The deafening howl of wind filled Applejack’s ears as empty air raced past her; if not for the thin film of golden magic she wore like a second skin the powerful gusts of wind could have torn off her coat. Her hooves thundered against the dusty roads, leaving clear imprints as the flat of her hooves smashed into the weathered surface of the path. Magic coursed through her veins, in perfect synchronization with the beating of her heart, flowing into her hooves and doubling the power of each step she took into the road. Despite her increased speed, however, she still could not catch up to the tar-black blur fading into the distance up ahead of her, a powerful enemy and her personal antithesis.
Suddenly a heavy body smashed into her side, sending her tumbling across the dirt. The high-pitched buzz of vibrating wings filled her ears, making them flick in annoyance; the taste of mud filled her mouth. Spitting as she pushed herself off of the ground Applejack glared up to look for her attacker, instead finding five pairs of glowing turquoise eyes. The whine of the creatures’ wings died down as they folded them against their backs; a harsh green glow radiated from each ashen-gray horn that slowly grew in intensity as it approached her. The Changeling’s hooves made no sound as they advanced towards her, silently compressing and expanding against the rocks and the dirt.
For a moment both sides stood still, just staring at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. Once again focusing on her magic, Applejack willed another rope of crimson-gold magic into existence by her hoof, though she dared not look down given the situation. The tension between them was palpable and dense; it saturated the air and dripped from it. Moisture had begun to build up near the bottom of Applejack’s eyes, but she ignored it; it could wait. Likewise she ignored the bead of sweat that had been slowly dropping down the side of her face, leaving an itchy, irritating trail where it hovered over her skin.
Three of the Changelings suddenly pounced on her, shattering the tension with an almost audible crack, like that of a whip. Applejack ducked down, grabbing her rope with her mouth and ducking under the attacking bugs, rolling against the ground toward the two who had remained. Jumping up from the ground, she was directly in front of the first Changeling—her hoof smashed through its face before the glaring turquoise eyes had a chance to blink. She spun around, barely dodging a bolt of angry green magic that whizzed past her face, nearly grazing her ear. Taking a moment to twirl the rope around her head, she let it fly; the lasso collided directly with the wings of the lead Changeling, who had just snapped them out as it jumped into the air. A frantic expression seized the bug’s face in the half-second it took for the rope to wrap up its wings and send it crashing to the ground, right into its companion who had been standing next to Applejack, about to strike. The two attackers let out a sickening CRUNCH as they collided and tumbled into the trees, dazed. Three down, two to go. The thought barely flickered in Applejack’s mind; she had no time to recognize it before redoubling her attack. She whirled around…but then paused.
The two remaining Changelings held back; their wings buzzed as they floated at a height far above the carnage of their fellows below. Though Applejack found it difficult to distinguish their faces from such a distance, they seemed unsure. With sudden decision the two turned down to face her, moving in sync. Their horns glowed harsh and bright upon her, shining brighter than the radiant moon above, whose rays spilled out across the sky and lit up the world in a glow of pure white.
All of a sudden they released their magic in a hailstorm of tiny green bullets that smashed down into the ground; dodging them would be akin to dodging rain. Applejack winced as the tiny stings bit into her skin like a swarm of angry wasps. The bullets that had not hit her had punched into the ground, burning holes in the dirt that sizzled and sent wisps of steam and smoke into the air—the magical projectiles would surely have killed her if not for the protection of her transcended form. She jerked her head up to see the two Changelings floating again in the air, their hooves hanging limp at their sides; without a potent being to power their magic, attacks such as that must take a lot of effort. Furrowing her eyebrows and concentrating on a mental image, a memory and a pastime she had enjoyed on the farm, in simpler times. Two objects shimmered into existence upon the ground in front of her; she lifted them up, weighing them in her hooves. A tight grin stretched across her face as she turned up to the two Changelings, still recovering in the air, and she pulled her hoof back beside her face as she judged the distance to the two gray targets. With a throw that was easier than it should have been, Applejack let the objects go—first one, than the other, whizzing through the air.
Two shiny horseshoes, identical to the ones used for free-time horseplay by the workers of Sweet Apple Acres, crashed into their targets with an audible THUNK from each respective target. The sheer momentum of the projectiles knocked the wind out of the two creatures, sending them smashing into the ground. They won’t be hurting anypony for a long time.
Applejack surveyed the scene around her, looking carefully at each unconscious Changeling. Noting that all of them were motionless yet breathing, she gave a nod of satisfaction and continued down the road. That took way too long.
