“Well here we are!” A.J pulled the handbrake and gestured grandly...to the small suburban house. It looked...kind of like a farm house in some ways, but it was still planted snugly in a regular cul-de-sac. Applejack was surprised to say the least.
“Y’all don’t live on a farm?” She asked as A.J opened the truck’s door for her. She jumped down onto the hard tarmac. Not the same as the dirt road of her beloved Sweet Apple Acres.
“Well yes and no.” A.J replied. “Mom and Dad run a farm just outside the city, but it’s a little far to go every school day. Mac, Applebloom and me live here with Granny during term-” She broke off as she noticed Applejack’s shocked face. “Um...you okay there partner?”
“M-Mom and...” Applejack’s words died in a whisper.
“Mom! I’m home!” Dash yelled out as she opened the front door with an unapologetic bang. “I brought a friend over, we’re gonna go play video games!” She was two feet away from the stairs when a woman’s voice piped up from somewhere in the house.
“Wait just a moment, young lady!” Dash groaned as the sounds of shifting filtered through the house. Clearly the woman was intent on making her way to the front door. “You know the rules, you can’t invite your friends over without asking permission first! Which one is it?”
As footsteps started to sound louder and louder, Dash and Rainbow looked at each other in shock. If Dash’s mother saw the two of them together it would be...difficult to explain.
“It’s...uh...it’s Applejack!” Dash yelled back. The footsteps suddenly stopped. “We’ve got...some things to...y’know...talk about.”
“Jackie’s here?” The voice responded. Dash looked over at Rainbow, frantically gesturing for her to speak.
Rainbow gulped. “Um...eeeyup! It’s me alright, sure as sugar! Howdy doo Mrs Dash!” Rainbow grinned. Luckily for them she was awesome at copying Applejack’s voice.
“Are you alright?” The voice piped up again. “You sound like you’re coming down with something.” Dash and Rainbow both slapped a hand over their eyes.
“It’s just a cold!” Dash called back. “It’s nothing serious, but the two of us have...stuff to talk about! Y’know...private stuff!”
“Okay honey!” The voice replied. “Hope you’re feeling better Jackie. I’m glad the two of you are finally working things out! But you know the rules, bedroom door stays open-”
“Okay Mom!” Dash bellowed, seemingly trying to cut her mother off. She grabbed Rainbow’s hand and bolted up the stairs.
A.J approached Applejack uncertainly. She sat on the couch in the living room, seemingly unable to speak.
“Here.” A.J spoke up. “Thought you might like to see this.”
Applejack raised her head up as a photo album was placed in her lap. It looked fairly old, the bound leather torn and curled at the edges, but it was clean of all dust. She had seen many similar ones in her own home. As A.J sat down next to her, she opened the first page, steeling herself for what she would find.
Rainbow was torn between confusion and resisting the urge to snicker at her double’s reddening face. As awkward as things were, at least her mother wasn’t embarrassing her.
Right now.
As Dash moodily stormed into her bedroom, Rainbow followed and took a moment to quickly survey things. The house and bedroom were hardly as awesome as her cloud house back home. Built on the ground, no fountains, no pillars. Just a simple house. Not small, not huge. The bedroom was fine. Twilight would say it was messy, what with clothing flung in every possible direction, but it suited Rainbow fine. It made sense to her, everything was easy to find like this.
Dash stomped over to a strange device near her bed and started pressing buttons. Soon, images appeared on the device’s screen. It was kind of like being in a movie theatre, only much smaller.
“Just gonna take a moment for the game to load up.” Dash spoke. Rainbow looked at the screen. There was a growing line with the word ‘loading’ above it. She looked over to a small object which Dash claimed was the game’s box. Her eyes lit up and all thoughts of Dash’s mother were gone from her mind as she suddenly recognised the human character on the front.
“There’s a Daring Do game?” She squealed.
In the toughest, coolest way possible, of course.
“And this ‘un here is Applebloom’s seventh birthday,” A.J was saying, “I thought she was a little old for the rockin’ horse Mom made for her, but she was so dang pleased with it. Had to pretty much pull her off it when it was time for bed. Course, these days, she goes red as a Pink Lady if you ever bring it up...”
