Abandoned Sanctuary
Applejack shook her head, lifting her hoof to wipe the sweat from her brow. Squinting, she looked out across the orchard. "Only two more rows to go," she said, grinning to herself as she pushed her hat back down, retrieving three buckets from her cart to set down under the next apple tree. As she turned around to buck the tree, she caught sight of a pink mane between the trees. Grunting, she reared up on her front legs to deliver a powerful blow to the apple tree behind her, the fruit raining down into her buckets before she returned her rear hooves to the ground so she could wave to her friend. "Howdy there, Fluttershy! What brings you here today?"
Fluttershy jerked her head to the side at the sound of her name, the shy pony trotting off the road and making her way between the apple trees. Applejack blinked at the pony's downcast expression, her own ears falling back at the sight of Fluttershy's lowered ears and watery eyes. "Ohhh, I don't know what happened! I can't find them anywhere!"
The farmer grimaced; she should have known this was coming. "Who are ya lookin' for?" she asked, eyes flickering away from her friend; it was hard to look a pony in the eye and lie.
"The vampire fruit bats! I went to visit their sanctuary, but there weren't any there! I must have searched for hours!"
Applejack sighed. "That's cause they're gone, sugarcube." She lowered her head to grab the handle of one of the buckets in her mouth, lifting it from the ground to set in the back of her cart, its precious cargo of apples gleaming in the afternoon sun. "They left their sanctuary and started eatin' all the apples again."
"They did? Oh my goodness! I thought they would stay there. They seemed so happy there." Fluttershy looked around. "But these trees look alright, and they're pretty close to the sanctuary."
"You didn't notice all the trees on the outside of the sanctuary that looked sucked dry?" Applejack asked, struggling to keep her voice level as she trotted over to her second bucket, picking it up and setting it in the back of the cart. "They left as soon as they'd sucked 'em all dry."
Fluttershy's wings sank against her back, her tail tucking itself in close behind her rump. "Oh no! Why didn't you ask us for help again?"
Applejack dropped the second bucket into the back of her cart with a loud thump. "Cause it didn't work the first time," Applejack growled, before lowering her voice at the sight of her friend shrinking away. "It ain't your fault, sugarcube. Those bats were just real bad apples; they aren’t like your animal friends, they don't listen to or care about anypony."
"But your orchard!"
Applejack sighed. "We lost about a quarter of our trees before Granny Smith finally took care of 'em. Things are gonna be tight, but we'll make it. It'll be tough though, but on the bright side, at least we're almost done buckin'." Applejack nodded her head towards the trees. "These here are the last two rows; all the apples on the other side of that road are no good anymore, so at least we're gonna get done on time and won't have any spoil on the tree."
Fluttershy glanced back over her shoulder at the trees beyond, red fruit hanging from their boughs, still glistening in the afternoon sun. "But they LOOK okay. I mean, I saw a FEW trees that looked like they weren't doing very well, but most of them looked alright."
"They're all bad apples now; anything that the fruit bats had at are nothin' but mush, and you know the sayin', one bad apple spoils the barrel? It's true." She jerked her head as she stepped back over to retrieve the last bucket, setting it into the back of the cart as Fluttershy watched.
"Couldn't you just throw them away though?" Fluttershy tilted her head. "That's a lot of apples."
"Well, t'ain't the only thing that's wrong with 'em.” Applejack leaned over the back of the cart to push the three full buckets together, securing them in place. “Granny Smith treated 'em with somethin' to make sure the bats wouldn't eat any more of 'em, but they ain't fit for pony consumption, either. We're just gonna toss them away, so there ain't no urgency to buckin' em."
"But they tasted okay," Fluttershy said quietly, turning her head to the side. "Oh, I hope you don't mind, but I took a couple apples when I was on my way over here. They just smelled so good, I couldn't help myself."
Applejack smiled. "That's fine. I don't mind if I lose a couple apples to my friends. Just don't make too much of a habit out of it." Applejack stepped over to the front of the cart, starting to put herself into the harness, before pausing. "Wait, you said you ate apples from over there?"
Fluttershy nodded. "I'm sorry. I just got so hungry after searching for the bats, I just..."
Applejack felt the bottom falling out of her stomach, her eyes widening in horror.
"What's wrong? Oh, you ARE upset! Stupid Fluttershy, you shouldn't have—"
"Get in the cart."
"What?"
"I said, get in the cart!"
"But—"
Applejack's vision swam before she clenched her eyes shut, the trapped tears leaking down her cheeks. "Damnit, Fluttershy! Those apples were poisoned!"
"P-p-p-poisoned?"
