Twilight Sparkle Goes 'Batty' for Peaches

by Palm Palette

The Rise of Countess Jackula

Applejack retreated to the sanctity of her orchard, but the scores of ruined, squishy apples underhoof made her wince. Bent and twisted apple trees where healthy ones once grew and the dark figure (with an extra pair of glittery wings) of bendy-straw Flutterbat flying overhead showed just what a sorry stare her orchard was in. It wasn't much of a sanctuary after all. It was still better than town, though.

For all of the chaos and madness that had erupted and destroyed not only her farm, her way of life, her town, and even her casual acquaintance Fluttershy, Applejack could only think of one thing: Granny Smith. She'd be so disappointed when she got home. Applejack sighed; it'd be nice if Granny Smith was an alicorn princess who could solve everything with her ninja cyborg granny powers, but that cop-out ending had been removed and it was up to Applejack to solve things now.

Applejack had no idea how long it would take before Twibat's unstable magics would spread beyond Ponyville and threaten the rest of the world. Scores of confused bats of all types fluttered in the skies already. It probably wouldn't be much longer before other changes crept into the farm as well. And what could she do about it? Nothing. She'd lost her lasso, and her only other talent was apples—not that did her any good with her farm as badly ruined as it was. All she really had left was her hat.

Flutterbat swooped down and stole Applejack's hat.

“Hey! That was totally uncalled for!” Applejack waved a hoof up at the abomination blocking the moonlight. Flutterbat lost interest in the hat when she realized that she couldn't drink it through a bendy-straw. She'd certainly tried, though, and the torn-up, raggy, lump that was once a hat joined the ranks of the shrived, ruined apples on the ground in a display of careless vandalism of Applejack's property.

“Curse yer bat wings! How am Ah supposed to compete against that!” Applejack kicked her ruined hat and fumed. If only there were some contrived way that she face them as equals, or at least reach them. The clouds parted and a moonbeam lit up some white objects on the ground. Applejack gasped—wait, wasn't it supposed to be daylight still? Oh well, she was willing to forgive the strange continuity error if those white things were really what she thought they were.

Applejack gathered up Fluttershy's teeth and put them in a bag but kept the fangs for herself.

“This had better work.” Applejack put the fangs into her own mouth. They snapped into place as if they'd grown there, but otherwise nothing happened. She was the same earth pony as before—just with cute 'lil fangs. “Well, so much for that idea. Ah'd best find another rope and see if Ah can't at least get Flutterbat back under control.”

She had no trouble finding rope, but when she bit down on it to make her lasso her fangs pierced it and it transformed into a vampire bat rope and flew away. “...Ah was NOT expectin' that.”

Applejack ran her tongue over a fang and accidentally pricked herself. “Ouch.” Her transformation was sudden. It was like somepony flipped a switch and now Applejack was a bat pony. It was like she'd really been a bat pony all along and only now just realized it.

“Woah.” Applejack barely had a chance to glance at herself before she heard it. Her heightened senses now picked up on the wailing echolocation of all of the other bats and she cringed at the pounding headache this was giving her. She plugged her ears with her hooves and tried to fight back the pain. Stars appeared before her eyes and she lost grip of reality.

“You were supposed to bite an apple,” a star said.

“You hunger for yourself, you idiot,” another twinkled.

“Does this nebulae make me look fat?” a third asked.

The stars lost interest in Applejack to discuss dieting tips. They wouldn't want to develop diabetes like the black holes now would they?

Applejack shook her head to clear it. She'd have to remember that trick about using a close approach to another star to shed an asteroid belt. That seemed useful. Wait, wait. That wasn't quite right. Applejack shook her head again.

This time she really did return to reality, or whatever was attempting to pass for it these days, for she was now, apparently, a bat pony. She spread out her leathery wings and flexed them for a bit. That felt really, really weird. It felt like her ribcage had opened up and she was trying to hug the air with her lungs. She might have the body of a bat pony but she'd somehow retained her own mind—a mind which belonged to a wingless creature. Unable to comprehend 'wings', her mind wound up 'mapping' her new appendages to her next closest body parts. It was a miracle she could move them at all.

