Later into the night, the trio made their way to Sweet Apple Acres to execute their plan. They made sure to not to use a path to get there and walked a bit into Everfree to avoid any ponies on the way, not too long later, they made it to the south acres of the orchard.
“Alright, here is our first stop.” Their dad said “Let’s inject a dose right over there, next to that large tree.” They then injected their first dose with no incident.
“Hehehe. This is way too easy.” Sunrise said, before they moved on to another part of the orchard. They repeated this for the west, the north, and the east.
“Wow. I didn’t realize we would have about half the container left, maybe we can save this for the Blueberries’ Orchard next.” their dad said before they proceeded on to the center of the orchard where the barn was. Once they reached there, their dad got out a needle and put a dose in it. “Alright, last one for the night.” He then jabbed the ground with the needle before he began to inject the last needed dose of poison. Meanwhile inside the barn, the CMC were having a sleepover, not the slightest bit aware of what was happening outside.
“I thought I flunked Cheerilee’s test when she gave back those results, but turns out she just gave me another filly’s paper,” Scootaloo said with a chuckle.
“You should have seen the look on your face though,” Sweetie Belle replied with a laugh, “You looked about ready to go Twilly nanas!”
“What! I would never!”
“You did when we first got our cutie marks.” Applebloom added.
“Hey! You two did as well.” The three then continued to laugh, only for Applebloom to suddenly go silent as something caught her attention, which got the other two attenions making them go silent as well.
“What’s up Applebloom?” Scootaloo asked in concern.
“Ah thought I saw somethin’ outside for a moment.” Applebloom said as she blinked a few times to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Clearly she wasn’t as that thing was still there, but its color was quite familiar, bearing a painful similarity to a certain young pony that she had a confrontation with a couple days ago. Her thoughts were finally confirmed as the thing moved just enough to reveal its cutiemark, which indeed belonged to Strawberry Shortcake.
“What’s she doing here?” Applebloom asked to herself in irritation
“Who’s here?” Sweetie Belle asked. But she didn’t get an answer as Applebloom got up and looked out the opening for a better view, only to gasp in horror at what she saw.
“What is it?” Scootaloo asked.
“The strawberries!” Applebloom said in panic, “and they look like they’re up to no good, APPLEJACK!!” Applejack then came running down the stairs
“What is it Applebloom?”
“It’s the Strawberry family! They're outside with a needle in the ground and just look up to no good!”
“A NEEDLE!?” Applejack then burst through the front doors of the barn, and sure enough, there were the three Strawberries staring back. “Now what in Equestria do you vermits think you're doing!?” The Strawberries gave a hard laugh in response.
“Isn’t it obvious, you simple earth pony? We’re compromising your orchard, so we can finally have a fair chance in the market!” Sunrise said.
“And just look around you, trees are already starting to die!” Her dad added in.
“After this, there will be nothing left but bare dead trunks! We will have to call you Lumberjack cause that’s all you will be selling from here!” Shortcake added. By now Applebloom along with Big Mac, Granny Smith, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had come outside as well and gave horrified expressions at the sight they saw.
“Well, if it isn’t the poor sorry excuse of a father, Strawberry Tart,” Granny Smith said. “How do you feel giving your two daughters this poor example of behavior?”
“What do you think, Granny? I feel just fine. I’m teaching them that sometimes you gotta play dirty to win!”
Granny then blew a raspberry. “Like playin’ dirty would get you anywhere with your moldy bitter tastin’ berries.
“What did you just say, you overripe granny!?”
“You heard me loud and clear you rotten thing! Unless your hearing is goin’ at such young age.”
“Oh I heard you clearly, you limp old thing, and I suggest you watch your mouth before I make you wish that you were dead already!” Applejack gasped at this comment before walking up to Tart’s face.
“Now listen here you oversized pegasus! You ain’t gonna be throwin’ threats li-” Only for Tart to suddenly punch Applejack in the face.
“I had just about enough of this-” Big Mac bucked him in the face in response, causing him to tumble over.
“DAD!!” Sunrise ran over. “Oh you Apples are gonna get it now!” Sunrise then leaped to the air before smacking Big Mac in the face. By this time, Applejack had recovered enough to jump up and grabbed Sunrise by the tail. “AAGH!” Sunrise screeched as she was slammed down to ground, however, this just resulted in the earth pony receiving a surprisingly hard punch from Shortcake in the jaw as she flew by Applejack. Applebloom then jumped into Shortcake’s path before bucking her in the face, causing her to fly out of control and crashing into the container of poison, spilling the rest on the ground.
