//------------------------------//
// All Work and No Play 
// Story: 1 Apple = 8 Bits 
// by NTSTS 
//------------------------------//

                    "I don't remember agreein' to no such thing!"
                    Applejack's voice was high-pitched and furious sounding, loud enough to shake one of the already crooked picture frames hanging on the nearby wall. Her eyebrows were narrowed in frustration, and she was glaring down at Applebloom, who was huddled in a ball in front of her.
                    "But sis! I practically found it, and I helped Rarity get it home and she said since I helped I could use it for a couple days-"
                    "No, you didn't help her get it home, Big Macintosh did... when he was supposed to be on his way back home to help close up the cellar for the day, I might add."
                    Big Macintosh said nothing, simply chewing a mouthful of hay at the nearby kitchen table. If he was embarrassed or apologetic, it was simply to be intuited.
                    "We came home right after! 'sides which, you managed fine on your own-"
                    "That ain't the point!" stamped one of her hind hooves into the floor, fuming. The vases on the coffee table in the living room jumped up and settled back down with a noise like a plate spinning on a linoleum floor. Despite her youthful bravado, Applebloom cowered slightly at her older sister's fury.
                    "We're comin' up on harvest season and I need everyone on the farm helpin' out. Ain't no room for magical playtime with some cockamamie contraption, no matter how sly you might' a' been getting Rarity to lend it to you."
                    "But 'sis..."
                    "Don't you 'but sis' me! I want that thing out o' the house this instant! Macintosh!"
                    Big Mac looked up from his hay for the first time in the conversation. His face was a typical mask of unenthusiastic participation, but he cleared his throat to speak as Applejack glared at him.
                    "Don't you think you're being a bit harsh, AJ?"
                    Applejack's expression fell at her brother's admonishment.
                    "Am I the only pony in this house who cares about gettin' ready for winter? I ain't tryin' to be a bully - if somepony doesn't get all those apples in, there ain't gonna be enough food to go around Ponyville while we wait for the next season!"
                    Big Mac stood up from the table and walked over to his sister. His expression was calm, and ponderous.
                    "I reckon' we won't have a problem gettin' enough apples in, just like we've done every year before now. Let AppleBloom have her fun."
                    Applejack snorted loudly, glaring at her brother. Big Macintosh simply rolled his eyes. Applebloom rose from her meager crouch, her face beaming.
                    "Thanks Big Macintosh!" she squeaked, as though her brother had the final say in the matter. She jumped up to his shoulders in a quick hug, which he met with a pat on her head, bouncing her bright red bow before she dropped back down and dashed off to her room, presumably to play with her new toy. Applejack glowered silently as her sister ran off, and didn't move a muscle as Big Mac approached, placing a hoof gently on her shoulder.
                    "A little fun for a week ain't the end o' the world sis." Mac gave his sister a pat on the back before he made his way to the stairs. He paused as his hoof lifted to the first step, keeping his head forward as he spoke.
                    "Besides... I ain't carryin' that thing all the way across town twice in one week anyway."
                    Big Mac darted up the stairs fast enough to narrowly avoid the couch cushion AJ hurled behind him.




 
                    "Dangit! I almost had him!"
                    Applebloom's voice was loud and shrill as it rang through the Apple household. Not loud enough to shake the walls as her sister's shouting good due in the worst of situations, but more than loud enough to prompt an annoyed sigh from her sister who was making her way through the upstairs hallway, busying herself with harvest cleaning. Applebloom's shout was accompanied by a loud ringing explosion in bleeps and bloops.
                    "You kept letting him hit you when you jumped," chimed in a second voice. It was a contrast from Applebloom's youthful southern drawl, almost the complete opposite in a combination of tomboyish gravel and scratchy-voiced excitement.
                    "You didn't do any better when it was your turn," said a third, high-pitched and girlish. Sweetie Belle nudged the bright orange pegasus in front of her in the back. Scootaloo turned her head and stuck out her tongue, blowing a loud raspberry in Sweetie's face.
                    "Ew, gross!"
                    Scootaloo giggled as Sweetie Belle feigned wiping saliva from her face, and Applebloom joined her, setting the controller in her hooves down for a moment to laugh.
