“No, wait! It gets even better! When the villagers woke up, the dragon horns had gone missing, and the hunter was never heard from again!”
The lunch table broke into a round of laughter at the conclusion of yet another tall tale from beyond the Everfree. This one included larceny.
“Hehe... whew. Anyway, that’s how I got fired from the Monster Hunters’ Guild.”
Applejack and Granny Smith continued laughing, despite a worried glance from Macintosh.
“So enough about me, Miss Smith. Tell me, what’s the history about this place?”
The old green mare (who wasn’t what she used to be) at the end of the table chuckled.
“Yeh can call me Granny, son. Everypony does.”
“Fine, ‘Miss Granny,’” Archer drawled, eliciting a stifled chuckle from Applejack. “I think it’s your turn to tell a story.”
“Well, lemme see,” began the pony-shaped collection of wrinkles at the end of the table. “Well, I betcha didn’t know that the Apples are pretty much the reason Ponyville exists in the first place!”
“Oh, this I have to hear.”
Now, obviously, since you are reading this, you are either already familiar with that story or you are in a position to become so soon. So, for the sake of pacing and not wasting anyone’s time, we’ll just skip straight to the end.
“...An’ now the Zap Apples keep our business afloat during the off-season!”
“Fascinating.”
In truth, the fact that the Apple family had kept such a steady flow of various apple-related foods to the table was more “fascinating” to Archer than any long-winded dissertation on Equestrian history.
“So, do you have any of these ‘Zapples’ on hand? I might like to see one.”
“Well, now thatcha mention it, we may have one or two preserved,” Appljack said, returning into the room with a tray filled with more mouth-wateringly delicious food. “They’re a lot better fresh, but it’s fine if you just wanna take a look.”
After being assured that, yes, an old Zap Apple was fine, Applejack brought one up from the cellar. Upon seeing it, Archer began to laugh again. No, scratch that. He started to giggle. At the sight of this rainbow-colored apple, he giggled like somebody not entirely possessed of their mental faculties.
“It’s- heh - it’s a storm fruit!”
“A what now?”
“Oh, I never thought I’d see one of these again.”
“Granny, what’s he on about?”
“I know a guy who used to grow these!” Archer said, examining the Zap Apple more closely. “Only his looked a lot more like pears.”
“Oh, I’ve heard tell o’ those,” Granny Smith said with a knowing grin. “Amp Pears. They ain’t got a leg to stand on ‘gainst a fresh Zap Apple, though.”
“Oh, no doubt. No one bought them for the taste, anyway. It was always the static electricity they had in them. It gave it an aftertaste that was quite... I don’t know the word for it.”
“Lightning-y?” offered Mac.
“That’s it, ‘lightning-y.’ Gave it a bit of zest. Of course,” Archer continued, setting the Zap Apple down, “most people supported the business just because they wanted to watch him perform this bizarre series of rituals he thought he had to take before they were ready.”
“Oh,” chuckled Applejack, “if bizarre rituals are your thing, we gotcha covered.”
“Really? Do you paint your kitchen in polka-dots, too?”
“Eeeyup.”
“Oh... kay,” Archer muttered, bewildered. “Do you... talk to the pollen bees?”
“Yessiree-bob. Learnt all their names, too.”
“Do you dress up like a drill sergeant to inspect the jam jars?”
“She’s the meanest jam-jar inspector this side o’ Trottingham.”
Archer, now quite taken aback, shifted in his seat.
“Well, I’m fairly certain you don’t that thing where-”
“That thing where we dress up in bunny outfits, hop over water cans, and sing the alphabet song?”
Any lingering suspicions that he had escaped crazytown were immediately dispelled. No doubt about it, these ponies were all insane.
“Yes, the thing where you do that.” Archer stood up. “I’m going somewhere where things still make a little sense.”
As he left the room, he could almost swear he heard Granny Smith chuckle and say “Good luck.”
***
Inkwell had been laying on the ground in a miserable pile of defeat and all-around “Why Me, Celestia”-ness for a solid five minutes before someone interrupted her.
“Uhh, Miss Inkwell?”
She looked up. It was that white filly. What was her name? Sweeney Todd or something.
“Whuzzit.”
“Well, we were trying to see if we could get Cutie Marks for watching crazy ponies-”
“Gee, thanks.”
“-but you haven’t really been doing anything for a while. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Really.”
“‘Cause when you yelled and fell over like that, we thought y’all might been hurt.” That was another of the terrible trio. Apple...? Apple Blossom. That’s it, it was Apple Blossom.
