“Then it exploded.” Rarity took a sip of apple juice.
“Your life is crazier than a gaggle of wet cats let loose in a rocking chair convention.” It was hard for Applejack to find the words for Rarity’s lifestyle. In fact Applejack was having a hard time believing that Rarity was supposed to be a pony that just made clothing, whether it was fancy or not was to be decided.
“Well enough about me. How have all of you been surviving out here? It’s nothing but snow, dead or dying trees and rocks for miles.” Rarity was going to make an abridged pamphlet if she kept bringing up her history since she bought the Caravel Boutique. “Well the trees around here seem to actually be doing well enough.”
“Yeah, what is up with the funky blue apples on those frosted over trees?” That was something Gilda was more focused on, the only one still inside the Centaur-pede was Greta. Her absurdly cheerful griffon friend was working on the shield generator and hopefully the spare smaller shield generators from the robot wolves would help. “That’s what I want to know as they look kind of funky.”
“I don’t know, they look kind of nice to me.” Resting up at the table was Ember; her leg would take at least five more hours to heal up. The blue apples reminded her of her scales.
“It’s the main reason we can even survive out here, we’re between the blizzard zones. It’s cold, but apparently not enough that you can’t grow ice apples.” Coloratura was serving refreshments; nobody had to ask what she was still doing here. It wasn’t like she could leave the snow zone on this quarter of the planet, but she wouldn’t do so even if she could. She was here for Applejack. “I don’t understand how it works, but apparently Applejack and her family figured out how to grow apples in this weather. I really don’t question how they do it, I was just here to visit Applejack for a week and I’ve been here since the blizzards started up.”
“It is rather complicated to grow them and the apples are not all that sweet either. In fact they’re entirely tart, but at least they are good for pies and some other things. Why we even still have enough food to last three weeks, we’ve been rationing our last normal haul of apples and we’ve been mostly using ice apples.” Cringing, Applejack looked away from the others. “It’s becoming an acquired taste at this point; I’m not exactly big on tart foods. Sugar is making it work though.”
“I try; making new recipes for apples as tart as those are is quite a trial. Can we get back to this thing about the robots that attacked you on the way through that husk that was a town?” There was a hint of concern in Sugar’s voice as she turned to her cousin Rarity; she was the reason why the Apples' were still holding it together. Her chosen profession as a baker was put to the test when she tasted her first ice apple; the tart flavor was a little unsettling.
“About that, we’re here to fix the climate problem or at least find the cause of it. It’s being created through machines, the kind that we ran into coming here. If that’s true, then we should be able to destroy the cause and fix things.” That was why they brought the rocket launchers, though Gilda didn’t want to be the one to use one as she heard about the dangerous recoil. Chrysalis really bought some cheap, if effective, rocket launchers. “Well it would fix the problem somewhat. Even if we can stop the machines that are causing this devastation, that doesn’t mean the weather will get better on its own. So fixing the climate would be another issue that we’re not exactly capable of, we can only stop the damage from getting worse. So you can kind of guess that things aren’t exactly going to end up all sunshine and rainbows.”
“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh Apple was a large red stallion, orange mane and tail. He was a stallion of few words, but he was entirely sweet on Sugar Belle and it showed as he nuzzled her gently.
“Who are these whippersnappers, did our family get bigger when I wasn’t looking?” The grandma of the family Granny Smith Apple was a green coated mare with hair, white from old age, held up in a bun. She was quite old and rickety looking, but she was holding on pretty well at her age. “Did I finally go entirely senile and miss the lovely little mare and my grandson having foals?”
“No, they’re visitors Granny; one of them is family. They’re also heavily armed and dangerous, but I’m sure that’s not for us to worry about.” Leaning over, Sugar Belle motioned Rarity closer. “Granny has a bad tendency to mishear things.”
“I may be a bit off my rocker, but I’m not deaf! If they is family, then they’re welcome… even the buzzard over there.” Granny didn’t care about Gilda’s glare or twitching angry eye. “If they’re here to help, then they’ll have to hurry. This planet isn’t exactly doing too hot, by that I mean its cold and my bones have been aching for a while now. Where’s our little Bloom?”
“I’m right here Granny… Applejack, please tell me there’s something other than apples to eat?” The little filly came walking in from the living room with a closed book in hoof. She had a red hair and yellow fur, Apple Bloom Apple couldn’t have been any older than Babs was. “Why is there a dragon at the table, also a griffon and other strangers?”