                    "Oooh, it's my turn now," said Sweetie Belle, recovering rapidly and reaching out for the controller. Anathema to the usual bickering amidst the trio, neither of the other two fillies made a move to stop her. Even watching another pony's turn was enough fun to keep controller envy out of the picture, and by this point lives were over so fast there wouldn't have been cause for antagonism anyway.
                    "I bet you can't make it past the two headed hydra," teased Scootaloo as Sweetie Belle's character substantiated on the screen, looking stalwart, but somehow confused.
                    “Bet you I can!”
                    The girls’ giggling and banter carried loudly down the upstairs hallway, rolling down the stairs and flooding through the house along with the cascade of bleeps and bloops that followed their every on screen action. Each time something exciting happened, peals of laughter and exclamation bounced from the wooden frame of the housing like a ball in tight quarters, rebounding from every surface.
                    Applejack could hear the noise from outside as she passed by, glaring up to Applejack’s bedroom window as she wiped a hoof across her forehead to clear the sweat that had gathered there. The sun was beaming downward mercilessly, turning a hard day’s work into an even harder slog through waves of heat and the nagging worry of dehydration. She paused and took a long swig from the flask of water fastened to her side. The water was already lukewarm from minutes in the sun. The unpleasant taste did little to bolster her sour mood, and a particularly loud squeal of laughter through the window pane above didn’t help.
                    Why was she down here doing all the work when keeping the farm in order had always been a family effort? Something about that box infuriated her for reasons she couldn’t describe. It was like a black hole, sucking away ponies’ attention and free time. Wasting time was all well and good, but when there was work to be done, there were lines to be drawn.
                    Applejack grit her teeth and lowered the handles of the cart she had been dragging. The giggling upstairs followed her as she walked inside the house.
                    Applebloom had the controller in her hooves and was focused intently on the  machinations of the armored pony-approximation on screen when her sister’s voice made her jump.
                    “Applebloom, did you sort the apples in the cellar like I asked you to?”
                    Applebloom was torn between two platforms of attention.
                    “Um, no, not yet,” she mumbled with her tongue between her teeth as she kept her eyes locked on the screen in front of her. The armor knight under her control was navigating a series of deadly lava pits – every time Applejack pushed a button, he jumped, and her hooves moved along with him, dragging the control up as though it might heighten his ascent.
                    “I asked you to do it four hours ago! Those apples are in the cellar for a reason – they need to get sorted so we can start pressing and packaging ‘em.”
                    “I’ll do it in a minute...” Applejack said out of the corner of her mouth. She was dodging fireballs and the occasional swooping bat on screen.
                    “In a minute nothin’! Put down that silly contraption and come do your chores like the rest of the ponies in this family!”
                    Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had piqued with an air of visible discomfort the second Applejack’s admonishment had started, and now their eyes were darting from sister to sister, unsure what to make of the severity of the situation.
                    Applebloom had separated her eyes from the screen for a moment to acknowledge her sister’s direction, but her hooves were still moving on her controller, prompting the armored pony forward on screen.
                    “But Applejack! I’m in the third castle, and we’ve never made it that far before-“
                    “I am sick an’ tired of this stupid game making you more useless than a third wing on a pegasus! You’ve been up here all day with that thing, wastin’ your time when there’s work to be done. Put that thing down right now and get to your chores!”
                    Applebloom’s face twisted into a grim glare, but she knew enough not to push her sister beyond this point, no matter how critical the stage of the game she had managed to get to. She set her controller down reluctantly, jamming a smaller button In the center and bringing a flashing ‘PAUSE’ onto the screen.
                    “That’s better. You best show your friends out as well, unless they want to help you work.”
                    “Uh… that’s okay. Thanks for letting us come over and play, Applebloom.” Scootaloo cut off the idea of cooperative chores before it could even bolster as a suggestion, and Sweetie Belle nodded along side her.
                    “Yeah, thanks! Next time let’s see if we can get all the way to the dragon king!”
                    Applebloom managed a smile as Sweetie and Scootaloo dashed out her door, giving apologetic nods to Applejack as she glared on at her sister. Applejack’s gaze turned to full force as the two fillies exited, leaving only the Apple family in the room.
                    “You best get downstairs and start that sortin’ right now, missy, or you and I are gonna have more than words.”
                    Applebloom grumbled resentfully as she walked to the box at the bottom of the screen. With a push of a button, the images on the inlaid glass vanished, and Applebloom followed her sister’s hoof pointing out the door, marching to her chores and leaving the game until she could escape from the tyranny of obligation.
