Darkness. Nothing but darkness was seen by anybody. No one knew where they were, how they got there, or if they’re even clothed. But one thing was for sure. Their hands were tied behind their backs.
“Aquila! I can’t see a godsdamn thing! You know I’m afraid of the dark!” Redik’s voice says in a panic. It echoes through the room signaling that it was fairly small.
Aquila begins to chuckle lightly from wherever he was at. “Actually I didn’t.”
“Shit... well I don’t care about that right now! What’re we going to do?! I can’t see and my nose itches and I can’t scratch it and my butt hurts and-” clearly he was beginning to panic.
“Just calm down, I need to think!” Aquila barks at Redik before he could go into a loop. He made sure to keep calm and he struggles a bit in his bindings. He stops for a seconds and remembers something. “Applejack! Are you in here?!” he calls out rather loudly.
A quick jump of energy, as if something shifted, sounds throughout the blackness. It is followed by a rather startled panting. “Ah’m right next ‘ta ‘ya...” replies a rather groggy Applejack. She couldn’t tell what was going on right now, since she could see nothing but blackness.
“Aquila! I can’t breathe!!!” Redik let out and began to hyperventilate and squirm around.
“Andare avanti e mi assicurerò che non si può respirare!” Aquila snaps at Redik in frustration. If these bindings weren’t on his wrists, he’d have slapped Redik in the face.
“SPEAK NORMAL YOU DAMN FOREIGN ROBOT!” Redik screams at the Italian. Now was clearly not the time to do what he hates most.
Applejack sighs in annoyance through the panicking that she was experiencing. Even though the severity of the situation is smashing into her like a train, she tries her best to stay as calm as possible. “W-... will y’all be quiet for a minute!?” she yells, both annoyance and panic mixed together in her tone. This seriously isn’t helping her headache.
“Yeah Aquila you should listen to her, while I’m over here dying you’re just sitting there like a jackass!” Redik tries to blame the noise on someone else, when he’s been the one flailing about like a ‘jackass’.
Aquila growls lightly and manages to pinpoint directly where Redik was. Right behind him. He jerks his head back and he hits something, though he wasn’t completely sure if it was Redik.
“OW MOTHERFU-!” Redik screams in pain before he smacks the floor face first. He is going to have a lump on the back of his head for a while now.
“Bullseye.” Aquila says quietly. “Okay, we need to figure a way out of this... wait a second!” he remembers the hidden blades around his wrist. He opens up his palm but nothing happens. “Figlio di una cagna...” he sighs in frustration. Apparently they weren’t there so whoever their captors were, took them.
“What in the name’a Celestia is goin’ on!?” Applejack asks rather blatantly as she tries, as helplessly as it may be, to get free of the bindings. Quickly, she stops, and lets out a sigh of defeat. “This is jus’...” she then mumbles something which is unable to be understood under her breath.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been in this situation numerous times Applejack. I could get us out of here if this blindfold wasn’t here...” he does his best to reassure her. But right now it was more important to get out than have a morale boost. So he took a second to think. “Wait! I have an idea. Redik, see if you can burn through your bindings.”
“I’m not ready to talk to you yet.” Redik whimpers on the floor. He has no way of getting up so he uncomfortably turns his head so his nose would stop hurting.
“For Celestia’s sake Redik, see if’n ‘ya can do it or once we get outta this, Ah’m gonna buck ‘ya right in ‘yer naughty bits, ‘ya hear!?” Applejack snaps, jerking her head in the direction of the grouchy twelve-year old Wizard’s voice.
“Hey, it’d be the first bit of action I’ve gotten in a few years.” Redik comments snarkily, he’d smirk if anyone could see it.
“What’re ‘ya, some kind’a masochist!? C’mon, just try already!” Applejack orders, obviously being agitated with the childlike man.
“No, that was my uncle.” he shamelessly says. “But I’ll do it.” He begins to shuffle his wrists around to get his right palm facing outward. He concentrates for a second and a small flame emerges from his hand. It quietly burns through the rope, but it quickly began to grow. “Uh-oh!”
“Uh-oh?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘UH-OH’?!” Aquila begins to hop around in his spot a little bit to turn himself so he could face Redik’s direction. “IT’S JUST A TINY LITTLE FIRE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘UH-OH’?!”
