Vacation to a Pleasant Country Retreat

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Emotional Expression through Avante-Garde Performance

Daisy eyed her wife closely. On the outside, Carrot Top seemed as calm and collected as ever. Those two words, ‘calm’ and ‘collected’ described Carrot quite well, most of the time. It was a farmpony thing, Daisy thought. Applejack, Big Macintosh, the Pies (other than Pinkie, but Pinkie defied all classification anyway), they were all the very definition of stolid dependability. And yet, there was something about Hyacinth that set the constantly collected mare on edge. The same sort of horror that Daisy felt over a broken flower stalk or rabbit stampede was reserved solely for the eldest Bouquet sister. Also rabbits and moles, but she had become much better about just going and asking Fluttershy for help after the incident with the garden hose and the bathtub of overripe tomatoes.

The point was, Daisy was familiar with how calm her wife usually was, and she could tell when Carrot was faking it. The signs were subtle, but they were there if you knew where to look. Little things, like the sharpened intensity of her gaze, the way she would close doors with a little more force than necessary, or the twitch in her jaw.

“GrrrrrRRRRAAAAGH!” Carrot screamed, dashing a copper kettle against the tile floor.

Well, not all signs were subtle.

Daisy watched her wife pick up a rolling pin and smash it into the pastry dough again and again, hard enough to make the walls shake. She continued to shout incoherently the entire time. The florist calmly picked up her coffee and sipped it lightly, glancing at the newspaper. Another riot in Griffonstone, then. Well, it was about time, too. They’d been rooted in by tradition for far too long. Carrot let out another scream of sheer agonized fury as she slammed one drawer after another over and over again. Daisy took another sip of coffee. Apparently the rebels, led by Rainbow Dash’s old friend from camp, had managed to set the Lord Mayor of Griffonstone to flight.

There were many things of which she was afraid; blight, drought, wild herbivores, to name but a few. But she could never be afraid of her wife, not even in this state. Carrot was safety. Carrot was protection. Carrot was angry, yes, but it was a carefully channeled and redirected anger. It was an anger which would pass in a few moments, and it was anger carefully hidden and construed so that nopony would be hurt by it save Carrot herself.

Already, the shouts were fading into tired grunts, and the swinging blunt instrument was barely even denting the pie crust. Daisy nodded to herself. “Wanna talk about it?”

Carrot sighed. The rolling pin clattered to the floor, making Daisy wince slightly. “Sorry. No, don’t really want to talk about it, actually. Not much more to say. Think that expressed everything pretty well.” She waved a hoof vaguely at the flattened dough. A pony could probably read a newspaper through it.

“Hm. I’ve never been one for interpretive dance,” Daisy said with mock seriousness. “Tell me, was my sister the rolling pin or the pastry in that little skit?”

“Daze. Do not.”

“Which one was me? Ooh, and which one was you? Was that what you were doing with those tongs?”

“I— ew. No. Those tongs were for picking up and squishing your sister in effigy.”

“Oh. I rescind that question, then. She is not sharing a bed with us.”

“Oh Celestia, don’t give me that image,” Carrot groaned. “She’d constantly be fluffing pillows, rearranging blankets, probably making us get up so she can fix up hospital corners.”

“She’s not that bad,” Daisy protested, frowning slightly.

“Okay, maybe not. But I bet she snores.”

“She does snore,” Daisy admitted. “And she pushes ponies out of bed.”

“Is that why Civil always looks so tired?”

“No, he invested in a sleeping bag and earplugs long ago. I think it’s more... what happens when she’s awake.”

Carrot snorted. “Yeah, I can see that,” she agreed. She sighed, long and low. “I’m sorry. She’s your sister. I shouldn’t harp on her all the time she’s here.”

“Seriously?” Daisy asked, eyebrows rising. “No. Go ahead. Celestia knows I’m not going to stop griping.”

“Yeah, but she’s your sister. You’re allowed to gripe about her.”

“She’s your sister-in-law,” Daisy replied.

“...Yeah, but—”

“Shush. We’re all family here, and family gripes about family even though they love each other deep down.” Daisy smiled serenely.

Carrot just stared. “Wow. I knew you guys were a little dysfunctional—”

“Oh, we aren’t,” Daisy said, her grin growing even wider. “Mom died when I was eight, Dad saw a new mare every week even while she was around, and all of us foals more or less had to raise ourselves.”

The orange-maned mare paused, frowning. “How is that an argument against your family being a little dysfunctional?”

“Like I said, we aren’t a little dysfunctional.” Daisy’s smile was too wide, and did not reach her eyes. “We’re extremely dysfunctional.”

---

Rarity blinked. She was quite confident that mere moments ago, she had been in a hilly patch of land, covered in grass and the odd wildflower. Very bucolic. She was quite sure that she had not been standing in a clinical white room with Macintosh and Ditzy. Under the circumstances, there was only one thing to be said. “...Uh?”

