Projected Nightmares

by bearcat

Applejack -- quest, part 1

As the only other pony present that had been mentally invaded, it was Applejack who said "Ahlright so lets get this show on the road. Might as well go to my 'country' first if nopony else is going to offer."

She looked to the assembled demigods, who seemed to have finished their huddle. The ponies walked towards one another, and Applejack bowed deeply, as did the others. She noticed Jack step off to the side, so it didn't look like anypony was bowing to him. Well, suit himself I guess

Celestia dropped to her belly, and tried to make eye contact with each of her fighting force. Having achieved that, she spoke, her voice as regal and gentle as ever. "Ponies I must return to Canterlot now, but I trust Equestria is in good hooves. In case this interloper changes tactics entirely my sister and I must devise spells for the waking world to stop this horrible invasion." Here she looked specifically at her advanced magics student, the purple bookworm unicorn to Applejack's right. "Twilight thank you for letting me know about this and I'm really sorry about your home. I'll have someone from the treasury make sure a good contractor is hired soon."

Standing back up now, she flared her wings, then looked confused. Turning her head over her right shoulder she asked Luna "How do I wake up again?"

Applejack could just hear Luna mumble "Some body part. Your hooves. Feel your waking hooves, and twitch them. As soon as you've established connection with your waking body, just ... well, Celly, then you wake up."

Applejack saw the princess look down, as if searching for a thought, then suddenly she disappeared. Not even a flash, like she'd teleported, just one moment she was there, then next she wasn't.

The guard didn't have the difficulties that "his liege" had; as soon as she flickered out, so did he. Princess Luna walked up to the space where Celestia had been a moment before, and added "We thank you also, and we wish you good luck. Prince Jack will remain as your guardian and instructor. As well, he knows how to contact us from within this dreaming place. We must take "

Here the princess faltered, and Applejack guessed she must have started listening to herself. loosen up, lighten up, princess! she tried to say to her but didn't verbalize anything.

"I must take my leave. Friends." The princess dropped the royal 'we' to bid them farewell, then flared her majestic midnight blue wings, and as she refolded them, she too flickered away.

Jack spoke to the crowd, his voice smooth and silken now, and about three octaves higher than the road grading equipment range that was his natural voice. "Have we decided on a mind to minister to first?"

Applejack stood stiffly, still worried about the army of buffalo that would greet them. "Yeah sugarcube. Drinks are on me. Do any y'all know how this Luna train is operated?" She was walking slowly so as not to seem impatient but she had already turned straight towards the foreign contraption.

Dash and Fluttershy were floating as they so often did, but not moving any faster. Jack, Prince Jack now, with that pony shape like that, offered to figure out the controls, and flew quickly ahead. Pinkie took off running and Rarity, fearing for a moment she had been left behind ran after the earth mare. Applejack upped her gait to a trot and sighed internally.

The train engine was huge, having two decks and the most elaborate control console she had ever heard of. But for all of that, it had a lever in the center, clearly the largest single control, and on the left of it were the names of the ponies boarding the train, and just to the right were the matching cutie marks.

Applejack looked behind her, and seeing everyone climb in, she shouted "All aboard!" and couldn't help but smile just a little. "Applejack's train of insanity! Come for the apples stay for the inanity! All aboard!" And she moved the lever from the 'N' in the middle to the her cutie mark, just below Twilight's star.

The train shifted, rotating to what to the Earth pony was a random track. Aligning itself, it stopped. what in tarnation? was all the farther she thought, before Jack prince Jack. Guess I gotta call him prince Jack in here. walked next to her, and grabbed a lever nearly as big as the alignment lever. It had some hatch marks next to one side but no marks beside the 'h' at the bottom, where it was now, to an 'f' at the top. Jack eased it a quarter of the way from h to f, and the engine lurched.

Dash started grumbling about not having room to fly, and how she could probably have just followed from the air and at least kept her wings in motion, and Applejack heard Twilight lecture the blue pegasus about magic and how this was the dream world so the train would be symbolic so not being in the train might mean you would never get to where the train was going.

"You're afraid we're going into a nightmare, aren't you?" That soft voice was Fluttershy's, and Applejack saw she had sidled up next to her at the giant console near the front window. "But it won't be unless this meanie finds us. Just a dream, right?"

Applejack tried to smile but couldn't. She didn't want to think about it, but prince Jack was nodding. "Nothing there but yourself. You do not seem the type to be mean to yourself so it may be as simple a trip as your lifestyle is simple."

