The sun burned its way across the tall sandy hills around the town, soon migrating all the way into the metal walls, and casting its obtrusive rays between the corrugated sheet metal roofing. Semi-opaque yellow rays from the heavens, a beam hit Applejack’s eye. She blinked and held the one eye tightly.
The lamb skull was to her side and seemed to whistle. She lifted her ear to it and the echoed sound of the ocean was apparent. She tossed the thing away and turned wholly to the long sheet of glass that was in her room. She was greasy and grimy. She took a shred of a washcloth and rinsed it through a bucket of water that had been dropped by the night before. She rubbed and scrubbed the sides of her orange furred face, wrapped it around her ear and did a shoe-shining sort of motion.
It pained the ear and she reached up to feel the wound. She brought the hoof in front of her. It was half covered in warm red fluid. She let the hoof hang and used the remaining one tidy up her coat a bit. After awhile of being done with the water she washed her blood off in it. The chatter of the village of ponies or people or lizards began to rise in this early morning.
But once Applejack stepped out to greet the sheer bright morning, the entire town died to nothing but a minuscule whisper. Applejack felt intimidated but willed herself to step down the wooden staircase. She walked over to the half empty water basin in the corner of the town and filled the bucket she had around her neck. Everybody watched her.
She returned to the room and drank a single cup of water. It was warm, but she did not mind, any drink was due for a welcoming into her gullet. She swished a mouthful and swallowed.
Hoon leaned against the doorway and whistled. Applejack turned and her absentminded look went morose. He side-eyed her with his own hidden anxiousness. They both joined each other in a glum walk down the stairs. Applejack hopped herself onto the hood of the tan vehicle and looked down into the dust.
After what seemed like forever the entire town stood in sullen attention of the two creatures. Axeon sat cross-legged on an altar that had been brought to be the day before. He called to the heavens in a mournful chant. Hoon secured a short shotgun and a bandolier to her metal bone and shoulder, completely ignoring the strange rites “Get in,” he whispered to the mare as he pulled the final strap tight.
She picked the lamb skull off the hood. She put it on her head and said “Help?” shortly.
Hoon again tucked a strap away, this time just below the horn of the Lamb. Hoon patted the side of her head and turned to the pack of villagers. They all peered scandalously over the two. A few monkeys steered through the sea of the limbs. They hooted and hollered jumping just in front of the car, looking at Hoon. He fell to them, patting each of them on the head.
He rounded the car and climbed through the passenger’s side window. Applejack shook as she left the hood alone. But she only had a moment to hear the clops of hoofs before she was pushed against the car’s side panel. She flicked her head to Rarity’s teary face. Rarity leaned and listened to Applejack’s heart. It beat so fast. Rarity looked into those eyes once more and her face went angry, but tears flowed freely from those gorgeous sky blue eyes. The white mare pushed Applejack hard into the side of the car.
Applejack felt the ear, more blood was on her hoof. Her lip quivered and rose with her head as way down as possible. The sound of hoofs once again clopped away. Applejack hurried to her side of the vehicle, the door was already open and she stepped in. Door closed.
Car pulled out and the people made way. The car kicked up dust. The car left through the corrugated metal front gate. They cut red sandy grooves. The sky was all at once grey. Just ten minutes ago it was a blazing sun that hit them. The remnant of that did pierce the clouds.
A chill wind blew. It skipped along the hood.
``
Two days had passed, Applejack had not slept and had been barely conscious. Hoon had tricked her into sleeping, and now she was passed out in the driver’s seat. Hoon opened the trunk for the first time since their departure. The thing creaked open and there in the dark fabric was several gas cans and a pair of binoculars. He picked up the can and the binos. Hoon walked to the gas cap and reached up to pull it open.
Hum.
He dropped the can and dove to prone. The sand caught in between his fur and he watched the distant bright horizon. There, almost blotting out the sun, was the behemoth and it’s savage pack. They crossed the far off dune without noticing the car. Hoon breathed a great sigh of relief. He then returned to putting gas in the car.
After a few moments the can was empty. He put in back in the trunk, knowing that leaving traces was dangerous. He climbed into shotgun and gave Applejack a few slaps to her cheek. Almost patting. Applejack’s head rolled and her eyes opened just slightly, but she refused to actually wake. Hoon sighed.
