The storm, when it broke over Equestria, came upon the land with all the power of a hundred full grown dragon’s roars. The rain came down in torrents from the manufactured storm clouds, drenching the entire landscape of the nation within minutes of its onset. Water levels in rivers rose exponentially, at some points flooding over the banks entirely. The dirt roads that led in between towns and cities quickly turned to mud, large puddles forming in depressions caused by travelling pony hooves and cart wheels. Lightning split the sky frequently, lighting up the dreary night for miles around, followed by the subsequent loud crack of thunder. Small animals that had run for their burrows at the storm’s onset shivered in their homes, scared by the storm’s fury.
The streets of Ponyville lay deserted, all the residents of the town having taken shelter from the storm when the rainfall began to pick up from its meek-seeming beginning. The rain drummed upon the thatched roofs of the town’s buildings, providing a constant irritating cacophony of noise for the ponies dwelling inside them. Miniature waterfalls formed as the rain ran off the edges of the roofs to the ground below. Puddles gathered in the nooks and crannies of the cobblestoned roads, the stones at the edges sometimes glistening wetly in the light thrown out infrequently from windows in homes that had their lights on.
One would think that on a night such as this, most sensible ponies would be locked up in their homes, waiting the storm out. It was not a night to be spent out on the town. But it is on this dark and stormy night that the events of this dark tale truly begin to unfold, and so, we pick up our tale in the Cockatrice’s Egg, Ponyville’s local tavern, where a Stetson-wearing earth pony and prismatic-maned pegasus are doing their best to enjoy the evening, unaware that their evening plans are about to take a turn for the sinister…
…
“…And then the guy just jumped. All the way from the top of the camera cloud, from twenty feet in the air! It was So. Freaking. AWESOME!” Rainbow Dash excitedly finished recalling to her friend sitting on the other side of the table.
The Cockatrice’s Egg was a rather small, modest tavern, nothing fancy like the ones in the big cities, but it was still a local favorite among the townsponies regardless for its excellent food and drink and warm hospitality offered by the husband-and-wife owners. On most weeknights, the tavern would be bustling with patrons. Tonight, however, it was mostly empty. Save for Applejack and Rainbow Dash, there were only two other tables occupied, the solitary stallions sitting at each of them nursing their drinks in sullen silence. There was also a single magenta-colored mare sitting on a stool at the main bar area who seemed to be well and truly enjoying her drink, if the several empty tankards around her were any indication.
Applejack’s jaw hung open in disbelief, her eyes wide. “Well, ah’ll be…” she breathed in shock. “That unicorn is crazier than Pinkie Pie fer doin’ something like that, and that’s sayin’ something! A pony can get seriously hurt, or worse, doin’ that!”
“Relax, A.J.,” Dash said, casually waving a hoof, “nothing bad happened; the crowd caught him. Seriously, have a bit of faith in us metalheads, A.J. When a band member does a stagedive, you can rest assured that we’ll catch them.”
She paused, considering something. “Well, that is, unless the band totally sucks…” but then, seeing Applejack’s horrified expression, she hurriedly added, “but most sucky bands don’t do stagedives because of that very reason. Point is, this guy’s band most definitely did not suck, and thus, they can do stagedives. But most stagedives are not so totally, mindblowngly epic as this guy’s was!” a wide grin spreading over her face as she finished.
Applejack chuckled, lightly shaking her head. “Sounds like ya’ll had quite the time,” she said amusedly.
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” Dash replied enthusiastically. “That probably ranks as one of my favorite concert moments of all time, and I’ve had more than a few of those in my time, let me tell you,” she said, pausing to take a drink from her tankard of hard cider.
“Oh? Just how many o’ these here concerts have ya been to, exactly?” Applejack asked curiously.
Lowering her tankard and wiping off her lips quickly with a hoof, Dash considered the question for a few moments before replying, “Best I can guess, gotta be close to fifty. Mostly small club shows, mind you, I’ve only been to a couple really big festivals.”
Applejack gave an impressed whistle. “Dang, girl. You’re rightly addicted to them shows, by my reckoning, no question about that.”
“You know it,” Dash replied with a proud smirk. She then leaned forward slightly across the table and asked in a slightly lower voice, “But do you wanna know who’s an even bigger heavy metal fan than me?”
