Applejack at the Edge of the World

by MagicS

Karza V

The following morning, Applejack stripped off all her bandages and gauze because even if not all of her wounds were fully healed she didn’t want to go back out to Karza looking like she needed them. Sure Suture wasn’t fond of that but her stubbornness won out in the end. She then had a quick breakfast consisting of one more peach and a glass of water before she felt ready to get on out of Maple Town and confront Karza again. Grabbing her hat she put it on and gave the doctor a last thank you and goodbye—trotting out of his office and heading west to the small town’s exit.

She was being watched. It was easy enough to see. Many stallions, mares and foals of Maple Town watched her as she went back to face Karza. They saw her fading bruises and scratches, saw the hat she proudly wore, the confident way she carried herself. They saw Applejack. Many were worried for her, many confused and surprised by her behavior, but she didn’t break her pace at all as she walked through Maple Town. Melody Jewel was playing her violin in front of one of the many buildings in town, playing a happy and upbeat tune compared to what she was playing when Applejack first came to town. The musician smiled at Applejack as she walked by and Applejack gave her a curt nod in return.

Her mind still on bigger things.

If any of the other ponies she knew were watching her they did so behind their own closed doors and windows this time. There wasn’t a group to say goodbye to her at the town’s wall.

That worked well enough for her.

Applejack strode on out of Maple Town and started making her way back towards the rocky passage where Karza waited for her. This would settle everything.

---

She didn’t keep track of the time while walking or bother to take notice of much anything else. Applejack this time knew exactly what she was getting into and where she was going. There’d be no surprises this time when she confronted Karza.

That was what she had thought at least.

The short trip through the forest ended and Applejack made it back to the rocky passage that Karza called home—or at the very least that he watched over to stop ponies from using. And in the short time since she had been gone he had made some changes.

The entire landscape had been morphed drastically with the road no longer winding through rocks and boulders but instead heading straight west while every large boulder that had helped form the rocky passage was arranged in concentric rings. Stuck halfway into the ground she saw at least three rings that got smaller the further you walked through them, all focusing on one central point in the middle of the former passage. It was outrageous that Karza had the power to manipulate the landscape to such an extent. Applejack realized that it might not have been an empty boast when it came to the threat of destroying Maple Town. Even if not, he clearly had a lot of destructive power along with the will and intent to use it. She had to stop him here.

Soon she made it past the final and smallest ring of boulders and came into the middle of the passage. The ground was flat with nothing but dirt all around, not even a pebble marring it. Applejack stepped into the middle of the ring and stopped, planting her hooves on the ground and flatly staring ahead. She didn’t bother looking around or doing anything else, just letting her mane and tail flutter a bit in the light breeze.

“Well?” She asked to seemingly just the air. “I know you’re there so are you going to come out already and we can finish this?”

The dirt in front of her warped and the crown of Karza’s head with its loose golden mane rose from the ground—along with the rest of his body. He was smirking again, still wearing his silly red cape, and holding himself with as smug and bombastic of an attitude as any pony could purely through body language. Just that alone was enough to annoy Applejack immensely.

When his hooves fully emerged from the ground he glanced around at the rings of boulders before raising an eyebrow at her. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place? I’ve made it more of a standard fighting ground you see.”

“I don’t rightly care one way or the other how you’ve changed it up,” Applejack shrugged.

Karza frowned. “You’re no fun at all. And here I was actually attempting to be magnanimous with you after discovering you had an interesting power of your own—clearly you’re different from the average peasant—but you can’t even humor me?”

“A pony like you, who’s pointlessly hurting others and destroying everything around him, doesn’t deserve humor,” Applejack glared.

“I am the mighty Karza and I can do what I want,” Karza glared right back. “My greatness is obvious even to you, and though you cannot fathom my grand ambitions it is not to say they don’t exist. Unfortunately for you you will not be alive to see them come to fruition. As soon as I discover the secrets of your strange power things will end here. I have shown you more than enough courtesy even as the foolish peasant you still are. Now you will witness my illustrious powers once more—and fall before me!”

“No chance!” Applejack yelled and slammed a hoof into the ground. It wasn’t a targeted tremor this time since Karza already knew what that looked like and could just fly up fast enough to avoid it. Instead she was taking a page out of his book and just used Hoof of the Earth to send a powerful vibration throughout the ground around them, shaking it and causing the dirt to ripple and warp under their hooves.

Karza was thrown off-balance and he stumbled backwards while his eyes went wide before the vibrations knocked him off his hooves and he fell to the ground.

Applejack immediately pressed her chance—attempting to end this fight all at once—and jumped towards him. She had another tremor prepared in her hoof to disable him with the slightest touch.

But before she reached him the dirt beneath him opened up like a mouth and swallowed him up, taking him down below ground to safety. Applejack instead landed on the dirt and sent the tremor into the ground to find exactly where he was and sensed the same strange vibrations and movements as before moving around the ring. Before Karza showed himself again several rocks and boulders shot up out of the dirt and floated around Applejack first. Though she didn’t exactly know how Karza could see what he was doing or where she was right now, he didn’t seem to have a problem with directing his rocks towards her.