He leaned out the window with the binoculars and watched the surrounding sand with a careful eye. After a few minutes of thorough scanning, his scope found a parked car. Barely visible, just a black speck, barely a silhouette.
He found a magazine crammed in between the seats and laid it next to every one of his scoping points as went to them. Taking peeks at it every chance he got. It was a magazine about ponies. Ones who wear expensive clothes. Hoon had never seen a pony wear anything, but rags, mementos or leather. So this peaked his interest. So strange, so perfect.
His eyes went wide, a mare was on the front. A white mare. A light royal purple mane. He dropped the binos and scanned every line. He couldn’t read. She looked older than the one who had presented a sour goodbye to Applejack. He jumped onto the center console, still looking at the magazine intensely. He sweated, he looked at Applejack’s face, then back down onto the magazine.
He sighed and felt silly. This isn’t what needs to happen. He took the glossy thing and tossed it under the passenger’s seat. He waited and stood guard for another two hours, thinking of every way he could awake Applejack in case of dire circumstances. An hour into the two, the silhouette departed into the desert.
The timed passed uneventfully. He then tried his gentle slaps again. She stirred into a semi-conscious state and asked “Where are we?” while trying to block the sun.
“Close to them,” he said conspiratorially.
She dragged herself from the depths of unthought to ask a single important question “Them?”
“The devil truck was just there a while ago,” he pointed through the back window to the now setting sun “We are gonna need to be fast,” he seized a short semi-automatic rifle from the floor and aimed down the sights “Maybe pick them off...”
“Like we even get one…” Applejack blinked her heavy eyes.
“One?” he lowered the weapon, “I’m not dying with only one slain, several.”
“Yeah,” Applejack said mindlessly, she turned on the vehicle and mounted the grooving sand hill ahead of them.
The car buzzed all day, and only at night did it rest. They both slept in the back, Hoon on the floor, Applejack on the seat.
They hunted in the morning, found the sand trail of tires, and followed. Soon the sound of motorized death rung over the dusty embankment they had arrived at. Applejack breaths shuddered.
“Shut the car off,” he reached for the binoculars, “But keep the keys in reach.”
Gunshots, screams, suffering, murder. They spiked and fell like great waves of sound. The two of them were transfixed morbidly to the tip of the sand hill. Where all the world seemed to burn. Yes, great stacks of smoke soon met the clouds.
“Who is that driver?” Applejack scratched an itch that had begun to bug her on the first night.
“She proclaims herself to be, ‘the leader of the pony race’,” he made bunny ears on both hands behind his head “She gave herself this title ‘The Mad Nomad Queen.'” he waved away the notion “Only an imbecile would take such a name.”
“Why would anypony follow her?” Applejack inquired earnestly.
“She has food, gasoline, water, and is not afraid to take it from others.” he threw up a finger for each thing he listed, he let them falter and rested his elbow on the open car window.
“She only has ponies in her group?”
He muttered looking lazily into the hazy distance “Kills the rest,”
Much time passed before the sound of guns ceased and the sound of motors met the air. The two readied their weapons, just in case they were found. It was a bit before the sound of cars faded. During this time, they watched the hill with fear in their hearts. Then the only sound was of the death wind blowing. Grey blotted the horizon behind their car.
The strong car topped the hill and the passenger's looked below. Hoon’s face did not falter, but Applejack’s eyes narrowed and she trembled. A gruesome bloodletting blew in the strange wind. Carnage had taken place, no mercy, just corpses.
Hoon drove to the center of the town and got out to examine the hellish scene. Applejack simply looked around and tried to find something to say or feel, but soon Hoon returned the vehicle with an unreadable steel look on his face “Northwest, that’s where she’ll be.”
They drove for an hour in silence. Soon they rounded a rock at the mouth of a stony valley and found the car in the caboose of the murderous caravan. A car two stories high with a little turret atop. They rammed the side of the sharp vehicle and it tipped. The one on the turret screamed as he fell under the mass of the car. Sand blew into the air. There was a purple mare who was working on the machine. She gasped and ran for the bloody red rock hills.
The neck snapping crack of Hoon’s magnum echoed throughout the crimson expanses around. Then car horns, motors and tires sounded off from every direction. Hoon opened his magnum’s cylinder and reloaded the single round. He glanced nervously in every obvious entrance to the rock valley they were in.
