Applejack woke up from her dream, feeling a bump on her noggin. She gazed up at the night sky in wonder.
That's odd, since when did the sky have all those colorful lights? she thought to herself.
Sliding back up onto her hooves, she noticed something else too. There was glass covering the sky as well, and a big tube, and a giant aquarium area.
What in tarnation? she thought, realizing that this wasn't where she thought she was.
"Hahahaha!" Came an unknown voice seemingly far away from her location.
Applejack looked over and spotted The Captain standing next to a strange looking machine. She then looked down at herself and noticed that there were these strange magenta bonds around her hooves, preventing herself from breaking free. She struggled, but couldn't move.
"Oh, don't even try to move 'Applejack', if that's even your real name." The Captain said smugly.
Applejack gave him the weirdest look. "What in Equestria are you going on about!? Of course Applejack is my name." She said without a moment's thought.
"Lies! Don't give me that 'Applejack!' The Captain said giving her a fearsome scowl. "I know you've been working alongside those cyber-terrorists so don't even try to deny it! You infiltrated my compound, snuck into my computer network, and now succeeded in escaping, breaking part of the simulation along with it. And now you have the audacity to lie and say you're the legendary Element of Honesty? Don't make me laugh. But I caught you!" He had a mad glint in his eyes, "You thought your escape would go unhindered, but it did not! My guards captured you and now your precious resistance will watch as their famous infiltrator dies! It's just glorious!"
Applejack just stared at him, mouth agape, unable to even comprehend what he was talking about. Finally she spoke. "Spies? Infiltrators? A resistance force? What in tarnation are y'all talking about? I really have no idea what you're going on about. Seriously I don't!"
The Captain took a few steps closer, scowling yet still smiling at the same time. He looked like quite a mad pony "Oh poor, poor Applejack. Your world is finally falling apart at its stems. Tell you what, since I'm a kind and generous pony, I'll let you choose. You can either join me in destroying your pathetic resistance force, or you can die a pathetic death at the hands of these spikes!"
He then pulled a lever with his horn, and suddenly the ground beneath Applejack opened up. She was being held by a rope on a wench, as she dangled in mid-air. Beneath her was a large pit of magenta spikes. They all looked very sharp and deadly.
The Captain began cackling, before stopping his monologue to look at her, "So 'Applejack' what will it be? Will you join the winners or will you die like a pathetic coward?"
Applejack couldn't process what was happening. She had a mix between fear, embarrassment, confusion, and anger. Currently however, the other emotions were fueling the anger. She fumed, if this were a cartoon, there would be smoke coming out of her ears. The Captain swore that her eyes turned red. He took a small step back in worry.
"Ah have no freaking idea what y'all are talking about. My name is Applejack! I work on a farm, I am not some 'infiltrator.' Ah have no idea what you're talking about, and Ah don't care one bit for your Celestia-damned offer. You can take the offer and shove it where the sun don't shine, because Ah would not want to be on a team with a coward like you, who is forced to throw another pony into a pit of spikes because they can't do their own dirty work. So come on, you worthless excuse for a pony! Fight your own damned battles!"
Applejack fumed. She yelled, expressing all of her frustration, expressing herself like she's never done before. The Captain looked slightly worried and a bit afraid. Suddenly dropping her into a pit of his own spikes wasn't such an appealing idea. He pressed a button on a keypad, and then all of a sudden, the crane turned, dropping Applejack onto the floor.
"Fine. You'll learn the hard way." The Captain said. He backed away from the machine, and bucked it, completely destroying the device, and shutting down the system. The lights began to flicker as the hole in the floor started to close back up but instead suddenly broke, filling in the hole of spikes with its own machinery. The hole was no more. The Captain's eyes shone with a bright-green as he cracked his neck, before glaring at Applejack.
Applejack was relieved that she wasn't in imminent danger, but realized that this fight wasn't over. The Captain had decided to take her advice and allow her to fight him once and for all. Despite this, she silently wondered if this was the right choice to make. The Captain seemed mighty powerful, bucking that machine into smithereens. she thought.