“Look at what you just did, you fools!” Tart said as he started to get back up, only to be tackled back down by Big Mac. Shortcake recovered from her crash before growling in irritation and flew towards Applebloom, crashing into her from the side, causing her to crash into the side of the barn. However, she quickly recovered, but nonetheless Granny got ticked off. She then trotted over to Shortcake before grabbing her.
“Woah!” Shortcake cried before Granny smacked her flank. “Ahhh!”
“You don’t go treatin’ other youngins, especially my own one, like that!” She continued smacking her.
“Ahhh! Sto- ahhh!” Shortcake said in tears.
“It’s about time somepony teach ya some manners!”
“And it’s about time you learned to attack somepony your own size!” Sunrise said as she flew up high into the sky before targeting Granny.
“Look out Granny!” Applejack said. Granny tried to dodge, losing her grip on Shortcake in the process, but the experienced pegasus still got a hit on her.
“OOF!” Granny said in pain as a noticeable crack was also heard. “MY HIP!” She shrieked. Sunrise grinned at this only for the metal container that used to contain the poison to be bucked directly at her wing, breaking it. She then crashed into the ground with a thud. She looked up weakly as she saw that it was bucked by Applejack, who glared back at her before making a run towards Granny to check on her, only to feel a sudden stab pain directly in her left fore hoof. She then tripped to the ground before she looked at her hoof, only to be horrified as she saw that it was the needle that was used to inject the poison, which explained why it burned a bit as well.
She clenched hoof in pain as she saw Shortcake walk up to her and said. “You don’t mess with the-” Only to be bucked to the ground by Applebloom.
“Little brat!” Applebloom said in disgust, before she came up to Applejack. ”You okay big sis?”
“Yeah, well, at least mostly.” Their conversation was cut short when they saw Tart throw off Big Mac.
“Ow! Come on y- you two…” Tart said in a weak pant, “let’s get the tartarus o- out of here!”
He then darted towards Shortcake, who was knocked out cold, in a limp and picked her up. Sunrise got up shuddering in pain as she struggled to her hooves, before she limped with her dad towards the exit of the orchard.
“Yeah, that’s right! Get the buck out o- ow ow ow!” Granny said, remembering that her hip might be dislocated at this point. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle then galloped towards the quad to help out.
“Oh my CELESTIA! Are you okay Granny Smith!? Scootaloo asked as she came up and looked at Granny’s now awkwardly angled hip.
“Ehh… I will be fine… but I think we should take a visit to the hospital.” Meanwhile Sweetie Belle came over before using her magic to get the needle out of Applejack’s hoof.
“Yow! Dangnabit! That hurt more than a rope burn on a summer day.” Sweetie Belle then looked at the needle in horror.
Umm… yeah. We should probably get you to the hospital ASAP,” Sweetie Belle said in concern as she saw that there was still some poison left in the needle. Applebloom then looked at the needle in horror as well.
“Do you think you can still walk sis,” Applebloom asked.
“Well, I can try to.”Applejack said as she started to try to get to her hooves. She was able to stand, but not able to put any weight on her left fore hoof due to the pain. “I can walk, but probably won’t be able to carry Granny. Big Mac then came over.
“I got her.” Big Mac out of the four of them was in the best condition, even with his pretty roughed up muzzle. Applebloom limped a little herself as she tried to trot.
“I can carry you to the hospital,” Scootaloo said in response to this.
“Thanks Scoot,” Applebloom said as she climbed on top of Scootaloo before the group made their way to hospital. As they walked towards Ponyville, Applejack couldn’t help but to look at the trees in concern, nearly every one of them was dead.
“Welp, it looks like we will have our work cut out for us once we get out of the hospital,” Applejack said.
“Awww, can’t we just bring Twilight to fix everything?” Applebloom asked tiredly.
“Trust me sugar cube, This would take a lot of magic to fix, possibly even beyond Twilight’s abilities. But even then sometimes, it's not the solution in general.”
Finally after what felt like a long trip, they made it to the hospital. Even though it was just from Sweet Apple Acres to the outside of Ponyville, it was definitely much more work for the injured Apple family.
“Let’s get on checked in.” Granny said before they walked through the entrance of the hospital. They got checked in and treated for their injuries before getting their room to recover for the night, before they went to sleep, thinking the worst was over. However, the worst had yet to come.