Chapter 7
“As ponies go, Applejack is one of the toughest as well as the strongest, both emotionally and physically. I have worried about her plenty of times. Once when she was helping me defend the others from Imperial Stormtroopers, she took a bolt for me … another time, she kicked a trooper in the face, sending him flying across the room. It made me feel as secure as a foal in its mother’s care to be around her.”
-Twilight Sparkle, On Extra-Galactic Voyages, pp. 282, 285
Applejack was stunned.
These... well, she didn’t rightly know what they were, but they were intimidating to say the least. They were a good 25 feet tall, made of a dull gray metal with two spindly legs attached to a bumpy box, and on top was another big metal box that looked like a skull, with two tiny eyes and a mouth full of what looked like long, pointed teeth.
That wasn’t the only thing Applejack saw in the clearing.
Walking alongside the big metal beasts were some kind of creatures that Applejack was quite sure were mechanical in nature as well. They stood on two legs and were covered from head to toe in some kind of hard, white material. It looked like it might be some kind of armor, but there were no holes for the eyes, so they must be some kind of machines, too. Either that, or they were creatures bred by the ponies in this world to do their fighting for them. Some of them were sitting on some kind of brown and dark gray floating device that every once in a while took off to move rapidly through the forest. How they were floating though was a mystery. It was obviously magic, but there was no aura around it. Maybe it was a type of magic that she was not aware of.
All of this activity surrounded a small, blocky building, but she suspected this building was bigger on the inside somehow. Maybe it was the entrance to an underground structure, judging by the number of creatures entering and exiting.
Applejack jumped a bit and looked up as yet another machine flew overhead, producing a roar that sounded like the gates of Tartarus itself. As it receded into the distance, she got a better look at it. Two large vertical panels made up most of it, both connected by thick pylons to a single metal sphere. The sphere had a hole in the back and two glowing red dots that she might have guessed were eyes, save for the fact that they were facing away from the direction it was moving.
There was no telling what else might be around here, but Applejack wasn’t about to stay and find out. She turned and ran, not stopping until she was a good hundred yards from the edge of the forest. This definitely wasn’t Equestria!
“I gotta find my friends! Twilight’ll know what all this means and how to get back home!” What Twilight could possibly do about this situation was something Applejack couldn’t fathom, but she had to find her friends no matter what. Being out here all alone, even for a tough earth-pony like Applejack, was disconcerting and frightening, and she needed to find somepony she knew.
Applejack ran for an hour before she finally stopped looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was following her. When she was fully satisfied that nobody was, she stopped and sat down, then breathed a long sigh of relief.
That’s when the disappointment really began to sink in. She’d assumed that all she needed to do was find civilization, but then these metal monsters showed up and all of the sudden “finding civilization” had turned into “finding civilization that was anything close to familiar.”
How in Equestria could such things exist?
She thought first that perhaps it was some country that they hadn’t been to or heard of, but that made no sense at all. Then she considered maybe this was an alien world after all. But how Rarity of all ponies had caused them to end up here was anypony’s guess. Twilight or the princesses she could understand, but Rarity? That pony barely had enough power to find gemstones, and was certainly not a practitioner of magic the way somepony like Twilight was.
But putting aside the bizarre circumstances of their arrival, the fact remained that she was on an alien world.
At least the rest of her friends had probably been transported here, too.
A cold fear then gripped her when she realized that they may not all be in the same place or time! Such a hopeless concept was enough to send her mind reeling, but she threw a metaphorical lasso around it and pulled it back into her head.
It won’t do me any good to think such things, least of all when I’m caught in the middle of this awful forest.
A mechanical whining noise interrupted her inner monologue. It started off quiet, barely audible above the bird calls and wind that surrounded her. But it quickly grew in intensity, and she barely had enough time to jump out of the way of one of those floating contraptions she’d seen earlier as it barreled through the forest. She watched as it flew off into the trees, made a slow loop, then came back around. Applejack was frozen in terror, her eyes widening as she watched the thing head straight for her. Bolts of what looked like yellow glowing packets of magic flew toward her, accompanied by sharp twangs that snapped her out of her paralyzing fear.
“Jumpin’ jackrabbits!”
Applejack took off running as fast as her legs would carry her.
Hooves pounded undergrowth as Applejack struggled to keep ahead of the thing chasing her. She dodged and weaved as yellow energy bolts flew past her, impacting on trees ahead of her and exploding, sending shards of splintered and burnt wood showering all over her. Every once in a while a bolt would get a bit too close, the heat from it radiating and confirming that what it did to trees it could easily do to a pony.
She rounded a bend, watching behind her as the thing banked toward her with as much ease as a pegasus clearing a cloud. Her heart pumped hard, each thump booming in her ears.