Despite this, she sighed and then spit onto the ground. She narrowed her eyes before adjusting her hat. The Captain decided he had waited around enough and charged at her. Applejack took the opportunity to throw her hat at him, hitting him square in the face. She then reached out a foreleg and caught him while he was running, tripping him into the pit full of spikes. The Captain landed atop all the rubble, so she didn't have to worry about killing him.
After falling, she spotted her hat on the floor and picked it back up, before running out of the exit.
"Celestia damned you Applejack! Damn you!" The Captain's voice was heard from the room behind her. Applejack just kept running. This hallway seemed endless she thought. It looked like she was in an underwater base, where there were fish and water swimming along next to her. The hallway seemed to curve around itself, so she knew that there must be a time where it must turn into a circle into itself. She hoped against hope that it didn't just lead back into the same room that she had been in.
After a long time of running, she spotted what she was looking for. She saw a flight of stairs going upwards. Bingo! she thought.
As she started running up the stairs, she started to hear a loud sound behind her. It was the crunching of machinery, opening up. "I'm coming for you 'Applejack!'" came the Captain's voice.
Even as she started to run up the staircase, a stray thought caught up to her, Even after all this time, he still thinks that Applejack's not mah name? What is with this bozo? she thought.
After running for what seemed like a long time, the stairway yielded a door. A locked door, to be more precise. She banged on the door in frustration, trying in vain to get in, until The Captain seemed to have caught up with her. He was wielding a light-greenish sort of magic around him, almost like a type of aura. His eyes seemed to seethe. He was pissed off.
"I finally got you my little seahorse. Now I will show you the true might of Sanctuary!" He started to charge up a spell to launch at her, and then at the last moment, the door seemed to open and she was pulled through. The door closed behind, leaving an angry and agitated Captain.
Applejack looked up and saw her team: Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Spoon all looking at her like she grew another head. At last, Pinkie Pie broke the silence by jumping over to her and hugging her. "Oh, Applejack! We had thought we lost you forever!" she proclaimed.
Applejack tried pushing Pinkie Pie a bit, just enough for her to breathe before she took a breath and said, "Ah sure am glad to see you again Pinkie. Same with the rest of y'all. How in the hell did y'all find me?"
Twilight was the one to speak first. "Spoon was telling me about the psychometric readings that each of the suits seemed to be giving off. He used a spell to find the Element of Magic that was on my head" — she paused a moment to point to the crown on her head, —"and then we noticed that each of the guard-ponies were wearing a certain type of suit. If I recall, you mentioned before about a suit that was able to guide you to The Captain's office last time, right?"
Applejack nodded, before she continued, "Well, Spoon and I were able to figure out how to decrypt the precise algorithm in the suits, allowing us to find virtually anything in the entire building. And lo and behold, we found you!"
Applejack looked at Pinkie Pie, expecting her to take some credit, but she just sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "Don't look at me AJ, they did most of the work. I was the inspiration that guided them to their destinations!"
Everyone rolled their eyes at that comment, leaving Pinkie to ask, "What?"
"Anyways," Applejack said, beginning, "That was the hardest part, finding where each other was, but now that we have, what now?"
"I believe I may be able to shed some light on this dilemma," said Spoon. "From my research at Trottingham University, we discovered that there was a type of delta-wave particle present in most of the most basic structures of our universe. Looking at these walls, I can say the same about this place as well." He sighed abruptly, straightened his glasses and continued. "I don't want to let anyone's hopes up, but I believe we're still trapped in the simulation."
"What!?" Applejack cried. "After everything we did? What was with that strange ritual that the four of us conducted then? The ground shifted and we were thrown into a great big void! If that wasn't the real world, then this should be it!"
"That's where you're wrong Applejack," Spoon said. "The ritual did work, and we did succeed in destroying a small portion of it, but despite our efforts, it wouldn't lead to us being freed. Think of it like this. If you're a fish, and you get freed from an aquarium, are you outside? No, you're still indoors to whatever creatures found you to be a pet."
"So you're saying that if this is a simulation, then outside of here is the real world?" Twilight asked.
"No!" Spoon began. "Because if what's outside of the aquarium is the owner and his house, then what is outside of the owner's house? It becomes the owner of the owner's house, and if you travel outside of that, you enter a house of a house of the other owner!"
