Pinkie Pie kept honking the horn of the cart, the accelerating rhythm indicating her growing frustration.
“RARITY!! What is TAKING you so long?! My sister is going to have a FOAL and I wanna see it while it’s still STICKY and smelling like FRESH BABY!”
Rarity threw her luggage onto the cart and hopped on herself, almost too startled to frown over Pinkie's rudeness.
“My, my, I have never travelled with so little baggage... Had you given me five more minutes...”
“NO MORE MINUTES!", Pinkie Pie cried, "WE GO! Hey-HO and whatnot...”
If she’d had a whip, the stallion pulling the cart would have regretted the day he picked his career. Maybe he already did. His cutie mark was a diploma from Hoofward.
“Y-yes m’am... right away...”
The cart started jolting over the broad dirt path that lead from Ponyville to the ridge of hills that separated the area from the badlands.
Twilight Sparkle was a little worried when she thought about the coming hours. With all of the mane six crammed together, plus their luggage and the mind-boggling number of baby-presents Pinkie Pie was taking with her, there was hardly enough room to shift your weight around when your muscles were getting sore.
While the railway network had expanded rapidly all over Equestria these last decades, the infrastructure of the badlands was still largely unreliable and subject to strange... outages.
"Tell me again what happened to the train going to your parent's home town?", Twilight said to Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie streched her neck over the length of the cart, bulging her eyeballs into Twilight's face.
"That's just the thing... NOPONY knows!"
Without breaking eye contact with Twilight, she reached into one of the saddle packs and produced a tiny toy train.
"That's why I'll get the baby THIS! It's like a good luck charm for travels by train. So that's useful."
With a low, mysterious whisper, she added:
"Also, it's a TOY."
She retracted her neck.
Applejack chuckled.
“Ol’ Pinkie will be a great aunt, don’t you think?”
“Sure”, Twilight said, and lowering her voice, she added: “A tad scary, too.”
“Word. I’m afraid I might be sittin’ on the pie... Are newborn foals even supposed to eat pie...?”
"Every Pie is eating pie", Pinkie objected, popping up between the two of them. "That's how we got our family name. Or maybe that came later, and my ancestors were cannibals, I always forget. And yes."
"Yes what?"
"You really are sitting in a pie. But no, it is not the pie. I brought one for each of you to sit in."
Pinkie twisted her neck to search the skies. "Rainbow Dash!! Oh Rainbow Dash! Come sit in your pie! It's your favorite!"
The weather pegasus rolled her eyes and pretended to be deaf to this invitation. She had decided earlier on that for now she preferred flying to playing "sardine", using the cart only as a reference point.
-
They reached the hills in under one hour, and were rewarded with a panorama view of the badlands.
Rainbow Dash, high up in the sky, was of course the first one to get a glimpse of the land.
The other fillies flinched at Rainbow's sudden - and not exactly family friendly - cry of disbelief, with the exception of Pinkie Pie, who merely giggled.
"Rainbow!", Rarity complained, "Language!"
Then the cart reached the highest point of the hill, and the white unicorn lady turned a little green around the nose.
The badlands. That wasn't just a name, Twilight realized right then and there. It was also an accurate description.
They had already passed by the badlands when traveling by train, though they had only ever caught glimpses of it. It was quite another thing to have the entire land laid out before you like this.
A large plain of grey, volcanic dirt stretching all the way to the horizon, some black, rigged mountain chain in the distance. The sparse plant life couldn't even be called plant life most of the time, because it was dead.
When the wind was blowing, it was shaking your bones with both its gruesome howling and its chilling cold. When it wasn't, a strange, sickly warmth was radiating from the ground, and you were gasping for air. And you felt even colder inside.
Twilight's eyes met those of Pinkie. The pink earth pony smiled comfortingly. "Remember, it's a little more cheerful where my parents live. That's where all the rocks are."
Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash gazed into the distance, slowly shaking her head. She glided down to the cart.
Fluttershy raised her head.
"...Oh, hello Rainbow Dash. Are your wings getting tired?"
