Story
The Pokey Plant Party Present from Pinkie
Story
Pinkie Pie hopped merrily along through the creepy forest of Everfree wearing her singing-invitation outfit along the path that led to Zecora's house, ignoring all the various large confused creatures on either side of the path that, if not for her odd outfit, might consider having her for lunch. As she was with her bright outfit and big happy grin they decided that she must either be some new, unknown creature, or that she was insane and therefore unfit for ingesting.
The ground was, as always, almost covered with leaves that had fallen off the trees and had never been swept away by ponies due to no ponies other than Zecora, who was a Zebra living there, and she was more concerned with studying and mixing the local herbs together to concoct new (and hopefully useful) potions than tidying up after nature.
Her legs starting to feel sore from the spring-hopping she was doing, Pinkie Pie finally arrived outside of Zecora's house and climbed the few steps and tapped on her door, then backed down the steps and waited patiently for Zecora to come to the door and open it. For several minutes she waited, and nopony came. Frowning a little but not discouraged Pinkie once more walked up the three steps and knocked on the door, this time a little harder and louder, and again retreated. Repeat performance.
Hmm...maybe she's not home right now? That was not out of the question, given her occupation. If she was out of the house, Pinkie would have no was of knowing when she'd be coming back, and unfortunately due to her script-writer's patience and lack of imagination she could not stay out there all night waiting for her.
Pinkie sighed and walked up the stairs one last time to knock on the door when suddenly some scraggly bushes next to both Zecora's house and the treeline of the forest surrounding it shook and a very tired and sopping wet Zecora tiredly stepped through them carrying on her back what looked like several green and yellow-spotted vines. The vines looked as if they'd been chewed off of whatever plant they'd been taken from. Zecora herself, as stated before was very wet to the point that liquid was dripping from her hide. Well, perhaps wet and dripped were the wrong words, as Pinkie saw better as Zecora came closer and stopped before her, her eyes widening. Zecora was coated in a strange light green slime that had a sweet smell to it, kind of like the nectar of a honeysuckle flower.
“A pony of pink stands here dressed strange! What help for you, might I arrange?”
“Hiya, Zecora! I was going to sing you a song inviting you to a a party in town for Twilight's birthday, but you look tired and in need of a bath, so I'm willing to skip my usual singing invitation this time! Instead, here ya go!” Pinkie reached into a bag on one side of her body and withdrew a white envelope and offered it to Zecora, who took it in a hoof and tore it open with her teeth. She read over the invitation's contents briefly and then smiled and looked up.
“Honored I would be, to attend this party. But tonight I must rest, for gathering these,” She patted one of the vines laying across her back. “was was quite a test!”
“Really?” Pinkie Pie asked. “What kind of plant is that from?”
“The Pokey Plant, are these on my back. Difficult indeed, to evade its attack!”
“Is that why you're covered in goo?” Pinkie asked, scraping a tiny bit off with a hoof and holding it closer to her eyes for a better look.
“Yes this green slime, it comes from that plant. But do without the vines, my potion simply can't. This ingredient is so rare that it, one cannot buy. But once every five years, do its seeds take to the air, and fly.” Pinkie Pie scratched a part of her head not covered by her hat, looking confused.
“So...you took the vines to get the...seeds?” Zecora shook her head.
“The vines alone are all I need, I did not seek with it to breed.” Pinkie Pie snorted and then giggled.
“A pony breed with a plant? That's silly!” Zecora watched and listened to her laugh for several seconds, then yawned and headed for her door, saying nothing else but also not meeting Pinkie Pie's eyes.
“To your party I shall go later. Say for me, hello to your alligator.”
Pinkie waved goodbye to Zecora, said good night, and then began trotting back out of the woods along the path she'd headed in by.
Meanwhile inside her house Zecora set the vines on her worktable below her already-jarred ingredients and then took a long drink from a pitcher of water before she again went back outside and took a short walk to the nearby river whereupon she doused herself several times to wash the slime off of herself.
