//------------------------------//
// Cutie Mark Conundrum 
// Story: Back To The Past 
// by Onomonopia 
//------------------------------//

"Keep it down. You'll wake him!"

Jack's consciousness slowly began to return to him as sleep's hold steadily lost its grip, granting him the ability to slightly hear what was going on around him. He let out a soft moan before rolling over slightly in the hay, almost certain that he heard voices speaking around him.

"Do we have to do this? I mean, there has to be other tools we can try."

"There isn't. Ah've tried every other pair of scissors, clippers and even knives ah could find. We need something really sharp and this'll do the trick."

His eyelids flickered slightly as the faint voices began to reach his mind. He debated opening his eyes for a moment, to see if there truly were voices in the room with him, but then the weariness overcame him and with a small yawn he rested his head once again and began to drift off.

"Well I don't feel right just taking it. At least let me ask first. Excuse me, Mr. Jack?" a sweet and melodious voice whispered into his ear, bringing forth images of the girl he had met a lifetime ago. "Would you mind if we...borrowed yer sword for a moment?"

"Borrowed?" Jack sleepily asked in return as his eyelids fluttered slightly. For a brief moment he considered opening them once again, but the fatigue of his journey and from the nightmares the night before kept him down once more. "No, I suppose that I do not mind...letting you...see it...for a moment..."

With a start Jack sat up straight, his mind returning to him in a flash of realization. The fatigue melted away as the samurai's eyes glanced around the empty barn that was warmly illuminated by the still rising sun, but a glance down at his side showed that his sword was gone once more. His eyes narrowed slightly as he recalled the three voices that he had heard speaking to him while he drifted, knowing who one of them belonged to.

He rose to his hooves and glanced down at the dirt floor, able to make out three sets of hoofprints that had been in there before him. One of them had been pacing, the other stood by the door and the third had been the one that got close to him. Yet all of the prints were much smaller than his, indicating only one thing.

'It seems that Applebloom and two other foals have taken my blade,' he realized before sprinting through the barn doors and out into the dew filled air of the farm. On any other day he would have drunken in the golden beauty that reminded him of home, but the samurai's eyes remained glued to the ground as he followed the hoofprints. His eyebrows raised slightly when he discovered how far the three managed to get so quickly, but soon the tracks changed from hoofprints to another set of tracks.

"They must have gotten on something with wheels to make tracks like these," Jack murmured as he placed a hoof in the now straight line tracks that appeared where the hoof ones ended. He took off at full sprint after the tracks, certain that he would find the three in town. Yet to the samurai's surprise, the tracks veered off from the town and instead seemed to head off to a small cottage that rested on the edge of the town.

"What could those three have need of my blade for?" Jack asked while continuing his sprint, managing to reach the cottage just as the sun finally freed itself of the horizon and emerged as a full circle in the sky. A smile crossed Jack's face when he arrived at the cottage to immediately spy a scooter and wagon resting outside of the building, but his smile turned to another frown when he approached the means for transportation and discovered the three's hoofprints once more.

His eyes slowly narrowed when he found their tracks headed into the dark and sinister looking forest that rested near the edge of the cottage. He did not know what kind of forest that it was, but he knew that it was not where three foals belonged. Without a moment's hesitation the samurai raced into the forest after them, eyes narrowing further still when he found that the thick foliage blocked out the rising sun, despite day just beginning.

The foals' tracks were easy enough to follow at first, but with the copious amounts of rocks, leaves, and other foliage that blocked his path, Jack soon found that their trail had vanished completely. He knelt down next to the last indication of their trail that he had seen, glancing around to try and figure where they would have gone. 

Deep snarls that emerged from the undergrowth informed him that he had far worse troubles than trying to find the foals and as the samurai rose up, he found six wolf-like creatures encircling him. His eyes narrowed as the creatures emerged from the shadows and slowly began to stalk around him, allowing Jack to realize that their entire bodies were covered in wood.

