*Flashback directly to right after everyone went their separate ways*
“Hello random stranger! Have you by chance seen anything really strange or craaaaazy at all because me and my friends are looking for a way back home, because we’re not from around here at all!”
The dark blue haired stallion who was being questioned just slowly backed away.
The questioner zipped over to a different pony, a purple haired filly.
“Have you seen anything weird or strange or bizarre at all happening around here?”
The white skinned pegasus shook her head slowly, with a hint of fear in her eyes.
“Well, if you do see anything weird, will you tell me? K thanks.”
The blue earth pony blasted off. After he took a few steps, he gave a big sigh.
“Think Bubble, there has to be better way!” the yellow haired colt thought, “Surprisingly going up to random people and asking them if they’ve seen anything is not working. I need a better plan…”
Bubble Berry paced back and forth as he pondered some ideas.
“I need to do this a little more secretive and undercover... Ooo, I could do this like one of those detectives in those old black and white movies! But, how can I pull that off?”
Berry walked back and forth some more. He was started to leave a big impression on the ground below him. Suddenly an idea struck him. He raised his head and looked up into the sky.
“Mr. Narrator! Can I ask you a favor?”
There was no reply. He did however; get a few heads to turn and stare at him confused.
“You can’t fool me narrator! And they look more annoyed than confused!”
…..Fine. What do you want?
“Can you make this story go old school noir style?”
How?
“I don’t know…hmmm…Oh! You could make everything go black and white and play mysterious background music!”
I guess I could. What’s in it for me?
“You could have a pretty interesting chapter on your hands!”
…Anything else?
“You wouldn’t have to narrate at all! I would do all the narrating for you! You could take a break and watch your own mystery movie!”
I do like a mystery…Maybe I could watch a Columbo.
“See! Now, what do you say? Do we have a deal?”
…I guess that’s fine.
Suddenly all the color seemed to be drained from out of the town. The town’s great variety of different colors was replaced by grayscale. Music started to play from some unknown source. The now light gray colt with pale white hair looked around in amazement.
“That’s so cool!” Bubble Berry shouted with excitement, “Thanks narrator!”
Hey, you’re welcome. Now…to see how Columbo solves this one.
“Wait! Could I ask you for one more thing?”
…What?
“Can I have one of those hats the detectives always seem to wear? It would make this whole situation seem even more noirish!”
Bubble felt something on top of his head. He quickly reached up and grabbed the mysterious new arrival. It was exactly what he had hoped for. It had a grey brim that went around the whole hat. It stuck out about five inches. It had a darker grey strap that went around where the main part of the hat met the brim. The main part of the hat rose up for about a foot.
“Thanks!”
Don’t mention in. Can I finally take my break now?
“Of course you can man! Have a wonderful break!”
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It was normal sunny day in Ponyville. Something was different today. This wasn’t the Ponyville I knew. This was one from a different dimension entirely. I had to find a way back home, and fast.
I quickly scanned around to see if there was anything of interest. I saw a familiar building that I have seen many times throughout my life. The building’s lower walls were white and they had lines of dark grey going straight up. The doors and windows were a darker grey, but matched the shade of the roof very well. The roof was tipped in white frosting. The top of this building was made to look like a giant cupcake, and it accomplished that very well. Three giant grey candles with lighter grey stripes were on the very top.
I entered the Sugarcube Corner, a place where I called home. I wasn’t sure if I was welcomed here, being in a completely different dimension and all. I saw something placed on top of the counter across the room. I walked over and saw that it was a pie. A blueberry pie. A note had been placed behind the pie. It read, “To be delivered to Sweet Apple Acres.”
“Hmm...” I thought to myself, “Deliveries aren’t usually made and they are definitely not let to sit out of the counter like this! Maybe I should pay Sweet Apple Acres a visit, with my special guest…”
I picked up the pie, “…this pie!”
I turned to leave. However, a voice called out from behind a corner.
“Did those colts end up sending someone to pick up a pie for them?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see a middle aged middle grey pony with hair that was a tad lighter grey at some points and a darker grey at others. Its style was ice cream like. You know, when you go to one of those ice cream machines and the ice cream slowly comes out and is all nice and swirled? It was like that. Her tail also resembled that. Three grey cupcakes were on her grey behind, making it impossible to see if I hadn’t squinted. She wore a lighter grey apron that had wing things sticking out. Grey circles that matched the color of half her hair were stuck to her ears.
I fully turned around to speak with her. “No ma’am, I just wanted to be a good pony and help you out. I was heading to Sweet Apple Acres anyways.”