She hit the pedal and threw wheel to the left. They approached the wide end of the valley and caught sight of the crude beast of metal. Applejack did not let her foot leave the pedal as the dark vehicle neared her. She almost ran bumper first into the great truck, but the truck spun to avoid the collision. But still ahead there was a muscle car with an angry beige mare inside. Hoon leaned out window with a rifle and level its sights. He fired, but only the windshield cracked
The beige mare headbutted the windshield and let crimson run freely into her eyes. Blinking it away the best she could. She was ready to die.
AJ attempted her first shot with the metal bone pulling the trigger for her. The burst cracked from the end of the machine gun, but most of the bullets simply pierced the other mare’s car hood. Applejack threw the wheel once more and the vehicle just turned enough not to be hit by the other car. A seething electronic voice screamed over all “I want to see them!”
Applejack pounded the accelerator, but the car only made a single burst of movement before hitting the rock ledge that lined the mostly narrow rock valley. The front bumper fell and few pieces of the grill joined it. She backed the car up to straighten her drive to the open end, but a vicious bash hit the trunk and forced her to ram her snout into the wheel. Her eyes teared up and she tried to blink the water out. Warm fluids dripped from her nostrils onto the car’s dirty floor.
She stepped on the pedal, blindly hoping that would be enough. Hoon was quiet. She couldn’t see him. The car plowed weak shrubbery out of the way that had been loosened before. One small shrub blocked half of her already limited view. Something whizzed by the window. Another something struck home in her shoulder. Applejack cried to the air and let the car slow to a stop. She willed up her mental energy and focused on grabbing the door handle with the metal bone. Luckily on the first try it took ahold of the handle. She pulled with all her might and the door loosed. She let her body flop and let that weight open the door fully. She scrambled in the dust beside the door. Unable to turn her eyes up to see where she flailed too.
But with every staggered step, her shoulder stung in agony. Pain filled every fiber of her being and she collapsed. Dust matted wet red clumps of fur on the side of her face. Her ears rang. Fluid began to blur her vision entirely. A leg and hoof was silhouetted in her distorted eye. She looked up.
A dark menace, a pony who murders, stealer of life. The cords hung like spider legs off of her neck. A grotesque blunt silver muzzle mounted on the end of her scarred white snout. Metal bracers grafted into the skin of her legs. A silvery fluorescent waft of steam poured from the muzzle’s vent. The muzzle changed, seemed to conform to a frown. Applejack could barely make out a single detail
Applejack's lips parted in surprise, but she could utter anymore. She turned over and lifted her upper torso off the ground, digging the back half of her hooves into the sand. She choked out a few breaths and pushed a few inches forward. But her body gave and her chin fell onto the hard dust.
Applejack turned and saw the pony, it had both a horn and wings, an alicorn. She was just looking at her, letting Applejack crawl. In those eyes there was a studying hate. Almost as if she admired a cockroaches will to live in disgust. Applejack dug in again and lifted herself an inch forward before falling into struggled hyperventilation. Her throat was dry and the taste of copper was all that was left. She had never tasted copper before.
She attempted for one last time, to lift herself away from the twisted alicorn. As her chest lifted, a heavy hoof weighted down on her shoulders. She slammed against the ground and lost all will. A few seconds passed of near silence. A few murmurs. Cars being shut off. A crowd seemed to encircle the pathetic mare.
Then a hoof nudged on Applejack’s shoulder. One hardy hit later and she was turned over. To be seen by all the savages. Her mouth was open and inhaling every breath she could. Limbs limp, but still stuck in the air.
The white alicorn lowered herself to be just a face apart. The alicorn’s expression went to a gleeful surprise “I’ve finally found her!” the Alicorn rasped out to the air “Where’s Rarity?” asked the alicorn.
Applejack actually summoned the strength to sit up and look deep into the Alicorn's eyes. The colors changed from a noxious green to sickly pink to a dull orange. Applejack had the confused look that a tired child would have. But that was all she could express before passing out.
A few excited rasps later the orange mare was lifted into a warm hug. Strangely during this hug, the dusty air still bit at her from every direction. But after a few minutes of gentle travel, she was laid out in a shady hut. A while passed and the sound of wood hitting rock startled Applejack awake. She looked up, there was the strange alicorn. She was tossing a bundle of wood onto the ground.
The alicorn caught Applejack’s gaze and muttered “Soon....” she turned around walked down the side of the valley’s sloped ledge. Sun danced it’s insidious light along the red rocks. Applejack felt a ball forming in her chest. Something sad was becoming a realization. She may never return to Rarity.
