//------------------------------// // Applejack's Attempt // Story: Pinkie Pie's Excellent Adventure // by dashingrainbows //------------------------------// Fixing problems doesn’t usually work out. You’re better off going back in time to visit a party and just have fun. You get seven turns. The last player gets to see something beautiful. I was just finishing unpacking and giving my little sister a hug when a certain blue pegasus decided to show up. Now, Rainbow Dash is good for a lot of things. She’s fun to hang around, she sticks with you when the going gets rough, and she’s the second-best athlete in Ponyville. Second best. One thing she’s no good for is knowing when to shut her trap. “Woah there, Rainbow!” I said. “We just spent a whole week together. What could possibly be so important that ya can’t wait, but not so important ya couldn’ta said it then?” “I’ve made a huge mistake! I destroyed something!” she answered in her ridiculous Cloudsdale accent. An Apple knows better’n to judge a mare by the way she talks, and I don’t hold it against her, but sometimes she can be a little hard to understand. She says her "I"s all weird. “Now hold on just an apple-picking minute. In the fifteen minutes since we split up, ya managed to destroy something?” Honestly, it wasn’t much of a surprise. “I tried destroying a mean letter some jerky-jerk-face wrote to Fluttershy, but I accidentally got the wrong one. I’ve tried like, twice now, I’m just not good at this time-travel stuff. But you can go back in time to before I destroyed the note, and read it and tell me what it said” Before I had a chance to reply, she pulled some rock out of a saddlebag and threw it on the ground. “Step on the rock. Say ‘Fluttershy’s house, three days ago.’” With my famous good manners, I politely rolled my eyes at her and groaned. “Look, I’ve really gotta get some work done here. I’ve left the farm for a whole week, and my kin’s been struggling to cover my chores on top of their own. And what’s all this about time travel, anyways?” “It won’t take any time at all, I think. Maybe your time, but not your farm’s time. I promise. Just do it and say ‘home’ when you’re ready to go back.” Y’ever hear a word so many times it don’t sound like a word no more? That time, with her saying time all the time, it happened to me. With the word time. I rolled my eyes, a little more pointedly this time, and stepped onto the piece of rock. “Fluttershy’s house, three days ago.” Then all of a sudden I was in Fluttershy’s cottage. I didn’t know that at the time, though. A lesser pony would’a been afraid. Not this cowpony. Instead, I instantly got ready to defend myself from whatever dangers were in this new, unfamiliar place. I started shaking to keep myself warm, just on principle, while I looked around the little house for any sort of clue as to where I was. Little homes for critters lined the walls, but were suspiciously empty. I ran around in circles for a bit, trying to get a better view of the surroundings. I noticed a flash of movement and reared up on my hind legs, just in case, but it was nothing, just my own shadow. Still, better safe than sorry, so I ran to the nearest door – a pantry – and waited in there for a few moments. Eventually, I realized I must be in Fluttershy’s cottage. The first clue was the animal houses – probably nobody in all of Equestria had half so many pets as her. Looking through the glass door of the pantry and out the house’s window, I thought I recognized a particular stand of trees from the Everfree forest. And the fact that all her aprons had the name Fluttershy embroidered onto them was also a clue. Finally, I found the note on her table and started reading aloud. While quite naturally, force is often necessary to accomplish the ends one seeks, and in no situation is this more true than that which is time-sensitive, such as the one in which you find yourself presently engaged, tact and diplomacy are equally essential. In attempting to convey the threat posed by the fragility of the Hoofer Dam, and the disastrous consequences of its imminent collapse, it is therefore imperative that one seeks to balance the security of house and home And then all of a sudden I was back in the farmhouse. Rainbow Dash hadn’t flinched from the position she was in when I vanished. “What did the note say?” Anyway, I struggled to remember the words I had just read, the sudden disappearing had thrown them out of my head. “Uh… something about force… somepony getting engaged… and the fragility of something. Hoo-something. Hoop. Hoot. Hoof. Hoofer – the Hoofer Dam!” I looked her straight in the eye. “The Hoofer Dam’s disastrous imminent collapse - Rainbow Dash, I think the Hoofer Dam is gonna collapse!” We raced to Twilight’s library faster’n a green snake up an apple tree, and told her the news. She told us we needed to talk to Dam Straight, the princess’s civil engineer. He’d personally overseen the construction. That was the part where things started getting bad. See, all six of us took the next train to Canterlot, and using the fact that Twilight’s the personal student of the princess, got ourselves an interview with the pony. He was big and tough-looking, even bigger’n my brother. An’ it turns out he takes offense a lot more easily than my brother, too. “Unstable? MY DAMS ARE THE PINNACLE OF EQUESTRIAN CIVIL ENGINEERING!” “Your dams ain’t worth a –“ “Silence, ignorant farmer!” That knocked the wind out of my sails like a pegasus from a tree. “You- you- you know nothing! I am an ENGINEER! BASK IN MY GLORY!” We were all pretty stunned there. I was pretty sure this was the time to shut my trap. “When I was a foal, a pair of serpents crawled into my crib. I crushed their heads and used them to build a bridge! THUS DID I RECEIVE MY CUTIE MARK!” Straight turned, showing off an image of some sorta suspension bridge, with snakes for cables. "You think the truth is your friend, but you merely adopted it. I was born in it!" Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, did not agree. About the shutting and the traps. "You think you're so great? Well Twilight Sparkle here," she gestured to the unicorn, who backed away, "is a genius and an egghead and a personal student to Princess Celestia!" “By the age of seven, I had bested all teachers. Even Celestia herself, it is said, feared my mathematical prowess. From then on, my only teachers were Pain and Experience. “For countless years, I trained my body and my mind in the middle of the Hellsdeath Volcano! For each theorem, a hundred sit-ups; for each proof, a thousand push ups!" He reared up on his hind legs and showed us his abs. I was ready to believe him. Rainbow Dash's confidence was beginning to falter. "Yeah, well, I did a Sonic Rainboom when I was just a filly!" With a voice like thunder, the pony roared. “It was I who tore the forbidden theorem of Gödel from the mind of the great dragon Anataxaris! I consumed the Seaponies’ Pie of Knowledge! I defeated the Demons of Discontinuity at Khurad-Mor!" "YOUR INFERIOR EDUCATION CAN NOT COMPARE TO MINE! BEGONE! PERHAPS YOU ARE THE CHOSEN OF CELESTIA - BUT NO MATTER! IF SHE WILL NOT RECOGNIZE MY SUPREMACY, I WILL BRING EQUESTRIA'S INFRASTRUCTURE TO A HALT!"