“I am one hundred percent okay, you guys. Now please leave me-” grrrgh “Oh, my.”
One of the fillies giggled. “I think somepony’s hungry.”
“I had a triple-decker sandwich for breakfast, I don’t think I’m...” grrarhgh “...You know what,” she said, standing up, “Now that you mention it, lunch sounds pretty good.”
“C’mon,” Apple Blossom said, still chuckling. “Ah think they’re putting the vittles on up at the house, if you wanna stop over.”
“Lovely.”
***
There was one thing Inkwell had to admit about Apple Family Brand Apples. You could tell they were made with love. She vocalized her feelings on the matter as she bit into a scoop of Apple Brown Betty, emitting a rather vulgar-sounding moan as her brain was overtaken by a wave of crumbly, appley deliciousness.
Granny Smith just nodded sagely, as if Inkwell were pointing out a profound fact about the universe. Which, come to think of it, she sort of was.
“Golly, Miss Inkwell. You sure you weren’t that hungry?”
“Cphrnm tphk, bphhm mmphm.”
“What.”
“Granny Smith, you’re good at speaking ‘mouth-full-ese’,” said Scootaloo. “What’d she say?”
“Ah think she said, ‘Can’t talk, too busy... breedin’?’” Her first clue that she had gotten it wrong was Inkwell half-guffawing, half-choking on a bite of Brown Betty. “No, ‘eatin’.’ She said ‘eatin’.”
Inkwell gave an irked nod as the three fillies burst into giggles at her abject misfortune. Such was the way of the young, innocent, adorable, and inestimably cruel. She swallowed carefully before speaking again.
“Actually, I’m not here for the food, although it is delicious. I was actually wondering if you’d seen Archer around? I hear he’s hitting trees with other trees. He’s obviously gone completely bonkers and needs to be sectioned away immediately.”
“Archer? You mean, ‘Sweet Apple Acre’s newest part-time employee’ Archer?”
“What?!”
“Y’all should see him buck apples,” called Big Mac from the next room, currently slaving over a sink filled with soiled dishes. “It’s really quite ingenious.”
Inkwell’s eye twitched involuntarily.
***
After thinking it over, Archer had decided that Physics was really quite a nice individual once you got to know it better. If it allowed him to collect an entire half-acre of apples in half an hour, it certainly couldn’t be all bad. Right?
“ARCHER!”
BOMF
On second thought, Physics sucked. Screw you, Physics.
“Ow.”
“You’re okay!” exclaimed Inkwell.
“Well, I was,” he said, sounding much worse off than he probably was.“But then you tackled me like that, and now I’m thinking I may have cracked a rib. Oh, and the bruises. Can’t forget the bruises.”
“No, no,” Inkwell growled, getting up. “I mean, you’re not... you know, crazy.”
“Begging your pardon, miss, but my sanity was never the one in question.”
“Oh, and what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just ran me over,” he pointed out.“That’s not behavior typically associated with mentally wholesome individuals.”
“I am not insane!”
“See, that’s just the kind of thing an insane person would say.”
Inkwell made a rather unnecessary show of being offended and sauntering away from Archer, who had still made no move to get up.
“Inkwell, seriously. I’m kind of messed up here. Could you...?”
“Oh, sorry! Sorry!”
She quickly came back and lifted him back up, throwing his spine back into alignment with a snap that was undoubtedly less painful than his anguished screaming made it sound.
“Ow.”
“And here we are, back where this conversation started.”
“Now, please, before anything else horrible happens to either of us, what did you come all the way out here to tell me?”
“...I have... well, I needed to tell you a few things.”
“Do go on,” he said, arms crossed.
“Well... I used to...”
“Drink?”
“No!”
“Smoke?”
“Okay, that was only the one time.”
“Out with it, then!”
“Ithinkiusedtobehumanpleasedon’thateme.”
Archer blinked.
“Care to run that by me again?”
“I think I was human once. Like you. Then... then I came here for - for some reason, I can’t remember - and I was turned into an Equestrian.”
At the present moment, Archer could have easily been confused for a witness to the famous Chanhassen Death Ray Array’s famous “First and Last Try.”
“That’s it,” he said simply, dropping his log beside him. “You really are nuts. I’m taking you to the asylum.”
“No, listen!” Inkwell shouted, scooting backward a few feet. “I’m from Baileyton! Remember? That town’s still around, right?”
Archer now just looked confused again.
