After the mane six’s bout with the controlling Starlight Glimmer, it was obvious that the six heroines would go home and get some well deserved rest. All except for two mares who were trotting through the halls of Twilights castle, bickering back and forth about their recent exploits.
“What are ya’ll tryin’ to say Rainbow?” A irritated Earth Pony shot back at her multi-colored friend.
“Nothing Applejack, besides the fact that your special talent is your ability to talk country and stuff.” Rainbow Dash retorted, while trying her best to not break down laughing at her friends stupefied face.
“Now do ya have a skull thicker than a-” The apple farmer was instantly cut of by a vicious boop on the nose by her now flying friend.
“Look AJ I’m just stating the facts here, I mean remember when those stupid equal marks would flash when we tried to do our special talents and stuff,” Rainbow paused long enough for her friend to simply look at her with an ambiguous brow raised. “Weeellll, yours flashed when you tried to say something all countryish when we were trying to break down the door!”
Applejack instantly took offense to her friends wild accusations. But when she thought back she couldn’t deny what happened back in that shack, nor could she avoid Rainbows contagious laughter as well. Looking over at her flying counterpart who was laughing uncontrollably while flying blindly forward, it was enough for Applejack conceived a dastardly plan while glancing ahead. She begun to count down in her head and when she reached one, Rainbow Dash flew head first into the entrance to the castles throne room. Now that was enough for the apple farmer to lose her composure as well, falling over laughing at her friends misfortune that could have been easily avoided.
“Serves ya right!” Applejack chuckled.
“Yeah, yeah…”
Rainbow Dash was still sprawled out on the ground rubbing the sore spot on her head when the doors to the throne room creaked open in the most eeriest of fashions. Both parties looked through the cracked doors to see the map of Equestria still erected in the center of the room. Applejack was the first to pick herself up and internally question why was the map still up when there was no pony in the room. But Rainbows process was much more direct, she instantly sprung back to life just to swing the doors wide open and trot in as if she was hot stuff.
The Earth Pony lightly shook her head knowing full well there would be absolutely nothing productive coming out of what was getting ready to happened. Following her friend through the door, she couldn’t honestly say she wasn’t interested in the map either. However she could act more reserved than her cyan friend who was already poking and prodding at the magical map with her magenta eyes.
“Now be careful with that map RD, we don’t rightly know what type of magic that thing deals with…” Applejack warned, knowing full well it went right over her head.
“Pff, you're starting to sound like Twilight.” Rainbow respond, waving a hoof back at her friend without even turning around.
Rainbow could care less about whatever her apple obsessed friend was worrying about. She just wanted to check out the cool map… It wasn’t a crime, or at least she thought it wasn't. Walking around the map and looking at it from every angle, she could easily make out Ponyville and the Everfree Forest from the center. Meaning she could see Cloudsdale to the northwest of Ponyville and it was amazing. Rainbow couldn’t believe how detailed the map was, it was almost like something from space had taken pictures of Equestria and glued a 3D version to the map. Before she could bring her hoof up to touch the little city of Cloudsdale, Applejack swatted her hoof away.
“Hey, what was that for?!”
“Sugarcube, where ya even listenin’ to a word I said…” Applejack dead-panned.
“No.” Rainbow instantly responded.
“Well then were outta here.” Applejack caught her friends rainbow tail in her mouth and begun to extract her from the table. Still the pegasus wasn’t going to go down without a fight, struggling to touch Cloudsdale Rainbow had one hoof hanging onto the edge of the map while the other was out reached, centimeters from Cloudsdale. The tug of war lasted for several seconds before the determined pegasus was successful in her endeavors. Poking Cloudsdale, Rainbow was surprised to find that it felt like it was statically charged and the resulting zap that was enough to cause Rainbow to lose her grip on the map and fly back into the force that was pulling her.
With both ponies crashing into the wall in a jumbled heap, Rainbow was the first to look up in aww at what she saw. The map had some how zoomed in on the City that Rainbow touched. On the other hoof Applejack was still extremely disoriented and miffed with Rainbows childish display. But before she could start scolding the featherbrain she noticed RD was fixated on something ahead of them.
“Now what in tarnation?”
“This is totally AWESOME!” Rainbow exclaimed in response, boosting off of AJ and back towards the map.
Rainbow Dash was now floating mere inches from the spectral display of Cloudsdale, taking in the maps ability the Pegasus had to try it again. Pressing her hoof on Manehatten, it had confirmed her suspicions, now with the entirety of Manehatten filling the map she could see every road and building the Metropolis had to offer. At that point Applejack was even amazed, now feeling less threatened by the magical map. She even got up and approached the thing as well, watching Rainbow Dash scroll and touch random locations.
“Hey let me try!” Applejack said, now generally amused by the maps abilities.
“Now be careful with that thing AJ” Rainbow teased.
In response, Applejack fixed her with a death glare while she got into place in front of the map. Looking over the entirety of Equestria, she had only one thing in mind. Without a moment of hesitation she brought her orange hoof over Ponyville and pressed the southern portion of it. It resulted in the map bringing up an expansive apple orchard that had spotted barns and buildings throughout it.
“Really… I mean we got a map that can see everything in Equestria! But you choose to look at your apple farm? I mean we can see it from the window for ponies sake!” Rainbow gestured to the said window, where just off in the distance you could see Sweet Apple Acres.
But before Applejack even had the opportunity to say anything in response. Both ponies were alerted to a new presence in the room by a pony tapping there hoof impatiently on the ground. Neither one of them heard Twilight at the door before and neither one of them could describe the visibly annoyed expression plastered on the Princess's face. Being the most responsible and honest of the two, Applejack knew exactly what to say.
“Now sugarcube… I reckon none of us can explain and this is most likely exactly what it looks like.” Applejack had thought she nailed it, but from the audible facehoofs ringing throughout the room she begun to question whether or not she said the right thing...