"I would advise that you all go home," Jack calmly spoke to the creatures, which almost seemed to snicker at his words as they drew ever closer. "Shattering wood was one of the very first tasks that I was assigned when I trained. And that was when I was a boy. You do not want this fight."

With a roar one of the wolves lunged at him, the samurai sidestepping just as its jaws bit down on where his arm had been a moment before. The samurai then drove his elbow down into the wolf's head, shattering the wood that made up a part of its skull with one, precise blow.

The creature yelped with pain as it staggered away from Jack just in time for another to hurl itself through the air towards the samurai. Jack rolled onto his back as he lifted all four of his limbs into the air, catching the wolf on its belly before kicking off with all of his might. The wolf hurtled through the air behind him and crashed into a three trunk, where its body cracked from the force of the blow.

Jack rolled to his hooves just in time to leap back from a pair of claws that slashed at his stomach, a scowl crossing his face as the claws tore through the front of his kimono. The wolf almost seemed to smile at the shredded garb, before a kick to its skull that cracked its jaw to the side knocked the smile off of its face. 

He ducked under a lunge by the fourth wolf before leaping over the attack of the fifth, yet he stuck out his rear hoof to catch the sixth wolf in the face with a blow that knocked it flat. Yet as Jack glanced off into the forest, he couldn't help but worry about the safety of the foals. 

"This battle is over," Jack informed the wolves as he landed on his hooves, eyes calm while he glared down the three remaining beasts. One of them let out a roar and prepared to charge him...before Jack's eyes snapped open wide and glared at the beasts with a power and fury that they immediately understood they could not match.

Jack watched as the three remaining beasts scurried off, before glancing at the bested ones that were slowly piecing themselves back together. Figuring that he had wasted enough time, the samurai turned and sprinted into the forest once more.

Every sense of his waited for some sign from the foals, some way that he could find them before they were in danger. Then he heard the faint scream, a scream that was only given off by one who was in danger--a cry that Jack had heard so many times before. Adding fuel to his already unbelievable speed the samurai raced towards the cry, bursting through the foliage to find Applebloom and two other fillies pinned up against a rock by some sort of creature made of darkness.

In a brief moment, Jack took in where the three were before glancing to the side to see his sword resting on the ground, having been removed from its scabbard that was leaning against a tree. He raced to the sword just as the black creature opened its maw and lunged towards the fillies, who all screamed as they closed their eyes.

Then there was a flash of light and the sound of metal cutting through bone, followed only by silence. The three fillies slowly cracked their eyes open to see the face of Jack looking down at them with a curious expression...and the motionless body of the creature laying on the ground behind him. For a minute, they just continued to stare up at him in shock and awe, before the samurai finally spoke.

"The three of you are in trouble."

--|======\

The darkest of caves, the most vicious of monsters and even the master of evil himself paled in comparison to the orange mare that glared down at the three fillies before her, lightning flashing in her eyes as the ground itself almost seemed to shake beneath her hooves. The three fillies that Jack had rescued from the forest didn't dare to lift their heads, and even the samurai himself, despite not being the target of the fury, stayed as far away from Applejack as he could.

"So let me get this straight," Applejack began in a whisper, yet the three fillies jumped almost as if thunder had erupted next to them, "Not only do you steal from our guest and a good friend of mine, but you three go into the Everfree Forest, with a weapon you don't know how to handle, to free an entangled creature that you know nothing about? THIS is the story that ah'm waking up to on a beautiful day like today?"

"Well, technically Jack did say that we could borrow it," the pony called Sweetie Belle dared to say, but with a small yelp she went quiet as Applejack glared down at her with all of her fury. Jack wanted to speak up and tell Applejack that technically she was right, but in the state Applejack was in he wasn't sure if she would turn that fury upon him or not. He decided he would tell her once she had calmed down.

"You didn't even see this creature! It's like nothing we've ever seen!" Scootaloo tried to reason, but a glare from Applejack cut her off then and there.

"Are we grounded?" Applebloom dared to ask, getting a sinister chuckle from Applejack.

