Applejack stared down the hallway, watching as a limping machine wobbled towards her. She grabbed the closest thing to her, some rusty gears and trinkets. She threw them at the Knight, it flinched away from her. It slowly lowered it's head, examining the objects Applejack had thrown. The knight ate the gears, an annoying crunching and grinding sound emanated from the knight. Applejack watched with curiosity, raising her eyebrow, she was good at that. The knight finished chewing and made a soothing high pitched noise and it's bounced towards Appjeack, rubbing it's head against her cheek.
"Woah, little fella, don't get too close" The knight backed off and waited for Applejack to do something. She rubbed her cheek, the rugged steel causing slight cuts. "Sooooo, I'm just gonna go now, lookin' fer my friend" She walked away from the knight. Confused, the enthusiastic little machine followed her, stopping when she'd look back. Applejack was getting agitated the more she listened to the accordion it played as hit bounced.
"Why are ya' following me?!" She shouted, her echo running through the castle.
"Indescribable Accordion Note" The knight said, bouncing to Applejacks side, she sighed.
"Fine, come along" She groaned.
-----
Wilson slowly regained his consciousness, his body pushing him to just fall asleep. He groaned as he forced his head up, looking around the arena. His mouth was dry and his eyes were extremely heavy. His vision was just a blur, only seeing a large tan spot. He tried to move his arms, but they were chained up. His legs dangled lifelessly, but he could kick them a little. All he remembered was a bright light, pain, and that's it. His head hurt, and that was never a good thing, but over the years he got used to it. He heard Maxwells voice, something about Wendy and stuck and prize. Wilson didn't know what he was blabbering about. Wait..... WENDY??? Wilson tried his hardest to see straight, and when he did he saw Wendy stuck under a piece of debris. His throat hurt, he could barely speak.
"Wendy" He muttered feeling the drowsiness take him over, and he closed his eyes.
-----
"Maxwell! This isn't fair! Get this off of me!" Wendy screamed, pushing the pillar weakly.
"Fair? Who said anything about things being fair? I know I didn't" Maxwell chuckled.
"But I defeated the Rooktron! That's all I had to do!"
"You did defeat it.... oh well" Wendy was about to snap, she wanted to go up there and choke him. Too bad she couldn't fly, not yet, at least.
"Which one do you want?"
"What?"
"Wilson, or the Potato?"
Wendy thought for a moment.
"Wilson... I choose Wilson" She said. Maxwell snapped his fingers, Wilson fell to the ground. Maxwell then floated out of the arena through his door, and all of the Maxwell copies disappeared.
"Where are you going! Get this off of me!" Wendy hollered, flailing her arms. The giant door shut and Wendy and Wilson were left there. She wasted her energy attempting to move the piece of debris. Wilson watched weakly and tried to stand up to help her, but he was drained. Wendy groaned, she wasn't getting anywhere, soon she would die from dehydration.
*Knock Knock*
Both Wendy and Wilson looked over at the metal door, the knocking started again.
"Wilson? You in there?!" Applejack hollered, pushing on the door, it slowly creaked open. Wendy stared at the opening door.
"Help!!" She called out, Applejack poked her head inside. She saw Wilson on the ground and Wendy stuck underneath a piece of pillar.
"What in the..?" She said, running towards the two. Wilson smiled a bit and slowly raised his hand, greeting Applejack. She lifted him up and placed him on her back, a bit heavy. The clockwork knight bounced inside, gesturing to Applejack if he could help.
"Go on ahead" The knight squealed and bashed the debris in half. Barely let Wendy free though.
"Awww, c'mon!" Wendy still failed to push the rest off. The knight used his legs to slide the pieces off of her, playing a silent tune to himself. He lowered his head, Wendy grabbed onto in and climbed on the chess piece. "Thanks, bud"
"We really have no time to talk about what jus' happened, Rainbow Dash is in serious danger!" Applejack said, Wilson nodded his head.
"Just, can we g-go" He said weakly, pointing towards the door. Everyone else agreed to this and began to head out.
The old, dark, scary castle was now a mechanical factory by now. The doors were operated by gears, steam shot out of everything. As if steampunk just took over. Everything outside of the arena was well lit, Maxwell gave this whole place a make over. Clockworks wandered around the entire place, not becoming aggressive with the small group. Bishops gave glares every once in a while, but that's only because of their nature. It was pretty beautiful, the robotic game pieces looked...happy. The damaged knight was reluctant to even leave, looked like heaven to him. At the giant front door, there were to Rooks, each with flashing gold armor and spiked horns. Definitely intimidating to anything around, they sized up Wilson, Applejack, Wendy, and The Knight. The doors slowly opened, revealing a stone path just outside. Man, Maxwell works really fast.
"What in tarnation happened here?" Applejack asked, turning towards the rook for an answer. The rook gave a low horn sound, then a growling sound. The knight seemed to understand that language.
"Indescribable accordion notes"
"Long, drawn out horn"
"Indescribable accordion notes"
"Lets just go, yeah?" Wendy suggested, smiling at the rook, who seemed to smile back, but it was hard to tell. The knight huffed and turned towards the door, bouncing outside.
After following the path, at lead straight into Ponyville. Convenience at its finest level.
"C-can you take me to the l-library? Please" Wilson asked.
"Sure thing, Wilson, shouldn't be long."
"Thank you"
In the distance, a slight boinging noise could be heard. Chester has arrived, as subtle and silently as ever. He picked up his pace when he saw the state Wilson was in. It made him angry, seeing his father like that. He growled at Applejack and snapped wildly at her.
"Woah! Little feller', calm down!" She exclaimed, Chester pushed her. Wilson rolled off of her back and onto Chester's.
"Chester! That was not very nice, she was h-helping" Wilson scolded, the pup blew a raspberry at Applejack. The pony scoffed and dusted herself off. "Sorry about that, he's super defensive, he'll fight anything when he's like this"
"It's okay, I understand, I should go check on RD, she got hit pretty bad by that flying thing" She ran off, maybe she was upset by what just happened.
"Chester, you know that was not okay, mister" Wilson said, Chester let out a strange noise, somewhat of a giggle.
"Can we go to that library, I'm tiiiiiiired!" Wendy shouted, they got moving.
Upon reaching the tree, the knight opened the door, Spike was there.
"Oh! Wilson! I was wondering why Chester had left so quickly, are you okay? Who's your friends?" The curious little dragon asked. Too many questions all at once, made Wilson even more exhausted.
"I'm fine Spike, and this is Wendy, and a Clockwork Knight" The two, upon being mentioned, greeted Spike. Spike got blankets for the group, they all looked pretty tired.
"Twilight should be here soon, she had to go to the hospital because Rainbow Dash got into an accident. That's what she told me, anyway" He finished setting up a mini couch for Wendy to sleep on. She thanked him and drifted into deep sleep in a mere ten seconds. Now it was just The Knight and Spike.
"Sooooo, where are you from?"
"Indescribable accordion notes"
"Oh, that's pretty cool, what was it like?"
"Indescribable accordion notes"
"Sounds great! But why are you all, bashed up?"
"Indescribable accordion notes"
"That's sad, can you be fixed?"
"Cheerful, yet still indescribable accordion notes!!"
"Aaah, sounds complicated, I think it can be done, don't worry. Hey, maybe I can fix you!"
"Loud, cheerful, and still indescribable accordion notes!!!!"
"Sure thing! Y'know, you're a pretty cool guy"