• Published 29th Dec 2012
  • 12,587 Views, 1,189 Comments

Mother of Invention - zaponator



Awake and alone, Applejack will find a way to survive.

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Far From Home

Applejack woke slowly, lying on cold, hard stone. Light shone in through the entrance to her little cave, the rays of dawn tickling her eyelids, prompting her to crack them open groggily. As her mind slowly untangled itself from the last lines of sleep, Applejack swore she could still smell the books that would be lining the walls around her. She could hear the deep thunder of the storm, and the loud creaking and snapping of the library breaking apart. Vertigo took hold momentarily as the feeling of falling was still fresh in her mind, and it took several moments of careful, measured breathing before her heart stopped racing.

Confusion gripped her as she looked around. She recognized the cave she'd spent the last couple nights in, but had no idea how she'd gotten there. Then her gaze fell on a pair of saddlebags slumped up against one wall between her resting place and the cave exit, decorated with the tri-balloon cutie mark of one of her closest friends, and stained with a splash of dark red on the left pouch.

She gasped lightly as memory came back to her, the sound echoing through her stone sanctuary.

Applejack remembered going to the beach the day before looking for any information about her strange arrival on the island. She really hadn’t expected to find anything, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from trying. Initially, her search had gone exactly as expected, in that she’d found a whole lot of nothing but sand and water.

Then she'd found the inexplicable pair of saddlebags she now found herself unable to tear her gaze from.

Her memories of the day's events after that point were a bit hazy. She had never really snapped out of the daze that the appearance of the logic-defying saddlebags had put her in. She vaguely remembered stumbling her way back to the cave from the beach. The walk through the jungle was a blur of trees and dirt in her memory. She hadn't even stopped to get more food, as a pang from her much-ignored stomach was quick to remind her. Her plans of lighting a fire, and maybe even exploring the cave, had been completely forgotten. She had simply trudged back into the cold dark place, set the saddlebags down against the wall, and collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

It had been evening by the time she had made it back from the beach, and mental exhaustion had done even more than her physical tiredness in putting her to sleep extremely quickly.

Despite the less-than-pleasant dreams that still haunted her, Applejack felt rejuvenated after her prolonged rest. With her newly restored energy, she was able the tackle the saddlebag situation head-on. Just as soon as she could will her legs to move.

She could do this.

She shook her head to clear it, noticing that she had somehow slept with her hat on, and forced herself to stand. One hoof in front of the other, step by step, she made her way with extreme slowness down the tunnel toward the saddlebags, and the morning light shining through the cave’s opening. As she approached them, horrible images flashed through her mind. Images of Pinkie Pie with a bloody gash on her head, her mane matted down with sticky redness, her dead eyes staring blankly at Applejack above a massive grin.

Applejack shivered.

"Landsakes, girl. Get a hold of yerself." Her voice was slightly scratchy, and considerably quieter than its normal, powerful tone; it was both a side effect of not speaking for a few days, and a blunt reminder that she hadn't gotten a drink on her way back from the beach yesterday either.

"It was just a dream. Ain't any reason to think anything bad happened," she thought aloud, as if hearing the assurance from any voice, even her own, would somehow ease her rapidly increasing heart rate. It helped a little.

Carefully, she approached the bags, eying them as if they were some sort of venomous creature. Even her hesitant, inching pace could only delay the inevitable for so long, and in what felt like a blink, she was standing before the object of her focus.

She gingerly reached out with a hoof, pointedly avoiding the left pouch. She gave the rightmost pouch a delicate nudge with her forehoof, and the slightly dirty, white fabric barely shifted.

Applejack blinked, suddenly aware that she was being ridiculous. It was a saddlebag. It wasn’t going to attack her.

With a snort of self-derision she reached out and flicked the right flap of the saddlebag open.

Her head spiked in pain, her vision swam with colours, and she felt herself flying backwards through the air. The smell of burnt gunpowder assaulted her nostrils for a split second before she impacted the cave floor with a grunt, forcibly expelling the air from her lungs.

Applejack wheezed in a breath, coughing as acrid smoke filled her throat. Her head was swimming, her skull felt like it was being split open from inside, and her ears were ringing loudly. Her sense of orientation was gone, but she could feel the cold stone on her back, indicating that she was lying belly-up on the floor.

Her own laboured breathing sounded distant, with a clear echo brought on by her blasted out hearing. She blinked several times to clear her foggy vision. Her head was throbbing mercilessly, the injury from the day before still fresh.

Applejack's breathing eased as the thin smoke fled the confines of the cave out into the bright morning sun of the jungle. With a pained groan, she was able to roll onto her hooves. Her ears were still ringing, but it was significantly less pronounced than before. She wobbled slightly as she regained a standing position, but was quickly able to steady herself against the nearest wall.

