3 The Next Victims
“What’s that?” Lazybug pointed to the jar of spit. “I thought you said you’d given that spit to the Zap-O-Lantern.”
“This isn’t Applejack’s and Big McIntosh’s spit,” Crosspatch told him. “I did get theirs. The nurse at the hospital fell for my bluff and those two were asleep when I got to their room. This is Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash’s spit. Unfortunately, I didn’t run into the Zap-O-Lantern on my way here, so…”
“How is that unfortunate?” asked Lazybug.
“Well, I couldn’t throw the jar into its mouth,” explained Crosspatch. “It’s gonna be tough to get the Apples’ replacements outta the way. Rainbow Dash is really fast. She nearly caught me after I’d taken their spit.”
“Didn’t the Zap-O-Lantern go after Applejack and Big Mac?” asked Lazybug.
“Yes, but I don’t know if it got them. It might’ve been spotted, so we need to hurry up and get Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie eaten. It won’t come after us again if it’s got four other ponies to do its bidding.”
Apple Bloom struggled to break free of her cape, but she couldn’t manage it. A vampire fruit bat swooped down. Crosspatch lunged.
“Shoo!”
The frustrated bat backed off and flew away. Apple Bloom kicked the tree in disappointment.
“Why can’t we just feed her to the Zap-O-Lantern as well?” Lazybug suggested.
Crosspatch looked Apple Bloom in the eyes and her lip wobbled.
“I just can’t,” she said. “Look at her. She’s so young and perky. She reminds me of me when I was young.”
“Uh, Crosspatch,” smirked Lazybug, “you’re still young. And so am I.” He paused thoughtfully. “Any idea why?”
“Part of this stupid mutation, I suppose,” Crosspatch shrugged. “I suppose that’s the upside.”
Crosspatch picked up the jar of Pinkie’s and Rainbow’s spit and looked at it for a moment.
“You know, the last jar I threw at the Zap-O-Lantern nearly missed his mouth and almost got smashed,” she said. “Let’s throw an apple instead. It’ll be drawn to a source of juice, and an apple will be easier to aim at it.”
“Well good luck finding a juicy apple around here,” Lazybug frowned. “Those nasty bats sucked them all dry while trying to get at Apple Bloom’s.”
Crosspatch looked thoughtfully from Apple Bloom to Lazybug.
“What did I do with the jar lid?” she asked.
“I’ve got it here,” Lazybug shuffled over and picked up a lid. “It’s got a hole in it though.”
“That’s perfect!” exclaimed Crosspatch.
Then, before Lazybug could ask why, Crosspatch plonked the jar over his head and pulled it off again. Both is ears were soaked with drool.
“Yuck!” he cried.
Crosspatch slid the now empty jar underneath Apple Bloom and took the apple out of her mouth. Before Apple Bloom could yell for help, Crosspatch shoved her through the CMC cape and squashed her into the jar, snapping the lid with the hole in it over the top. This was far less comfortable than being tied to a tree. Apple Bloom could barely move, and her breath was already making the inside of the jar very warm. Crosspatch wiped the apple off to get rid of Apple Bloom’s drool, and then mopped up Pinkie’s and Rainbow’s drool from Lazybug’s ears.
“Jeez. At first, I thought you were gonna throw me at the Zap-O-Lantern,” chuckled Lazybug.
“Never,” insisted Crosspatch “You’re never going back to that monster, and neither am I. Now, are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” replied Lazybug confidently.
And the two siblings walked away, leaving Apple Bloom stuck in her jar.
Crosspatch looked back at Apple Bloom and chuckled. “You look like a prize winning gala apple in there.”
Apple Bloom seethed as she watched Crosspatch and Lazybug disappear. Any sympathy she had for their misfortune left her.
Darkness had fallen, and Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash hadn’t seen any sign of Crosspatch, Lazybug or Apple Bloom. They met each other in the zap apple field.
“Alright Pinkie, the bet’s off,” said Rainbow Dash after they exchanged progress reports. “There’s something else going on here. That mare and that colt are definitely up to something. We need to call Twilight, Rarity and Fluttershy here.”
“Right,” nodded Pinkie Pie.
She tilted her head to the sky and yelled.
“TWILIGHT!! RARITY!! FLUTTERSHY!!”
Rainbow Dash recoiled. “I meant with the bell, you idiot!”
“Oh.”
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash hurried to the barn.
“You tell Granny Smith to hold the fort,” Rainbow said to Pinkie as they crossed over the door to the apple cellar. “I’ll sound the alarm.”
Pinkie nodded as Rainbow Dash flew up to the bell tower. The kitchen window was still open, and Pinkie saw that Granny had not stopped talking to the jam jars.