"Nah", the hovering pegasus said, "I just remembered that it's time for my afternoon nap."
"... Uh, that's right, you love your little naps... Let me just make some room for you..."
"That won't be necessary."
Rainbow Dash stopped flapping her wings and let herself drop onto Fluttershy.
"... Ouch... Well, okay, then, I guess... make yourself comfortable..."
Rainbow snickered and hid her snout in her friend's sweet-smelling mane. She was out in ten seconds and started snoring wholeheartedly into Fluttershy's ear.
-
They reached a weigh station further down the road, a little hut with a set of picknick tables in front of it. It appeared to be utterly abandoned.
Someone had written something strange onto the roof in large, white letters. But since the winged members of the group weren't in the air right now, the fillies would never know.
"Welp, I'm afraid this is the part where we'll have to part", the cart stallion said.
"What?!", Pinkie Pie complained, "We paid for a whole trip, buster!"
He shook his head. "Maybe, but this is as far as I go. We're supposed to meet another guy here."
He looked around. "Strange. He was supposed to wait for us. Guess he's late."
No birds were singing. For a moment, the ponies were just listening to the silence.
"Bah, I'm sure it'll all work out. Good luck to you, ladies."
And with that the cart stallion climbed out of his harness and darted off so fast that he turned into a blurr.
"What...? HOLD IT RIGHT THERE...!"
This of course made the stallion run even faster.
"Applejack...?"
"On it", the work horse said. With one throw of her lasso, the fleeing grey earth pony tumbled to the ground. Applejack slowly dragged him back to the cart.
"I'm pretty sure that's against the law", the stallion huffed. More than ever, he wished he hadn't dropped out of law school.
"Silly cart slave", Pinkie Pie said, "There is no lawn here!"
"Now why don't ya'll just calm down and tell us what's gotten into you", Applejack said to their captive.
"N-Nothing. Everything's just fine. I did my part and now I want to leave."
He wriggled his hooves pathetically.
"Yeah, well, the day isn't getting any younger and we still have a long way to go. You weren't really going to just leave us here, now were you?"
The combination of Applejack's honey-dripping voice and her muscles bulging at an uncomfortable proximity left the colt speechless for a moment.
"How about this", Twilight Sparkle intervened, "We'll pay you extra for taking over the part of your colleage. We can always figure out later how to get it back from the traveling agency."
The colt pondered. Apllejack's muscles were still uncomfortably close. It was doing strange things to his hormones.
"Extra...?"
"That's right, big boy."
He stared down into the badlands, then back at the fillies, with their big, toothy grins.
"Ooookay... But I don't like this one bit."
"Sugar, what's your problem?" Applejack asked while she removed the lasso and Rarity helped the stallion back into his harness with psychokinesis.
"Grrglwrgl", was all he had to add, so the fillies shrugged and let it go.
-
It wasn't just the silence. The further they went down the hillside, closer to the barrens, the more the ponies started to feel a strange sense of paranoia. The feeling of nopony watching them.
They passed other abandoned huts, not enough to refer to the place as a ghost town, but still enough to make them think of some kind of disaster which had lead to a mass exodus.
Rusty kid's swings were creaking when they passed them, sometimes without any wind going. Strange sculptures could be seen along the roadside, representing alien, distorted creatures.
"My word", Rarity said, mostly to break the silence, "If I had to guess, I would say they were all driven away by the awful artist who produced all these things."
It was supposed to be a light-hearted comment, but it made Flutttershy shudder.
"...You think that person is still around...?"
Suddenly, Twilight shrieked, making the cart pony -and thus the whole cart - jump a few feet into the air.
She pointed at the huge saddlepack against which she had just leaned.
"There is something ALIVE in there!"
As usual, Twilight Sparkle was right. Something was moving inside the bag. There were little bulges, traveling around and making noises.
For once, Fluttershy was glad about the commotion: it had woken Rainbow Dash up. She didn't mind being used as a futon,but Rainbow had started drooling on her, and that she could do without.
For a moment, the fillies were just staring.