"So you're saying there's an unending cycle of simulations outside of simulations?" Twilight deadpanned.
"Precisely!" Spoon explained.
Pinkie Pie just looked at Spoon, before leaning over to Applejack and asking, "Where did you find this guy Applejack? He is so creative!"
Applejack glared at her, but kept her mouth shut. "So if there's no end to these simulations, then why in Tartarus did we travel here in the first place?!"
Spoon raised his hoof, about to answer her, but abruptly closed his mouth. "I'm afraid I have no idea," he said.
Applejack growled. "Ah left my sister and my family behind to escort on your damned mission, because you made us think that they were all in danger, and now that we're here, you're telling me that this place isn't real either?" She seethed, and couldn't think straight. She started shaking her head to the left and to the right to make sure she didn't do something she regretted.
Twilight walked over to her and put an arm around her. "I know this is all very confusing and strange Applejack, but you'll see your family again, I promise."
Applejack started crying, until she looked up at Twilight. She asked, "Do ya really mean it Twilight?"
Twilight nodded in response.
"Yeah Applejack, we'll definitely find a way out of here! We'll pop back out of this dimension back into our own before you can say 'surprise!'" Pinkie gasped. "What if we can have a dimension-hopping party!? Can we have a dimension-hopping party Twilight!?" She asked, her eyes seeming to glimmer.
"Yes, yes, we can have your party Pinkie!" Twilight said, now smiling. This little exchange brought out a lot of her feelings, and she was feeling a lot more rejuvenated than before.
The group had been walking down the corridor. The door that they came from seemed to have held for the longest time. There was lots of banging and yelling at first, but now it was suspiciously quiet. It was a bit unnerving.
"Hey Twilight, how come there's water all around us? Are we underwater?" Pinkie asked.
Twilight looked at the walls and noticed that beyond the glass lay the strange water that she had noticed. "I suppose it's possible Pinkie. That, or else we're in a strange dimension where all there is is just water."
Spoon scoffed in response, "Or else there's nothing beyond the walls, and they're just simulating the appearance of water."
"Now that's just downright silly Spoon. Why would the walls need to simulate something if there's nothing there?" Applejack inquired.
"Who knows," Spoon said. "Maybe looking into the face of nothingness would inspire chaos and confusion into the souls of those working here? What can be more daunting than looking into the void itself?"
"You guys are silly," Pinkie Pie said. She walked over to the glass and banged on the wall. A red minnow swam over to her. "Hi fishie!"
The fish seemed to look at her in response. "Aww, he's adorable! He's waving at us in his own language." Pinkie said.
Twilight seemed to facepalm. "Pinkie, it's just a fish. It's not waving at us."
"Yes he is! Look at the small bubbles coming out of his gills. One bubble is for yes, two bubbles is for no. He has tons of bubbles coming out of him, that means he's excited!"
"No, Pinkie. Just, no." Twilight said, shaking her head. She just focused on the path in front of her, the long narrow path. She thought she could see something at the end of the tunnel, but she couldn't tell; the image seemed to fade in and out.
The image before her became superimposed, before blotting back into itself. From her peripheral vision, she could barely tell that it was an outline of a door. As her mind pieced together what she had seen, it looked like a vault door, with many screws tying into the design, with a single light-bulb illuminating the display.
She glanced over at her friends, and they seemed to see nothing, except for Spoon who seemed anxious the whole time.
Glancing back at the door, she started to run up to it, seeing her friends fade from view, and the door begin to progressively get further and further away. She stopped and saw all vision fade from view, and she was alone in the dark with merely a spotlight illuminating the white circle before her. She looked up at the light, and she saw nothing.
Confused, she looked down to see what she was standing on, before learning that it was a black-tiled floor, with a white outline design She looked around, before learning that the tiles seemed to grow, becoming a large outline of a checkered-square. The walls lit up and suddenly there was a TV screen, with white walls surrounding her. The ceiling had become a solid, gleaming metal.
"Hello? Is anypony there?" She asked, not expecting a response.
Suddenly the screen turned on, and it was her.
'Hello? Is anypony there?' the screen mimicked at her.