“...Inkwell, Bailyton was wiped off the map twenty years ago. There are plenty of humans who haven’t heard of that place, let alone...!” A sudden flash of realization. “Sweet mother of - You’re telling the truth!?”
“Yes! Why would I not be!?”
“Because if you’re telling the truth, I’m in even more danger than I thought I was in to begin with!”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“It’s a Fisher Kingdom, isn’t it? Lures you in and gets its hooks in you?” Archer began pacing frantically around the small clearing. “Oh, this is not good. This is not good.”
“Archer, quit having a conniption and listen to me.”
“What!?” He turned to her, nearly as crazed as she had feared him to be coming in.
“I wasn’t transfigured by whatever you think I was. I didn’t just wake up a pony one day.”
“Oh, really? Then explain...” He gestured furtively to her. “...all of this!”
“I chose ‘this!’ I wanted to be an Equestrian, okay? They offered me the spell and I said, ‘Sure! I love this place! I wanna stay here forever!’ Little did I know that one of our stupid scouts would come wandering by and remind me how stupid I am for breaking one of Vorlan’s most dire, most stupid laws!”
Archer nodded. Vorlan had a very large list of “Thou Shalt Not’s” in the halls of the castle’s courtrooms.
Thou Shalt Not murder, steal, blaspheme...
But Thou definitely Shalt Not abandon thy race.
And apparently, Inkwell had thrown caution (and common sense) to the wind and screamed, “WATCH ME!” That was the sort of thing that required a King’s pardon to get out of, and given Jove V’s apparent history with this bunch, that was just terribly unlikely.
At least, from where these two stood.
“Why did you tell me this?” Archer asked, finally.
“Because it was driving me nuts,” she said. “And I had to tell someone, once I remembered.”
“That’s another thing. How did you only remember this now, of all times?”
“I may be able to shed some light on that,” Arrowhead called from somewhere very high up.
“Who’s that?” Inkwell asked.
“You can hear him?”
“I can see him,” Inkwell said, pointing to a rather cartoonish-looking imaginary cloud. “Who is that?”
“Sort of an expert on missing thoughts, love,” Arrowhead called back, looking down over the cloud’s edge. “Name’s Arrowhead, for now. Nice to meet you.”
“‘Arrowhead’? Archer, is this a friend of yours?”
“He wishes.”
Arrowhead recoiled dramatically. “Oh, I’m wounded, my good fellow! We’re not friends, after all I’ve helped you with today?”
“You sang thirty-odd verses of Henry the Eighth until I begged for mercy, then nearly caused me to shoot my only prospect of employment. What do you think?”
“He sounds nice,” Inkwell muttered.
“Oh, but I am, Inkwell darling.” Arrowhead began circling her in a manner most creepy. “I’m a dream spirit, you see. And under orders from the source of your confuddlement, Princess Luna herself, I can help you sort out your... predicament.”
“First things first, Arrowhead. How can she see you?”
“Oh, don’t think you’re special. I get to hop around the heads of anyone Her Majesty Luna has deemed appropriate, which right now is you and Inkie over here.”
“Inkwell.”
“Whatever! My point is, I’m graciously offering you the chance at undoing fifty years of inborn forgetfulness and the revelation of your true past, in all its juicy detail.” He walked behind her, emerging on the other side as her identical image.
“Doesn’t that sound fun?” he, now she, said in Inkwell’s voice.
“Well, I might be-”
“Wonderful!” she said. She poked the side of Inkwell’s head, which somehow caused her to collapse like a poorly-constructed block tower.
“Arrowhead,” Archer began, “I really don’t think -”
“You know what? Screw what you think! I don’t have to hang around in your weird-shaped head anymore! You’re not my real dad!”
“What?”
“Peace out.” And with that, Arrowhead disappeared.
“Well, now I have to carry her! Thanks a lot, man. This is why we can’t be friends.”
Inkwell turned over and muttered something in her sleep. Somehow, that seemed to be response enough.
“I suppose I’m going to have to drag you home?” She proceeded to continue lying there, unconscious. Archer sighed. “Right.”
***
knock knock knock knock knock knock-
“Hold yer horseshoes, I’m comin’!”
Applejack opened the door. In a shocking twist that really didn’t shock anyone, it was Archer, pulling a slumbering Inkwell up to the door by her front legs.
“Oh, Ah can’t wait to hear this one.”
“It’s a long story. Can I just...?”
“Guest bedroom’s upstairs.”
“Thank you.”
