The sky was not dark with flapping wings, and it was the one thing Applejack could feel thankful for. It was starting to feel as if the migration had first begun to arrive during the night, and while there were some geese airborne and descending, Fluttershy believed (or least hoped) they were the stragglers, the slightly weaker members of the flock who hadn't been able to keep up with the central gaggle. Assuming there wasn't another group right behind them -- and Applejack wasn't comfortable with any assumption concerning that potential addition into despised math -- they could at least get some idea of the total population which would require clearing out, and when it came to the immediate part of the street which was right in front of Town Hall, that was still thirty geese.
Plus another forty or so to the almost-immediate left.
Add about fifty on the right. (There was currently more food available for stealing on the right, although not for long.)
And that was just what they could see...
Ponies were still racing by. Two of them were police officers: Applejack spotted the chest strap and badge glinting under Sun. They were trying to herd the traffic, both pony and goose: getting enough of the latter out of the way to clear some level of befouled path for the former. It wasn't working out all that well. Little barricades were being placed, and most of them were immediately knocked over by angry wings, while nothing stopped the stuff. And ponies shouted, and yelled, and complained, and...
...Applejack was finally starting to hear it.
"There they are! Who wants to bet it's them again? Or maybe it's the siblings? What did Apple Bloom do this time, Applejack, and what kind of pony lets her and those other two just keep right on doing it? If you can't herd your family, I bet I can get a restraining order which lets me give it a try!"
"They're animals, Fluttershy! Shouldn't your so-called talent have this under control already?"
"It's you! It's always you! I'm going to the moving supplies store! I bet Ryder has a few boxes which don't have these things camping out in them yet...!"
There were variations, directed towards every pony (and dragon) in the group. They were loud. They were angry. And they weren't many in number, not when compared to all of Ponyville... but there were enough...
...a number which then increased by one.
"Ms. Applejack."
It came out as a snort, and a stomp, along with being more than a little bit of a curse. And because she knew the voice, knew it by heart and had been heartily sick of it since the first moon after her parents had died, Applejack didn't bother turning to look at the source.
The cattle didn't care, and moved itself to face her. Old cracked hooves did their best to damage the road, failed, and took it as one more level of insult. A muzzle gone white with age thrust itself a mere hoof-thickness away from her snout. Curving horns nearly poked her ears. Foul breath filled her nostrils.
"Do you see these things?"
"All Ah can see right now," Applejack tensely stated, "is you. Ah got work t' do. Ah know that's somethin' y'don't appreciate, but it's gotta be done all the same. Y'wanna complain 'bout somethin' again, same way y'do every chance y'get, y'can do it later. The mayor's asked us t' go out there, an' you? You, Ah don't care 'bout right now. Or ever."
She could feel her friends staring at her, but only just barely. It was getting hard to make out any sensations through the chill, and that included what normally would have been the surging heat of hate. Any words she was typically forced to exchange with the old bull normally came out covered in emotional steam, but today...
He hadn't listened, of course. He never heard anything he didn't want to, which meant that all words other than his own generally remained an uncared-for mystery. "Do you know what I see? I see feces. All over the Acres. All over my land."
"Ain't your land. Was never your land. Y'jus' lease it, or y'would if'fin y'ever actually --"
"It is fouling my grass."
"It's foulin' everyone's grass. That's why Ah can't deal with you right now, 'cause the mayor asked us t' go an' --"
"You are providing unsuitable living conditions. The same as your parents did. The same as every single stupid pony, a race too simple to understand the needs of the only intelligent and worthy species...!"
He snorted on her. Mucus sprayed her snout, went into her eyes.
"The others might be choosing the idiotic path of patience, of waiting to see what their magic-tainted inferiors plan on doing about this disaster. But I," the old bull declared, "refuse to pay my grazing fees!"
"The Princess raises Sun."
He kept staring at her.
"And what is that piece of pony stupidity supposed to --"
"-- Ah thought we were talkin' 'bout things which happen every single day." Her head came up a little, and she locked eyes. "Go home. While y'still got one."
"I will not be moved! You have no right to --!"
She didn't have a Stare. All she had was the entire morning, the day, every tenth-bit of her life which this particular cattle had been involved with, and she put every last portion of it into her unblinking gaze. "Go. Home."
He took a step back. Wrinkled sides swayed, and the muzzle worked with the effort of pretending none of the movement had ever happened.
"I'm not paying."
"You'll pay."
"I won't."
"Ah didn't say y'were gonna pay in bits."
Another step.
"We'll talk about this," he swore. "When you get back. We'll talk about the reparations for my pain and suffering...!"