She looked around, finding echoes of the voice coming from different corridors of the room. She looked around madly, trying to find a way out. She ran towards the sound of her voice in the corridor, but right when she turned the corner, she was back where she started. It seemed that the room seemed to run in a big donut-like shape, with the screen in the middle, always blasting her image and that accursed question.
'Is anypony there?'
Twilight was getting annoyed. As annoyance rose to anger, she found herself with the energy to blast what was in her way. She lit up her horn, and a beam of magical energy hit the screen, revealing a room. She jumped through it, eager to escape from the echoing of her own voice.
On the inside, she found another white room. It was a square room with only a screen on the wall. Before the screen was a white couch. She noticed somepony sitting on it. He too had a white mane.
Twilight jumped towards this mysterious pony and landed on top of him, noticing it was Spoon.
"Twilight stop! Why are you attacking me?" Came Spoon's voice.
"Huh?" Twilight asked, as her vision seemed to change and she was back in Sanctuary.
"What in the hay was that all about Twi?" Applejack asked.
"Yeah, you were like zoom, whip, bam, and then you landed on poor old Spooney here!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
"What!? What just happened? I don't even..." Twilight ended her thought waiting for someone to pick up.
"All I know is that you seemed to stop and stare at the corridor that we were on. Your eyes went hazy, you started muttering to yourself, then your horn lit up and you jumped onto me!" Spoon explained. "By the way, would you like to have the decency of getting yourself off of me?"
"Oh, sorry," Twilight said, as she got off of Spoon's chest.
"Thank you," he said.
"I have no idea what happened. One moment, I was with you guys and then I found myself in a white room, with the sound of my own voice echoing throughout the chamber, and then when I wanted to get out, I found you guys here." Twilight explained.
"I feared this would happen," Spoon said.
"What do you mean, Spoon?" Applejack asked.
"I mean that we never actually left our plane of existence. We seemed to have entered a meta-plane of reality. If my theory holds true, we're all trapped within your mind Twilight."
"What?!" Twilight and Applejack explained at once.
"How in the hay is that even possible!? We met that Captain pony, and then we're exploring this underwater base, and we brought all of us with us..." Applejack paused, trying to gather her thoughts. "I just don't see how any of that is possible. This must be real somehow."
"Remember 'the Captain'?" Spoon asked. "Your earlier depictions of him made him seem very dark and mysterious, but now he seems very antagonistic. What do you think happened since then? I'll give you a hint: it has to do with subliminal messaging."
"Subliminal what-now?" Applejack asked.
"Subliminal messaging," Spoon sighed.
"That means you learned and were influenced indirectly without being consciously aware of it," Twilight explained. "Kind of like when you watch a food commercial on TV and then you start getting hungry."
"Ohhh, I get it! Yeah, we use those all the time, but we don't need no stinkin' commercials to influence ponies. They come to us for us!" Pinkie Pie explained.
"Yeah, thanks for that Pinkie." Applejack said. "So you're saying that... What exactly are you saying?"
Spoon groaned. "It's possible when we left our previous simulation before, that that was the prime dimension, and then using the laws of metaphysics, they were able to insert us to our own minds."
"How in the hay does that work?" Applejack asked.
"How should I know? I'm not a meta-physicist." Spoon said.
"Okay. Whatever or however we're here, we need to get out of it somehow." Twilight said, feeling like her head was about to burst. "This obviously isn't Ponyville, and we need to make it back there." Directing her body into Spoon's direction, she continued, "Spoon! If this were a dream, how would you suggest that we get out of here?"
Scratching his chin, he said, "Well, if this really was a dream, then we could go anywhere and it would lead us in the right direction. Pick a direction at random, and expect you'll arrive somewhere. Chances are we will."
"All right group, where are we going?" Twilight asked.
"Apple farm."
"Sugar Cube Corner."
"Trottingham Library!"
Twilight looked at the three of them and groaned in frustration. "If we all say we're planning on arriving somewhere, then chances are we'll never arrive there. We need to choose somewhere the four of us have all been before."
"The library!" Spoon exclaimed.
"Yes, the library. All right everypony," She changed direction and pointed at a nearby door. "Imagine that that is the front door to the library."
Everypony proceeded towards the door, and she lifted a hoof before opening it, before disappearing from the complex entirely.