As she had told Pinkie Pie, breeding with the plant had not been her goal. What she had not told Pinkie Pie was that this had been the plant's goal, and that was the reason she'd been covered in goo.
“Yick!” she said as she scrubbed her limbs in the flowing water. “A determined weed, it was indeed. A good thing then, that I only took that of which I was in need.”
Earlier That Day
The time of day was just before noon, and other than a light drizzle the weather was pleasantly warm and the humidity was low.
Zecora trotted through the forest with an old, but still sharp machete on her back, her eyes wary of the woods around her, and her nose just as much. She knew what she was looking for, and knew that gaining it would be no easy feat if she wanted to come out of the encounter with the strength to stand and walk away on her own four legs.
From what she had been told of this plant, though failing to approach it properly could be be an unpleasant experience (unless you were into that kind of thing), it was rarely lethal. Even so, Zecora preferred to simply get what she was going to the Pokey Plant patch for, and then to leave as quickly as possible.
Zecora skirted several patches of Poison Joke, a Manticor snoring near its recent half-eaten kill, forded the river that zigzagged throughout the forest before finally falling into a crevice several miles downstream, and applied an ointment to herself every half hour to hide her scent from prowling Timber Wolves. It was not until a little after two in the afternoon that she arrived at the Pokey Plant patch she'd been told about, and licked her lips nervously. This was something she had not tried before, and was unsure of how to proceed.
“Unnerving indeed, to enter this patch. If careful I'm not, I could be its catch!”
The Pokey Plants were of the creeper breed of the vine family, and possessed very few leaves on the vines themselves reaching past the distance farther from the main stem than three feet. At that point the vines were just tendrils that reached out for other plants to latch onto and wrap themselves around or sink into and pry apart to leech moisture out of. Such was the case here. At one time there had been several tall and thick-trunk trees with wide leaves that turned a golden color before finally falling away in the late autumn month before winter. Now it was a tangled mess of corded vines that covered what few branches had not yet rotted enough to collapse under the vine plant's weight. Two of the old trees had already fallen over, and another looked one storm away from doing the same.
Zecora scanned the Pokey Plant patch, recalling the rhyme she'd been taught to help her recall what she was looking for: “To find the vines that be not yet old, seek out the ones that bear flecks of gold!” Slowing her scan rate and beginning to walk in a circuit around the patch. Zecora would search for five more minutes before finding the youngest plant present. Contrary to most cliches, however, it was not in the center of the patch, but rather right on the outer edge nearest to the tree that looked to be ready to fall over.
Zecora smiled and increased her pace until she stood at the nearest point to it and then drew her machete from its sheath and held it firmly in her teeth. If she was lucky, she would not need it, but given that normally her first encounters with life in this forest tended to not end well it was better to walk in wary. And walk in warily she did...until she tripped over one of the vines and landed face-first on a large mushroom, which broke her fall quite comfortably, but tasted horrible. Her mouth had been open because she'd let out a startled yell and dropped her machete, but thankfully had not fallen onto the edge of the foliage-clearing tool.
Reverse-snorting and spitting out the bits of mushroom that got into her mouth, Zecora rose from the remains of the large mushroom and looked down at the vine she'd tripped over. It was just an ordinary brownish-green vine as far as she could tell. Smooth, no sign of any thorns or ridges, or anything that seemed remotely out of the ordinary from regular vines.
“Hmm. Why do you be, called the Pokey?” She asked the vine as she looked for, found, and retrieved her machete. It just seems like an ordinary plant to me. Zecora shrugged and continued toward the shorter and younger vines until she reached them and then halted. She took a quick glance around, noting the sudden lack of forest sounds common to nearly every area of the forest, and then after spending five minutes standing stock-still listening for a possible predator, she swung her head, which swung the machete, and chopped one of the vines. Again she halted and waited, but nothing happened, and she chopped again. Still nothing. Finally she chopped a third, each of the vines oozing a thick green goo from the stems where it had been cut, and tied them together before swinging it up onto her back. “I fail to see here what I am to fear.” Zecora said aloud, once more scanning the patch of plants. “It was plain enough, my task not tough.”
