“Right here! Right here!” yelled Applebloom, running around an apple tree like a dog chasing its tail.
Applejack had no idea what the little filly was hooting and hollering about. From what little she could make out of Applebloom’s frantic, mile a minute, Pinkie Pie style babbling, it had something to do with a monkey and the apple tree she and Big Macintosh were standing before.
Oh, and apparently, the monkey belched in Applebloom’s face.
But, while Applejack and her older brother could clearly see that the tree was suspiciously barren of any apples, unless you counted the apple cores scattered around it, there was no branch or twig on the tree where they could see a monkey hanging about.
“Right where?” asked Applejack. “All I sees is that some no good varmint done ate a whole tree’s worth of apples.”
“A belching monkey no good varmint!” said Applebloom.
“Girl, I don’t see anything here that says it was a monkey. For all’s I know, it could have been one of them,” she said before pausing and shivering at the memory, “fruit bats, that didn’t get the memo and stay the hay away from here.”
Applebloom’s hooves dug into the dirt as she tried to stop in front of Applejack. However, she lost her balance and landed before her dear sister with her face eating the dirt. Undeterred, she brought her head back up, face to face with the scowling look of Applejack. “But I know what I saw, and I’m telling you it was a monkey!”
Applebloom then did the one thing Applejack could rightly say her sister was talented at. A thing she was so talented at, that if she didn’t know better, she might say Applebloom had gotten her cutie mark in.
Applebloom, made the puppy dog face.
Applejack looked at Big Macintosh, and immediately, she could see his silent resolve cracking. His limbs grew shaky, sweat poured forth from his brow and pooled at the fur there, and his eyes darting to and fro, trying not to stare into Applebloom’s absurdly sad looking eyes yet inexplicably drawn there like a mosquito to sap.
And boy howdy, was Applebloom playing him for a sap.
Applejack, however, having been keen on using this ancient pony form of manipulating others to one’s bidding on Grannie and Mac back when she herself was a filly, was like a brick wall.
Applejack stuffed her hoof into her brother’s mouth before he could try and console their obviously fibbing sister, and said, “Fine. Let’s say for the sake of arguing that the varmint was a monkey, not that I’m saying it was. Then where’d it hop off--”
Applejack suddenly felt something hit her upside her head out of nowhere. It wasn’t so much the force of the something’s impact that made her fall onto her side, as it was the surprise of anything at all impacting her in the first place.
When she got back to her hooves, she got a good look at the something, and determined that it was an apple core. She grabbed it and brought it up to her hooves, Big Macintosh getting a close look too.
“What…where the hay did this come from?”
She turned to her brother, who just shrugged and shook his head.
“Applejack! Macintosh! Look!”
Applejack and Big Mac looked at their younger sister who was now back on her hooves and pointing and jumping at something on a mound of dirt not much taller than a bucket not too far away. Applejack could make out another apple tree on this dirt mound with about half as many apple cores scattered about it.
And there, hanging upside down from the tree’s tallest branch, could she make out the creature her sister was going on about. The creature that, up until now, she had thought Applebloom had made up in a fit of wild, hysteric imagination.
The Monkey. The monkey that had eaten an entire tree’s worth of apples and was about halfway done devouring another tree’s worth of apples.
Applejack’s eyes narrowed.
Several thoughts went through her mind then.
Things like, what the hay’s a monkey doing in Equestria of all places?
Why the hay was it wearing clothes?
Why did it seem to have an orange-red walking stick on its back?
And, of course, where the hay was it putting all of them apples?
However, all of these thoughts took a backseat to the primary thought on her mind at the moment:protecting her precious apple trees. She galloped to the tree, took out her lasso from under her Stetson, and twirled it around in her teeth.
“Why you belching monkey no good varmint!”
With a flick of her head, the lasso soared through the air and wrapped firmly around the varmint’s neck, not deterred by the jutting spikes of its odd mane style. With another flick of her head, she pulled with all of her might and brought the monkey to a screaming crash right at the base of the tree.
She tried dragging it away, but the varmint was a feisty little critter that had dug its hands and feet into the earth and was proving to be as stubbornly resolute as her Grannie was when it came to no-good city folk daring to challenge Sweet Apple Acres.
“Macintosh! Little help here!” Applejack yelled in-between breaths.
*****
Big Mac hesitated for a moment, shooting a confused look to his little sister.
This monkey... thing... wasn't too large and he'd seen Applejack overpower larger animals. Hay, she held the Equestrian National record for cattle roping. There was no way this thing could overpower Applejack...
And yet it was...
“MMM--MAC! Varmint's stronger than it looks!” she grunted, tugging against the rope with all of her might.
With an understanding nod, he came galloping up to her and grabbed a hold of the rope in his teeth as well.
