Since weeks now, Applejack had impatiently waited for this day to arrive… And finally, only seven days were left until she’d take off for the all-category Equestria rodeo championship in Las Pegasus!
This year, the competition was during Christmas holidays and the whole Apple family was really excited to go South for the occasion. It would change them a little to have a great weather for the end of the year celebrations, since in Canterlot, a very biting cold already struck since days.
Her upcoming week would be organized around practice, and nothing but practice. That was the reason why she’d invited her friends to come and see one of them, so she could spend a little time with them after school.
Sunset Shimmer was the only one missing, since she had her own practice today. Since she belonged to the volley club, each of her Monday and Friday afternoons were dedicated to this activity. In the others’ opinions, it was a good thing. She would be able to get new friends out of her circle.
While admiring Applejack on her mechanical bull, the four young women were busy talking about what they planned to do on the end of the year celebrations.
Twilight was going to ski with her parents in the Crystal Mountains, and didn’t want to go. Her parents, as well as Shining Armor and Cadence, were going to ask her to go out in order to make the most of the snow, when everything she wanted was to stay warm and review, along with catching up her overdue reading.
Pinkie Pie would see her parents, like she did twice in the year, at the occasion of her birthday and at the occasion of these celebrations. She was really excited by the prospect of seeing her whole family again, especially Maud, who was her favorite sister, though the teenage girl never said such a thing out loud. They all were having their own tradition, an exchange of candy necklace, and the preparation of these candies seemed to obsess her more than anything else.
As far as Fluttershy was concerned, she would stay in Canterlot and spend Christmas with her parents. Her family was very traditional and did nothing eccentric at this period. On the eve of 24, they would eat a meal which consisted into parmesan and poppy biscuits, of goat’s cheese and apple puffs, of champagne fondue and of sweet chestnut-flavored ice-cream Yule log. In short, the typical meal of the country for this night of the year… Then, they would play a board game until midnight tick and open their presents.
It wasn’t extraordinary, but Fluttershy loved this comforting and comfortable simplicity. Now that the ‘ordeal’, aka Halloween, was over, she was way happier and relaxed to soon be on holidays.
It was the opposite for Rainbow Dash... Halloween was fun, and she’d been very proud to sport her costume of Clara Bow in “Wings”, her favorite movie – also one of Firefly’s favorite. On the other hand, Christmas, the moment of the year dedicated to families, had everything in common with hell. All those trickling sappiness on TV, and above all, all those people happy to be surrounded by the ones they loved… Disgusting. And most importantly, depressing.
For this reason, she was the only one not to express herself about the end of the year’s celebrations and her schedule for the night. This detail intrigued Fluttershy, whom it seemed her friend had done something last year on the same period. She was afraid to ask… But took the risk to ask anyway, in order to know why.
“What are you going to do, Rainbow Dash? Don’t you have a little something planned?”
She shrugged.
“Meh, no. I think I’m going to spend my Christmas Eve face to face with a honey and almond ice-cream pot and Jimmy Stewart…”
“Who’s this Jimmy Stewart?”
“He’s an actor, Fluttershy”, Pinkie Pie pointed. “A dead actor…”
“Hey, don’t say that! James Stewart is eternal!”
“’It’s A Wonderful Life”?” Twilight questioned her friend.
“Yep!”
She rolled her eyes, unsure whether it was sad or laughable. Obviously, Soarin was going to Cloudsdale for Christmas and she’d refused to come with him. Yet she knew his family well…
“So, it means you’re going to be all alone?”, Fluttershy asked with a hint of horror in her voice.
She couldn’t envision that someone could be alone during such a period. Christmas was supposed to be a moment of sharing and happiness… The magic of daily life. It was so sad! There had to be something to do. As her friend, it was her duty to make sure she wouldn’t have to go through something so tragic. In fact, she even wondered why the others offered her no help.
“Yes. My father would rather spend his end of the year’s celebrations in the air than with me, this is the way things are and that’s all… And if he didn’t, we’d have nothing to say to each other and it would feel worse, anyway. It’s better off like this.”
“What about Soarin?”
“He asked me but I refused. This too is better off like this… Ask Pinkie Pie what happened last year.”
“We were all busy chatting while eating our Christmas soup, and Dashie broke down and cried. It was very sad.”
She had tried. She had made an effort. But she hadn’t been able to do it. Yet, Pinkie Pie’s family wasn’t anything like her, and was neither the most expressive and expansive people of the world. And even among them, her pain resurfaced and blew up on the table.
Since her mother’s death, Christmas had never been the same again. Since the very first year, her father chose to let her between the Green Haven’s staff hands rather than taking her with him, under the excuse that she had arrived just two weeks ago. During the only visit he did when she was there, he explained her it would have been too difficult for him to deal with it.
Yet, even Suri the Unraveling and Angel Wings, her dear roommate, been allowed to go back home for the Christmas Eve.