Ditzy sighed. “Teleporter,” she said succinctly. “The Doctor calls them ‘T-Mats’, I think.”

Mac lay in a corner, twitching occasionally. Rarity nodded at him. “Is he…”

“Fine,” Ditzy said quickly. “He’s fine. Just a little overexcited after that… y’know.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. Well, he’s a strong stallion, I’m sure he’ll—”

Mac grunted and rose to his hooves. “Eeyup,” he said, nodding at Rarity. “Anypony catch th’ number on that cart?”

Rarity smiled wryly. “Good, recovered already. Just in time to face whatever is going on around here. Which is what, do you suppose? Nothing good, I’m sure…”

Ditzy shrugged. “Dunno. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they want. They haven’t killed us already, which, y’know, is a good sign that they aren’t going to just randomly kill us in the immediate future, either.”

“Well,” Rarity said slowly, “While that is true, I don’t think that the fact that our deaths will be carefully timed and plotted out is terribly much comfort, do you, Mac?”

Macintosh considered this. “Well,” he said slowly, “Ah wouldn’t say it’s doin’ much ta relax me. But at least we can try an’ stop a plan.”

“‘Try’ being the operative word,” Rarity replied drily. “We’re in their— their lair, or prison or whatever. We know nothing about who or what they are, nor what they desire from us. We don’t even know where we are. They have every advantage over us.”

“Not every advantage,” Ditzy said, shaking her head. “There’s one thing that we have that they’ll never be able to take from us.”

The other two mulled this over. “Love?” Mac guessed.

“Style?” Rarity hazarded.

“The deductive method!” Ditzy said triumphantly.

Despite the fact that the room was devoid of life apart from the three ponies, Ditzy could swear she heard crickets chirping. “Deductive method!” she repeated with no less enthusiasm. “First, the obvious; we don’t know what sort of intelligence we’re dealing with.”

“Of course,” Rarity droned. “Genius.”

Mac, however, leaned forward. “Beggin’ yer pardon, but don’t we?” he asked. “They ain’t never tried ta attack us one-on-one. They react ta stimuli, but not much else. Take that with their numbers, Ah reckon we got us a swarm on our hooves.”

Ditzy beamed. “Good point,” she agreed. “We also know that these little guys are mechanical, meaning they must have been manufactured by some other life form. Now, I didn’t get too good a look at any of them, but I think we can all agree that they were way more advanced than anything any agency on Gaea can mass-produce.”

Rarity frowned. “Really? They scarcely seemed any more intelligent than parasprites. Swarm mentality indeed!”

Ditzy shrugged her wings. “Maybe we could build something like that. Maybe. Twilight Sparkle, sure, she could mock up an artificial intelligence like that given time, and she could build a little robot like that, too. But not without magic. Magic to build it, to power it, to keep it stable. Those guys? Magically inert, or else your picking it up and chucking it wouldn’t have interfered with its mobility so much.”

Rarity frowned. “You’ve lost me, darling.”

“Right, okay. Advanced Thaumodynamics 101,” Ditzy began, but Mac cut her off.

“Basically, whatever magic that powered that thing woulda pushed back on yer magic. Woulda kept movin’ even as you were holdin’ it, ‘less ya managed to exert enough force ta overpower th’ runnin’ spell.”

The two mares stared at the laconic workhorse. “Yeah, that,” Ditzy said with a nod.

Rarity nodded thoughtfully. “I see. In keeping with this little exercise, have you considered the design at all? Little spider-crab things, not outwardly offensive to sensibilities; at least, not alone. In groups, that is another story.”

“Not physically large or intimidating,” Ditzy said frowning. “And we saw one squeeze into a mousehole. They’re designed as some sort of infiltration… whatever they are.”

Rarity frowned. “Bright silver? For an infiltration? That’s absurd. Matte colors, muted shades, that would be they way to go. Dark greys and greens, browns. Not black, perhaps, that tends to stand out more than ponies think, but certainly not silver. Camouflage, not flash.”

Mac snorted. “Almost like they want ponies ta see ‘em.”

Ditzy frowned. “An invasion force that wants to be seen?” she muttered. “That’s ridiculo—” She stopped, staring at Rarity. The unicorn had gone very still. “What?”

“My father,” the unicorn began, “is, you may know, an avid fisher. He talks about it… often. Very often. Terribly often. Most of his tales aren't in the least interesting to my mind, but there was one that always stuck with me.”

Mac frowned. “An’ that is…”

Rarity swallowed. “The anglerfish.”