Her ears filled with the thundering sound of hooves, one thought crossed Applejack’s mind as she ran faster than wind towards her home at Sweet Apple Acres: I will not let that bug hurt my family.
With an unnecessarily powerful buck, Applejack opened the door to her home, panting heavily; her normally calm eyes glowed with fiery anger. The door bounced off of the wall and back at her with an audible crash, making Applejack wince; she was still unused to the power she carried. Carefully she set it back on its hinges, feeling an impatient stinging in the back of her mind as the precious seconds of wasted time slipped by.
“Applejack, is that you?!” Granny Smith’s raspy voice echoed down the stairs, bouncing off of the walls and reaching her granddaughter’s ears. Applejack paused, stopping for another vital second; her heart began to slow its racing pulse and her breathing steadied. Something seemed off about Granny Smith’s voice, although she couldn’t quite place what.
Applejack trotted up the steps slowly, pressing her body against the wall to avoid the inevitable creaking of the steps that came from stepping on the center. Leaning her head forward and straining her ears, she thought she heard the buzzing of a Changeling’s wings, faint yet steady…no, it must be the ringing in her ears left over from fighting the drones. Still, a twinge of uneasiness remained in Applejack’s mind as she cautiously advanced through the hall; her eyes darted in every possible direction as she walked in her own home. She could feel it in the air, an alien presence that had infected the calming atmosphere of her house, of her family…
“APPLEJACK!” The mare in question whirled around just in time to see a yellow blur crash into her at full speed, tackling her in a tiny but powerful hug. She stared down at her sister, whose playful gaze was met with one of unsure caution. Apple Bloom’s eyebrows furrowed, confused at this seemingly unexpected reaction, and Applejack backed away from her little sister as though she had no idea what the filly would do next.
“J-just a moment, Apple Bloom, I…need a moment to think.” Hurt, Apple Bloom turned around and shuffled back into her room, her tail dragging against the floor. As soon as Applejack’s back was turn her tail immediately perked up again, and she strode to the window with an impatient frown upon her face.
Ignoring her younger sister, Applejack walked into her empty room, squeezing her eyes shut in concentration, deep in thought. Okay, Chrysalis is somewhere around here, that’s for sure. But where? She frowned. This is the Element of Deception that I’m dealing with, and the last time she was in Equestria, she took the form of the pony who no one would have suspected because of how much we loved her. Changelings feed off of love, and who’s to say that they can feed off of other kinds of love? Now who’s somepony I love, who I would never suspect…?
Her eyes snapped open and her pupils dilated as the horrible truth descended over her like a cloud of shadows, darkening her expression. Swiveling around, Applejack found herself staring into the unblinking eyes of her little sister, who had appeared in the doorway without a sound. With a malevolent grin she asked, “Big sis? Is something wrong?”
Applejack’s heart hardened into stone, colder than the freezing rain of the storm over Canterlot. Her gaze contorted into an angry glare, shooting daggers at the form of the little filly. “What did you do to my sister?”
The little creature, hiding beneath a false skin, continued smiling and gave no response.
Her patience at its end, Applejack charged forward and bucked her little sister with all of her might, sending the creature crashing out the window, which shattered into a thousand shards of invisible glass. Rushing to the window, she saw the creature vanish in a ball of green flame and reemerge as a familiar-looking black insectoid figure, which promptly burst out a pair of wings and swooped over the grounds moments before a satisfying crash could occur, floating up into the air. However…she was not alone.
Applejack’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and her pupils shrank to that of two peas; her jaw dropped open in horror and her face froze for an instant in an expression of absolute shock. The massive horde of Changelings outside her window, hovering over the massive orchard like a swarm of locusts, drowned out the sky with their colossal numbers. The buzzing of a thousand wings combined in a continuous high-pitched hum, echoing across the vast plain of emerald-green trees that carpeted the ground surrounding her home. A thousand eyes zeroed in on her own, filled with hatred and bloodlust, determination and anger. Among these hundreds of heartless faces was one whose expression was not of detestation but of bemusement; one pair of eyes among the thousands did not glare but rather laughed at her.
There’s no way I could take that many Changelings at once…that’s probably half of the whole army floatin’ over my farm! Or, at least, what’s left of it after the last time we scattered them all across Equestria…Applejack allowed herself a fleeting smile of satisfaction before refocusing on the task at hoof. It’d be crazy to just go on out there and fight them all one-by-one.