He left, and not quickly enough. Not far enough away, either. Not ever...
Softly, from behind her, "Applejack... was that one of your tenants? I'm certain that I've never seen him before, not during any of my trips to the Acres. And yet he spoke to you -- that way. And it felt as if -- you'd known him for a long time."
"No, Rarity. Not one of mine."
"But... he spoke to you as if he --"
Her right foreleg automatically started to come up, reaching for the comfort of touch, that moment of extra contact with the hat -- but she lowered it. She was too dirty for that, and too... cold. "He's mah Daddy's. Sort of. His son... dead now, lotta years, such a good bull... asked mah Daddy t'look after his own father, 'cause there was an old bull too stupid an' stubborn t' survive on his own. Someone who offended everyone an' everypony within seconds of meetin' 'em, and wasn't smart enough t' care, even after he'd been chased off every other bit of land, 'cause he always found an excuse for tryin' t' stay free until the courts forced him t' leave. An' he was pretty much out of places he could go, an' didn't see how any of it was his fault. But he had a good son, somehow, an' he said his father would be dead in a year or two anyway, but the son went first, an' then... Ah'm jus' keepin' mah Daddy's promise, Rarity. Givin' him a place t' live until he dies."
She felt the designer coming closer. A rare event, that. Among the seven, they were the most distant from each other in every way Applejack could think of, had the most trouble connecting, and they probably always would.
But she couldn't seem to turn and look at the event. The internal ice was stiffening her joints.
"And he doesn't pay his grazing fees?"
"Or his rent, or anythin' else. When he don't have no other excuse handy, he says all the land was for cattle back before Equestria, an' we're jus' usin' government power t' steal it. Y'don't see him with the other cattle 'cause they don't want him anywhere near them, especially near the calves. They pushed him out t' the farthest corner of the pasture, where he can't taint no one. An' he thinks that's mah fault. Ah jus' hope none of the younglings are sneakin' off t' listen."
It was surprising, how gentle the unicorn's voice could be. "You're just being a good daughter, Applejack. And I know it's a hard promise to keep, but... it's not difficult to see age on a bull, especially one that old. You're giving him a place to rest in his senior years. He's... not a bull I would want to know, or perhaps one anypony would truly care about without the bond of family. But... might he still not deserve the dignity of a final pasture, for the little time he has remaining?"
"Little time?" The laugh was hollow. "Y'don't know how many years it's been, Rarity. Sometimes Ah think he's gotta be the oldest bull in the world by now, not that he'll tell me his age or show me any birth stuff 'cause that's jus' the government tryin' t' take his identity. Ah'm waitin' for him t' die, an' he don't have a heartbeat any more, not one that blood drives. Jus' hate. An' sometimes, Ah think that'll let him live forever..."
The white flank brushed against her side, pressed a little closer, waited for a matching pressure. But she had no strength to offer such and after a long moment, the contact was withdrawn.
"What's his name?"
"Doesn't matter."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
"Applejack --"
"-- Cloven. Cloven Bundy. Can we jus' go?"
They went. But Rarity stayed oddly close to her as they began the trot through town, and Applejack wasn't sure why.
For Davenport, having acquired a live-in source of fresh quills didn't seem to make up for having that potentially-infinite supply lounging (and defecating) on his sofas. He knew exactly who he blamed for that, and he shouted it for all the street to hear. Not that there were many ponies left to hear anything, excepting those whom the words were aimed towards.
"...he thinks it's our fault," Fluttershy whispered.
"Yeah," Applejack heavily said. "For now. He'll get 'round t' blaming Apple Bloom an' the other two in a minute. Jus' don't even look at him."
"A lot of them have been yelling at us!" Rainbow huffily noted. "What did we do? Why is everything suddenly our fault?"
"It... ain't exactly sudden. An'..." Dropping close to a whisper, "Rainbow, Ah don't wanna talk 'bout this before we get out of town, okay? When we ain't got so many ears twistin' all 'round us, that's when y'bring it up again." If at all, and she was so hoping on never... "Jus' give it some time. 'cause --"
"...it is our fault."
They'd just barely been able to hear Fluttershy, and so the rest of the language-comprehending area remained unhappily (and loudly) ignorant of the words. Rainbow's response, however, nearly reached the fringe. "Ours? How can it be --"
"-- later," Applejack cut her off. "Jus' -- later, Rainbow. Hold it back best y'can, jus' for now. Jus' look around, try t' see if there's anythin' we can use, try t' find Pinkie..." Pinkie, who shouldn't have left, who was out there somewhere doing the Princess only knew what, and knowing wouldn't necessarily equal comprehension...
