"Twwwwwwiiiii!!!"
"Oh Celestia damnit, not again," mutters Twilight, the pretty pony princess, under her breath. With the quick shake of her head, the alicorn turns towards her new home's entrance and gives her friend a big, if forced, smile. "Applejack!" she says. "What a pleasant surprise!"
Slowing her gallop to a mere trot, the tired earth pony roughly crosses the threshold separating the outside world to the inside of the Friendship Castle and approaches her equally ragged looking friend with a look of concern.
"Twi," Applejack began. "There's a situati-”
With the raising of a purple hoof, Princess Twilight quickly cuts off her true true friend in mid-explanation.
“Let me guess,” the bookish mare interrupts, her insincere smile still beaming brightly. “Your apples have become sentient and have eaten Apple Bloom whole.”
Applejack simply blinks.
“... Wha?”
Twilight, still smiling all the while, tilts her head to the side in apparent curiosity.
“No?” she continues without pause, muttering “Maybe Carrot Top’s thing was self-contained then…" under her breath. "... Are your trees demanding equal rights in ancient Griffonese?”
Applejack blinks for a second time at this second odd question. Only in the resulting silence between the two did the farmer begin to notice the odd hair or two protruding themselves from the princess's clearly unkempt mane.
“That’s not it either?” Twilight asks, her eyes blinking out of order as she does. “Haha… HAHA!! Oh silly, silly me! Of course that’s not it! Of course! Ha! The Apple family loves their trees; they wouldn't dare revolt against you… only against Cheerilee!” The alicorn then gently smacks herself in the head with her wing, purple feathers falling to the floor as a result. “Silly me! HA!”
Three. Three times did Applejack blink blankly at the scene before her.
“... Er, Twilight?” Applejack finally builds up the courage to ask. “Are... are you… okay?”
In that moment, Twilight’s body suddenly becomes deathly still.
The rising and falling of her chest as she breathed, the blinking of her eyes, the twitching of her wings and tail, even the falling of stray feathers; all remained spectacularly frozen in time, locked in the instant these words had left the earth pony’s lips. Applejack held her breath, as if even the slightest of movements would cause an explosion the likes to which her furry behind would never truly recover from.
After a time, Twilight's answer finally comes in all its horrific glory.
“... Oh, don’t worry. I’m okay, Applejack.”
Applejack pauses at this.
“... Really, sug?
Twilight closes her eyes gently as her smile began to grow slightly softer, making it finally look real. With an aura of serenity radiating off her very form, one that finds itself wrapped around Applejack like a warm blanket, forcing her to smile as well, the former librarian slowly opens her mouth and replies...
“No.”
The aura blanket of good tidings was then swiftly yanked from Applejack’s grip and promptly thrown into a fire.
“I” the positively powerfully pissed off pretty pony princess began to rant thunderously, “have been doing nothing, nothing these past few days but fix every earth ponies' problem! Every, single, one! I know I’m the resident expert of the arcane in this town, Applejack, but that doesn’t mean I instantly know what the hay is going to happen to your rose garden when a giant freaking castle of pure crystallized magic decides to plant and grow itself right smack dab in the middle of a magical earth pony layline!" A light shower of plumage falls to the ground as Twilight began to twitch. "I-I didn’t even know that was a thing until this last week when I started doing the research into how in the horse hell this damn place was even possible! You know how it is though, AJ?”
Caught in the middle of her body loading the necessary chemicals to initiate the ‘Fight or Flight’ reflex command, Applejack simply nods her head “No” and prays to the powers that be that this was the answer that her friend was looking for.
“It’s possible by eating all the magic out of the ground to nourish itself!" the flustered ponies answers with a laugh. "A-applejack... my new stupid home is a freaking, fluffing, Celestiadamn, parasite! A freaking parasite! A parasite that eats magic! Magic!
"That's... t-that's absolutely horrifying, AJ! Horrifying! Hay, if it wasn’t for the years upon years of magic fortification that's been built up here thanks to earth ponies simply trotting from place to place, everypony would have probably died by now! Sucked dry in the name of friendship! Ha! T-that’s a great tagline, isn’t it? Come see the Friendship Castle, everypony! It’ll eat your damn soul but colt is it pretty! Nice rainbow beam, am I right?!”