Applejack raised an eyebrow and, after a moment’s consideration, replied, “Okay. Lay it on me.”
Rainbow Dash motioned with her hoof for Applejack to come closer. Slightly confused, Applejack nonetheless acquiesced, leaning in towards the cyan pegasus’ face. Glancing left and right to make sure nopony was eavesdropping, Dash then raised a hoof to the side of her mouth and whispered in a hushed voice only loud enough for Applejack to hear:
“Fluttershy.”
Applejack leaned back quickly, a thoroughly gobsmacked look on her face. “You can’t be serious; you must be jokin’. Or drunk.”
“I’m not joking; by Celestia’s mane, I swear I’m telling the truth here: Fluttershy is a serious manebanger.” Dash insisted exuberantly, a wide grin plastered on her features.
It was true: Applejack couldn’t detect a trace of dishonesty in her friend’s words (something on which she considered herself an expert at, even before earning her status as the Element of Honesty), she was being completely truthful. And that, if anything, just made it all the more shocking! Applejack spluttered incoherently for a few moments before finally managing to blurt out, “How?”
“How what?”
“How can Fluttershy possibly like that kind a’ music?! Her, of all ponies?!” Applejack elaborated loudly, gesticulating wildly.
Raising a hoof to her lips, Dash hissed, “Shh! Keep it down, will ya?” looking over hurriedly to her right to see if anypony had heard. Thankfully, none of the other few patrons were looking over at them, either being too morose or, in the case of the magenta mare at the bar, who was currently in the middle of quaffing yet another tankard of ale, too blasted to care.
“Eheheh, ah’m sorry?” Applejack offered sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck nervously at the stern glare her friend was shooting at her. “Ah get it, ah promise to talk real quietlike from now on.”
Heaving a sigh and slowly running a hoof down her face, Dash said, “I would really appreciate it if you did; this is a really big thing for ‘Shy, as in super-duper top secret-level stuff; it’s not something she wants getting out in public. She even made me Pinkie Promise not to tell anyone else when I found out.”
Applejack’s face blanched at this, a look of absolute horror on her features. “Daaash…” she began slowly.
However, she was abruptly cut off when Dash leaned over and forcibly shoved her hoof against the cowpony’s mouth. “Shhhhhh!” she hissed, even more insistently than the last time. “I’m already taking a huge risk by even telling you; let’s not unnecessarily tempt fate with any further incriminating statements on your part, shall we?” she whispered hurriedly. Her pupils, which had shrunk to pinpricks, were paranoidly darting around in every which way, and her ears were high and alert, swiveling left and right in search for some unseen phantom sound.
Applejack nodded slowly against Dash’s hoof, and the pegasus just as slowly removed her hoof and leaned back to her original position, although her eyes and ears continued their wary, paranoid vigil.
Reaching up and adjusting her hat nervously, Applejack ventured carefully, “Ah think ah understand fully now why you’re so insistent on keepin’ this quiet.” She herself knew all full too well the dangers that came with breaking one of the pink party pony’s special promises. To this day, she still would occasionally wake up in her bed in a cold sweat, the nightmarish memory of Pinkie’s wrathful visage and her terrifying accusatory screams of “APPLEJAAAACK!! YOU PINKIE PROMISED!!!” which even in her dreams-or nightmares, in this instance-seemed to echo with the weight of a thousand angry Tartarian demons still fresh in her mind.
Finally seeming satisfied that no imminent pink wrath was about to be visited upon her, Dash relaxed and said, “Yeah. And now that I’ve told you, you’ve gotta swear to me that you’ll keep a lid on it in turn. Heck, only reason I told you is because I consider you the most reliable one to keep a personal secret. I couldn’t tell any of our other friends; Rarity would blab about it to the first customer she gets, Twilight would probably have some crazy egghead worry about ‘Shy’s ‘mental stability’ and want to have a therapy session with her, and Pinkie… well…” her facial features carrying the unspoken ‘you know’ implication quite clearly. “So, can I trust you to keep this between us? No telling no one, not any of our friends, not even Fluttershy; I want her to keep thinking it’s only me who knows,” she asked, leveling a serious gaze at her friend.
Reaching up with a hoof, Applejack removed her Stetson from her head and solemnly held it against her chest before saying, “You can count on me, sugarcube. Ah give ya my honest word as a member o’ the Apple family; you can trust me.”