Applejack shrugged, and looked out the front window. There was a brief flurry of snow, and as it cleared the train was in desert again. But there was a train station looking mighty similar to the one in Appleloosa, up ahead.

She turned around to tell her friends the stop was nearing, but stopped mid sentence when she saw Pinkie was wearing her ill-fated show tunes outfit. "Uh. Sugarcube? Where'd yah get that outfit? I'm not sayin' I thought yur singin' was as bad as th' buffalo folk thought but I don't rightly remember any o' us packin nothin'."

Pinkie looked her outfit over with gleeful astonishment, and finally settled on answering the farmer's query with a simple shrug. "Seemed like what you should wear, you know?" Applejack looked to her other friends, but no one else had suddenly acquired new duds.

Mentally shrugging she started again. "I see a place like Appleloosa up ahead. Don't rightly know what's there but I guess we get off. Is that right prince?"

The dusty looking alicorn looked her in the eye, and smiled very slightly. "That depends on you, orchard farmer. Earth pony. Is the distant land of your more adventuresome cousins the best place to stop and begin searching for your most hidden truth? Your closest held power? We arrive by constructed means to the Equestria between your ears. Is the first stop the best one?"

The train whistle sounded, and the engine began decelerating rapidly. Applejack looked over hear shoulder, out the front window at the approaching station, before turning back to the sometimes sergal. "Since Ah don't rightly know what you're really talking about, Ah'm just gonna say lets get off and start looking here."

The train stopped, and wooden steps climbed up to meet the metal ones dropping down. The engine seemed to have gotten even larger during the trip, Applejack thought but then dismissed it to examine the town itself. There was an even mix of buffalo and ponies, but the cultural differences were immediately apparent.

The ponies wore suits like what you'd find in the city. Even when Applejack could make out dirt stains marking them as workers of the earth -- the same reason she never wore clothes herself, these ponies wore clothing with "bling" gems at odd corners, lots of easily broken buttons all maintained at the highest levels of repair.

But the buffalo wore only the occasional feather, or a shiny rock, tied to their fur with tiny strips of leather. Their walk was stoic, their speech was a little bit old fashioned and always carefully enunciated.

As the questing ponies made their way through town, Twilight commented on the possible cultural rift in such a town. "Every buffalo I overhear is talking about how it has always been thus and so. But the ponies, even the old ones, are talking about needing to tear down the old things, to make room for new forms."

"Well" Applejack opined, "that should make it clearer where we need to go. Lookit' up there." She pointed to the distance where an evenly formed mountain climbed from desert into forest, and at the very top was a giant structure. Shaped like a barn it would be many square miles if her eyes were to be believed in this place. Faded paint marked it as her old barn but the shape itself was clearly the newer barn she'd just built a couple of years ago.

Applejack stopped at a pair who were discussing something amiably in the middle of the street. The blue pony with musical notes as his cutie mark to her right, and an especially large buffalo of an especially dark hue of brown, to her left. "Hay uh, 'scuze me but can you tell me how a pony gets up there?" She pointed with a single hoof to the mile-high barn in the distance.

The buffalo spoke first. "It is an arduous journey of self discovery and disappointment. You must search within for the best path."

Followed closely by the blue pony whose tone would have been at home in a stand up comedy routine. "Well seein' as yer already within, meanin' within th' town here, yah just start walkin'. See that train y'all came in on?" The assembled ponies looked hopefully behind them. "Ya cain't take that up thar. Ain't no tracks."

And the Buffalo again, with "There is an ancient tradition you must adhere to. If you take the wrong path, it shall not lead you to your destination."

Applejack was pondering this for a moment but Rainbow Dash blurted out "So, what's the tradition? How do we find the right path?"

The blue pony smiled like a used wagon dealer and replied "He means ya gotta make a new path each time. If'n ya take some other pony's way, why the stronghold moves. Does that, just ups and moves away from yer hooves."

Rarity groaned melodramatically and said "Ugh; that's a lot of walking for these poor old hooves." But Applejack had heard enough. Thanking the pair for their input, she strode purposefully toward the mountain, the pair already back to discussing ad nauseum the benefits of the new, versus the old.

At the edge of town however there was a three buffalo deep line easily a hundred wide. Fluttershy floated up a little ways, and dropped back down to state the somewhat obvious "At least three hundred buffalo facing us and they don't look very happy."

