Vignette Fifteen - Bats!
The situation at Sweet Apple Acres over the last few days had gone from bad to worse since Applejack’s realization that the farm was once more host to a colony of vampire fruit bats. The last time this had happened had been in the early days of the farm, when Granny Smith was younger than Applejack was now, and had left the family in dire straits.
Fear of those dire straits repeating once more had led Applejack to take drastic measures, especially once it had become clear that Fluttershy wouldn’t be able to get them to leave. The bats either didn’t understand her, or simply weren’t interested in listening to her. Fluttershy’s own suggestion to dedicate part of the orchard to the bats was, to Applejack, unfeasible, as the bats were themselves rather gluttonous. Finally, Twilight had suggested a solution of her own – a spell that would manipulate the bats into not wanting to suck the juice from the apples. Unfortunately, it required Fluttershy’s assistance.
And that had led to another problem.
Much to the shock of her friends, Fluttershy was now hanging from a branch on an apple tree by her tail. As they watched her shadowed form, she shot her tongue from her mouth, snared an apple, and caught it in her teeth, now augmented by sharpened fangs where there hadn’t been any before. She sucked the juice dry in seconds, then spat the drained apple out and away.
“Fluttershy?” Pinkie Pie had joined her friend, and was similarly suspended by her tail with a flashlight held tight in her mane. “Yoo-hoo! Fluttershy!”
Fluttershy hissed and extended her now bat-like wings. Pinkie Pie dropped to the ground in shock as Rarity realized, “That’s not Fluttershy! That’s Flutter-bat!”
The newly-rechristened Flutterbat hissed, dropped from the branch and swooped down upon her friends, and thus forced them to take cover.
“I don’t understand!” Rarity hugged a tree for dear life as she kept her eyes locked on the aggressive vampire bat-pony in their midst. “How did this happen?!”
“I think this was my fault!” As the group ran out of the orchard, Twilight explained, “That spell I used earlier on the vampire fruit bats must’ve interacted somehow with Fluttershy’s Stare and backfired!”
“And that led to her turning into a bat-pony?!” Rainbow Dash skidded to a halt as she came in for a landing. “Wait a sec, bat-pony! Fluttershy’s got thestrals in her family tree, and there’s folktales and stories about rare thestrals having hypnotic stares! That might be why the spell’s affecting her this way, thestral heritage!” At her friends’ shocked expressions, she asked, “Well do any of you have a better explanation?!”
“Well I’d certainly like one that’s a bit less tribist, darling.” Rarity turned back towards the orchard, Flutterbat’s silhouette lost in the trees. “Still, I fear that’s the best explanation we have for this. And at the rate Fluttershy’s consuming apples, there may not be any left in the orchard by morning.”
Applejack’s heart sank at that thought. “Great. First Ah bully one’a mah friends into doin’ somethin’ against her will, then she gets turned into a monster that’ll wipe out mah family’s livelihood.” She bowed her head mournfully. “This is all mah fault.”
Twilight approached and laid a comforting hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “No Applejack, I’ve got a share of the blame too.” She turned back to the orchard and declared, “But we can fix this. We just have to find Fluttershy and keep her held in place while I try to reverse the spell.”
“But that doesn’t solve the initial problem of the vampire fruit bats, Twilight!” Rarity gestured to the orchard. “As soon as their desire to feed is restored, they’ll be back to consuming all of Applejack’s apple harvest!”
“I know, but one thing at a time.” Twilight considered what they would need. “Alright, we need full-length mirrors and lots of sturdy rope.”
“An’ bait.” Applejack took on a determined look. “An’ Ah got just the thing.”
-
Only two thoughts were on Flutterbat’s mind as she swooped through the orchard. The first was to feed. Her hunger needed to be sated, and once this place could no longer sustain her, she would move on elsewhere. The second was to drive away threats to her food. The second wasn’t an issue, as the competition was gone, but the first remained. She must feed. She would feed.
A scent caught her nostrils, that of succulent juice. Her head whipped around to the source to see one of the threats standing beside an apple as large as itself. The gigantic apple dripped with juice, and she could smell juice on the long metal thing the threat was holding. What the threat was doing with the apple she didn’t know, but the apple was hers, and the threat would not have it.
She swooped and hissed at the threat, but as she closed the distance, something popped into existence before her, and she barely stopped herself in time to see…herself? She turned away, only for something else to block her path and for her to see herself again, and again, and again, more reflections blocking her path until she could not escape.
“Keep her confined! We can’t have any gaps in the mirrors!”
Suddenly, the spaces between her reflections flashed with bright lights. She was confused, disoriented, hissing in fear as her eyes darted from one reflection to another. She finally settled on one and locked eyes with it before letting out the most terrible hiss that she could.
And something deep within that had been buried under terrible, overwhelming instinct woke up. The hisses of Flutterbat faded, and a gasp led to a scream of terror.
“Fluttershy?!” A gap formed in the mirrors and the lights dimmed as someone entered the cage. “Fluttershy!”
Gone was the terrible predator driven by an insatiable hunger. There in her place was a quivering, frightened form, curled up and whimpering like a frightened child. She looked up, her mind swimming upstream against the current of blind instinct with memory powering her along. “Applejack?” At the mare’s nod, Fluttershy jumped and embraced her friend, tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t… I couldn’t…!”
“Hush now, darlin’, it’s alright.” The mirrors slowly went away, and Applejack gently held her friend in her forelegs, comforting her with all the love she could muster. “Everythin’s gonna be alright now.”
As the rest of the group approached, Rainbow Dash looked Fluttershy over. “I don’t think the spell worked, Twilight. Fluttershy’s still all…batty.”
“I haven’t cast the spell, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight approached warily and explained, “When Fluttershy saw herself in the mirrors, it must’ve triggered something, and got her back to her senses.”