“KEEP YELLING AT ME AND IT’S GONNA BE A BIG ‘UH-OH’! NOW QUIT BEING A BUTTBAG AND SHUT UP!” Redik retorts at Aquila as he attempts to concentrate. After a few seconds the rope snaps and he nearly leaps to his feet. He balls his fists and walks to where Aquila was sitting, he socks Aquila in the face as hard as he can, just out of nowhere.
Aquila takes the hit, unknowing that it was even coming. “Oh you’re going to get it now.” Redik didn’t realize Aquila’s head was right at crotch level. Aquila jerks his head forward and hopes he hits something. He felt the hit.
And it sounded like it hurt.
“...” Redik falls down to his knees and grabs his berries, they were on fire. “Not my factories man! That’s fighting dirty!”
“DON’T YOU LECTURE ME ABOUT FIGHTING DIRTY!” Aquila yells at him. “Now get this blindfold off me so I can kick your ass!”
“No!” Redik retorts.
“WOULD THE BOTH OF YOU STOP?!?!” Applejack screams at the very tip-top of her lungs, as sternly as she possibly could. Even if either of them attempted to talk back, Applejack quickly cuts them off. “Redik, get to your darn feet already and jus’ set me free first! Then you can deal with Aquila. Ah don’t care if he ‘kicks your ass’, just DO IT, ‘ya baby!”
“Yes ma’am...” Redik disappointingly says. He stands back up, slowly because his crotch was still sore. While making his way over to her he was thinking of all the things he could be doing right now instead of being here. He brings his hand to the bindings that held Applejack’s hooves and he lights a fire to them until they snap. Afterwards, he removes her blindfold and sighs.
“Thank ‘ya.” Applejack stretches out her hooves, and sighs, clearing her throat. She gets out of her chair, and stretches out a bit more. She turns to face Redik, and says, “Sorry ‘bout yellin’ at ‘ya, Ah just didn’t know another way ‘ta get ‘yer attention Redik. An’... are ‘ya okay?” she asks.
“Forget it, I get yelled at by Aquila so much it’s practically talking to me now.” he says to her and smirks.
“I’m right here you know.” Aquila comments, he has a busted lip from that punch and was beginning to get annoyed. “Now get me out.”
“But I’m talki-”
“Now.”
“Fine.”
After Redik gets Aquila free from his bindings and blindfold. They begin to take notice of the room they’re in. It was like a big metal box with some kind of electric light in the top corner of the ceiling. The door was made of metal, with rivets all throughout it along with a tiny little glass window so guards can peek through.
“Okay, I’ll just get the guards’ attention, kick their asses, and we can sneak out of here.” he plans aloud and heads for the door. He goes to knock on it. But the very yoctosecond in which his knuckle makes contact with the door, a burst of electricity explodes from the door in some kind of nova. In turn, Redik is sent barreling across the room, smashing into the metal wall. He literally saw stars afterwards. “Or maybe we could play ‘Duck Duck Goose’...” was all he could say, in a broken voice.
In response to this happening, Applejack’s jaw falls open in shock. If it weren’t for her shock, and the fact that Redik is likely experiencing a concussion, she would be laughing very hard right now.
“Now’s not the time for your stupid made-up games Redik. We need to figure out a way to get those guards in here. Apparently we can’t be heard from the outside, since you kept screaming like a girl and squealing like a pig.”
“I may sound like a girl, but pudding goes great on a steak...” he couldn’t formulate proper sentences at the moment. He tries to stand back up but doesn’t get much farther than a crouch.
“What in the hay!... What jus’... what jus’ happened...” Applejack thinks aloud, looking back and forth. From the door, to Redik. From the door, to Redik. Again and again, she repeats this, before she shakes her head, her eyes rolling about their sockets. She really didn’t expect that to happen.
“Well... it all started when I was a sperm... and I let the rabbits out of the gate and his pee was blue.” Redik weakly attempts to answer Applejack.
Applejack takes a few seconds to render the sheer stupidity of what Redik just said. She responds with a deadpan, “... Alrigh’ that is just bucked-up.”
“Idiota...” Aquila facepalms at Redik and returns to thinking of an escape plan. So far though he was coming up short. He looks around and peeks through the window, he notes one of the guards leaning against the wall. And that the wall is all metal. Maybe if they could hit the wall hard enough, the guard would feel the vibrations. “I have an idea! And Redik’s going to have to use his head!”
“But Akilla! Polar Bears are purple and my head is bacon pie!” Redik says as he manages to stand-up, as he spoke his gibberish he made his way to Aquila and poked him in the chest. He almost appears drunk. It sounds like it too.
