As for why they were so infatuated with their construction, I have yet to find out. In another room upstairs from the ground floor factory was a science laboratory far superior to any that I have ever seen, of course with the exception of the one back at Princess Celestia's castle. Cases upon cases of tonics and potions were stacked in the labs corner, the brothers were clearly educated in the fields of chemistry, robotics and mechanics. Far from the typical con artist as I originally had believed. I was able to see the entire factory layout from atop of the roofs skylight window that oversaw the ground floor, and two separate skylights that were over the office and lab. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see if there were any other rooms on the second floor. I wanted to enter, but if the warehouse was any indication of the brothers' security measures, I would end up tripping an alarm without knowing it, possibly putting Applejack in danger.

I perched over the skylight that oversaw the office, watching carefully as the trio entered the room with one pane lifted slightly up to hear the conversation. Flim pulled out a chair for AJ to sit in, while Flam walked around the executive desk in the middle of the room, plotting down onto the leather office chair across from AJ. The pair had on the same happy go lucky jolly smiles that they wore back at the farm.

“Well Applejack, this surely was an unexpected surprise my dear. You could imagine our surprise when you called to arrange this meeting,” said Flam, fiddling with his thumbs as he smiled at AJ. Flim paced back and forth behind her with his hands behind his back, and his nose high into the air. The brim of his hat was lowered over his eyes, casting them in a shade of black. The way his white pearly teeth shined in that state was a little off putting to say the least.

“So, I do hope that this party you’ve orchestrated is because you possess the money,” said Flim. AJ stared at the floor; her legs closed in together with her hands pressed tightly against her lap. Seeing her look so weak and shy just didn’t sit right with me.

“I uh...well, no. That ain’t exactly why I’m here.” Even behind his bushy beard, you could see Flam’s smile drop. It was even more tense when Flim stopped pacing, yet his smile never changed.

“Then, what is this meeting for? For your sake, I hope it doesn’t waste our time.” The threatening tone in Flim’s voice masked by his smile was enough to have me on edge, preparing me for whatever would happen next. AJ twirled her finger around the folds of her skirt, clearly petrified on how to speak whatever was on her mind.

“I uh...well...I don’t have the money, and I wanted to discuss other ways we could-”

The sudden slam of Flams fist on the desk made AJ freeze up like a cat with its hairs risen. Still staring intently at AJ, he spoke to his brother who was standing behind her, still wearing that creepy smile across his face.

“Dear brother, have we had any word from Titan or Mr. Shill?”

“Unfortunately not,” Flim sighed. “Titan hasn’t answered his phone at all tonight and Mr. Shill is still missing after the warehouse incident. We’ll have to deal with the biker's unprofessionalism later, but for tonight you and I will have to take charge on the discipline.” Flam, still staring at AJ, grinned menacingly.

“Oh good, it’s been a while. Couldn’t ask for a better person to do it too.” AJ shifted around the chair uncomfortably, nervous at what the two brothers were insinuating.

“Wha...what are ya’ll talking about? What are y’all going to do to me?” Flim placed both his hands on the headboard of the chair from behind, causing Applejack to remain firmly seated out of fear.

“Well my dear, it pains me to say this, it really does. But you have to learn the consequences of your actions,” said Flim. Flam opened a drawer on his side of the desk, shifting around a bit before pulling out a cordless drill and one large screw. AJ eyed down the objects as the growing worry started to form across her face.

“For every time you don’t pay, you will be punished accordingly. So, I’m going to need you to put your hand on the table. You're going to drill a screw into it and you're going to rip it out,” explained Flam.

“What? You people are insane,” cried out AJ. She stood up from the chair, backing away from the table without a single objection from either of the brothers. Flim didn’t move an inch, still smiling at her with the brim of his hat covering his eyes, while Flam just stared at her with a smug expression.

“Oh, indeed we are. But you’re going to go through with this,” said Flim.

“No, I’m going to the police, y’all have taken this far enough,” declared AJ. Flim began to step closer to her, breaking the grip of fear that grasped her. She stood their defiantly, one leg stepped back as she was ready to strike on either of them if they should try anything funny. But neither of the brothers seemed bothered by it.

“Oh my dear, please don’t make this difficult on yourself,” said Flam. AJ gave a light, albeit nervous, smirk.

“Heh, you two scrawny backbreakers won’t be able to touch me. I’ll knock both of your daylights out.”

“Oh I have no doubt, you are physically superior to us, and we are both aware it would be impossible to restrain you. Well, we do have ways to do so, but that’s not the point. You’re going to do all of this on your own accord,” said Flim.

