//------------------------------//
// Green Fast Zone 
// Story: 1 Apple = 8 Bits 
// by NTSTS 
//------------------------------//

####################ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RELOADING GROUND ERRRRRRRRRRRRR##################################################MODULE##########################################################1-1-1-8-1-8-########ERRR#################
2FAST4^##########M####################E###########################LOADED.EXE.GIF.JPG|
 
 
The sensation of waking into nothingness was rapidly becoming familiar to Applejack. She parted her eyes cautiously, and breathed a grateful sigh of relief when colour and substance greeted her instead of nothingness.
“Look – er. Drat.”
Applejack looked around, more appreciative than she could express to have functioning use of her senses and to not have to dictate exactly what she wanted to do to some omnipotent narrator who could understand commands more complex than one syllable. The sight that greeted her was an optimistic one – instead of the bleary skies the narrator had described a moment ago, only tiny whispy clouds were drifting across a bright blue overhead, setting a picturesque background to the green foliage and rolling hills that stretched out in seemingly every direction. Applejack did a double take as she let her eyes rest on  nearby flower – she had almost hoped for a moment she was somewhere in Equestria proper. The jagged edges of the flower petals told her otherwise; still, anything was better than ‘YOU SEE A FLOWER.’
Cautiously, Applejack reached her hoof out to the yellow petals. It passed right through into air.
“Well, this beats the alternative.”
Applejack looked around again. There wasn’t much to see in the immediate vicinity, but the horizon seemed to stretch out forever. More so, there were hills and obstacles stretching forward as well. Applejack guessed she might have ended up on some kind of race track, given the checkered pattern on the various sticks that impeded the path forward. Even stranger, some of the checkered patterned blocks were floating, bobbing up and down in the air like balloons on an oddly rigid schedule of oscillation.
Applejack looked up, and a sun with a bright single line smile and sunglasses stared back at her.
“Yeesh. Not sure what to make of this one.”
To weigh the pros and cons, there was no Pinkie Pie spraying her with icing and bizarre accents, and no need to dictate the simple act of looking up into the sky… the con being, she was still anywhere but Sweet Apple Acres.
“Well, I beat the last one… this is all sunshine and tropical gardens. Should be a piece of cake.”
Applejack prodded the ground experimentally with one hoof. It didn’t yield in the slightest, making the grass feel like a pounded flat racetrack. Applejack was good at racing. She raised her head, and stared into the distance. On the horizon, past what looked like a hundred hills and strange floating platforms, she thought she caught a glimmer of something glowing.
“Piece of cake,” she repeated.
Applejack had no sooner pressed her hooves to the ground to spring into a leap than she suddenly felt the sense of upright orientation leave her body. The ground spiralled over her head, and the sky spun around her. Her immediate reaction was to throw up violently, but restraint overcame instinct, and so she settled for an unpleasant sounding gurgle as the world righted itself again. Her feet hit the ground hard, and despite its hardness, she didn’t feel as though she had kicked a wall of cement. The nausea began to pass quickly too, leaving her more or less where she had left off to start, only several feet forward.
Cautiously, Applejack attempted a tiny hop into the air. The world spun around her again as her body flipped of its own accord, landing her solidly on her hooves after several rotations.
“Urgh… that’s gonna take some getting used to.”
Still… the Apple family were no quitters.
Taking the next jump at a run and aiming herself over a hill directly in her path, Applejack jumped straight up, trying to will herself into the spin that came anyway. Pushing forward into the flux made the sensation of disorientation disappear, and Applejack landed on the crest of the hill feeling exhilarated. The path stretched out in front of her, laden with trees, plants, and circle hoops designed for spinning jumps.
She braced her legs against the ground, and grinned.
“Let’s do this.”




Applejack settled into the dust on the ground from another jump. Her breathing was heavy. Despite her positive attitude, the reality of several hundred obstacles to clear had taken its toll, and she was feeling significantly winded after what felt like a day straight of sprints and jumps. In addition to leaping overtop obstacles and off suspicious floating platforms (which had turned out to be more stable than they looked), Applejack had caught herself needing to dodge several evil looking crustaceans that had leered at her out of the corner of their beady eyes as she passed by. The things were huge, practically the size of a small pony, and instead of claws, their arms curved into menacing drill points, twinkling with their sharpness underneath the sun. Applejack had stayed as far away from them as possible, but once or twice over a long chasm jump one of them had reached its pointed drill claw up at her, which she had only narrowly avoided each time. She considered stopping once or twice to try squishing them, but kept the goal in sight as best she could.
