“Where in the span of Time did this come from? Its characters span eras, its ambitions emanate hallucinogens rivaling the Ichor…I must see who brought these here!”
– Cristoph Magreat, The Duel of Shaman Kullermes and Migrant O-Thorde

“Did any’a you hear that?”

The other ponies seated around the Apple family dining table paused. Their guest didn’t stop chowing down on his food, but we’ll get to him momentarily.

Their matriarch, whose body was barely covered in a green coat moreso than her wrinkles, cocked an ear to the south of the farm. “I coulda swore I heard explosions coming from the Everfree.”

The middle child, a mare, adjusted the Stetson resting atop her blond mane. “No offense, Granny, but are ya sure those were explosions?”

“I may be getting old,” Granny said, “but I can still tell the diff’rence between my joints poppin’ and the sound of high explosives goin’ off. ‘Member how your cousins Fuji and Big Apple tried ta fish in the lake durin’ the last Apple Family Reunion?”

The youngest child, also a mare, perked up in her seat as her eyes shone. “Oh YEAH!” she twanged, lifting her hoof up and nearly smacking the massive red bow off her yellow little head. “They had those sticks ‘a…sticks ‘a…” She frowned. “What’s the word ah’m lookin’ for?”

“Dynamite, Applebloom,” the middle child said, holding a hoof to her face at the freshly resurfaced memory. “It’s called dynamite, and ah see what Granny’s getting’ at.”

While Applebloom smiled at the memory, especially at the part where her cousins threw in a few sticks too many, her older sister managed to finish off her plate and, placing it into the sink, she started walking to the door. “Ah’ll find out what’s going on, don’t you worry none.”

Granny took a drink of cider. “A li’l late for that, but I appreciate your goin’ out to check regardless, Applejack.”

The guest seated next to Applebloom took a second to stop inhaling its food. He looked at Applejack with his big blue eyes and asked, “Poyo?” Applejack didn’t know much about their puffy pink guest, but she could tell from how he shifted in his seat that he probably wanted to come with her. Applejack wasn’t sure about letting him come along, seeing how he acted like a literal big baby, and in her search for inspiration she managed to glance over at the table. “Well, it’s an Apple Family Tradition that no one gets up from the table ‘til their plate’s cleared, and seein’ as you’ve got plenty left…”

Their pink guest promptly inhaled with enough force to vacuum the food off of all the plates, managed to close his mouth despite growing to twice his previous size from the sheer amount of food in him, swallowed the entire mass in one go, and plopped back down into his chair at his normal size. He smiled blissfully and began rubbing his belly with both of his nubby pink arms.

Applejack paused halfway over the threshold, processing the flagrant breaking of the laws of physics that she just saw. To her credit, she recovered much more quickly than Applebloom. “…guess ah can’t say you broke tradition, can I? Ah suppose you can come with if you’re that eager t’help.”

As the pink puffball happily strode out the door after Applejack, Applebloom looked at the considerable amount of nothing left on her plate. “Can ah learn how to do that?” she wondered aloud.

“Eenope,” said the eldest child.

“…okay, maybe not now, but ah could do it if ah got my Cutie Mark in Apple Eatin’, right Granny?”

After opening her mouth, closing it, and opening it again, Granny put a hoof to her chin in deep thought. “Well Applebloom, I don’t see why not…”

Moments later…

Applejack had just finished lighting a torch when the pink puffball decided an open flame was a nifty dessert. As Applejack held onto her hat to keep it safe from the sudden vortex, she quickly noticed that she was no longer holding the torch. She spotted their guest standing in front of her swallowing something suspiciously torch-shaped.

“What in tarnation possessed ya to –” Applejack began, but stopped when he swallowed the torch in his mouth and promptly went up in flames. Eyes wide, Applejack began to bolt for a bucket of water to put the little guy out, but the second she came back with the filled pail she paused again. The little guy was showing absolutely no signs of distress over the bonfire on his scalp. “So when ya swallow fire, yer head lights on fire,” Applejack noted. “Who knew?”

Night had fallen by the time the trio finally managed to defeat the Arbitrarily Heartless King Timberwolf, but the coins and gear it had dropped somewhat made up for the ludicrously long but nonetheless action-packed fight involving Shadow-class Heartless, a hastily cobbled together but nonetheless devastating Trio Attack, and lots and lots of fire-based attacks. The moon shone down on the field, relatively in the same state as before the fight had begun, and the triumphant trio of Mario, Luigi, and Xion, who were resting in the regenerative field a cast of Xion’s Curaga spell had created.

The trio tore their eyes away from the slowly ascending form of a giant glowing heart, the only remaining part of the Heartless once it had dissolved into wisps of darkness, to see a single onlooker applauding under the shadow of a tree. He was human in appearance, sporting a pair of khaki slacks, a tanned leather jacket unbuttoned enough to spot the shirt for some band named ‘Sunsetters’ underneath, bright red hair on his hatless head, and an oddly familiar glove on his right hand. It was made of a red material of some sort that looked like but wasn’t quite leather, and the owner didn’t seem to have a matching glove on his left hand.

