Chapter 3: ...And a Cockatrice in a Fir Tree
The Centaur and the Centurion
Chapter 3: ...And a Cockatrice in a Fir Tree
The trio of ponies walked out of the barn. Rory was carrying the tree trimmer on his back, while Apple Bloom was balancing a lantern on her back.
“Are you sure we don’t need to bring anythin’ else?” the young mare asked.
“No, we’re good,” Rory replied.
“I just got the feelin’ we’re leaving something important behind,” Apple Bloom said with a pout. After racking her brain in vain for several seconds, she stopped. “Hold on,” she said in a resigned tone. “There’s somethin’ I gotta do.”
As Amy and Rory watched, Apple Bloom closed her eyes, held her breath, and puffed out her cheeks. For a moment, her hair puffed out into some sort of strange fractal curve that may have been a shade over three dimensions, while in the distance the sound of a horn or noisemaker could be briefly heard. Then everything was back to normal, and a roll of clear packing tape was balanced on Apple Bloom’s outstretched hoof. Also there was some multicolored hay at Apple Bloom’s hooves that wasn’t there a second ago.
“What was—?” a befuddled Amy began to ask.
“There’s lemons in my head! There’s lemons in my head!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. She battered her head several times with a free hoof, and then panted a bit before recovering her composure. (Reflecting on this scene later, Amy and Rory were never able to figure out how Apple Bloom managed to stay in a quadrupedal stance while holding a roll of tape in one hoof and bashing her head in with another.) “I hate doing that!” she said to nopony in particular. “Pinkie Pie tried teaching a class on earth pony magic once,” she explained, “and I was the only one who made it past the first day. Eventually I figured out the inverse relationship between how much she taught, and how much sanity I had left, so I had to back out after that. But I picked up a few things.”
This “explanation” utterly failed to explain anything to Amy and Rory. The couple then shared a unspoken communication, the rough meaning of which was “I have no idea what that was, but we might as well roll with it.”
“I’ll take that,” Amy said quietly, taking the roll of tape from Apple Bloom using her magic and placing it inside her saddlebag.
The pair resumed their walk towards the forest.
“So!” said Rory brightly. “Why don’t you tell us about this Everfree place we’re going to?”
“Alright,” the young mare replied, launching into what seemed to be a memorized lecture. From the clipped voice and somewhat different American accent she used, Amy guessed that it was picked up from Princess Twilight, or some other of this pony’s multiple teachers. “The Everfree Forest was once the city of Winnychester, the capital of Equestria in the Classical Era. However, a couple of fierce magical battles a millennium ago, coupled with the fact that it was here that Princess Celestia was forced to banish her sister Princess Luna to the Moon after succumbing to the Nightmare, meant that the city was abandoned, and the magically enchanted forest soon overran everything. Horrific monsters began to appear, and in a generation’s time, the Everfree became the most dangerous place in all of Equestria. So it remained for a thousand years.”
“Of course it would be the most dangerous place in all the land,” Rory said with a groan. By now they were within sight of the edge of the forest. Unlike most forests, it seemed to spring up behind an invisible barrier that delimited “forest” from “non-forest” with sharp precision. Outside, the apple orchard was fairly well illuminated by a full moon, but once past that boundary, the Everfree looked nearly pitch black.
“My great-grandparents came out here to found a farm, and Ponyville grew up next to that,” Apple Bloom continued. Now, her voice had a stronger version of her original accent, reflecting a new source she was unconsciously copying. “With the Everfree right next door, it took an odd sort of pony to settle down here—most ponies run away from danger, but these ponies ran right towards it instead. Princess Twilight called us all crazy for living here.”
“Well that’s a rude thing to say,” remarked Amy.
“It was right after she moved here, so she was including herself,” Apple Bloom said with a grin. “Everypony in Ponyville has a story to tell about why they’re here. Fer’instance fifty years ago, the whole town was saved by a notorious bank robber who had served her time and was trying to start over. In fact, most of the ponies who settled here were trying to start over: Rainbow Dash had been forced out of the Academy, Pinkie Pie escaped from a mad rock cult—well, that’s the version of her life story that’s probably the true one—and Colgate came to town carrying only a ficus, a pocket watch, and a recipe card for her toothpaste.”
“Wait...Colgate?” asked Rory. “As in Colgate toothpaste?”
“Oh, you’ve heard of it all the way in Humanland?”
“Our planet is called Earth,” said Amy, “and I’m guessing Colgate is the name of that dentist you said you worked for.”
“Earth?” Apple Bloom asked herself. “Now that’s a good name for a planet!”
It was at this point that the three ponies crossed into the Everfree, and suddenly that lamp on Apple Bloom’s back became very necessary in order to see. The trio huddled closer together without even thinking of it.