She reached a hoof up to the top of her head, and felt her heart turn to ice when she felt nothing but mane. Panic gripped her as she swept her gaze around the cave frantically. Finally, letting out a huge sigh of relief, she spotted her hat on the ground a few feet away, none the worse for wear.

After slapping the treasured piece of headgear back onto its rightful perch, she gave herself a once over. She was apparently completely unharmed. Her head felt like her skull was about to split apart, but that was a pre-existing condition that had only been reawakened by her sudden imitation of a really terrible acrobat. Judging by the fact that her head had never actually hit the ground, she probably hadn't caused any real additional damage. Her hearing was still mostly gone. The tight-space of the cave certainly hadn't helped with that.

Applejack glanced around trying to ascertain exactly what had happened. As she did, her face underwent a rapid transformation from wildly confused to highly amused.

Small bits of confetti carpeted the floor of the cave in a myriad of colours. Deflated balloons were plastered intermittently over every surface, sticking to the walls and ceiling. Little tendrils of smoke still wafted from Pinkie's saddlebags, which were sitting wholly intact exactly where Applejack had left them. The only difference being that both flaps were now wide open, with black soot staining the edges of their gaping mouths.

Applejack barked a laugh, the sound muffled and distant to her temporarily damaged hearing.

Her heart slowed down as she breathed slowly in deep relief. Nothing was trying to kill her. At least, nothing was trying to kill her by sabotaging her friend's mysteriously appearing saddlebags in some sort of extremely convoluted trap.

There was actually a good chance that something out there actually was trying to kill her, but that was neither here nor there.

This was simply Pinkie being Pinkie.

The thought of her friend killed her laughter instantly. She fixed the saddlebags with a serious look. She still needed answers.

She once again approached the saddlebags, though with a bit less apprehension than last time. She was reasonably sure they couldn't explode twice.

Applejack shook her head at the prismatic mess the portion of cave surrounding the bags had become. "Ah swear, that mare's infatuation with explosives is mildly unsettling at the best of times," she muttered under her breath.

Surprisingly, the whole ordeal of being blown up had only served to brighten Applejack's mood. She was even beginning to feel slightly more at ease. Pinkie always did have that effect on ponies. There was a strange sense of familiarity to be found in the unexpected when dealing with that particular mare that brought a small smile to Applejack's face.

Despite the blood that seemed to indicate otherwise, Applejack somehow felt sure that wherever she was, Pinkie would be just fine.

Of course, that did beg the question of where the owner of the saddlebags actually was. Applejack decided that the first thing that might shed some light on that quandary was the actual contents of the saddlebags before her.

Wasting no more time, Applejack sat down in front of the bags and began rifling through them. She started in the right pouch. Inside, she found a neatly folded blanket, which she carefully examined. It was pink, of course, and made of nice, thick wool. Not the sort of thing she would have much need of with the island's heat and humidity, but she was grateful to have it just in case.

She refolded the blanket and reached back into the right pouch. Only to be met with an abundance of feathers.

"What in the hay?" Applejack jerked her hooves out of the bag in surprise. She tentatively leaned forward and peeked into the pouch. Sure enough, it was about half full of small, fluffy white feathers. For a moment, she simply stared. She blinked, then blinked again, but the image before her didn't change. She had known Pinkie to pack some strange things in her saddlebags, but this was just ridiculous.

With a sigh, she reached back in and began rummaging through the feathers for anything that might have been buried by them. Finally, at the very bottom of the pouch, she felt a bit of loose fabric. It felt like another blanket, though this one seemed far thinner than the pink one she'd already found.

She pulled it free of the pile of feathers, only to find that it wasn't a blanket after all. For a moment she stared, confused, at the bit of shredded fabric held in her forehoof. It was rectangular in shape, and was torn and shredded in many places. Feathers leaked of several of the tears and gashes present. Finally, it clicked in her brain, and she realized what she was holding.

It was the tattered remnants of a feather pillow. From what she could tell, it had somehow been totally obliterated while still inside the saddlebag, expelling its insides into a pile that took up a good portion of the pouch, and leaving the fabric part of the pillow behind as a ruined and empty mess.

Also, Pinkie Pie apparently overstuffed her pillows.

Applejack was struck with the feeling that she shouldn't be looking through her friend's things, but she squashed the thought quickly. Survival was the most important thing. Being polite wouldn't matter one bit if she couldn't live long enough to see her friends again in the first place.

Survive now, apologize later.

With that thought in mind, she turned to the left pouch. The… stain was on the flap itself, meaning that it wasn't visible when the pouch was all the way open. Applejack was grateful for that at least. Seeing as Applejack had simply appeared on the island with no memory of how she got there, it was probably a safe bet that the bags could have ended up there without Pinkie herself.