“We’re here for family and business, Rarity here is Sugar Belle’s cousin as the family part. As to the business, we’re going to make the weather better so you will be able to go out and play again. Now go on back to what you were doing, we’ll feed you something that isn’t apples when we’re done cooking it kid.” The filly smiled and wandered off leaving Ember to turn to Rarity’s cousin, while Applejack spluttered in the background in anger about the offer of food that wasn’t apples. “Sorry for the pun, but I have to ‘Sugar’ coat things around the filly.”
“It’s alright; I’m used to that coming up where my name is concerned.” Sugar Belle was as sweet as her name sounded.
“We’re likely heading into a pretty bad situation that we’ll come out of with moderate injuries. You may as well have some of our supplies while we’re here before we set out to search the area where the blizzards are forming from.” Ember turned to Rarity with a hopefully look. “We’ve got plenty of food so it won’t be a problem right Rarity?”
Rarity opened her mouth to say something only for Applejack to take offense at the offer.
“We don’t need hoof outs; we can take care of ourselves!” The stubborn side of Applejack reared its head. “We have been doing fine even before you showed up… just so long as we don’t attract the attention of those machines to ourselves.”
“Yes, but are you getting your full nutrition on those apples alone?” That caused the farmer to pause and look at Rarity. “Goodness knows I would make sure my sister was eating right, as such I’d assume you’d do the same with yours. Do you even have any vegetables?”
“Well we’ve got some left and we aren’t exactly eating only apples here… yet. The portions have been pretty small around here and we’re a family of big eaters.” Though it was pretty close and Applejack had to admit the health of her family mattered a lot, they’ve been doing great so far. The conditions of their surroundings weren’t changing and it was slowly becoming unbearable to hold their position here. “I’m not about to give up on this farm, not after I figured out how to grow ice apples.”
“What about your own health Applejack? You and Big Mac haven’t eaten much aside from apples for the past week.” Coloratura had been getting pretty worried about Applejack and she shared a good friendship with Sugar Belle. “Look, I know it’s a family trait and that you’re quite sturdy in your fruit choice, but can you really say that you or even the rest of us can last much longer like this? With the kind of conditions we’re living in with very little in the way of being able to escape them? The pipes are slowly freezing over and soon we won’t even have plumbing. It’s been kind of touch and go on that for a while… it’s a good thing the plumbing here is separate from the town's.”
“Yeah, no kidding, we’ve been having problems even keeping the pipes warm.” It was becoming quite clear that it was kind of miraculous that Applejack had managed to stubborn her way through the current crisis as well as she had so far. “That’s not to mention that we’re quickly losing water and we’ll run out of that if it all turns to ice.”
“Well if we’re not taking hoof outs, then how about a trade?” Granny offered with a shrewd look to their visitors, her granddaughter was too proud sometimes and they still had plenty of apples.
Quite frankly even Granny could use a different taste right about now. Oh she would still definitely eat apples with her meal, but it needed to be supplemented by something else this time. These visitors were just trying to help and one of them was practically family, so why not give them something while getting what they sorely needed out of it. They sounded like they were heading into a warzone and that would make this a onetime offer. Now if only Applejack wouldn’t scoff at the help.
“Would you really be okay with that Mac?” Applejack didn’t know what to think of a trade, it sounded fair and it wasn’t exactly taking charity.
“Eeyup.” Even Big Mac was all for trading and Applejack wasn’t the only one that wouldn’t accept charity, he just wasn’t as vocal about it. “We really need this.”
“When are we going to set out to look for the main cause of all this snow?” Sitting around and doing nothing felt lazy to Ember, she was a dragon that preferred to be as active as possible. She was never going to become lazy enough to sleep for thousands of years; it just wasn’t in her nature.
“When Greta finishes getting the shield generator back up and running, when your leg has healed and when we’re done trading. Mare-Do-Well can take care of moving supplies when we finalize our agreement.” Rarity was now going to hash out what they had to trade versus what they could possibly want from a deteriorating situation with a family that had been pushing their survival out here. She looked over to Saffron who had been quietly standing in a corner; she was kind of surprised Apple Bloom missed her quiet if rather intimidating visage. “As such we’re staying for lunch at least.”
“Sounds good to me, it’s better than just standing around here looking intimidating.” The distorted voice was hard to carry how Saffron was really feeling, she was just standing in the background and now she had a lot of attention on her for speaking out loud. “I’m sure you can take care of negotiations from here. I’m going to go check on Greta to see how she’s doing out there. Come get me when you want me to move something.”
“Oh trust me; it’ll be a while before we get around to needing your help.” Gilda was surprisingly upset to be overpaid as she was, not that she was complaining about having funds to do the things she wanted too. It just seemed that Rarity always unfairly balanced a deal against herself. “You have no idea what it takes to make a completely fair deal when Rarity is involved.”