Applejack wasn’t really listening. She was just staring at two faces. Different, but not unfamiliar. A man with yellow skin and red shaggy hair. A woman with tan skin and a scraggly, ginger ponytail. To think, they were out there somewhere. Just a few miles beyond this very city. She wondered what they were doing right-
“What happened to them?” A.J’s voice cut through her train of thought. She looked over. The other girl looked sympathetic. “What happened in... your world?
For a moment, Applejack hated her other self. She wasn’t stuck running a whole farm. She didn’t have to deal with monsters and magic on daily basis. She never lost...
Applejack shook herself. What was she thinking? She could be jealous of her other’s fortune, but to resent her? That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t what they would have wanted.
“You’re better off not knowin’.” Applejack said, forcing a smile. She looked down at the smiling faces in the photographs. In a small voice, she added: “Are there any more o’ these?”
Rainbow’s initial excitement at the prospect of getting to be Daring Do was starting to wear off as she kept looking at the loading bar.
“Auugghh, how long is this thing gonna take?”
“I dunno.” Dash shrugged. “Twilight says it has something to do with gigabytes and the CPU or some-”
“Wait, what?”
“CPU. It’s part of the machine”
“There’s a machine part called see pee-yew?” Rainbow couldn’t help but snicker. After considering her point for a moment, Dash soon joined in.
At last loading bar filled out. The screen showed an image similar to the game box, the human Daring Do running away from a giant boulder, treasure clutched in her hands.
“Aw yeah!” Rainbow cheered. “It’s finally ready, right?”
“Yup!”
“Woohoo!”
“Now we just need to wait for the level to load!”
“AAUUGGHH!”
“And this here is from Christmas, two years ago. Heh. Dad dressed up as Santa for Applebloom, just as he did every year before. But by then, Applebloom was goin’ through something of a moody phase. Kept gettin’ huffy ‘bout him embarrassin’ her in front of her friends. Mom told her off for that, kinda ruined the mood for a-”
“Is that Dash there?” Applejack cut the story off. She had no idea what ‘krissmuss’ and ‘sahntah’ were supposed to be, but she was more intrigued by the presence of a certain rainbow-haired girl that seemed to flit from picture to picture. None of their other friends seemed to be there, so why would Dash-
“Oh Dash?” A.J cut her off, looking strangely nervous. “A-hehe, yeah, um, sh-she was just...I mean her folks were goin’ outta town for the holidays, so she-I mean, we asked me-I mean her to, um...”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. Was this really how she looked to other ponies when she was trying to hide the truth? No wonder she lost so many rounds of poker to Rainbow and Pinkie. Regardless, she turned over to the next page of the photo album. And there, she saw...
Still waiting for the game to load, Rainbow decided to take the chance to ask some questions.
“So what was up with your mom? Why would she call A.J ‘Jackie’? And what did she mean by working things out?”
To her surprise, Dash’s face grew redder.
“Oh! Um...well A.J and me had some...uh...” Dash seemed to be staring intensely at the screen, even though there was nothing to look at but another loading bar.
“And what did she mean by keeping the bedroom door open?”
“Um...well Mom and Dad have a thing about...privacy...” Dash chanced a look at Rainbow and saw her raising an eyebrow in confusion. “I...mean...hehe, it’s totally lame, right? I bet your folks are just as bad, huh?”
Rainbow was not swayed by her twin’s attempt to change the conversation. “What would you and A.J being doing in your room with the door close-”
“Ohheylookatthatthegame’sloaded!” She blurted out, throwing a smaller device with buttons to Rainbow and taking one for herself.
“Dang it.” A.J muttered, covering her face with her hat. “Forgot that was in there.”
Applejack stared in shock. The next photograph along was of her (well, the other her) and Dash. Clearly it was the same krissmuss party, but that wasn’t the strange part. The two were standing in the hallway, a sprig of mistletoe above them.
And they were kissing.
Not a friendly peck, not that one kiss on each cheek that Rarity insisted was the “sophisticated way of saying hello”. It didn’t even look like they were doing it on a dare.