Ever since, this period had become one of the period of the year she wasn’t anticipating at all. She was lucky there was only two periods of this kind, or else her life would’ve turned into a real nightmare!
She also was lucky because she wouldn’t need to keep talking about this topic. Well, if what happened could be called being ‘lucky’…
Indeed, under the four friends horrified eyes, Applejack had just fell off her mechanical bull. And it wasn’t a small fall. She had been knocked down back, and had hit the back of her head when bumping against the floor.
Immediately, the young women gasped in shock, before dashing to the other side of the plastic fence.
Twilight, who always had a small bottle of water in her bag, gave a few swallows to Applejack, who opened her eyes one second later.
They all were relieved. Undoubtedly, their friend had been shaken, but she seemed to be alright. When she sat back, massaging the back of her head, her gestures were precise and she didn’t tremble.
Pinkie Pie opened her palm wide in front of the young woman’s eyes.
“How many fingers do I have, AJ?”
“In all, or just the hand in front of me?”
“Well…”
“You got to be very accurate with numbers. It’s serious.”
“Err… Are you sure everything’s okay?” Rainbow Dash questioned, frowning.
Of course, the young woman didn’t seem to be raving, however there was something odd in the way she talked. Something… foreign. A hit on the head could have consequences people didn’t always think about.
“I fell; I can’t see how in the world would I be alright.”
“Oh my goodness! AJ, your accent…” Pinkie Pie claimed with horror. “It’s gone!”
“Which accent? I have always talked the way I am talking now.”
The four girls looked at each other, dumbfounded. She couldn’t even realize that the way she talked, with these small hints from the South of United States, where she was born and where her grandmother was born as well, had disappeared.
Applejack stood back up and looked at the surroundings. Clippings with her face on them, advertisements posters for the promotion of apple-flavored drinks… And this awful device of torture, in the middle of the room. She didn’t understand.
“Did I climb on this thing and fell because of that? What an idea I had to do such a dangerous activity. You should have stopped me.”
Once again, the bunch of friends couldn’t help but looking at each other, more and more stunned by what they saw and heard. Rodeos were one of Applejack’s favorite pastime, if not her very favorite. She was excellent at it, and couldn’t spend a day without at least a bit of mechanical bull practice or a horse-back ride around the estate.
“Stop you? Applejack, come on… Rodeo is… your life!”
“If you excuse me, I strongly doubt it. I only like coding, web design and the “Star Crop” TV Show!”
“WHAT?” the young girls yelled at the same time.
There! It was even worse than what they thought! They had to bring her to see a doctor. It was a disaster.
---------------------------------------
Usually, the group was chatting in the corridors, in order not to let Twilight with the control freaks from the Guiding Class right from the beginning of the day. This morning, when passing by her classroom, Sunset Shimmer was surprised to see her friend already inside, leaned over a book.
She hoped she and the girls hadn’t argued like one year ago, when they thought they could part indefinitely.
In all honesty, back then, Sunset Shimmer still thought she too could grant an access to this elite class, thanks to her grades in mathematics… And quickly, she accepted the truth. Too many things had happened, her grades had drastically lowered. Especially, when thinking it through, she rather be in a normal class where she could spend time strengthening her bond with her new bunch of friends.
The comfort she felt when she saw all four of them chatting at their tables was quickly cut short. Something was wrong… And it wasn’t only because of the faces filled with dismay that – almost – all of them displayed, because now she could understand that even in such a tight group of friends, everything wasn’t a bed of roses.
No, it was something else. Like a rock floating on a soup, or a printing stain in a newspaper.
Rainbow Dash was sitting at Applejack’s seat, and Applejack was at her desk, while Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were staring her, the expression on their faces between panic and horror.
As she came closer, she realized the young blond girl wasn’t sitting there randomly. Her back almost broke in two, she was laughing her heart out, with a Power Ponies comic book under her nose. Her reading engrossed her so much that, when Sunset Shimmer greeted her, Applejack ignored her.
“What the hay is happening? Since when does Applejack read comic books?”
“Since yesterday”, Rainbow Dash mumbled.
“She has made a terrible fall off her mechanical bull”, Fluttershy went on.
“And ever since, she’s all…” Pinkie Pie finished, patting her temples with her forefinger.
“You know; I can hear you! How boring you all are!” the person in question complained.
And, without even a glance at them nor Sunset Shimmer, who was stunned with her eyes as widely opened as her mouth, she left the table to isolate herself in a corner, with her friend’s comic book in her hands.
“Hey! My Power Ponies! I haven’t even read them yet!”
Each had hoped that, thanks to time spent with her family and friends, in a familiar environment, on the next morning Applejack would have get her memory back at the same time as her mind. When she arrived at school, hatless and fond of her History book, they all knew they had hoped for too much.
