Getting the horseradish out of the ground had been difficult. Getting it to go back in, though, was quite impossible. Applebloom attempted several times to push it back into the hole, and each time it would simply climb back out. She tried begging it, pleading with it, threatening it, and even bribing it, but it did not respond with anything more than a curious stare.
Exasperated, the Cutie Mark Crusaders eventually just left through the orchard. The horseradish, of course, followed them. Sweetie Belle found this mildly unnerving, but Applebloom was secretly pleased. Scootaloo actually did not notice it until they were already almost back at the farmhouse, as she had become preoccupied with not being stolen aloft by vampire fruit bats.
By the time they reached the farmhouse, Sweetie Belle was most of the way through a rather edifying tome about horseradishes. She suddenly stopped, though, when she turned to a particularly clear passage.
“Um, Applebloom?” she said, nervously.
“Yeah?”
“This isn’t good. We need to go back. Right now.”
“But we just got here,” said Scootaloo. “I barely made it out of there alive!”
Ignoring Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle continued. “We need to go back there right now, and put this thing back in the ground where it came from.”
“We already tried that. Besides, he’s pretty cool. I mean, I grew him. Myself. I grew a pony. In the ground. I’m awesome!”
“It’s not a pony, it’s a type of large radish.”
“So? Just wait until I show Applejack! She’ll be so proud!”
“Applebloom, you do NOT want to show this thing to your family.”
“Why…” Applebloom’s eyes suddenly widened as she seemed to realize what Sweetie Belle was implying. “Holy Inverted Luna!” She cried. “I didn’t think of that! He- -he’s- -”
“Dangerous?” said Scootaloo.
“Illegal,” suggested Sweetie Belle, holding up her book.
“Not an apple!” cried Applebloom. She began to shiver violently. “If they find out- -if they find out I grew a crop that’s not an apple? They’ll- -they’ll put me in the root cellar again! I don’t want to be locked down there, not again! It’s so cold, and it makes me smell like…well…him.” She pointed at the horseradish, who was watching the conversation silently. It was unlikely that, as a root, he understood anything that was going on.
“Being locked in the root cellar is the least of your problems!” cried Sweetie Belle.
“Easy for you to say! Rarity only locks you in a nice warm closet full of fancy clothes!”
“It’s still no fun,” said Sweetie Belle. “Being in the closet makes me feel like Scootaloo! But that’s not the point!” She held the book closer to Applebloom’s face. “This is a list of ultra-super-secret-double-illegal plants in Equestria! Read what’s on it!”
Applebloom’s eyes scanned the page. “Let’s see…Lophophora, Erythroxylum, Swainsona, Ponidragora…” Applebloom’s eyes suddenly widened and she looked up at Sweetie Belle. “Ponidragora? That’s horseradish!”
“I know! If we get caught with this thing, we’ll get thrown in the royal dungeon for sure!” She shivered. “And- -and they’ll use the rack on us! I’m sure they will!”
“Not the rack!” cried Applebloom.
“Wait a minute,” said Scootaloo. “Does Twilight even have a filly-sized rack?”
“I assure you,” said Sweetie Belle. “I’ve spent enough time around Twilight to know that her rack is indeed filly-sized.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Applebloom. “But I guess we can’t all be Fluttershy.”
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both looked at Applebloom with the same expression as the horseradish.
“So,” said Sweetie Belle, regaining her train of thought, “we have to put him in a hole!”
“No!” cried Applebloom, tightly hugging her plant. It tipped slightly and awkwardly, but seemed pleased and jerkily attempted to hug back. “You can’t hurt him! He didn’t do anything wrong!”
Sweetie Belle sighed. “I meant planting him again.”
“But he won’t go!”
“Applebloom, do you have any idea why he might be following us?”
“Well…” Applebloom looked at the root. “Hmm…” A look of epiphany came over her face. “The soil! It must be the soil! It isn’t rich enough! That’s why he’s so small!”
“Then where can we put him? Where can we find soil that rich?”
“Not here,” said Applebloom. “It’s all made for apples. I need…time. Yeah.” She turned to Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. “I can make that kind of dirt, but it’s not easy. It will take me time.”
“So what do we do until then?” asked Scootaloo.
“We can’t let him wander around,” said Applebloom.