Somehow, Applejack thought that if Pinkie was somewhere on the strange island, it was only a matter of time before Pinkie found her. Pinkie was capable of nearly anything given enough time. As much as she wanted the company, Applejack offered a silent prayer to Celestia that Pinkie was far, far away from the island. She wouldn’t wish her own troubles on any of her friends.

She reached inside the left pouch, and felt her hoof bump against something metal. She pulled it out of the bag, and stared with wide eyes at the object. It was a canteen with a faux-leather strap. Empty, apparently, but a canteen nonetheless. She was hit with a wave of déjà vu as memories of her dream the night before surfaced.

"Well if that ain't the strangest thing," she muttered quietly.

Applejack was starting to think there was more to the dreams than it seemed. She quickly set the canteen off to one side, and with it any thoughts of prophetic visions. She had enough to worry about, and plenty of unanswered questions. Trying to puzzle out the truth behind a couple coincidental dreams wasn't about to help anypony.

Delving back into the bag yielded a rubber chicken, which Applejack set aside without question, and a small box with the logo of Sugarcube Corner on it. Applejack scooted back from the saddlebags and set the cardboard box down in front of her reverently.

She recognized the style of the box, as anypony who frequented Sugarcube Corner would. After all, it was the kind of box they sold their most popular product in.

It was a cupcake box.

Applejack stared at the box like a foal stares at the biggest gift on Hearth's Warming. Her eyes were wide and full of wonder, her breaths came in short gasps, and a small bit of drool was beginning to work its way down her chin. She hadn't even opened the box yet.

She wiped off her chin and shook her head. There was no sense in getting her hopes up. The box could very well be empty. Or, judging by the state of the pillow, there could be nothing edible left inside. Unlike so many of the questions that plagued her mind as of late, the cupcake quandary was easy enough to solve.

Applejack opened the box.

The sight that met her eyes was the single most glorious thing she had ever seen in her entire life. There, sat peacefully in one corner of the box, was a single, pristine cupcake. It was chocolate, covered in what looked like vanilla icing, though it could have been cream cheese icing. Applejack silently hoped it was cream cheese icing. Scattered atop the liberal coating of icing was a menagerie of sprinkles; little candy representations of hearts, stars, and other whimsical shapes in every colour of the rainbow. Applejack's stomach let out a loud growl that echoed through the cave. It was accompanied by a pang that made her suck in a breath through her teeth. Her eyes lit up with a predatory gleam as she looked down upon the hapless cupcake.

It took her mere seconds to consume it. The flavour was unlike anything she had ever tasted. She suspected that her hunger was warping her perceptions, but as her eyes rolled back in pleasure she didn't particularly care. It was over all too fast, and before she knew it she was licking the empty cupcake wrapper clean.

Once she was sure that neither a single crumb of cake nor a single drop of icing remained, Applejack sighed contentedly. It had, in fact, been cream cheese icing. Now that she had a little food in her stomach, she could get back to business.

Looking over the items she had withdrawn from the saddlebag, Applejack took stock. One destroyed pillow plus feathers, one canteen, one warm blanket, one box of cupcakes already eaten, and one rubber chicken. That was packing light, especially for Pinkie Pie. Applejack noted with some frustration that the items failed to shed any light whatsoever on her situation. In fact, they only raised more questions. Whatever Pinkie had packed for, it clearly wasn't, well, this. Not that Applejack had expected survival gear, but a hatchet, some rope, or some flint and tinder would have been greatly appreciated.

Really, the contents barely qualified as an overnight bag.

Applejack snorted in frustration, and smacked the saddlebags with a forehoof. They tipped over, spilling a few feathers onto the cave floor. Applejack's ears twitched as she caught a distinct clink of metal in the impact with the floor.

Her frustration forgotten, Applejack snatched the saddlebags up and rushed out of the cave. The early morning sun shone down through the canopy, but went ignored by Applejack as she trotted a few paces outside the cave and upended the bag onto the ground.

A cascade of white feathers flowed out, scattering across the jungle floor. Applejack ignored them though, focusing on the object that accompanied the feathers to the ground with a heavier thud.

At first she couldn't believe what she was seeing. It simply made no sense. Sitting in a sea of white feathers that stirred in the breeze, was a knife. It had apparently been buried at the very bottom of the bag, preventing Applejack from finding it when she first searched it.

It was a good 12 inches long, including the grip. The blade was currently held securely in a plain brown sheath that had a strap clearly designed to be fastened around a leg. The metal buckle of the sheath explained the clinking noise Applejack had heard, but nothing could explain the presence of the knife in the first place.

She used her forehooves to pull the blade free of the sheath, getting a good look at the design of the implement. It was a camping knife, seeing as the strong, single-edged blade was clearly designed as a tool, not a weapon.