Pinkie rushed ahead totally ignoring Applejack's cry of warning. She heard the pink pony ask the first buffalo she met "Why are you standing here? Can we get around you please?" which did not receive an immediate answer.

But when Rainbow Dash flew up to that buffalo and tried to start in with "Yeah we're friends with a drag Ahhhh!!!" she was blown rather harshly into her friends by what seemed to be a simple exhalation of just one buffalo to the speaker's right.

Addressing no one in particular, the one Pinkie had asked, said "We are the ancient tribe of Will Not Budge. We have always stood her, and we always shall."

A smaller specimen to the pony's right several places, added "We're here to keep your hooves on the ground. Only then might you understand our place in this society."

Pinkie turned to her friends, but couldn't say anything because she was too astonished. "Guys! Where's the town?" she pointed behind them, where an expanse of unadorned desert stretched for several hundred feet before the edge of town could be seen.

Prince Jack coughed delicately, and said "Ah, yes. I believe that may be my fault." Looking over his shoulder he gave full attention to the edge of town, now back to the edge of the buffalo. "Yes. I tried to teleport past them. Each time I found myself in the same spot relative to you, and they. But I see now I am as far from the town's edge as my teleport spell should have taken me."

That settled a lot of questions in Applejack's mind. Walking up to a random buffalo in front of them, she asked "So, can we jus' walk through y'all if our hooves stay on th' ground?"

Both this one, and the first that spoke after blowing Dash to the ground, spoke now in unison. "We have never moved, and we never shall."

Turning to her friends, she tried to guess which were the lightest. "Twi? You and Fluttershy stay in the middle so's we don't lose you. We jus' need to walk between their legs or somesuch." Of course prince Jack would have a heck of time given his size but that was going to have to be his problem.

They formed two rows, three ponies deep. She followed Fluttershy who was hanging on to Rainbow Dash's tail. Every few steps a buffalo near one of them would exhale that hurricane breath on them and the whole row would be forced to drop to their bellies. Rarity was followed by Twilight Sparkle then Pinkie, who of course kept giggling when the hurricane would dislodge her accessorized outfit but otherwise seemed none the worse for wear.

True to their word, the tribe of Will Not Budge didn't so much as raise a two toed hoof and after what seemed like forever the two columns forced their way through. Panting, sweat dripping off her belly, Applejack looked behind her to find prince Jack. She couldn't see him but through all those buffalo standing so close that might not mean anything. "Hey, uh .. Jack? Prince Jack?"

The soft tones chimed behind her. "It is as we guessed, friend Applejack" which caused the orange mare to about jump out of her skin since that put the oversized flying goober on this side of the line of buffalo without having walked past them. "When you exited the barricade, I could teleport to your location. You are the deciding factor in this leg of the journey."

Well. Don't that beat all. Applejack wasn't sure whether to be elated that she was somehow more influential than this world shaking magic caster, or annoyed that he didn't have to put up with the hurricane breath. Aloud she said to him "Sure thing boss. Can we get to gettin'?" To which his only reply was a sardonic smile before he raised himself airborne, along with Dash and Fluttershy.

They walked on, towards the great green mountain in the distance. Vegetation quickly sprang up, rustling beneath their hooves. Here there was a small creek, steep sided with clear water flowing at a measured pace past them. Applejack thought it looked much like a irrigation canal, and probably functioned as one since they had moved from bare desert to fertile grasslands.

The prince landed to walk beside it, studying the clear fluid as if it were a great mystery. "Your feelings run deep, Applejack." Looking up at her, he explained "Water is emotion, in this place. This emotion is clear, and strong. The creek tells me you are healthy, friend Applejack."

Not sure how to take what sounded like a compliment, she stopped and drank from the creek. It was crisp; cold even as if there was a glacier of some renown in that old barn, melting the way glaciers do, feeding ice water to the plains below. All she could think to add was "Glad you think so boss. I've a feeling we're gonna be losing some health points up ahead."

Applejack went back to walking, and so only peripherally saw Jack sigh, but she saw Fluttershy drop to the ground and look nervously about her. Maybe the water gave her clarity, or maybe she was just guessing, but she felt an epiphany dawn on her; there would be nothing to watch for in this open plain.

Rising to a brisk trot, she called to her friends. "Tain't nothing here gonna get us, Fluttershy. Just everypony keep moving and will find someplace that needs our worries." She didn't wait for her friends to pick up the pace, knowing that if she didn't slow down they would keep up.