                    Applejack cast a sideways glance at the box and cords, narrowing her eyes as though giving a stare to an acquaintance she didn’t particularly care for. The box remained silent, hushed from its bleeps and bloops by Appleblooms handling of the ‘off’ switch. With a huff, Applejack turned and followed her sister downstairs. There was more work to be done, and she didn’t have time to spend resenting the box that was sucking up what little was there in the first place of her sister’s work ethic.
 




                    The family gathered at the end of the day around the dinner table, the meal consisting primarily of Granny Smith’s prepared root stew and wheatloaf. What little apples there were had been saved in some semblance of respect for the rapidly depleting remainders of the previous reserve, and the new collection that would have to last through the winter. Not that the meal was flavourless, but it did give a certain ‘drowning amidst a sea of apples’ feeling.
                    Applebloom sat at the far end of the table next to Granny Smith, and poked idly at her plate of food as the rest of the family ate. Applejack’s voice was the only one to bound over the meal amidst the relative silence of chewing.
                    “We’re making good time on the first field this year... despite slacking off more than we should.” Applebloom simply rolled her eyes to her sister’s glare. Big Mac, as usual, held his words, and Granny Smith couldn’t hear the attempt at conversation over the sound of her own chewing.
                    Where normally a conversation might have been struck up for pony’s plans for the weekends or what they had done during the day, here both were devoid of purpose. Applejack and Big Macintosh had spent the day working, and Applebloom’s only activity was the hammering of a controller upstairs with her friends. The adventures in her head were bigger than their actuality, however, and in what might have been a sudden impulse of youthful enthusiasm, she turned to Granny Smith with a sparkle in her eyes.
                    “Granny, do you wanna’ know what me and my friends did today?”
                    “And what was that, dear?”Granny’s voice was perpetually creaky, but despite her age, she still paid rapt attention when her granddaughter had something to say. Applejack lowered an eyebrow over her wheatloaf, anticipating the story that was coming.
                    “We explored a cave, and found a magic sword, and used it to slay a troll-“
                    Granny’s eyes widened in confusion. She had nodded along for the first half of the sentence, taking notice when the mention of monster slaying arose.
                    “You fought a troll? Heavens! That’s not something we did when I was your age.”
                    “She’s talkin’ about that dumb box she’s got upstairs, Granny.”
                    Granny’s confusion only doubled as she tried to separate the events she had only a hazy understating of in the first place.
                    “What box is that, again?”
                    Applejack sighed.
                    “That giant two cart size hunk o’ wood and glass she made us haul up the steps so she could spend all day ignoring her chores-“
                    “Applejack, come on! I sorted the apples eventually...”
                    “And the sooner you do them next time, the sooner we can get the rest of the harvest work done!” Applejack pushed her plate forward with a clink. Big Macintosh was still chewing his meal silently, but he raised his head to the tone of the conversation, unsure about the level of concern that was appropriate.
                    “Why do I gotta work all day? You’re the one saying I’m just a little pony, which means I should have time to enjoy myself-“
                   “I ain’t got no objection to that, the exception being that every member of the family helps out during harvest time. And you’re old enough to know that there’s plenty of work that needs to be done this time of year.”
                    “I ain’t a slave pony! I should still be allowed to play with my friends in between work-“
                    “You weren’t playing with your friends though! You were glued to that big dumb box with its squeaking blobs that sound like a cat on a chalkboard.”
                    “Yeah, with my friends! We were playing together. What have you got against that game machine, anyway?”
                    Applejack stood up from the dinner table, and Applebloom did the same at her end, leaving Granny Smith looking confused in her chair, and Big Macintosh silently mulling over a mouthful of stew. The tension in the debate had escalated quickly, and now the two sisters were glaring at each other, neither of them content to let the other ones point of view pass mental clearance.
                    “I got plenty against it! Playin’s fine in healthy doses, when it’s you and your friends running around outside, or heaven forbid crusadin’ for yer cutie marks. But staying in one place for so many hours barely movin’ a muscle ain’t a good use of anyone’s time, least of all when there’s work to be done!”
                    “But that is work! I mean, it’s not just hitting a button and watchin’ stuff happen: you’ve gotta think about puzzles, and dodge monsters, and beat up giant ogres-“
                    “And you’re not doin’ any of it! It’s time wastin’, pure and simple, and I’m about fed up with the whole thing!”