“I agree,” said Sweetie Belle. “If ponies see a horseradish, they’ll panic. Then they’ll find us, and Twilight will make us all a lot taller.”
“I want to be taller!” said Scootaloo excitedly. “And can she make my wings bigger?”
“I think that’s Rainbow Dash’s job. But we need to focus on hiding the plant right now.”
“We can stash him in my room,” said Applebloom. “Applejack doesn’t look too close in there anymore ever since she found ‘apples’ the last time.”
“But he’ll track mud. He’s so dirty!”
“He sure is,” giggled Scootaloo, poking the horseradish’s flank.
“Hold on,” said Sweetie Belle, picking up a garden hose. “Let’s just spray him off- -”
“NO!” cried Applebloom, slapping the hose out of Sweetie Belle’s magic.
“Ow!” cried Sweetie Belle, even she had not been holding the hose with any part of her body. “What did you do that for?”
“That’s COLD water! Would I spray YOU with cold water?”
“You spray me with cold water when I get dirty,” said Scootaloo. She paused. “And I get dirty a lot…”
“Well you can’t develop root rot! He can only be bathed in LUKE WARM water, or water that is slightly warm!”
“Applebloom- -”
“We’ll take him into the house dirty. We’re on a far anyway, it’s not like anypony will notice.”
Before Sweetie Belle could stop her, Applebloom took the horseradish by the hoof- -or whatever it had instead of hooves- -and led it into her house.
Sweetie Belle groaned. “Why is she so stubborn?” she said to Scootaloo.
“Rainbow Dash says it’s because earth-ponies are butthurt that they’re basically donkeys with cutie marks. Or something like that, I don’t know, I’m a bad listener.”
“Thanks, Scootaloo,” said Sweetie Belle as sarcastically as possible.
“Your welcome.”
Not wanting to let Applebloom get caught, they both followed her into the house. Like the rest of the farm, it smelled strongly of apples, especially since the back door entered into the dining room. Both Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were both fans of it, Sweetie Belle for his appreciation for rustic architecture and design and Scootaloo because it was an actual house.
“Has somepony been making cake?” asked Scootaloo, sniffing the air. She gasped. “Is it…apple cake?!”
“Sure is,” said Applebloom. “We can have a piece after we deal with- -”
Before she could answer, a door suddenly swung open. Applebloom squeaked with surprise as her brother entered, and she shoved the horseradish with her rump, sliding it into a pantry and closing the door quickly.
Big Mac entered the room and momentarily seemed surprised when he noticed the three very nervous looking fillies. Big Mac, though, was known throughout Ponyville to be somewhat thick. He did not seem to notice that anything was amiss, although he did seem vaguely suspicious.
“Big Mac!” said Sweetie Belle, pushing herself against the door with Applebloom and Scootaloo. “Hi! You look- -um- -very big today!”
Big Mac chuckled. “Eeyup,” he replied. He then crossed the room and sat down at the table, pouring himself apples from a container on the counter. Raw, plain, unsalted apples. Sweetie Belle winced at the thought of eating fruit that was not soaked in sugar and possibly deep fried. In sugar.
“Big Mac!” said Applebloom. “Didn’t you have something to do right now?”
“Eeyup.” Big Mac held up an apple, indicating that the thing he was supposed to be doing was having lunch.
“No! You know, the thing, with the thing, and the pony- -”
“Oh butt nuggets!” cried Scootaloo. “I forgot to do that today!”
“We don’t use that kind of language in this house, Scootaloo,” said a twangy female voice as Applejack entered the room with Granny Smith behind her. “Remember, swearing makes Celestia cry.”
“And I hear her tears of made of pure golden honey,” mused Granny Smith. “And if ya eat one, it cures yer rheumatism!”
“You could probably use that,” suggested Sweetie Belle.
“You’re darn tootin! But Celestia is really hard to catch! You’d think somethin’ so wide wouldn’t be maneuverable like that, but she’s like some kind ah’ supersonic dirigible!”
“Now, Granny, don’t go talking bad about Celestia,” said Applejack. “She’s a nice pony. That, and we wouldn’t want to call down the Wrath of the Sun again.”
“Again?” said Scootaloo. “What happened last time?”