Zecora wiped the goo on her machete off on one of the vine-cluster's leaves, and was about to sheathe it when the plant she'd harvested her ingredients from suddenly began to writhe. Zecora backed a few steps away from it, watching as vines, some of them nine times her own body length rose up from the ground or uncoiled themselves from the leaning tree, which fell apart as though the vines had been holding what was left of it together. “Oh no...I think I should go!” Nervousness now infecting her, Zecora spun with the machete still in her mouth and began to run for the edge of the patch, jumping over other fallen and rotting plants and brushing one more cluster's leaves. This plant also became abruptly active, though its vines were much shorter than those of the one she'd harvested (though none of them were had vines in the length she'd been looking for which was why she'd ignored it).
As its own vines rose protectively from the ground and a small bush it had wrapped itself around Zecora once more tripped over a vine- or so she thought. Rather than fall, she suddenly stopped moving forward. She twisted her head around to see it quickly twisting around her body, tightening as it did. Quickly she swung the machete and freed herself only to have another snag one of her front legs. This one she also cut, followed by another that rose from the ground directly beneath her and tried to wrap around her middle. This one was thicker than the other two and took three chops, but once more she was free and she resumed her flight.
While she had been fighting, however, the first plant had brushed through the leaves of the largest and oldest plants which also became active, turning almost the entire Pokey Plant patch into a noisy rustling and cracking flurry of activity.
Zecora looked over her shoulder to see something that might be out of a herbologist's nightmares forming behind her. She began to sweat, which was one of the worst things given the circumstances that she could have done. One of the vines brushed her side, trying to find something not itself to grab, and swiped away with some of her sweat on it. The plant reacted to this new source of nourishment, which it also (barely) understood was moving and froze, as did the the others in the patch.
Zecora did not stop to observe this, however, and kept running for the edge, reached it, and exited it, stopping several feet away beyond the line of untouched trees and turned to look back, breathing heavily not from exertion, but rather from almost being caught by a surprisingly-active bit of vegetation. She raised an eyebrow curiously at the plants that had suddenly frozen as if a freak-blizzard at sub-zero temperatures had suddenly swept through them.
“A strange thing indeed, this move from this weed. Why did it let me go, I am curious to know...” Still, she had gotten away, and other than a bit of goo on her person from what had splashed on her when she chopped herself free from it, she was not marked by the encounter. Curiosity overcoming her good sense, Zecora set the vines she'd harvested onto the ground and slowly approached the seemingly-petrified plants and poked a vine that had remained on the ground. Nothing happened. Shrugging once more, she turned to leave and brushed it with her tail.
'twould seem that brushing the leafs was what set it alive. A more careful method of harvesting I shall have to contrive. Zecora nodded an was about to leave to return to her home (after retrieving the chopped vines, of course) and took one step forward. That step was the only step she was able to take, however, as her other legs seemed to be stuck. Zecora looked down, made a panicked expression for half a second, and once more reached for her machete.
In the very few seconds that she'd stood still after tapping the vine smaller creepers had coiled themselves gently around her hoofs, and were even now rising toward her knees. But with her machete once more in jaw, she began hacking at them.
As soon as her legs were free again she tried to run forward but was painfully stopped by a tugging sensation at her backside. Zecora looked behind her and saw that her tail had been very thoroughly intertwined with more creepers. If she wanted to escape, the tail had to go. She knew she'd look silly for about two weeks, but two swings and two brief doses of pain at the root of her tail later, it was gone and she took two steps forward and fell onto the ground.
Zecora cursed in her native language. While she had been freeing her tail more creepers had re-wrapped her hind legs and more were curling around her front and trying to climb up to her neck. Zecora fought the still-weak grip on her front hoofs and tore them loose and turned once more to her hind-end, but found the vines had already moved up to her backside and were now dragging her back into the patch.
Chop! Chop! Chop! She swung as more and more came from around her, but she could no longer turn herself far enough around to again free her back legs and soon she'd been pulled back toward the plant that she'd harvested the vines from earlier.