Applejack opened her eyes to look at her friend; Fluttershy had dropped to the ground, her hooves crossed across her chest as she trembled violently. "Yes, poisoned! That's how Granny Smith got rid of the bats. Now get in the cart."
The pegasus only pulled her legs all the more tightly around herself, drawing her wings and legs in, her head bowed. "But, if you did it to get rid of the bats, how did the bats know it was poisoned?"
"Fluttershy, I ain't arguin' with you. Get in the cart!"
"Applejack—eep!"
Fluttershy squeaked as Applejack wrapped her hooves around the barrel of the pegasus, hefting her off the ground before clumsily staggering over and depositing her into the cart.
"Fluttershy! I'm not lettin' one of my friends die because she ate some bad apples!" Applejack rushed back to the front of the cart, quickly wrapping the harness across her chest and over her back before taking off at full speed, the cart rattling loudly as it bounced down the side of the hill.
"Applejack, what happened to the bats?"
Applejack didn't look back over her shoulder; she couldn't meet her friend's gaze, no matter how scared she sounded, she just couldn't do it.
"Applejack? Please, tell me what happened to the bats. Please tell me that they're alright."
Applejack bit the inside of her cheek.
"Please—"
"Don't worry, Fluttershy. You'll be right as rain, you'll see. We'll just give you some—"
"Applejack!" Fluttershy shouted, before her voice dropped once more to a quiet, pleading tone; Applejack knew if she looked back, her friend would be crying. She had to keep it together, for Fluttershy's sake at least.
"Please, just tell me what happened to—"
As the cart burst out of the orchard onto the main road leading to the farmhouse, Fluttershy fell silent. Beside the road a large section of one of the fallow fields had been recently disturbed, the grass replaced with a large mound of freshly-dug dirt.
Not another word was spoken until they reached the Apple family home.
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That's how it's done.
Next time, Fluttershy, leave the farmers to deal with the pests their way. Because farmers know how to deal with pests.
Well then. Don't see it in AJ's nature to kill animals, even vampire fruit bats.
uh huh...i say it should continue. you left it on an effing cliff hanger man. that's good in a chapter story but not on a one shot. then you're just leaving us on nothing at all
Poor fluttershy
Well then... That waa a good little read <3
Hm, I don't think that Applejack could agree to kill vampire fruit bats. It's just... not like Applejack. Also, she knows how much it would hurt Fluttershy.
Muahaha, excellent.
3744449
Well, you can't argue with a pony that has experience, especially Granny Smith.
This story was about to get interesting!
...
And then it ended. I was expecting to see more. Nice story though.
O.o Oh...the poor bats...
continue. i HATE cliffhanger endings. with a burning passion
Let me quote something for you:
3787006
What's that quote from?
EDIT: Nevermind, the Book of Exalted Deeds. Of course, that's D&D for you.
3787504
In a world where:
Frindship is Magic.
The feelings of the people in the Crystal Empire affects all of Equestria. <--- looks like a good example of good helps good, evil helps evil.
Evil (Wendigos) feed off of hate.
If Pinky is not actively trying to make people happy, people start attacking each other.
I would not put it pass the world to make what AJ did give power to evil. To shift things a little more to evil.
Now for a more basic look her action:
AJ was being a little unsafe and there are likely laws about marking when poison is in use and limiting their effect on the environment. If you are going to do something like that, you should do it with worst case in mind.
It is like keeping a loaded gun in the living room. It may protect you from a break in, but it is also not the thing to do if a small kid can get a hold of it. You can find ways to keep the gun near you and not put kids in danger.
Put up signs and fences. Make it crazy clear that you should not eat from the tree. If the bats can read signs, then maybe you should not be poisoning them.
Still I liked the story.
3787006 Wasn't that the same edition where engaging in consensual BDSM automatically meant you were evil-aligned? D&D might make a good analogy for a setting like Star Wars (which in some ways is even more rigid!), but the comparison doesn't really hold for a setting where Discord is capable of redemption.
Edit: Actually, it's an interesting idea--how well do Applejack's actions function within the framework of the show? True, she's not following the primary value of tolerance by failing to tolerate the bats, but if she's acting to protect the traditions of the Apple family, should her behavior be tolerated? In a setting that's built around a certain degree of relativism (it's okay if zebras or buffalo are different, because that's just they way they are!), but dumbs it down for kids and avoids the messier aspects, how far does that relativism actually go when you introduce concepts that wouldn't appear on the show?
Edit to the edit: Just noticed your comment was eight weeks old. I'm sorry for reviving a dead topic.
This is not something AJ would do. Not ever. This isn't believable or long enough. Fluttershy would never speak up like that, even if she thought animals were in danger.
This is a well-written tale that, above all else, is perfectly in the spirit of the episode which spawned it.
