With Malus Aforethought

by Schismatism

Chapter 3 - Going Pear-Shaped

Some hours earlier...

Sugarcube Corner, being the town's de facto bakery, coffee-shoppe, and parlor for the taste buds, rarely slept for long. Fortunately, the Cakes were able to work in shifts to provide Ponyville with practically all of the essentials, day-to-day: from the muffins which the mailmare raided before starting her shift to the doughnuts the few guards happily devoured, all were prepared more than a few hours in advance of the dawn. The ovens always ran at practically maximum capacity from a few hours before daylight, and usually the pony in the kitchens was one Pinkie Pie, Baker Extraordinaire!

At the moment, the pink mare was happily darting around the kitchens with a surprising minimum of racket, her thoughts merrily spinning away into all the delicious apple treats she was going to help provide for the family: apple fritters, apple dumplings, apple doughnuts, apple-upside-down-cake, appletinis...! The possibilities spiraled before her eyes into a seeming abyss of delicacies, an infinite host of delights...

The sound of ding interrupted her reverie, and she pulled open the oven with a grace which belied her ordinarily hyperactive modus operandi, easily replacing one tray of banana-nut muffins with a set of cranberry-apple ones. "Hmmm, I wonder if Applejack'll be angry if I serve some of these to her family? After all, they're cranberry, but they're also apple, and they like everything apple, after all!" Her voice was astonishingly quiet in the kitchen, owing to the knowledge that the twins were still very much in bed, but she still found it better to voice her thoughts rather than let them rattle around in her head...

With a nod out of a professional's handbook, she surveyed the fruits of her labor so far, finding it good... before the world started to quake and bounce like a bowl of jelly! "Whw-whw-whwhwhwaaaaat?!" she vocalized with surprise, before realizing that it wasn't the world that was shaking - it was her! "I-it's-a-dooo-oo-oozy...!" she gasped, pots and pans (thankfully cool) falling from the counters to clatter against the tile floor, her ears flicking back as the racket awoke Pumpkin and Pound upstairs.

It took about fifteen seconds for her Pinkie Sense to finally stop going off, Mr. Cake already having rushed into the kitchen to watch Pinkie vibrate her way across the floor. Through some miracle of design, virtually none of the baked goods had fallen to the floor - save for one large donut which, by the nature of these things, had hit icing-side down. With a quiet sigh, having grown inured to these things over the course of several years, Mr. Cake asked, "Pinkie, what's going on?"

"I dunno!" came the merry response, Pinkie's voice no longer quiet (as, up above, the shrieks of toddlers caused a painful din). "But it was one heckuva doozy! I haven't felt one like THAT for ages!" The party pony punctuated her passage with a peek around the room, seeking out anything which was out of place. Something was wrong, after all...

"Well, do you think you could keep it down if it happens again? It'll take a while for the dear to get the twins back under control..." That, again, was the voice of long experience, the foal and filly having a predeliction for waking up at the worst possible times.

"I'll do my best!" proclaimed Pinkie, saluting the weary stallion. With a nod, he returned to the front counter, where he was preparing the shoppe for those hectic opening hours.

"I wonder what that was all about..." Her voice came to a pause as she spied a pair of small baskets which had been left by the door last night. Beforehand, they had been filled with bright green Granny Smith apples, tart and tasty - a perfect addition in a recipe which might otherwise be too sweet. Now, however... they had changed. Rather than those neon-green delicacies, what remained in that basket were a group of bright orange, small, round fruit, ovoid in precisely the manner of hens' eggs. The occasional pointed leaf sprung from the remaining stems, and the smell emanating from the fruit was decidedly citrus...

Slowly walking over to the basket, Pinkie's eyes widened further and further, her face spreading in a wide smile as she observed the rare, sour fruit. A rapid inspection of all sides was enough to prove that she wasn't simply imagining things, and the pink pony gingerly lifted one of the succulent delicacies out with a slightly-shaking hoof.

In a whisper that sounded to her like a rushing waterfall, she breathed, "Kumquat..."

---

Now...

With the telltale flash of magic, Twilight's teleport spell landed her and the still-shaking farmpony in the middle of an orchard. Well, some manner of orchard, in any event. Her eyes widened as she saw the sights surrounding the pair, and frantically worked over the spell she'd just cast. "What? This isn't Sweet Apple Acres! Where the-- how are we here?!"

Indeed, while they'd landed in what could best be described as a fruit farm, absolutely none of the trees in sight were apples - or anything even akin to them. To her left, a lovely lemon tree sprouted, the mouth-puckering fruit practically radiating the essence of 'sour'. Before her, a cherry tree crested a small hill, impossibly decorated with both sakura blossoms and the bright red fruit. And to her left... much less appetizingly, a crabapple tree lay there, the barely-edible fruit glistening in the sunlight.

"Sugarcube," Applejack told her with a voice still shaky, "I hate to break it to ya, but this is Sweet Apple Acres. See why I'm so, so... plumb terrified?" To punctuate her statement, she pointed at a ripe plum tree, the fruit barely darker than Twilight's own colouration. "All o' this happened overnight, and I ain't got a single clue how or why." A pause gave way to a darker tone of voice, practically a growl. "Actually... I bet I know just who did this, but..."

