So Much for the Memories
Applejack was not having a good day. Riding on a buffalo about a hundred miles north of where you were supposed to find any buffalo is what Applejack would call a not good day. Day nonwithstanding, it was moments like this the orange farm pony lived for. Feeling the hot tempered beast bucking against you, fur meshing with your fur as you fought for your life to stay on top and not end up caught under those drumming hooves, it almost made you not regret having a bad day. If this was what you called a not good day, then Applejack wasn’t much interested in what you’d call a good one.
She probably should have gone and let Twilight fix all this, but there were just some things a scrawny little purple unicorn couldn’t handle. This was not just one Pinkie Pie, but a whole lot of Pinkie Pies, and buffalo for some reason. Applejack was so busy saving the day, she simply did not have one second to spare to limp back to miss “solve-everything” to whine about hardships and uncertainty.
That was Rainbow Dash’s job, anyway.
Applejack was always ready to lend a hoof for her friend, and for Ponyville at large. She might not have all them fancy powers and sorcery, but she had a good strong back and a step above your average pony in terms of ability and skill. Some ponies didn’t like hard work like this, but as for Applejack it just made her heart sing when other ponies looked up to her, and trusted her. She finally got her lasso around the lead buffalo’s head, and Applejack knew once again she was going to be able to live up to that trust.
“Calm down ya crazy cow!” Applejack shouted vigorously, jumping off the buffalo’s back and hauling her head around with the lasso on her neck. For her effort, Applejack got flipped into the air like a ragdoll, but she didn’t let go. She hung on until she slammed back down in the dirt, refusing to budge, while that buffalo tried to outrun her own head. That’s the first rule of herding creatures much larger than yourself. No creature, no matter how large, is going to get very far without its head.
The fight for control was fierce though, and it was all Applejack could do to keep her teeth on the rope. Her hooves scraped to and fro as the little earth pony relentlessly fought the buffalo cow down, disrupting her ability to charge and forcing her to stop, forcing her to think rationally , if only to figure out how to get this annoyingly persistent pony off her back. Applejack was waiting for that moment. As soon as the buffalo got a cunning air about her, and went to throw Applejack into the air again, Applejack champed out, “What’s got you so riled up?!”
And then she was in the air again. One of Applejack’s hooves came up to press down securely on her hat, not even a hair on her coat disrupted this time when, descending like a stone, she burst onto the dirt again. Applejack had barely touched ground this time, before the buffalo was in her face, exclaiming in that sonorously deep voice these folks had,
“She ruined my oatmeal!”
The greater Equestrian oatmeal exposition had been a smash hit. This year all ponies from all over the land came to Ponyville, as well as some esteemed oatmealists who were not ponies at all. There were the Trottingham stone ground golden oats, a few ponies from Baltimare with a cinnamony honey drenched concoction, the Ponyville home team whose bowls were served with fresh crisp apple slices inserted into the mash, and the Windyfeather tribe of buffalo, there to spread awareness of their culture and their stewed grains.
This particular tribe stood proudly, six giant round brown hairy buffalo adorned with feathers and bangles, before a kettle of hot, steaming cracked oats. They were traditionally hoof ground, and flavored with the finest desert mushrooms and hoof-dug mustard root, and time refined portions of parsley and dill. Sure to be medal winners this year, the buffalo were awaiting tasters to gather enough courage to come and taste their wares. No doubt they would be unable to hold out long, sorely tempted by the powerful smell emanating from the cauldron. Sure enough, to their delight, a pink pony appeared before the buffalo, appearing very interested in the interesting smelling concoction they had brewing.
Brandishing a clay bowl, the matron said with a knowing smile, “Would you wish to try a sample?”
The pony responded by dunking her head in the bubbling cauldron. Then she yanked her head out and screamed before you could say, “Wow, that looks hot!” The rest of the herd galloped around the table to gathered around the squirming pony rubbing at her face, one offering a wet cloth to clean her face with.
But this pony mare she wasn’t the most polite of ponies. She just looked at the offered cloth disinterestedly! Then she licked all of the oatmeal off her face in one swoop of her tongue. The pink mare jumped up to her hooves, darting through a space in the herd, where she stood before the cauldron of their oatmeal with an uncharacteristically angry look on her face. She spun on a dime to give a mighty kick with both hooves to the side of the cauldron, bowling the entire thing over, and pouring its contents all over the ground.
“What have you done?!” a steer shrieked, aghast as their hard work and assuredly blue ribbon oatmeal lay wasted on the muddy earth. Ignoring him, this pink pony mare poked a hoof tentatively into the cooling slop and then jumped bodily into it, rolling around in the oatmeal delightedly. She opened her eyes and looked around innocently, once she became aware of an angry herd of buffalo surrounding her at a distance of abooooout 3 inches away, give or take. What might have passed for fear crossed her face. There was a tiny gap where their broad bodies pressed against each other though, making just enough space between their pairs of legs for a little pink pony to squeeze through.
