Cheerilee's Thousand

by xjuggernaughtx


Date Thirty-Nine - Terms of Ensnarement

Applejack glowered at the three fillies. “Now, what in tarnation made y’all think this was a good idea?”

“Uh…” said Apple Bloom.

Scootaloo poked at the dirt with her hoof. “Well…”

Sweetie Belle just swallowed loudly.

Without taking her eyes from the fillies, Applejack waved her hoof in the vague direction of two ponies swinging ten feet in the air. “Somepony could have gotten hurt!” She frowned deeply at her sister. “I thought we taught you better than this, Apple Bloom.”

Overhead, Cheerilee made several labored grabs for the rope, finally catching hold of it on the third attempt. Sweat beaded on her brow as she tried to undo the snare holding her ankle. She’d long ago lost the feeling in that hoof, and her own body weight was working against her. The more she struggled, the tighter the knot became. Cursing under her breath, she finally relaxed her burning stomach muscles and simply dangled from the tree.  

Beside her, Trailblazer swung slightly in the breeze. “Well, you said you’d like to hang out more,” he said with a shrug. “I told you that a hike would help you see the forest in a whole new way.”

Cheerilee tried to scowl, but snorted instead. “You’re not helping.”

Applejack pulled herself up to her full height, towering over the cringing fillies. “Now, explain yourselves! If this isn’t the most hare-brained, cockamamie—”

“Could you just cut us down?” Cheerilee said, rubbing her temples.  

Applejack held her hoof up. “In a minute. First, we gotta make sure these fillies understand what they did was wrong.” Her brow furrowed. “Of all the ponies I know, I woulda thought you’d get how important it is for young’ums to learn a lesson. You bein’ a teacher and all.”

“They can learn when the blood isn’t pooling in our heads and my ankle isn’t falling into a coma!” Cheerilee said, pointing to the rope snare that was cutting off her circulation. “Just get us down!”

Applejack snapped her head back to the fillies. “You heard her! Y’all better start explainin’ things so we can get them down!”

Cheerilee waved her hooves under her head. “That’s not what I—”

Applejack stomped a hoof. “So you three grab a patch of grass and start talkin’!”

They sat.

They talked.

~~~

Apple Bloom scratched behind her ear. “You don’t remember where they are?”

“Nope,” Scootaloo replied, smiling broadly. “That’s the good part! I figure that if we don’t know where they are, we’ll probably stumble into them when we’re looking!”

Sweetie Belle sat quietly for a moment, and then arched her eyebrow at Scootaloo. “Uh, how is that good, exactly?”

“Well, we’ll either get cutie marks for trapping or for getting caught in traps!”

Apple Bloom’s ears perked up. “Hey, yeah!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sweetiee Belle said, holding her hooves up. “Why would we even want ‘getting caught in traps’ cutie marks?”

Scootaloo shrugged. “I don’t know, but we may as well give it a shot.”

“Yeah!” Apple Bloom said, jumping to her hooves. “They’re all set up anyway. We may as well go lookin’ for ’em.”  

Scootaloo threw out a restraining hoof. “No, not like that! We’ve got to not look for them.”

Sweetie Belle’s face crinkled. “Um… I don’t get it.”

“It’s simple, you guys!” Scootaloo hopped up, her wings flapping. “If we want to get caught, we can’t look.”

Apple Bloom grinned. “Oh, I get it! We gotta just run around all over the place without lookin’ where we’re goin’!”

“Exactly!” Scootaloo put her hoof out. “We’re sure to get caught! Cutie Mark Crusaders Trap Specialists...”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle added their hooves. All three took a deep breath.

“...Go!”

~~~

Sweetie Belle stumbled, plowing into Apple Bloom’s side.  

“Hey, watch out!”

“Sorry,” Sweetie Belle said, massaging her hoof. “It’s just that we’ve been walking around this forest forever. I’m tired.”

Apple Bloom nodded and plopped down next to the unicorn. “Yeah, me, too. Scootaloo, we gotta sit down.”

“Another rest?” Scootaloo stared at them over her shoulder. “We’ll never find them if we keep stopping all the time!”

“Well, you were the one who wanted to take the last break!” Sweetie Belle said, frowning. “I wasn’t tired then.”

Apple Bloom held her hooves about between them. “We ain’t got time for arguin’. We’ll just sit here for a minute and then start lookin’ again.”