Take that as you will.
i for one found the story well written and belivabel fluttshy can get loud if she wanted to there a few epsods she did season 1 and 2 being the most promanit.
3787006
Opposing a force of destruction is not evil. Those apple trees were FAMILY to Applejack, with names. Fluttershy didn't think that there was nothing keeping the vampire bats from feeding on the rest of the orchard once they had fed that part dry. Fluttershy, is naive. She thinks animals are always going to be rational and reasonable, she keeps forgetting that animals are creatures of drives and instincts. Animals don't judge her like ponies do, so she holds them in an idealistic regard.
Seems that AJ will have a lots of explaining to do...
Unless Fluttershy dies and they'll bury her next to the bats...
Granny Smith stopped the bats, and possibly FlutterShy too.
The story is AU:
Lauren Faust created a show devoid of negativity, except for the antagonists one finds in the opening and finales of the seasons. What is means practically is no violent deaths of animals or ponies. Indeed, we have not seen any deaths from natural causes.
Well... when locusts are eating your crop, you poison-murder the ever-loving shit out of them. I felt that Fluttershy's been a traitor to Applejack twice now, once to Discord and his "reformation", and a second time trying to choose pests over her own "friend's" livelihood. Because of that, she plummeted straight to the bottom of my Mane 6 list. She's a boring character with no real personality besides shy and angry, and subtly, a manipulative and treacherous bitch.
Fuck Fluttershy. But that's just me.
4899736
Yeah, I found that episode to be rather dissatisfying for... a large number of reasons. There's a reason farmers eliminate pests. It just wasn't a good idea for a MLP episode, because exterminating pests is terribly discordant with the world of MLP.
And because the last five minutes of the episode is basically the characters running around with Flutterbat hovering overhead. And they set up the apple having a shiny, reflective surface and didn't even use that fact to resolve the conflict.
Started off kinda clumsy, but it got on the right track toward the latter half. I like how you pulled off the "Ah ain't gonna speak a lie no matter what" thing that AJ tends to do...
The "BATS!" episode was by far the most aggravating episode for me. It pits pest control -- a real-world problem -- against the usual "Fluttershy was right all along and we should have listened to her and acted with more kindness" thing, which was already old in the "reforming Discord" episode...
The song sucks, too...
Then again, to be fair, Fluttershy's approach to the problem, in both the episode and this fic, isn't completely naive. Unregulated pest control has led to serious, sometimes even irreparable, damage to the ecosystem in certain regions, to the point that some suggest less "sterile" approaches, i.e "not just murderizing everything that dares to nibble on your property." Is it silly to give the ending that interpretation?
5000286
North America once had a locust, the Rocky Mountain Locust. Like all locusts, it swarmed and was a major pest.
Then some folks accidentally plowed under where they laid all their eggs one year, and the species rapidly became extinct.
Now, North America has no locusts, and a major pest was eliminated forever, and yet, North American ecosystems didn't collapse as a result.
I dunno, call me cynical, but eliminating pest species isn't always a bad thing.
As for the rest of it... really this story was written as a quick reaction to the episode. It is probably my most controversial story. Overall, it doesn't fit well into the world, but on the other hand, that's really a problem with the episode in general - I think the real mistake is that pest control like this feels out of place in Equestria, but Fluttershy's position didn't make a whole lot of sense either. I did my best to keep the characters in character, despite the unpleasant situation they found themselves in.
5000410
I didn't say all such efforts lead to bad results. Some have claimed that the whole panic about DDT use over "a couple of bird eggs" was a huge screwup on the public's part, because it practically destroyed the ability to use an effective and helpful pesticide with little to no benefits to the ecosystem in return.
Indeed, the Earth is not a little baby that needs to be pampered. Nature adapts far more quickly and drastically than we can imagine. If we kill off one pest, another will just take its place. It will now be free of competition, not to mention it could be far more robust than its predecessor. The problem isn't as much about "upsetting the balance" as it is about "where will the new status quo end up?" Nature can balance itself, and we'll only end up trying to cope once again...
That said, solving a pest problem by eradicating the species can have repercussions that are difficult to predict. This is what got me thinking about AJ's solution, and why I thought the final scene may have another meaning. Did the poison just scare the surviving bats away for good? Or did it wipe all of them out in that region?