“Get her!” some bovid shouted when Pinkie Pie squeezed out from within their circle, and started running down the street. While the herd thundered after her, another Pinkie came sneaking up behind, and started to eat the oatmeal (and possibly the dirt), indulgently. The herd charged en-mass through town leaving their ruined oatmeal behind, as of yet unaware of the Pinkie Pie situation. It didn’t take much charging around though, before the herd became aware of the situation. It was true these ponies were sometimes hard to tell apart, but this was ridiculous!
Applejack frowned as the buffalo cow finished her story. Applejack backed up then, stomping her hoof and shouting, “Well stop chasing them around willy nilly! We need to herd these things toward the library!”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” the lead buffalo asked disparagingly.
“Well we—” Applejack paused, closed her mouth and looked down, lifting up a hoof as if it were needing inspection all casuallike. She just needed time to... think.
“Hmm...” she schemed, tapped her chin, thinking about what the Pinkies were like to deal with. They couldn’t be reasoned with, it was clear, and they all had to get to the library somehow, but ponies chasing them individually would find themselves flip turned upside down, with Pinkie Pie giving them the slip every time. Just like through the legs of a buffalo. So they all had to do something as a concerted effort , with a lot of ponies working together to make sure there weren’t no way for any sort of Pinkie escape manuver.
“We need to form a line,” Applejack concluded. “We cain’t let these Pinkies get one inch or lick of space to slip through. If we stand shoulder to shoulder though there ain’t no way they’re gonna get past us all. We can clear out the town that way, and leave the Pinkies right where they’re supposed to be. Meet me on the east side of town past all the Pinkies, then we can turn around and push ‘em right back to the library.”
Some of the buffalo looked at each other and nodded. “Let’s get on then!” Applejack shouted, waving her hooves and charging off to the east. That’s where the Pinkies seemed to be coming from, so she was just gonna let them keep on coming, until every Pinkie got pushed all the way through town, to the library on the west side.
The buffalo charged past her to the east as Applejack dallied, shouting, “Come on, everypony!” She started dashing from pony to pony, going like, “Cherry! Whatnot! Goldie, come on, we gotta herd these Pinkies right out of our home! Brozie, Thunderflank, come on!” Applejack might not have as good an idea of everypony as Pinkie Pie’s freakily ededic memory but everypony she did know, knew another dozen ponies themselves. Soon, pretty much everypony knew the situation, and they all gave up whatever fruitless Pinkie task they were struggling with, following Applejack to regroup east side of town.
A vague cheer began to rise, as the ponies rallied behind her. Soon Applejack was hot on the heels of those buffalo, with the entire town behind her, everypony ready to give this Pinkie swarm a piece of their mind. Applejack dragged ponies of all shapes and sizes, except of course one particular sort of pudgy pink shape with little wings, out beyond where the Pinkies had ventured.
Once she had a feel for it, Applejack stopped and whistled hard. They had to be absolutely sure that none of them buggers were further along, but Applejack wasn’t too worried. She had a feeling that she was right where she needed to be, to round ‘em up good. She had a good intuition for this sort of thing. Applejack never missed a cow coming in from pasture after all, nor a sheep, and she sure wasn’t going to miss a Pinkie. The buffalo slid to a halt, and they and every member of the townsfolk vaguely gathered around her.
It didn’t occur to Applejack to wonder why the Pinkies weren’t still coming from the east, but Applejack was a pony who lived in the here and now, and little details like that could be Future Applejack’s problem.
“Alright everypony, form a line!” Applejack shouted, rearing up excitedly.
“Everyone,” a buffalo prompted politely.
“Alright every one , form a line!” Applejack shouted more deliberately, rearing up. She half-pushed the ponies in place, without too many protests, showing them where they needed to go to get maximum coverage of the area. From north to south they assembled, a solid wall of muscle and spirit, ponies and buffalo alike joining to turn back the pink tide.
Applejack ran back and forth along the line, encouraging ponies and buffalo alike, saying, “Not one Pinkie gets past this line! We gotta check every building, barrel and bush. Leave no stone unturned! No really, she likes to hide under big rocks! We’re gonna go west here, and sweep all these pink ponies to the library. Then we come out and do it again, until there ain’t a cotton candy mane to be seen! You ready to do this?”
A thundering of hooves was the reply. “Then let’s move out!” she shouted, charging for– backing up until she was enmeshed with the line, and saying a little quieter, “Careful now, everypony. Let’s move out!” They all began walking forward, stomping through the dirt and weaving through the houses of town. They went slowly, pausing as soon as any of them got hung up on checking something, or making sure no Pinkie was hiding anywhere.
At first the only sign of them was a few curious blue eyes looking from the distance, but not approaching, but soon enough they ran into the Pinkies. Rather the Pinkies ran into them, pink ponies dancing to and fro, looking for ways to get in trouble no doubt, but not even seeing the ponies who were stopping them. A few ponies tried to talk to them, but Applejack hollered, “They don’t talk! Just push ‘em along!” When they were pushed, the Pinkies ran away at first, but came back quickly, not so much curious about what was going on, but merely seeking a destination beyond the line, that was summarily denied when they got shoved back by the inexorable advance.