It was a full on, tender, loving kiss on the lips. Dash’s arms were around A.J’s neck. A.J had one hand on Dash’s back and the other running through her hair. Their eyes were closed in deep bliss. In the background, Applebloom and Scootaloo were making faces of disgust, A.J’s father was watching Dash rather mistrustfully, and her mother seemed to be tearing up, yet smiling at the same time.
A.J snatched the photo out of the album and walked off to the other side of the room. She stood with her back to Applejack and looked down at the picture. Her shoulders seemed to sag.
“What the heck was that?” Applejack asked. She tried not to sound accusatory; she appreciated all that A.J had done for her so far. But between finding out that her parents were still alive (sort of) and now this on top of it... Her mind was reeling.
A.J just continued to stare at the picture. Shuffling around, Applejack could make out her face. She seemed so...sad.
“Are you and Dash...” Applejack swallowed before she continued, “together?”
A.J grunted in response. “Used to be.”
Rainbow was torn again. On the one hand, she wanted to ask Dash more about what was going on between A.J and her and why she was so embarrassed.
On the other hand...Daring Do.
So for a while the two played in silence together. It took Rainbow a while to fully grasp the concept of a video game. The screen had some simple instructions to follow, but Dash had complained that the instructions were making things too easy for the ‘newbs’ these days, so Rainbow made a point of ignoring them. Instead she spent most of the time observing Dash, whose face seemed to be growing redder and redder by the minute.
Suddenly a voice from downstairs broke the silence. “It’s getting awfully quiet up there! You two aren’t doing anything you shouldn’t be, are you?”
Dash growled and stormed over to the open door. “We’re fine Mom!” She called. “We’re just playing a game!”
“As long as that’s all it is!” The voice called back. “I don’t want to have to call Mrs Smith again! Remember what happened last time!”
Dash flopped onto the bed and buried her face in a pillow in shame. Rainbow stared at her for a moment.
“So...?” Rainbow asked, waiting for Dash to finally give up the goods.
“Ugh, fine!” Dash rolled onto her front and threw her arms up in the air. “Me and A.J are fu-”
“What happened?”
A.J sighed. “Dash and me were...well we dated some time ago.”
“You mean she was your special somepo-somebody?”
A.J turned and gave Applejack a half amused, half annoyed look. “Well she was my girlfriend, if that’s what you mean.”
Applejack couldn’t help but gape for a moment. “You and Dash...really? You and Dash?” She imagined herself and Rainbow for a moment. Cupping each other’s faces in their hooves. Leaning forward to- She immediately felt blood rush to her cheeks and started kneading her fists against her temples, trying to erase the mental image.
“Why’s that so surprisin’?” A.J lent back against a side table, bemused. “Ain’t you and Rainbow-”
“Nope!” Applejack shot to her feet. “There ain’t nothin’ like that goin’ on ‘tween us, you hear me?”
“Alright, simmer down.” A.J raised her hands in defence. “Just askin’. Why’s the idea freak you out?”
“It ain’t freakin’ me out, I just...” Another mental image came to mind, this one a lot more...mature. “I just don’t need them thoughts in my head!”
“Heh, ain’t as bad as you might think. Dash could be real nice when she-”
This time Applejack strode over to her double and clapped a hand over her mouth. Her mental images were getting dirtier by the second! “Well if it’s so dag blasted perfect, why ain’t you together no more?”
She regretted her harsh words and tone as she saw the sadness return to A.J’s eyes. She removed her hand and backed up.
“I...I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like-”
“It’s okay. Stuff happens, ain’t nobody’s fault.” She took another look at the picture. A sad smile crossed her face.
“What happened between you two?”
Now it was Rainbow’s turn to blush. She sat listening as Dash had described the things she and A.J had been getting up to. She didn’t understand the word Dash had first used, but of course, she pretended that she did.
“Okay, well maybe we haven’t actually done that yet,” Dash had admitted, “but we totally would have if our families didn’t have their dumb ‘doors open’ rule!”
“Uh huh.” Rainbow said. Naturally, she kept up an air of coolness, but inside her mind was trying to figure out what it was the two were doing.