*****
Much to the widening of Applejack’s eyes, even with Big Macintosh’s help, they had only succeeded in budging the varmint an inch when she had surmised her brother’s help would make it budge a mile…and this was Big Macintosh she was thinking about! This was the stallion, so blessed with earth pony strength, that when her sister and her friends tried to get him and poor Cheerilee hitched with a magic love potion, was pulling an ox-cart carrying anvils and entire cottage as though they were was some pretty meager hindrances. Applejack should know, since she was still being forced by the courts to give reparations to the two oxen and Berrypunch for damages.
Yet this here monkey, surprisingly hairless compared to the pictures she vaguely recalled from the school textbooks she had perused so long ago, was holding his own against her AND Big Macintosh in what essentially amounted to a game of tug-o-war!
Nearing the breaking point, Applejack stole a quick glance at her brother to find that he was just as surprised as she was. Unconsciously though, her teeth’s grip slackened.
And that was all it took.
Applejack barely had time to blink when the monkey, in a burst of strength, grabbed a hold of the rope and pulled, not only with enough force to yank it out of her teeth, but to also sweep Big Macintosh off of his hooves and into the monkey’s waiting foot.
The kick sounded like a cannon going off and sent Big Mac off at such an angle through the air that his shadow was growing ever larger upon Applebloom’s frightened face.
“Applebloom!” Applejack yelled out as she galloped towards her little sister and shoved her out of the way with a mild shoulder check.
Before Applejack had time to congratulate herself for such a close save, however, her brother crashed into her, kicking up a small dust devil.
“Applejack! Big Mac!” were the last words Applejack heard her sister cry out before she started seeing apple shaped stars and blacked out.
*****
“Hey! What the heck was that for!?” Goku yelled out. He had gone through several shades of blue in the face when the Stetson wearing horsey had tightened its lasso around his neck like a noose. Even after getting the stupid piece of hemp off of him, he still found his breath adjusting itself.
He looked on as the big red horsey he had just kicked in the face got off of the makeshift cushion the Stetson horsey had proven to be. He noticed that the big red horsey looked down at the Stetson wearing horsey with the kind of concern reserved for a friend or loved one. He took a combat stance when the big red horsey turned its attention to him and stared with a fire in its eyes.
Goku returned the dirty look in full.
The big red horsey dug at the ground.
Goku drew his power pole.
The big red horsey snorted a visible cloud of mist from its nostrils.
Goku stuck out his tongue.
That was it. The final spark to the fire. With a speed Goku thought wasn’t possible for such a lumbering looking lug, the big red horsey galloped full steam toward him.
As surprisingly quick on his feet… errr… hooves…as the big red horsey was though, Goku could tell it was no Mr. Popo. Such was evident when he deftly managed to dodge the big red horsey’s side-ways buck at the last second with not even a modicum of effort.
However, as the big red horsey’s hooves connected against the bark of the apple tree’s trunk, the very one Goku was pulled down from, he did not anticipate being buried in a sea of red delicious deliciousness.
Though, being covered in apples did remind him of a dream he once had, or several, except not so strictly vegetarian.
He popped his head out of the pile of succulent red fruit only to come face to face with the big red horsey, which reared its neck back for a head-butt.
Now, normally, Goku might have been inclined to stay still and let the big red horsey literally ‘knock itself out.’ However, Goku remembered full well that the big red horsey was pretty tough from the way he was pulling that lasso, the way he took his kick to the face, and how he had cleared the tree of apples just now.
Instead, he let the big red horsey drive its face through an after-image.
Watching safely from the top of the apple tree, Goku snickered to himself as he watched the big red horsey look around frantically, as though it had just seen a ghost.
“Hey you!” he yelled out. “Power pole extend!”
Goku made sure that, as the big red horsey looked up, that it got a good look at the end of his orange-red bo-staff right before it connected with its forehead.
*****
Applebloom had seen many frightening things in her brief existence on Equestria. Aside from all of the historical craziness that her sister and the other elements got into that somehow wound up affecting her, like the whole Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Queen Chrysalis fiascos, she had also gotten into lots of trouble with Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle too. Whenever she was out crusading, though, and her and her friends were in a jam, it tended to be her own siblings that saved their flanks from the fire the most.
And now, both of them were knocked unconscious.
“Applejack… Big Macintosh…” she stuttered, frightened to wits end at the horrific smack down that just unfolded before her brilliant gamboge eyes.
The hairless ape stuck the end of his freaky magically elongated stick on the ground next to her brother, stepped off of the tree, and with a shout of, ‘Power pole retract!’ rode down its decreasing length and landed on terra firma.
“Hmmm… that’s odd…” it said as it moved around her brother’s form and poked him with its stick. “I didn’t think I hit it THAT hard. It should have been like a slap across the face for such a tough horsey.”