“Yeah, but for how long?” Glares turned to Spike as he asked, “What? I can’t be the only one wondering that.”
“No, Spike’s right to worry.” Fluttershy regained her footing as she explained, “The vampire fruit bats’ feeding instinct is…it’s overwhelming! They’re migratory! They’ve traveled across the land for generations, drawn from one food source to another to feed until they’ve reached their fill, and then they move on to the next!”
“Well that explains why we ain’t seen ‘em since Granny Smith was a young’un, but we still gotta get you back to normal.” Applejack looked to the orchard, where she knew more vampire fruit bats were still resting and waiting to eat. “And we still gotta do somethin’ ‘bout all the vampire fruit bats. Ah can’t just cordon off a huge chunk a’ orchard for ‘em, even if they’ll only be usin’ it every couple hundred years or so.”
“Perhaps there’s some way to shift their migration route?” Rarity approached and explained, “Sweet Apple Acres wasn’t here prior to their last visit to the area, after all. They had to be going after something else.”
“Ah suppose, but…” Realization struck as Applejack turned her attention past the orchard to what lay beyond her family’s land. “The Everfree Forest. They must’ve been feedin’ on zap apples before the farm was established. An’ when Granny Smith started growin’ zap apples a’ her own, then that must’ve attracted them here.”
“And what do you bet me their growth cycle in the Everfree is different from their growth cycle outside of it?” Twilight brushed aside idle thoughts of a thaumabotanical study as she reasoned, “In any case, these apples were more plentiful, and easier to get to, so they came back. And they’ll keep on coming back unless we find a way to repel them and set them back on their original migration route.”
“Hopefully in a way that don’t repel the fruit bats we already have on the farm, too.” Heads turned to Applejack as she explained, “They’re harmless to the crops an’ keep the local bug population in check.”
“Umm, well…” Fluttershy’s demure demeanor was welcome, if incongruent with her current appearance. “I might have an idea.”
-
As the morning sun rose over Sweet Apple Acres, the last of the vampire fruit bats fled the property for the Everfree Forest. Quite a bit of damage had still been done, but nothing the farm couldn’t recover from given how briefly they had been present.
“Can’t say Ah like the smell’a that repellent you came up with, Fluttershy, but it sure works.” Applejack turned back to her restored friend. “Strange mix, though.”
“Well, most creatures don’t like the scent of peppermint and cinnamon anyway, and mixed with urine from a predatory creature like a manticore, well…” Fluttershy shrugged. “Even back to normal, I’d still want to avoid a mix like that.”
“Too right.” The farmpony sighed and added, “Anyway, Ah guess we got us quite the entry for the Friendship Journal. Bein’ careful about short-term solutions that are too short-sighted…”
“And not letting anypony pressure you into doing anything that you don’t think is right.”
“Or you could get turned into a rampaging fruit-sucking bat-pony!” Pinkie popped up between the pair with a tray of glasses with straws. “Speaking of, apple juice? I had to do something with the giant apple beyond make a lotta pies.”
Applejack and Fluttershy accepted the offered drinks as they made their way back to the farmhouse. “Speakin’ of, you gonna do anythin’ ‘bout those fangs?”
Fluttershy grinned. “Actually, I think I’ll keep them. At least, for now. They aren’t hurting anything, and I don’t want to be a bother for a dentist unless I need to be.”
Applejack sighed. “Fair enough. Still, kind of a shame you don’t go out fer Nightmare Night. Those things would save you time puttin’ together a costume.”
The shy pegasus chuckled nervously at that. She’d already scared her friends enough, and she didn’t want to do it again.
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Thanks immensely for sharing this with us. I really appreciate you going to the effort concerning the exchanges, characterizations and general wrap-up. I especially liked how the gang made the realization concerning the changes in the fruit bats' migration route as well as Fluttershy (after she was back to normal) coming up with the repellent to protect Applejack's trees without hurting the bats.
VERY much looking forward to the remaining Vignettes.
This is much better than the original. It both solves the problem of the "bad guy"* winning, and wraps up the loose end of why exactly Fluttershy transformed. I approve. If I absolutely had to give criticism (and this is more nit-picking than anything else), it would be that it didn't really elaborate on why surrendering part of the orchard to them wouldn't work. In a vacuum, it should be obvious to anyone who puts five seconds of thought to it (a simple wooden barrier that both has holes in it and doesn't even reach the bottom of the canopy has no hope of stopping something that flies, and the show explicitly shows that they can't be reasoned with besides), but the show tries to present it as the proper solution, and at least part of the fandom concurs, so a refutation of that idea might have been nice. But again, that's a nit-pick. As I said, it's far better than canon as is.
*You can't really call the bats evil since they aren't sapient, but they are a destructive force that can't be reasoned with
Very nicely done, and quite an appropriate Vignette for the holiday as well
11033687
When I considered the episode, I thought about what they established therein about the last time that the vampire fruit bats paid the farm a visit. The fact that it had been some decades, perhaps the better part of two centuries, suggests that the bats had a very long migration route, and that something attracted them there. The zap apples seemed the most likely possibility. As for the repellent, well, Fluttershy would have enough knowledge of animal behavior to know what would attract something and what would discourage it as well...and would you go anywhere that a manticore decided to take a piss?
Fair chance that we'll be seeing another Vignette before the end of this year. The rest will be coming in whatever months don't see the release of regular Quiververse installments, so I'll likely have the rest of them out by the end of 2023.
11033787
Admittedly, I hadn't considered bringing up that point. Still, you're right - a simple wooden fence isn't going to dissuade a creature that can fly. Hence, the repellent.
11034169
I do try to time these things properly. Glad that it was enjoyed.
This was pure genius
11110439
I do my best.