"Pinkie... that's one of your bags, isn't it?"
Pinkie Pie was shaking her head. "Uh-uh!"
"You're lying", Rainbow Dash said.
"Maybe...?"
Rarity shuddered. "At least tell me it's not rats... You don't have any rats at Sugar Cube Corner, do you?"
"Certainly not", Pinkie Pie said, "Mr and Mrs Cake would fire me if I told anyone!"
Which wasn't really a satisfying answer if you think about it.
"...Actually, rats are very clean animals...", Fluttershy objected.
Applejack gulped. "I guess there is no way around it. We'll have to open it and see what we're dealing with."
"Allow me...", Twilight said.
Twilight Sprakle opened the flap of the saddlepack with psychokinesis. Thus she was the first to behold the blind passengers, and this caused her to shriek yet again.
"BABIES!"
"That'll cost you so much extra!", the cart pony said.
A little colt and a little filly emerged from the bag.
"Pound Cake!", Applejack said.
"And Pumpkin Cake!", Rainbow Dash added.
Pinkie rushed foreward to hug them.
"Hey you guys!! What are you doing here?!"
Twilight groaned. "I'll tell you what they're doing here. You foalnapped them, for whatever Pinkie-reason."
"Uh-uh! I did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did NOT! I WANTED to take them, because they're babies and the new one is a baby too so they could fill it in, but the Cakes wouldn't allow it! So there!"
"What? Are you telling me they plotted this all by themselves?"
Pinkie put the two foals down and petted their heads.
"Why not? They're really smart. I think they take after me."
"You're not related!", Twilight objected. She managed to repress the urge to debunk Pinkamena's other, unspoken assertion.
"Oh, COME ON! I'm their parent's apprentice. You can't tell me that didn't translate into SOME degree of relatedness."
"It doesn't!... Urrgh! Why are we even having this discussion..."
Exhausted, Twilight turned to the rest of the mares.
"Why isn't anyone of you saying anything? Hey... is that popcorn?"
Rainbow hid the popcorn behind her back.
Applejack chuckled. "Sorry, sugar cube... It's just really fun to watch these little exchanges between the two of you."
"...Aaaanyway", Twilight said with a frown, "The right thing to do here is to give the foals to Rainbow Dash and have her bring them back to Ponyville. I'm sorry to ask this of you, Rainbow, but you're the fastest flyer we have. I'm sure you could catch up with us in no time."
Rainbow Dash saluted with a sigh. "Wouldn't be the first time I was playing stork. See you guys later..."
"Wait! This is a really bad idea!", Pinkie Pie objected.
Rainbow and Twilight frowned.
"How so?"
"Rainbow will only get lost. The skies over here are treacherous. That's why we don't have that many pegasi or alicorn princesses, I guess."
"What are you even talking about, sugar cube?", Applejack asked.
"Geography is not exactly a reliable thing over here."
"That doesn't even make any sense. I'll just go back the way we... came..."
Rainbow Dash stared over her shoulder. Her jaw dropped.
Nothing but a flat wasteland. She turned around her own axis. It all looked the same.
"I don't understand! The road was just there a minute ago!"
"Yeah... That sort of thing will happen. Good thing I packed baby food and diapers. Take notes, everypony: diapers are the ideal present for young parents. Their single greatest desire."
Twilight was dangerously close to hyperventilating. "How are we even going to get to the farm? Or anywhere, for that matter?"
"We follow land marks", the cart stallion said, "That's how it works."
"What landmarks?", Rainbow Dash protested.
"Hey, I didn't say it would be smooth sailing. That extra you're paying me better be extra." He let out a frustrated groan. "It's not fair! I'M the one who won at 'hoof-paper-scissors'!"
"Uh, uh!", Pinkie Pie blurted out, "I think I found the first Mark!"
She pointed to a little black dot in the distance which had always been there for almost two seconds.
-
It turned out to be a well with a drinking thrug. It wasn't backed up by any other structure.
"At least we won't die of thirst just yet", Applejack said."I could really go for a cool drink."
