A Pony's Day on Voyager

by Jninja15

6 - Applejack

Applejack gave a firm thump with the side of her fist to the trunk of a tree and apples fell into an aluminum bucket on the ship’s floor. The bucket only filled up halfway as the tree was much smaller than what Applejack was used to back on Sweet Apple Acres. She’s still perfecting her technique for knocking all the apples out of these genetically modified trees.

As she could no longer ‘buck’ the trees like she used to, she and Big Macintosh had to develop a new method for collecting apples efficiently. Given the nature of how the plants were set in the hydroponics bay and the fact that these trees were so small that it would be more like “bucking a bush instead of a tree” it shouldn't have surprised any of her friends when Applejack developed acute claustrophobia shortly after they started farming apples from recovered grafts of Bloomberg II.

“The trees look fully grown, but ain’t nearly as tall,” she had said after having partially recovered from one of her episodes. “The sky is too close and dark grey with bright white stripes instead of blue and open, occasionally dotted with soft white clouds in the distance.”

Applejack had said that the worst of all was the smell, the fact that she could smell steel and titanium while she was farming was enough to make her feel queasy every time she would catch the scent of a crewmember after they had a hard day’s work in engineering.

She and Rainbow got along with B’elanna Torres very well. But, Applejack was unable to even speak to B’elanna when her claustrophobia was at its worst.

Applejack breathed deeply, sighed, and gave the tree another thump, filling up the basket to about three-quarters. She glanced up at the tree and gauged that was all she was going to get out of this one and moved on.

She was just about to go harvest from her seventh tree of the day when she realized she only had six trees now to call an orchard and brought her meager haul to Big Mac for inventory.

Big Mac stood over some steel crates filled with various, alien fruits and vegetables as he looked over a datapad he had in his hands. He wore a black tank top underneath a yellow Starfleet engineering uniform that had its upper half tied around his waist by the sleeves.

Applejack dumped her bucket into a bushel, filling it to the brim, and wiped the sweat from her brow, “Doesn’t look like we got a big haul today, does it?” taking pause at how little sweat there was on her forehead.

Big Mac looked up from his datapad and glanced at the full bushel of apples with two empty ones behind it. “Eenope,” he said simply.

Applejack clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Granny Smith was really looking forward to our first haul of apples aboard this ship.”

“Eeyup.”

“She’s not gonna have much to teach Neelix how ta’ cook a proper pie, ah suppose.”

“Eenope.”

Apples were just about the only things grown on this ship that was remotely familiar to Applejack, and her friends. The promise of apples also had much of the crew very eager, in particular, the ones from Earth as Equestria had an uncanny amount of similarities to Earth in just about everything. Everypony quickly found out why everyone was so eager for apples once they had a look at Neelix’s cooking. Then they tasted it. It wasn’t bad, it was just- pardon the phrase- alien.

Surprising and not surprising- in that order- was that Rarity and Pinkie Pie were the quickest ones to not treat Neelix’s cooking like how a child would treat broccoli or spinach. Neelix is very proud of his “homestyle” cooking, but Granny Smith seemed to have taken offense to that the first time she tried his cooking and wanted to take over as head chef of Voyager. Pinkie proposed a cook-off to settle the matter. Neelix did not hesitate to accept the challenge and neither did Granny, claiming that she could out cook Neelix even without apples.

She could not. Limited to completely alien ingredients that she had no time to become familiar with, and her equally limited knowledge of cooking with anything that wasn’t apples, Granny got shellacked in that competition. Neither Applejack nor Pinkie Pie could stomach what Granny attempted to prepare.

Applejack cringed at the memory of Granny’s first time cooking with alien ingredients. She was just about to close the lid when she heard the door hiss and saw Fluttershy, a cat with a bandaged forepaw in her arms, and B’elanna enter the room. “Hey, Applejack, are those apples ready yet?” She was almost running up to Applejack, eagerly glancing at the trees.

“Just finished harvesting them.” Applejack reached into the barrel and pulled one of the apples out. “I take it you want one?”

B’elanna didn’t have time to respond as the apple was already lobbed into the air. The warrior instincts of her half-Klingon heritage had her snatch the incoming projectile in an instant, while her human half still had her flinch somewhat. “Yes.” she hissed as she stared at the red fruit in her hands with a predatory grin and hungry eyes. She looked back up to Applejack, held up her prey for a moment, and said, “Thank you.” before she immediately took a large bite out of the delicious red fruit.

“Thought you would want first crack at our haul before Neelix started cooking with it. I heard Klingons prefer their meals raw.”

B’elanna half-smirked, half-scowled at Applejack. “You must be thinking of gagh,” she said with half a bite of apple still in her mouth. She swallowed. “No, in that case, it’s mostly preferred live.”

Applejack went wide-eyed. “Live?” Big Mac turned around and raised an eyebrow. Fluttershy paled, then slowly and robotically walked over to a tree and set the cat down before setting herself down at the base of the tree. Fluttershy stared off into space in the direction of the dirt at her feet, looking like she was in deep contemplation on matters of death. The cat just looked at Fluttershy before attempting to climb the tree behind her without a care in the world.

B’elanna glanced between the two siblings before looking at Fluttershy with concern. “I get the feeling if I go any further into detail, I just might disturb... all of you.”

Applejack said nothing as her face gave a tense, nervous smile.

Fluttershy continued to stare at the ground.

The cat mewed angrily after it fell on its back and into the dirt after only climbing two feet up the tree before jumping back up to attempt climbing it with gusto.

“Eeyup.” Big Mac said plainly.

B’elanna chuckled. “Well, um, you guys don’t have to worry, you won’t find any of that on board, and I would not trust Neelix to cook such a thing even if he lived among Klingons for twenty years.” she bit into her apple and started to walk away. “Thanks for the apple, by the way.”

Applejack closed the lid on the barrel of apples, then remembered something. “Oh! B’elanna, are you coming to Pinkie Pie’s party?”

B’elanna turned around and continued walking backward. “The party to celebrate your first haul of apples? Of course I am. Wouldn’t miss a Pinkie Pie party for anything. Gotta love those party cannons.” and B’elanna exited the room.

“Welp.” Applejack said to Big Mac as she picked up the barrel of apples. “I’ll be taking this to Neelix now. Let Granny get a head start on teaching Neelix how to cook an apple pie.”

“Eeyup.”

Applejack stopped as she passed by Fluttershy. “You ok there, sugarcube?”

“They eat it live.” she murmured.

“I’m... sure it’s not as bad as you think, Fluttershy.”

“It sounds like they swallow the poor things whole, or-or bite their heads off as the first thing they do!”

“Now, Fluttershy, let’s not go jumpin’ to conclusions or anythin’.” Applejack offered to calm down her animal-loving friend. “We’ve met with other kinds of people who eat animals, remember the griffons? Heck, some of the animals you cared for are carnivorous too.”

Fluttershy seemed to visibly relax. “Yeah, but, humans seem so similar to us, it’s hard for me to imagine that they are capable of eating animals.”

“Well, to be fair, B’elanna is half-Klingon, and we don’t know how different Klingons are to humans or even us ponies, so I think it’s a little hasty to judge right now, right?”

Fluttershy leaned her head against the tree and sighed, “I suppose you’re right. I’m still... adjusting to the idea of aliens on other planets. I’ll get over it, just like I did with the griffons.”

“Attagirl.” and Applejack left the room, making her way to the mess hall.

Comments

[HiddenEntity]

I'm stickin' around to see what happens to poor Spike.

[FleetlordAvatar]

Loving this so far, can't wait for more.