“Hello! Excuse me!” Grandmaster Spoon said running up the hill. He couldn’t believe it, he had found her! He had found her!
Applejack was just putting apples into her apple cart up the hill when she turned her head in the direction of the noise. A strange grey stallion with a white beard and horn ran up to her before wheezing out of breath.
“Thank” breathe “goodness” breath “I…” cough-cough “found you here, Applejack. Whew, excuse me, I just need a minute."
“Well howdy there, I’ve never seen anypony like you strolling on up here before.”
“Yes whew, yes, I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Applejack! My name is Grandmaster Spoon, I'm a chrono-wizard! I have something gravely important I need to address. The shapes! They are lying. Lying to us all! I require your special powers of Honesty to pierce the truth of their essences. I heard about your deeds in the Elements. Your magical abilities in the place of Honesty should triumph here! Tell the shapes to stop their falsehoods at once!” he declared, his eyes twitching like a mad stallion.
“Shapes? Oh howdy….. Uh…. We-well I’m afraid you caught me at an awkward time, partner. For I-I was just heading back to the farm now, and I’m afraid I cannot get to your… shapes?”
“Ah, I see, I see. Don’t you worry your feathered head about it, for I see now that I had completely forgotten about the Element of Honesty’s training and transferences. I shall return… On the morrow!”
"What a weird pony." Applejack said shaking her head. She grabbed a wheelbarrow next to the cart and began wheeling it back into the direction of Sweet Apple Acres.
The next day, Applejack was wheeling her apple cart in and spotted Grandmaster Spoon on a bench.
Applejack gulped and shot the fellow a shy smile. “Well, howdy there, uh... Spoon was it? Did'ja catch your masquerading shapes?”
“What! How did you know about… wait. Oh yes, you! You’re that other one, yes it’s you. Yes, no! I did not! Those conniving sons of cattle! They’re lying to us, they’re lying to us all! Please Applejack, please tell me you’ve come to talk some sense into them,” he said while holding up the screws, bolts, and pennies he was interrogating.
“Now w-w-wait just a goddarn minute! I just came up here to see how y’all are doin', and now you want me to interrogate these.. these household appliances? Jus’ how many hits on the noggin’ have you been given, boy?”
This was it, this was his one ticket out. Grandmaster Spoon glared his way out, he looked into the space being held to the perpendicular of Applejack’s eye-socket, seeing that which was not there.
Still glaring, with one half-lidded eye, he gave the screw to Applejack. “You think I’m insane, don’t you? That I’m just one apple short of an apple tree? ‘Oh, look at ol’ Spoony, glaring at his misbegotten cubes. Why I’ve never seen anything quite as funny in my good old life.’” He continued to glare at Applejack who had no good words for him.
“Look at the screw. Ask for it to cease its lies, and if truly, the Element of Harmony’s honesty ceases to work out, then I promise not to bother you again.” He got up and levitated his nuts, bolts, and screws away into a bag. He then closed the bag and gave it to her. "Here. I know it isn't much, but please investigate this further before you dismiss my claims as complete and utter tomfoolery." He then got up off of the bench and began to leave.
Applejack was stumped, looked for a way out, but couldn’t find one. She decided to accept the bag from the crazy pony and decided to get a second opinion.
A few hours later, she decided to visit Twilight and see what she thought of all this um, 'circumstance.' Applejack walked over to the library from the farm, and began knocking on the door.
"Twilight? You in? Ah need to talk to ya about somethin'."
Twilight answered the door. "Oh hi, Applejack, are you doing okay? I was just reading this book I received recently about illusions. Did you know that your emotional state can influence the ways that you can perceive things?"
Applejack just scratched her head in response. "Uh no, Twilight, I didn'. But that's not the reason why ah'm visiting..."
"Oh! Well, why didn't you say so!" Twilight said energetically. She closed the book she was levitating and looked at her friend. A thick layer of dust came out of the pages making Applejack sneeze. "Bless you."
"Thank you." Applejack said. "Anyway, I just wanted to ask you about somethin' strange. Ah—"
"Sure, what's on your mind?" Twilight said interrupting her.
"...Ah ran into this strange pony the other day, calling himself Spoon. He seems like an old-n-wiiise pony," Applejack said gathering her thoughts. "But I don't really know what to think. He says all these newfangled words, but he seems… well… like he's missing one apple from a bushel!” she exclaimed, practically screaming before taking a deep breath to relax. “D'ya know what Ah mean?"
"Uhh not really," Twilight said.
"Well, here's the doggone thing. He approached me the other day asking me about shapes. He had been 'interrogaten' some dimes, nickels, and pennies earlier, and he mentioned that they weren't listenin' to him. Ah swear, it just sounds weird talkin' about, but what he's mentioned won't get out of my mind!"
"Ohhhh Oooohhhh! That pony! Yeah, that pony!" Twilight said exclaiming. "That pony was an oddity. He was reading this book that I'm currently reading. It all makes sense now! Oooh!"
Applejack couldn't make sense of the nonsense that Twilight was exclaiming. She just looked at the cover, and it had all these weird fonts of moving magical energy about it. It was hurting her eyes just looking at it. Nonetheless, while Twilight was thinking to herself, Applejack decided to leave. It was already sunset. She wanted to get back to the farm before it got too late out.
Night came, then dusk, dawn, then dusk again. She tried to put Spoon’s warning out of her head, but it just kept streaming on back. After a full day's work, all she could think about was the strange pony with his even stranger message. Applejack tossed and turned in the night until she couldn't put up with it any longer.
Applejack removed herself from her sheets, then made up the bed out of general tidiness. She then opened up a drawer and removed the bag that Spoon had given her. “Ah can't believe Ah’m doing this…” she muttered to herself. She then undid the tie strings and opened the bag up. Inside were tiny objects.
She placed a screw onto the floor and hesitated to start. She welled up a tiny bit of courage, and maybe a bit of pride and exclaimed, “Now, jus’ stop it right there you screw! Now STOPPIT! Ah know you’re listenin', and Ah know y’all can hear me, and y’all better wisen up right this instant!”
She didn’t expect anything to happen. She was just hoping to get the voices out of her head. She wanted to fulfill the promise, Okay, maybe it wasn’t really a promise, but it wasn’t a denial of the promise that she would do something about it. Now she could just get some rest and tell that ol’ Spoon what’s for.
That was when the screw began to rattle around. While Applejack was climbing back into her bed, she saw it. The screw started moving, slowly at first, before going faster and faster. It seemed to have an orbit around itself until it was moving so fast that she could barely track it as anything more than a large vibrating sphere. Suddenly, with a tiny arcane explosion, the screw burst, releasing strange energy across the room.
“What in tarnation?” Applejack exclaimed before approaching the screw. She had never seen anything like it before. Well, that wouldn't be entirely correct. She had seen the weird and transformative experiences introduced by Twilight. Though, Twilight had never been malevolent. Every time she tried doing anything with her, she had never been harmed. Why should this be any different?
She lifted a hoof up to the strange vibrating object and something strange began to transpire. Suddenly, she saw a ton of lines begin to crisscross across her hoof, slowly moving upwards across her entire body. Before she even had the chance to react, she felt her body being sucked into the strange vortex. She heard an abrupt explosion, like the popping of a firecracker, before she had left the entire room, leaving no trace of her remains.