“Listen here, soldiers! Your moonlight punishment fatigues are an hour away… so you will stand smartly to attention and stay vigilant!”
“Looks like she’s got everything under control,” Pinkie Pie said to herself as she drew away from the window.
“Hey, Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash called from the roof.
Pinkie quickly scaled the barn walls and clambered into the rooftop.
“What is it?”
“The bell’s not working,” said Rainbow Dash. “I think that mare and that colt stole the clapper.”
“Leave it to me,” Pinkie grinned confidently as she ducked underneath the bell. She was going to use her head to ring the bell as she had once done with the school bell.
“Wait!” Rainbow grabbed the bell to stop it moving. “Look down there!”
Pinkie peered down. Crosspatch and Lazybug emerged from behind some trees and were running towards the barn.
“Get them!”
Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie jumped off of the rooftop.
“Hurry, Lazybug!” shouted Crosspatch.
The siblings stopped at the cellar door.
“Don’t let them get into the cellar!” bellowed Rainbow Dash as they descended towards their foes.
The trees Crosspatch and Lazybug had appeared from were slammed to the ground. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash froze in fright. The spitting image of the king of the zap apples from Equestrian Literature Abridged was hovering briskly towards the barn with an open, hungry mouth. Crosspatch flung the cellar down open. Lazybug dived into the cellar. Crosspatch dived in after him and shut the door. The Zap-O-Lantern passed over the door and headed towards Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
“Run!” Rainbow shrieked.
Rainbow Dash went right, Pinkie Pie went left. Pinkie screamed when she looked back and saw that the Zap-O-Lantern had decided to chase her.
“Keep ahead of it, Pinkie!” called Rainbow Dash. “I’m gonna try and get the cellar door open!”
“OK!” Pinkie called back, picking up her pace to stay out of the Zap-O-Lantern’s reach.
Apple Bloom was wobbling like crazy trying to tip the jar she was in over to break free, but she couldn’t lean it over far enough. She wanted to call for help through the hole in the jar, but she could barely move her head, and she realized that if she got it completely stuck, she might block the hole and suffocate.
“If I don’t get outta here, our family’s gonna lose the farm,” she said.
Then she thought about Crosspatch’s comment about her looking like a prize winning apple in that jar. She had an idea. She would need to attract the attention of the vampire fruit bats that Lazybug had chased away. She took a deep breath and whistled as loudly as she could. Three bats appeared in the distance. Apple Bloom knew they didn’t exactly have 20-20 vision, so to them, she literally did look like a large red and yellow apple sitting next to a tree. The three bats screeched excitedly. Before Apple Bloom realized it, she was being dive bombed by dozens of vampire fruit bats. Countless fangs and blue tongues are now obscuring her vision. Cracks were forming all over the jar as the bats tried to bite the big apple. Apple Bloom forced her legs to outstretch, and the jar fell apart. Disappointed vampire fruit bats scattered everywhere as Apple Bloom leapt out of the broken jar bottom and stepped tentatively over the broken glass.
“I’m free!” she shouted triumphantly.
Rainbow Dash was straining to try and get the locked cellar door open.
“You doing OK, Pinkie?!” she called.
“Yeah!” replied Pinkie as she ran past Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow stopped straining and looked behind her.
“Yipes!” she cried before shooting upwards to avoid the Zap-O-Lantern’s open hungry mouth. “That was close.”
She looked down.
“Oh, snap! It can fly!”
Rainbow Dash flapped her wings furiously to keep ahead of the flying giant stripy apple.
“Rainbow!” Pinkie called from below. “I got the door open!”
Rainbow Dash veered over, let the Zap-O-Lantern pass her, and dived down to the cellar door. It was still closed.
“Hey, what…!”
She crashed through the door and landed with a painful thud on the cellar floor. Crosspatch and Lazybug jumped back in fright.
“Sorry, Dashie,” Pinkie peered down into the cellar. “But I figured you were high up enough to be able to break the door.”
Rainbow Dash looked angrily up at Pinkie Pie. The Zap-O-Lantern was descending rapidly towards her.
“Watch out!” Rainbow shouted.
Pinkie looked up, screamed, and jumped down into the cellar. Seconds later, the Zap-O-Lantern hit the ground and got wedged into the doorway.
“Great!” Rainbow Dash groaned. “We’re trapped!”
“Well,” said Pinkie as she picked herself up, “at least it can’t get to anypony.”
The cellar shuddered. Bits of the roof fell to the floor. The doorframe came apart and the Zap-O-Lantern was forcing its way down the stairs.
“It’s become too strong!” Crosspatch cried. “It’s getting in!”
“Did Applejack every say anything about another way out of the cellar?!” Rainbow Dash asked hastily.
“Nope,” Pinkie Pie replied.