“Look out!” Apple Bloom exclaimed suddenly, dodging aside from the grasp of a timber DD. From all sides except the way they came, the three ponies were soon surrounded by the wooden monsters.
Rory reached up with his hooves and swung the tree trimmer off of his back. “All right,” he challenged, “who’s first?” The answer to that rhetorical question turned out to be “all of them”.
# # #
Ten minutes later, Apple Bloom was slowly catching her breath, surrounded by the still bodies of several dozen timber DD’s. Those monsters that hadn’t been decapitated by the tree trimmer had had their eye gems plucked out by Amy’s magic. Either method was enough to cause the beasts to collapse into the timber they were made out of, unlike their canine cousins.
“All present and accounted for?” Amy asked, dusting herself off and taking her place in the lead.
“Private Rory Williams, reporting for duty...and anything else you might be interested in.” This line was delivered with quite a bit of cheek.
“I’ll get back to you for that later,” Amy purred. “Apple Bloom, are you all right?”
“Y...yes, I suppose,” Apple Bloom said, rather surprised at how easily that encounter had gone in their favor.
“Where were we, before we were so rudely interrupted?” Amy asked, walking down the trail without even checking to see that the other two ponies were following her. “Ah yes, Apple Bloom!”
“Yes?”
“That’s an interesting arrangement you’ve got going there, apprenticing yourself to four different masters like that.”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that at all,” Apple Bloom said, putting on some speed to catch up with Amy. “Like I said, Pinkie Pie was a one-time thing, and Colgate’s just my boss. Zecora and Princess Twilight are workin’ together to help me learn about all the kinds of magic an earth pony can get. All the sane kinds, that is.”
“And yet...” Rory prompted from behind her.
“Excuse me?” Apple Bloom asked.
“I heard an unspoken ‘and yet’ coming up,” Rory said. “Tell me I’m not imagining things, Dear?”
“No, I heard it, too,” Amy said. “You’ve got two teachers, survived the horrors of the mysterious Pinkie Pie as well as the existential horrors of contemporary dentistry—”
“Unless she’s American,” Rory butted in. “Ever see an American smile? Most terrifying thing you have ever witnessed in your life. All of those identical gleaming teeth, devoid of any trace of character! ‘Stepford Teeth’, to borrow one of their own horror clichés.”
“No, I think the Doctor has proved rather spectacularly that the entire universe is essentially British,” Amy rebutted.
Apple Bloom looked back and forth between the spouses with something between confusion and horror. “No words, I have no words.”
“Yes, you do,” Rory teased. “And they begin with ‘and yet.”
“Alright, fine! Two teachers, Pinkie Pie and the dentist, and yet obviously, it hasn’t done me any good.”
“‘Obviously’?” Amy asked.
“‘Obviously’?” Rory asked. “Oops, sorry, I was a second slow there, completely ruined the stereo effect.”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “Obviously, because I haven’t got my cutie mark yet! Everypony else my age already has one.”
“So what is a cutie mark?” Amy asked.
“It’s a symbol that shows what your special talent is. You get one when you realize what your purpose is, why you’re here.”
“Well, can you get it by just saying it?” Amy asked.
“Yeah...?” said Apple Bloom with some hesitation.
Amy suddenly stopped and addressed the heavens. “I exist to explore the universe!” she proclaimed. “To see everything there is to see! To do everything there is to do! And to help any person—or any pony—that I can!” After feeling something very odd, she turned her head, to see a symbol appear on her flank. It showed two objects crossing each other in an “X” shape. One object was a cigar-shaped rocket ship, like you might see in a 1950’s movie. And the other was a sword straight out of Arthurian legend. “Neat!” she exclaimed.
If Apple Bloom was a changeling, her eyes would have turned green with jealousy right then. As it was, it sure felt like they had.
Amy then turned to her husband. “OK, your turn!” she told him. “I wanna see why you exist in pictorial form.”
“Pass,” Rory said firmly. “We need to get to Zecora’s house, before something really dangerous jumps us.” Of course, the real reason why he didn’t try to do what Amy had asked was because he thought she would be weirded out if she saw her own face appear on his flank.
“Aw, those timber DD’s are the only dangerous thing to come out of these woods in months,” Apple Bloom said, pushing forward to be at the front of the group. “My sister and her friends tamed the forest three years ago, and most of the monsters have gone away. Zecora taught me how to handle the rest. Oh, by the way, if I ever tell you to close your eyes, it’s really important that you close your eyes.”
“Oh, do you have a Medusa lurking around?” Amy asked facetiously.
“Cockatrice,” answered Apple Bloom, unimpressed.
“Oh,” Amy said flatly. “I guess I would have accepted that answer as well.”
“How exactly do you tame a forest that’s supposed to be the most dangerous place in all the land?” asked Rory.
