Once again I would like to thank ProtheanBrony for proofreading.
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“Dang, the roots look perfectly fine,” Applejack stated. She was cover in dirt as looked at the half dug up tree. She crawled out from under it, “Alright fellas, ya’ll can lower it back down now.”
The sound of groaning wood and stomping hoofs filled the air as the tree was slowly lowered down back to its hole. I’m running out of ideas, she told herself, I can’t find anything wrong that’s causing these trees to be sick. Maybe I should ask for Twilight’s help before it’s too late.
She felt a light tap on her head, she turn to see Braeburn offering her hat back.
“Thanks Braeburn,” she said before she grabbed her hat with her teeth and skillfully tossed it back on her head. “I think we need to send a letter to Twilight via Lighting Express. I have no idea what I’m looking for, all of my tricks aren’t working, and hopefully Twilight might be able to help us out. Otherwise, there nothing else I can do.”
Braeburn nodded his head, “I trust your judgment cus’, and I think I know the perfect pegasus for the job.” Braeburn noticed the other ponies had finish putting the tree back and were heading back to Appleloosa. He looked back at Applejack, “Will if there nothing else to do, how about we head to my place, you clean up and I buy lunch.”
Applejack smiled, “That sounds mighty fine. You and Strongheart go head though, I catch up with ya’ll in a few minutes.” Braeburn nodded his head and left Applejack alone. Applejack stood there for a few minutes, surveying the land, trying to account about how many trees were truly sick and maybe find a way to stop the spread of the disease if they had to.
After six minutes of thinking, she started to make her way back to Appleloosa. However, as she about to leave the orchard she heard something. It was faint but she could hear rock rolling off the cliff side that was near the orchard. She panned her head towards there and saw some dust floated in the air before it faded away. She narrow her eyes…there was an intruder in the orchard.
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“Shit…hoped no one saw that.” Scarlet climbed down numerous hills sides, ruins, and other things from the Mojave, Zion, and even the great Divide. But just she was about to step of the slope off the hill that overlooked this tree field, she lost her footing and stumbled forward. This cause some rocks to rolled down and dust spewing up only to be carried away by the slight breeze that was present.
This cause Scarlet to be uneasy, she knew the importance of trying to make as little change to the land as possible to remain hidden. Which is why she favored the Desert Ranger Combat armor and a long rang riffle with some kind of scope on it. She could blend in with environment and scoped out the land before making her move.
Which she did; when she decided that she needed to find some source of water to replenish her supplies, she found a river running down not far from the town. There were also acres of actually living apple trees near the river, a rare sight in the Mojave. Well…that takes care of food and water, she thought as she took in the view. Sure the apples might not give her a full stomach, but it would be a nice side dish to her meals.
As she was surveying the land she noticed that near the river bed there were a group of horses working on something. Curious she took out her Anti-material rifle and looked down the scope. They were digging out one of the trees and not all of them were horses, one of them looked like a deformed Bighorn calf.
She didn’t want to risk going down and get spotted, so she stayed on the hillside and silently observed them. After making a the tree lean out of a hole exposing its roots, an orange horse jump down and looked at the roots. What is it doing? Never seen a tree’s root before? However, the horse didn’t stay under there for long and soon jumped out, followed by tree being lowered back down. Scarlet observed the orange horse talked to a yellow one for a while. The yellow one soon left with the others while the orange one stayed behind…standing there…doing nothing.
It finally started to make its way out of the field and Scarlet decided that it was safe enough to descend from the hillside. However, as she was taking careful steps down, she misjudged the sturdiness of one of the rocks and it gave under her weight. She stumbled forward, but she caught herself before falling flat on her face. Soon, Scarlet finally reached the edge of the field and she made her way to the river’s bed.
Once she got there she knelt by the river and got out anything that could hold water. As she was filling her last water bottle, she turned her head towards the nearest apple tree. The apples were hanging low, and they looked delicious. One wouldn’t hurt them…and they have thousands of apples to eat. She got up and walked to the tree, reached out and plucked an apple. It was shiny and fresh compare to the one in her world, and she bet it taste a lot better too.