“Swear to it?”
Applejack chuckled. “Sure, reckon ah might as well,” she said as she placed her hat back upon her head. “Although, do ya think we can just make it a regular swear this time? Ah ain’t had that good a track record in keepin’ the other kind, as ah’m sure you remember.”
Laughing, Dash said, “Sure, I’m cool with that. I’m not too high on those kind of promises, myself, case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, then…” Applejack said, before proceeding to spit on her right hoof and offer it forward towards Dash. “Only form o’ swearin’ ah holds any merit with,” she said with a grin, seeing Dash’s amused look.
Chuckling, Dash nodded before spitting into her left hoof, and then the two friends smacked their spit-laden hooves together, sealing the pact between them.
“So, how’d ya come to learn about this, anyway?” asked Applejack curiously, before taking a drink from her own tankard.
“Well, it was around when ‘Shy had first moved into Ponyville from Cloudsdayle, had to be, like, five, six years ago. I had already been living here about a year, and she invited me to come have tea with her at her new home, you know, the cottage out near Everfree forest outskirts?”
Applejack nodded. “Ah know the place. Can’t say ah’ve been there myself, though.”
“Right. So, yeah, she invites me over for tea and to check out her new place,” Dash continued, “We’ve been friends since we were fillies, me and ‘Shy; went through standard flight school and academy together. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, like I said, about a year, although we did keep in contact via mail during that time. But yeah, I had to move to Ponyville after being assigned to the weather team there, while ‘Shy had to stay behind in Cloudsdayle working the weather factory; she was deemed ‘not fit enough’ to be assigned to a weather team of her own,” an audible tone of anger creeping into her voice near the end.
“Whoa, that’s rough. Not seein’ your closest friend for that amount o’ time… ah can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for you both.” Applejack voiced in sympathy.
“Yeah, and it was especially hard for Fluttershy. She hated working in the factory, just hated it. But it was the only job available for her; there aren’t that many jobs to be had in Cloudsdayle, and because ‘Shy was so, well, shy, all the other places weren’t willing to hire her. Can’t get a job if you can’t make a good, confident impression when they interview you, you know? So all that was open to her was the factory; they don’t particularly care whether you’re shy or not, so long as you go about doing your job.” Dash murmured scornfully.
“That’s horrible,” Applejack breathed sadly.
“Yeah, I know,” Dash said, glumly regarding the amber liquid in her tankard on the table as she idly held it in between her hooves. “’Shy always used to tell me how much she wanted to work with animals; I figure that was always destined to be her true calling, ever since she got her cutie mark. It was her dream to be a vet, it was her main area of study when she was in academy; she threw herself into learning everything there was to know about animal care and the like, she was like a miniature Twilight during that time, I swear!” she said, chuckling at the memory. “But all that studying really paid off for her: she graduated with top honors in the school of veterinary care and zoology, and with one of the highest grade point averages in her entire class.”
“Wow, that’s really somethin’. Ah knew Fluttershy knew a lot about takin’ care o’ animals an’ all, but ah had no idea that she was that smart in general,” Applejack said amazedly, seeing her timid pegasus friend in an entirely new light. “If she was so smart, though, an’ wanted to be a vet so badly, whyever did she remain in Cloudsdayle workin’ a crummy factory job? Why didn’t she leave first chance she got?” she asked in confusion.
Dash sighed. “Simple: she didn’t have the money needed to move in the first place. ‘Shy comes from a relatively low-income family; her parents only barely managed to scrape enough together to put her through flight school and academy combined. So it’d be a massive understatement to say that they couldn’t nearly afford the cost of supporting their daughter’s move, buying a house and everything. So ‘Shy was stuck.”
“Ah see…” Applejack murmured unhappily. “But, at least she did eventually manage to get out a’ there. She wouldn’t be here in Ponyville otherwise,” she then said, her voice brightening somewhat.
“Yeah, she eventually managed to save up enough for a downpayment on her cottage house. But I tell ya, she had to endure some very tough times during that one year in order to earn enough money. Working the factory doesn’t pay much, and ‘Shy wasn’t gonna work there any longer than was absolutely necessary; she wanted out as soon as possible. So she was forced to make a lot of hard sacrifices lifestyle-wise in an effort to save more money in the quickest time possible; basically, she became Equestria’s biggest cheapskate. I’m not even gonna begin to go into some of the stuff that mare had to deal with, in respect for her, personally… and also in respect for our meals,” she finished uneasily.