"Oh, I agree", Rarity said, "Applejack, would you be a dear and fill my cup?"
Applejack took the handle of the delicate porcelaine cup between her teeth, leaped out of the cart and started lowering the bucket with the rope down into the well.
Suddenly, something started pulling from below. Applejack wrestled with the rope and was finally able to get it free.
When the bucket appeared once again, it was full of teeth.
"I think they're plastic", Pinkie Pie said.
"That's... better?"
"Applejack, be a dear and do NOT fill my cup", Rarity said.
Driven by some dark instinct, the fillies and their cart pony stared down into the depths of the well.
Something came rushing up with terrifying speed, and they hardly had time to back off before a pony popped out like a surreal jack-in-the-box, flailing their front legs and foaming out of their mouth. It turned out the little suspended roof on top of the well also served as a lid of sorts, because the pony pulled it down as they let themselves fall again.
Pinkie Pie felt the need to break the awkward silence with even more awkward noise. "Fillies and gentlecolts, THE BADLANDS! Population: lower than it was when I started this sentence. Our number one export: stranger danger."
With fluttering eyelashes, she added: "Did I mention I'm from the badlands?"
She was also the first one to jump back on the wagon.
"Let's find another Mark, this one is silly."
-
After the well had disappeared, the cart pony just stopped.
He looked around, biting his lip.
"Sugar Cube", Applejack said, her patience audibly growing thin, "Do you even have any idea what you're doing? See, when we coerced you into working for us, we were under the assumption that you know what you're doing. If you don't, you should've just told us. Have you ever even been in these parts?"
"Yes I have!", he protested, "But it's different every time. Let's see... if the sun is over there..."
But the skies were equally gloomy in every direction, a strange brew of light and haze.
"Give it to us straight", Rainbow Dash said, "are you completely useless?"
Turning to the others, she added: "I think he's completely useless."
Then they all cried out in horror.
The cart pony was gone. Where he used to be, there was only a skeleton, picked perfectly clean.
A pony skeleton. Maybe the cart-pony hadn't actually gone anywhere...
"I don't even... what?"
Applejack jumped from the cart and, reluctantly, took a closer look at the skeletal remains. "How is that even possible?! What happened? What's going on here?"
Rarity leaned out of the cart to empty her stomach onto the dusty ground.
"I think something ate him. Or someone", Pinkie said, "Out here in the badlands, that sort of thing will happen."
Not far from her, more vomit splashed down into the dust.
"But it will not happen to any of us, right?", Rainbow Dash suggested, her eyes racing to scan the perimeter. "Pinkie?"
By then, Pinkamena had jumped off the wagon as well. She had taken Pound and Pumpkin Cake with her to get them a better look at the skeleton.
"Look, guys! The nice gentlecolt who has been pulling us is a skeleton now! I bet we'll be skeletons too really soon!"
The foals squealed in delight.
"How they EVER let you anywhere NEAR children is beyond me", Twilight said, trying to cling on to the sweet taste of rant to deal with the traumatic sight in front of her. "Oh... this is horrible. Oh odd... oh ODD..."
She teleported the foals out of Pinkie's arms and onto her own back.
Pinkie shrugged. "Let's look at it like this... he has moved on to a higher state of existence."
"I thought you didn't believe in life after death?", Twilight Sparkle asked tentatively, her eyes still dull from the shock.
"Life after death? What are you talking about? I just meant that he's a xylophone now."
"Xylophone...? NO PINKIE FOR THE LOVE OF ODD PUT DOWN THESE STICKS!"
Applejack agreed with Twilight on this one. "Pinkamena, do have some respect for the recently deceased, will ya?"
Rainbow Dash gulped.
"F-for the record, I'm not going back on calling him useless." This didn't sound right, even to her. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?"
"It can't really be him, can it?", Twilight said, "That's impossible... I mean, this thing looks like it has been here for ages..."
"...Our cutie marks vanish forever when we die", Fluttershy whispered, "do you ever think about things like that?"
Rarity was finally able to gather enough courage to speak, though her voice still wasn't steady. "We can't just leave him like this."