She wondered if the caretaker felt just as frozen inside.
The pegasus fumed. Jaw muscles tightened, flexed. Forelegs crossed in mid-hover.
"Fine. Why don't I just get higher and see if I can spot her from altitude? She's usually not that hard to make out from the -- hey, does anypony else hear..." Her ears pivoted. "That's got to be Pinkie, right? Do you think she's going to try -- ?"
And now the other four were picking it up.
"That... is the sound of somepony cleaning out a rather large spit valve, is it not? It's rather distinctive, even through all the honking and hissing." Rarity swallowed. "I haven't heard that since the last parade, when Pinkie -- oh dear, somepony please tell me she's not going to --"
But the others were already moving into full gallop and flight, racing to reach the source before it got to them. Rarity swallowed again, then scrambled to catch up. It didn't take long for everypony to converge.
"Hi, everypony!" Pinkie beamed from somewhere in the middle of the brass and valves and keys and wood and strings. "I got everything together! Well, almost. I kind of had to substitute for the cymbals, but the trash can lids produced the same sound after I stomped on them a few times! You know, making music with trash can lids... I just bet there's a market for that. So once I get everything cleaned out and stretch out my joints a little more, work through a few scales -- it really has been a while, hasn't it? But don't worry, I haven't forgotten how to keep the beat!"
They all stared at the slightly chubby body, nearly lost in the mass of instruments, as geese milled around them, flew by them, occasionally tried to attack before getting kicked by what was now a completely casual offhoofed effort. (They weren't trying to incite any attacks. They were just occupying the road. The road which ran right through several Everythings, which was in itself decidedly Owned, and the geese were making more determined attempts at eviction than a family-bound Applejack ever had.)
"Pinkie," Applejack carefully began, "Ah understand what you're gonna try here, and Ah'm gonna let y'do it, 'cause we all should have the first time 'round. But... why this time?"
"The name!"
"The name," Spike slowly repeated. "...which name, Pinkie?"
"Airasprites! Come on, Spike! Names are important! Just think about all the ponies who have names which go so well with their jobs! A name can really really say a lot about a pony, and sometimes even someone who isn't a pony! A name means something, and if somepony once called the geese 'airasprites,' maybe they meant it as a clue! They were trying to tell us that they're vulnerable to the same thing, teaching us across more than a thousand years!" The briefest of pauses. "When you think about it, that's really kind of cool!"
Everypony looked at her. Then at the geese. Back to her.
"There are," Rarity carefully noted, "at least seventy. On this street."
"But we had thousands of parasprites!"
"Yes, but... in terms of comparable mass... if it does not quite work... Perhaps you would be best served by taking a -- trial gallop?"
Pinkie thought it over.
"Those three," she said, working a foreleg between two violins in order to make the indicating gesture. "Over there. The really heavy ones with the mean little beaks and the thrashing wings. Okay?"
"Perhaps something a little smaller?"
"But they're the ones who look like they could really use a good tune!"
Rarity, with the practiced ease of those who had spent long years dealing with Pinkie's reasoning process, skillfully gave up.
"Just get ready, everypony!" Pinkie gushed. "A little more tuning, and..."
Her teeth nipped here and there, twisted a few screws. Legs checked relative pressure and valve lubrication. Her tail began to carefully move from side to side, keeping time.
"MUSIC!" Pinkie proudly announced, and marched towards her chosen audience.
Twenty seconds passed.
And then a pink blur shot past them, instruments falling away in every direction as a trio of hissing geese snapped at her curly tail.
"CRIIIIITIIIIICS!"
"But..." The awkward words were rather soft-spoken, as they almost always were. And when those words had to deal with Pinkie, they generally emerged through a veil of confusion. "...Bon-Bon needs me at the shop, Pinkie, she needs every pony she can get right now and Caramel took off at the first sign of real trouble like he always does, I have to go back --"
"-- it'll just be a minute!"
"But --"
"-- on the teeny-tiny chance that they maybe just might want to hear something from a professional! Now here's your instrument, and here's your beat! And a one, and a two, and -- go!"
Lyra looked at Pinkie. Then at the other Bearers.
She looked at the geese.
She shook her head and trotted away.
The kicking was starting to become a constant, and Applejack swore she'd just seen Fluttershy launch her first. Everypony had picked up scratches, and Spike had some awkward-looking talon-produced skid marks running across his scales. The geese were pressing in with increased density, which included a few in the air: the Everything had reached that level of subdivision, and they crossed at least five invisible offending borders with every hoofstep and flap.