“It… ah… k-kill everypony?”
Twilight shakes her hoof passingly at Applejack's first real comment to the startling revelation. “Eh, well, probably... but not anymore. The soil here is full of earth pony magic, with or without that layline. It’ll be thousands of years before this place becomes some lich pony’s castle... But that’s not the problem anymore.
"The problem is that some of the Everfree’s wild magic has been pouring into the now empty pockets of ambient magic scattered around town, creating chaotic results. Discord has been helping me in that department, but he can't do much right now. The other princesses and I are still reluctant to let him have back all of his magic...”
Twilight’s wings, along with the rest of her body, finally slump lowly as the exhaustion of it all finally catches up with her.
“... Him, Spike, and the other girls have been the only people and ponies available to help me right now, but it still doesn't feel like enough...”
“... Oh… oh sugarcube," Applejack speaks up after a much needed moment of silence. "I’m... I'm so, so sorry. I-I didn’t have the slightest clue. It’s apple bucking season again and, well, you know how things get around my home when that happens…”
Expertly balancing on three legs, the farmer gently drapes a fetlock around the tired princess’s, her friend's, neck.
“That’s no excuse though. You should have sent somepony to get me; I would have helped you, rain or shine.”
"..."
Twilight eventually leans into Applejack’s embrace, sighing softly as she accepted it. “It’s... okay, Applejack, and you’re right that we should have got you. We didn't think it was necessary though; we all figured that you would have come running to town at some point once something strange happened on your farm...”
“But nothin’ happened Twi,” AJ replies in their pony embrace, doing her best to look over.
Twilight raises an eyebrow at this as she looks over to her friend as well. “Really? Nothing? No abnormal trees or fruit? No strange weather or horrific Tartarus-spawns roaming your premises? Nothing at all?”
“No, nothin’ like tha-” Applejack starts to say, but she then quickly cuts herself off, having remembered something. “No, wait… shoot. I lied. There is something screwy going on back on the farm, and it’s the whole reason I came stormin' in here for.”
“What’s that?” is Twilight's simple reply.
The farmer breaks away from the friendly embrace as she explains clearly how “Some unwelcomed new flowers have started growin' near mah barn. I need help removin' them and help curin’ mah brother of them.”
“... Curing? Why do you…” Twilight starts to ask, but then her eyes narrow. Her features grew rigid as well as she mutters “Poison joke” angrily under her breath.
“Yup” Applejack nods her head solemnly. “I don’t know how to remove those kinds of weeds. Figured it be a job for unicorn or alicorn magic, seeing as how earth pony magic doesn’t really work on things from the Everfree like them."
A frustrated sigh escapes Twilight’s muzzle, predicting an incoming increase in her workload. “Yeah, it is. Normal fire doesn’t work on the stuff. You need controlled spellfire to make sure it doesn't grow back. I'll try to make some time when I can...” the young mare's face suddenly brightens, a thought having crossed her mind. “Actually, wait… I think Spike’s breath would work just fine here! I’ll send him your way when I next see him and-”
“That’s probably not the, er, best idea right now, Twi.” Applejack interrupts uncharacteristically shyly. “W-we would need to fix mah brother first before that could work.”
Twilight blinks in response. “Oh… right. You said Big Mac got infected…”
A timid Applejack nods her head in confirmation. “Yeah. He’s the one who found the patch when he was doing his chores earlier; s-stepped right into it, the big lug.”
“Ah. I see. So you want your brother cured first… is his affliction really that bad?”
The farmer grimaces.
“The worst. It’s… well… have you ever heard of the expression, ‘If you ain’t got anything nice to say, don’t say it at all’?”
Twilight raises an eyebrow slowly.
“Yes…?” She asks cautiously, only to suddenly receive a leveled glare from Applejack. Though it quickly became apparent it was not a stare meant for her, but perhaps another.
“My brother never talks," the work horse states plainly, gritting her teeth as she does. "If we don't fix him soon, Ponyville is gonna to find out why that is.”