She fell back into a dreamless sleep. Time ticked and tocked in her mind. Dramatic affronts of purpose blazed throughout the moments in this desert.
To fight for innocence.
To fight for someone.
To fight for revenge.
To fight for necessity.
Lay this all out and Applejack couldn’t pick a single one. Like a clock ticking and never landing on a number. But what is between the numeric marks?
To fight for herself.
She denied even the thought of it. If that was true, why did she take Rarity’s place?
Answer is; She failed to find emotion, triumph and love every step of the way. She festered in her limitation. Death she hoped would be her release, a moment of absolution. If just for a flash something she did mattered. Death.
Death would not find her, it was not looking hard enough.
Applejack woke just after nightfall. Fire crackled, weight shifted. Orangey cinder, embers popping above the fire. The natural smokey smell of burning wood. A tad spicy.
The alicorn manipulated a dry branch and poked at the fire. Sending more flurries of ember to the cracked ceiling. It took just about two minutes before she noticed that Applejack had awoken. Deep in that Alicorn’s heart, she wanted to cry out her knowledge, but she would stave off that whim, if only for a moment.
Applejack was no longer hurting. She was also cleaner. She sat up a little bit and rubbed the back of her neck. This where words would be, but she had nothing to say to the alicorn. She looked directly into those changing eyes. Deep ocean blue, then lavender. It did not change from that color. She had removed a large bundle of her metal muzzle some time before Applejack had awoke.
“Tell me the truth,” the voice rasped out lowly “is Rarity alive?”
Applejack shook her head.
“I apologize,” the alicorn placed two hooves firmly on the muzzle and twisted it, it clicked loose. She placed it to her side. Her bare snout was holey and cavernous, saliva dripped down onto the stony floor of the cavern. A sweet voice that Applejack recognized rang in her ear “for not finding you sooner.”
Applejack shook and stared the mare in the eyes “That can't... Is that you, Twi?” her voice
was cracked and dry.
The alicorn breathed and thought “Perhaps, how long have you been traveling these lands?”
“A few days maybe.” Applejack looked into the dust and made no expression other than words.
“I’ve been here for two hundred years,” Twilight's sweet voice said this in the flattest voice “I was trying to find you two, still was in the back of my mind,” she corrected herself “Well, I guess I have found you farm pony,” she gestured out the clay doorway “What do you think of my home?”
“Could be better.”
The Changed Twilight threw up her white upper body and laughed, wholeheartedly “Were you always this good?” she shook her head and smiled at Applejack “See, I don’t remember.”
“What happened, Twi?”
Twilight sat back and looked up to stars through the holes in the ceiling “Longest story, AJ,” Twilight was a crude monstrosity “What is your story?”
“The both of us were teleported to someplace and found some prisoners, then we went through a tear that Rarity created and the truck crashed,” Applejack gulped and summoned up some tears in her eyes “Rarity cracked her skull in the crash.”
There was stillness except for Applejack’s rather convincing lamentations. Crickets sang their droning song. Up until this point, the white coated Twilight had been empathizing in her own strange way, but something was off now, she licked her upper lip “Are you sure?”
Applejack fake cries ceased “What?”
“Are you sure, Rarity passed in that crash?” She leaned in closer to the mare.
“Yes.”
“If I remember correctly, I was tasked with bringing you two back to Equestria, I was so happy at the thought of bringing my newly lost friends back, so I left.” she went from almost gleeful to flat “So you say Rarity is dead?”
“Yes,” Applejack screamed internally.
"Ok, ok, you have a bit of white fur?"
"Yeah,"
“Yeah, this is what the warp does to you,” she gestured about her mutated appearance “First time I tore through, I had little bits of white hair, strange teeth stabbing, things like that, But I was still determined to find you two.”
“Second time I went through, I was much worse, so much worse, covered in my own lifeblood, half white fur underneath, I found someone who could fix a bit of it. Then I hungered for revenge, I couldn’t make sense of the world I was poured into, ponies were not happy, they were killers!”
“Third time, I realized I would never get a break or moment to really rest, that my hopes for revenge were petty and foolish, it was easier to try and find you anyway.”
"Fourth time, I gave up happiness and kindness, found a way to bring ponies closer to what they need, and have been trying to bring them closer ever since.”