Applebloom didn’t yet know what her special talent was. She didn’t even yet know what her brother or sister thought it was, though it probably wasn’t flattering, she could reason that much. If Applebloom didn’t know any better, though, it would be in exactly the sort of thing she tended to do in a no-win situation like this.
Running away screaming like a little pansy.
“HALP! HALP! SOMEPONY HAAALLLPPP!” she hollered out as loud as her little lungs could carry as she turned tail and high-tailed it out of there like she was running from a giant dragon that also happened to be a little monkey barely taller than her.
*****
“Huh?” Goku turned his head around to find the little bow wearing horsey screaming and running away like she had just seen a resurrected King Piccolo. He watched her disappear over a rolling hill, scratching his head. “I don’t get it. I just wanted to see if it wanted an apple...”
It was then, that a familiar sensation erupted from his lower end, but it wasn’t that he had to go relieve himself or that he had to scratch his butt. No no. Nothing so pleasant.
Rather, it was the sharp, biting, numbing pain that came whenever someone or something grabbed ahold of his tail.
“But… how…” he said through clenched teeth.
Then, it hit him. It hit him like being hit by Yamcha’s Wolf Fang Fist that first time. Ever so slowly, he craned his neck around to find that the big red horsey had recovered and that its jaw was now firmly clamped down on Goku’s tail. Paralyzed everywhere else, Goku could only sweat as the big red horsey snorted another cloud of mist into his face.
*****
“Thanks a bunch again Twilight,” Fluttershy said as she trotted side by side with the lavender Unicorn on the dirt path leading into Sweet Apple Acres, both carrying saddlebags.
“No problem Fluttershy. It’s the least I can after all, since you’re letting me encounter a completely undiscovered species!”
Twilight stopped for a moment to tap her front hooves together and squee.
Fluttershy smiled at the display.
Earlier that morning, she had made good on the silent promise she had given herself after watching Goku beat the living daylights out of her food supply the night before. She had gone to sugar-cube corner to stock up on sweets and went to the market to stock up on veggies. However, by that point, the saddlebag she was carrying was filled to the brim and she hadn’t even been to Sweet Apple Acres yet. If Goku’s stomach was as bottomless as she thought it was, she knew what she had so far wasn’t enough to satiate his dragon-sized hunger.
However, she had planned for such a thing. With her own saddlebag full, she trotted over to Twilight’s library and told her about the odd little talking monkey.
As Fluttershy expected, the bookish mare was ecstatic at the prospect of meeting him. Twilight barely batted an eyelash when Fluttershy strapped her to any extra-saddlebag she was carrying just in case and asked if she could carry the apples she intended to get for Goku.
After about a minute though, the yelling of a familiar member of the apple clan, broke their peaceful walk.
“HALP! HALP! SOMEPONY HALP!”
Fluttershy and Twilight stopped in their place.
“Oh my. That sounds like Applebloom,” said Fluttershy.
Without another word, Fluttershy galloped further down the dirt path towards the shouting filly, Twilight not far behind. Fluttershy did not expect, however, for Applebloom to come running out of a bush and tackle her into the ground. Not just because she had not anticipated Applebloom’s appearance, mind you, but also because she didn’t know that Applebloom had the physical strength to knock her down in the first place.
Fluttershy cleared away the butterfly shaped stars she was seeing and got up in tandem with Applebloom. “Applebloom, are you—” she began before being interrupted.
“Fluttershy! Twilight! Talking Monkey thing! No hair! Belch in my face! Munching apples! Beat up! AJ! BIG MAC! HAAALLLPPP!”
Her odd rant done, Applebloom ran back through the bush she had come through and disappeared back into the orchard.
Fluttershy looked to Twilight. “Ummm… did you follow any of that… ummm… like… at all?”
Twilight put a hoof up to her chin in thought. “Well, I have been reading a lot of books on how to pick up hastily said sentence fragments lately.”
“Pinkie Pie?” Fluttershy asked.
“Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said. “And from what I could tell, in normal non-hectic speech, what she said effectively translates out to, ‘A talking hairless monkey belched in my face, ate a bunch of apples, and Applejack and Big Macintosh just—’ ”
“Oh no…” Fluttershy said, as her pupils contracted to the size of sand grains.
Despite the weight of her saddlebags slowing her down, Fluttershy galloped off after Applebloom, repeating the words, ‘No no no no no no,’ over and over again.
“Fluttershy! Wait!” Twilight yelled after her.
The canary Pegasus, however, was far too focused on running and saying, ‘No no no no no no,’ to give an adequate response.
When Applebloom stopped in the middle of a clearing, Fluttershy was barely able to slide to a halt and not barrel into her.
There, along with Applebloom, Fluttershy saw something that made her jaw drop. In the shade of an apple tree, Big Mac’s teeth were chomped down on Goku’s fuzzy tail. His right fore hoof continually smashed into the odd little monkey’s face, launching his body a foot into the air only for the elasticity of his tail to bring him back down into Big Mac’s waiting hoof over and over again like a punching bag.
