//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 - Gonna Eat a Lotta Peaches // Story: With Malus Aforethought // by Schismatism //------------------------------// Halfway across Ponyville, a certain lavender alicorn was still fast asleep, her bedroom carpeted in darkness. It did face the sun, but Twilight Sparkle was rarely awake in time to watch her former mentor's glorious sunrises... something which niggled in her mind from time to time, but hardly caused enough concern for her to fix it. Night-time, after all, was the best time for studying, well away from the hustle and bustle of Ponyville in the hectic days. Nonetheless, she had promised Applejack that she'd assist with preparations, and for that reason, she set her alarm a full hour earlier than her normal time. And so it was that with a familiarity well-known to any student, the alarm clock sprung into motion, filling the room with an overwhelming din... right before a well-placed hoof silenced it forever. The tired groan of the eternal student replaced it instantly, Twilight rubbing her now-sore hoof against the bedsheets. Before she'd become an alicorn, she was accurately able to judge how much effort it took to shut an alarm off without damaging it... but now, it was far too easy to overdo it. With a flick of her horn, the now-ruined apparatus sailed into the garbage, following the other three from this week alone. "Spike, are you awake yet?" she asked, rubbing bleary eyes and stretching each wing in turn, the bedsheets flying away through a minor force of will. The only response was a loud snore from the smaller bed across the room, and a grumble about some manner of jeweled muffin. "Ugh..." The alicorn shook her head, resolving to let Spike get at least a bit more rest before she resorted to the ever-popular bucket of water. A few minutes later, Twilight was considerably more awake, and much more coherent, aided in no small part by a mug of steaming coffee and a pair of waffles. The book she'd been reading for the past day or two, Malus Mundi: A History of the Apple Family, floated next to her while she ate, and a flick of her horn added a bright apple to her breakfast. Or at least, it would have... What actually hit her plate was rather sizeably different. It took Twilight a moment to register, but before her eyes lay a mottled, orange-and-yellow fruit, not entirely dissimilar in shape and size, but far from alike in composition. Rather than the shiny skin of an apple, the object's outer layer was covered in a light fuzz, and rather than a long stem, it had a shorter, more fragile twig stemming from the top. A careful sniff of the item confirmed Twilight's suspicions: this was a member of prunus persica, rather akin to but not entirely similar to a nectarine: this, in fact, was a peach. "Spike...?" she asked curiously, looking up to her bedroom as she tossed the peach back in its basket. "You didn't buy any peaches yesterday, did you?" The dragon was known for occasionally being frivolous with his allowance, though she suspected he had a hoard of bits stashed somewhere on the grounds that, well, dragon. "Spike?" Another snore met her ears, and she sighed, looking back over at the container. A casual inspection showed that her first instinct was mistaken: sure enough, the basket was one of the two which Applejack had provided her, and stamped on the bottom was indeed the signature maker's mark of the Apple family. Nonetheless, this basket was filled with peaches, rather than apples... With a curious tilt of her head, Twilight wandered over to the cupboard where she'd stored the other basket, a small suspicion worming its way into her brain. The cupboard barely creaked as it opened, revealing - sure enough - yet more peaches. "Okay, now this is just too strange. Metamorphosis is one thing, but fruit? I'm wondering if this might be Rainbow Dash's idea of a prank..." Closing the cupboard once more, Twilight returned to her breakfast, picking up one peach and slicing it along the equator. The pit she set aside, planning to study it later, before she segmented the remainder of the fruit into sixteenths vertically. "At least it'll be a nice change," the alicorn shrugged, lifting a slice of waffle and peach to her mouth-- "TWAILIIIIGHT!" Fork clattered to the table, spilling a little bit of syrup and fruit as the door to the library practically vibrated off its hinges. "Twilight, open up!" came a familiar farmpony's shout, before another set of rattling bangs echoed through the library. "Alright, ALRIGHT, I'm coming!" Twilight sighed, looking at the mess on the table before rushing to the front door. The last thing she wanted was for Applejack to buck the door right off its hinges - again. "Hold on, already, will you?" With a click, she unlocked the door to take in the sight of... "Twilight, you've gotta help! Somethin's really, really wrong with Sweet Apple Acres! It's horrible! It's beyond horrible!" "Applejack, you--" "It's gotta be the work of Discord! You've gotta come and help, do some sorta magic to fix this, I mean, you're a Princess, you've gotta be able to do somethin'!" "Applejack, calm down, stop--" "I swear, if this cain't be fixed, I dunno what's gonna happen! Granny's practically off her rocker, Big Mac's almost catatonic..." "Applejack, CALM DOWN!" The farmpony's eyes were wide, irises the size of pinpricks, but the force of Twilight shouting managed somehow to get through her addled brain. Her rump hit the ground hard, the ordinarily reliable mare shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. But none of this proved to Twilight what an emergency this was so much as one simple observation: Applejack had forgotten her hat. "Okay, hold on." Twilight sighed slightly, looking back at her ruined breakfast before levitating her saddlebags over. Spike would be up to eat the breakfast before too long anyway, so it certainly wouldn't go to waste - though she would truly have preferred a few longer-acting carbohydrates before the day began proper. After a pause, she added some small grain bars and a few of the aforementioned peaches to the pack... then turned around to see Applejack shaking again at the sight. "What... in tarnation are those?" The farmpony's voice was dangerously level, with barely a quaver to her words, but that was somehow even more frightening than the sound of her panicking. "Those... things you just packed in there...?" "They're just peaches...?" Twilight's answer came out in the form of a question, the alicorn looking back at the table from which she'd pulled them. "I think Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie must have pulled some sort of a prank, because when I woke up this morning, your apples had gone missing, and all there were were these peaches." Twilight shrugged. "Not that I don't like peaches, but..." Applejack interrupted with a harsh bark of laughter, her body shaking again. "C-come on... we've gotta get to Sweet Apple Acres fast as we can." The farmpony'd been rattled before - and been under a lot of stress in the past - but this was the first time Twilight had seen Applejack really cracking up since that Baked Bads incident. So, she made a snap decision. "Alright, hang on - we'll teleport over." And with that, the pair were gone in a flash of magic. A yawn from the library resounded outwards, the sound of a dragon finally waking up from a long nap. "Hey, Twilight? I thought I heard Applejack a second ago..." He stamped down the stairs slowly, nose following the aroma of breakfast, until he came to an empty kitchen - and an empty library, at that. "Twilight...? Huh, she must've run off in a hurry." With a shrug, Spike looked over at the plate of waffles and fruit, then muttered, "Well, waste not, want not." And, with a happy chomp, Spike ate a peach.