“And what makes you bozos think that’s going to happen?” Suddenly, Flam picked up the drill and screw, and slammed his other arm onto the table before aggressively throwing everything off of it. Papers and pencils went flying across the other side of the room, and once the desk was cleared of all its content, he slammed the base of the drill back onto the desk violently.

“YOU’RE GOING TO DO AS WE SAY YOUNG LADY, OR IN THE NAME OF GOD WE’LL HAVE OUR MEN HEAD OVER TO YOUR FARM AND THEY’LL BEAT THAT OLD HAG OF A GRANDMOTHER OF YOURS TO DEATH,” yelled Flam, the shift in his tone from gentleness to pure venom made even me jump a bit.

“Quite so. Or perhaps you’d prefer to have that stupid hick brother of yours shot down in the street? Or maybe you’d like that little brat sister to be abducted when she’s walking home from school or out with her friends, and the last thing you’ll ever see of her is her photos on some escort site. Hell, we’ll even nab her friends as well. But why stop there? We can send your cousin Braeburns head in a box to your front door, or make your other cousin Babs seed die from a drug overdose, pinning the blame of it on her older sister. Wouldn’t that be fun? Flam, where were those two located again? Amarillo Texas and Brooklyn New York?”

“Last I checked brother, yes. Though, it wouldn’t be too hard to find any new address they move to. If it is, well this family is big enough to grab others. Isn’t that right Applejack,” smiled Flam. “Now, pretty please with a cherry on top, put your apple fucking hand on the God damn table and pick up the drill.” AJ stood there completely frozen, her mind struggling to grasp the severity of the situation. I could only imagine what was going through her head at that moment. I knew to AJ, she felt responsible for her family, so all she was taking from any of this was the very real notion that these sick and twisted bastards were going to kill them...or worse. After a while of just standing there in utter horror, Flim sighed and turned to his brother.

“It appears she rather take the hard route. Very well, Flam, please pass me the phone so I can call our contacts in Texas to head over to the Apple farm in Amarillo.” The words suddenly woke AJ up from her mused state, and as if the weight of it all overtook her, her legs began to wobble and she fell onto her knees, her eyes starting to turn glossy as her breathing intensified.

“No, please...leave my family alone...I’m begging you,” AJ cried out, but both brothers just glared down at her.

“Too late young lady,” snarled Flam. The entire time, I didn’t even notice how tight my fists were clenched, and I felt the sudden rush of violence overtake me. I’ve heard enough, and have had enough of the abhorrent scene playing before me. It was time to act.

“Hey Red... contact the police. Use the burner phone on my nightstand. Ask for Easy Glider and tell him to send as many units as he can to the abandoned apple cider factory off of main street near Peaches farm. I’m going in,” I said speaking to the earpiece.

“Roger that Sunset. Making the call now. Make sure you get that girl out of there,” responded Red. I stood up, taking a few steps back from the skylight, enough to get a running start. “Oh, and Sunset,” continued Red. “Be careful.”

“Of course.” With a smile spread wide across my face, I ran at full speed towards the skylight, jumping high into the air when I reached its base. With my legs coiled in like a spring, I shot them through the glass, crashing through the skyline and shooting into the room like a missile. The rugged edges of my cloak flew in every direction as the upper half covered my body, and with one arm outside of it, I pressed a hand over the top of my fedora, keeping it firmly in place as I flew in from the ceiling. I crash landed directly onto the executive desk in the middle of the room, shattering it to pieces as if it were made of nothing more than glass. Flam flew off of his chair, shielding his face from the falling bits of glass and metal that rained around us accompanied by the sudden intrusion of moonlight into the room. Flim stumbled into the wall, while Applejack curled into a ball next to the door, both shielding themselves from the flying pieces of debris from the desk scattering all over the room. Hunched over a bit, I peered up at Flam, shooting him a deadly cold stare. Through his fingers, I could see the fear and shock displayed in his eyes.

“I warned both of you. I would only give you one chance to do the right thing. Now you’ll pay the consequences for your blatant disregard for the law,” I growled. The three individuals in the room peaked from their cover, staring at me with astounded looks from my sudden coup de main. AJ just looked more terrified than anything, while the brothers' mouths were wide open. Without warning, Flam grabbed the drill and lunged at me, the sound of its buzzing replacing the previous silence that engulfed us. Stupid of him, I thought. Without much effort, I dodged his futile attack and threw a round house kick to his stomach. He fell to his knees, holding his gut as his hand dropped the drill. Wasting no time, I picked up the drill with one hand, and grabbed the collar of his shirt with the other, before repeatedly bashing the drills base against his face. The loud crack of his nose followed by his whimper didn’t stop my relentless attack, but what did stop me was the beep sound from behind me.