“Ah… see,” Applejack repeated once again, albeit in a decidedly more unsettled tone.
“And even with all those bit-saving measures in place, I still don’t think she would’ve been able to save enough money for a house in a year alone working the factory,” said Dash, raising her tankard to her lips.
“So… yer sayin’ that she had another source o’ income on top o’ the factory job?” Applejack asked, pondering what that source could be… and almost immediately, a very dark possibility entered her mind, one that filled her with dread even considering. With wide, fearful eyes, Applejack leaned over the table and blurted out, “Dash, don’t tell me that Fluttershy became a prostitute!”
Dash, who was in the middle of taking a drink, nearly choked upon hearing her friend’s words, erupting into a fit of violent coughing as she struggled to clear her airways. With each word interspersed with a series of coughs, the cyan pegasus wheezed, “W-what?! No! She wasn’t a prostitute! How could you even think something like that?”
Thoroughly abashed, the red-cheeked cowpony rubbed the back of her neck ashamedly as she waited for her friend’s coughing fits to subside. Once they were more or less under control, Dash explained, “Seriously, A.J., it was nothing like that. I just sent her a portion of my own wages in the mail every week, that’s all. I did say that we kept in frequent contact, right?”
Applejack’s eyes widened. “Oh. Wow, um, that’s really, uh… You… really did that for her, Dash?” the cowpony asked softly.
“Well, yeah, of course I did, A.J. We’d been best friends since we were fillies, remember? Once I understood how miserable she was working in that factory and of her plan to save enough money to move, how could I not help her, especially considering how long it would’ve taken for her if I hadn’t? As cheesy as it may sound, even I know how important dreams can be to a pony, and how far that pony will go to fulfill that dream. My reasoning at the time was, that if I can help my best friend in fulfilling her dream, well… it’ll certainly be something to be proud of for when I finally do leave this world,” she finished in a quiet and subdued voice, a distant, watery look in her eyes.
No words came from Applejack; she didn’t trust her emotions to allow her to speak. She stared at her friend with a deep, newfound level of respect and admiration as tears threatened to roll down her cheeks, yet she managed to hold them in. She knew her friend, in her stoic manner, would not tolerate tears to be shed for her own emotions. For her part, Rainbow Dash closed her eyes briefly, before lightly shaking her head and giving a small, almost inaudible snort of amusement before reaching for her tankard and taking a quiet sip from it.
Doing her best to make it seem like she was just idly rubbing her eyes in tiredness, Applejack cleared the threatening tears from her eyes. “So,” she began, however, her still high emotions caused the word to come out shaky. Hastily clearing her throat in an effort to calm herself, Applejack then continued, to her relief in a much stabler voice, “you were sayin’ Fluttershy invited ya over?”
“Oh, yeah, right!” Dash said, snapping out of her own silent existential ponderings, glad to resume her original story. “So, yeah, ‘Shy invites me over to have tea. Having just moved in, she hasn’t had much of a chance to unpack, y’know? So there were a bunch of boxes lying around the place. Anyway, we talk for a bit, tell each other how we’ve been, and then ‘Shy excuses herself to go and get started on the tea; she goes into the kitchen while I stay in the living room. After a while, though, I started to get kinda bored, so I decided to take a look around the rest of the house while I waited.”
“Do ya usually make a habit o’ snoopin’ around your best friends’ homes?” Applejack jokingly snarked.
“Hey, she said I could make myself at home! Nothing wrong with her best friend taking a look around her then-new house, is there?” Dash lightly retorted.
“I ‘spose not,” Applejack conceded.
“Right, so, yeah, I take a look at everything downstairs, and after seeing all there was to see there, I decide to take a look upstairs, y’know, to see the bedroom area. I go up there; the room’s pretty much barren like the rest of house. But then, I notice that there are a couple of boxes lying off in a corner of the room. I assumed they were just some more boxes of ‘Shy’s stuff, but it struck me as odd that this box was alone, upstairs, instead of with the rest of the boxes downstairs,” Dash continued.
“And let me guess: you decided to take a look inside them?”
