Appledashery

by Just Essay

==Part Fourteen: Road Trippin'==

"Get away from me, ya friggin' suitcases!" Rainbow's voice cracked. She desperatetly climbed a pine tree with numb hooves while massive jaws snapped at her hooves. "Guh! I mean it! Buck off!"

HRESHAAAA! Winged alligators swarmed all around her in the humid air, their blood-red eyes fixated on the tender morsel stuck in a tree. They rammed the trunk below her several times with their scaled snouts, trying to shake her loose into their drooling maws.

"Ambushed by flying alligators!" Rainbow seethed, her limbs tingling. "What a rotten time for my potions to run out!"

Rainbow Dash decided to scream for help.

"Screw that! I'm not screaming for help!"

SNAPPP! An alligator's hungry jaws clamped over her tail.

"Awwwww sh—" Rainbow shrieked as the winged beast yanked her off the scraggling branches. "HELLLLLP! SOMEPONY! ANYPONY!"

With a merciless yank of its throat, the alligator body-slammed Rainbow to the floor.

"Ooof!" Rainbow winced as pine cones and squirrel droppings flounced all around her. Her body was too numb at this point to register pain. Sitting up, she yelped as several beasts touched down, circling her like reptilian wolves. She crab-walked in reverse, hyperventilating. "No... no! This is totally a lame way to die! Why couldn't you be dragons or robots or sentient explosions instead?!"

HRESHAAAA! The dragons loomed closer, their breaths smelling like dried blood and lockerroom sweat.

"Nnnngh!" Rainbow Dash flailed, her hooves curling daintily beneath her quivering muzzle. "Just m-make it quick. I won't cry." She sniffled. "Honest!"

All at once, the alligators flapped their wings and dove towards her.

Th-Th-Thwisssssh! A veritable blitz bomb of apples landed from above, pelting the alligators from head to tail. They collapsed to the floor, thrashing in frustration.

"You bite one single hair on her purdy lil' body and I'm makin' gator burgers out of the whole lot of ya!"

HRESSSSHA??? All the reptiles glanced up.

Rainbow spun, and her eyes glowed. "Applejack!" she melodically cooed.

Standing on a hill—the tallest point in Fillyda—was none other than Ponyville's most dependable mare, the cream of the citrus crop, the diamond in the Equestrian agricultural rough—

"Just introduce her already!" Rainbow growled.

Applejack(!!!) stood on her hind legs, somehow glaring and smiling at once. It didn't matter. Either way, it was super sexy. Rainbow Dash could smell her freckles from a mile away as she stood proud in the light of the setting sun, performing angry hoofy-kicks of love and justice.

"I've come all the way to Orlandoats to do two thangs! Squeeze cider and make love to awesome pegasi! And I'm all out of cider! So guess who you lizards done pissed off with all this shenaniganical horse hockey?!"

Ch-Chtung! One alligator cocked a shotgun.

"Look out, Applejack!" Rainbow Dash hollered. "He's packing heat!"

"He'll be packin' my dress shirts by mornin'!" Applejack tilted the brim of her hat forward. "Hoedown time!" And she galloped down the hill with smextastical wild abandon. "Yeeeeeee-haaaaa!"

POW! The alligator fired multiple times. P-POW! POW!

Applejack juked left and right, grinning as she dodged each splash of lead. "Nope. Nope. Aaaaaaaaaand nope!" She leapt over a final blast that exploded a log in front of her, sending chunks of wood and dead squirrel in every direction. "My turn!" she chirped, pulling a lasso out from... someplace exquisite. By the end of her stride, she had formed a loop and twirled the thing in the air. Before the alligators could urinate on themselves, she tossed the noose around the gunlizard's neck and swung it by its gullet. "And this is how we dosey-do!"

WHAM! The whimpering reptile's body slammed against its companions, ricocheting off of them like pinball paddles. Cold blood lit the air, along with the sound of tearing wings.

Rainbow Dash blinked several times. Between each flap of her lids, she saw more and more skin and bones shredding the air, and in the center of it was an orange freckled nucleus of badflank and sweat!goddess.

Within seconds, the alligators were decimated. Whatever was left alive tore for the hills, yipping like doglizards... lizarddogs... bitchodiles...?

"And stay out!" Applejack shouted. "Of this forest!" She spat. "Cuz yer bein' foreclosed!" She grinned. "And y'all work at Maredonald's!"

"Applejack..."

The country mare spun about, her red ribbon bursting so that her golden mane spilled loose and glittered in the hot Fillydian sunshine. "Sugarcuuuuuube," she cooed with the octaves of a hundred fallen angels.

"Duahhhhhhhhhh..." Rainbow Dash instantly fell back with the mother of all swoons. A hovering orange figure giggled in her peripheral. She glanced over.