Her neck was growing tired, and as her pace of swings slowed her front left leg became entwined, and then her right, and then suddenly one vine that she struck, which was thicker than the others, was not chopped asunder, and the machete stuck in it and was pulled from her teeth and left behind.
Gasping for air and once more sweating, Zecora watched in a mixture of distaste and fear as the plant wrapped and spread around her body until she could move little more than her eyes. She now appeared as a equine mummy in strange wrappings, only she was very much alive, and wondering what would come next.
Though she had been told by others that what was to come next would likely be unpleasant, the tellers had been rather vague beyond that point, and simply encouraged her not to get caught. Well, caught I am now, but as to escape, how? Obviously those others that had been caught had gotten away somehow. If only, they had told me! She came to a stop near the center.
For a few minutes nothing else happened, and she was left to her thoughts, but as time continued to pass and her bindings were not removed her body heat had less area to escape and she did not cool off and continued to sweat. Is it going to hold me until I am dry? Perhaps this is how some harvesters die! Until night finally fell she feared that she would not be cooling off any time soon, which meant that the plant would likely continue to hold her as it had the dying and rotting trees around her to drain as much liquid nourishment from her as possible.
If that had really been the case she might have gotten off and gotten loose after the sun went down, but this was no ordinary plant, and this had not been the first time it had caught an intruder in its patch. Though the plant had no intelligence in the same manner as an animal or sapient being, it should be noted that even regular vines know that to better get at the sun's light they need to climb anything higher on the ground than itself, and as already stated, this was no regular plant. Intruders that were not insects typically had a better source of nourishment other than the water that flowed out from their bodies.
Zecora tried to shift in discomfort as she felt the vines wrapped around her shift and pull at her again, this time up. Slowly her front lifted first while others held her rear legs down until it appeared she was standing, and then her whole body was lifted until she hung like a fly caught and wrapped in a spider's web. She tried to turn her head and failed, but she could still hear, feel, smell, and see what was in front of her (which in her current position was mostly the sky). Her sense of smell told her nothing that she did not already know, but her ears told her that even though the vines holding her had stopped after she'd been suspended others were still moving. She tried once more to move her head, and to her surprise the ones on her face and the rest of her head released it and receded. Zecora looked down at the ground and around her, but other than a few not-moving vines and other plants that had not yet been choked out by the Pokey Plant, nothing was in motion in her line of sight, so she tried to turn her head around. Alas, her neck was still tied up, and she could not.
The vines around her head were not the only ones moving. The ones that had been intertwined in her tail also had moved, and the ones on her limbs were pulling outward, straightening her legs and (what was left of) her tail out as far as they'd go without being painful. It was still uncomfortable, but at least being in her position did not hurt...just yet. Am I being released? Has the plant concluded its liquid feast? It had not, and was instead moving both itself and her into a position in which the plant from which she'd taken vines from could do a little harvesting of its own.
Zecora felt a slithering sensation as vines covering her backside slide away from her backside and she once more looked down, and then made a face as she realized why the survivors had been so vague. Below her a tendril that made her briefly think (though she wasn't sure why at the time) of Big Macintosh rose up from the forest floor directly below her and stopped below her nether regions. Zecora gulped audibly and again tried to free herself, hoping that the vines that left her would allow her to free herself. It was not, and the grip on her body that the plant had possessed before tautened, her position now more than a bit uncomfortable.
Her discomfort further increased as she felt the tip of the vine prodding around her waste-disposal regions and finally finding and pressing against her rear entrance (or exit, depending on how you choose to look at it). Oh crap! I do not want that! But what she wanted and what the probing Pokey Plant (who had just explained its name to her) planned to proceed did not coincide, and, with Zecora loudly crying out in pain, the vine shoved its way inside her until it seemed to her that it might make its way to her stomach.
