As the last of the equines from the central lane hit the ground, Big Macintosh wheezed, the weight of the creature expunging a cloud of dust from its landing. The barn’s far exit filled with a mist of dead grass, and the farmhand tied another rope around the muzzle, pulling it from the cradle and away into the draining room.
Applejack dropped another of the iron levers in the corner, lowering panels of wood into the maze of animal pens. They slid into the mess of metal bars and hewn beams, creating a pathway for the next row of ponies and horses to move into the main row. Whilst the other animals had all, by this point, settled, happy to be moved about as they were, Trixie kept herself crushed deep against the corner of her pen, whimpering like a puppy.
The gate of her cage lifted, her ears pricking up as she heard Applejack begin her run down the lane, banging on the back of the cells with a rusty metal pipe to rouse and force the inhabitants into the centre. Trixie kept herself silent and low hoping that by some miracle the farm-girl would miss her and lock her up by accident. She had no such luck however, her bright blue coat and luscious silvery mane indicating her position from ten miles, with a clang and a sharp prod from the gnarled end of the pipe, Trixie budged her way across the floor and into the next holding block.
“Ready AJ?” Big Macintosh called, his voice reverberating throughout the enlarged building. Trixie noticed an odd pause from Applejack, before, she had always responded with immediacy, returning to the end to begin putting the lane through, but this time she had stopped. The unicorn dared a glance out from beneath the hooves clasped over her face, and found Applejack gazing back at her. The cowgirl was unsure of what she was doing, she had put down a great number of animals for this venture, and she had seen the faces of every one of them during and just before she had done so, but something bothered her about Trixie’s.
“I,” Applejack began, choking on her own breath. Her eye faltered with a twitch and her brow furrowed, revealing her reluctance to carry on. As Trixie continued her pathetic leer, Applejack could not put down the thought that continued to beat on her mind anymore, this unicorn trembling before her was not a normal animal. She was no witch, and, despite the amount of time she had spent around Twilight, did not garner much magical knowledge, but Applejack knew that something was very wrong, it was a deep gut feeling that she refused to ignore.
“Applejack?” her brother queried again, concern layering his deep, calming voice. Without thought, Macintosh raised the crank and sealed the final selection of animals into what would be their last prisons, moving away from the controls to see what had entrapped his sister. When he reached her, he gave a sigh, dropping one of his titanic palms onto her shoulder. “Applejack.” He groaned, giving her a gentle shake, “Fer the last time, AJ, it’s just an-”
“But it’s not, Macintosh,” Applejack snapped her brother's words up, throwing his palm off of her collar, “there’s somethin’ wrong with this one. Ah know it.”
“Jus’ cus’ ya like it doesn’t mean somethin’s wrong with it, now come on back up and let’s finish this load.” Macintosh could see that his words had no meaning or effect on Applejack, but grunted and left her side anyway, insistent with his manner that they continue so that he could rest soon. For the first time since she had been a little girl on her own parents’ ranch, Applejack blinked a tear away from her eye and shook her head, grasping the droplet in her coarse leather gloves and disposing of it to the air.
“Ah’m so sorry, sugarcube,” she whispered beneath her breath, unwilling to remove her clutches from Trixie’s fencing as the pony’s eyes widened, realising that her last chance had just disappeared with Applejack forcing herself away from the unicorn’s pen and beginning the long walk back towards the barn's exit. Leaping up from the floor, Trixie lumbered around on her hooves, throwing her legs over the barriers surrounding her and whinnying as loud and intrusively as she could, begging for mercy from the farm workers.
Big Macintosh threw his eyes up and waved his head, all he could see was another animal becoming frantic in its final throes, and knew that his soft-hearted sibling would at least try to talk him out of putting the pony through the line once more. It did not come as Macintosh had expected it though, whilst Trixie wailed at the back of the barn, Applejack gave the sombre tip of her hat and reached down to the floor, wielding the bolt gun as her brother brought the newest of the batch into the last cage that it would see alive.
The carcasses were dragged away by the large, brute of a man, and moments later he would return, his sister pulling a lever, the remaining animals siphoning forward towards inevitability as the gates slammed shut behind them. Although it took the workers two thirds of an hour to sift through ten ponies, to Trixie, the time skipped by much too fast. Each time the pen in front of her opened, she would back against the bars behind her, having to be prodded, and even on occasion hit on the flank to comply, though reluctant.
Eventually, it came down to the last three horses, Trixie being one of them on the very end of the line. Her heart outlined itself in her chest as it beat against her ribs with frightened fervour, her entire body quaked against the anchors of her hooves and her horn throbbed once more with the waves of anguish she had suffered at the hands of Slick. The stress of the situation intensified each of these deep-rooted, instinctive emotions, forcing Trixie into an animalistic foetal position as she rocked back and forth, letting out high whimpers.
From her low vantage point, Trixie hid and watched the last two horses trotting into the final pen, then moments later sliding out of it across the ground on the other side. It was now her turn.
Big Macintosh threw the frayed rope onto a pile of old potato sacks beneath the barn controls, thinking that their job was done. For a moment, Applejack remained silent and rested the bolt gun on a desk strewn with sales papers, sitting in an old ranch chair as she kicked one of the low levers to bring the vast machine into a standby mode. She knew that they had not seen to the azure unicorn, and hoped that her brother’s absent mindedness would prevent him from realising the same.