“They’re national heroes,” explained Apple Bloom. “Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.” She looked back, to see exactly the disbelieving expressions on the two other ponies that she expected to see. “Anytime we get visitors to Ponyville from outside Equestria, I try to explain to them that we ponies have figured out how to weaponize friendship, but they never believe me. Not until they see the Rainbow Beam in action. Pinkie calls it an ‘orbital friendship cannon.’”
“You ponies have learned how to weaponize...friendship,” Amy said dully.
“A-yup!” the young mare exclaimed with a grin. “They’ve saved the world six times now, and even without the Elements, they’ve saved Ponyville I don’t know how many times!”
“You know,” Amy quipped, “I think I know now why the Doctor never took us here before: because this is the only planet in the galaxy that actually doesn’t need us to save it. Admit it: if these ‘Bearers’ were here instead of us, you’d have rescued everypony already!”
“Now you’re doing it,” Rory said on hearing the word “everypony”, giving Amy a nudge.
“Doing what?”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes at the attitudes of her companions, before continuing her explanation of why her flank was blank. “I’d love to be a hero when I grow up, more than anythin’, but the Bearers don’t really leave any room for it.”
“Well I’m sure they’ll retire eventually,” Rory assured her. “And in the meantime you could try seeking out adventure somewhere else in, um...”
“Equestria.”
“Right. Equestria.”
“I don’t think they’re gonna retire,” Apple Bloom said despondently. “I’ve got my suspicions that they might not stop for a really, really, really long time. And my friends and I have been on all sorts of adventures, and nothing ever happened. And that was before we even met Doctor Hooves.”
“Wait, you mean the Doctor?” asked Amy.
“No, Doctor Hooves. He’s a different pony than the Doctor. The Doctor’s a gray pegasus with a fez and a bow tie, while Doctor Hooves is a tan earth pony with a necktie. They both have hourglass cutie marks.”
“Wait, just a bow tie?” asked Amy. “With no shirt?”
“No,” answered Apple Bloom. “Who needs to wear a shirt?”
“I just love the fact that he kept the fez,” said Rory.
“OK, so Doctor Hooves is different than our Doctor,” concluded Amy. “Does he have a TARDIS?”
“Yes, it looks just like the one in the barn.”
“It’s a blue box too?” asked Rory.
“Yep.”
Amy and Rory shared a significant look.
“Where’s this Doctor Hooves now?” Amy asked.
“With Derpy in Canterlot,” Apple Bloom answered.
“Derpy?” asked Rory. “Is that his companion?”
“Derpy’s his wife.”
“What?!” the couple exclaimed in one voice.
“Oh, we’ve got to get that story out of him when this is all done,” Amy vowed.
“Yeah, he started a clock shop,” Apple Bloom continued, “and they live on the second floor. The TARDIS is in the basement, but nopony’s supposed to know that. Anyway, we didn’t know at first that there was anything special about him, other than the fact that he was so smart that Twilight Sparkle came to him whenever she needed to know something that wasn’t in her books. So one day Scootaloo asked him if he could figure out why she couldn’t fly. Scootaloo’s my pegasus friend, and back then she didn’t have a cutie mark.
“Doctor Hooves looked her over, and told her the reason she couldn’t fly is because she lacked the ‘particular innate magic’ all other pegasi had, which allowed them to control their weight. So Princess Celestia gave Scootaloo a map, and we went on this big adventure following it, and at the end Scootaloo got a feather stone, and once she put it around her neck she could finally fly just as well as any other pegasus.”
“And that’s when she got her cutie mark,” Rory said.
Apple Bloom chuckled. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew Scootaloo. No, she was happy she could fly, but she didn’t like the fact that she owed it to a magical artifact, that she had to rely on something made by somepony else. So she built an airplane so she could fly entirely on her own, and then she got her cutie mark.”
“How did you find out about Doctor Hooves’ TARDIS?” asked Amy.
“Oh, we just stumbled into it one day: Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and I. We started the thing up, and travelled back in time to the Griffish Revolution.”
“Wait, that’s not supposed to be possible,” Rory protested. “The TARDIS has all kinds of safeties in place to make sure that only he can operate it.”
“Well,” Apple Bloom said sheepishly, “we’re kinda good at disabling safeties. And maybe Doctor Hooves turned some of them off, so Derpy could pilot it. Anyway, we met Emperor Noffony I at Water Loop when he was about to cut the Strings of Fate, and this big bell in the TARDIS started ringing, and Sweetie Belle started singing to it, and—”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on!” Amy interrupted. “You set off the Cloister Bell?!”
“We didn’t set it off!” Apple Bloom protested. “At least, I don’t think it was our fault. So what’s it do anyway? That name suggests that it’s for gathering monks to supper.”
“It only rings if the world’s going to end,” Rory explained.
“No, it only rings if something a lot bigger than just the world’s going to end,” corrected Amy.