They made good progress at first, sweeping through the municipality like a fine toothed comb. It was hard work, though. Pinkie, or—whatever you called the Pinkies who weren’t Pinkie—had an uncanny ability to get away from you, when you were least expecting it. You’d push a crowd of them back towards the library, and suddenly one of them would be standing right behind you, or popping out from behind that barrel that you know you checked behind. There sure seemed to be a lot of them too. Applejack didn’t even want to know what happened to the original Pinkie, to make all these ones. Nothing good, that’s for sure.
Applejack got a better idea just what she was up against, when a bunch of Pinkies came pouring out of what remained of that new soda fountain. It looked like they’d turned on every tap and spigot in there, practically flooding the place with sugary drinks and icy cream, and much of it ended up right in their bellies. You could tell, because it looked like some were more trying to roll away rather than run away. These Pinkies didn’t seem to have any restraint whatsoever, and with how much the real Pinkie loved her sweets, it was just a disaster to any shop or stand selling sweet stuff. Which was pretty much every shop in Ponyville, apple carts included. Applejack couldn’t fathom how it could possibly be any worse a situation to be dealing with.
That’s when the Pinkies started reproducing themselves.
“What in the name of Celestia?!” Applejack exclaimed, scooting back frantically as the pile of a half dozen fat Pinkies became a pile of a half dozen not fat Pinkies, and a number of gigantic balls of disgusting pink puke. Just like she’d seen that crazy Scootaloo filly doing, except this time they were all just Pinkie being Pinkie, over and over and over again. Feeling chills down her spine, Applejack ran back to the line, pushing past eager Pinkies to reach her townsfolk, and shouting, “We gotta step this up! They’re makin’ more of them when they eat stuff! The longer we wait, the more of them there’s gonna be!”
There was an unsatisfied murmuring, but Applejack joined in shoving the Pinkies forward roughly to continue their forward pace. You had to shove them roughly, because there just wasn’t any other way to get them to listen to you. Applejack had to run back behind the line then, where she spied a suspicious looking cardboard box shuffling along back there all innocent-like.
They made it to the library with over 200 Pinkies being driven before them. Twilight saw them coming and her eyes narrowed. “Why are there so many?!” she exclaimed.
Applejack leapt over the line, landing before Twilight and saying, “We gotta get ‘em in your cage thing, fast! They’re eatin’ everything in Ponyville they can get their hooves on, an’ makin’ more of them!”
“Just...” Twilight looked at the mass of Pinkies they had corralled, every one of them just waiting for an opportunity to scram in every direction at once. She firmed her lower lip. “Wingward, Cloud Chaser!” Twilight Sparkle shouted into the air above her, “Get every pegasus here to drop these into the cage!”
The pegasi were having trouble catching the Pinkies, after the Pinkies had begun to catch on that winged things swooping down on them were carrying them off to some place they didn’t want to be. Bonnie had it covered though. She stepped in, and whacked a fleeing Pinkie with her prominent hindquarters, which sent her in a neat arc through the air right into the arms of Blossomforth, it looked like. Cherry caught on and started doing it too, and with bucks, bumps and headbutts the ponies on the ground kept delivering Pinkies right into the willing arms of the pegasi.
It was a pretty efficient operation, after the ponies on the earth figured they’d speed things up by butting the Pinkies one by one up into the air where a pegasus was waiting to catch them and swoop away. Applejack watched the last Pinkie fall with a satisfied but grim smile.
Another Pinkie snuck up behind her, and stole her hat.
“Confound you piles of pink horse pucky ding dang discorderly mounting bucking monsternags give me back my hat!! ” Applejack said in a calm, level, and not at all infuriated tone. The offending Pinkie had vanished in mid-air, the very moment Applejack spun around, snorting and glaring. Wait, mid-air? Applejack craned her neck up into the air, and sure enough, the Pinkie was dangling there in a particular pegasus’s arms. A very particular pegasus with a rainbow colored mane, and a not so particular Pinkie who, on top of her ridiculously bouncy curls, was wearing Applejack’s hereditary family Stetscolt.
“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack shouted out to the ascending pegasus, urgently.
“Applejack, you made it!” Rainbow shouted down elatedly, adding in a teasing fashion. “I thought those buffalo got the best of you.”
“Hah!” Applejack bleated with a sloppy smile, crouching on her hooves challengingly, “Ain’t no buffalo gonna buffalo this pony! Ain’t no creature nor pony that ah cain’t herd!”
“Except parasprites?” Rainbow said, rolling her eyes.
Applejack blushed angrily, shouting up, “That’s different and you know it!”
“Well, these are like parasprites,” Rainbow said, brandishing her Pinkie. “You having any trouble herding them?”
The Pinkie in question was sliding out of Dash’s armlock, so the pegasus had to keep grabbing her before she fell limply back to the ground.
Applejack paled when she remembered, and shouted, “Rainbow Dash, wait! Ah need you to–”
“Hold on, Applejack,” Rainbow interrupted fighting with the Pinkie’s limpness, “Lemme just get rid of this Pinkie and I’ll help you out.”
“NO!” Applejack shouted, but the Pinkie had already left Rainbow Dash’s hooves. Whether Rainbow Dash intended it, or if the Pinkie finally just slipped out of her grasp, the pink pony, and a familiar brown cowpony hat both descended ungracefully into the sea of pink at the bottom of Twilight’s magic cage thing.