“See how red Big Macntosh is?” said Granny Smith. “He used to be pale green! That’s all sunburn!”
“Granny Smith, don’t go scaring fillies and tellin’ tall tales! It just- -” Applejack suddenly froze. Her nose twitched as she smelled the air. “Do you smell that?” she said.
“NO!” cried Applebloom. “Don’t smell a thing! Nothing smelly here…except Scootaloo!”
“HEY!”
“Yup! Scootaloo doesn’t bathe, and her wings are too short for her to reach for pruning! She smells like that all the time!”
“Applebloom…” Scootaloo looked extremely hurt, but both she and Sweetie Belle knew that it was true.
“No, this isn’t Scootaloo stink,” said Applejack, sniffing around the room. “This is something…different…”
She began inching toward the door, and the three fillies each felt their hearts beating faster as their respective fears were rising: Applebloom that her family would be disappointed in her and that her horseradish would be taken away, Sweetie Belle that she would be put on the rack and given a diet of gruel, and Scootaloo that she would receive scootabuse Apple-family style.
Then, suddenly, Applejack turned to Big Mac and began sniffing vigorously. He sat perfectly still, wide-eyed and sweating.
“Is that…muffins?”
“Nope,” said Big Mac, shaking his head.
“Don’t you lie to me, Big Mac! You’ve got the smell of MUFFINS on you! What were you doing this morning when you went into town? Something with a certain GRAY PEGAUS, perhaps?”
Applejack stared at Big Mac with an expression of fury, and Big Mac began shaking nervously. The floor below him was getting saturated, and Applebloom hoped that it was with sweat.
“E…yup?” he squeaked.
“And what, exactly, were you doing with her?”
“Making…muffins?”
Applejack glared at him. “What kind of muffins?”
“Apple?”
Applejack stared harshly for a moment, and then her expression instantly softened. “Oh, well that’s okay then. Apple muffins are the very best type, and that’s a scientific fact! Because apples are best fruit! Another scientific fact! Ha, take that Twilight!” Applejack turned around. “There’s no muffin in all of Equestria like one with an apple shoved inside of it!”
Big Mac chuckled. “Heh heh heh…eeyup…”
“But still,” said Applejack, suddenly becoming more serious. “Wash yourself off after lunch. You smell like derp.”
“That reminds me,” said Sweetie Belle. “Big Macntosh, Rarity wanted your help with something.”
“Rarity?” said Applejack, confused. “What did she need? Why didn’t she ask me?”
“I don’t know. She just said that it was only something Big Mac could do. Unicorn stuff.”
“But Big Mac’s not a unicorn. Last time I checked, anyway.”
“I knew a unicorn, once,” said Granny Smith. “Way back when I was young and less arthritic. Noonlight Sparkle was his name. Member of the Royal Guard, back when we were caravannin’ through Canterlot. His horn…” Granny Smith sighed. “It was huge. But funny shaped. Real nubby, but unusually wide. And I do mean WIDE.” She groaned. “And Sweet Cadence in a Barrel, he could BUCK!”
The entire room went silent, and every pony looked at Granny Smith, all of them looking mortified.
“Granny Smith! We’ve talked about this!” hissed Applejack.
“What?” said Granny Smith, annoyed by the reaction to her story. “Have you ever TRIED to buck Canterlot elderberries? They’re stuck on those trees tighter than a unicorn’s wallet! Let me tell you, old Noonlight taught me a thing or two about bucking!”
Applejack breathed a long sigh of relief, but it was interrupted by a sudden knock. To her horror, Applebloom realized that it was coming from the closet behind her. The horseradish was trying to get out.
“What was that?” said Applejack, looking at Applebloom. Her eyes then shifted to the mud on the floor. “And where did all this dirt come from? It certainly isn’t ALL from Scootaloo!”
There was another knock. Applebloom looked to Sweetie Belle, but Sweetie Belle had frozen, her mind filled with visions of Twilight’s rack. “It’s um- -it’s the tommyknockers!”
Applejack, Big Mac, and Granny Smith all gasped.
“Not again!” cried Applejack. “Granny, get me my poking stick! Applebloom, you get to your room, and if you hear hollering and screaming, get the forceps! Big Mac, you’re on me!”