“Oh,” said Apple Bloom, having some difficulty comprehending that statement. “Anyway, Sweetie Belle spontaneously invented music-fueled unicorn magic, saved...more than just the world, and got her cutie mark. So I figure the only thing left for me to get a cutie mark is for me to join your club.”
“Our...club,” said Rory.
“Yeah!” exclaimed Apple Bloom. “I read through Spike’s entire sci-fi comic book collection to get ready. I bet if your ray gun goes dead, I could even refuel it from raw plutonium!”
“You read comic books to prepare you for life as a Companion,” Rory said doubtfully.
“Worked for me!” Amy bragged. “Well, that and a couple of ‘People’s Histories’. One word of advice, though: real plutonium isn’t Day-Glo green.”
“It isn’t?” Apple Bloom asked despondently, as a beloved foalhood belief was shattered.
“Still want in?” Amy asked with an impish smile.
“You gotta accept me!” Apple Bloom said with desperation. She then climbed up on a nearby rock in order to address the couple. “Either you accept me, and I get a ‘save the universe’ cutie mark, or...” her look deflated. “Or, I’m not meant for adventuring, and I get a dentistry cutie mark, or a potion-making cutie mark. Or maybe a carpentry cutie mark, ‘cause I’m pretty good at that. Or maybe an apple-related cutie mark, for working on the farm. Either way, I’d finally know what to do with my life.”
“Now wait a minute!” Amy said, pulling Apple Bloom back down to the ground and putting a hoof to her chest. “You’re just going to let a flank mark tell you what you’re going to do with the rest of your life?”
“That’s how it works,” Apple Bloom explained.
“No, I don’t think that’s how it works,” Amy protested. “Or at least, I’m certain if that is how it works, then it’s wrong. It should be that you decide what you want to do with your life, and then the cutie mark shows up to tell everypony else what you’ve decided.”
“But...but I’m not really sure!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. “I’m good at all sorts of things, and my family have left it up to me. I could leave the farm if I want, and Granny Smith and Big McIntosh will be able to take care of it without me. Or I could settle on the farm, and that would be fine, too. It’s...none of the choices work for me! I want more!”
Amy craned her head around to look at Rory. “Rory, has Apple Bloom spouted a mermaid tail yet?” she asked, a mocking smile on her lips.
“Not yet,” Rory replied in a similar tone.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Apple Bloom asked.
“We were just checking to see if we had fallen into a Disney musical,” Amy explained. “Protagonists singing songs about how they want more is a primary sign.”
“I wasn’t singin’,” the young mare said with a pout.
“I’m willing to bet a million pounds of oats—or whatever else you use for currency around here—that you’ll get your mark as soon as you commit yourself,” said Amy.
“They’re bits—our currency, that is.”
“Seriously?” Rory asked.
“Seriously.”
“OK, my turn to take the lead,” Rory said confidently, before walking right into a gigantic tree that the path was curved around. “Wow,” he said, craning his head back. “Ponies sure are tiny.”
“Rory, that tree would still be enormous even if you were a manticore,” Apple Bloom told him as she rested a hoof on its trunk. “It’s six hundred and eighteen years old.”
“You’ve got manticores, too?” Rory asked, looking around him nervously. “Any of them still around after those Element thingees tamed the forest?”
“Just one,” Apple Bloom said, a big grin slowly spreading across her face. “But his bark is far worse than his bite. Wanna know what we call him?”
Amy looked between Apple Bloom and her husband, and then put on a big old grin of her own. “I bet I can guess...”
“What?” the stallion asked, looking back and forth between the two mares. “What’s his name?”
“His name?” Apple Bloom asked, drawing out her words for maximum effect. “His name is Roary of course. Roary the Manticore.”
Rory groaned in near pain. “Your princesses screwed up when they picked the bit as their currency. If they had only picked puns instead, then every pony in Equestria would be millionaires!”
“Now that I think of it, he was pretty red,” Apple Bloom added with a smirk. “He might have even been the red-haired king of the manticores.”
“I can’t stand it,” Rory said as he fell into position behind the two females. “I just can’t stand it.”
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I am so loving this!
It's like watching both a MLP and a Doctor Who episode!
EVERYTHING IS PUNS!
Emperor Nofonny!!
We're not supposed to know anything about him!
I cannot believe that a pony pun could sneak up on me like this! However, it only occurred to me now that the Equestrian bit is only a coin because a real halter bit would look ludicrous.
8081194
Likewise if it were a cut-off piece of a spanish dollar. (The origin of the term "pieces of eight" and referring to a U.S. quarter as "two bits".)
627273 words of only this content, plis
I love that Amy can intuitively know her own mark. That's so her. She knows exactly who she is and wha t she wants out of life. And I'm guessing Rory knows his lifes purpose revolves around any in someway and doesn't fancy having that conversation. Nice work.