5000460
Getting rid of DDT was probably wise; modern pesticides really are better, primarily because they don't have the same sort of issues with lingering in the environment. The problem with DDT is that it lasts forever, which means that you are more likely to end up with stuff getting resistant to it simply because if you apply it fairly frequently, you're going to end up with it being present at some level in the environment all the time, and stuff is much more likely to end up resistant to it that way. Something which is sprayed, kills everything, then goes away very quickly doesn't give pests time to really accumulate resistance to it iteratively, thus delaying the acquisition of resistance. DDT is handy for applying to a house or similar place, though, precisely because it lingers; today, it is only usable for vector control (primarily mosquitoes) legally, and because it is ONLY used for that, it means that there is less of it in the environment, and thus less accumulation in living things as well as less opportunity for things to become resistant.
And DDT bioaccumulates, which is bad for birds, but also potentially bad for humans, too, given that DDT has a ridiculously long half-life and despite its ban, they STILL detect DDT in pretty much all humans to this day. The fact that it caused problems in birds was worrisome, because who knows how long it would be before it was causing problems in humans? And if it DID cause problems in humans, its extreme durability in the environment meant that the contamination would continue for decades.
All in all, it was good to move away from it.
It is very much the case that eliminating one thing can cause problems when something else comes along or takes over or whatever. That being said, sometimes it is totally worth it.
Plus, from an individual farmer's standpoint, who cares? Today is more important to them than ten years from now. Of course, one could argue that's what gets them into trouble in the first place...
As for the ending - well, I dunno. My thought was that they all died from it, but it is possible some of them left. But animals tend not to really understand such things, though MLP animals show a greater level of intelligence than most normal real-world animals do.
You know, barring Fluttershy getting poisoned, this is a far more satisfying ending to that episode than the actual ending. Fluttershy was thirteen kinds of wrong in it, while Applejack was, well, right. The episode tried to make us side with Fluttershy, but it backfired spectacularly.
5039837
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
It is true that the episode was flawed in this regard; the real problem was that it took up a real world problem and then didn't really present it in a remotely reasonable way. It also took up an issue which feels just plain old weird in Equestria.
That's not to say that there isn't more than one perspective on pest control, but that the one espoused in the episode by Fluttershy wasn't a particularly reasonable one.
5039959 Very true. Sorry Flutters, but as demonstrated in a later episode, you were just TOO soft when it came to critters that were complete strangers ruining the livelihood of one of your best pals.
5055364
Alas, it is so.
Thanks for this story! The worst part of this episode for me was that it called Granny Smith an idiot who didn't know how to farm, but avoided confronting it by putting her on a bus. You're the first person I've seen who showed her as having the only real, (final *ahem*) solution.
4827331 We have, actually. The CMC crashed a funeral when they were desperate for a stallion.
5072787
Yes, I remember that funeral, but no pony died on screen. We have seen neither deaths from natural causes nor violent deaths.
In Bats, the Apples wanted to chase the bats away (“¡Stop the bats! ¡Stop the bats! ¡Make them go and not come back!”), which seems reasonable. I love FlutterShy to death, but her solution to give the bats an huge chunk of the orchard could financially ruin the family Apples. Nopony in the episode advocated killing the bats.
3793775
ah, the importance of communication
5104896
Or the lack there of. Giving in the MLP world Bees are able to understand equestrian, the Bat would be able to also.
For it to work Applejack may have had to not put up signs.
5105227
mass murder is magic!
Hey! just wanted to let you know I did a reading of this story. :) thanks again for writing it! :D
5343843
Thanks! That was really, really awesome of you! I liked it; that had some real production value.
I put a link to it at the end of the story and made a blog post about it.
I lol'd. I think you took the wrong tack with the ending, though; I had everything figured out well ahead of Fluttershy (I felt she had some Idiot Ball) and was more interested in what was happening to her than the bats. I expected the silence at the end to be because she was choking on her own vomit or something, for example. :B
5351134
You wanted me to murder Fluttershy?
You monster.
5351748
Kill your darlings. :V
Hey, I wrote a review of this story. In case you are interested, it can be found here.
Overall, It didn't really do much for me. It feels incomplete, and while I like how you set up the mystery, the payoff is too disappointing.
5495589
Thanks for the review! I ended up putting my comment over on your review.
Nice work, sir. You really did a swell job of using some darkness without being overt. It's a cute little story that has it's poignant secret hiding just beneath the surface. Everything is implied and yet never spoken to leave the weight squarely on the center of the table under a delicious layer of icing. But, Celestia help you when you take a bite.
5519743
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. I don't really write stories like this very often, so it was nice to hear that it worked for someone who does.
5521515
I'm a little surprised this has so many dislikes -- and I'm saying that as one of the (rare?) people who liked "Bats!" I thought it was pretty good. I found it a bit hard to believe that Fluttershy wouldn't have worked out what had happened by the end, but I did like the uneasy atmosphere.
...That...was dark.
And I like dark. Oh so very much! :D
I am faving this! XD
5731530
I'm glad it worked so well for you!