Rainbow was starting to talk about lightning again, or rather, maintained a constant low-level mutter about it in which at least half the words weren't curses, although that percentage was rising as they fought their way towards the latest group of buildings. Spike had yet to launch his first burst of fire at anything which wasn't a scroll, but his nostrils were starting to flare in a certain distinctive way, and Applejack didn't know how long he could keep fighting the urge to do something, not with more geese seemingly arriving by the second, heading towards the thing they currently wanted most...
The group had reached the restaurant district.
It didn't mean as much for Ponyville as it did for some of the larger settled zones. There were certainly places to buy food in town, and some of them were grouped into a convenient cluster near the train station, where weary returning commuters might find it all the more convenient to decide there was one less thing they wanted to do for themselves before ending their day. But that cluster was somewhat smaller than it should have been, with a single central source forcing a certain degree of scatter. Some eatery owners simply didn't want to be too close to that place, and the geographic debris fell to all sides of the map.
Still, there were a few. The places which served breakfast for commuters heading to the train had begun their prep work at the same hour as Sugarcube Corner. Those who began serving at lunch started getting ready for it during the latter part of breakfast. The ones who focused on dinner still had their pantries, and some of those rooms were deliberately set up to leak enticing scents into the street through strategically-placed vents. Ponies walking by would, in theory, appreciatively inhale and consider whether they wanted to make plans for later in the day.
The geese had, in practice, taken one whiff and gone directly for the source.
Feathers flew out of eateries. Nearly all of them were still attached, and the contents of those pantries made their sound-chased way into the sky.
Rainbow's constant flow of low-level inventive took a time-out from sheer amazement. "I've never heard that curse before."
"Cooks," Applejack wearily said. "Jus' keep movin'."
"Anypony know what it means?"
"It means move."
Rarity was busy doing some impromptu trimming work on a goose's tailfeathers, which involved exposing nearly all of the actual tail. "Why are we coming this way? Are we not trying to discover the places they are avoiding?"
"Can't do that without checkin' everywhere. Jus' keep pushin' on, Rarity: if we stop movin' as a unit, they're gonna really surround us, an' then it's gonna switch into pickin' us off."
"So let me scout!" a frustrated Rainbow huffed. "I can fly over the whole town, check the main settled zone, the farms, the dam, the fringe -- I can even do a quick survey over the Everfree! If you'd just let me loose, I could have that question answered in -- well, not ten seconds, but a lot faster than we're answering it now!"
"Can't be splittin' our forces," Applejack insisted. "Can't lose anypony, 'specially not after Pinkie already ran off once. If'fin we don't stay t'gether, ain't no tellin' if we can get back t'gether. Got lucky the first time: shouldn't risk another."
"It's stupid!"
They couldn't pause to stare at her. To pause was to give the geese a chance to close in a little more. But they did slow, just a little.
"Rainbow." It was as close to a bark as Applejack ever came. "Yer stayin' here. Where we need you. Need all the ponies we have, jus' in case anypony thinks of anythin' at'tall..."
"I am thinking!" It had been a shout. "About scouting! Of getting information! Let me do what I'm good at! We'll get to a wall, find a defensible position, and after that, I trust you guys to hold the line for a few minutes! Maybe even use a building if anypony will let us in, or we find someplace we can just get into anyway, and then --"
"-- yer stayin'!"
"Twilight would let me go!"
"Ah ain't Twi!"
Furious kicks landed. None of them were on each other.
"No, you're not." And for a moment, it was almost as if the geese had begun to speak, with all of Rainbow's words so close to a hiss and emerging on that same level of unreasoning fury. "Because Twilight knows a lot of stuff, and you know what the first thing she knew was, after she linked up with everypony here? That she didn't know everything. That she had to listen sometimes. What do you know about listening, Applejack? Sent off any scrolls about that? Because right now, all I'm seeing is a pair of orange ears, and nothing's actually going in them --"
"...don't fight... please, don't fight..."
Somehow, the near-whisper got through.
"Fluttershy, you know I can do this, keeping everypony in one place isn't helping..."
"Y'ain't gonna --"
But only audibly.
Pinkie's anxious face briefly surfaced in a sea of flying feathers, then submerged -- and immediately came out again before falling a second time: it took them all a few seconds to realize the baker was jumping up and down. "Rainbow's -- got a -- point! But -- if Applejack's -- well, at least for -- right now -- we shouldn't --"
Spike, who was doing his best to guard Fluttershy's back while perched on it, had his little claws visibly starting to wring: always a sign that the stress was starting to get to him, and having to take a side made it worse. "If we split up for a while, Fluttershy could ask some of her bigger friends to help out, or we could just ask the police to give us some reinforcements..."
