A Monster Looming Over Us

by Brass Polish

1 Overgrown

The long-term consequences of Fluttershy’s proposal to give the vampire fruit bats a section of forest in Sweet Apple Acres were mounting dramatically. For many moons since the sanctuary was set up, Applejack and Big Macintosh would wander its perimeter collecting the seeds the bats spit out. The two of them never went in because they never felt comfortable around the creatures. Apple Bloom on the other hoof went straight in every time it was her turn to collect spit-backs… albeit against orders. She had fared much better from that unpleasant day she was foalnapped by Crosspatch and Lazybug than Applejack gave her credit for, and she was comparably less disturbed by the vampire fruit bats, as they had been a lot of help to her. No one found out that she was going straight into vampire fruit bat territory to collect seeds, even though she always brought back more than her sister and brother could together. Granny Smith attributed this to how short and near to the ground Apple Bloom was. In her most recent trips into the sanctuary, she began to notice that despite the larger amount of seeds she collect, she barely even made a dent in the amount of spit-backs littering the ground. By now, hundreds of new trees had grown, and there was barely enough space for even little Apple Bloom to walk. It was looking more and more like the Everfree Forest every week. No two trees were the same size, nor the same degree of healthy. A lot of the trees that had been there long before this area had been given to the bats were deprived of nutrients, and not producing leaves, and their bark was falling off. And some of the younger trees weren’t getting enough sunlight because of the larger trees’ leaves and branches casting shadows over them around the clock. Apple Bloom knew something had to be done, but she also knew that if she brought this up, she’d get busted for venturing into the vampire fruit bat zone against orders.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said to Applejack. “There’s hardly any seeds around the vampire fruit bat’s area.”

“You do okay,” observed Applejack.

“I know,” Apple Bloom said slyly, “but maybe you and Big Mac can get more seeds if you wentinto the zone.”

“Don’t talk crazy,” groaned Applejack. “Them bats’ll never leave us alone if we’re scrounging around their territory.”

“They don’t--”

Apple Bloom almost said that they don’t bother her as much as they used to when she first started collecting seeds from within the forest because of all the extra trees producing more apples for them to occupy themselves with. She’d had a hard time concealing the various bites and scratches she’d sustained, and she was not going to let Applejack find out what she’d been doing if she could help it.

“Uh, I mean… they didn’t bother Crosspatch and Lazybug when they held me hostage in there,” she said quickly.

Applejack squirmed. It gave her no pleasure hearing her little sister talk so casually about getting foalnapped by two ponies they now count as friends.

“Maybe we could hire them to go in and collect seeds,” suggested Apple Bloom.

“Hey! I like that idea,” grinned Applejack. “They’ll be perfect for the job.”

So Applejack spoke to Crosspatch, who agreed to come to Sweet Apple Acres the following morning. After Apple Bloom had gone to school, Applejack waited around the vampire bat zone. When Crosspatch arrived, Applejack was surprised to see Lazybug was with her.

“Shouldn’t you be in school right now?” she asked.

“He insisted on coming along,” said Crosspatch.

“The point is to collect as many seeds as possible, right?” asked Lazybug.

Applejack nodded.

“Well the more ponies you have, the more seeds you’ll get. Right?”

“I guess,” said Applejack.

“I didn’t need any school to tell me that,” smirked Lazybug, picking up a bucket and taking off into the vampire fruit bat zone.

“I’m a bit worried,” confided Crosspatch. “Do you think Twilight’ll be cross if Lazybug’s not at school with Nyx?”

“She can lose her cool,” said Applejack, “but if it’s only for one day, everything should be fine. I won’t mention anything to Twilight.”

“Thanks,” said Crosspatch. “Well, I better get going. If he gets more seeds than me, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Hours later, Crosspatch wasn’t hearing the end of it.

“What have you been doing?” demanded Lazybug. “You’ve not got one seed in your bucket.”

“There were so many nests on the ground, full of tiny-winy little bats,” pined Crosspatch. “The trees in here are so old and weak, they can’t support the nests the bats make. I couldn’t leave them lying on the ground to get trodden on.”

“What’s gonna step on them in here?” asked Lazybug. “This is their territory. No other animals live or come in here.”