“Mah hat!” Applejack shouted in despair.
“Oh! Your hat ...whoops.” Rainbow flustered in a nervous tone, hovering in place up there above the cage, hoofing at her mane embarassedly, and looking down into the pink sea, “That’s what you needed help on... right?”
“Well don’t just stand there!” Applejack shouted at her.
“Hello? I’m flying ?” Rainbow said confusedly, gesturing at her ungrounded hooves.
“Well don’t just fly there!” Applejack shouted, bracing on the magic wall and lashing her tail at the infuriating pegasus, “Get it back!”
Rainbow Dash paused. She looked very leerily down into that churning group of Pinkies, out of which nopony could expect to emerge intact and sane.
“I think they’re eating it,” she said quietly, descending down to stand beside Applejack, the two of them helplessly watching the hat getting torn apart.
“Consarnit! ” Applejack shouted, beside herself with anger, throwing her hat down, and glaring furiously at the pink menace.
There was a pause.
“Applejack...” Rainbow Dash said beside her, very cautiously.
“What?!” Applejack demanded, sticking her face in Rainbow Dash’s face. She blushed apologetically, and pulled her neck back then, and set her hat back on her head, saying, “Sorry Rainbow, ah’m just so worked up over this mess. They ruined mah hat!”
“Then... what’s that on your head?” Rainbow asked, pointing a hoof above the pouting Applejack for clarification. As if there were any place other than the top of Applejack’s head, that Rainbow could have been referring to.
Applejack sighed and rolled her eyes, “That’s mah spare hat, ya silly filly,” she patiently explained, “Ah got more than just one , y’know.”
“How many hats do you have? ” Rainbow Dash asked with a skeptical tilt of her head.
Applejack shrugged at the whithers, saying, “Ah dunno, couple dozen maybe? Ah go through them a lot in this town.”
“Then what’s the problem ?” Dash exclaimed, her face twisted in confusion.
“It’s the principle of the matter!” Applejack grumbled grumpily, looking away from those big innocent eyes, feeling all put out at everything and everypony and everyone.
“Look, whatever,” Dash grumbled back, looking away herself, fretfully. “But—” she turned back, “What have you been doing all this time?”
“Herding Pinkies!” Applejack stated proudly, with a hoof on her chest. “We got a posse of ponies and buffalo, and went all the way east of town, funneled them right over here to the library. We’re gonna cover the south side of town next, so they don’t get in the apple orchards.”
Dash rubbed her chin, fluttering slightly airborne again to remark, thoughtfully, “Yeah, that’d be bad, but... I would think you’d be more worried about north of town, where all those big bales of barley and wheat are from the summer harvest. I mean, it’d be absolutely terrible if they got into the apples, but those bales they could probably go through in one gigantic bite, and then boom a thousand more Pinkies. I dunno. Hey I gotta go find more Pinkies to grab, so you just keep doing your thing, okay Applejack? Applejack?”
When Rainbow waved a hoof in her face, Applejack snapped out of her trance of pure, unadultrated horror. “Oh celery stalks if they get into the harvest crops,” she squeaked, with a terrified look on her face. “Gotta go, Rainbow!” she shouted, then ran over to where the ponies were convening who helped her herd the group from the east.
“Come on everypony!” she hollered.
“Everyone !” came a buffalo’s voice.
“Whatever!” Applejack said impatiently, “We gotta push ‘em down from the north, before they get into the wheat and barley! Now come on! Every uh... friend!”
She took off at a run, at what might be a leisurely pace for her if she wasn’t dancing-on-her-feet-worried about what was going to happen if their entire harvest went up in pink. She was not looking forward to the consequences if that were to happen. If Pinkie Pie did that , Applejack figured everypony was going to have to get mighty used to having cutlet of Pink for dinner for the rest of the year. It was just like—
It was just like with the parasprites...
Shaking her head, Applejack continued charging past Pinkies, her entourage thundering behind her urgently. She didn’t pause for the Pinkies who were throwing themselves at a local eatery, ignored the ones who were spilling out the windows of somepony’s house, and continued ignoring the ones who were clinging on the top of Town Hall, making growly noises and swinging toy airplanes in their hooves around their heads.
Applejack and everypony kept on running north, until the last Pinkie had been passed. And it was a close call, but these Pinkies didn’t have any rhyme or reason to their travel, so Applejack managed to reach the edge of town before any Pinkie did. She turned on her hooves and called to any pony who could listen—which was a surprising amount of ponies—saying, “Come on, we gotta do it right now! Push these Pinkies back, don’t let ‘em take our Wheaty’s!”
“And our Lucky Charm’s!” Lucky Charm shouted out. Applejack never did figure why he farmed barley, with a name like that, but a cutie mark’s a cutie mark. He wasn’t much of a farmer, anyway. One could say he was barley farming.