She let a large, hoof-stitched blanket glide out of one of her bags and carefully wrapped it around the skeleton. The fillies flinched at the sound of the dry bones knocking off of one another.
And there they were, six fillies, two foals and a sack of bones in an empty land under a dead sky.
-
Suddenly, an expression of joy rushed over Pinkie's face. "Hey! I've been to this town before!"
"What town?", Twilight asked.
"Excuse me, ladies", the sheriff pony said, "Do you have a parking ticket? Otherwise I'll have to ask you to move on."
Applejack put on the harness while the other fillies climbed back onto the wagon.
Rarity blinked, confused.
"Say, why didn't we hire a cart pony back in Ponyville?", she asked, "Why ever would we let poor Applejack pull this thing all by herself?"
"Yeah, they're paid, like, minimum wage", Rainbow Dash said, "doesn't make much sense to only take the cart."
"We can switch later on if you want, sugar cube."
They drove down main street.
It was a strange place. Many of the buildings were made of concrete and over two stories high, hinting at a bygone industrial age, yet only the ground-floor seemed to be in use in any given structure. The windows in the other floors were usually either broken or missing completely.
Though no one said it out loud - there was no need for that, really - they were all relieved to have returned to civilization. Or a form of civilization, at least. For once, even Twilight Sparkle decided it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"So I've been thinking", Twilight said after a few moments, "Why even bother to search for your farm at all? Maybe we should just wait until it comes to us?"
Rarity noticed her friend's nerveous, uneasy smile and put an arm around her for comfort.
"Commendable sentiment, Twilight", Applejack said, "But - and I can't believe I'm even saying this - maybe we should leave navigation to Pinkie this time."
"We need to find the Magnetic Fields", Pinkie explained, "We should be able to see the mountains again from there."
"That sounds like something you just made up at random."
"What's your point?"
She observed the street life around them. "Let's just ask somepony if they have seen the fields."
"At least the locals appear reasonable", Rarity said while observing the street life, "If a little old-fashioned. Just look at these hats... "
An earth pony mare they were passing by hissed like a feline when hers and Rarity's eyes met.
"Och! Why, I never!"
In fact, there were hostile stares all around. They all seemed to converge on Twilight and Rarity.
Pinkie Pie suddenly looked genuinely dejected.
"Oh yeah... That. Twilight, Rarity... I'm so sorry, I completely forgot. I have been living in Ponyville for so long... The thing is, I'm afraid you should cover your heads. Your horns specifically. Oh, and Pumpkin Cake too, of course."
"But why?", Twilight protested.
"They're considered... offensive in these parts. I mean, my parents will invite and employ unicorns, but they're like, the most open-minded folk aound; of course when I say 'open minded'..."
-
Their hearts are small and full of poison.
-
"So wait, it's illegal for unicorns to show their foreheads? But everypony 's got one!"
"Not illegal 'per se'. People might just end up hurting you, with the sheriff looking the other way."
"Twilight, darling", Rarity said, "Let me take care of this."
She levitated three hats from one of her bags. She swiftly levitated them onto her own head and those of the other two unicorns. She noticed Pumpkin Cake chewing on hers, so she gently picked her up and pulled it from her mouth. She gave the foal one of her least favorite girdles to exercise her teeth on instead.
"What about wings?", Rainbow asked. "The pegasi here are all wearing these clamps. Do we need to wear that, too?"
"Naaah. That's just to make it easier to resist the urge to fly..."
-"Ghaaaah!"
A young pegasus colt darted out into the street, violently pulling the clamps from his wings.
"I can't TAKE THIS ANYMORE! FORGET this town! Forget EVERYTHING! I'm out of here!"
The ponies from Ponyville watched as the colt rose up into the sky with a few powerful strokes of his wings.
When he reached a hight he was satisfied with, he just kept hovering there for a moment, letting his gaze wander over the land.
"I'm okay!!", he exclaimed, "I'm totally fine! Nothing bad is happening at all! It's completely safe! In fact..."