“So, Applejack, is Rarity alive?”
Applejack scanned the dust, but soon grew resolute “No.”
“You are not being honest,” Twilight leaned down and whispered maniacally “Say the word and I can bring the three of us back, just tell me where she is.”
Applejack again let the moment breathe “She’s back at the truck, layin' in the passenger’s seat.”
“Yes, of course she is, we found the truck, Applejack, and we killed all of those ponies, Applejack, and Rarity’s corpse was not among them, or in the passenger’s seat, Applejack.” Twilight's voice twisted in strange tension.
The blood zapped from Applejack’s face.
Twilight began again “Lying to me, how far have you fallen?”
Applejack spat “You’re the killer.”
“But I never crossed this here horn, or my magic, YOU have lied, Applejack,” she said in high and mighty tone “You’re very element must be cross with you.”
Applejack threw her head into the sand.
“Now, you’re just gonna ignore me, right? Forget you or I said anything?”
“You’re an idiot, Twilight.”
Twilight laughed so uproariously that she nearly knocked into the fire “IDIOT, ARE YOU SERIOUS!” she rubbed a hysterical tear away “Is that why I command a pack of conquerors across this wasteland? Because I am an idiot? What does it really have to do with anything? Name calling?”
Applejack hid her head away.
“You’re doing it again, Applejack,” she chuckled “Being a coward.”
Applejack picked her body up and launched into the Alicorn. Applejack’s hooves found Twilight’s throat and pressed hard onto it. Twilight’s horned cracked against a rock and shattered. Twilight lost all magic.
She wrapped her legs around Applejack and squeezed her torso tightly. Applejack croaked out “Buc-” before being slammed onto her side by the Alicorn. Applejack coughed, and pain scratched up and down her trachea. Blood swelled from her lungs and was coughed out.
Twilight sat on her hams and laughed “Fragile, aren’t you, you wanna know what happened to the monkey?” she smiled wryly “I’m sure you can guess, but we slit his throat good.”
Applejack's breathing filled every bit of her own hearing after those words were said, eyes blurry with tears, warm tingling on the eye's edge. She wasn’t crying from the mention of his death, but at the thought of her own.
Twilight said something more, but Applejack’s ear could only hear from below an ocean. Things fell silent for the mare, breathing slowed, eyes closed.
She was jarred by a gunshot back to consciousness. The fire was out, the clay hut was dark, and Twilight was dead. Her head with a hole, leaking. Eyes no longer any color than white. There above that body stood an angel. One of white and purple “Where’s Hoon?”
Applejack shook her head and grasped at the air for Rarity, she closed in and magically lifted the mare. Outside, the sound of hooves hitting sand was palpable. Rarity made sure Applejack was firmly pressed against her before closing her eyes in concentration and teleporting them across the valley.
The both of them appeared before a muscle car, a human sat in the driver’s seat urging them to enter. Rarity laid Applejack down in the back and had the human open the front door for her. The car lurched forward into the night. Whispering winds filled the silence.
The driving went on for hours, after a few minutes of the first hour, Rarity hopped in back and attempted to tend to Applejack’s throat. It only went so far, and she laid the passed out mare on the mare’s side.
As dawn passed, the car was running on fumes.
Applejack awoke from what only could be approximated as a nightmare. Rarity shushed her gently and murmured lovingly “It’s all alright, It’s all alright, dear.”
Applejack laid her head down and blinked in relief.
Rarity asked gently “What happened?”
Applejack came to a crossroad. She fought with every piece of her mind to speak. To break the silence, to not shake it off, to stare it in the face, look the horse in the face.
Her very body told her to obscure the truth. That it was better for her to not know, but she couldn't. That'd make her right.“Rarity, it was, Twilight…” she spewed out through the fluid “she killed them-,” Applejack said few more things and Rarity responded with horrified faces.
And Rarity asked her to sleep some more. Rarity only letting the tears flow once the orange mare was surely dreaming. She was happy AJ had survived, mostly. And now had to pay the human and find a place for the two mares to live... but that was an issue for later in the morning. When the sun was high and strong.
They crawled over a dusty dark horizon towards what seemed like nothing.
The sky was stuck in a space in between night and day. Both blue and black at once. A lizard crawled along the sand sniffing and inspecting the car's tire tread, he stepped over the track not knowing what it was and never knowing what it was, that is, till the day he was squished by a tread not so different from that one...