---

The anglerfish, Rarity’s father had told his daughters, was an ugly, misshapen fish that lived at the bottom of the ocean, where it was so dark, not even Celestia’s light could illuminate your hoof in front of your face. Or rather, your fin, since none but the hardiest of sea creatures could ever hope to survive at such a depth. And then, out of complete blindness, light. Welcoming. Comforting. Beckoning.

Rainbow Dash was in that comfortable middle ground between rising and shining, the bleary, muzzy-headed state that every sentient creature experiences when arising from a deep sleep. Cthulhu may well have already awoken, it just can’t be bothered to climb out from under the cozy blanket of millennia-old sand and sediment shot through with geothermic vents and the odd sunken city. Not when it’s just gotten comfortable.

Dash was not thinking about this. She was not thinking about any sort of sea life at all, which is unfortunate. Anglerfish, you know? It probably wouldn’t have helped her much at the time, but it might have lent some context later on. Instead, she was mostly thinking about clouds, and how it would be more efficient to farm them rather than produce them with generators. Utterly impossible, of course, and likely not at all practical, but everyone thinks about weird stuff when they’re waking up.

At any rate, she had just gotten to the part where the Apple family were all pegasi, when a stray ray of light reflected directly into her eye. She growled and rolled to one side. It was still there, in the corner of her vision, flashing her. “Don’ need that,” she growled. “‘F I want flashing, I’ll go sit in the Wonderbolts locker room.”

Instead of obeying her entirely reasonable request, the light flashed with greater intensity. “Ugh,” Dash groaned, sitting up. “What the rut is that thing?”

Looking down with greater focus, Dash could see a brown stallion holding some kind of silvery metal object. “The heck?” she muttered. “Isn’t that the train stallion?”

On reflection, Dash didn’t think she’d ever seen the pony outside of his workplace. Her brow knit. This required investigation. She spread her wings and leapt from the cloud. “Hey, fella! What’s that ya got there?”

The stallion made no response, merely staring at the pegasus. Dash hovered in place. “S’matter, you deaf? I mean, all the trains and stuff, they’re pretty loud, I could see that—” She paused as the brown stallion held up the object that had so disturbed her rest. “Oh. Hey, cool, what is that th—ARGFLFL!”

This last came as the little silver robot leapt out of Time Table’s hooves and onto Dash’s face. The pegasus desperately tried to claw it off, but to no avail. Little scratches were cut into her face as it climbed onto her mane and down the back of her neck. She felt a brief, sharp stab in the base of her skull a4%R8J)&9HB*Q

Curiosity killed the cat, they say. More often, it kills the fish. And the angler swims on…

---

Mac and Ditzy stared at Rarity. “Wow,” Mac said. “An’ yer pa told y’all that when you were how old, now?”

“Seven,” Rarity said brightly. “I think he learned his lesson after I had nightmares for three months. He waited until Sweetie was ten before he told her.”

Ditzy opened her mouth to comment, but she was interrupted by the faint swish of a door sliding open. Five eyes fell upon the hitherto unseen door as it opened out into the hallway. At first glance, nothing was there. Second glance only confirmed this. A careful scrutiny revealed no more. “...huh,” Mac said. “Trap?”

“Probably,” Rarity said, studiously examining the door. “Very interesting design here, too. Made for elegance, I would say.” She trotted over to the door and ran a hoof along the sides. “Astonishingly smooth,” she murmured, “I don’t recognize the material. Some sort of artificially manufactured polymer.”

“Okay,” Ditzy said slowly. “Where do we go from here?”

“If we leave, we’re doin’ what they want us to do,” Mac pointed out.

“But if we stay,” Ditzy reasoned, fluttering her wings anxiously, “there’s no chance of escape.”

Rarity glanced out into the hallway. “None of those little scuttlers as far as I can see. I vote we exit. At the very least, we’ll be able to increase our supply of information.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Ditzy said, pausing at the threshold. She glanced back. “Mac?”

Mac sighed, rolling beautifully clear green eyes toward the ceiling. “Alright,” he said grudgingly. “Reckon we won’t be in no more danger out there than in here.”

“That’s the spirit!” Ditzy beamed as she trotted out into the hall.

Rarity followed close on her tail, but Mac hesitated at the door. “...Are we sure ‘bout this?”

“Yes! Now c’mon already!” Ditzy said, exasperated.

The workhorse took a deep breath, and before he could think better of it, stepped into the hallway. The door to the room immediately slid shut behind them. There was a long, dead silence. The grey pegasus chuckled nervously, desperately trying to flatten down her feathers. “Um. Oops?”

Comments

[Xanderfox]

*Gasp!* brain stealing robocrabs.

[jimerjam]

The other two mulled this over. “Love?” Mac guessed.

“Style?” Rarity hazarded.

“The deductive method!” Ditzy said triumphantly.

the dichotomy of good and evil?

[Prince Leviathan]

Metal Head Crabs.

Fun