“We step on them while we’re collecting seeds in here,” insisted Crosspatch.

“While we’re collecting seeds?” Lazybug cast another pitiful look at Crosspatch’s empty bucket.

“I’m sure I can do the job properly once I’ve scooping up all the baby bats that fell from the trees,” said Crosspatch, casting misty eyes on a family of bats on a branch. “You’d think the parents would try and pick their young’uns up, but they don’t seem to think they’re in any danger on the ground.”

“If you’re gonna insist on spending your whole time in here picking bats off the ground instead of what you were hired to do,” frowned Lazybug, “I’m gonna insist on taking 100% of the pay.”

“It’s not easy, you know. This forest is way overgrown,” Crosspatch looked around at the trees and bushes of varying age and health. “And did you get a look at Applejack’s red gala field?”

“What about it?” asked Lazybug.

“Those are the only kind of apples they got in here. Red gala seeds are the only ones they find in vampire fruit bat territory. They could get more variety if they planted different seeds in here.”

“Plant more seeds?! Look around. There’s virtually no more room,” observed Lazybug in an irritated manner. “That’s why we’re here, Crosspatch. To pick seeds off the ground.”

“But we can’t possibly get them all,” said Crosspatch.

“I probably could,” muttered Lazybug. “You’ve been no help at all.”

“My point is if the Apples don’t plant more seeds, the bats will. And this forest will be completely impenetrable. If more seeds are planted, they might as well be something other than red gala,” insisted Crosspatch.

When she got home from school, Apple Bloom was pleased to find that her plan had worked perfectly. Applejack told her that they would be giving the vampire fruit bat zone a comprehensive clean-up. Old trees would either be pruned or chopped down, sick trees would be disposed of, and seeds of various types of apple would be planted in their places. Apple Bloom was glad that this plan came about without anyone suspecting she’d been venturing into vampire bat territory, but she was worried that she might have inadvertently caused friction between Crosspatch and Lazybug. Crosspatch had collected fewer seeds than Lazybug, but still took half the pay. And now they were arguing about whether or not Lazybug should skip more classes.

“If you leave it to just her, you won’t get many seeds,” Lazybug insisted. “The two of us can get you more.”

“Frankly, I don’t think you need more red gala seeds,” said Crosspatch. “Like I said, you’re red gala field’s the biggest one in Sweet Apple Acres.”

“I got an idea,” said Applejack. “Lazybug won’t have to miss too much school if somepony can get the bats to leave me and Big Mac alone. Fluttershy’d be perfect for that.”

“But Applejack,” Apple Bloom piped in, “Fluttershy said she doesn’t understand vampire fruit bats as well as any other animal.”

“She’s still our best bet,” insisted Applejack. “We don’t know anypony else who even comes close to communicating with animals. All these two get do is get ‘em to buzz off.”

“Great. So I can help Crosspatch collect seeds until Fluttershy gets through to the bats and gets them off your backs,” smiled Lazybug.

“But what about his ponyguard duties?” asked Crosspatch. “He’s meant to be watching over Nyx in school. Who knows? There could be one or two ponies in Equestria who still think Nyx got off too lightly for causing a two-week-long night.”

So Applejack, Crosspatch, and Lazybug paid Twilight Sparkle a visit to get her view.

“It sounds reasonable,” said Twilight. “If Lazybug has work to do, he should be allowed to help out. And Nyx is getting better at defensive magic. And she’s got plenty of friends by now to watch over her.”

The more Twilight spoke, the more Lazybug smiled and the more Crosspatch frowned.

Starlight Glimmer piped in. “You and me could speed up the process whenever we’re not practising magic. Getting rid of old trees, cleaning up the overgrowth, and chopping it up…”

“Great idea. We’ll let you know when we have an opening, alright?” Twilight asked Applejack.

“Sounds dandy, you two,” smiled Applejack. “Alright. Now if we can get Fluttershy on board, everything’ll be set.”

Nyx wasn’t worried at all when Twilight told her Lazybug wouldn’t be in school for a while; though she was a little disappointed that she wouldn’t see much of her best friend. And there was no need to worry about any attempt to ambush Nyx going unnoticed, as today, Cheerilee had an in-class assignment to be carried out in pairs. The school ponies were to construct kites. Nyx was glad to be paired with Apple Bloom, but Apple Bloom seemed put out about something.