Rover just grunted at that and put his head back on the table to continue his nap.
-
“Need any help?” Saffron stood by watching Greta dig into the shield generator in the lower torso, said generator was in the ceiling.
“Yes, but you’d probably find it hard to lift anything while in that armored suit like that box of salvaged parts I need. The frogs of your hooves can’t possibly work through… how are you doing that?” Greta poked her head down from the ceiling and saw Saffron holding a box of parts up to her. “That should be impossible, you’re hoof is picking something up through several layers of things! One of which is fairly solidly built energy cannon.”
“Like I’m going to let a little thing like physics get in the way of me doing things with my hooves.” Doing things out of ignorance was what made it more impressive when you didn’t know they were impossible, like Saffron being able to pick up anything with her hooves while armored and wearing an EVA suit underneath that.
“Apparently not, but I am going to look into this later.” Greta got a grip on the box and pulled it up to her. “Thank you, but mark my words, this will be investigated!”
“You can try, but Ponies have been pulling this kind of crap for centuries and nobody's been able to determine anything except that it is magic!” Why was Saffron even challenging Greta on this? Oh right, it was part of Pony pride to defy logic and do crazy things, it also kind of tied into her need to spice things up.
“Magic doesn’t exactly extend that far out from a Pony’s hooves… also you’re a unicorn, yet I didn’t see you using your horn for this. Unicorns can’t even focus magic out of other parts of their bodies as well as an Earth or Pegasus Pony can.” Greta’s comment did kind of point out the flaw in the problem with Saffron’s explanation or what she had even accomplished. “Look, can we discuss this later. I’m a bit busy at the moment. Let’s see, cross these two wires, wrap it rubber and duct tape it to be sure it holds. Pull this piece out, replace it with something fresher and add a connector or two...”
“How do you live or stand being near Gilda constantly?” It was interesting to Saffron that Greta didn’t pause in her work; she didn’t seem bothered by the question at all. “She’s like the crankiest griffon I know, well being the only one of two griffons I know personally that isn’t hard for me to believe. I’ve fought griffons before; I just didn’t know any personally until you two.”
“Well that’s easy, I love her. I have no problems with her yelling at me or getting angry, because at the end of the day I know she’ll always be Gilda.” That and Greta had a standing agreement that if Gilda ever laid eggs, then it would be up to Greta to care for the children as Gilda wasn’t the motherly type. So far Gilda, despite her attraction to and habit of sleeping with Pegasus Pony stallions, she had yet to actually get pregnant and Greta didn’t have any chicks to take care of. It would have been nice to have at least one hippogriff to dote on, but Gilda was surprisingly careful about her sexual actions.
“So it’s an almost completely blind obsession and devotion to her no matter what? Don’t you deserve someone who can give you the attention you want, given how she tends to treat you?” To think Saffron had been watching them around each other, yet she didn’t get Greta’s fascination with the sour grump or how they were still friends. “You know, like someone better?”
“Well at least you said the word ‘almost’ unlike some other people who don’t even give me that much leeway. As for better, there is no one I’d rather spend the rest of my life next to!” It wasn’t complete obsession, but Greta had to admit that it did kind of look bad from an outsider’s perspective. “Even if I did find love somewhere else or formed a family, it would have to be around or right next to hers all the way to my last breath.”
“Is she really that attractive to you?” Saffron could not keep the disbelief out of her voice.
“Well yeah, I know that many griffons find me far more attractive than her and I will admit that I have good looks. They just really have no clue what they’re missing or what I see in Gilda personally.” Some clanging noises were heard from Greta’s position; also a grunt or two were thrown in for good measure. “Fixing this is going take another hour or two and it would go faster if Gilda was out here helping me with it. Looks aren’t everything and are subject to change, but a strong solid personality is forever. Although I doubt Rarity would ever give up on her outward appearance.”
“Well that’s a certainty; even then Rarity will always have friends like us thanks to who she is and not what she looks like.” Saffron eventually wanted to settle down to have a foal or two, but she’d never give up on being a hero and she could understand having a personality that didn’t mesh well with others. Gilda and Greta were certainly the kinds of personalities she didn’t expect to mesh at all. “I don’t think I’ll ever find a good stallion, well at least one that doesn’t mind me being a hero like what happened with my mom and dad. I sometimes wonder what it’s going to take to get me a partner I can spend my life with, I’d likely scare off stallions just being me. I also don’t know if I’m bisexual or not, because I might like mares too.”
