The sun drifted lazily across the sky over St Orangeberg, caring little for its inhabitants, or for any place that absorbed it’s greatness. There were no clouds blocking out it’s luminosity, but it wouldn’t have cared if the weather decided to stay cloudy for years at a time. The simple fact remained; the sun paid no attention to the world it was providing life to. Or even the one that had ponies on it.
On the world inhabited by ponies, there was a series of several megacities, spread far apart from each other. In one such city there was a mind-boggling number of districts all roughly the size of small towns. And in a single one of those districts dozens of streets were all lined with various businesses, homes, town services, alleyways, and small parks.
Walking along one of these street sidewalks was a small group of three, two earth ponies and a small bipedal dragon. Things were pretty quiet for a time, but one of the earth ponies decided to break the silence and strike up conversation. It seemed she disliked the lack of speech.
“So how’d you meet the Executioner?” Pinkie asked curiously. The neutral expression on Applejack’s face plummeted into the most foul of sour looks, “I have a few ideas, but don’t want to assume.”
Applejack stopped in place and slammed her hoof into the sidewalk, causing an unpleasantly loud sound to resonate, “KURWA! Niech to diabli I hate her so much! That… fucking… FLEJTUCH stole my life from me! When we find her I’m going to rip her in half!”
Pinkie could tell just how upset The Executioner made Applejack, even if she didn’t dip back into Polish, her accent always came through when she was emotional.
“We can’t find her soon enough,” Applejack started moving again. Pinkie looked at Spike, who - to his credit - had the decency to shrug and not to include himself in their conversation.
“I know, but why do you hate her so much?”
Applejack almost blew a gasket, but after exhaling harshly, she focused on her breathing and began calming down. She took her time to calm her nerves, not at all caring about how she looked to the other ghosts in Partyville. They all knew she was unbound by the one and only Whisperer, and was now under its protection. Not that any of them actually knew who the Whisperer even was, it seemed Applebloom wasn’t all talk in the way she kept her secrets.
The ghosts knew Twilight was the new Hunter in town, but that was different, the Executioner told them that the night she showed up. Calming down to the point of holding rational thought, Applejack turned to look at Pinkie. “She was the first face I saw when I died.”
Pinkie gasped, Applejack solemnly nodded and took a deep breath, “I remember it like it was yesterday. The pony that killed me stabbed me twice before I actually died, which means I felt the first two.” She brought an orange hoof to her chest to scratch at her non-existent wounds. “He was crazed and couldn’t have been reasoned with even if I had the time to think of anything.
“The shock kept me from feeling most of the pain; I remember thinking somebody punched me in the gut. Well, after I died I woke up almost immediately in a dark room. I didn’t know what was going on and was still in shock. I honestly didn’t know I’d died at first. I don’t remember much, just that I saw a pony and heard their voice telling me that I was a farmer now.
“I tried correcting her. I tried saying I was a noodle delivery girl, but what came out wasn’t English. It was like my ability to speak my language was stolen from me. After I quieted down a lot of information was put in my head about what I was: what my place in the world was, the fact that I died, and all the rules I was meant to follow and live by.
“She then explained that I was worth nothing, that she owned me. I wanted to object, but my mouth wouldn’t actually open, she was controlling me…”
Pinkie wanted nothing more than to stop and just hug Applejack forever, to take all that pain away, but she kept completely silent for Applejack’s sake. She also assumed that Twilight might get jealous.
Not that their relationship had really been… well a relationship. They hung out, chatted, ate lunch together, even tried cuddling. It was just disappointing, in her letters Twilight felt like a person that really got Pinkie, understood her. But Twilight turned out to be a walking mental breakdown.
So often she’d just berate everyone and everything around her, and not even in a public sort of persona way like Pinkie first assumed, but full on internalized contempt for most things around herself. Pinkie got to enjoy the softer side of Twilight a couple times, if she had to find a silver lining, it was a side that enjoyed quiet spaces and genuine affection. But those moments were so few and far between it almost wasn’t worth it. Pinkie was content being friends at least, even if she got the impression that Twilight didn’t want that either.
Pinkie shook her head of the thoughts, now was hardly the time to be thinking about Twilight, not with Applejack finally sharing what’s been on her mind. She looked at the ghost with sympathy as they walked. “What was your life like?”