                    The air settled again into uncomfortable silence, Applebloom glowering at Applejack, who was on the verge of catching heavy breaths after her loud-voiced ranting. Several seconds passed. A clink rose from the table as Big Macintosh pushed his plate forward.
                    “I think-“
                    “Fine!” Applebloom’s shout cut off her brother’s attempt at reason before it could begin. “I’m gonna go upstairs and go to sleep so I can wake up early and do nothing but work all day, because apparently fun isn’t allowed when Applejack’s around!”
                    “You listen here missy-“
                    But Applebloom had dashed off up the stairs before Applejack could begin her riposte. The sound of her teeth grinding together was loud enough to hear over the hushed silence left standing in the dining room.
                    “I hope the wheatloaf wasn’t too dry...” Granny Smith mumbled absentmindedly.
 



 
                    Applejack woke early the next morning – but as her eyes parted to let the sun in through the window, she felt the unusual whole body sensation experienced only when waking early. The feeling when the sun isn’t quite as bright as it should be, and the moment of panic that can signal oversleeping before the hands on the alarm clock precede obligation. Applejack sighed, and settled down into her bed, hoping she could fall back to sleep. Hours of rest were valuable when the rest of the day was manual labour.
                    A noise made her jump underneath her quilt. Instead of the rattle of her alarm clock, or the roosters crowing outside the window, she heard something that until several days ago had been completely unfamiliar, but was now quickly becoming akin to a generated curse word.
                    Beep. Beoooop.
                    “Applebloom...” she muttered to herself, throwing her sheets and blanket off in one swift motion and jumping out of bed, and tossing on her hat from its bedside post. The noise was loud enough to hear through her bedroom wall as she opened the door and started the walk down the hallway. The beeps and boops grew louder as she approached Applebloom’s bedroom, eventually reaching an almost ear-piercing height as she stood outside the closed door. She paused for a second, took a deep breath, and pounded the door open.
                    “Erk!”
                    Applebloom’s face froze as she turned to meet the noise, having subconscious presence of mind enough to press the pause button on her controller. The armor suited pony on screen froze in place,  inches away from a fireball above his head.
                    “Consarnit Applebloom, I have had it with this stupid thing!”
                    Applejack marched over to the wood-inlaid screen, her hoof hovering over the power button to the box on the ground in front of it.
                    “Wait, don’t!”
                    Applejack’s hoof paused for a moment, on the off chance that her sister might proffer an explanation to withhold her malice.
                    “I’m just about at the third castle...”
                    “Gaah!”
                    The images on the screen fizzled for a moment and blinked out of existence as Applejack pressed down on the power button much harder than was necessary.
                    “That’s it! No more of this dumb game!” Applejack’s voice was, in irony, louder than the beeping she had stormed into the room to silence. Applebloom was torn between quivering and raising her own voice in defiance, and settled somewhere in the middle.
                    “You’re just mad because I still remember how to have fun instead of working all the time!”
                    “That ain’t got nothin’ to do with it!” Applejack stormed over to the other side of the room, mentally stalling her hooves from bringing her into a brisk set of pacing.
                    “It does too! You’ve been cranky from workin’ too hard, your brains turned to mush after so many years of being nothing but boring!”
                    Applejack didn’t often hear her sister talk back like that, and given the combination of circumstance, it was enough to tip her from boiling to smoldering. She turned her exit into a circuit of the room, making her way back to the now black screen and the grey box beside it.
                    “Boring? Let me show you what I think’d be fun!” Applejack’s eyes cocked into a cocky ‘just dare me’ look as she poised her hind hooves close to her body in bucking position, right next to the fragile glass and unidentifiable material of the console that didn’t look as though it could survive even a fierce shove. Applebloom saw the intent immediately, and leapt to action, springing up from her seat on the floor. In an uncharacteristic display of brashness, whether due to a well-labeled affection towards her new toy, or due to the increasingly heated level of conflict that had arisen over the object’s presence, Applebloom aimed her momentum straight for Applejack’s forehead, and clamped down on the brim of Applejack’s hat. She pulled it down with the weight of her body, covering AJ’s eyes completely and dragging her front end down as well.