"Discord," Twilight agreed. "It has to be him... I can't imagine that anypony else would be capable of this. Maybe the Princesses, but I can't imagine that either of them would even consider doing such a thing, least of all so close to your family reunion. But why?"

"Who knows..." The cowpony's shock had turned to something of a simmering pot of anger, her voice very tightly controlled. "But he's gonna pay for this. Not just messin' up the farm, but doin' so like THIS? I didn't look, but I bet there ain't a single apple tree out there now!"

"Well, let's get to your family, first, and then we can start figuring out how this can be fixed. I'll send a letter to Princess Celestia once we've made sure that everypony's all right... how's Apple Bloom taking this?"

"Last I saw, she was still in shock, just like the other two. Bet they're still sittin' there, just starin' at all this, this... JUNK!" Applejack waved her hoof to describe practically the entire farm, not least the crabapples. "I mean, we're the Apple family, not the mish-mash family!"

The two set off on their way to the farmhouse, Twilight levitating a quill and scroll out of her pack to begin taking notes. "I don't recognize half of these trees, let alone these fruits... I think these are from practically all over the world..." Her voice took on a slightly excited tone at the possibility of studying, however briefly, the cavalcade of new species, and Applejack's ear flicked back at the possibility that the scholarly alicorn might not be interested in fixing things just yet.

"Now, hold on there, sugarcube. This isn't some sort of game, you know. Whatever's happened here HAS to go back to normal, tout suite, or we ain't gonna HAVE an Apple Family Reunion. Yanno, that thing you've been making all those checklists for?" Hopefully, with any fortune, that would pierce through to the studious princess' brain...

"Y-you're right," Twilight stammered, putting her writing implements away. "We need to get this fixed as soon as possible, even if..." Her eyes widened as she saw one particular tree, but with a force of will she practically stapled her saddlebag closed. "No, no. Let's get over to the others as soon as possible."

Thankfully, the trip only took five more minutes from that point, though to Applejack it seemed like hours. Every time a new, rare genus of fruit appeared, Twilight's eyes would widen a little more, to the point where Applejack was debating simply blindfolding her wayward companion. "Twai. Twilight. We're here." Sure enough, the ever-familiar red building rose up before them, as warm and inviting as always.

Inviting, that is, except for the argument going on inside.

"But Granny! My friends have gotta know about this! They're gonna be worried about me, and I don't want them to haveta wait..."

"None o' that, now. Those little friends o' yours'll be by soon enough, mark my words, and if you're not here, they'll be worried even sicker! You're gonna stay right here and wait for your sister to get back, y'hear?"

"Eeeyup."

"Awww, but... fiiiine." The last three words came in a whine perhaps better befitting a certain dressmaker, and were followed up by a quiet clomp up the stairs, the sound of a filly who knows she's right, but just can't prove it.

Twilight and Applejack exchanged a look, and a small smile, at the sound of something at least approaching normalcy in this chaotic situation. "At least they're all doing all right," noted Twilight, letting Applejack lead her inside.

"Yup, gotta say this much, at least... the Apple Family's always good 't bouncin' back..." The door opened at a touch, showing a table which, ordinarily, would be covered in a traditional Apple breakfast: pie, fritters, bread, even milk and eggs for the more adventurous. Right now, however, it was bare, save for a single, lonesome pear sitting in the middle of the table.

Big Mac and Granny were seated at opposite sides, their gazes locked on the offending piece of fruit as though daring it to move. The green skin glistened eerily, slight marks and bruises magnified in the bright light of the morning; beneath it, the wood of the table trembled slightly with the nerves of the young stallion and aged mare.

"Y'forgot your hat," Big Mac stated, not taking his eyes off the abnormality. A hoof waved in the general direction of the door, where the Stetson rested atop a hoof-carved hook; with a momentary shiver, Applejack pulled it off, setting the faithful garment in its proper place. At once, she seemed to come slightly back into focus - not a very clear distinction, but she looked, and felt, more like herself.

"Aright, now. I brought Twilight, and she's promised to help figure out how we can fix this thing. She'll be sendin' a letter to Princess Celestia in a sec, but we wanted to make sure everypony here was OK..." She paused, looking at her two family members, still locked in a battle of will with what they full well knew was an impossibility.

"Ee-yup."

"And, um, we're going to try and figure this whole thing out, and how it can best be reversed... I wouldn't want to leave any of my friends in the lurch, especially not in a case like this." Twilight slowly started backing away towards the door, her ear twitching slightly. To a regular pony, the sight of such intense study would have been frightening enough, but for Twilight, the sheer force of personality in the air was practically overwhelming.

"You'd better, young mare."

"Y...eah... Twilight, maybe you'd better get back to town. Wouldn't want that letter to go unsent, after all..." Applejack was edging her way around the room now, trying to reach the stairs without getting caught in either of the two's sights. She didn't know what would happen if she did, but it wasn't likely to be pretty.

"O...okay. You take care of your sister, Applejack. I'll be back soon." And with that, Twilight was running fast and hard, trying to put as much distance between her and the farmhouse as she possibly could.

It didn't even occur to her to teleport.