Now, panting and out of breath, the sparkling in the distance still seemed far away… and peering over the next cliff brought a chill to Applejack’s spine. Dozens of the crabs were there, leering up at her and clicking their jagged looking mandibles.
Applejack sighed and fell to the ground, trying to make herself momentarily comfortable in the insubstantial pixilated grass.
“Ow!”
A sudden pinching sensation not unlike Pinkie’s earlier nip made her eyes snap open. She drew her foreleg to her body by instinct. A red mark glowed underneath the sun – and next to where her hoof had layed, a miniature version of the drill-clawed crabs leered at her.
Smashing one almost her size was one thing, but this would be like squashing a particularly annoying fly. Applejack lifted her hoof and tensed her muscle before the down-swing.
“WAAAAAAAAIIIIIT!”
The volume of the shout was enough to shake the leaves of the palm trees waving perpetually in the background. Applejack’s eyes flew wide in surprise, and her hoof-swing faded into nothing, leaving the tiny crab freedom to scuttle in the other direction.
Where had that other voice come from, and why did she recognize it?
“Ohh, Applejack, please don’t squish the poor little guy… he didn’t mean it… did you, lil’ fella?”
Only one pony could talk that way about a drill-handed crab.
Applejack tilted her head up to see a familiar pink and yellow pegasus touching down on the ground to her side.
“Fluttershy? Fancy meeting you here.”
“Hello Applejack! I’m sorry again about the pinching… really, the crabs aren’t so bad once you get to know them.” Fluttershy let her hoof rest on the ground where the crab found it, and scurried up her leg, resting on her shoulder and blinking his beady eyes. Applejack cast a sideways glare in his direction before returning her attention to Fluttershy.
“I don’t suppose you’ve done anything since you got here aside from try to keep those little monsters out of harm’s way.”
“I’ve been here for a little while, I think… but no, I’ve just been looking after these little crabbies. After Rainbow Dash tried to squish one first, I didn’t have much of a choice!”
More familiar faces then.
“Rainbow Dash? What’s she doing here?”
“That’s like asking what any of us are doing here! I woke up and I was outside instead of in my bead, and there were  palm trees everywhere and I don’t know if you know, but I hate the ocean so when I smelled the breeze I panicked and thought I was having that awful dream again-“
“Woah, girl. Calm down. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what’s goin’ on here, and I aim to get it back to normal. Just wondering what RD’s gotten herself into in the meantime.”
Fluttershly blinked in relative confusion. The drill-crab on her shoulder poked at her hair idly, running its drill claw through the strands of pink like a filly poking at cotton candy.
“Um… I’m not sure. I just saw her zoom in the other direction a little while ago. Do you know what’s at the other side of this big path? I’ve been too busy stopping to check up on these little guys…”
“I reckon that’s what we’d call the ‘end’ of this particular section… It’s where I’m headed, anyway.”
Fluttershy gave the tiny crab a gentle pat on the head before turning back to Applejack.
“I’d love to give you a lift, but I’m sure you understand I have to stay here and watch out for all the crabbies.”
“Uh, Fluttershy, I don’t meant to burst your bubble… but strictly speaking, these crabs ain’t even real. I fell on one by mistake, and a bunch o’ numbers popped out and nearly cut my head off. They’re part of a… what was it, a video game? A bunch of squares and bleeps in a box on a screen, or at least, that’s where they came from originally.”
“A… video game? I don’t understand.”
Applejack sighed, sat up, and adjusted the brim of her hat.
“Long story short, it means they’re kinda like, uh… scarecrows that walk. They ain’t real animals. And, uh, video game… it’s a long story. Just take it easy and know that I’m sortin’ it all out.”
“Oh, thank you Applejack. I do have to confess the salt air has gotten me a little jittery.”
“Mhm.” Applejack’s gaze caught the edge of the horizon, following the gentle breeze and the waving of the palm trees along to the point far off in the distance – her target.
“Say Fluttershy… I don’t suppose you’d mind giving me a lift in the direction o’ that sparkly stuff? I think it’s where I need to be right about now, but the walk there is killing me.”
“Of course! I’m happy to help however I can, Applejack. Just let me take your hoof there-“
Applejack felt Fluttershy’s legs around her own, and seconds after felt the touch of the ground disappear as she lifted into the air. She couldn’t help but smile – with Fluttershy’s help, this would be another game out of the way, which meant the library had to be running low at this point. Things would, under an optimistic interpretation, be back to normal in no time.