Once again, ponies of all sorts...even technically not ponies, who were surprisingly placid and organized buffalo, all formed a line, and Applejack started marching back with them, through the neighborhood southwards. The line parted like a wave around the houses as they went, going inside and checking each one for the presence of Pink. It wasn’t long before they got their wish, and thankfully there wasn’t too many eating establishments up north, so not only did the Pinkies not gravitate this way, but they weren’t getting any chances to multiply further.
The worst part was the more you pushed these Pinkies the more they pushed back. They were just ambling around in random directions at first, but when you started herding them they immediately had to be exactly the way you didn’t want them to go, right this very moment.
Applejack got the impression that they were both like Pinkie and unlike Pinkie, in that they were every bit as ornery as her, but not a one of them said a single word, or even acknowledged anypony’s presence. You could kick one in the chest, and it’d slide back, but then just keep hopping forward not even looking at you or realizing it just got kicked back. It probably the second strangest thing Applejack had ever herded in her life.
Those air whales sure had been an astounding experience.
The line had a bit of trouble, when a Pinkie started trying to join in with herding Pinkies. Nopony was sure whether to let her do it, or to push her ahead, or what. Applejack ran the line and encouraged them though, and they let her be and kept pushing forward. Whether or not Pinkie Pie or, some part of Pinkie Pie at least, wanted to help, they had to get these Pinkies away from their all-important hay bales for the winter seasons. Applejack held a grim visage, but she wasn’t really worried. Long as they all got to the library, everything was gonna be fine and dandy.
That was right about the time when everything went totally, catastrophically wrong.
Butting Pinkies with her head, Applejack was shouting out, “C’mon, get on you! Get it up. Keep it moving, ponies!”
“We got a runner!” Margey shouted, charging at a Pinkie who’d gotten behind the line and was running, well, hopping away. It was strangely adorable when Margey connected, the completely confused expression on Pinkie’s face as she went sailing through the air, her little wingding wings fluttering ineffectually. Margerine Delight rejoined the line next to Applejack, right as they arrived upon another... well... it wasn’t an eating establishment, precisely.
The line parted around a building whose presence in their town not many ponies liked to bring to attention. It would have been generous to call it a tavern, but it was at least a fun place to share a drink with friends in the evening. Trouble is, it was also one place you could go if you really wanted to get soused on questionable liquor. Applejack never liked the place, but they managed to get ponies drinking her cider after it’d gone bad already, so she couldn’t complain about the extra bits there.
Still, it wasn’t the least questionable of places, and it wasn’t exactly an eating establishment but they did serve food there. A few ponies went to check out the tavern anyway, to make sure there were no Pinkies inside eating up the pretzels or what have you, and getting even drunker than they already were naturally, guzzling down that tarnished juice stuff. Applejack didn’t event want to know what would pop out of Pinkie’s mouth if she drank a bunch of booze .
Applejack might have been more concerned—no, alarmed—no, panicked if she knew about the other thing they served at that bar. Something that was even less respected than alcohol in these parts, for what it did to ponies. Made them downright idiots, liable to do some damn fool thing like run off a cliff or start rearranging everypony’s flower garden in town to be color coordinated without sleeping... for 3 days straight. Yep, Applejack was mighty low on respect for that stuff, and as a consequence not even she knew that the tavern offered it to discerning customers, who felt they needed that little pick-me-up to take away the blurry edge of an alcoholic buzz.
No sooner had any of her line ponies gotten to flank the door of the tavern, than it burst open, and the greying proprieter charged out of it. That was the other reason this tavern stayed in Ponyville. That old fart had been in the business longer than Applejack had been alive, and nopony was gonna run such a long standing, respectable business out of town just for being a little seedy. At the sight of the ponies outside, and the mass of Pinkies they were pushing along, he fell to his knees, shouting in despair, “It’s all over! They got into the salt!”
Putting two and two together, Applejack’s pupils had a moment to narrow before she shouted atop her lungs, “Everypony! Surround the building! Drop everything! Block off the windows! Don’t let even one of them get out!” Applejack sure didn’t know what a hyperactive pony like Pinkie Pie was going to be like on salt, but she figured it was pretty bad. She didn’t know what a Pinkie Pie like these was gonna be like on salt, but she figured it was gonna be pretty gosh darned bad. But actually, it turns out it wasn’t bad at all. It was worse.
They had ponies holding the window shutters shut, and barricading them if necessary. All the doors were being watched, blocked and leaned against. It was a single story establishment, thankfully, so nopony had to climb up to the second story or anything. Applejack was cautiously approaching the front door, thinking to run in there and at least separate the Pinkies in there, to try to minimize the damage they could do collectively. But then Wheaty cried out in alarm, as something slammed into her window.
The ponies were shouting, as the Pinkies apparently were trying to physically batter their way out. It felt like Pinkies were throwing chairs against the windows and using battering rams to try to push the doors open. The defenders didn’t realize at first, but the reality is, the Pinkies weren’t even trying to get out at all. The chairs, doors, and walls just happened to be in their way at the moment.
Fighting to contain them had turned into a losing battle. There was no going in that place if you valued your tail, your hide and your sanity. The battering had turned into one continuous rumbling thunder, and even the ground was beginning to shake unsettlingly. Applejack backed up from the whole mess, starting to see what a mistake she had made. The walls, even the walls, they looked sort of like...