“Yeah! Go Big Mac go! Get that talking belching monkey, beats ponies up, no good varmint!” Applebloom cheered.
Fluttershy could only do one thing at the terrific sight before her.
Yell unusually loud for her usually timid self.
“BIG MACINTOSH!”
The yell was so loud, that any and all birds resting in all trees for a mile around flapped their wings and flees away like their lives depended on it. Big Macintosh looked similarly perturbed.
Fluttershy angrily trotted up to him and said, “How dare you pick on such poor, defenseless creature!” Fluttershy stuck her head right against Big Mac’s, noticing the constriction of his pupils. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Now wait just an apple pickin’ minute!” came a familiar voice.
Fluttershy turned around to find Applejack wobbly getting up from a small hole in the ground that was, oddly enough, rather pony shaped.
“That ‘poor, defenseless creature’ done just knocked me into next week and almost did the same to Big Mac over there! I says he has his whoopin’ coming!”
“Yeah!” Applebloom shouted.
Fluttershy turned back around to see a look of determination come back to Big Mac’s face and see him bring back his forehoof to strike Goku.
“Big Mac! Stop it!” Fluttershy yelled, bringing the look of fear back to his face.
“Big Mac! Clobber him!” Applejack yelled, bringing the look of determination back to his face.
“Don’t clobber him!” Fluttershy yelled.
“Punch him!” Applejack yelled.
“Don’t punch him!” Fluttershy yelled.
“Trample him good!” Applejack yelled.
“Don’t you dare!” Fluttershy yelled.
“Big Macintosh!” Applejack yelled.
Throughout this shouting competition Fluttershy had with Applejack, Big Mac’s eyes darted to and fro in hopeless indecision worthy of MacBeth. That was until, Fluttershy noticed, that Applejack gave her older brother the puppy dog face. Fluttershy, knowing full well the effect this would have on Macintosh, could only bring herself to say, “Clever girl…”
Quickly, she turned back to Big Mac and saw him rear his hoof back again. There was nothing she could do to save Goku’s skin now… unless she decided to resort to drastic measures.
Considering her predicament, it wasn’t even a decision.
She brought out her most powerful weapon, one infinitely greater than any puppy dog face known to equine kind, one that could bring even the mightiest of dragons to its knees before her.
The stare.
She got directly into the path of Big Mac’s hoof, right into his line of sight, and unleashed its unholy, eldritch powers upon the poor stallion.
“Big Macintosh. Stop it. NOW.”
Big Macintosh could not help but be compelled by her words and let Goku plop unceremoniously onto the ground. With that done, he quickly galloped away from Fluttershy and hid behind Applejack, cowering like a school colt.
Fluttershy could hear Applejack and Applebloom shouting out, “Oh come on Big Mac!” but she didn’t care about that. All she cared about was making sure that the latest addition to her collection of animal friends was alright, which he was, much to her surprise. In fact, not long after Big Mac let his tail go, he was so alright that he jumped back to his feet and was massaging his face as though he had just accidentally walked into a street lamp rather than having just been punched dozens of times by a full grown stallion like Macintosh hard enough for multiple bruises to form.
“Owy owy owy!” Goku said.
“Goku!” Fluttershy said, giving the little monkey an embracing hug.
It was then that Twilight finally made it to the clearing, sweating profusely. “You know Fluttershy, I think you’d make it pretty far in The Running of the Leaves,” she said, before bringing her head up and looking at everypony, who all looked back. “Ummm… what did I miss?”
Goku, despite the obvious pain Fluttershy could tell he had, pulled on one of her wings and pointed at Twilight. “Fluttershy! Look! That horsey has a purple carrot glued to its head!”
Twilight did not look amused at that comment.
“Ummm… actually Goku, she’s a unicorn,” Fluttershy said.
“A Unicorn? So that’s a purple piece of corn on the cob glued to her head?”
Fluttershy’s hoof met her face. “No Goku, it’s her—”
“Now hold up!” Applejack interrupted, stomping towards Fluttershy and Goku. “It sounds to me that you’re awfully familiar with this here talking monkey thing what with you calling it by what sounds like its name and all.”
Applejack stopped just a few inches away from Fluttershy’s muzzle and scowled. “Now why is that, I reckon?”
Whatever courage Fluttershy had possessed previously went out the window and fell the length of Canterlot Castle to its doom right then and there. She looked passed Applejack’s face to Applebloom and Big Mac, who sat on their haunches with their fore-hooves crossed over their chests and who bore the same expression as their sister. She looked passed them, to find Twilight shrugging.
Gulping, she looked back at Applejack’s face and said, “Ummm… actually… it’s kind of a funny story, really…”
Fluttershy chuckled nervously.