Eight days. It had been eight days since Twilight had used the spell that had transformed her back into a pegasus pony, and still she had the undeniable craving for the juice of plump, scarlet, tantalizing apples.
That wasn’t the only thing that was different, either. Fluttershy was often up late at night to feed her nocturnal critter friends, often in a drowsy, lumbering state expressing her exhaustion. But for the past seven nights, she had felt more…awake at night. Her ears twitched with every whistle of wind, and her wings felt tense, ready to fly at any moment. Her intelligence began to fog, giving way to an animal-like instinct to suck the juice from fruit.
Something was wrong with her. Something was very, very wrong.
“Something is very, very wrong,” Twilight remarked, and Fluttershy started, jerking backwards as she snapped out of her daze.
“Did you figure it out?” she managed to squeak, allowing her mind to slowly recover from the sudden shock and settle into the reason she had come to the library in the first place, after having been cooped up in her cottage for a week trying to make her predicament go away by simply ignoring it. In short, it didn't exactly work out.
Twilight levitated the book down back onto the table, mouth curved in a jagged frown. Fluttershy could practically see the gears working in her mind as she began to pace in a slow circle. “No…no, I haven’t. It just doesn’t make any sense! I correctly used the radiation spell on you, which should have cleared all vampire fruit bat instincts from your mind instantly, but you say—”
“They’re still there,” Fluttershy confirmed half-heartedly.
Twilight shook her head. “It’s impossible. It’s absolutely impossible! There is no way…” Her ears drooped. “How could it have failed? It wasn’t incomplete, not at all! The only possible explanation is that you already had vampire fruit bat blood in you, or some other kind of bat blood, but that’s also impossible….wait, none of them bit you, did they?”
Fluttershy shook her head and bit her lip, feeling alarmed by the mere idea of a sweet little bat biting her. Sure, sometimes when creatures got a little upset they would nip, but to bite a pony on purpose? How could Twilight even conceive such an idea?
The pegasus watched her friend pace back and forth, hooves tapping on the wooden floor. Back and forth, back and forth, then Twilight muttering under her breath and occasionally stopping to scribble something down on a piece of parchment, then more pacing. A never-ending cycle. Though she had no ideas about how to fix their current predicament, Fluttershy was starting to feel a little out of place, and Spike, currently at Rarity's, wasn't even here for her to converse with.
Maybe staying with Twilight wasn’t the best idea. Maybe she should just let Twilight do her own thing. Fluttershy squeaked under her breath that she was going outside for fresh air – though she doubted Twilight heard her anyways – and excused herself, stepping outside into the blustery day.
It was a regular day in Ponyville. The wind had kicked up a bit more than it usually did, and Fluttershy had to struggle not to be blown away by the sheer force of it – a sure sign that autumn was in full swing and that the Running of the Leaves would be held soon, an event she adored to watch. Not to take part in, of course. The stress would make her crack under the pressure!
Curiosity overtaking her, Fluttershy turned around to look back at the library, placing one hoof on the window, rubbing it to clean it ever-so-slightly, and squinting as she peered through. Sure enough, Twilight was in the same spot she had left her in, still pacing and muttering to herself.
Turning away from the window, the pegasus mare rolled her eyes and began to walk – where to, she didn’t know. Somewhere else. Perhaps the market, where she could do some shopping. But that could be a bad idea...
Her hooves ended up carrying her to Sweet Apple Acres - an even worse idea. Or maybe they were intending to carry her home, but her mind drove them elsewhere. It didn’t really matter in the end, except that she was at the farm now, and it would be rude to simply stand outside and gawk, after all, so Fluttershy trotted up to the barn and raised her hoof to knock, trying her hardest to ignore all the delicious, juicy apples hanging behind her...Oh, please let Applejack be in the barn...
The friendly call came from behind her. Of course. “Howdy, Fluttershy!”
Though she was more annoyed than startled, the pegasus still had a sharp intake of breath as she turned to face the orange earth pony trotting up to her with a barrel of shiny red apples on her back. “Oh, hello, Applejack…”
Applejack’s grin spread the length of her muzzle. “Ah sure am mighty glad ya stopped by. Ah’ve been meanin’ to call ya down here, but Ah keep forgetting, what with the harvesting of the new apples an’ all.”
“Is that so?” Fluttershy smiled nervously, attempting to ignore the saliva rapidly forming in the corners of her mouth by staring up at the light blue sky swirled with cotton-puff clouds. “How nice of you.”
Applejack nodded, shifting her weight a little bit so that the basket wouldn’t fall. The slight movement made Fluttershy’s gaze fall and meet the basket again, and she licked her lips, already feeling the fangs she had come to hate slip from their hidden sheaths. Her mind was fogging over, and her hunger was intensifying…she hadn’t even known she was hungry…
“Ah’m going to take you to see how the fruit bats are doing!” Applejack announced loudly. “Just follow me and Ah’ll take ya there – Ah think you’ll love it.”
Blinking rapidly, Fluttershy nodded, nervously smiling and slipping into place a little ahead of the farm pony. The fangs slipped back into their hidden sheathes, and her mind cleared. Just don't think about the apples. Don't think about the apples. Don't think about the apples...
The walk, though it must have only taken a few minutes, could have taken years, especially if one is trying to ignore the bountiful amount of fruit surrounding them on every side.
Fluttershy hadn't even known apples had such a strong scent.