“Well you’re more likely to get a stallion than Rarity is; now there’s a lost cause no one will ever take up. I doubt even Cadence would touch that with a ten foot pole. So that’s at least some good odds in your favor.” Something fell down and clattered to the floor, Greta sighed audibly from her position. “Say, could you get that for me?”
Behind the metallic gaze of the powered armor suit, Saffron smirked as she picked up the object with her other hoof.
“I’m guessing there’s a smug look under all that armor.” Greta would be correct as she saw Saffron doing the hoof thing again; she wasn’t going to question it for the time being. She had more important things to do after all.
-
“We don’t exactly need the weapons. My material rifle is enough around here, but we thank you kindly for the food trade.” Well enough to keep the farm safe from the smaller wolf robots, Applejack was having issues with learning that there were things bigger than the robotic wolves around. The snow sharks sounded horrific, it was a good thing she hadn’t gone near the town after the raids and missing ponies started to slow down until nothing was left there. “This is reminding me of the good days around here before all this stuff started up.”
“How exactly did things start going wrong?” Rarity perked up and took interest.
“It was just small things at first, an attack by what sounded like regular wolves here or there and that’s all that we saw. There’s not supposed to be many large predatory animals on this planet and the local mayor tried to write it off, until we found out they were mechanical. That was when the random snow storms came and there were a lot of missing ponies, until… well you’ve seen it. It’s a ghost town and dangerous to approach from what you’ve told us.” Applejack didn’t want to go near the town after hearing what these strangers went through to get here. “The first real sign of big trouble was the blizzards, they come like clockwork and ponies started evacuating. Only thing keeping us safe here is that the blizzards never directly hit us or the farm. We never saw them shark things, but I know that you’re being honest with me about that much.”
“One would assume that this happened to the other towns in the tundra zone.” Gilda crossed her arms and leaned back looking bored, with a talon tapping at her shoulder. “Didn’t you call for or get help from other places?”
“Oh we got help alright, but every bounty hunter that went out to find what the problem is never came back. EDF really hasn’t helped much aside from their assistance in evacuating the planet and the triple P is sitting on their flanks twiddling whatever it is they have to twiddle. Not a lick of strong groundside enforcement among them.” Applejack knew that no further help was coming, but that big contraption out there might be able to do something helpful. “You’ve been by the town of Gravenstein, was there anything that looked off to you about the town when you got close to it? None of us have been near there for quite a while.”
“Is that really the town’s name?” Even Gilda couldn’t keep her tone amiable as she scoffed at the name of ‘grave and stein’ while holding the bridge of her beak with a talon. “Though yes there was something we thought that was rather odd when we got a close up look at the town before we were attacked. The buildings in town were burned down and not by natural causes, would you happen to know anything about that?”
“Well that’s odd, those robot wolves never destroyed any of the buildings and anyone who was caught outside during a raid was always considered missing or… otherwise. I did once see a frozen pony being dragged off to who knows where.” After that day Applejack had declared that they couldn’t head into town anymore and she was glad that she had, Big Mac had a delivery to make that day and Coloratura had to go back on tour. The spaceport was destroyed and there was nothing to make a delivery to anymore, so it had been a good call on Applejack’s part.
“Well I’m out of questions to ask at the moment.” They had a lot of questions and very little in the ways of answers, but Gilda thought that the destroyed buildings were something important to remember. At least she knew the machines hadn’t destroyed the buildings before, maybe it was that they destroyed them after taking care of any opposition? Or maybe it was how they destroyed them that bothered her.
“At least we have an ideal direction to work in when it comes to finding the one or ones behind this. We’re going to go to the center of where the blizzards are being formed and sent out from.” Ember was going to be on her feet for that and she was going to start a fight worth remembering, her noble heart couldn’t have her do any less. “There are eight blizzard paths that move out on a set counterclockwise formation that move in the eight cardinal and ordinal directions from one central location, one that is really hard to reach given how hard it is to get close to it. The blizzards are always formed at the edge of a large circle; the pattern was easy enough to catch from orbit thanks to a feline friend of ours. The wrinkle is the snow storms that can pop up at any time, at least we’ll have an early warning for when we’re about to be attacked.”
“You all are plum crazy if you plan on heading out that way.” Though Applejack wanted to do so to stop the constant cold spot her family was stuck in the middle of and save her farm.
“Oh believe me I know darling, but I choose to be crazy knowing that it’s the right thing to do.” As reluctant as Rarity had been about the various situations she’s walked into, this one was going to be one of the times that she did it absolutely on purpose. “At this point, acting on the only thing we’ve got left to go on is the main course of action. We could leave the planet and help evacuate you or we could take a risk and stop the problem at its source, we would be following that proverb about the hydra’s head I believe. Which would you prefer we do?”