“Well, hey, I figured ‘Shy would be okay with it. No secrets between friends, y’know? And also, I’d already settled in my mind that I would offer to help her in her unpacking, so it’s not like I wouldn’t see what was inside most of those boxes, anyway,” Dash reasoned.
“So, I open up the first box, and what I find in there just blows me away. That box was literally stuffed to the brim with heavy metal albums! I couldn’t believe how many there were in there! And there were even more in the other box! I swear, there had to have been at least two hundred in each box; even I didn’t have that many! I’m tellin’ ya’, A.J., words can’t even begin to describe how absolutely floored I was at that moment,” she said enthusiastically.
“Heh, ah can imagine.”
“So, anyway, I’m flipping through some of the albums, when I hear this tiny ‘Oh, dear’ from behind me. I turn around, and there’s Fluttershy, her face as red as a beet, looking equal parts horrified and embarrassed. I gotta admit, it was kinda cute seeing her like that.” Dash chuckled.
“So, what happened?” asked Applejack.
“Well, first I’m all like ‘Ohmigosh ‘Shy you like heavy metal?!’ And then she just gives this scared little nod and says ‘Um, yes, I guess,’ and then I’m all like ‘Hey, me too!’ and that I think calmed her down; she was actually worried that I would hate her for liking heavy metal, can you believe that? From there we talked about metal, how we got into it, what bands we liked and all that cool stuff. She showed me some of her favorite albums, too; I tell ya, we had such a blast that night, listening to music, manebanging together and stuff… Best. Reunion. Ever,” Dash said, a fond, faraway look in her eyes.
“Nice. That certainly sounds like a memorable moment for ya both,” Applejack said appreciatively.
“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” Dash said simply, a smile on her lips.
A period of contemplative silence ensued between the two friends, broken only when Dash suddenly broke out in a fit of snickers.
“May ah ask what’s so funny?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, it’s something I just considered,” Dash said, straining to keep a lid her laughter. “You know how Fluttershy’s always so nice and pleasant all the time, even in the moments when she does get angry or frustrated?”
“Ah will admit, the few times ah’ve seen her get riled up over something or other, she did have a rather… restrained way o’ showin’ it, to put it mildly. Why do ya mention it?”
“Well,” Dash began, a stifled snort of laughter escaping her before she continued, “when you consider the fact that ‘Shy is an insane closeted metalhead, it all becomes obvious: the reason why Fluttershy is so pleasant all the time, and why she has such a restrained way of showing her anger, like you said, is simply because she listens to so much metal; she just manebangs all the aggression right out of her!”
At this, Dash couldn’t handle it any more, and burst into raucous guffaws of laughter, Applejack joining in after a moment’s consideration of her friend’s words, albeit in a much more controlled manner than the pegasus sitting opposite her.
As the laughter wound down, Dash leaned forward on the table, resting a hoof on her forehead, and said, “Ahh, by Luna, I tell ya, this has been a fun night, and in my case, that’s saying something. I’m usually not that big on deep, introspecty talks, that’s always been more of Twilight’s or Fluttershy’s bag. I guess it’s because I’ve spent so much time with you and ‘Shy and Twilight and Pinkie and Rarity over the last couple years, you’ve all just kind of rubbed off on me a bit, character-wise, y’know?” She paused, smiled. “Or I dunno, maybe it’s just the booze talking,” she said, chuckling.
Applejack laughed and said, “Naw, ah think ya just hit the nail on the head there with the whole ‘character rubbin’ off on ya’ bit, sugarcube. Ah reckon ah feel the same way. Guess that’s just another aspect o’ friendship, ah suppose, your personalities rubbin’ off on each other over time.”
“Heh, be sure to remember that for next time we see Twilight. I bet she’ll just be itching to write a friendship report about it as soon as possible,” Dash snarked.
“Heheheh,” Applejack chuckled.
Sighing, Dash then said, “Anyway, my point is, we should totally do this more often, A.J. Y’know, take a breather every now and then from the usual competitive stuff we get up to.” She paused, a playful, cocky grin spreading across her features. “Nooooot that I don’t thoroughly enjoy kicking your plot on a regular basis...”
“Ah still say you cheated in the last competition we had,” Applejack accused playfully, her eyes narrowed in mock indignation.