Suddenly a spark went off in her brain; she pondered a new idea that she hadn’t thought of until now. Wearing an expression of grim determination, Applejack squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her Element, trying to channel the foreign energies that flowed through her body, emanating from the pulsing Element hanging beneath her neck. I hope this works, because if it doesn’t, I’m in for one heck of a hoedown.
Applejack’s pounding heartbeat slowed down to a soft and gradual rhythm, dropping below any normal, healthy levels expected in a pony with her physical capabilities. Deep breaths of air flowed through her throat; she allowed each individual particle of air a sizeable portion of time to rest before releasing it back into the atmosphere. Her Element began to glow bright orange; its light washed the room with a film of crimson gold, spilling out the window like a brilliant fire, emanating out into the open air. Some of the thousand eyes hesitated at this; some closed as their owners braced themselves and some rotated as their owners simply cocked their heads to the side in confusion.
Reaching out beyond her senses, latching on to the feeling of home that had once filled this landscape with an aura of contented satisfaction, Applejack called out to the earth and the plants around her, sensing their life forces surrounding her on a higher plane of existence. Focusing with all her might, she directed the wild magic pouring freely from her Element into one single thought, which she cast out into the surrounding landscape; the single thought exploded out into the earth and the plants with conscious energy.
Her plan set into motion, Applejack opened her eyes to see a thousand pairs of eyes descending on her, emanating rays of fury directed solely at her, sparkling with the craving to inflict pain and hurt. She smiled and waited as the unending horde of insectoid drones descended on her like an army of demons from the pits of Tartarus.
In perfect synchronization and silence, a thousand red semi-spherical objects ascended into the air, hovering over the field of emerald. They sat motionless in the air, defying all known laws that dictate their supposed actions, given that such objects usually possess no collective consciousness that could drive them to do anything like this. Moving as one, the red semi-spherical projectiles flew upwards towards the horde that surrounded them, rapidly accelerating to highly dangerous speeds.
Sitting behind the window, Applejack smiled as a gigantic swarm of apples flew up from their trees within her orchard, crashing into and immobilizing the entire armada of Changelings that had attempted to defeat one single pony sitting in a farmhouse.
Hundreds of screeches echoed through the air as the continuous buzzing broke into frantic whining. Apples invaded the sky, drowning the out the black with a bright, beautiful red, bouncing from target to target without hesitation, demonstrating ruthlessly unrelenting battle strategies. Though most were immediately knocked out by the sudden swarm of delicious projectiles, several Changelings frantically zipped from spot to spot in the air, desperately trying to dodge the apples. However, if the initial burst of apples did not take them out, the rapidly falling bodies of their unconscious companions did.
Applejack stared out at her work, seeing the thousand eyes now closed in a comatose sleep, with only one pair of eyes remaining. Within a protective bubble of turquoise magic, the pair of eyes was not laughing anymore. For a moment that stretched into a painful eternity, the two pairs of eyes locked, radiating equally powerful auras of resolute determination. Neither of them blinked. The tension in the air between them was palpable; it saturated the atmosphere to such an extent that it almost dripped from every single molecule that dared to get in the way of the two adversaries.
Suddenly the tension snapped; the moment exploded as Applejack leaped out of her window and Chrysalis shot forward to meet her. The air howled in Applejack’s ears as she smashed into the ground, her hooves shuddering under the impact—if not for her newfound strength, she could never have emerged from such a jump unscathed. As it was, she had to waste a precious few seconds recovering from the leap; Chrysalis used those seconds to land directly in front of her and conjure a ball of green-and-turquoise magic shining harshly from the tip of her horn; visible wisps of energy flowed up to her horn from the pendant that clung to her neck, pulsing in sync with her ever-beating heart.
Applejack barely had time to roll to the side before the ground she was standing on not a moment before was vaporized; all of the air that now occupied the spot she was in simply ceased to exist under the sheer raw power that had been blasted at it. Chrysalis whirled around to face her attacker, her eyes glowing as bright as her horn in fury. Bolts of power flew unceasingly from her horn, sizzling as the faded into the air when they inevitably missed their intended target. Beads of sweat trailed down Applejack’s face as she jumped and dodged every which way to dodge the fiery bolts of energy. I can’t do this forever…
As abruptly as the surge of projectiles started, they suddenly stopped. Applejack stood up on her hooves, taking half a moment to catch her breath before turning up to face her opponent. The sphere of light surrounding Chrysalis’s horn whirled around like an uncontrollable storm, with sparks flying every direction, and its master’s eyes screwed up in concentration. A beam of raw power stronger than lightning burst forth from the storm cloud, ripping through the air towards Applejack. In the fraction of a second that she had to look, Applejack whipped out an equally powerful beam from within her Element, blasting back Chrysalis’s own, creating a double-edged shaft of lightning between them. However, this stalemate did not last for long; Chrysalis’s sea-blue beam slowly began to press forward, pushing Applejack’s own orange beam back into its Element. Sparks flew into Applejack’s face, speckling her skin with tiny burns, yet she did not dare to move.