“Everypony, run!” she shouted frantically, pushing protesting ponies away from their defense of the egresses to the tavern. The Pinkies weren’t just banging on the windows and doors anymore. It was more like the ceiling and walls of the tavern were swelling, like something at an incredible pressure was trapped within.
“Go! Go!” Applejack shouted, leaping away with most of the others just as the entire building erupted into a titanic explosion, the blast sending Applejack flying heels over head. Ponies all around her were screaming their heads off. She twisted in midair trying to see, but the motion of the Pinkies was so impossible to track that they just all looked like a badly exposed photograph. Ponies went flying everywhere, and Applejack landed with her back to a fence. The Pinkies actually rose up into the air like they were flying, before crashing down on everypony like a tidal wave, and running in every direction at once. There were so many! There were... there were...
Three?
Three Pinkies, and hopefully something explosive, detonated the tavern, and ran through the streets faster than the eye could see. It seemed like a whole barn full of them, but it was actually only about three that managed to summon up such unstoppable power. The explosion had the form of a pinkish cloud sweeping over everypony and all the Pinkies they had been herding, as if Pinkie’s very essence had been dispersed into the air. Applejack picked herself back up, a dim silouette inside the pink cloud, coughing as the dust started irritating her lungs and making her nose run. What was this stuff, and why was it making her feel all jittery?
Applejack’s face fell in horrified realization. “Ohh nelly,” she mentioned.
“Get outta tha,” she shouted to everypony, “AHSHOO get outta the cloud!”
“You kidding?!” an unfamiliar voice shouted eagerly back through the obscured air, “This is primo quality, and cracked!” Applejack just... ran away from that little comment, and from what was left of the tavern. She shook the dust out of her hair once her vision cleared, and that was a mistake because it made her head pound along with the increasing speed of her heart rate. She took a despairing look back, trying to figure how to get those Pinkies in line, but dozens of them were all kicking up the dust right into their own faces, buzzing around like hyperactive bees, and anypony who could stop them...
There was no herding Pinkies anymore. Ponies were trying to keep things together, but all they were doing was shouting in each other’s faces and zipping around trying in vain to catch the pink blurs shooting effortlessly past the line. They were going crazy! Applejack bit her lip as a Pinkie drove herself right through a wall, to the sound of a screaming family inside. The Pinkies were going crazy! Applejack was going crazy! She didn’t want to go crazy! She danced on her feet, unsure of what to do. She had to hold it together! She had to do something! She had to get help! She’d be in no position to help anypony like this!
Applejack went running for the library, finding it dreadfully effortless to do so. The town flew by her, her hooves pounding underneath her, while her heart raced at a million miles a minute. She hit the tree head on because she couldn’t stop right easily, but that was fine, because somepony here could always solve everything. Without even pausing, she ran up to Twilight and shouted hurriedly, “We gotta situation! Some Pinkies managed to blow the tavern sky high! There was salt everywhere! They’re all runnin’ around too fast to see, and everypony else is just running around being all crazy because of the salt and I really need somepony to stop those Pinkies because I got a facefulla that stuff and I don’t know how long I can keep my wits!”
“Aaaaapppplejaaackkk,” Twilight said, turning to face Applejack as if in slow motion, “Youuuuu’reeee spppeeeeakiiiiing toooooo ffffffaaaaaaaaa”
“I ain’t got time for games, Twilight!” Applejack said shaking her by the withers. “I don’t do so well with that stuff and someone’s gotta stop the Pinkies!” She must have shook Twilight too hard, because there were two of them now, both looking at Applejack sort of extremely with extreme concern. Applejack saw the magic Pinkie jar behind them flickering, as Twilight’s focus left it. She winced and immediately released both Twilights, who hurriedly resumed reinforcing the cage. It was getting real hard to see, on account of the sun ramping up in brightness a few notches, making Applejack squint and pull her hat lower over her brow. She pondered what she could possibly do for a good few microseconds.
“Ah know!” Applejack exclaimed in realization, pounding one hoof into the cusp of another, “Ah’ll go get the Pinkies mahself!” She ran off at a blinding speed, and she was making good time until she realized she hadn’t made it more than four feet before plowing face first into the ground, and just running like that for a while. Oh, this wasn’t good this wasn’t good at all. She jumped to her feet again, shooting over to another green pony saying, “C’mon Wintergreen we gotta go herd the Pinkies fast. Ah think they might be into the crops north of town! They could be anywhere at that speed! Heh heh, speed,” she couldn’t help but chuckle at her little word play, despite the gravity of the situtation.
The pony just stared at her in terror, and on her head was glowing a, oh she was a horny pony. Heh heh, horny. Applejack had to pat her on the head and leave her be since the unicorns had to magic the cage, so instead she started chasing after the flower ponies, but they kept running away and screaming, and all Applejack was doing was saying “Hey c’mon! You gotta help! You know how to help, right? You can do anything!!”