“Oh, that’s so kind of you!” she exclaimed with a big grin of her face, “My husband and I are about to leave and go have some fun this afternoon together. We’re leaving Sugarcube Corner in the hooves of our only other worker, and I bet she’ll be glad to not have to worry about that. Heck, I’m glad not to have to worry that pie!”
She gave a quick laugh to top of her statement.
“Well,” I turned my attention back to the pie, “I better go deliver this pie then. Have fun!”
“Wait!” She called for me before I could move my feet even an inch. “What’s your name kind stranger?”
I quickly thought of the most detective-like and cool name I could think of. “Bond. Berry Bond.”
“Why, thank you Berry Bond for going out of your way to do this delivery then!” She was waving to me and I exited the front door.
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I took my merry time to get over to Sweet Apple Acres. I wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to my precious cargo. I protected the pie with my life, even though there really was no need to. No one even got close to harming the pie on the way. However, this brought me and the pie closer together. In fact, I was thinking about what name I should give him when I arrived at my destination.
I looked around as I walked through the apple themed arch way that led into the farm; nothing seemed really out of place. The giant grey barn stood front and center and the white trimming on it was still white. The lightish grey multileveled roof still possessed a giant apple on its top. I saw someone moving over on one side of the barn. I bounced over to see who it was.
“Hello.” I tried to remain professional, but part of me was getting annoyed by that and wanted me to stop that nonsense, “Did you order a pie?”
The pony glanced over her shoulder. She was, well, obviously grey. Her long lighter grey hair was done back in a ponytail. I couldn’t see all of it, due to a darkish grey hat that sat on top of it all. Her tail matched her hair in both color and style. I could see some apples, three in fact, on her butt. She was covered in some grey paint, since I had interrupted her painting the side of the barn.
“No,” she answered, “No, Ah don’t think Ah ordered any pie.”
I was pretty dang sure that the mare in front of me was Applejack, one of my good friends. He lived on the version of Sweet Apple Arcs that I knew, with his brother and sister. It wasn’t that fact that made me think this was Applejack. The hat was very similar to the one he always wore and the thick southern accent screamed him.
“Well, whoever did order this pie left a note that said to bring it over to Sweet Apple Acres.” I explained.
“Hmm. That’s strange.” the mare thought about this for a little bit. Then, she spoke again. “Ah’ll tell you what sugar. Ah’ll brin’ this pie inside and see if anyone comes around to claim it.”
I thought this was a perfectly fine plan. “Sounds good to me!”
“Would you like to join me for a snack of something?” she asked me as she started to pack up her painting equipment. “Ah feel bad for makin’ you come all the way out here for no good reason.”
“Hey, thanks!” I never turn down an invitation to a gathering, no matter how small. “I would love to! What’s your name by the way?”
“Mah name’s Applejack!” She held out her left hoof. “What’s yours?”
“Berry Bond.” I used the same name that I made up on the fly back at the Sugarcube Corner.
I put down the pie carefully as I shook Applejack’s hoof. Applejack then went inside the barn to put away the painting stuff.
I made a few mental notes. “Applejack’s name is the same in mare form too! How strange. I’ll have to tell Applejack that when I meet back up with him. Hopefully they’ll never meet because a conversation with them would get awfully confusing!”
Applejack came out of the barn with no painting equipment, but some paint remained behind to continue the journey. Suddenly, a shot or bullet of something landed close to my feet. It gave off a mini explosion as it landed. We turned around to see two colts standing there. One was a light grey, with his thin hair being a lighter grey and kind of shot out everywhere from his head, like he had a balloon rubbed on it. The other colt was grey and had a darker grey vest on. He had a weird thingamajig in his hooves, which must have fired the shot. His hair was a different color grey, lighter than his vest but darker than his skin.
“Hey, give us that pie!” the colt with the vest shouted at us.
The thin haired one muttered something that I couldn’t hear to the other colt. They turned around and started to have a private conversation.
“What do you think those strange colts are doing over there?” I asked Applejack.
“Ah don’t know, and Ah don’t want to find out.” Applejack replied.
“What do you think they want with Tim?”
“Well, it can’t be good ‘cause they’re willin to use force agai…”Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Tim?”
“Ya, Tim the pie!” I held Tim up so Applejack could see.
“You named the pie…Tim?”
“Ya! I was trying to think of a name for him and I was really struggling to figure out a name for him, and that’s when I looked at him. Suddenly, I saw the pie tin and I thought. ‘Hmm, a pie tin. A pie named Tim!’ And that’s how I got that idea.”