Halting my vicious attack, I looked over my shoulder, and my heart suddenly dropped. Flim held a small remote controller in both of his hands, a small red light at the top of it was blinking rapidly. The wicked smile on his face told me all I needed to know.

Shit.

“APPLEJACK, RUN!” was all I could shout before the large metal arm of a robot came crashing through the wall in front of me. Its metal claw wacked me across the room and out through the office window next to the door. While dazed, I felt myself flying over the second-floor balcony, and crash landing onto the conveyor belt of the first-floor factory. While the dust around me settled down, I rolled off of the conveyor belt, falling onto the hard ground on my hands and knees. “Ugh...damn. Stupid of me. I should have checked the factory before jumping in there. Damn my hot-headed temper,” I said to myself out loud. Not even two minutes inside of the factory, and my whole body was already on fire. I was getting really sick of being tossed across dangerous facilities like factories and warehouses. Just once I’d like to land on top of pillows or something instead of forklifts or crates or conveyor belts.

“Sunset, talk to me. Are you okay?” I heard Red say through the static noise in my ear.

“Yeah...bastards decided to take out another robot I guess.” I looked up to the second-floor balcony, wincing at the giant hole through the office window I had just shot out of. I saw AJ barging through the door, and running for dear life across the balcony. Thankfully, she was far enough down the balcony when the rest of the robot came crashing through the wall, shattering the balcony and everything around it into pieces. The robot was huge, its lower half crashed through the wall of the first-floor room directly below the office. AJ ran down the stairs, narrowly avoiding the rest of the balcony collapsing in on itself like dominoes. Once she got to the first floor, she froze up when she saw me in the middle of the floor. She looked as if she wanted to come help me, but I glared at her before shouting at her, “GET OUT OF HERE APPLEJACK! NOW DAMNIT!” The urgency in my voice was enough for her not to challenge my order, and even though it was clear she had to fight back an urge, she nodded and ran out of the factories exit door.

I stood up on my feet, clutching my side as I felt a sharp pain on my abdomen. The robot slowly emerged from the huge cloud of dust caused by its sudden intrusion through the concrete walls. By all things Celestia, the damn thing was massive. Far bigger than the one back at the warehouse. It almost looked like one of those old tin windup toy robots, with the blocky body and goofy ass legs. It even walked like a windup toy. The whole thing was red, with bits of chrome peeking out from its joints. The front of its torso had multiple lights and meters blinking different colors. Its chrome clampers for hands were a lot bigger and thicker than Silver Shill’s robot, and the back of it, much like the other one, had multiple exhaust pipes protruding out, like the quills of a hedgehog, shooting steam into the air. There was a massive glass dome for its head, clouded in fog so you couldn’t see inside of it. Once the damn contraption was completely out of the smoke and in full view, it stopped. The dome on its head slowly began to open, releasing the fog into the air. Once it was completely up, and the fog had dissipated, the two brothers were in full sight. It looked like they were seated in a cockpit of some sort. Levers and buttons on a control panel were in front of them. Flim had both hands-on different levers, while Flam had one hand on the dashboard and another pressing a towel under his nose to stop the flow of blood leaking out of his nostrils from when I broke it. Unlike Flim, he wasn’t smiling at me.

“Well, this has certainly been a surprise. We didn’t think you’d find us so quickly. I assume the reason for the biker's lack of communication is because of you then?”

“Heh, you’re the smart asses, you tell me,” I retorted. Flim sighed, and pulled a lever centered in between the two, causing the dome to close back over them and fill with fog. He spoke through a speaker coming from the robot's center.

“Never mind that. You being here actually makes things quite easy for us. We call this glorious invention of ours the Super Cider Squeezy 6000, named after our very own humble abode. With it, we’re going to squash you like a bug.” The bot began to move towards me, each step omitting miniature earthquakes causing the whole building to rattle.

Damn, how am I going to take this thing down, I thought to myself. I began to think back to the previous encounter I had with a damn giant mechanized beast, and my attention went to the exhaust pipes protruding out of its back. I could...no, damnit I can’t. I have nothing to pour in there, I thought, remembering the chemicals I used to destroy the previous robot. That’s when I suddenly remembered the lab, and all the toxins and unknown chemicals piled in the crates. There was just one problem with that idea. The second floor was completely destroyed, and I didn’t know how I was going to get up there to the lab in the back of the building. Let alone with this giant hunk of shit blocking my way. But I had to figure out something, and fast before the police arrive. No telling how many officers could be in danger with this thing still standing.