Several hours of having her anus thoroughly and roughly scrubbed by a manure-hungry plant later it dropped her to the ground where she, in only a half-aware mind, crawled out of the Pokey Plant patch unmolested (any further than she already had been), forgetting her machete and retrieved what she'd hacked from the plant and began making her way home, where she would eventually be greeted by Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie herself would make it home with no incident, and would begin writing up a list of foods and drinks that would be present at her Pony pal's party. The following day she would swing by the market looking to get Twilight a present and discover what seemed to be an abnormally large (and gold-speckled) maple tree seed stuck in Applejack's left apple wagon wheel. Realizing from a brief peek at the storyline yet to come that Twilight would love to plant and grow for study she would take it home, put it in a box and gift-wrap it, and give it to her with no idea of the repercussions to follow.
()()()()()
Twilight's birthday went off without a hitch, and she was quite thrilled about the gift that Pinkie had picked for her, as she'd not seen it before and was always looking for some new subject to learn about. Due to Zecora being so worn out and achy from the previous day she slept later than usually and as a result was late to Twilight's party. Because of this she missed Twilight opening her gifts and had no idea what Pinkie and the others had given her.
Twilight stripped the seed of the propeller-shaped outside of the large seed and planted it in a wooden tub, watering it with a metal watering can once a day and then skimmed through a book of local flora trying to uncover what plant it was that she was in the process of growing. Two weeks after having planted the seed she discovered a picture of the seed and how one would be able to nurture it into an actual plant.
“At least six hours of direct sunlight, water three times a day with sugar-water for optimum growth, plenty of space to spread out, and a warm room!” She glanced up from her brown book and looked at the wooden tub and nodded, smiling. “A chance to grow a rare plant and study it's growth and I already have everything I need? Best birthday gift ever!” A glitter of light from the page she stopped on drew her attention back to it. It was a cautionary note written in silver lettering “'Caution: Do not allow plant to grow at least six vines longer than two meters unless you 'like it rough'.'” Twilight Sparkle furrowed her brow and blinked in confusion and read it again. “'Like it rough'? Like what rough? That doesn't tell me anything!” She absently rubbed a leg on her floor, on which she was lying. That's when an idea of what it might mean came to her and her eyes widened slightly. “Oh! Maybe it means that the vines themselves will become rough! I remember seeing some older blackberry vines around the back of Applejack's barn; those ones had bark on them!” She gave the book a condescending smile. “I don't think it'll matter very much if the plant gets rough, but thanks anyway.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled while putting the book away.
Almost a year later, Twilight's plant had grown to be quite large, and it had taken to her tree in much the same way the wild Pokey Plants had in Everfree. In short, her tree had started to wilt from the water being leeched out of it. As much as Twilight wanted to keep it to document its growth up to the time when it was supposed to produce seeds (the flowers that came before the seeding were supposed to be a bright purple and the scent they gave off were supposed to rival that of a few sprays of perfume), the Pokey Plant had to go, and so she'd enlisted the help of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and even Rarity to get rid of it. Applejack brought two pairs of shears and a wheelbarrow for disposing of the vines they were going to pull from the walls, Rarity was going to help Twilight pry them delicately free from the walls so as to cause as little damage to her home as possible, and Pinkie Pie had actually just wanted to see it one last time before Twilight got rid of it, but promised to help as well.
After five of the twenty or so vines that Twilight had allowed to reach a longer length had been cut free Rarity decided to take a break, and Twilight agreed while Pinkie helped finish loading up the wheelbarrow. Once it was full Applejack began pushing it to the outskirts of town where the town's decaying compost pile was placed.
Spike, who had been in the kitchen getting water for Twilight's floral-removal assistants came back out with four glasses on a tray. First he, as usual, went to Rarity (to the knowing smile and eye-role of Twilight) who took one glass in her magic with a thank you and a pat on the head for Spike, and then he walked in a love-struck daze to Twilight.
“Thanks, Spike.”
“You're welcome Twilight.” He replied slowly with a dumb smile on his face. “Can I get you two anything else?”
“No thank you, Spike. Water will be fine.” Rarity replied after daintily sipping some of her water. Twilight, on the other hand, drank like any other creature and finished her glass in one tenth the time it took Rarity.