Dash’s only response to her friend was to use a hoof to stretch the skin below her eye and stick her tongue out at the same time.
Shaking her head in amusement, Applejack then said, “But yeah, ah agree with ya on doin’ this more often. Ah had fun too, and ah can say it’s a heckuva nice sendoff for when ah leave in a couple ‘a days.”
“Well, then…” a smiling Dash began before picking up her tankard and raising it. “Here’s to friends getting together more often!”
“Ah’ll drink to that!” Applejack said heartily, raising up her own tankard and clacking it against her friend’s before raising it to her lips and taking a long drink as Dash did the same.
It was in the middle of this that Applejack suddenly got a strange feeling. It felt as though something invisible was slowly crawling up the back of her spine, and at the same time, it felt like portions of her coat were burning with heat. She couldn’t explain its suddenness or where it came from. But for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she suddenly had an inexplicable and unexplainable feeling of cold dread that seemed to fill her very being with an equally unexplainable, yet ominously chilling certainty: Something horribly wrong was going to happen to somepony, and soon!
KA-THUNK!
Dash was startled out of her drink by the sudden loud noise, raising a hoof under her chin as cider spilled down her lips. “What the…” she began irritably, but then stopped upon seeing her friend. Applejack’s face was pale as a ghost, her pupils shrunk to pinpricks, focusing on nothing, her mouth hanging open slightly and quivering in fear. Her hoof was still raised in front of her, but it was empty. Quickly glancing beneath the table, Dash spotted her friend’s tankard lying on the ground, its contents spilling out onto the wooden floor.
Looking back at her friend, Dash slowly ventured, “A.J.?”
No response.
“Applejack?” Dash repeated, now more than a touch worried. “Hey, Applejack!”
At last, the earth pony’s eyes seemed to focus on Dash, although they remained in their dilated state. Somewhat relieved at this, Dash gently asked, her eyes wide with worry, “Hey, A.J., what’s wrong, girl? You look like you’ve seen Death.”
“Somepony’s in great danger,” Applejack whispered, almost too quiet for Dash to even hear.
“Huh? What? Somepony’s in danger? Who? How do you know?” the confused pegasus rattled off, shocked alert by her friend’s ominous words.
“Ah don’t know,” the now shaking Applejack said quietly, leaning against the table with a hoof, while the other was held to her forehead, as she looked aimlessly at the table with her still slightly dilated eyes.
“You don’t know what? Who’s in danger, or how you know?” Dash asked in clarification.
“Neither!” Applejack bit off forcefully, throwing both her forehooves to the side. “A-ah don’t rightly know who’s in danger, or even how ah know!” she exclaimed, her own confusion now apparent in both her eyes and voice. Drawing her forehooves around herself and glancing around nervously, Applejack then said, in a voice laced with fear, “All ah do know is that soon, somepony’s gonna be in great danger, and it’s gonna happen to somepony near…” She then broke off, suddenly noticing something that had escaped her attention, something that now set her nerves on end and put a cold feeling in her stomach.
Apart from the owner stallion currently washing the bar, she and Rainbow were the only two ponies sitting in the tavern now. The mare at the bar had vanished... as had the two other stallions. The drinks they had been nursing now sat unattended on their tables.
“…by.”
Without preamble, Applejack abruptly got off her chair and rushed over to the tavern front door.
“Applejack?” asked Dash in confusion, turning around in her chair to follow her friend’s movements.
Applejack didn’t answer as she flung open the front door. Immediately the sound of torrential rainfall filled her ears as the earth pony stepped out into the rainy night. Ignoring the rain soaking her, Applejack cast her head left and right, straining her eyes for any sign of equine movement in the murky darkness. She saw none, even when a bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating the surrounding streets for a brief moment. Celestiadammit! she cursed mentally, the boom of thunder seeming to highlight her unspoken blasphemy as she quickly turned to head back in the tavern.
Once again ignoring her pegasus friend’s attempt to get her attention and her cry of indignation as she bulled her way past her standing in the doorway of the tavern, Applejack strode quickly across the length of the tavern, leaving glistening hoofprints in her wake. “Hey, you there!” the dripping earth pony called out as she came to a stop at the cusp of the bar area.
The earth pony owner behind the bar looked up from the tankard he was cleaning with a rag and gave a pointed ‘who, me?’ look.