Archer dragged the somnambulant sandbag of a pony up the stairs, not really caring that her back hooves made quite the racket knocking against the top of every other stair.
“Aww. Are you mad, Archer?”
There, on his shoulder, was a very tiny Arrowhead.
“You look mad.”
“Well, I’d really rather not be doing this at the present moment.”
“Come on, smile! Turn that frown upside-down!”
“Ok, Pinkie. Why should I?”
“Because your head is no fun to live in when you’re angry.”
“I thought you were in Inkwell’s head!”
“I am. Or most of me is. Lucky son of a gun’s running around, being free. Meanwhile, I, the bit of personality most closely bonded to you, have to stick around here.”
“Am I never going to get rid of you!?”
“I dunno! Maybe? Is it really that bad?”
“Yes!”
“Archer!” That was Applejack, downstairs. “You alright? Who’re you talkin’ to?”
“An insane pony who lives in my head.”
There was silence, save for the repeated knocking of an unconscious Equestrian’s legs on the wood steps.
“...Well, alright then.”
“Hey, at least he’s honest, folks!”
“You shut up.”
“What!?”
“Not you, Applejack.”
***
“Look, maybe you’re not angling it right...?”
“I didn’t want to beat my head against this tree, Arrowhead, but so help me, I will if there’s the slimmest chance I can get rid of you before-!”
“Okay, okay. Jeez.”
Archer attempted to buck the tree once more. Nothing happened.
“Before what?”
“Are you always this talkative?!”
“If your head had more things to look through, maybe I wouldn’t be so bored.”
“Sorry. If I had known I would have to-” THUMP “-entertain guests, I would have tidied up the place.”
“Regardless, you humans are pretty boring. Was shooting arrows all you did before coming here?”
“Hey, get out of there! Can’t you bugger around in my imagination or something?”
“Oh, that’s not a good idea. You’d wind up seeing whatever I conjured up, and I can conjure up some screwed-up stuff.”
“Try me.”
“I’d rather not. Besides, if you knew you were hallucinating, you’d never think that thing that’s about to happen was real!”
“What thing?”
“This thing.”
And then a multichromatic wrecking ball plummeted from the sky and drove Archer into the ground.
***
“Hey! Monkeyman! You okay?”
Contrary to popular belief, Archer had not blacked out, though the prospect of doing so was quite attractive at the moment.
“Danebow Rash, is that you.”
“Yeah. Sorry, I’m still working on the landing on that one.”
“Aren’t you always working on a landing?”
“Huh?”
“No, I mean...” He pushed himself up and away from the second Equestrian mare to bowl him to the ground that hour. “You crash, like, every time I see you. Why do you even bother using the ground if it hates you so much?”
Somewhere, a very tiny Arrowhead was fastidiously taking the minutes. This was pure gold.
“Excuse me? I happen to land just fine most of the time!”
“Most?”
“Okay, reasonably often.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“I wanted to ask you about Inkwell. She looked kind of frazzled last time I saw her, and...”
“She got possessed by an insane figment of my imagination, and now she’s sleeping in Applejack’s guest bedroom while said insane figment sorts out her long-lost memories.”
“...Seriously?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“You’ve got me there.”
“So...?”
“You know, the last time I crashed, it was your fault.”
Archer blinked.
“Well, that certainly came out of nowhere,” he observed, picking his log back up.
“I mean it! You drove me into the ground.”
“‘Archer, Pegasus Driver’!”
“I heard you the first time, funny man.”
“Yeah, well don’t worry. I’m never flying you again.”
“Thank goodness. I...” Wait a second. “Hang on a minute, why not?”
“Did you see that landing?” he asked in a snide tone, slamming into the tree again with a THUMP. “I wouldn’t ride a hay wagon that kind of steering!”
“I have good steering!”
“No, you can go fast. As a certain orange filly informed me the other day, there’s a significant difference.”
“...What did Scoots say now?”
“Something about Fleetfoot bring-” THUMP “-the worst Wonderbolt because she can’t pull turns more than three g’s.”
“Oh, that’s stupid! Fleetfoot can go up to Mach Four!”
“That’s what I said! She was mostly mad at me for talking about-” THUMP “-Spitfire, though.”
“Say what?”
“She can barely pull Mach One and a Half! Come on, you can’t tell me she’s-”
There was another THUMP. This time it was of Rainbow pressing her face against Archer’s.
“Nopony talks smack about Spitfire.”
“Oh?”