The grey bat rested upside-down on the branch, staring out at the trees surrounding him. He had a colony of fellow vampire fruit bats that got along relatively well. He had a whole section of an apple orchard for said vampire fruit bats. But he was unhappy. And he wasn't quite sure why.
Distressed by this thought, the bat reached out to snatch a piece of apple hanging next to him but was slightly shocked to discover it had already been whipped out of his grasp. It was a darker furred bat, one he didn't know particularly well; the bat stuck out his tongue at him and stuck his fangs into the apple, absorbing the juice with an idiotic grin on his face.
Irritated, the grey bat flipped right-side up on the branch. 'That doesn't bother you?'
The black bat looked at him with apple juice still on his chin, confused. 'What?'
'You just took my food. And you don't even care.'
The black bat rolled his dark, beady eyes and snorted. 'Am I supposed to care?'
The grey bat crossed his arms and shook his head sadly. 'My point exactly.'
He didn't even know why he was thinking of such things, honestly. All his life, he had been exactly like that black bat - a mindless fruit gobbler, willing to take another's piece of food for his own personal pleasure. But now he was finding a problem with it? Perhaps he had sucked on a bad apple last night. That had to have been it. Satisfied with this result, the bat curled up on his perch once again and closed his eyes.
The thoughts didn't seem to leave his head. What was messing with him? Every fruit bat in the history of fruit bats ever had been uncivilized and rude and grabby, and his colony shouldn't be an exception. Their purpose was to suck the juice from the fruit and spread the seeds, and that was it. There was no other special thing they were supposed to do in life.
But eight days ago they had been forced to do other things. They simply hadn't wanted to eat apples anymore.
The grey bat knew that for that day, they hadn't had a purpose. And if you have no purpose, what are you, exactly?
Big thoughts for a little bat. He released a breath of air and tried to stop thinking, but the thoughts just kept on rolling. Maybe, if it was possible for them not to eat fruit, fruit eating was not their purpose. And if fruit eating wasn't their purpose, maybe they weren't supposed to be grabby and rude and uncivilized. Maybe they could become the first respectable fruit bat colony.
The bat actually made a chuckling noise out loud. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. That was impossible. Yes, he had sucked on a bad apple last night for certain. To even come up with such an idea was outrageous in its own right! After all, the colony didn't even have a queen! Everybat knew that a respectable colony had to have a queen to lead them.
None of the females in this colony were even close to being qualified, anyways. The grey bat sighed. There really was never any doubt his plan wouldn't work, but it was worth a thought. He closed his eyes, preparing for sleep...
And then there were voices, and they were coming closer to the orchard. The bat opened one eye to see the orange pony that he didn't like - the one who always called him an ugly, stupid pest, and the yellow pony that he did. She was the one, he knew, that had convinced the orange one to give the bats their orchard.
"They're all hidden up in there, happy as can be," the orange mare announced loudly. She seemed to yell unnecessarily a whole lot of the time, and the bat didn't really find it very pleasant.
"They still have enough fruit?" came the softer voice.
"Plenty of it, Ah'd say! We did go an' give 'em a sixth of the orchard at yer request, after all."
The yellow mare tilted her head and stared at the apples. The grey bat found this quite odd behavior for a pony, but decided to let it go. Ponies did awfully strange things. "Enough fruit," the pony repeated in a dreamlike tone, but then shook her head rapidly and stared at the ground. "Are they getting along?"
"Well," the orange pony said, scrunching her muzzle into a frown, "No. Still stealin' food from each other an' all that stuff. But it's in their nature, Fluttershy, so you shouldn't worry yer head over it."
It's how we are, the bat reminded himself.
But still the yellow mare looked displeased, head tilted to one side as she stared up with teal eyes confused and wistful into the trees. The bat had seen a lot of ponies in his life, and that wasn't how most ponies looked when they looked at fruit-gobblers. Especially not fruit gobblers in an orchard.
"Well, Ah'd best be getting back," the orange earth pony commented. Loudly. "Wanna come along back with me, Fluttershy, or stay here a bit longer?"
"If you don't mind," the pegasus pony whispered, "I'd like to stay here."
Then they were alone - just the pony and the bats.
The one known as Fluttershy spread her wings and soared upward, into the orchard so that she could stare around at all of the assembled bats watching her, wondering why she was there. She frowned. "You need to stop being mean to each other."
One of the bats screeched. 'It's what we do, sister. There ain't no changing it.'
Fluttershy's eyes grew wide at the insult, and then narrowed into little slits. "You want to play that game, huh? Well, mister -" Slowly she trailed off, staring behind the bat at the apple hanging above it. Her eyes grew wide; saliva began dripping from the cornera of her mouth.
The bats gasped. Yelped. Screeched in confusion. Because the pony in front of them was not a pony at all, but a bat - or part of a bat - or part of a bat of a bat, because she hadn't completed the transformation yet...but her eyes were no longer teal. They were a pale scarlet.
Fluttershy seemed to realize this as well; she shook her head rapidly, allowing the saliva to drip down to the ground and her eyes to return to their normal color. "I...I think I'd better go now," she whispered quietly, before flapping her wings as fast as they could take her away from the orchard.
As she left, many pairs of bright red eyes trailed her in complete silence.
As soon as she was out of sight, all the bats burst into chaos.
'Did you see that? That is just unnatural! She should be destroyed!'
'I thought it was kind of neat. If we add a pony to our colony, she can add more ponies, right?'
'No she can't, stupid.'
The grey bat, however, hung on his perch silently. He only had one thought going through his head, and the thought was making him tremble all over with excitement.
I've found our queen.