With the robot only a couple of feet away, it raised its arm, and steam blew out around the claw, filling the air with an ear-piercing screech of hot air like a boiling tea kettle before the claw shot out of the arm like a cannon ball. The speed of the projectile was so fast that I barely had any chance to dodge it, jumping high into the air as the claw crashed into the ground below me, its base connected to a long cast-iron chain that was coming out of the end of the robot's arm. Quickly seizing the opportunity, I landed on top of the claw that was still lodged into the ground, before running up the chain and climbing onto the robot's arm. My plan was to climb up the robot, and jump onto the shattered remains of the second floor to reach the lab, but my plan was kaput once I was on the robot's shoulder.

“Oh no no no no no! That simply will not work my dear,” echoed the voice of Flam from the speaker, and without any warning, the robot ignited in a shield of electricity, engulfing every inch of it from head to toe.

“AGHHHHHH,” I screamed as I felt my entire body fry, electricity coursing through my insides. Every organ in my body felt on fire, and I could smell the smoke emanating off of my flesh. The shock caused my entire body to tense up, and I couldn’t move an inch, my feet were firmly planted on the robot's shoulder as its defense mechanism continued to electrocute me. Through my own screams and the deafening noise of the static shock, I could faintly hear the brothers laughing through the robot's speaker. They could have kept me like that until I was nothing more than a burnt corpse, but either because the attack only lasted for a short period of time or they simply wanted to keep my torment going even longer for their own amusement, next to my foot a small compartment opened up, and a small metal black ball shot into the air, hovering near my face for a second before it lit up red.

KABOOOOOM, the little ball exploded next to my face, and my entire smoke covered body flew off of the robot's shoulder, crashing onto another pile of metal scraps and shards, blood gushed out of my mouth as my horsed voice yelped in agony.

“Sunset! What was that? What’s going on,” Red repeated, but I could barely hear her. All I could hear was white noise, and the vision of my right eye where the bomb blew near was hazy, almost turning black. I was sure I went blind in that eye. Attempting to get up, the jagged edges of the scrap metal underneath me tore through my cape, stabbing my back like hundreds of little needles. The pain was so unbearable. My attempt to stand up amounted to me rolling off of the mountain of debris, and falling onto the floor. Desperately trying to regain my senses, I failed to hear the dozens of marble like objects falling to the ground around me. I was only aware of their presence when my vision slowly cleared up, but when I saw what the objects were, my eyes widened in fear.

Oh shit, was all I could think of as the dozens of balls around me lit up like fire crackers, the sea of mines exploding all around me. I felt myself being shot into the air; parts of my costume were on fire as I flew like a damn shooting star. My fedora at this point had flown away, and the only thing that stopped me from my flight of pain was the hard impact into the robots outstretched claw, catching me mid air like a baseball.

“GOTHCA,” Flim shouted gleefully. The hand closed in around me, and I was stuck inside of it like dirt in a construction cranes claw, all while I was desperately trying to put out the bits of fire that now felt a million times hotter in the confined space of iron. “Let’s see if you can survive this,” I heard the muffled voice of Flim say from outside the claw, but I was so dazed from the previous explosions that I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. The attacks didn’t give me any room to breathe. I felt the claw shoot out into the air, causing me to slam against the iron walls of the tight space like a ball in a rattle. I assumed that they were swinging the claw with the chain all around the factory, slamming it against walls, machines and other objects. All while I violently shook around inside of it, my entire body rattling back and forth, and up and down as I fought the urge to slip out of consciousness. After what must have been at least two minutes of slamming me around, the claw opened up, and I was thrown like a baseball right into the upper windows of the factory.

Crashing through the glass barrier, I felt the cool breeze of the outside world send chills all around me, and given just how cold it felt, I imagined my costume was hanging on by threads. As I flew out of the building, I flung right into the side of Applejacks truck, denting the door in as my back felt like it was on fire.

“Ugh...damn...everything hurts right now,” I found myself muttering. Red was saying something, but I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even register it. Falling out of the truck, I fell onto my side, the cold concrete floor felt strangely comfortable, especially on account to the ass beating I just endured. Rolling over on my back, I could hear my struggle to breathe, and my vision was slowly returning. That’s when I saw her.

“Oh my God...Sunset?” I turned my head more to the side to see Applejack standing next to me with her hands over her mouth and tears rushing down from her horrified eyes.

What the hell did she just say? My tired eyes shifted to the trucks broken off door view mirror that was lying beside me, and suddenly fear grew in my mind. Half of my mask was completely torn off, exposing half of my face. Large flocks of my fiery hair were sticking out of rips atop of the mask, even with burnt tips, the color was clear as day. Bits of my skin was showing through the unprecedented amount of blood and black ash, and the color of my cyan irises could still be seen through my red, blood covered eyes. I could only see my face, but I imagined the rest of my costume wasn’t so different. Barely breathing, and struggling to stay alive, I looked back up at applejack, feeling the drips of bloodied tears fall from my face and onto the ground.

“Oh no...”