“So Twilight let you come here without Lazybug?” asked Apple Bloom.

“Yeah. She said I should be perfectly safe,” Nyx nodded. “She says I’ve gotten much better at the protective spells I’ve been practising, and my magic’s a lot stronger by now.”

“I wish my sister had as much confidence in me as your mom has in you,” frowned Apple Bloom. “She told me to stay outta of her bat zone clean-up. I’m better at dealing with those bats then she is. I’m the one who got them to stop the Zap-O-Lantern.”

“Lazybug told me you couldn’t get them to go back to their own territory after they’d sucked all the juice out of that monster,” said Nyx tentatively. “They started eating all the apples in the cellar and completely ignored you when you told them to go back home.”

“I still got them to follow me to the cellar in the first place,” insisted Apple Bloom.

“Maybe the only thing you said that they understood was there was a giant apple for them to eat,” suggested Nyx.

Apple Bloom looked around, half-hoping there was a student without a partner. She saw that the only pony who had no one to pair up with was Tender Taps, but he was already writing down notes from a text book while the rest of the class were still rifling through them. It wasn’t a surprise to Apple Bloom; the assignment was about the Rain Dance.

Back at home, the operation to overhaul the vampire fruit bat’s section of Sweet Apple Acres had begun. Applejack and Big Mac were taking it in turns to collect twigs and fallen branches, in between other duties in the orchard. Any reservations either of them had about venturing into vampire bat territory didn’t last long because the only bats they saw whenever they went in were merely observing them from distant tree branches.

“Ya think Fluttershy’s gettin through to ‘em?” Applejack asked Big Mac during one changeover.

Big Mac glanced over Applejack’s shoulder. “Nnnnope.”

Applejack turned to see Fluttershy staggering towards them sporting a few scratches.

“I reckon she’s just a distraction to ‘em,” finished Big Mac.

“I think I’m gonna take a break now,” Fluttershy said.

“Not goin’ well?” asked Applejack.

“Better than I expected,” said Fluttershy in an upbeat manner. “I still can’t quite understand what they say, and they still don’t quite get what I tell them, but all those games of charades we’ve been playing are helping things along.”

“You’re playin charades with the bats?” Applejack raised an eyebrow.

“I tried to mime a gopher by pretending to burrow down into a bush, and I got stuck,” chuckled Fluttershy. “That got them to laugh at least… I think.”

Big Mac knew he was right about Fluttershy being a distraction to the bats when he was circled by them upon entering their territory. But it didn’t take long for Crosspatch and Lazybug to get them off his back.

“Our spritzing bottle’s running dry,” Lazybug said once the last one had backed off. “Don’t take too long, okay Big Mac?”

“Yyyyep,” nodded Big Mac.

“Or you could take your time and the two of us can just do a Rain Dance,” chuckled Crosspatch.

Big Mac chuckled as well, but Lazybug just tilted his head.

“Rain dance? What’s that?”

“It’s what an ancient tribe of earth ponies used to do before negotiating with the pegasi to control the weather over their plantations,” said Crosspatch. “Didn’t you learn about that in school?”

Lazybug shook his head.

“I can’t think why you wouldn’t want to stay in school,” frowned Crosspatch. “Back before we got eaten by the Zap-O-Lantern, Ponyville didn’t exist, and there wasn’t a school for miles. Now we’ve got a schoolhouse within walking distance and a top notch teacher with it.”

“Yyyyep,” nodded Big Mac.

“Well I didn’t need school to learn about the Rain Dance, did I?” smirked Lazybug. “And how did you know about the Rain Dance? You never went to no school.”

“I found out about it when Twilight and me were looking for ways to keep us hydrated while we’re asleep at night,” explained Crosspatch.

“Looks like you can learn about stuff they teach you in school anywhere,” suggested Lazybug.

“I suppose,” Crosspatch faltered. “But you did learn useful stuff there, didn’t you? Like the unseasonable snowfalls in Clopley Hill. That’s how we realized why our mum wandered into town wearing a hat, scarf, and boots.”

To that, Lazybug had no counterargument.

Author's Note:

Partially inspired by Tale of the Brave.