A very small voice, which may have been Arrowhead’s Mini-Me floating inside Archer’s head, screamed “PUSH IT” as loud as it could.
“And I suppose you can make me stop.”
“Darn right I can.”
“Oh, come on. Seriously, a crap flyer like you could hardly be expected to-”
His next words, which upon reflection did not exactly sound like his at all, were drowned out by a sudden snap of displaced air. Rainbow was gone.
“...Sorry?”
A very loud boom sounded over the orchard. That would be the sound barrier, appropriately enough. Straining to see beyond the sun, Archer made out a very tiny rainbow streak doing very complex, very impressive aerial aerobatics at roughly a whole lot above sea level.
It was quite stunning, really.
Then, quick as she left, Dash landed back down in front of Archer with a smug grin.
“Still think I’m a crap flyer?”
“Oh,” he sighed, leaning nonchalantly on his log, “I’m really quite unconvinced. Is that all you have?”
Rainbow was not a stupid mare. She knew that this was an obvious barb, intended to humiliate her.
But the gauntlet had been thrown, and she was going to throw it right back.
“The Buccaneer Blaze!” she declared, after leaving a line of prismatic fire 20 yards long.
“Yawn-a-rama.”
“The Super Speed Strut!” that consisted of a moonwalk that would make Luna herself cheer.
“Boring.”
“The Fantastic Filly Flash?”
“Sorry, I blinked. Can you do it again?”
“The Three-Legged Beggar!”
“Begging for attention, apparently.”
“OKAY, FINE!”
She landed again, exhausted, angry, and quite unfavorably disposed towards Our Hero at the present moment.
“You obviously aren’t impressed by some of the most involving and fantastic air stunts this side of Griffindom. What’s gonna make you happy, huh?”
“Well...” He sighed depressingly. “It all lacks a certain... punch. Pretty lights will win over an Equestrian crowd, but where’s the danger? Where are the death-defying feats I was promised?”
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “You want danger?”
“She can be taught!”
“You want death-defying?”
“Yes, please, ma'am.”
“Then hang onto your socks, because I’m bringing down the thunder.”
Without another word, she flew up, up, and away into the sky. For a good minute, nothing happened.
“Did she leave?” he asked, to no one in particular.
His answer was another sonic boom, this time from very high up. Directly above his position, a pale blue dot in the sky was growing quite rapidly. As it neared, the roar of air being buffeted out of the way became ever louder and ever higher-pitched.
As she came within two thousand feet of the ground and a splattery, untimely death, Rainbow’s body became surrounded by a locus of electric charge. As she dove faster and faster and faster, the bubble coalesced into a sharp, voltaic cone.
And with a snap, she broke a barrier that was once thought impenetrable, and the Equestrian Air Speed record besides.
An explosion of color radiated outward, the shockwave rattling windows and knocking over innocent flower pots for miles around. Archer’s applebucking quota was filled for the next week, for all the trees unfortunate enough to be caught in the wake.
However, he was about to face a much bigger problem than a work order.
Fact: A Sonic Rainboom is a massive detonation of prismatic, uncontrolled magical energy.
Fact: Archer’s buck knife, which had not seen much of its intended use this week aside from one really unlucky hare who fortunately totally had it coming, had a gem in its hilt enchanted with a dispelling charm.
Fact: Tenebraes Depellendam had a long and storied history of being driven just a little crazy by undirected magic.
Fact: Having a knife strapped to one’s leg overflow with magical energy and explode does not exactly tickle.
***
“Arrowhead?”
“That’s my name.”
“Where are we?”
“Unconscious.”
“Why?”
“Long story, which I’m sure you’ll hear plenty of later.”
It wasn’t a white void this time. Actually, it was a very quaint smoking room, one Archer remembered from a very long time ago. Arrowhead was seated at the table, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a pipe, which ruined the desired effect by emitting bubbles.
“Sorry about that, by the way.”
“About what?”
“Well... You remember what you said about me trying to find a way to entertain myself?”
“Yes...?” This conversation was aimed in a very bad direction.
“I kinda sorta found your personality, and... well, I kinda sorta went overboard.”
“Wait... you’re the reason I said all that to Rainbow Dash?”
“Kinda. Sorta.”
Archer stood up, mortified. He stalked over to where Arrowhead was seated, and regarded him with one of those looks that, if looks could kill, would murder, embalm, and bury Arrowhead six feet below the ground.
“You sir...”
Arrowhead winced.
“...are an absolute pillock.”
And that’s when the floor collapsed.