                    Applejack’s legs, not being an ill-proportioned firearm, didn’t go off of their own accord, but the shock of the sudden blindness as well as her sister’s sudden aggression prompted a response in kind, bucking her front end up in an attempt to dislodge the abruptly vicious yellow parasite clinging to her headwear. Her shake sent Applebloom flying to the side of the room, where she landed against the book-case with a thud. Immediately, several books fell from their place on the shelf, and the ancient construction of the boards creaked as they jostled against Applebloom’s body-weight. Applebloom jumped to her feet quick, turning a second after to notice the book-case behind her. It was falling forward to meet her. Being sandwiched under a hundred pounds of ancient wood boards not being her idea of fun, Applebloom managed to draw on her hidden reserves of adrenaline, already kicked into gear by her bout with her sister, and sprung out of the way, ducking sideways under the rapidly descending wood.
                    Applejack’s reaction gave a second longer for the shock of the approaching furniture, but she was quick on the draw as well, diving to the side as the book-case fell. Its descent was as quick as a laborious assemblage of old planks could manage, and within seconds of the two Apple sisters dodging its movement, the book-case had crashed against the ground, slamming itself against the floorboards with a crash – as well as the grey box in front of the wooden screen, missing the glass by inches.
                    The sound the box made as the book-case collided with its frame was something like glass breaking in a vortex. Pieces of it flew in every direction, and as Applebloom and Applejack watched, the air in front of them blinked for a moment, a bright flash of magenta, followed by a sound like a sigh escaping from an elephant made of pixels. Applebloom’s eyes widened in shock as the shards of grey material scattered to either side.
                    “Nooo!”
                    It was the only thing she could manage. Not only was the box in pieces in front of her, but it was a broken item not even belonging to her. Despite her conjecture to smash the thing, Applejack’s expression was the strained awkwardness of someone who couldn’t weigh their contribution to the destruction of something that wasn’t theirs.
                    A soft hiss like settling smoke was the only sound in the room for a moment.
                    “Applebloom... I, uh...”
                    “How could you, Applejack!” Applebloom turned with tears in her eyes, shifting the blame of her own part in the accident in the way that only heartbroken children are able to do.
                    “Hey now, I didn’t do nothin’! You’re the one that came at me like a timber wolf at an applecart.”
                    Applejack seemed oblivious to the fact that empirical evidence in this kind of situation was not at the forefront of Applebloom’s mind. Due to the accuracy of the response, Applebloom couldn’t dismiss it immediately, and so instead settled for sniffling and looking at the pieces of grey scattered on the ground in front of her. Applejack stood in the settling quiet alongside her, unsure whether or not to apologize.
                    Applebloom turned again to break the quiet, her cheeks stained with the overflow of her tears.
                    “@#%$!^(*^@%(@!”
                    Applejack blinked. When her sister had opened her mouth, instead of words, a sound like a rusted lawnmower through a water tunnel had emerged. Applejack rubbed her ear with a hoof in an attempted to clear it out. Maybe the lack of sleep and long work days were getting to her.
                    “Beg ‘pardon, Applebloom?”
                    Applejack’s little sister opened her mouth again, her face still a mix of hurt and self-resentment.
                    Blooooop.
                    Applejack felt very tired all of a sudden. The air in front of her was blurring and flickering in her periphery, as though a soft fog was descending on her irises. She raised her hoof again to clear her eyes, but they shot wide open when she saw her foreleg.
                    “What in tarnation?”
                    The orange fur of her own body looked suddenly unfamiliar. Instead of smooth creases on her foreleg in the natural way it had always been, her limb looked blocky, and angular – like it was assembled out of a hundred tiny blocks, pressed together in a semblance of what an actual pony leg looked like.
                    “                              “
                    Applejack’s mouth moved, but no sounds emerged. She tore her attention from the alien looking part of her own body. Applebloom stared up at her; her face was a collage of yellow blocks, and a bright red set of triangles on her head in a crude approximation of her bow.
                    Before she could speak again, Applejack felt the floor underneath her shift. A look down to the floorboards gave a sigh similar to Applebloom’s face, thousands of brown geometric blobs connected – but now falling apart below her feet. Applejack’s reaction time didn’t feel dulled in the slightest, but as she lifted her legs in an attempt to spring away, time slowed to a crawl, and the floor disappeared rapidly. Gravity took hold in an instant, plunging her down through the crack in the pixilated floor. She tried to shout, but managed only a bleep before the ground swallowed her whole, bypassing the downstairs of her house entirely and plunging her into darkness.