Twilight hurried to and fro, throwing whatever would fit in the few suitcases she had. A beaker set here, flasks and note paper in her saddlebags. The librarian-cum-princess was eager and excited to bring as much as she could in one go. If absolutely necessary, she figured that she could always send for emergency supplies. But given the urgency of the letter she received just this morning, Twilight was almost certain that the most important thing to bring were her books: on magic, weather, and farming.
Spike read through the letter yet again, only half paying attention to how he was fitting the plethora of items into the suitcases, much to Twilight’s chagrin. “Say, Twilight…” he muttered, out, not entirely sure what to make of the emergency in Appleloosa. The fact that this came from Princess Celestia made it seem a bit odd, given the circumstances. “...I don’t know about you, but...are you sure this is something that...y’know...is a thing?” He glanced up just as the several suitcases were enveloped in the young alicorn’s magic, made to zip themselves closed regardless of the bulk of items that had been made to fit in them.
With a huff Twilight set the four suitcases down at the front door just as the taxi driver arrived on schedule. “Spike, Zombie Plants are most definitely a thing. A serious thing.” She stated this fact in such a stern and serious way that the dragon only felt sheepish about questioning the matter. Just as the earth pony driver trotted in to grab the last suitcase, Spike hurried over with the letter in claw.
“I don’t mean it like that, Twilight! It’s just that,” Spike hopped mid-sentence onto Twilight’s back and pointed out the line on the letter, bringing it to the pony’s attention. “If this was such a big deal, wouldn’t the princess have taken care of it, herself?”
“But a princess is going to take care of it herself, Spike,” Twilight began to explain as she made her way out of Golden Oaks library. She thanked the driver for holding the door open and continued her way into the cab just after Spike hopped in. “It’s not like there’s going to be disasters happening every week, Spike. I have to take what I can get when it comes to princess duties.”
Spike raised a scaly brow upon hearing that, bracing himself from the initial jolt of the cab moving to the train station. “Wait, what? Then doesn’t mean that...this isn’t that big of a thing?”
Twilight sighed and moped, losing the vigor that she had back at the library almost instantly. “I don’t know, Spike,” she admitted. “Besides hanging out with the girls, giving them advice every now and then, what’s really different now that I’m a princess?”
“Um...you’ve got those wings?”
“Sure I do.” She sighed from that reminder and unfurled a wing to inspect the appendage. It moved and stretched as she wanted just fine, but no matter how much she tried, it still seemed a bit tacked on. She looked outside of the open-air cab to spot a filly and her mother watching them pass by and happily wave. Twilight waved in return, showing a smile that managed to cheer her spirits. Her thoughts turned to the direction the cab driver was taking and she figured that it was still a five minute trot over to the station. Then there was the boarding process with her luggage and getting her and Spike’s tickets, not to mention the train ride itself. She wondered how much a delay would occur if Mootilda and her friends decided to pass across the tracks like they had last week when Celestia sent that emergency letter asking Twilight to get another jar of pickled apples from Applejack.
When was the last time she had been asked to save Equestria? Discord’s usual antics were wearing a little thin and it had been years since anypony had been put into substantial danger. at least, not counting the time that everyone had Pinkie Promised not to talk about. Twilight shuddered to even remember that awful time.
“Uh, Twilight?” Spike shook Twilight’s shoulder, hoping to get her attention after he had listed at least a dozen things and she hadn’t reacted any differently when he started to describe a moldy slab of cheese he found under the couch the other day.
Twilight looked over at Spike with a renewed sense of purpose in her eyes. “Y’know what? I do.” Spike blinked, unsure what exactly she meant by that.
“You do have blue and green splotches?” He asked, wanting to confirm now before jumping out of the cab for his own safety.
“What? No.” Twilight balked and looked at Spike for asking such a peculiar thing before standing up and opening her wings to their full span. “I mean I do have wings!”
“Ok?”
“And I’m going to use them. To fly straight to Appleloosa. Then solve the problem of those Zombie Plants. And become a real princess just as I was destined to!” Following that declaration, Twilight picked Spike up in her magic as she did with her suitcases, then took to the air, surprising the driver just as he turned around to see what the fuss was all about.
“H-hey! Where are you going?” He called out. “What about your fare?”
“Sorry!” Twilight yelped in embarrassment and searched through her suitcases until she found her purse. With expert precision she tossed out the amount of bits down to the stallion, hitting him straight in the jaw and knocking him out flat cold. “S-SORRY!” Twilight hollered in abject terror and flew off as fast as she could with her bags in tow.
It took some effort for Spike to perch onto her back and hold on as she zoomed past mountains and hills until Ponyville was just a dot in the distance. Despite the less-than graceful departure, he hooted in excitement at Twilight’s sudden turn for the adventurous. “Alright! Let’s go save Appleloosa!”