“Redik, sit down and shut up.” Aquila says as he grabs Redik’s shoulders and forces him to sit back down in one of the chairs. “Okay Applejack... we need to figure out how to hit the front wall hard enough to grab their attention. Any ideas?” he asks while returning to the door and examining it.
“Well, Ah can buck it as hard as Ah can. Probably not a good idea though, ‘could hurt mahself ah might bad. But what Ah was thinkin’ also, is that we could pretend to be tied up’n stuff, an’ wait ‘till someone comes in ‘ta get us, then we get the drop on ‘em.” she suggests, looking to the assassin.
“That was part of what I was planning, but the issue is the fact of the wait. You and I both know Redik doesn’t have that kind of attention span.” he replies while giving a ‘you should know’ look.
“Yeah, yeah...” Applejack nods. “Maybe we can promise him somethin’ that he wants,” she shivers as she says this. “-in return for him cooperatin’ when he’s up on his feet?”
“There is no way in hell that anyone is going to come in contact with his pants. I know that’s what he wants... and that thing called ‘bacon’.” he nearly shudders at the thought after he says those words. If Redik wanted it, bacon was probably horrible.
“Bakin’?” Applejack squints at the word as she misunderstood it. “Well Ah can bake ah whole ton’a things, like apple pies, fritters, you name it.” she smiles, rather proudly as she speaks.
“No no ‘bacon’ b-a-... uh...” Aquila stops to think for a second, “I’ve never seen it in writing but I imagine it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“Ohhh, bacon! Y’know, the gryphons are meat-eaters. Ah’d never touch the stuff, but gryphons do have somethin’ called bacon, Ah think.” Applejack tells him.
Redik freezes for a moment and sniffs the air. “Mmmm that’s like...” he sniffs again. “Is that bacon?” he sniffs once more “Hey guys, I smell,” he takes a huge whiff “Do you smell bacon? Bacon, anyone?!” He stands up quickly and grabs Aquila by the collar, “Oh, that’s bacon! Bacon! Who’s got the bacon?! WHERE’S THE BACON?!” he starts shaking Aquila around furiously.
“What?! I don’t smell anything!” Aquila exclaims as he gets shaken around. He manages to catch the smell though, he takes a sniff of his own. “Wait... I think I smell it too.” He shoves Redik off of him and goes to the door’s window. One of the guards was eating lunch.
“BACON!” Redik yells and charges the door.
“NO REDIK WAI-!” was all Aquila could let out before Redik slams into the door and gets electro-zapped again. He goes flying back and slams into the wall behind him, even harder than last time. This causes the whole room to vibrate, and the guards take notice.
Aquila begins to curse over and over again as he quickly runs to grab Redik’s limp body and throw him in a chair. He didn’t have time to adjust and Redik’s hands were resting on his crotch.
Aquila quickly gets in his own chair and puts his hands behind his back, then he forgets his blindfold and says things Applejack couldn’t understand. He grabs the blindfold and loosely wraps it over his eyes.
Quick as a cat, the farmpony got into her position, as the plan suggested. She takes her blindfold from the floor and quickly rests it over her eyes, putting her fore-hooves behind the chair. Her heart is racing by now.
The door beeps and slides open. Two guards walk in with metal beat sticks in their hands. One of them waits by the door while the other checks the prisoners. He examines them closely but raises a brow at Redik’s position. “Didn’t we tie them all up?”
“Redik has a way with his hands...” Aquila regrettably tells the guard.
“And how did you know his hands were unbound.” the guard says as he gets in front of Aquila and gets in his face.
“You know, that’s the last place you want to be right now.” Aquila warns the guard and holds back a smirk.
“And why is it that you’re all tie- OH SHI-” was all the guard could say before he was headbutted in the face.
Aquila’s blindfold fell off and he leaps to action. He spots the other guard coming straight for him and almost laughs at the horrible form of this guard. The guard just sends his weapon down at Aquila, the momentum packing some extra punch.
The assassin expertly catches the arm and uses that momentum to throw the guard over his shoulder and into the wall behind him. He then stomps on the face of the upside down guard to make sure he stays down.
Applejack took off her blindfold the second she heard the guard yell out before he was headbutted, to get a better view of the situation. Once the guard fell down, she quickly charges at him and proceeds to whip around and give his head one of her all-famous, powerful Apple Family bucks. The sheer power of the kick sent the guard unconscious, his body falling limp on the floor. She sighs and lands her hooves down.