Applejack heard Twilight running up slowwwly behind her, still talking in that silly sounding slow way saying, “Aaaaaapppleeeejj” but Applejack grabbed her again, shaking her by the withers, saying urgently,
“Salt, Twilight! The salt! Salt salt salt salt salt!” She must have shook Twilight too hard because the shield was flickering again and wait, in fact Applejack wasn’t supposed to shake Twilight at all. Applejack released the little purple pony abashedly, backing up a step before suddenly realizing, “I know! Ah’ll go for help!”
She would have run off then at a blinding speed, but her legs weren’t working quite right again, so they got all tangled up in her other legs and Applejack went down in a heap. At least this time she noticed right away, instead of running into the ground like some kind of crazy pony.
Instead of getting back up, Applejack calmly rolled onto her back, giving her legs a critical look. What was wrong with these things? They weren’t moving fast enough. She tried running them in the air, and that was lots easier than running on the ground, but she still didn’t get anywhere. It was really funny too, the way her legs were all bendy and she could kick and stuff. A chuckle built in her until she was laughing enthusiastically, because her legs and the thing and it was just so funny how she had like, legs and all, because they were funny legs.
“Mah legs are so buckin’ hilarious!” Applejack crowed triumphantly. She didn’t even notice she was falling unconscious until she did, passing out with more surgical precision than a pony could have caused from just clocking her on the back of the head. The blackness that engulfed her was such a relief from the blindingly bright sunlight that was making her eyes water and redden, no matter how hard she squinted. And then Applejack was out like a late zap apple.
Twilight stood somberly over the body of her fallen friend. Applejack seemed to symbolize Ponyville as a whole, in this moment. Fallen over on her side, Applejack’s peaceful appearance concealed a total loss of sense and reason. Princess Celestia had ordered Twilight to keep the Pinkies safe, but there was nothing to keep them all safe from the Pinkies . And now their winter bales were to become just more pounds of pink flesh, far too much for any one pony to contain. When would these Pinkies stop eating? Why did they even exist? The answers were not forthcoming, and with no other recourse they might as well give up the entire town as a lost cause.
Behind Twilight, Lyra and Sparkler were shouting about the pillar barrier. Without her magic it would surely fall, but what purpose did it serve anymore? There were soon to be an innumerable amount of Pinkie Pies charging down from the north, anyway.
Plans for evacuation drifted through Twilight’s head. Plans for marking buildings as condemned. All the buildings. Every single one. Perhaps they could cordon off the entire municipality somehow, stop the Pinkies from spreading to neighboring towns. Perhaps they could build a scale model of Ponyville and nopony would know what happened to the real one. Twilight saw in her head the disappointed and horrified visage of her princess, at what terror resulted from what Princess Celestia herself had ordered to happen. A princess who had gone through so much, finding nothing but tragedy after tragedy.
Twilight was interrupted by a sturdy hoof clocking her on the side of the head, and a stallion shouting “I said, snap out of it!”
“Huh?” Twilight groaned confusedly, holding her aching head. “Spike?” She focused on—well, it definitely wasn’t Spike.
“Twilight Sparkle,” the tannish brown stallion said to her with great urgency, “You have to reinforce the barrier. It is imperative that you not let it go down!”
“Why is it important?” Twilight half shouted at the frantic stallion. “I’ll just let these Pinkies go, and go to the north and fix things there, then let them fall apart, and go to the south and fix things there and let them ” a hoof on her shoulder.
“Just do your best with what you have here,” the stallion said in an eerily sympathetic tone, “This is Ponyville. Your fellow citizens can do more than you think. We’ve been through worse than this and survived! You have to trust them. Do your best, and I’m sure they’ll find some way to pull through.”
Twilight almost stared through him, wanting to refute his inexplicable optimism, but he was right. She wasn’t going to fail any worse if she did what she could, than if she just gave it all up for lost. “Thank you,” she said seriously to the stallion, lighting up her horn and turning to the force cage. Lyra and Sparkler were bearing the brunt of the operation, with Dr. Doctor a close third, but the field was no longer uniform but swirling and warped and worryingly uneven in places.
Twilight slammed into it metaphorically, the cage lighting up with her characteristic glow as she stabilized the pillars and adjusted the vectors to account for the latest bizarre amalgamation of force that was on the center of the cage. The barrier smoothed out, and stopped distorting, and with just a bit of ultraspatial 4 day harmonic derivation, the last of the anomalies were contained. A Pink hoof which had somehow managed to push through the barrier was inexorably drawn within, leaving nothing but smooth magenta, raspberry, teal, and golden sheens on the smooth, glasslike cage walls.
Twilight spared a glance at the stallion who helped her, thinking to thank him for his motivational support, but the earth pony was already running away full tilt, shouting to an unseen party (no doubt a Pinkie Pie), “Get the bloody hell away from my ship!”
...ship?
No time for that. Twilight had to concentrate.
You’d think this a perfect time for a scene transition, but in life we have to deal with what we’re given in the proper order, and without conveniently skipping the boring parts. For Twilight, caging Pinkie Pies was unsurprisingly—or perhaps surprisingly—a very boring experience. Oh sure, the spell theory involved was fascinating and all, but the application was very mundane: just making sure the runes remained unswirled, and the proper mana channels were set, accounting for all the little dings and scrapes Pinkie Pie seemed to have on reality.