Before Applejack could say anything about my brilliant idea, the stranger with the weird doodad shouted the same words as last time.
“Hey, give us that pie!”
This time however, they started to walk toward us.
“What should we do?” I asked with a hint of panic as my professionalness that I had tried to keep this whole time was started to slip away.
“I say…” those words were almost a whisper, “RUN!”
She sprinted off and I followed suit, bringing Tim along for the ride. When the mysterious duo figured out what had just happened (it wasn’t that confusing so they figured it out pretty quickly), they turned and chased after us.
*************************************************************************************
After about five minutes of dodging random trees and bullet things, we were nowhere closer to losing our chasers then we were before. You could hear their footsteps when they stepped. We sprinted all over the place, well, all over an area that you can reach about in about five minutes. We always went through areas with trees, in hoping that it would increase the chance of them losing track of us.
“Where should we go next?” I asked, taking a breath in between words.
“Ah…Ah really don’t know…” Applejack ducked to dodge another blast from the thingamabobber.
I jumped over a root that stuck out the ground. “You know what; this reminds me of this one time when a friend of mine was messing around with a beehive with me. We were having a great time, but it turned out the bees weren’t. We ended up running away from an angry swarm of bees, just like this, except there are no bees, just angry ponies.”
Applejack did a quick hop to dodge a rock. “How did y’all get away?”
I shook my head, which is really hard to do when running really quickly. “We didn’t. I was in pain for a quite good chunk of time.”
Applejack muttered something to herself, probably something about how great my story was. Her head then abruptly shot up and turned to me, “Berry, do you hear that?”
I listened. “Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed, “We must of finally lost them!”
“Hurray!” I reached and grabbed Tim and held him up, “and we still have Tim!”
Due to all this sudden excitement, I had completely lost track of where I was going. My right front hoof whammed into the corner of a truck of the tree. My upper body slowly flew forward and got me airborne. I was brought back to earth with a crash as my face and front left leg collided with the ground. With nothing to hold him, Tim flew through the air, did a couple of wicked tricks, but couldn’t stick the landing.
“Tim!” I got up and hobbled over to him. “Tim...Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
“Berry!” I turned to see Applejack quickly walking over, “Are you alright?”
“No…” I was trying to hold back tears from falling down my face, “Tim…Tim is dead!”
Applejack turned and saw the remains of Tim. “Yes…Ah guess he is…”
I held the tin of Tim in my arms. I looked to the heavens and screamed soulfully, “Why must the good die young!”
I turned to see Applejack pointing to my left front leg, “Berry, Ah’m pretty sure that ain’t natural...”
I looked down to see that the upper portion of it had turned into a way darker grey. “It’s alright. That’s just a flesh wound.”
Applejack didn’t believe me. “We need to get you back to the farm as fast we can to help heal you! Can you walk on it?”
I grinned through the pain that was starting form from that region. “Of course I can, see!”
I took one step and returned back to the ground with a scream of agony.
“It’s worse than Ah thought!” Applejack exclaimed. “Here; put your leg on me. That should allow you to walk back to the farm.”
I did what she said. I put my leg on her for support, and it turned out she was right. It wasn’t pretty, but I was able to sort of make the movement to walk now. We started to head in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, leaving behind the scattered remains of a fallen comrade.
***************************************************************************************
When you’re slowly limping your way along, you can see exactly how far you can run when you feel like your life is on the line. The time it took us to make it all the way back to Sweet Apple Acres was more than double the time that we had spent running. As we stumbled into the farm, a small filly ran out to greet us.
“Applejack, where have you been?” She greeted us with concern.
“Well, Applebloom.” Applejack began, “Some weird colts chased us. They were tryin’ to get a pie that here Berry Bond brought.”
I grabbed my hat with my right arm and put it over my heart. “He will be missed…”
I looked down to see a really light grey filly. She had medium grey hair that went all the way down her neck. Her tail, that was the same color, sprang out of her rear casually. A giant light grey bow was placed in her hair. Her great grey eyes were looking up back at me.
“Are you okay mister?” she asked me, “You don’t look okay.”
Before I could respond, Applejack jumped in. “He’s in quite a big deal of pain. Would you like to go and do a favor for me and Berry?”
“Sure!” Applebloom replied happily.
“Can you go and find Twilight? She should be able to help us with some of her magic.”
'Can do!” Applebloom quickly ran off.
Applejack then led the tattered me inside their house. I was in both physical pain, due to the great injury in my leg, and emotional pain, due to the loss of a dear friend.