Applejack took a shattered fountain pen wedged between the slats of the table and withdrew a fresh contract from the makeshift pigeon holes at the back of the desk, scrawling a rough receipt of payment for the acquisition she had made from Slick for later. As Macintosh tidied away some of the business papers onto the shelf above the table, chance had him glance down with curiosity and spot Unicorn in large scribbled handwriting. At that, he gave a short grunt, turned, and wielded a fresh length of rope from a nearby hook.
“We fergot one AJ,” Macintosh said in his usual tender tone, flipping one very important lever up on the control box beside him. In response, Applejack’s anger filtered out through her hand, crunching the receipt up and reducing it to the size of a pea in her visceral grip. Without words, she stood and took the gun from the desk, keeping her hat and head down. The two workers approached the third pen from the end and paused, looking down at the pony lying on its side, sniffling and whimpering to itself. Trixie gasped as she felt the rope fasten around her snout, alleviating her head from the floor to return the leers of her owners.
“If y’all don’t come along by your own accord, ah’ll drag ya into it,” Macintosh demanded, his face stern and hard. Trixie shifted her pitiful eyes to Applejack for any semblance of a saving grace, but the farm-girl said nothing, instead taking one sniffle and moving back to the end of the line. Trixie ascended to her hooves just before Macintosh pulled on her bondage and began to drag herself forward, ears down, head amongst her hooves, tail pinned deep between her legs. As she entered the pen, she felt the slaughtering cradle fit around her limbs, her body hoisting a few inches from the ground whilst Applejack reloaded the bolt gun.
The cold steel of the barrels end was exemplified by the pure terror, Trixie feeling the jolting sting of it as she lay limp in the embrace of death. Closing her eyes, she felt it necessary to concede. She let out a final whine of sorrow, laced with the disappointment she had for Twilight. Trixie was sure that Twilight had done the best she could, and did not harbour any hatred towards her for failing to rescue her, but still, Trixie was mortified that it had come to this.
Within the blink of an eye, this quelled emotion surfaced in its entirety. Her mind spun as the basis of her entire being, her subconscious, shifted its approach to the situation. Her rows of flat teeth ground against each other like the plates of the world as her sadness bubbled up into an unreserved fury. To her brain, flight had not worked, so now it was time at last to try the other approach.
Applejack screamed and dropped the gun into the pen as the bolt shot from it, penetrating the floor beside Trixie’s hovering hooves. She delivered a fierce curled punch to the unicorn’s horn and in the ripples of terrific pain, Trixie released her viciously clamped maw from Applejack’s forearm, holding it with her free hand as she cried in agony at the deep indentations in her flesh. The unmitigated swaths of anguish served only to intensify Trixie’s enraged state as she thrashed about, snarling and wailing with fury until the ribbons holding the cradle snapped and let her down to the floor.
With no barricade to prevent her movement, Trixie fled from the slaughtering cage and made for the wide open barn door. Whilst adrenaline continued to pump through her veins, her anger had subsided, the short burst served only to escape Trixie from immediate danger, and now it was up to her alone to take the opportunity and flee. The unicorn growled and yelped as she tumbled again to the floor, her uncooperative body failing her as she plunged into the masses of flat, dry hay covering the ground.
Trixie howled in denial as the fingers of rough, leathered hands entrenched themselves into her flanks and pulled her up to her legs again, she felt her back end nestle between Macintosh’s thighs as his dominating arms climbed across her body, clamping around her neck to keep her still and steady. The unicorn choked and coughed as the air refused to move through her throat, tears of suffocation draining from her tightening eyes.
“AJ! The bolter!” Macintosh yelled as he stubbornly clung onto the mare. Applejack’s own rush of energy allowed her to disregard her crushed arm for the time being, she ripped the bolt gun from the ground and forced the metal rod back into its chamber, approaching her brother and the pony with a trembling clutch on the weapon. With efficiency that would make a trained elite marksman blush, she emptied the powder chamber, whipped a fresh load into it, cocked the bar, and pulled back the hammer.
Taking aim, Applejack paused for a fleeting moment. Her brother screamed at her to pull the trigger, but her humanity prevented it, her senses were deadened, all she could see was Trixie shivering with true horror in Macintosh’s hands, begging with just her eyes for mercy. As the beast of a farm worker shifted focus to his sister again, Trixie abused the lull of his power and slipped from his grasp, bent down on her front legs, and in a flash of full control, launched her back legs up into the air. Free of Macintosh’s imprisoning grasp, Trixie leapt forward towards the freedom that the open door before her promised.
Her chin met the hard marble floor, a twinge in her front right leg snapping beneath her as she galloped. In a rolling heap, Trixie collapsed and ground to a halt along her side, ceasing all movement for a moment as the feeling of what had happened caught up with her. Behind, Applejack looked over her brother as he lay on the ground, his hands planted between his thighs, muffling curses into the floor. With no more hesitation, she retrieved her double barrel shotgun from the shelves and loaded it with a pair of shells. The intimidating, very real weapon loaded, Applejack raised it, locking the iron sights onto the battered unicorn.
Helpless, Trixie wriggled away and towards the corner of the barn. She knew that crawling out towards the field would be useless, in fact she knew that whatever she did would be useless. Unable to walk, the unicorn wept in silence, staring at the floor as she awaited execution.
“Applejack! NO!” a light voice screeched, but Applejack had already pulled the trigger. In a mist of dark smoke, the farm girl heaved, wanting to vomit as Twilight threw herself into the firing line, wrapping herself around Trixie.