“I would personally prefer evacuation, but I can’t exactly talk you out of this can I?” Sugar Belle sighed as she saw the determined look on Rarity’s face, her cousin had become a lot braver than she remembered her being.
“Well then I’m going with you when you head on out, I’m tired of watching this farm crumble out from under us.” Applejack wasn’t about to let her farm go under if she could help it. Ice apples had peculiar growing habits and she couldn’t keep up with the requirements to grow them forever.
“Lunch is on every pony, come and get some!” Granny’s interruption was well timed.
-
There were quite a few stares in Saffron’s direction; she was in her Mare-Do-Well costume and eating food through the mask. None of them were quite sure of how she was managing to do that.
“Look, I know you’re all staring at me.” Having a caped pony at the table wasn’t the oddest thing about lunch. “So could you please stop it? I’m just a normal pony like the rest of you.”
Coloratura snorted loudly and covered her nose while trying to hold back her giggles, she noticed the looks sent her way and she blushed.
“I once sang about being a normal pony and I’m sure a lot of ponies here remember that concert. That was about the time someone pointed out that I had somehow played a piano so masterfully, that nothing about my song was exactly normal.” Yeah normal didn’t define Coloratura on that day. When she wrote that song, she didn’t exactly know how to play the piano either. She was glad that no one brought it up or even bothered to ask her how she had managed what she did under time constraints, thank goodness for musical pony magic. She clearly proved her friendship to Applejack that day and possibly more, if the farmer would let her snuggle a little closer.
“That was me sugar cube, I was almost certain that you never took any piano lessons. I guess it had been a few years since we last saw each other during for that, so you might have taken them between then.” Applejack bit into an apple fritter and wondered why it sounded like a lie every time Coloratura said that she had.
“Um… can I get an autograph?” Apple Bloom had some hero worship and she had heard the tales of heroes like the Mauve Mare-auder, it was nice to hear Mare-Do-Well was related to that hero from the comic books. Or was it the hero that the comic books got their ideas from? Either way it was so cool to have a real live hero at the table.
“Eh, I don’t see why not. Do you have a comic that was made about some of my ancestors to sign?” Saffron knew what she would sign on it; heroes are the people who do the right thing no matter how bad the situation.
“Applejack, you’re not going with them.” This was the start of a long conversation and Big Mac didn’t want his sister to become another statistic.
“If you’re so worried then why don’t you come with me, this farm won’t survive unless something is done about all this snow!” The siblings butted head and glared at each other.
“It looks like things are about to get juicy around here...” The slap Greta received for that comment made her frown as she had been expecting Gilda to be the one to snap.
“Greta your puns are horrible.” Ember stated flatly after having slapped Greta with her tail.
“Thank you for finally saying what I was thinking!” Gilda and Ember fist bumped one another and continued eating, while Greta gave them an adorable pout.
“You really wouldn’t take Applejack with you… would you?” Sugar Belle received a calming hoof across the back and Rarity tried to give her a comforting smile.
“It depends really… will they really let her go with us or will they want to come along themselves?” Rarity didn’t want any liabilities if they were going into a place as dangerous as the eye of the blizzards sounded.
-
“So you’re sure that the Changelings had nothing to do with this incident?” Celestia was glaring at Luna who was giving her a rather sheepish smile, the foxhole they were in wasn’t going to provide shelter from the love storm forever. “They have been acting rather suspicious as of late.”
“Well how was I supposed to know banana flavored moon pies had enough banana in them to set her off like that?” Luna had been researching moon pie flavors and they were in the middle of a bad situation where Cadence ate one. Luna and Celestia thought it was bad when they or Twilight ingested a banana; Cadence was a force of nature on just a banana flavored product alone and they really didn’t want to know what would happen if she ate bananas regularly. “Well at least we know that eating banana peels doesn’t do anything to us and they are kind of tasty.”
“I sometimes seriously consider that there might be something very wrong with you Luna. Cadence has gone mad and we need to come up with a plan that’s not burying our heads in the nearest pile of sand like Twilight suggested!” Celestia was scared, she thought Chrysalis was bad and she may have thought Discord was a horrible monster from time to time, but nothing was ever going to top her fear of Cadence, the Alicorn of Love, on bananas. “It would take forever to get all the sand out of our manes and goodness knows Twilight will come to me for help with that later.”
The two sisters prayed that Shining Armor was still alive; the last they heard of him, he hadn’t apparently been enough to satisfy or even appease Cadence in her state. They sorely needed his help to deal with the Swallows.