“Yeah, you,” affirmed Applejack before she raised a hoof to point at the spot the drunk mare had been sitting at, easily identified by all the empty tankards strewn around it. “Who was the mare sittin’ at that there spot?”
“Uh, that would be Berry Punch, a regular. She usually comes here once a week and always winds up drinking her plot off,” the owner explained with a trace of weariness.
“Uh-huh. And where did she go?” inquired Applejack as Dash came up behind to confusingly watch the exchange.
“She left, to go home, I suspect. Finally worked up the nerve to tell her she’d had enough for the night, and she left without too much trouble, thank Celestia for that.”
“And those other stallions that were in here? When did they leave?”
The owner looked puzzled at this. “Er, pardon me for asking, but what is this all about?”
“Just answer the question, please, sir,” insisted Applejack.
“Uh, okay. Uh, from what I remember, they left about a minute or two after Ms. Punch left,” the owner recalled.
“Together or separate?”
“I beg your pardon?” the owner asked in confusion.
“Did they both leave together or did they leave separate-like?” Applejack clarified.
“Uh… together, I think.”
“And you didn’t think anythin’ suspicious o’ that?” Applejack asked in a tone of incredulity.
“…Not really, no,” the owner said after a moment, confused. “Look, what is going on here?” the owner asked exasperatedly.
Running a worried hoof over her mouth, Applejack contemplated silently for the briefest moment before a sudden determined look filled her eyes. “Sir, ah’m gonna have to ask if you know where Ms. Punch lives,” she stated firmly.
“Why do you want to know that?!” the earth pony blustered.
“Ms. Punch may be in danger, sir. It’s imperative that ah know where she lives so ah know the best way to head to find her.” Applejack said, gravely serious.
The owner’s eyes widened considerably. “W-what? Danger? What dan-”
“Please, sir,” Applejack cut him off insistently, “it’s important that we find her as quickly as possible, we can’t waste any time explainin’. Every second is crucial. Please, if you know where Ms. Punch lives, tell us now.”
The owner was silent for a moment, then swallowed gravely and said, “She lives in a small rental bungalow near the center of town. Two-fourteen Sunshine Lane.”
“Thank ya kindly,” Applejack nodded before turning around and walking past Rainbow. Stopping at their table, Applejack first grabbed her neatly folded faded yellow poncho and then the lantern she had brought from home from underneath in her teeth, setting them both on the table before beginning to unfold the poncho.
“What is going on, A.J.?” asked Dash as she came to look her friend from the opposite side of the table.
“You heard me. That Berry Punch mare is about to find herself in a whole heap o’ danger, and ah’m not about to let anythin’ bad happen to her, not when ah can do somethin’ to prevent it.”
“You don’t even know the mare!” Dash yelled.
“She’s a citizen o’ Ponyville; that’s acquaintance enough for me,” Applejack calmly replied.
“You don’t even know if it’s her that needs the help!”
“Look, Dash,” Applejack said, cutting her friend off from any further protests, “ah know ya think this all seems crazy as all get out, but ah can’t rightly let this go. Ah can’t, ah just can’t! Ah’ll understand if ya wanna sit this one out, but by gum, ah’m headin’ out there!” she stated emphatically, before grabbing her unfolded poncho in her teeth by the hood and swinging the body area of the poncho up and over her back, a practiced maneuver that left the body area of the poncho covering her from withers to dock width-wise, and down to her cannons length-wise. The hood that would cover her head respectively had a strap at the neck area that would hold the poncho together.
Regarding her friend incredulously for a moment, Rainbow Dash then proceeded to closer her eyes, sigh, and shake her head in amusement before saying, “Yeah, fat chance of that, hayseed.”
“Huh?” queried Applejack in confusion, turning to look at her friend.
“No way am I sitting this out; you are not going out there without me,” Dash stated resolutely, reaching down to grab her own dark blue weather cloak from its resting place on her seat, before repeating the same maneuver Applejack had just performed to place it upon her back. Using her left forehoof to slide her hood into place over her head and then using her wings to hover briefly in the air while she used both her forehooves to do the steel clasp together, Dash then landed lightly before giving Applejack a Tirek-may-care smile, which combined with her fully cloaked appearance, gave her a very roguish air indeed. “Well, we gonna get going or what?”