She stared at it dumbly for a few moments. Finally she nodded simply. It may have made no sense, but few things with Pinkie Pie ever did, and she may as well just be happy that she'd finally gotten something that could prove incredibly useful in her current predicament.

It took some doing without the use of magic or dextrous wings, but she was eventually able to fasten the strap around her left foreleg. This left the handle of the tool within easy reach of her mouth. She tested it a few times with some experimental tugs, and nodded once she was satisfied it wouldn't fall off unexpectedly.

With the knife securely in place, and the sanity-bending thoughts of its very presence in her friend's bags pushed to the back of her mind, Applejack considered her next move. The cupcake hadn't been much, but with all of its energy-providing sugar it made an adequate breakfast. She still needed to light a fire, one of the things she had neglected to do in her daze the night before, so she decided that would be her next task.

Her original plan had been barely more than 'rub two sticks together and pray', but now that she had a good, thick-bladed knife, there was a much better option. First, she scrounged up some dried leaves and small twigs. These she brought over to her fire pit near the cave entrance and placed inside.

Next, she needed a specific sort of rock. Fortunately she was at the base of a mountain, rocks and gravel were in abundance. After about an hour of searching, she was finally able to find a decent piece of flint. Her search had taken her a ways away from the mountain, and ended on the bank of the river that emerged from underground. Since she'd taken the canteen with her, Applejack took the opportunity to fill it from the stream. She slipped her head back through the strap when she was done, and let it hang about her neck.

She smiled victoriously as she returned to the cave with the flint. Upon her arrival she immediately set about getting a fire started. She drew the knife in her mouth, and turned it so that the dull back end was facing outwards. She sat on her haunches and carefully lifted the flint in one forehoof, and a hoof-full of dried leaves and twigs in the other.

With skill and precision only afforded by years of practice, Applejack struck the knife across the flint in a long swipe that ran down the length of the blade on the dull side. Hot, glowing sparks flew from the contact, spraying the dried leaves with particles of glowing metal. Applejack quickly dropped the knife and the flint, grasping the dried materials in both forehooves. She blew gently on the little bundle in her hooves until she saw small wisps of smoke begin to rise from the center. With a quick, victorious laugh she carefully placed the burning tinder down in the center of the fire pit, and began adding some of the smaller sticks from the woodpile. After a few minutes of careful tending, she was rewarded with a bright fire burning steadily before her.

Applejack sat back, basking in the warmth despite the pre-existing warmth of the day, and grinning like a foal. She returned the knife to its sheath after quickly wiping of the dirt it had gathered when she so unceremoniously dropped it to the ground. She brought the flint into the cave and placed it into the saddlebags. She then repacked the blanket, the canteen, the fabric portion of the destroyed pillow, and the rubber chicken.

She wasn't sure what she would do with a rubber chicken, but for some reason she felt she couldn't just leave it laying around. The feathers she had left on the jungle floor. The breeze had already begun to spread them, and there was no way she was wasting her day chasing a bunch of feathers on the wind. The knife stayed secured to her foreleg. It wasn't getting in the way at all, so she saw no need to pack it away.

Once everything was in the bags, Applejack was struck with an idea. The day before, she had thought of possibly exploring the interior of the cave some more. Of course that would require a light source, such as a torch, something she was fully capable of creating now. She had plenty of energy after a good night's sleep and a sugary breakfast. She had a canteen now too, and there were no more pressing matters that came to mind. If there was ever a time for some exploring, it was now.

Applejack needed answers. The saddlebags had disappointed her in that aspect, only raising more questions, but the cave also had a chance of containing something enlightening. At the very least, she could maybe get a clue as to the cave's oddly uniform design. Already beginning to feel eager, Applejack threw several large sticks on the fire; enough to keep it burning for hours. It would be easier to simply keep it going at all times than to relight it when she got back.

Once that was done, she took a good sized stick from the pile and retrieved the destroyed pillow from the saddlebags. She wrapped the fabric around one end of the stick until it formed a tight ball. She would have liked some sort of oil to soak it in, but there was enough fabric from the large pillow that it made a decent enough torch even without it.

She picked up her improvised torch in her mouth and brought it over to the fire. Applejack plunged the end of the torch into the fire, setting it ablaze with orange brilliance. The sun was nearing noon now, and Applejack definitely wanted to return before nightfall; preferably in time to go out and get some supper, if at all possible.

Deciding not to waste any more time, Applejack turned and headed into the cave. Already, the light of her torch showed her more than she had been able to see before, though it was just more of the same eerie features she’d already noted about the place. The cave extended perfectly straight, and almost perfectly smooth, all the way until it disappeared into the inky blackness beyond the orange glow of her improvised light source.

Applejack shivered.

She set her features with a determined scowl, and slowly trotted off down the tunnel. The darkness fled before her.

Author's Note:

Edited by Pilate, the swellest zebra that you ever did see.