Charged with excitement herself, Twilight couldn’t bottle up her own shout and happy laughter. She dove to gain some speed and spun freely while pulling back up to gain altitude, rolling and dipping to catch streams of air that carried them all the way to the flatlands of Equestria’s southernmost territory.
What would have taken hours lasted a scant thirty minutes, which felt to Twilight even shorter as she freely arced lower to approach the town she was meant to save. Spike, tossing away his well-used air sickness bag after sealing it up, took a deep calming breath in to ready himself for the zombie hordes they were bound to face off against.
The wiry plants growing out of the orange and green landscape soon became groves of trees. But they were bare of the apples that were supposed to be farmed by the frontier ponies and shared with the native buffalo. In the distance, the town square was covered in splashes of red, and lifeless forms had littered the streets. An awful smell of rot reached her nostrils, making her nauseous.
“You ready for this, Spike?” The Princess of Friendship hollered back over the dry winds that kept her afloat between intermittent flaps.
“In a moment!” Spike looked back at the nearest suitcase floating behind them and pulled it closer to retrieve a wooden board with a nail in it before facing forward once more. “Now I am!”
“Good! Because we’re going in!” Descending cautiously, Twilight made sure to pick an open spot that would provide them cover if it was needed. Neither of them had spotted any of the townsfolk or even any signs of life up until they landed, raising their worry all the more. In a single motion Twilight pulled her suitcases up against the side of a house and released them from her magic, freeing her to bring out garden shears, hedge clippers, a rake and a ten-gallon stetson.
As soon as she placed the hat on Spike’s head, making sure that the baby dragon wouldn’t get a sunburn from the high noon sun, Twilight proceeded around the corner to bag a zombie for a sample.
“Well don’t that beat all, is that you, Twilight?” Shears, clippers and rake flew out to the source of the voice but stopped just short of hitting Applejack’s cousin, Braeburn. “...n-nice to see you, too…” the petrified stallion wheezed out as he looked down at the pair of shears that had nearly gelded him that had struck deep into the Appleloosian ground. “...how’s cousin Applejack d-doin’?”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, Braeburn!” Twilight quickly retracted her weapons and hurried over to the pony. “I thought that you were-”
“You’re not a zombie, are you?!” Spike jumped to the ground between the ponies, his piece of plywood at the ready.
“Zombie? Oh shucks, no. Is that what you two are here for?” While still in a bit of shock, Braeburn managed out a chuckle and began to walk away, gesturing for them to follow. “It wasn’t that big a deal,” he started to explain as Twilight and Spike caught up with him. “But it was quite the scare at first, though.”
Walking into the town proper, Twilight could smell the rot that had nearly made her puke even stronger, but gasped at the sight of the piles of apples, pears, dates, and various other indeterminate fruits. Their juices, thick and reddened by the soil, pooled on the streets in a sickening way. Twilight heaved and covered her nose with a wing while Spike pulled out a second air-sickness bag.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty awful smell, ain’t it?” Braeburn chuckled. “But lemme tell ya, they taste a heck of a lot worse! Hoooowee! Just plain awful. Though the plums weren’t that bad, all things considering. The plantains, however, are another story.”
“I don’t understand,” Twilight said in a nasal voice, as she was trying to cover her snout as best she could. “What happened here? How’d you stop the Zombie Plants?”
“Zombie Fruit, actually,” Braeburn said in correction.
“Whatever,” Twilight huffed. “How’d you stop them?”
“Simple. We ate ‘em.”
Twilight gasped in disbelief and exchanged glances with Spike. “All of them?” They both asked him simultaneously.
“Well, I guess not all of ‘em. They mostly ate each other. Bein’ Zombie Fruit, an’ all.” Braeburn pointed out with her hoof the scene of a group of rotting apples gorging upon an unsuspecting bunch of grapes, which simply stood no chance. Their juices splashing about in a violent manner, a pair of ponies quickly made their way to stomp out the last remainders of the undead fruit before they managed to roll away.
Twilight nearly lost it right then and there, but managed to hold on. Spike on the other hand, rushed off to a bush since he had run out of sick bags.
“How...how did this happen?” She managed to ask over the sound of the baby dragon heaving, luckily out of sight.
“A pair of slick salesponies came on by, sayin’ they had a new product that would help us grow our orchards even faster.” Twilight was reluctant to ask but was saved from guessing when Braeburn pointed out a certain pair of red-maned stallions working at the nearby first aid tent, carrying buckets for the dozens of sickly ponies. Obviously not of their own volition, given the looks of ire from several still-healthy ponies keeping watch. “Like I said, they tasted pretty foul,” he explained.
“I get the picture.” Twilight nodded and looked back to Braeburn. “So, is there anything I can do to help?”
“We sure could! Princess Celestia said in her letter that somepony would be here to help with the clean up!”
“Oh. She did?” Twilight asked, falling onto her haunches, quickly falling to despondency like a deflating balloon.
“Yep. Say, did y’all bring that jar of Cousin Applejack’s pickled apples I also asked about?”