"Just let it happen, Rainbow!" I said, smiling brightly from where I flew. I held a bow with a heart-arrow while a silken quiver hung over my toga-clad figure. "Just like you've always ssssssssssecretly wanteddddd."

"Oh goddess Celestia," Rainbow Dash whimpered. "I'm Neighra Falling in that place that the school books always talked about."

"Well, Sparky?" A mountain cougar with stone antlers chuckled. "That's what you get for drinking so much Applejack before bed?"

"Bed?" Rainbow blinked. FWUMP! Orange hooves landed on the silk sheets all around her. She looked up. Blink blink. "AJ."

"What took ya so long, darlin'?" Applejack purred, propped over the pegasus. She leaned down and kissed the square of Rainbow's limp chest. Laced drapes billowed in the autumn air that blew softly into the lavender-scented honeymoon suite. "All this time you made me wait..."

"I should have been more awesome," Rainbow whimpered, eyes tearing as she trembled. "Just now. Just as always. If only I could have been more awesome for you, Applej—"

"Shhhhh..." Applejack pressed a hoof to Rainbow's lips. She leaned down, breathing hotly into her ear. "Dun be awesome. Just... be fuzzy."

"Ohhhhhhhh..." Rainbow Dash's eyes rolled back.

Applejack nibbled her way up Rainbow's neck. "Mmmmm... golly, sugarcube, yer so tiny."

"I knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..." Rainbow gigglesobbed. "Applejack..."

Six words. Six words. Six words.

"Hmmmm?" Applejack nibbled and licked and kissed from ear to ear. "What is it, darlin'?"

Six words. Six words. Six words!

"I..." Rainbow panted and rose higher, higher. "I..." She lingered upon the crest of wailing.

Applejack suddenly grinned wide. "Oh lookie!" she thundered in a stupid stallion's grating voice. "A sinkhole!"

Rainbow's pupils shrunk. "Wat."

"I've always wanted to see one of these! Let's check it out, Applejack!" And the mare opened her mouth wide, vomiting out a squadron of Stu Leaves, all dropping flammable payloads that scorched the earth all over Rainbow Dash's chest.

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow!" Rainbow slapped and swatted at her burning flesh. "Augh! Dammit! Stop being—here! GO AWAY!" She rolled over and fell a thousand miles into a flashing light. "Whoah!"

WHUD!

The wagon screeched to a stop.

Stu Leaves looked back, gasping. "Rainbow Dash! What... H-how?!"

"Land's sakes!" Applejack sat on the edge of the rider's seat, gawking down at the mare as she clutched her hat. "You okay there, darlin'?"

"Nnnngh... g-guh!" Rainbow Dash lay on her back across the dirt road, legs sticking straight up like a petrified beetle's. Her eyes blinked as she froze in place. "... ... ...how long was I out of it?"

"Uhm..." Applejack fidgeted. "Reckon I dunno, darlin'," she said with a nervous smile. "I just figured you were bein' quiet all this time 'cuz you were bored of the conversation... snkkkkt..." She broked into fitful giggles.

Stu Leaves winced. "AJ?! What's so funny? She could have broken her neck!"

"I... I-I'm sorry, Rainbow..." Applejack slapped her knee. "But you look like fuzzy blue roadkill with yer legs stickin' up like that!"

"Heh..." Stu Leaves broke into a smirk. "Her wings too!"

"Oh golly! Hah hah hah!"

"Heheheheh..."

Rainbow siiiiiiiiiiighed, glaring aside.

"Oh Rainbow..." Applejack climbed down from the wagon and grabbed the mare's fetlock. "A thousand pardons, darlin'. But you sure are a rough-and-tumble pegasus."

"Heh, well, you kn-know me," Rainbow's voice cracked. "I take a fall and—" Fwooosh! Applejack's super-strong grip hoisted her into an immediate standing position. "—I get back up." Rainbow blinked.

Applejack's smiling muzzle was inches away. "You sure ya ain't hurt, sugarcube?"

"I..." Rainbow Dash made the tiniest of inhales. She smelled hay and citrus. The back of her mouth watered as her chest vibrated. "...yeah... I-I'm good..." She gulped.

"Alrighty then..." Applejack turned back around and climbed up the wagon once again. "Now, what's with all this hooplah, Stu?"

"A sinkhole!" He pointed, grinning. "See?!"

"Well, I'll be darned! You don't see many of those around in Ponyville!"

"Yeah! I hear Fillyda is full of them!" He smirked back at the mare. "Guess it's like a preview of things to come!"

"Well, what are ya waitin' for? Let's get a closer look!"

"Heheh! Okay!"

And the wagon creaked along.

Rainbow took a deep breath, then groaned, her ears aching from the sound of Stu's voice. She floated after the wagon on limp wings, glaring across the nearby woods that flanked the road.