“But what if somepony runs into the snares first?” Scootaloo said, glancing around nervously.

Sweetie Belle switched hooves and put her shoulders into kneading it. “Oh, nopony comes out here besides us, anyway. Think about it. We’ve never seen—”

TWANG!

The three fillies sat straight, their ears swiveling toward the sound of stretched rope.

TWANG!

“The snares!” they cried in unison. Leaping up, they ran toward the commotion.

~~~

“Apple Bloom, I guess I got to keep a closer eye on you from now on,” Applejack said, her scowl deepening. “I mean, y’all did the right thing by runnin’ right back to the farmhouse and comin’ clean, but—”

Apple Bloom held her hoof up tentatively. “But we didn’t come to the farmhouse to—”

Applejack swatted her sister’s flank with her tail. “Shush. You know better than to interrupt your elders. Why, when Granny Smith hears—”

“Applejack, could you please continue this later?” Each word felt like a hammer to Cheerilee’s tender skull.

“I’m sorry, Cheerilee.” Applejack paced, alternating between staring up at the two dangling ponies and the three shamefaced fillies before her. “These three will be gettin’ on that right now while—”

Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “Applejack—”

“Not a word.” Applejack tipped her hat back to give the fillies the full strength of her disapproval. “Once Rarity hears of this—”

Scootaloo bit her lip, then jumped up to joined Sweetie Belle. “No, you don’t understand!  There’s—”

“Oh, I understand plenty! I understand that certain fillies are—”

TWANG!

The three fillies gulped as Applejack flew into the air, her hoof tightly snared. They took a step back as her battered hat floated down and landed at their hooves.

Trailblazer offered Applejack a wry grin. “Welcome to the party!”

“Of all the—confound it, you three!”

Sharing a brief glance, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle pushed Apple Bloom forward.

“You talk to her,” Scootaloo whispered.

Sweetie Belle nodded. “Yeah, she’s your sister.”

Apple Bloom glared at her friends. “Thanks a lot.” Clearing her throat she stepped around the hat and looked up at the three snared ponies. “That's what we were trying to tell you. There was still another snare.”

Applejack crossed her legs tightly across her chest. “I can see that.”

Cheerilee clasped her hooves together in front of her chest.  “Please, girls, I’m begging you. This all seems like an accident, so I’m not really all that mad, but please, in the name of Celestia, get us down!

Scootaloo bit her lip. “Well, that’s kind of the thing. We... can’t.”

“What?” Cheerilee and Applejack said, their eyes bulging.

“When we saw Cheerilee and that stallion hanging there, we wanted to get them down,” Sweetie Belle said, her voice cracking. She wiped at her eye with a hoof as it teared, “but we realized we didn’t bring a ladder or a knife or anything, so—”

“Wait, what if you’d been caught in these traps?” Cheerilee said, her hooves on her hips.

The three fillies dropped their eyes to the ground.

Applejack sighed. “Oh, Apple Bloom…”

“We ran back to get somethin’ to get you down with, but then Applejack saw us with Granny’s big kitchen knife and made us put it back. We tried to tell her that we needed it to get you guys down, but she wouldn’t let us get past the part where you were up in the trees.”

Cheerilee turned to glare at Applejack.

Applejack chuckled uncomfortably. “Uh… sorry.”  Clearing her throat, she pointed back toward the farmhouse.  “Well, don’t just sit there, you three! Go get that ladder and knife!”

~~~

Apple Bloom carefully bit down on the handle to Granny Smith’s best butcher knife and slid it out of the wooden block.  

Scootaloo held out a hoof to help the earth pony filly down from the chair she stood on.  “Okay, let’s get—”

A deep voice cleared its throat. “Apple Bloom, what do you think you’re doin’?”

“Applejack and Cheerilee and some other pony are caught in a trap and—”

Big Mac’s eyes blazed. “What? Where?” Scooping up the three crusaders, he dropped them onto his broad back. “And what did Granny Smith tell you about those?” he said, plucking the knife from his sister’s grip and dropping it on the counter.

“But we need—”

The kitchen door banged against the outside of the house. “What you need to do is tell me where Applejack is!” Big Mac said, charging outside.

Scootaloo exchanged glances with her friends and sighed. “Well, here we go again.”