//------------------------------//
// The Hunt 
// Story: Thirty Minute Express Train to Story Town 
// by Predhack 
//------------------------------//

Applejack slung the coils of the weapon with which she’d lay her trap around her neck and checked to make sure her other tools were properly holstered. Behind her Apple Bloom watched with fear in her eyes. Big Mac watched solemnly as ever from behind her. Applejack stopped to hug them both as she passed out of the little tool shed.

“Sis, are you sure you wanna do this? I mean it’s not like she’s hurtin’ anypony. I bet if we just left her alone she’d sort herself out soon enough.”

“No, Apple Bloom. We’re responsible for her, we’ve gotta be the ones to set her right again. Where is she?” Applejack replied to her younger sister. Apple Bloom looked downcast and waved a hoof toward the orchard.

“She’s in the north twenty between the Gala and the Golden Delicious. She’s been milling around there since Big Mac drove her off last night. Guess she’s just waitin’ for one of us to go out there to meet her.”

Applejack nodded and started to walk past the barn/farmhouse they called home. She came up short as Granny exited from the kitchen door and walked over to her, laying a basket down at her hooves.

“These oughta help you when you catch up with the beastie,” she said shoving the picnic basket toward Applejack. Opening it with a hoof Applejack peered inside where three large ruby red balloons lay in some towels that padded the basket. She hefted one and tested its weight, the balloon wobbled, the fluid inside sloshing back forth.

“You made-“

“Yep,” Granny cut her off, “I’d have made more but we’re short on time and I didn’t have more ingredients or the equipment to put it in balloons cleanly. But you hit her with one of these it’ll at least weaken her.”

Applejack put the balloon back in the basket and closed it reverently before throwing her hooves around the old mare’s neck.

“Thank you, Granny,” Applejack’s voice quivered as she spoke, “This’ll help sure’n as anything will.”

“You go get her,” Granny replied, patting Applejack’s back, “You get her and you get back here in one piece y’hear?”

“Yes Granny.”

Applejack picked up the basket and its precious ordinance and nodded to her family again before breaking out into a trot for the northern part of the Acres.

—-

She smelled her quarry long before she ever caught up with it. She removed the first of the tools she’d readied for this confrontation to protect herself and placed it over her nose. Checking to make sure it was secure she carefully made her way out to where a water spigot stuck out of the ground among the trees. As she unspooled some of her coiled weapon and attached it to the pipe she kept a careful eye on her surroundings.

The ground beneath the trees was littered with leaves that had been dropped weeks ago in preparation for winter. Now a light snow the previous night had partially obscured them. It would be perfect camouflage for her prey, and she cursed that this had happened when the battle would most favor the beast.

Giving an experimental tug she confirmed that the spigot would take a good amount of weight without snapping. Applejack nodded to herself and began unreeling long lengths of her chosen weapon and tossing it out and around trees. It would be useless to try and rope the beast. It was a canny creature and intimately familiar with all of the tricks Applejack used for corralling critters with a rope.

Well, most of them. Applejack corrected that line of thought. She hoped that maybe her current plan would be a great enough change to trick the beast long enough to bring it down. She returned to the spigot and twisted the faucet to turn the water on. She listened as the water pumped through the hose she’d hooked up, until it finally exited the end of the hose that she’d hooked over a branch so the water would spill out and fall far enough to make noise. The beast had been out here all night. With the ponds and lakes being frozen over or winter she’d be thirsty.

Content with her work she turned and pulled another of her tools out of her bag, replacing it with the carefully handled balloons. She pulled a strip of cloth and whipped it around one of the larger trees near the hose end and then pulled both end taught with her mouth. Carefully she used the wrapped cloth to help her settle her weight against the tree so she could ‘walk’ up the side of it. It was exhausting but the brown branches of the tree would be a better hiding place than anywhere on the ground where the beast would see her. So she waited.

Finally her patience was rewarded in the form of a shaggy form wandering into the area Applejack was hoping for. The beast cast glances around, sniffing at the air. She could no doubt smell Applejack, and was no doubt aware that the hose had been set up for her attention, but not thinking to look up she couldn’t find the pony. Tenatively the beast reached out a tongue and began to drink.

Applejack carefully limbered the first balloon. She knew there was no way the single balloon would stop the beast but the damage it would do would be more than enough to keep her from disappearing into the orchard without leaving a trail. She waited until the furry thing began drinking, taking careful aim.

With a whiffing hoof she hurled her projectile. The red ball blurred at its unaware target and for a moment Applejack dared hope she’d succeeded. At the last moment something tipped the creature off and she turned her and rolled out of the way, the balloon missing her by an ear and breaking uselessly across a tree, spraying the red fluid inside everywhere but on the target.

The beast turned to the tree and spotted Applejack who barely had time to curse and roll out of her hiding place to land on the ground before the beast gave a start and ran. Hauling on one of the lines of hose Applejack had carefully lain near the foot of the tree. The cord whipped up into the air nearly rapping the beast on the nose as it ran. Grinding to halt the beast changed directions only to see Applejack had already moved and was a step ahead of it. It turned again, and Applejack yanked a different length of hose, once again whipping the hose in front of the beast into the air trying to scare it into changing direction but instead tripping it. Applejack loosed her second shot and was forced to curse again as the beast rolled to its feet and clear of the splashing fluid bursting where it had fallen. The beast exchanged a look with Applejack and bolted again. Time and again Applejack moved to cut It off, over and over it changed direction. Applejack pulled hose lengths half a dozen times, sometimes causing the hose to fall from the trees, others causing it to jerk taut, and in one ingenious placement even causing a loop to tighten around where the furry thing had been standing. Only its experience with Applejack allowing it to slip free moments in the instants between where Applejack let go of the hose in order to secure it. 

Applejack realized this wasn’t going to work. The beast was clever and it would know she was trying to herd it to a spot where she could get a clear shot at it with the hose or the balloons. She glanced at the last balloon and realized that for some reason Granny had made it larger than the others. Maybe it was an artifact of its creation or maybe she’d foreseen this conclusion. Making her decision Applejack watched for the moment where her prey would see the way out. A section of the battlefield where her hose traps were already expended.

The beast noticed. It was beginning to pick out the patterns and it could see that if the next two traps missed it would be able to slip past Applejack and back to freedom. The creature ran, as expected a looping hose rose up to meet her, and she turned to dodge it heading toward where the next trap surely lay, and where her bid for freedom could begin. She screeched to a halt as instead of running parallel to her as she had been previously she found the earth pony charging her full speed with one of those horrible smelling red things dangling from her mouth. It was ludicrous, the pony could outrun her on open ground but in the forest of apple trees her thin graceful limbs would allow her to escape. The pony would never just charge her.

The frozen moment of indecision cost the beast its escape. With a feral yell Applejack leaped into the air and tackled her smaller but more agile prey. The balloon she’d held so close to her chest exploded and the two of them were covered in its contents. Wrapping her hooves around the beast Applejack did her best to rub as much of the red goo into the beast’s fur as she could as it writhed in her grip.

“Darn it Winona, it’s your own fault for goin’ messin’ with that skunk now hold still so I can wash you.”