"No, a grounding would be far too nice in comparison to what you three did," AJ whispered before glancing over at the farm house and smiling. "This is yer punishment from me. The three of ya are gonna go in there and tell Granny Smith what ya did so she can scold ya. And ah'll know if ya don't."

"But...but every time Granny Smith scolds us she goes on fer hours, then she fergets about what she was talking about and starts over!" Applebloom tried to plead with her sister, but Applejack's eyes made it clear that there was no chance of escape for the three. She then pointed a hoof towards the building and with heads hanging low, the three dragged their hooves towards their boredom.

"Well, I am glad that they are alright at least," Jack said with a half-laugh as Applejack watched them go, his laugh silenced as Applejack slowly turned to face him. For a brief moment he believed that he would have to fight Applejack for his survival, before in a flash of speed that Jack barely saw the orange mare pulled him into a bear hug. Jack's eyes widened for a brief moment before he gently placed a hoof on her back, the two staying like that for a moment before AJ released him with relief in her eyes.

"Ah'm in yer debt now. No if, ands or buts about it," she said in a whisper that was choked up with gratitude. "Saving mah life is one thing, but saving the life of my sister and her friends...ah'm never gonna be able to repay ya fer what ya did."

"Please, there is no need for..." Jack tried to politely decline, but one look at Applejack's face showed that she wasn't going to let this go any time soon. "Sigh...I suppose I can think of something you can do for me if you so desire to pay me back. But honestly, I am happy enough to see that no pony was hurt."

"Oh, no pony was hurt yet," Applejack seethed as the rage came back, not noticing Jack take a step away from her. "Ah can't believe those three! How many freaking times must ah tell them to not go into the forest?! And not only that, they take yer magical sword with them and try to use it to cut free Faust knows what that got trapped in there?!  
Ah swear, the bricks ah used to build the well are brighter than mah sister and her friends sometimes!"

"While I agree that what they did was wrong, it seems that they did so in order to help a trapped creature, so their intentions were just," Jack added in defense of the fillies, surprised to see that his words gained him a grateful look from the mare.

"That's real sweet of ya, trying to defend them. But they're in trouble and that's that. Besides, what if they cut themselves with yer blade?" Applejack asked, glancing down at the sword and missing the smile that crossed Jack's face. "Would our magic even be able to counteract the magic in yer blade?"

"Applejack, those three were more in danger from you than they were from this blade," Jack said, his smile widening slightly at the confusion on AJ's face. He then unsheathed his blade and pointed it at her, getting her eyes to widen slightly. "Do you trust me?"

"Uh..." Applejack muttered before Jack flipped the blade around and offered her the hilt, her confusion increasing as she took the blade.

"Please. Stab at me." Applejack looked at Jack as if he was crazy, but the pure honesty and trust in his eyes made her sigh before she gingerly poke him in the chest with the sword...only for her eyes to widen when it came to a dead stop. She poked him slightly harder, then straight up stabbed at him, but each time the blade refused to move any further the moment it touched him.

"Do you see what I mean?" Jack said as he took his blade back, before poking Applejack with the tip of his sword. She bit her lip as she expected pain, but the blade failed to even cut through her coat as it rubbed against her without causing any damage. "The blade is enchanted with the magic of all that is just and pure. It will slay any evil without fail...yet it is completely harmless to any that are innocent and good."

"So...ya think mah sister and her friends would be safe with it?" Applejack asked in awe as she glanced at the ancient blade, wondering what else it could do.

"Well, I would not say safe, but the blade should not be able to harm them," Jack confirmed as he sheathed his blade. "This is why the sword did not harm me on the bridge, nor the beast creature that we fought in the village...or you just now. Because you have a pure and just heart, making you one of the most noble beings that I have met."

"Oh, thanks..." Applejack replied with gratitude--and a slightly reddening face--as Jack turned towards the sunrise with a small smile upon his face.

"Now let us go. On your journey you told me much of this place, and I wish to see as much as I can before I return to my time," Jack said as he began to move towards Ponyville.  'And hopefully, my journey will come to an end soon...I just wish that saying goodbye wasn't getting harder and harder.'