During the first break between the coming of two teachers, she gave Rainbow Dash her comic book back, still without a hint of Southern accent, then spent the rest of her free time playing video games on her smartphone. It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if she played at her favorite rodeo game… Except it was the latest edition of Marecraft!
Unfortunately, things didn’t get any better during the whole morning. Twilight had been right to have palpitations last night, when her friend recited the square root of five thousand without even thinking about it…
Chemistry course. Experience: mixture by titration of redox. The first one to find the point of equivalence was Applejack, even before Sunset Shimmer, and while Rainbow Dash was still wondering what on earth meant this extraterrestrial language.
They all almost let fall their test tubes on the ground, starting with their teacher.
And if at least things were different during other courses… But they weren’t. The pretty blond girl participated as much as Pinkie Pie, and conversely to her, her answers were always correct and her chosen words were always clever.
In a few hours of class, the news went all over the twelfth grade. Everyone talked about it in the corridors. Something they all ignored might have happened for this situation to exist. However, no one had any doubts that Applejack was a hidden egghead finally coming out of the closet. Twilight Sparkle should start worrying…
The group succeeded to be gathered for lunch… Much to their surprise, the school’s gang of nerds, called the “techies”, lured Applejack at their table in order to speak with her about “Star Crop”. Though she swore she’d met her friends later, they had to state this obvious – she would never come back, way too obsessed by her new hobbies.
“How did we happen to be here?” Twilight sighed, more than annoyed. “If she keeps behaving this way, they’re going to make her go into the Guiding Class with me… Oh no. I could never compete against one of my friends.”
She started to breath quicker and soundly, as if she was on the verge of a panic attack. Pinkie Pie forcefully made her drink a glass of water until Twilight pushed her aside asking her if she turned crazy. To which her friend nodded with a large smile.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. The whole story was a complete nonsense, the most complete of all nonsense she’d ever seen, and yet she had watched every of the Keystone Cops movies.
Applejack, an egghead, a nerd? All her life turned around rodeo and Sweet Apple Acres! When she wasn’t with them, she practiced, or she rode a horse, or she worked on the farm. Her leisure, her readings… Everything about her was country-related. It always been this way and it would never be any other way. Her true character hadn’t been finally revealed in broad daylight, it might be buried inside the wanders of her concussed brain.
Conversely to what Twilight said, if things kept on being this way, she wasn’t going to go to the Guiding Class, but directly to Green Haven! And it was out of question. Out of question that her best friend would be locked up and drugged with Tercian.
“What’s happening to Applejack?”
The group looked up to the new person who had just asked this question.
Here was Flash Sentry, his tray in his hands and his guitar over his shoulders, with his usual leather jacket instead of the supposedly mandatory uniform jacket.
He'd been discreet since Trixie’s little set-up. A slap in the face probably had set him straight… The fact remained that he was the first one who came to ask them about their friend’s mental health. The first one to display a curiosity colored with worry, rather than mixed with the excitation of seeing a freak.
“She fell yesterday at her rodeo practice, and ever since, she isn’t acting like herself”, Twilight answered with a smile.
“Not acting like herself? Try being someone completely different! Our best friend…”
Rainbow Dash threw an aggrieved glance at the techies table and saw Applejack laughing at a joke from Micro Chip, one of the figurehead of the band. Until then, she scarcely used her computer if it wasn’t in order to make her bookkeeping or to watch rodeo videos and now…
The teenage girl let her head fall against the table, even more saddened, and was welcomed by a gentle stroke on her back from Pinkie Pie.
“What’s sure is that she will easily find a partner for the Winter Ball.”
Without asking for permission, Flash Sentry put his tray beside Twilight, who seemed to be pleased by this new plot twist. She was the only person around this table who looked any enthusiastic, although one minute before, she was as desperate as her friends.
“The ball… I just couldn’t wait to go with you all”, Sunset Shimmer claimed as if to rub it in for good.
The Winter Ball was at the end of the week, right before Christmas holidays. If Applejack wasn’t back to normal until then, they all could feel it: they would lose her forever.
Fluttershy said the doctor told Big Macintosh the hit on the head his little sister had received wasn’t serious and that things would go back in place slowly, yet it never stopped them from feeling afraid.
“Did you… hum… plan to go with someone?” Flash asked Twilight.
“I didn’t. No one invites me and since only at the Prom Ball students are allowed to invite someone who isn’t a part of the school…”
“Would you like to go there with me? I mean… If you’re not still mad at me…”
“That would be great!”
In her shoes, Rainbow Dash would probably had think twice before saying yes, or at least check out whether Trixie wasn’t somewhere around the corner watching them.
But after all… Her friend was old enough to take her own decisions. If she had decided to forgive Flash Sentry for being a part of this little scheme, it was her business and nobody else’s. She didn’t have the right to tell her how to behave.
And, at least there was someone smiling around them. The more she glanced at the nerds’ table, the more she could feel Applejack getting away from them and herself, and the sicker she was. It felt almost as if she was losing another member of her family.