He was rammed and carried away by a giant, white flying machine.
"...Yeah", Pinkie Pie said, "so about these 'fields... Excuse me, M'me?"
She leaned down to a uniformed mare resting on the porch of what appeared to be the post office.
"Could you tell us where we'd have the best chance to get a hold of the magnetic fields?"
The mare shrugged. "When we need to deliver any letters over there, we just wait until they show up south of the town, usually on thursday."
"But that's almost a week from now! We don't have that much time!"
The mare scratched her beard stubbles. "Now, there's always urgent post, I guess. If you follow me around the back...?"
Moments later, the fillies were staring at yet another riddle.
"Is that... what I think it is?", Twilight asked.
"It makes sense if you think about it", Pinkie Pie said.
The object in front of them looked like a giant, silvery horseshoe with a red and a blue tip. It was anchored to the ground with stone weights. It was trembling under its restraints and emitting a barely audible, yet certainly unpleasant sound.
"See, if we need to get something delivered really fast, we just attach it to this thing an release it. The other post station is at the centre of the magnetic fields. When they send it back, they reverse the polarity."
The mare pondered. "Never tried it with something alive, though. But then again, we didn't really have any volunteers."
"So let me get this straight", Applejack said, "We're supposed to ride this thing."
"I suppose we could attach it to the cart", Twilight said with an unsteady voice. Seeing Applejack's face, she added: "You know... if there is no other option."
-
It worked surprisingly well. Sure, they had to remove the wheels of the cart and replace them with skids, and there was this constant fear that the vehicle would fall apart, but there was no denying that this was a fast way to travel.
At first, they had only advanced slowly, the huge magnet dragging them behind the way Rarity would drag a plow when helping out on Applejack's farm. But the closer they got to their destination, the faster the magnet gained speed, until the landscape turned into a blurr around them. It was a good thing Twilight had insisted on improvised seat belts.
Except for Pinkie Pie, of course, as she was riding on the magnet itself, and Rainbow Dash, who preferred to travel behind the cart on a pair of skis.
"Now we're talking!", Rainbow laughed, "Why do we even have trains and carts, still? This is so much better!"
"Here's a thought", Twilight said. "Maybe it's because there's no telling what will happen if we encounter an obstacle. Not to mention when we reach our destination."
That took a second to sink in.
"Splosh", Pinkie Pie said matter-of-fact.
"Twilight...?"
"I'm sorry, you guys. I should have thought about this earlier. This place is messing with my head."
"Well, you better get your brains moving now, sugar cube", Applejack said.
They rushed past a sign that read 'C.City, 2 miles'. Pointing exactly into the direction they were going.
"And FAST, may I add."
By the time she had said this, the next sign was already coming in sight.
"Hoh boy."
And there was the town now, approaching as a bunch of dark shapes right in their path.
"There's no helping it, we need to get off this thing", Twilight said, scrutinizing the obstacle ahead and calculating the time they had before impact. "I'll try to teleport us all off the wagon, but I'll need you all to hold hooves. I sure hope this works."
Applejack reeled Rainbow Dash in. Pinkie Pie hopped off the magnet and let herself be flattened against the front of the cart, where she was pulled off by Rarity and Fluttershy.
Rainbow Dash was able to grap Applejack's hoof, thus completing the chain of ponies, just a second before Twilight reached the peak of her meditation.
As they were blinked away, the ponies could hear the cart smash into another object. Later, they would even find wooden splinters in their hair.
Strangely enough, the last thing Twilight saw before the transfer was... a rock.
-
Twilight hit the ground, rolling through the dust and finally coming to a halt relatively unharmed, safe a few bruises.
She immediately rose to her hooves to check on the others. She saw Fluttershy close by, her wings wrapped protectively around the foals, who appeared blissfully intact. Rarity was to her left, Rainbow Dash just behind her. Their luggage was spread all over their landing zone.
"Is everypony okay? I tried to compensate for our velocity, so... Wait, where is Applejack? Has anyone seen Pinkie Pie?"