AJ hoped that the thing following her would tire, or run out of fuel, or whatever the buck would cause it to slow down. Yet, like a persistent wasp, it stuck to her tail.
She had to think of something quick. If she didn’t, her body would give out, or she’d miss a step and break an ankle, or any of a hundred other ways this chase could end. Then she’d be at the mercy of whatever it was that was following her with such tenacity.
Another bolt flew past her head, nearly igniting her mane in the process.
She was running out of time and luck.
Her strength was no match for that of a machine, and she knew it. So when she saw her opportunity, she knew it was all or nothing, and she leapt whole-heartedly into all.
-----
The Imperial Biker Scout smiled to himself.
This was almost too easy.
This pony, wherever it had come from, wasn’t much of a challenge to route. He had no doubt the laser blasts he was letting loose were causing her to panic, and even though he could open the throttle up and overtake her, he had orders to pursue and detain any ponies he came across, which meant routing them to a location where the Stormtroopers could entrap them. He chuckled for a moment at the thought of the oh-so-superior Stormtroopers reduced to the role of mere animal handlers.
The scout took a mental break from his humorous aside to wonder why his commander would be interested in such beasts. They already had their pick of horses and ponies domesticated by the indigenous Ewoks. But he was a soldier, and soldiers do not question the motives of superior officers. Soldiers follow orders, always. And this order was specific: capture all ponies you see which are not ostensibly domesticated and which are not accompanied by Ewoks or other sentient creatures.
He continued the pursuit, sending a few more blaster bolts flying toward her. This pony was hard to miss in the forest with her orange fur. It was quite interesting to him that the animal was wearing a hat and had her mane and tail tied in ribbons. Perhaps her owner had done so, maybe to shield his steed from the sun. But it also meant that this pony was probably not wild. All the same it would be better to capture and release it than to have to explain to his commander why he had chased her all the way into the forest only to turn around and come back to base empty-handed.
He was focused on the task at hand, deftly dodging trees and rocks, making sure to box the pony in on the trail he knew would lead straight to–
The pony was gone.
She had rounded a rock mound, then when he had flown past the same mound, she had vanished. “Sithspit, what now?” He had no time for this. He was given an order, and he’d be damned if some animal was going to outsmart him.
He slowed down and stopped as he put his speederbike into hover mode, then reached down to pull his blaster from its holster.
Suddenly his world turned upside down and he saw nothing but stars.
The pain in his side from the fall was nothing compared to the throbbing knob on his skull, and he thanked the Nine Spirits that he had been wearing his plasteel helmet. He groaned, and as he slowly got up he noticed the orange pony standing on the other side of his drifting speederbike, her hat on the ground where it had apparently fallen off her head. Was she actually smirking at him?
He knew he had to be careful. Any type of horse was dangerous to cross, even with armor on, and this one had already demonstrated a brassy streak. He raised his hands up, trying to look as friendly as possible. “Easy girl, no one’s gonna hurt you.”
“I think I’m smart enough to know that you ain’t exactly the peaceable type, mister.”
He paused, then shook his head. That kick must have jarred his brains loose. He could have sworn that pony had just spoken to him. The trooper began easing his way around his speederbike, and as he did the pony entered what could only be called an aggressive stance.
“You take one more step closer’n I’ll buck you so hard your grandchildren’ll feel it!”
This time he was sure he’d heard her speak.
“I have orders to take you in.”
“Ha! You think you can scare me that easily? I’m the best apple-bucker in all Equestria, and nopony’s gonna make me go nowhere’s I don’t wanna go!”
The scout had no idea what she was talking about, but he had a job to do.
“Dead or alive, you’re comin’ with me.”
This seemed to give the creature pause, as though she hadn’t taken the blaster bolts flying past her head seriously while she was being chased through the forest. She narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
He slowly reached down to grab his blaster, never taking his eyes off the pony. His mind however went from determination to confusion as his hand hit the empty holster, and he looked down for just a moment to see why his gun wasn’t there.
That was the window Applejack needed.
She head-butted the trooper, sending him rolling down into the forest. Before he could recover, she galloped toward him and bucked him in the head again, sending it reeling.
Despite the helmet, which now bore two chips, it was more than his brain could handle. He made a feeble attempt to get back up, then with a sigh he collapsed into a pile of leaves and moss. Grateful that the first buck had sent his weapon flying, giving her that golden opportunity, Applejack trotted over to the mound that the trooper had fallen on and glared down at him.
“Think you can tango with a member of the Apple family and get away with it? Well you got another thing comin’, mister!” Her confidence boosted, she walked back to where she’d dropped her hat. After picking it up and dusting it off, she plopped it back on her head.
Now the real problem had begun: how to find her friends now that she was effectively lost in the forest.
Oh, well. It’s not as though she had known where she was this morning either.
She trotted off, keeping her eye out for signs of ponies.