Twilight had already gone over at least three scenarios in her head, in which she utilized the library battery to maintain this impossible to escape spell, scenarios that would involve her being more useful than just sitting around and pouring her magic into it. But ultimately, she had made snap judgements, and now she could only do her best with what she had.
Twilight regarded the others helping her with her spell. Lyra with her musical ability effortlessly smoothing out the cage’s dissonances, Dr. Doctor eliminating weaknesses and fractures with surgical precision, and Sparkler who, while younger than Twilight, had an innate grasp of the art of pyrotechnic fireworks displays, which lent itself nicely to the multitasking of several thousand Pinkies all trying to escape at once. There was also some blue haired unicorn Twilight hadn’t seen around much, but she was pretty much still cursing and nursing her aching head, having not done much magic before today besides levitate the occasional glass, or turntable.
Not a lot of conversation was spared between the four of them, as they all had to concentrate on maintaining the cage’s integrity, but for Twilight, feeling her own magic mingling with theirs was its own sort of intimacy. It was a strange sort of communication, that unicorns could share together without speaking a single word.
She hadn’t known how good of a lyricist Lyra was for instance, until just now. The soothing touch of Lyra’s magic almost carried a song in of itself, and though Twilight was providing the brunt of the magic, it was the aquamarine unicorn who was doing the most to keep the cage both stable, and Pinkie proof.
Twilight really missed working so closely with skilled unicorns like these. Her Friendship studies had been refreshingly multi-tribal, but there were just some things an earth pony or a pegasus could not relate to. She made a note in her mental checklist to follow up with Lyra after the crisis has passed, see how she’s been since she finished school at Canterlot. In fact, since Twilight knew of Sparkler through Lyra, that meant two of her old classmates were both here and integral to the solution to the problem at hoof.
However ineffective that solution may be.
As she shifted restlessly to keep a close eye on her corner of the cage, Twilight’s hind hoof kept inadvertently nudging Applejack’s magically somnolescent body. Even asleep, Applejack was a bitter reminder that despite the fascinating challenge in the problem of containing Pinkie Pie, that the four of them faced with an innovative solution, there were still going to be vastly more Pinkies outside the cage than within it in short order.
Her foot hit Applejack’s limp side again.
“Can somepony take care of my friend?!” Twilight shouted over her shoulder, a little angrier than she intended. “She needs... bed... um, something... gah!” A pink nose in the meantime had started poking through Twilight’s magic, and she hurriedly adjusted the barrier to resist (of all things) being nuzzled into nonexistence. Twilight really wished she had a more long term solution than this. There weren’t supposed to be this many Pinkies in the first place. None of this was supposed to happen at all.
Twilight gritted her teeth, wishing she could go up north, where some sort of salt explosion if Applejack’s words could be deciphered had ruined everything forever. That she could do something about! But no, Twilight had to sit here reinforcing this stupid cage full of stupid Pinkies who were too stupid to stop reproducing when they knew they weren’t welcome. And the worst part is, Twilight had to concentrate , and it was just impossible to concentrate, between the interruptions and the wails of despair in the background, and the sounds of property damage, and the unmistakable sound of a... wait, what in the name of Celestia was she hearing?!
In a rising panic, Twilight Sparkle turned away from the cage and saw
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Oh dear, this just keeps getting worse!
Oh come on, a cliffhanger in the middle of a sentence?! :D
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The pure, unadultrated horror! OK, maybe a little adultrated.
5979093
Well you see, it's
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:)
Part of me gets the feeling that it's the Parasprite Polka. Probably wrong though. Spoilered in case I'm right, but once again, I'm probably wrong.
Confusing due to having just done so in the literal sense. Try "to leave her alone".
Unless the terms for buffalo are different than for Bulls then this term has absolutely no business in a story as light-hearted as this I think. Use "bull". Actually I know some specific ways "steer" can work in a story that is light-hearted but this isn't such a story.
6026493
Oh, oh you're right. I completely wrote that wrong. Hold on, I'll go use the correct word. There, all fixed.
6027661
Looks to me like your changes must not have saved correctly.
6027800
No, no I can clearly see the word "shrieked" instead of "shouted."
6029894
Whiiiiiich has nothing that I can tell to do with either of the problems I was pointing out.
Or were you trying to be sarcastic and dismiss my concerns? I really can't tell.
6031254
Just curious, where between selling orphans into slavery and the nightmarish oracle genocide did you get the impression that I was writing a light-hearted tale?
6031664
It is a matter of degree. The slavery was a long time ago and not described in detail. The genocide was... an honest mistake at the second stage.
The ideal that castration is reasonably common among buffalo tribes that Equestrian has good relations with breaks the hopeful mood for me.
6032752
But how else are they going to reach those high notes? The joke is that buffalo all have deep voices, even the females.
I don't suppose someone could explain the whole "salt-as-a-drug-for-ponies" thing that keeps showing up in fics to me?
6085912 the Appalosa episode hints at it
I'm Calling it, the blue haired mare is Vinyl Scratch.
Pinkie... on salt... We are doomed.