The words had hardly left her mouth when Applejack dropped from the sky right onto her back.
"Oups. Sorry, sugar cube."
"That's okay... As long as you're okay. But it's weird, we should have all been transported simultaneously..."
Over the next few minutes, some pieces of their luggage would randomly drop out of the sky in a similar fashion.
"What worries me most is that we're still missing..."
"Pinkie Pie!", Rarity cried.
Rarity had just spotted a bundle of pink fluff sticking out of the ground. She grabbed it with her teeth and pulled with all her might. Applejack started digging. After just a few seconds, Pinkie Pie popped out of the ground like an oversized carrot.
"Thanks, you guys!", she cried as she shook the dirt off her coat.
Pinkie then quickly turned around to look down into the hole. "It was nice meeting ya! These were some amazing weeks! See you again really soon!" The hole collapsed shortly afterwards.
"I'm not going to ask", Twilight said. She pointed to the nearby town. "Let's just walk into town and find out how much they hate us for crashing a giant magnet into them."
-
Twilight had expected a huge commotion, ponies running around and looking for someone to blame for the sudden cataclysm that had struck their town.
Instead, the place was perfectly quiet, except for a faint roar just over the horizon. All the doors were closed, all the curtains shut.It was a bunch of farm houses with depressingly barren acres around them, even lacking the rocks that were the region's second most important export.
"Well, what do you know", Applejack said as she looked around. "Looks like no one even noticed our little misshap. Maybe the magnet didn't actually hit anything at all."
"I'm pretty sure it did, though..." Twilight said, slowly shaking her head.
"Well, don't worry about that. Let's worry about how we'll get out of here."
She walked right up to one of the doors and knocked.
"Hello? Anyone home? We're a little lost, and if you could just..."
A curtain was pulled aside, and a terrified face appeared in the window.
"Get off the street, you fools!", The pony hissed. "They're coming! You got to hide somewhere!"
"Well, in that case, why won't you just invite us inside?"
The stranger unlocked the door, and the ponies from Ponyville rushed into the house.
"Care to explain what's going on?", Rainbow Dash protested.
"Shhh! Can't you hear it? They're almost here!"
The roaring they had heard before had grown a lot louder, and they could even feel vibrations in the ground.
"What is that?"
"Don't you know anything?", the old mare said, "They're rock riders. They race all over the badlands, and more often than not, they BREAK things. Maybe if we lay low, they'll just pass through. Otherwise..."
The ground started shaking, and then there were blood thirsty battle cries and the sound of shattering wood.
"Oh dear. It's one of those days."
-
Moments later, the whole front of the little house exploded into shreds of wood, shaved off by a large, terrifyingly fast object roaring down the street.
The ponies blinked through the sawdust.
"What on Earth..."
The monstrosity turned around and headed back to the town centre, this time leaning towards the opposite side of the street, crashing into the houses it had missed the first time around. On town square, it met up with two similar objects, and for a moment, it was quiet again.
Before they could stop her, Rainbow Dash was hovering in the middle of the street, yelling at the strange invaders.
"WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA? Who do you think you are, destroying other people's homes?"
The others carefully raised their heads as well.
The mysterious racing objects turned out to be... well, what exactly? Aparently, they were vehicles of some sort - they looked like crude little carts made of wood, with metal skids. But instead of being hauled by a pony or an animal...
"Rock riders indeed. Well I'll be", Applejack said.
The ponies on the carts were hardly recognizable as ponies at all. They were wearing bizarre gas masks, helmets, leather unforms and makeshift armor. One of them had a rubber duck taped to his tail stump.
When their eyes fell on Rainbow Dash, they flailed their arms and made guttural sounds.
"Foolish child!", the old pony mare hissed, "Now you've attracted their attention! Rock riders want to crush everything that doesn't move, but something that does move? That's what really drives them berserk."
It was strange how... NORMAL their rocks really looked. Now that they were standing still, it seemed like they were fused to the ground, as if they had always been on the town square and the carts had just been attached to them as an afterthought. There weren't even any marks on the ground. But of course there were the destroyed houses, with trembling ponies cowering in the debris...