Xion blinked a bit in surprise. “Oh. Hi there. How long were you –”

“‘Standing here?’ Time’s all relative, sweetheart,” the newcomer said, grinning. “It’s just how everybody observes the process of entropy. To a fly, I’ve been here for a small eternity. To the trees of this forest, I’ve been here for an infinitesimal moment. To humanoid beings whose natural lifespan tops out somewhere near a century…eh, about an hour or two.

“But I couldn’t help noticing…” he continued with a gleam in his eye, “that you all seem to be low on supplies. Healing items, for instance. Top gear. Decent badges. Maybe a nice tent?”

Luigi and Mario put a hand to their own chins and tilted their heads almost in perfect unison. “Hmm…” they hummed.

“Are you saying you’re a merchant?” Xion asked.

“Not just a merchant. One should never trust someone who goes by their profession alone,” the newcomer said with a smirk, before gesturing to himself with both hands. “Jack’s the name. Jack of All Trades.”

“Isn’t that another name for your profession?” Luigi pointed out.

The merchant man with the right red glove grinned. “Sharp as a tack, this one. Ten percent off your next purchase, and another five just because your mustache is looking fantastic,” he said, pointing to Luigi. “Jacob Winston, though I do prefer ‘Jack.’”

Mario looked around a bit. “Alright, ‘Jack’…so where are you selling your wares?”

Jack smiled. “Right here,” he said. At the sight of Mario’s raising brow, he smiled wider and asked, “Something wrong?”

“It seems strange that you don’t have so much as a suitcase with you,” Mario said, dubious. “How much stock do you actually have?”

“Since you’re so interested…” Jack snapped the fingers on his right hand. “See for yourself.”

close one eye, step to the side

Suddenly, there was a large blue quilt that stretched for several yards under their feet. Looking around, one could spot several places where items of wildly varying shapes and sizes were making depressions into the fabric. There were also a number of floodlamps fitted with red bulbs that were now illuminating the area, notably without a single visible power source to be seen.

Mario stared at Jack. “…and where were you keeping all of that?”

Jack smirked. “The same place you hold that veritable mountain of gear, obviously.”

“…point taken,” Mario conceded.

Xion looked around. “How is this even organized? Do we even have the munny to pay for any of this?”

“I’ll explain how my operation works in a bit, but I’m going to have to do that bit off-screen,” Jack said, gesturing a bit with his hands. “But first, let me just say what I say to all my customers, then we’ll get started:

“What will you give for a bit of safety?”

There was a moment of silence as Mario, Xion, and Luigi awkwardly waited for something to happen. An owl hooted somewhere off in the forest, the moon shone its cool reflected sunlight upon all of them, half a million hermaphroditic bugs were multiplying in ponies’ homes far away and yet also close by in the weird paradoxical manner that results from individuals’ relative perspectives and their effects on the concepts of reality, a cricket let out a few clear and well-clichéd chirps, the tumbleweed from The Mighty Warrior series made an unauthorized and quite possibly paradoxical cameo. This lasted for a full two minutes before Jack himself ended the ever-extending paragraph filled with silence and background events with varying significance to the plot.

“…well, that’s odd,” Jack said. “Here I thought we would’ve ended on that line.” He shrugged. “At least I can start explaining how my shop’s set up without being cut off by something stupid like a Gilligan Cut–”

Applejack had to admit, while watching the little guy swallow that torch was mighty unsettling, the results had their perks. For instance, neither of them needed to carry a light. Considering the nature of the forest and its inhabitants, this was a bit of a godsend, as one could never be sure when something would choose to strike. Granted, the pink guy was basically on fire and would be the one attracting the attention of any nocturnal predators and not Applejack, but she came to terms with that by deciding to defend him twice as hard as she was going to originally.

This moment provided the perfect segway into how Applejack met the pink guy in the first place. You see, this subplot started around lunchtime that day, back when she was bucking trees in the orchards –

Applejack’s train of thought was derailed when she saw a gout of flame come out of the little pink puffball’s mouth, and she instinctively leapt to the side. “Whoa! Give a gal some warnin’ next time!” she said, before noticing what the flames had been sent towards. It was covered in soot and burned-off feathers, had its eyes closed tightly either in pain or by way of protection, and possessed a snake’s tail. It coughed once, let out a high-pitched and manic sounding cackle, before slumping over unconscious. A quick glance over at the little guy showed that he was just as surprised as Applejack.

As interesting as the charred but somehow still living chicken-snake was, Applejack managed to get the pink guy to start walking again. Several hours of fruitless searching later, they had found absolutely no sign of anything that could have exploded and simply headed back to Sweet Apple Acres, warm beds, merciful sleep, and blissful ignorance of the utter chaos tomorrow would bring.