Big Mac nodded, and the three adult ponies all got various pots from the cupboards with precision and practice that indicated that they had done this before. They each put the articles on their heads, and then raced out of the room.
After what felt like several minutes, Sweetie Belle turned to Applebloom. “What’s a tommyknocker?”
“No idea,” said Applebloom.
They opened the closet, and the horseradish tumbled out, along with several cans of potted apples, a jug of apple butter, and several cans of baking powder. The horseradish appeared to have been standing against the door, and it looked relieved to see the fillies again- -or at least they thought it looked pleased; it did not really have a face.
Applebloom then rushed the horseradish upstairs, and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle stayed behind to clean up the mess. This took some time, in part because the apple butter had spilled and had become extremely slippery. By the time both of them were done cleaning, both were mildly lubricated and smelled strongly of apples.
“I smell realllllly good,” said Scootaloo, sniffing herself. “It’s like I cuddled Applebloom for, like, a whole week!”
“It had better not stain,” muttered Sweetie Belle. “You have no idea how hard it is to keep a white coat clean.” She looked up, as though she could see through the ceiling to where Applebloom was. “What’s taking her so long? She should have been down here by now!”
“Maybe she got lost?”
“How hard is it to stash a radish?” Sweetie Belle stomped to the stairs, and then began to climb. Scootaloo followed. They quickly reached the much smaller second floor that was built over the barn, and Sweetie Belle went directly to Applebloom’s room.
“How do you know where her room is?” asked Scootaloo.
“Because I’ve been here so many times.”
“Oh,” said Scootaloo. “Wait, what?”
Sweetie Belle ignored her and checked Applebloom’s room. It had its normal contents: a bed, a desk covered in books and formulae, a second table with a bubbling secondhoof alchemy set, and numerous small clay pots with a number of strange experimental plants growing from them. Applebloom, though, was nowhere to be found, and neither was the horseradish.
At the sight of the lack of Applebloom, Sweetie Belle swore.
“Careful,” said Scootaloo, “you’ll make Celestia cure somepony’s rheumatism!”
“Celestia can suck my horn!” swore Sweetie Belle again as she stomped down the hallway.
“That would kind of be hard. Considering how short and nubby it is.”
Sweetie Belle tried to push her hair over her embarrassingly short horn as she felt her face grow hot. She was about to retort when she heard a sound coming from down the hallway. She looked, and saw a door partially open. The door to the bathroom.
Scootaloo seemed to notice too. “Oh. Maybe she had to shovel the road-apples?”
“She better not have,” said Sweetie Belle as she angrily approached the door and swung it open.
When she did, she was pleased to see that Applebloom was, in fact, not on the pot. Instead, she was sitting near the bathtub. It was filled with water and apple-based soap that covered the top in strongly scented bubbles. The horseradish was sitting in the bathtub, his body covered in bubbles as well.
“What in the name of Celestia’s magical organ are you doing?!” cried Sweetie Belle.
“Well, you said that he needed to be cleaned, and the hose was too cold, so- -”
“So you’re cleaning him NOW?!”
“Why are you yelling at me?!” yelled Applebloom. “YOU’RE the one who wanted him clean!”
“Not NOW! BEFORE he comes in the house- -not AFTER!”
“Applebloom?” called a voice from downstairs. The three fillies stiffened. It was Applejack. “Are you up there?”
“EEP!” cried Sweetie Belle, slamming the bathroom door. She, as well as the others- -save for the radish- -began to panic, running around the room wildly.
“What do we do, what do we do?!” cried Applebloom, stamping her feet anxiously.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” squealed Scootaloo. Her wings were standing on edge from the agitation.
“We didn’t find the Tommyknockers,” said Applejack, her hooves clicking against the stairs as she came up. “But we did find Berry Punch trying to get at the cider supplies again. It’s okay, though. Big Mac took her out behind the barn to teach her a lesson. A real firm talking to, I reckon.”
“We have to hide him!” hissed Sweetie Belle.
“Who? Big Mac? But he’s huge- -”
“Not Big Mac, you idiot! The HORSERADISH!”
“We can’t!” cried Applebloom. “There’s nowhere to hide him in here!”
“Then- -then- -” Sweetie Belle suddenly spied a small window high above the bathtub. “THERE!” she cried. “Through there!”