After a minute of flight, Applejack caught herself looking up at Fluttershy – the breeze she’d felt on her back was a little unfamiliar, at least for the times she’d been flown places before.
“Uh… Fluttershy? Don’t you normally use your wings for flyin’?”
Instead of her usual method of airborne propulsion, Fluttershy’s tail was twirling around behind her like a propeller, making a humming whirling noise as it rotated over and over. Fluttershy glanced back at it for a second before looking to Applejack apologetically.
“I know, of course I do… but ever since I woke up, this seems to be the only way I can fly. I’m not quite sure how I’m doing it – my tail just sort of started moving on its own when I went to take off.”
Applejack kept quiet, having nothing further to say on the subject. Flying in style wasn’t the objective – getting from point A to point B was the highest priority, and Applejack desperately hoped that point B would be the final journey in her exodus of terrible graphics and bizarre beeping ambience.




Fluttershy and Applejack touched down on a hill only feet away from the sparkling glow – Applejack could see its intensity almost up close now, and her legs felt renewed with fresh energy as she readied herself for the final stretch of run.
“Probably best that you let me go check that thing out so you don’t get dragged wherever else I’m headed with me.”
“If you say so, Applejack. Just promise me you’ll be careful?”
“’course I will. Been easy-goin’ the whole way so far, but that’s no reason I’m gonna let my guard down. ‘sides, what’s the least a big shiny thing can do – gem me to death?”
Fluttershy managed a weak laugh, but her eyebrows furrowed in concern despite Applejack’s cocky smile.
“Ahaha… Right. Just make sure you stay safe for whatever happens next, okay?”
Applejack nodded, and steeled a look of determination, readying herself for the next leg of the journey. The sparkling glow, while immaterial, beckoned to her, inviting her spinning leap across the final chasm to completion. Her legs tensed in preparation for the jump, and she was an inch away from springing forward when a noise like a jet-engine sucked the air away from her ears and send her sprawling backwards onto the ground with her legs up in the air. Fluttershy caught a healthy dose of the gust as well, and it threw her to the ground, followed by an anxious ‘squeak’ as the fake grass collided with her spinning tails.
“What in the heck is that?” AJ asked allowed as the rush of wind subsided for a moment before returning in the other direction, like a multiflowing tornado doing its best to throw both ponies off balance.
“I think I might know…” Fluttershy mumbled under the wind volume.
A sound like a basketball on wet concrete shrieked through the air, followed by the abrupt halt of the wind in either direction. A foot from Applejack’s face which she had sheltered with her hat against the wind, a single blue feather fell.
“AJ, sup! What brings you here?”
Applejack looked incredulously at the pegasus standing in  front of her.
“I could ask you the same thing! What’s the big idea, zooming back and forth and throwing me off balance? I was just about to take the jump to get over to whatever that thing is and get out of this stupid place.”
“Why would you want to go? This place is awesome! Everything I do feels faster… A tried a Sonic Rainboom after I woke up and it was so easy it felt like getting out of bed!”
“Ain’t that more of a chore for you?”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind. Is there a reason you’re zooming around like that? On account of, I aim to get over to that glowball and finish my time here.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged, tilting her head to the side and gazing off into the tropical ocean skyline.
“You know me, AJ. I gotta go fast.”
“Well, you stick around and go fast as long as you want. I’m getting out of here.”
“Wait!”
Applejack paused for the second time mid-jump preparation, and cast a glare over her shoulder.
“Don’t you want to explore… you know, see what else is up with this place? It’d be easy, considering how fast everything goes…”
“Ain’t you even just a little confused about how you wound up on a vertical island with bumps and drill crabs everywhere?”
“Well… a little.”
“Did you take a look at one of those flowers and see how it’s made up of a bunch of lumpy little coloured blocks?”
“No, can’t say that I have.”
Dash cocked her head as though hit with a sudden understanding.
“Hey, wait a minute… is this all a dream I’m having? Am I gonna wake up soon?”
“If this was a dream I would have been out of bed a long time ago.”
“Don’t get all confusing on me! Can dreams tell they’re dreaming?”
Applejack shook her head, and readied herself for the jump again.
“If I think I’m dreaming, does that mean I’m awake? Am I gonna be back to normal speed when I wake up?”
“You keep thinkin’ on that, RD. Spend as much time goin’ fast as you can, before I get to the end of this stupid set of time wasters…”
The last remnants of Dash’s confused wondering vanished into the hum of the white light as Applejack threw herself inside, the world around her fading into white nothingness as the glow consumed her vision.