“There isn’t one. We looked,” said Lazybug. “There’s nothing but baskets of apples back there.”
The massive mouth of the Zap-O-Lantern edged closer and closer to the trapped ponies.
Suddenly, it stopped moving. The purple stripe on its bottom had vanished. Then its blue stripe faded away.
“Its stripes are disappearing!” exclaimed Crosspatch.
The green and yellow disappeared from the Zap-O-Lantern’s skin. Its hungry smile changed to an alarmed frown. It began to prune.
“What’s happening to it?!” asked Pinkie Pie.
They watched as the orange and red stripes were erased, and its skin began to shrivel up. Moonlight shone through a slowly widening gap in the shattered doorway.
“What’s the slurping noise?” wondered Lazybug.
The shrunken Zap-O-Lantern began to tumble down the stairs, and dozens of vampire fruit bats were crawling all over it with their teeth sunk deep into the now grey skin.
“What’s this?!” spluttered Rainbow Dash. “I thought Fluttershy had gotten those freaks to stay in their own territory.”
“I gave them permission.”
They looked up. Apple Bloom was standing in the demolished doorway looking down at Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
“There you are!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.
“Are you guys OK?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Yeah, we’re fine,” said Pinkie and Rainbow Dash together.
Crosspatch and Lazybug watched the vampire fruit bats sucking all the juice out of the now immobile Zap-O-Lantern’s remains.
“Gee,” said Crosspatch. “I was so bent on shooing pests away, I never thought to try and get those bats to help us.”
Rainbow Dash jerked around and pounced on Crosspatch.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, punk!” she snarled.
Pinkie Pie eyed Lazybug in his nervous face.
“Any last words before we take you both to Princess Twilight?” she asked sharply.
Lazybug, not bothering to ask who Princess Twilight was, said “Got any water?”
Crosspatch gasped. “We’ve left our water behind!”
“Well you can wait until we get to the princess to get a drink!” snapped Rainbow Dash.
“No, no, you don’t understand!” Crosspatch stammered.
Before she could explain, Apple Bloom had tossed their water spritzing bottle into the cellar. It landed with a sloshy plonk beside a very surprised Lazybug.
“There ya go, fellas,” Apple Bloom smiled.
“Wow. Thanks, Apple Bloom,” said Lazybug, picking up the bottle.
“You’re a good sport, kid,” said Crosspatch as Rainbow Dash released her.
Rainbow and Pinkie Pie watched, puzzled, as Lazybug sprayed himself and his sister with water. Apple Bloom clambered down the stairs, stepping over the feasting vampire bats and slipping a bit on the pool-sheet sized apple skin.
“Don’t be too hard on them, gals,” she said to Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. “They’ve had a rough couple decades.”
“Decades?!”
By the time the whole story had been explained to Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, the vampire fruit bats had extracted every last drop of juice from the Zap-O-Lantern. It would never try to eat any ponies and use them to collect apple juice for it again.
“Did you say the Zap-O-Lantern shrank after every night and hid in a composter during the day?” asked Rainbow Dash. “And then somepony dumped everything out?”
Crosspatch and Lazybug nodded. Pinkie Pie looked around for a distraction as Rainbow Dash eyed her annoyed. She found one. The vampire bats, apparently not satisfied with sucking the biggest apple in the world dry, flew over the ponies’ heads and targeted the apple baskets at the back of the cellar.
“Hey, this wasn’t the deal!” Apple Bloom yelled, walking to the baskets. “You’re supposed to head back home now!”
Some of the bats hissed at Apple Bloom as their fellows began sucking some of the apples at the back dry.
“You heard her! Get outta here!” Crosspatch snapped, she and Lazybug swatting at the bats.
“You two got a lot of nerve,” Rainbow Dash scowled.
“This is what they did before they lost their farm,” Apple Bloom told Rainbow and Pinkie Pie as they watched the two mutated ponies drive the bats out of the cellar.
“That’s right,” said Crosspatch. “Pest control’s what I got my cutie mark for.”
In seconds, the apple cellar was completely vampire fruit bat free.
“So, um, if you guys let us go,” said Lazybug, “we promise to get good honest work.”
“What, you too?” Rainbow Dash tilted her head. “You’re a little young to be getting a job, aren’t you?”
“I don’t care,” Lazybug frowned. “I just want to show everyone that I’m not a slacker like Granny Smith made everypony think I am.”
It was too bad they weren’t in the CMC clubhouse, because Pinkie Pie had a brilliant idea.
Ponyville Hospital’s sting weed garden sat at the bottom of the pond in the park. The divers the hospital hired had barely managed to pick enough to make a sandwich with. The nab turtles turned up every day and picked the whole garden clean. This morning’s growth was about four feet high, which delighted the approaching nab turtles. But before they could reach it, Crosspatch and Lazybug had propelled themselves out from within the weeds and charges towards them.