Applejack’s left ear twitched slightly; most of her anger had disappeared, leaving sombre sadness, but Pinkie’s question seemed to pique her attention a little bit. “It was in a district on the other side of St. Orangeberg: Denray. I lived there a few hundred years from now, and a big part of life there was Gallowball. I worked as a delivery girl at a Griffon wok near the Denray stadium.”
Pinkie noticed Spike raise his eyebrow, but she expected he might. “Almost every ghost is displaced in time,” she explained, “most come from the past, but sometimes they’re from the future.”
Spike shrugged, ‘Sounds pretty stupid if you ask me,’ he signed.
“We still haven’t figured out why ourselves,” Pinkie sighed, defeated by one of the biggest mysteries to ever crop up in apparology.
Spike brought a claw to his forehead before signing in as annoyed a tone as sign language could allow. ‘If she’s from the future, why are we still poor? She could just make something we’ve never seen and sell it for shit tonnes of money.’
Pinkie relayed the question for Applejack but she shook her head, “I got my freedom back last month and the last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself. Do you even know how powerful the council is?”
The only thing that met Applejack’s question was a shrug from the dragon.
“Well let’s just say I’m going to wait a few years before I decide to do anything stupid.”
“What was your life like?” Pinkie asked, “In Denray.”
Applejack looked wistfully forward for a moment before sighing, “It wasn’t the best I could ask for. My mom was a neurosurgeon and wanted me to follow in her hoof steps, but it wasn’t for me. I dropped out of university to live with a friend of mine, got a job near the stadium and spent several years just living, I guess you could say.”
Pinkie nodded in understanding, “I know what it’s like to disappoint my parents.”
“Well my dad didn’t care too much, he was an autotherapist and spent more time with his clients than with family. Still, I guess someone has to help SI figure out their purpose, I never really held it against him.”
‘SI? Autotherapist? The hell do those things even mean?’ Spike signed, Pinkie ignored him.
“I’m not much for sports,” Pinkie admitted, “What’s Gallowball like?”
Applejack’s left ear perked up slightly, “A lot of fun,” She spoke sounding excited for the first time that morning. “There’s six teams of three and they need to navigate a multilevel maze while avoiding getting tagged by each other. My team was Cyan Cyanide.”
Pinkie considered the idea, it sounded like a competitive obstacle course mixed with spray tag. She could almost see that as a big spectator sport, but where did a ball fit in? “Cyan Cyanide?”
“Every team needs a colour, or they’ll…” Applejack trailed off as they saw Oakfield’s door closed and the lights off, but drew their attention was the big splatter of blue goo everywhere. Pinkie quickly looked both directions before crossing the street to inspect the mess.
It was everywhere, on the front of the store, the street, some even made it far enough to get into the parking lot next door. She suspected what it might be, but had no actual proof. “Let’s see, unstable consistency, solid colour, and the blast radius looks almost five metres wide.”
It couldn’t be the swamp monster, the colour was wrong. It couldn’t be a genie because the goop wasn’t hot to the touch. Pinkie looked at Spike, considering it may be the work of a dragon, but she dismissed it almost immediately, he wasn’t even blue. Harpies were out. It could be Ouroboros puke, but there was no reason one would ever be this far south.
Then Pinkie chuckled as it occurred to her how dumb she’d just been. It’s clone mass, Applebloom was talking about dealing with the clone issue earlier. She pulled some up with her hoof and gave it a taste, no memories though, apparently the mass was still too fresh.
While Pinkie was inspecting the splatter, Applejack and Spike crossed the street to join her. Applejack herself tested the door. “Locked, they already left.”
‘Nice deduction there, Goldberg,’ Pinkie glared at Spike, but he just smirked in return. ‘Well if they’re gone anyway, we should handle this without them.’
“I agree,” Pinkie smiled, liking the idea. Applejack raised an eyebrow, “Spike thinks we should take matters into our own hooves.” Pinkie explained.
Applejack gave a final knock on the front door before she turned around and started walking away, “Great idea, let’s get going.”
Pinkie got behind her to keep up, and Spike leisurely followed suit. “To the Laundromat then.”