“There?” Applebloom looked up at it. “It’s too small! And this is a second story window- -”
“Scootaloo, help me!”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle joined together, knocking Applebloom into the bathtub. Together, they stood on top of each other. Sweetie Belle picked up the horseradish, opened the window, and then hurled it through.
“HEY!” cried Applebloom. “You’ll bruise him!”
“Your turn!”
Sweetie Belle picked up Applebloom, who immediately began protesting in the magical field.
“What a minute! No, Sweetie Belle, stop, don’t- -”
Sweetie Belle then chucked Applebloom out of the second story window after the horseradish.
“Okay, now- -”
The door suddenly burst open, and Sweetie Belle slipped off of Scootaloo’s slippery wet body and fell into the bathtub below. There was a splash, and water went everywhere. They were both momentarily under water, but then Sweetie Belle felt Scootaloo pulling her back to the surface.
The two of them came up with a gasp. Both were soaking wet and holding each other in the bathtub. Both slowly turned to see Applejack staring at them wide-eyed. All three of them sat in silence for a long moment, and Sweetie Belle saw Applejack’s eyes drift to Scootaloo’s still fully erect wings, a result of her earlier fright.
“Okayyyy…” she said, “now, I don’t care what you two do on your own time, but I’d be right appreciative if you didn’t go defying nature in my bathtub.”
“What- -eew!” Sweetie Belle pushed Scootaloo away. “No, Applejack, we weren’t- -”
“Don’t you worry. I won’t tell Rarity. I know what it feels like to be a filly, you know. All the hormones, and all kinds of changes in your body. Sometimes you get urges, and sometimes they can be…confusing.”
“Tell me about it,” sighed Scootaloo.
“Why, one time when I was your age, me and Rarity- -”
“Eew eew eew eew!” cried Sweetie Belle, trying to cover her ears. “No! NO!”
Applejack did not stop , though. Like her grandmother, once she started telling a story, she felt compelled to finish it. Scootaloo sat in rapt attention while Sweetie Belle listened on in horror.
About an hour later, the two of them quietly left the farmhouse. Sweetie Belle held the door for Scootaloo, and closed it silently. The two of them walked with neither looking at the other. Neither one could. They walked in silence toward the edge of the orchard.
They just kept walking, and, eventually, Applebloom emerged from the bushes, the horseradish trailing behind her. “What the hay?” she asked. “What took you so long?”
Neither answered, and Applebloom began to become nervous. Then Sweetie Belle looked up, but instead of looking at Applebloom she seemed to look past her with a distant stare.
“Sweetie Belle? Are you- -are you okay?”
“My innocence,” she whispered. “My innocence is gone. That story…the story! I can’t…I’m never going to be able to look my sister in the eye again!”
“I thought it was sweet,” said Scootaloo. “Two starcrossed young lovers!” She sighed. “And it makes me feel a little more comfortable with my identity, too.”
“What do you mean by that, Scootaloo?”
“Not that comfortable, Applebloom.”
Applebloom did not know what that meant, but turned to Sweetie Belle. “Well, we can’t get the horseradish back into my house.”
Sweetie Belle took a deep breath, and then did her best to repress the images of filly-on-filly cuddling. “Right,” she said. “We need to find out what to do with it.”
“We can take it to my house,” suggested Scootaloo.
Sweetie Belle and Applebloom turned sharply toward Scootaloo. Both looked immensely surprised. Even the horseradish did. “You’re house?” they said in unison.
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Well…we didn’t know you even HAD a house.”
Scootaloo frowned. “Why does everypony always think I’m homeless?”
“Various reasons. Chiefly the odor.”
“Well, I do have a house! I don’t live under Derpy’s porch anymore!”
“And your parents won’t find out?”
Scootaloo glared at Sweetie Belle. “I’m kind of in the same boat as Applebloom on that one. Trust me. No one cares enough to look. Or to give me food. Or hugs.”
Scootaloo held out her forelegs toward the others, but they did not oblige, despite the fact that her hour of sitting in Applejack’s bathtub had left her quite clean and fresh-scented. The horseradish, though, took the invitation. It, likewise, was clean, and despite the fact that it was a bizarre root monster, Scootaloo was the kind of pony who took any hug she could get.