She took a bite and…it was the most moist and sweet thing she had eaten in her entire life. Its flavor was almost like nothing she tasted, it was…it was…*click-click-click*… irradiated.
She looked at her Pip-boy, and indeed, the apple held small amount of radiation in it. Strange, that's the first sign of radiation I've seen in this world. Scarlet didn’t have much time to think about it, for something flew over her head, wrapping around her arms and chest. A hard tug forced her to fall down on her tailbone with a hard thud. She looked down, and saw a rope pinning her arms to her chest, and she traced it to the orange horse she had seen earlier.
“Crap.”
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Applejack had never seen a creature like the one before her. Its body was mostly covered in clothes that seemed to be made to blend into the desert. It didn’t have any fur covering its skins expect for a small red patch on top of its head. Oddly enough it was wearing sunglasses like the ones Rainbow Dash would sometimes wear to make herself to looked cooler; however, the ones the creature had looked like its purpose was to intimidate ponies instead.
Applejack was shocked at what she saw, but when the creature pluck and ate one of her family’s apples, AJ kind of lost it. Nopony stole from Apple’s family!
Applejack grabbed her robe, twirled it in the air for a few revolutions and tossed it at the creature. The rope successfully went over the creature and with a hard tug, Applejack brought the creature down. Applejack deftly wrapped her end of the rope a couple of times around her hoof, and kept the rope tight. The creature was a bit daze at first then it looked at itself for a moment and soon turned its head facing Applejack.
“Crap,” she heard the creature speak in an unfamiliar language. The sunglasses were slightly off and Applejack saw its eyes. They were blue and they looked a bit afraid; however, they soon were glaring right at her. A memory of Fluttershy staring down the dragon a few years back, flashed in Applejack’s mind.
“Now, I don’t know if you can understand me, but if you cooperate, we can try to find some way to work this out.” Applejack turned her head to find something to tied down the rope; however, her world soon tumble as something rammed into her hard. Before she could get back up she felt something go around her neck and being force to stay down. She then felt her legs being bound together. I’m being hogged tied!
“Now hold there muafjdaoidpfjl.” The creature took off Applejack’s hat off and stuffed it in pony’s mouth.
“Sorry, but in reality I’m going easy on you. And I can’t let you call out for help just yet.” The creature reached behind its back and pulled out a long cylinder with a big circle at the end of it. As the creature point at her face it said some more things she couldn’t understand, “Don’t worry, I believed the worst injures will be your pride and a bad headache.”
There was a small hum as device glowed and a blue pulse was emitted, passing through Applejack’s head. Her head spin and it was hard to stay awake. She tried to say something before passing out.
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The horse finally passed out and Scarlet carefully laid its head on the ground. She removed the hat from its muzzle and noticed some small blood running from its noise. Scarlet accidentally discovered that when fired at point blank range at the head, the Pulse gun acts as partial stun gun. It caused a massive headache and the noise to bleed for a few seconds, nothing serious. Boone didn’t talk for a whole week, she thought to herself, and that was the last time I let Veronica ever mix me a drink. Of course the stun doesn't last very long so Scarlet wasted no time in getting her stuff and headed right back to her campsite. Well that’s one way to introduced yourself to the town’s folks Scarlet, bravo…bravo.
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High in the sky two gryphons were sitting on a cloud, watching the human leave the apple orchard. The black feather one turned to brown one.
“Is this the “human” our master talked about?”
“Yes,” he answered with a sly smile.
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Author Note: I kind of making up the part with Pulse gun working as a stun gun. Just want a way for Scarlet to stun without causing massive head damaged to AJ.
Fallout New Vegas is copyrighted Obsidian Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks.
MLP: Friendship is Magic is copyright to Hasbro.
All characters that belong to their companies are rightfully theirs. This writing is for fun and nothing else.