Yet even despite her eventual victory, Chrysalis was becoming impatient. The sheer power of Applejack’s will had now been thrust into her Element and directed at her with its full potential, slowing the beam’s gradual advance. A clean show of strength simply would not do; she would have to rely as always on deception.
Painstakingly shaping her magic, she redirected a tiny fraction of it into a small awakening spell, shooting it off into the fields where a hundred of her loyal minions conveniently sat unconscious. To her malevolent glee, two Changelings awoke and, taking in the situation, began to sneak up silently behind her enemy, ready to take her down from behind. Chrysalis smiled and closed her eyes…
…which prevented her from noticing those same two minions crashing directly into her face, straight from Applejack’s back hooves. The last thing that she saw before blacking out was the mare reared up, her hooves in the air, emanating a ball of golden fire.
Applejack stared down at the unconscious Changeling Queen, completely befuddled as to what to do with her. It had been fifteen minutes since she had knocked her out with her own two minions, who also lay out cold on the ground a couple feet away. None of them would wake up anytime soon.
She had already found all of her family, who were—to her great relief—all perfectly fine. They had been imprisoned in disgusting gooey sacks in the barn, but all of them seemed to be okay—even though they were clearly asleep, all of them were breathing normally, and something within her—likely the Element—told her that they would be just fine.
She had already removed the Element of Deception from around Chrysalis’s neck, taking great care to remove it—the Element of Honesty seemed to know exactly what to do, though, forming a claw from golden magic and carefully plucking the necklace from its owner and locking it in a box of translucent orange magic, then surrounding it with chains of gold. Finally, the very same claw had tapped the Changeling Queen twice on the muzzle, before fading into the air like a wisp of golden wind.
It took a minute or two for Chrysalis to react; her eyes opened gradually and blearily, blinking once, then twice, before fully opening. Immediately they stiffened into a glare. “Well, what now, Element of Honesty? Going to shoot me back out into the Badlands, just like last time?!” the Queen shot, her words hot bullets slicing through the air.
Applejack paused a moment, confused. She hadn’t really thought ahead as to what she would do with Chrysalis once she caught her; that was the least of her worries and she had assumed that the Element would...well...just shoot her off into the Badlands where nopony had to deal with her. Now, she had no idea.
The gold-coated farmpony sighed and shrugged, thinking a minute before responding, “Well…honestly, I don’t really know. I never really thought about it before, but I guess it’d be a little bit harsh to beat you up when I already took your Element. Shucks, I…I dunno.”
Chrysalis stared up at her mortal enemy incredulously, her eyes wide open in shock. “What?!”
“You heard me; I said that I don’t know. Not gonna lie, I am mad that you trussed up my family like you did, but well…I dunno. It just doesn’t seem right to hurt y’all when you’re all beaten like this.” Applejack pressed her hoof against her chin, clearly thinking hard. “I guess I should probably take you to Princess Celestia, but that can probably wait until all the excitement in Canterlot dies down.”
“So, let me get this straight: We are mortal enemies. I brought an army of hundreds of my subjects here to invade your home, impersonated and imprisoned your family, and…you’re just going to take me to Princess Celestia and that’ll be it?” asked Chrysalis, nearly indignant.
“Yup.” she responded.
“And…you’re not going to take revenge on me, or any of my subjects?”
Applejack shrugged. “Well, you didn’t hurt my family any more than you had to, so I thought I’d go ahead and return the favor.”
Now it was Chrysalis’s turn to pause and think. She had never really encountered this problem before, dealing with subjects or enemies. It almost bothered her, that somepony she thought was an enemy was acting so…friendly.
And yet…she kind of liked it.
“So…Applejack,” she began, feeling the extremely alien tone of words spilling past her lips, with not a trace of malevolence within them, “…what were you saying about my…‘family’?”
Applejack smiled and looked down into the eyes of her enemy, seeing no anger, only curiosity. They had plenty of time before everything would die down…why not chat for a little while?