Twilight set her glass down on Spike's tray and informed Rarity that she was going to continue plant-prying now, to which Rarity nodded. Twilight turned her head and looked at the vines scaling her walls and frowned.
Why did I let them get that long? This is going to be a long day. She sighed and shook her head a little before approaching one of the lower vines. As she stopped before it an idea struck her. One of the books she'd read on gardening had said that when trying to kill a weed you should start with the roots even if the plant was a vine in case something came up in your schedule so that the plant you were trying to get rid of would be unable to grow any more in case what you needed to do took a few days or in case you forgot to finish weeding.
With this new idea she instead turned to the base of the plant and proceeded to use her magic to uproot it. There was just one teeny-tiny problem: The plant's roots had grown down through the bottom of the tub and between the planks that it was made of, and finally into the floor, which had become soggy and soft from the water that had seeped through the tub's dirt and leaked onto the floor beneath it. But Twilight did not know this, and with a frown pulled a little harder, to no avail.
“What the hay?” she muttered and paused for a second and then gave sudden, big yank. With the sound of groaning wood and a few muffled snaps the tub came free of the floor, to Twilight's confusion. “What the hay?” she repeated, gaping at the hovering tub. She had been trying to uproot the plant, not lift the while tub. Twilight trotted closer to investigate, and discovered, to her surprise and fascination what had transpired, though she was less-than-happy about her ruined floor.
“What is it darling?” Rarity asked, noticing Twilight's fascination with the floor and joining her to investigate. “Ugh! And why is your floor hairy?”
“It's not hairy, Rarity. These are roots!” Twilight explained, brushing them with a hoof. “It looks like the Pokey Plant grew through the tub and into my floor!”
“Perhaps you should have planted it outside Twilight?” Rarity pointed a leg at one of Twilight's open windows. “You know, like other gardeners?”
“I wanted to study the plant as it grew, Rarity, and with so much on my daily schedule if something is out of sight it's also out of mind. I didn't know it would grow through the tub!”
“Hasn't anypony else researched this plant before?”
“Of course,” Twilight replied as she returned the plant to the floor. “but very little of the research actually goes into detail on it. Almost everything other than how to increase its growth rate and a vague warning about not bruising the leaves if you had company, I've found very little information on it.”
“Bruising the leaves when you have guests?” Rarity repeated, turning her head slightly and leaning forward curiously to get a better view of the leafy base of the plant. “What difference would it make whether you had guests or not?” She asked, lifting a hoof of her own and extending it towards it.
“No idea. I even sent a letter to princess Celestia asking about that, and all she said in reply was that it was good advice and I should follow it.”
“Hmm.” Rarity said as she poked a cluster of leafs.
At first nothing seemed to happen, and Rarity stroked a leaf with the side of her leg, feeling the surprising roughness of it.
“Hmm. Well, other than it being a bit rough I don't see what-”
“Rarity!” Spike yelled, his tray falling from his clawed hands and both Twilight and Rarity's emptied glasses falling to the floor. “Look out!” He pointed a claw above Rarity at the wall and Rarity twisted her head to see one of the vines falling from the wall towards her. Her eyes became wide and she screamed a little before pushing herself back and just barely out of the way, but as she dodged the first a second fell, and that one did not miss and draped across her back like a saddlebag.
“Ugh! Get off me!” She shrieked at the plant, worried it might give her the equivalent of a grass stain on her hide. Rarity's horn glowed and he tossed it off of herself. But no sooner had she done this that the others began letting go of the walls (and in the case of two, one of the bookcases) and landing around her, save for eight, that fell in the direction of Twilight instead, who short-range teleported to dodge.
Meanwhile Spike was running as quickly as his little legs would allow to the aid of his beloved Rarity, who was freaking out and bucking about in a very panicked and unladylike manner. One of the vines had begun curling around one of her front legs, and he wasted no time breathing fire on it to try freeing her. It withered a little and he took a deep breath (for his size) and was about to breathe flame again when a vine he's not been watching hit him with the force of a slap from Iron Will and he flew across the room without wings and crashed into a book case, the contents of which fell with him and buried him.