Ah shouldn't have t' --
"We're stayin' together. Nopony splits off. An' no dragon neither."
"Why?"
She stared up at Rainbow, and the words emerged without permission or full awareness. "'cause when ponies leave, they --"
"-- does anypony else see -- that?"
In spite of all previous group experience with the mostly-falsified faints, Rarity's more dramatic tones still had a way of getting attention.
"See what?" Spike quickly asked, sounding glad for the distraction.
"Over there." The muck-encrusted tail managed a loaded lash to the left, with the momentum whipping absolutely nothing off. "Also, look down, if you can, and breathe --" a gasp, and the sound of swallowing something back "-- but not too deeply..."
They looked. And then the group began to fight their way in that direction. Towards the gap, and the confused pony standing within it...
"Mister Flankington!" Applejack gasped as she broke into the open space. "What happened? Please! We've gotta know!"
Ponyville's most notorious restaurateur blinked innocent red-eyed confusion at them as pony after pony tumbled into what was very nearly clean air, at least in the lack of pressing bird bodies occupying it. Although there were still geese. Several of them. And they were all...
"I don't know," the dark green pegasus worriedly said. "Well... not completely. I mean, I know what they did, but their reaction..."
Applejack stared at the geese. One of them just barely managed to raise its head enough to weakly hiss at her, then went back to draping its neck across its stomach.
It was a reaction, all right. It was a completely familiar one.
"What did they eat?" Applejack asked.
"I was -- getting ready for the lunch rush."
Which, since it wasn't tourist season, meant he'd been practicing the district's most dubious collection of what wasn't exactly cooking skills in anticipation of serving the results to a grand total of zero ponies, assuming there were no unsuspecting new arrivals who hadn't been told about this particular hazard of Ponyville life. (And all of those would have also been ponies who hadn't been warned about the bear.) "An'?"
"I'd just opened the back doors to let some of the fumes vent."
"You didn't know they were outside? Y'didn't hear 'em?"
"Well..." Wings helplessly spread. "You know... when I'm working on a dish..."
She looked at the two crossed test tubes on his flank. Mr. Flankington did have a way of getting lost in his work, although nopony was entirely sure what that work was. "An'?"
"Well -- they burst in. They went straight for my daily special, they gobbled it down --" the next part was said with distinctive pride "-- none of them could even remotely resist it. They didn't stop eating until the tiniest bits were gone, no matter what I did to try and scare them out. But then, a few seconds after they got outside -- that."
They all looked again. Geese weren't really equipped to double over any more than ponies were, and totally lacked the capacity to curl up into what Applejack would have considered to be a fetal position. But still, they were trying.
Fluttershy glanced at the outdoor chalkboard menu.
"...again?" And, even for Fluttershy, "...really?"
"It's the first fraction of the potential harvest from my new crop," Mr. Flankington said. The helplessness wasn't even remotely beginning to diminish. "I thought... I had it right this time."
Applejack looked at him. Then the menu, and finally the geese.
"...the others... they're avoiding them," Fluttershy said. "...you can see them retreating. They're backing away, more every second. They don't understand what happened. All they know is that part of the flock is sick, and they don't want to get sick too. But they don't understand the cause..."
Applejack thought.
"It's like dogs, ain't it?" she softly asked. "Winona... take mah eyes off her for a second, she'll scoop the foulest stuff in the world off the ground an' into her mouth, be sick all night, but she can't learn not t' do it again the next chance she gets... 'cause the taste is too good to resist, an' her memory don't care. She don't think about the consequences, because she can't..."
"...just like dogs," Fluttershy agreed. "If they got it again... they might eat it again."
"An' those others -- they'd eat it a first time, even after seein' these ones sick?"
"...yes. I think so... they just don't understand, and they probably didn't see the eating..."
"An' -- if there were enough of 'em sick, an' the whole flock thought it had somethin' bad enough t' fly away from..."
"...Applejack, I really don't know about this..."
But it was too late. Applejack had already turned back to Mr. Flankington, and her voice carefully enunciated words nopony in history had ever deliberately said more than once.
"Mr. Flankington, Ah'd like t' order some of your Saddle Arabian Grass specials."
He stared at her with the shock of a pony who'd already seen that particular tail desperately going out the door. "You -- would?"
"Yep."
"Well..." The pause was just long enough for his feathers to shake away enough of the disbelief. "...certainly!" With a rush of never-before-felt confidence, "How many portions would you like?"
"All of it."