“Good job.” Aquila compliments Applejack while he walks over to the guard she just kicked. He picks up a couple of his teeth and holds them out for her to take. “A trophy.”
“Heheh, years ‘a applebuckin’. But uh... nah, Ah’ll... Ah’ll pass,” She shakes her head in slight disgust at the so-called ‘trophy’.
“Suit yourself. I can put them to good use though.” he gains a near devilish smile and walks over to Redik’s still unconscious body. He pulls off one of his boots and puts the teeth inside. Then he puts the boot back on and lifts Redik up over his shoulder. Struggling a bit, “Mio dio, you got fat!” he remarks, even though he knew Redik couldn’t hear him.
Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit. “Well, what’re we gonna do now? Ah mean, how are we supposed ‘ta get out?” she asks, looking up at the assassin.
“What me and Redik usually do. Just go and hope we don’t die. Though usually this involves me keeping him from getting something sharp shoved in him. Either way it works so why stop now?...” he waits for a second before he chuckles. “I’m kidding! Though part of that’s true, I always have a plan. Me and Redik are going to take the guard’s uniforms and sail right out of here after I get my gear back. As for you, there’s an air vent in the hallway that you should be able to fit through. That would be your best bet, unless you think you can stand up straight and say you’re a funny looking monkey.”
“Ah’ll see if’n Ah can squeeze through there, then.” Applejack nods and lets out a small sigh. “Well then, let’s uh... let’s get goin’, then?” she chuckles a little bit.
“First off... we gotta wake up Redik...” Aquila says with a regretful tone. The peace and quiet was soothing, and that’s taking into account the capturing, the beating of the guards, and the fact they were light years away from home.
“Oh great...” Applejack smirks. “Well, ain’t he knocked-out? Don’t ‘ya have ‘ta wait for someone to come to when they’re out like he is?” she asks, as if she knew that was how it was supposed to be.
“No, you just have to think like he does... okay I’ll see if I can get his terminology right...” Aquila sighs and clears his throat. He faces Redik and exclaims, “Hey! Did you guys just see that hot chick walking down the hallway?! I think she was carrying bacon too!” he made sure his voice was a bit higher toned so he wouldn’t sound like himself.
Redik’s eyes shot open and he shoved Aquila out of the way, “WHERE?!” he exclaimed and went for the door.
“Nowhere, Redik.” Applejack says, shattering Redik’s hopes and dreams.
“But... but... but...” was all Redik says before Aquila cut him off.
“Yes yes, we all like butts now we need to get going. Redik strip one of the guards and put on his uniform.” Aquila ‘order’s Redik as he starts to take off his robe.
“Aw gross old man smell!” Redik says as he watches Aquila undress. “Like a horse’s ass!”
“And how do you know what that smells like?” Aquila slyly asks Redik while he begins to clothe himself with one of the guard’s uniforms. They were black with some kind of shirt-vest combination, the vest was thick so it must be for protection. The pants were a dark gray and covered with all sorts of pouches and pockets, probably for ammunition. For a belt they wore a simple utility belt for holding various small items. With it was an attached holster for some kind of gun. Aquila couldn’t tell what it was, it was far too futuristic for him. As for the boots, they were pretty basic black leather ones, meant for easy movement and adaptability to environment.
“We currently live in a world full of multi colored ponies who happen to be naked all the time.” the wizard reminds Aquila.
“You know, that just makes it even more awkward if you’re going around sniffing pony culo.” Aquila barely manages to hold back a laughing fit as he puts the last bits of the uniform on.
“Ah’m standin’ righ’ the hay here, y’all know that right?” Applejack deadpans, a small blush on her face.
“The truth had to come out someti-” Aquila manages to let out before Redik jumps at him and covers his mouth.
“Hey! Let’s not all be too hasty here, I know I’m weird but I don’t go around sniffing the ass of animals.” Redik disclaims himself then removes his hand from the assassin’s mouth. He then sighs and undresses so he can get in the other guard’s uniform.
“Yet you know what they smell like apparently.”
“C’mon, we’re jus’ wasting our time, arguin’ over... ass.” Applejack shakes her head at the two of them, with a sigh. “Redik, y’know the gryphons back in Equestria, well, and the Gryphon Kingdom, actually do have bacon. So Ah can show ‘ya to the market if’n ‘ya want.” she offers.
Redik froze, he’d just finished putting on the guard’s outfit. “... AQUILA GET YOUR SAGGY OLD ASS MOVING WE NEED TO GO!” he orders and nearly shoves Aquila out the door.