“SPIKE!” Twilight yelled, galloping across the room and jumping the now very animate vines that were no longer simply lying where they had fallen and were now whipping about like the tentacles of a giant squid from old pirate stories. Rarity was now stomping at the vine that still gripped her with her other front leg, but her other legs (minus the one she was using to strike the vine holding her other front leg) were now trapped too, though not completely immobile yet. “Spike! Are you alright?!” Twilight began digging through the books with hoofs and magic alike, and after only a few seconds that felt like hours to Twilight she found one of his arms. It was twitching, and she heard a soft groan from under the other books. “Hold on, Spike! I'm coming!” But she wasn't. In fact, she found herself moving backwards. “Huh?”
Twilight looked behind herself to find that one of the vines that had stayed attached to the wall had loosed part of itself from the wall and entwined itself in her tail. She glared angrily at it and blasted it with magic, but other than a few singes it was less effective than Spike's fire-breath. “What the hay?!” She exclaimed, and tried again, this time with more punch-power. The vine fell to the floor, but because it was already entwined in her tail hair she found herself with a tail-extension. Ignoring it for the moment Twilight ran back to Spike and finished digging him out and lifted him with magic, but then at the sound of a muffled called for help Twilight remembered Rarity was with her and turned to where she'd left her and gasped.
All four of Rarity's legs had been wrapped up and her mouth had been gagged by a fifth that had first wrapped around the back of her head twice, looking like half of a bridal with an improperly-placed bit. Twilight blushed a little at the mental image she recalled from a particularly arousing dream she'd once had after watching one pony riding another during her visit to Appaloosa, but was returned to the present when Rarity looked at her and tried to yell again.
“Melph Meh Mwy-like!” Rarity managed to say around the vine in her mouth.
“Hit it with magic, Rarity!” Twilight got the distinct impression that Rarity was trying to frown at her and Twilight gave her an embarrassed smile. Oh right, not everyone has the same knowledge in spells that I do! Heh heh, oops! “Hold on Rarity, I'll get you loose!” She claimed, and began charging up her horn. The vine still entangled in her tail however had only been stunned by her attacks, and had other plans. Twilight yipped as a sudden painful tug on her tail broke her concentration and she looked behind her to see, to her dismay, that her efforts had indeed been fruitless. “Oh horse-”
While her own rear distracted her, her front hoofs were grabbed and were in the process of being immobilized. Twilight twisted her head back and looked down, and, seeing her predicament worsening, blast after blast of magic at them, stunning them as she had stunned the one that had pulled her tail taught, but while she did that a fourth got hold of one of her rear legs and both that one and the one holding her tail yanked her hard to one side. Twilight fell to the floor on her side, banging her head against the floor and stunning her for a few seconds. She revived when the door opened and she heard Applejack say loudly to Pinkie that she wasn't really interested in Pinkie's tickly-tummy and runny nose.
“If yer getting sick, you should- wha the hay?!”
“I should 'what the hay'? But I'm not getting sick, I'm- oh! So that's what it's about!”
“Whaddawe do?! Rarity's wrapped up good, and Twi's getting' hoisted in the air like a cocooned cricket being lifted by a big spider!”
“Don't worry, Applejack! I have just the thing! Keep it busy!” Pinkie said energetically before darting out of the house again. Applejack looked nervously at the other vines waving around like seaweed in an ocean current.
“Keep it busy...right.” She swallowed. “So, uh...” Applejack looked around the room and then at Twilight. “what do ah do?”
“Get help! Spike's buried in that book pile over there! Get him, and get out of here, then wake him up and send a letter to the princess telling her that this plant's gone crazy! Hurr- mph!” Twilight's sentence was interrupted as a vine forced its way into her mouth as it had with Rarity, presumably to keep her from talking, but when her mouth began to feel dry she realized otherwise. It's...feeding off me?! Twilight theorized as Applejack, with Spike on her back, fled the library, just barely dodging over a vine that swept her way. Please hurry!