Applejack had no idea what had caused the transformation to fizzle at the last moment, but she now had a way of facing the other bat ponies on even ground. It was too bad they flew. Applejack shivered and spread out her lungs, er, wings. She tried not to think about it and flapped hard. It worked. She launched herself into the air and found herself above the trees. She hovered there, did a dive, flew back up and—a burning sensation made her realize that she'd been holding her breath the whole time. She gasped for breath; her wings seized up, and she crashed.

“Oooh.” Thankfully the ground was coated in squishy apples that were incredibly gross but soft to land on. She walked over to the barn to hose herself off. Well, she could fly. It was actually a lot easier than she'd expected it to be. But she couldn't fly and breathe at the same time. What a world. With some practice, she could probably take breaths between lung beats, er, wing beats. Okay, so it would take a lot of practice. She'd have to stick to short flights.

Applejack spotted Flutterbat dangling on a nearby tree branch. She could fly up and catch her now, but she still had another problem: what would she do when she actually did? Well, Applejack wasn't just a bat pony, she was a vampire bat pony. She could suck the batness right out of Fluttershy.

“Wait—Ah can't bite another pony. If Ah did that it would somehow wind up on Youtube and get a million hits! Ah'd so embarrassed. Er, what am Ah thinking? That's a stupid reason not to bite somepony. Ah can't bite her because, uh, it would be mean. Yeah, mean. And Ah don't want to be mean.” Applejack scratched at her hatless mane. “So if Ah can't bite her, then how can I—Ah got it! I'll combine my special talent, which is apples, with my newly acquired vampire powers and make a vampiric anti-bat-apple for her to suck on. That makes sense, right?”

Applejack had a harder time finding a healthy apple to use than she did modifying it to suit her needs (somehow). Item in hoof, she took a deep breath to chase down Flutterbat in an epic flight scene. It was anticlimactic. Flutterbat wasn't bothered at all by bat pony Applejack and she swiped the apple to drink it with her bendy-straw. But when she put the straw to her lips, the sucking flowed in reverse and Flutterbat's bat nature was absorbed into the apple which turned black and hard.

Fluttershy, the real Fluttershy, landed in a heap on the ground. “Mwa—mwu?”

“Fluttershy! It's so good to have ya back again. Ya have no idea—”

“Mwee.” Fluttershy trembled under Applejack's presence.

“Oh, Ah, sorry.” Applejack folded her lungs up. “Ah know I look different, but it's me, Applejack.”

“Mwa-alwaaa?” Fluttershy ran her tongue over her gums and started to cry.

“Wait, don't cry. Ah've got your teeth right here.” Applejack passed the bag to Fluttershy. “There's a zebra in the Everfree Forest who can fix them for you.”

Fluttershy nodded and turned to leave.

“Wait, don't go yet. Ya should know that Twilight was the one who did this to ya. She tricked ya into using yer stare at the bats and transferred their batness into ya. Ah tried to get her to fix ya, but she pulled yer teeth instead and gave ya that glittery pair of butterfly wings for no good reason.

“And now Twilight's terrorizing the town. Ah'm going to try to stop her, but Ah could use yer help. Yer stare is the only thing Ah know of that can bring her in line. So what do ya say? Care to help out?” Applejack smiled, revealing her fangs.

“Aaaamwaa!” Fluttershy ran off screaming.

Applejack sighed. Fluttershy was yellow for a reason. Would ya believe that her first instinct when presented with the vampire fruit bat infestation was to surrender to them? What was she, Prance? Regardless, Applejack was on her own, once again.

Applejack looked back at Ponyville. Arcs of magical power tore across the sky and a huge spire of twisted... trees(?) rose from the ground. She shuddered and pulled her non-existent stetson down to cover her eyes (it didn't work). The arcing continued and the sky erupted in another round of bats (who were just as confused as the rest). She'd best make preparations. Twilight would be a lot harder to defeat then Flutterbat.

Comments

[Palm Palette]

Originally I'd written this for the EQD Writer's training grounds prompt so I stopped when I hit the limit of 1.5k words. I wasn't too happy with the way that turned out so I removed the cop-out ending and added additional chapters to bring this story to a better conclusion.