The rock riders truned their contraptions around and thundered towards Rainbow Dash.
Unfazed, she dodged every single one of them by swiftly dashing to one side or the other.
"Rainbow, remember that you can't fly here!", Twilight cried.
"Flying or not, I... Woah."
The riders had already turned around and came right back at her, this time all in a row to cover the entire width of the street.
Rainbow barely made it back to the remains of the house where her friends were hidden.
"AJ, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Indeed I am! Let's show these clowns who's boss."
Applejack pulled out her lasso and caught one of the riders from behind, pulling him out of his vehicle, which continued racing away without him, quickly disappearing behind the horizon. Rainbow Dash hurried towards one of the others and tackled him out of the driver's seat as well, both of them crash landing in another house, causing it to release a flock of geese.
This only left one rider...
"He's coming for us!", Rarity cried.
Applejack didn't have her lasso ready yet, the first rider still struggeling on the other end.
Twilight concentrated as hard as she could, but this thing was so fast...
She wasn't even sure what spell she was using as her horn started to glow.
The vehicle exploded in a flash of piercing light. The only thing Twilight could make out was a huge U-shape...
Like a magnet headed for magnetic fields.
-
Applejack quickly found the last rock rider, who had landed in somepony's mailbox. Shortly after, Rainbow Dash dragged her own captive with her. Applejack made sure all of the marauders were neatly tied up.
The others gathered around the area of collision, with the rock standing in a pile of wooden debris. Completely still. Innocent. As it had always been there.
"Good work, Twilight. But... what exactly did you do?"
"I don't know... Oh. Would you look at that."
She picked up a piece of painted wood and showed it to the others.
"...But... that's from OUR cart ..!", Fluttershy said. "...You know, the one we arrived in ...?"
"Now we know what we crashed into!", Pinkie Pie chirped, "Mystery solved!"
"Yeaaah..." Twilight said with an uneasy smile. "Mystery solved..."
She shook her head, deciding not to think too hard about it.
She turned her attention to the three captive rock riders.
"So what are we going to do with these guys?"
Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake, sitting on Fluttershy's back, had caught the attention of one of the colts.
"Heh these two foals you have there...", he gasped with a nerveous giggle, his voice distorted by the gas mask, "Are they.. Can you... Can I hold them for a second? How about you give them to me?" He lowered his voice, as if he was letting Twilight in on a secret, "I want to have them inside my belly."
"Yeah", Twilight said, gently pushing Fluttershy further away from him, "How about 'no'?"
"The sheriff's office has a basement", the old mare said, "I guess we can keep them in there for now. As for you... you can stay at my house, or what's left of it."
The fillies nodded, grateful at the invitation. They had planned on arriving at the rock farm this very evening, but it was already getting dark.
"It's not the worst choice, seeing how every house is in an equally bad shape... How are we ever gonna fix all of this..."
The old lady gave one of the riders a light kick.
"We might just put these lowlives to work. Should straighten 'em out a bit."
"I'm not a carpenter", one of the colts mumbled.
"I'm a carpenter!", another one cried.
-"That's good news, I guess..."
"I can also walk on water!!"
-"Nevermind."
-
Later that evening, Twilight and Pinkie Pie were sitting on the remains of the front porch of their host, staring into the night sky. The others had already gone to sleep.
For a while, none of the two fillies said a word.
"You can never truly leave the badlands", Pinkie Pie finally said. "Even when I'm in Ponyville, and I close my eyes, I can see the grey plains and the black mountains, and nopony is calling out to me."
Twilight shuddered. "Nopony is calling out to you? What does that even mean?"
Pinkie just shook her head. "Nopony is living out there in the barrens. You can see nopony when you just stand still and gaze out into the land. It's really hard to describe. I guess you need to live in the badlands for a while to truly understand the nopony... You have to become part of the land."
"Doesn't sound very tempting", Twilight snorted.
"It's awful. Maybe I shouldn't have dragged you into this."
The pink earth pony shrugged. "Oh well."