“This is the hospital’s sting weed!” gurgled Lazybug. “Go get your own!”
“There are plenty of other sting weed gardens in this pond!” bubbled Crosspatch. “You’re all making pigs of yourselves!”
As it transpired, having their physical ages preserved wasn’t the only upside of Crosspatch’s and Lazybug’s mutation. They could stay underwater for about an hour before they needed oxygen. The nab turtles didn’t stand a chance of taking the hospital’s sting weed.
The fourth stage of zap apple season took place that evening. Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Apple Bloom and Granny Smith stood in the zap apple field watching the shooting stars fly across the sky, followed by the wilting of the blue flowers and the appearance of the grey apples.
“Never thought I’d get to see that again,” a voice said as the Everfree Clouds drifted away.
“Is that really you, Crosspatch?!” exclaimed Granny Smith. “Well, bust my bonnet! I ain’t seen you since I was your age!”
Crosspatch grinned. “You haven’t changed.”
“So,” said Pinkie Pie, “how was your first day as aqua-farmers?”
Lazybug stepped forward. “Ta-da!”
Apple Bloom spluttered. There on Lazybug’s flank was an insect with a slash through it.
“My little brother’s found his calling,” Crosspatch smiled as everypony admired his cutie mark.
“Darn it. I almost wish I coulda recruited you,” groaned Apple Bloom. “You coulda been the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ first graduate. Instead, you had to be one of my foalnappers.”
Lazybug stopped grinning. “We never did apologize for that, did we?”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “Well?”
“We’re sorry we jumped you and made you tell us where your brother and sister were,” said Lazybug.
“Now we can make it up to you by telling you where they are,” said Crosspatch.
Crosspatch and Lazybug looked towards the field’s entrance.
“Howdy,” said Applejack and Big McIntosh, both perfectly healthy.
“Oh, goody! You’re all better!” beamed Granny Smith.
“Welcome back, guys!” shouted Apple Bloom, running up to her siblings and hugging them.
“Nice to see ya, little sis,” Applejack smiled. “Did ya miss us?”
“Yep.”
“Ya doing OK?” asked Big Mac.
“Yep.”
“Learn anything?” asked Applejack.
Apple Bloom didn’t answer right away. She looked back at Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, who both had similar thoughtful expressions on their faces.
“I think we did,” she replied at last. “I think we learned that a bad attitude can be contagious, just like a good attitude.”
Pinkie Pie added her two bits. “If you’re in a bad mood, you shouldn’t take it out on your friends. You’ll just end up upsetting everypony.”
“And when friends fight,” put in Rainbow Dash, “they give their enemies a chance to cause trouble for them.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t still consider us enemies, do you?” inquired Crosspatch. “Are we not square now?”
“No enemies of ours get to go to an awesome party thrown by Pinkie Pie,” said Rainbow Dash.
Pinkie Pie presented a card with Nurse Redheart’s cutie mark on it and passed it to Crosspatch.
“Surprise birthday party for Nurse Redheart in two weeks,” Pinkie said. “See you there?”
“Yeah, you bet,” said Lazybug happily as Crosspatch opened the invitation.
A tiny pump concealed inside the card squirted little jets of water in Crosspatch’s and Lazybug’s faces when it opened. Everypony burst into laughter.
“Thanks, Pinkie,” chuckled Crosspatch.
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5301111 Not anymore. Just fixed it. Cheers, dude.
This is a really intriguing premise. But Crosspatch and Lazybug shouldn't get off so easy. They were going to destroy the Apple's free will.
Apple Bloom fits in a jar? Call me a skeptic but I don't think that works.
5301183 Cheers!
Took me a while to understand what that meant.
Crosspatch and Lazybug should have been sent to prison. They were making an attempt on somepony's life and they just get forgiven. Prolonged servitude to the Apple family at least. Is their no justice? If I were there I'd at least tie them to a chair and threaten them. This. Was. An. Attack!
They should be. They should be incarcerated criminals.
5301493 I'll be sure to give you a call if I need a proof reader. Cheers.
5301523 Aye. As was Trixie's takeover of Ponyville. As was Sunset Shimmer's demolition of Canterlot High. As was Discord turning Equestria upside down.
The forgiveness ratio in the show to those who ask for/earn it is about 50/50, and Crosspatch and Lazybug managed to crawl to the good side.
5301590 The thing is, they all acknowledged that they where basically terrorists. And Discord was turned to stone again. And all of them should still got off easy.
Have you ever considered submitting this story to Equestria Daily? You can find out how to do so here.
5331377 I'll mull it over.