“Man I swear you wouldn’t think a farm girl like her would be such a great kisser, but-”
Oh. Well that cleared things up a lot. As Dash prattled on, Rainbow’s mind started reeling. Her and A.J? Together? Doing...that?
“Guess it doesn’t matter anyways.” Dash was muttering. “Ever since that stupid bake sale...”
“Us two had been together for a while before it all went wrong.” A.J was saying. The two had returned to the couch, A.J still looking at the picture of the kiss. “A few months before Princess Twilight showed up...Dash and me had ourselves a fallin’ out.”
“Well that ain’t hard to believe.” Applejack spoke up. “That gal can be quite a hoof-um, handful.”
A.J chuckled. “That she can. But it weren’t all her fault. I thought she let me down about somethin’, she thought I let her down. We broke up and didn’t talk for quite a while. Princess Twilight helped us figure out it was all a big misunderstandin’ and we became friends again.”
“But you didn’t go back to datin’?”
A.J looked at the photo one last time before carefully placing it in her breast pocket. “Nope.”
Just as Dash finished explaining the details of the breakup, Rainbow finally had to interject.
“Woah, woah, woah.” She cut in. “I gotta ask something.”
Dash looked up at her, still lying on the bed.
“Yeah?”
“Why A.J?”
“I’m sorry if this is a rude question an’ all, but...” Applejack’s words died in her throat. It was a hard thing to ask and in some ways, she was afraid of the answer.
“It’s okay.” A.J replied, that sad smile still on her face. “Go ahead on an’ ask.”
“Well...why Dash?”
A.J raised an eyebrow. “Y’serious?”
“Well o’ course I am!” Applejack stood up to face her. “I mean Rainbow’s a great friend an’ all but...I just ain’t never looked at her that way before!”
A.J’s smile grew. “I didn’t neither at first. When she first asked me out, I turned her down right then and there without a second thought.”
Dash’s mouth split into a cocky smirk. “Heh, A.J might be pretty uptight, but she’s not as bad as you might think. I remember the first time I asked her out. She was like putty in my hands.”
“But once she put the idea in m’head, I couldn’t help but think about it more and more. I started watchin’ her, tryin’ to pay a little more attention to how she was. An’ then I started to realise there may be more to that girl than I thought. I figured it was still a fool’s errand, but I decided to give her a chance.”
“I figured she’d make me work for it. Like she’d be spending the whole time pushing me away and all. But let me tell you, once she gets going, dude, she’s like a freakin’ tiger!”
“As time went on, I started to see a different side to ‘er. I know she’s always puttin’ on airs, tryin’ to be cool and everythin’, but...when we were alone together, she started to show me what she was really like.”
“Like I said, she’s a freaking amazing kisser! She used to do this thing where she’d run a hand down my back and then bring it around to my-”
“She could be sensitive, quiet, thoughtful. Even kind. There was one time I was feelin’ down on account of our family dog, Winona havin’ to be put down. I...wanted to cry when that happened. But I couldn’t.”
“Then there was this one time when some jerk ran over her dog. I was ready to follow that guy’s car until he stopped and then pummel him into jelly! But...well...I mean A.J looked kinda sad so...”
“I had to be strong for Applebloom. She was cryin’ her heart out, poor thing, an’ I didn’t want her to see me doin’ the same. But then Dash came over and took me away to a private spot. At first I thought she was gonna try and make out with me or somethin’, but...
“I gave her what she needed.”
“She gave me a shoulder to cry on. I think she knew somethin’ about tryin’ to be tough in front of other people, so I guess she knew what I was going’ through. She was real sweet that night...”
Rainbow stared at her double in shock.
Applejack gazed at her twin, dumbfounded.
“So why didn’t you get back together?”
The sun was beginning to set when Applejack and Rainbow met at the portal. The atmosphere between the two was unusually quiet.
“Hey.” Rainbow spoke up, hands shoved casually into the pockets of her hoodie. The hood was up, failing to hide her blush.
“Eeyup.” Applejack replied, leaning back against the side of the statue. Her hat was pulled down over her eyes, but the rosiness in her cheeks was still visible.
“So...I think I know what the friendship problem we have to solve is....”
“Eeyup.”
TO BE CONTINUED...