They started flying at her at high speed and Applejack was again forced to dodge a swarm of rocks by ducking, diving, jumping, and running around. She was really tired of this and she didn’t exactly fancy getting cut up and bruised by more rocks again. Thankfully there wasn’t such a massive amount of them that she couldn’t avoid them at all and most simply went flying past her head without issue. Since Applejack knew Karza could do much worse she wondered if he was testing her on purpose, he truly seemed curious about Hoof of the Earth and wanted to learn about how Applejack could do what she does. Seemed it wasn’t enough for him to have unique powers that no earth pony should be able to possess, he didn’t want any other ponies doing something he couldn’t. He mistakenly might have thought it revolved completely around the earth itself like his own powers just because of the ways Applejack had been using it.

Well whether it was figuring out her power, beating her, or doing whatever he wanted to do afterwards, Applejack was going to make him work for it.

“Enough of you just hiding under the ground, come out and fight me! You’re not going to see me do anything with just this!” Applejack shouted.

Immediately the floating rocks stopped and after a second more they fell to the ground. Applejack kept lightly sending out tremors to make sure nothing was coming at her from underground that she couldn’t sense coming first—waiting for Karza to make his next move.

She felt something building underground but nothing focused directly at her—and then the ground suddenly tilted up at a slant—knocking Applejack sideways and causing her to roll down it before it tilted back the opposite direction and she started rolling the other way. Applejack grit her teeth as the ground split apart and started pistoning up and down like an uneven checkerboard. Pillars of earth rising and falling at rapid speeds while Applejack jumped and got tossed up between them.

“This is just getting silly,” Applejack frowned and tried to get her hoofing under control, safely jumping from pillar to pillar. Karza still wasn’t showing himself or really attacking directly, he just wanted to see what she could do.

That was when Applejack noticed that the ring of boulders on the outside of this dirt field where the two had confronted each other had all risen up. The much larger boulders had levitated out of the ground and were starting to float through the air above and toward Applejack. He was going to drop them on her just like in the first fight except now she had to deal with the ground going absolutely crazy at the same time. The shadows of the boulders passed over her head for just a moment before they started coming down at her and Applejack had to be even more careful of where she was jumping. She hopped from one pillar onto another that was coming up right as a boulder smashed down onto the one she had left and destroyed part of the “checkerboard”. Several other boulders came down in quick repetition—though never more than one at a time—and Applejack kept jumping around to avoid them while the ground and most of the pillars were pulverized.

He wanted her to do something, to show off her powers, but Applejack wasn’t indulging him just yet. And when Karza realized that he started to drop more than just one boulder at a time.

“Oh great,” Applejack gulped as three came down right around her.

The pillar she was on was shooting her up right towards them too so Applejack jumped from it onto a descending one right as the boulders started to smash into the higher up pillars. Rocks and dirt were sent exploding all over while the boulders crashed down to the ground. As soon as the pillar Applejack was on reached the ground she sent a powerful tremor into it and caused the ground to explode—creating a small crater for herself. When the three boulders smashed into the ground around her she had a small space to stay safe in. Even then a massive quake went through the ground when the heavy boulders landed and the rest of the pillars were destroyed.

For a moment the battlefield had gone back to being still and quiet, Applejack nearly wedged between three heavy boulders. A cloud of dust and dirt hung everywhere thanks to the chaos and Applejack wiped some sweat from her brow.

Right before the three boulders started to push through the dirt and begin to crush her.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Applejack tried to get out from between them but it was already too late—they were too close together and moving through the dirt far too quickly. She pressed her hoof against the closest one as fast as she could and shot a tremor into it. The huge boulder vibrated with immense force and shattered into a million pieces, letting Applejack jump over and through its remains while the two remaining boulders smashed into each other behind her.

She panted heavily on the destroyed ground, rubble from boulders and the pillars of earth all around her. Things had stopped again but Applejack wasn’t letting her guard down.

“I must admit I am still vexed by your powers,” Karza’s voice seemed to come from all around before he once more rose from the ground in front of her—a safe distance away this time. He rubbed his chin as he regarded her. “But the way the boulder trembled and vibrated… is it that you can create earthquakes? Is that some hidden earth pony power that you’ve managed to discover within yourself?”

He’s about half right. Applejack thought. Not that she was going to say anything. And unfortunately she was no closer to figuring out his own strange powers.

Seeing she wasn’t going to say anything, Karza merely shrugged. “Very well, witness more of my power.”

He gestured and spikes shot out of the ground from all around the ring towards Applejack. The earth making them up was as mutable as rubber and the spikes snaked towards her at impossible angles, going over the rubble or twisting around to try and confuse Applejack. She jumped up right as they all converged on her and speared the ground instead, landing on top of them and starting to run towards Karza. But new spikes emerged from the elongated bodies of the previous ones and shot towards Applejack all over again.

However this time she could do something else about it. Since she was running on and connected more directly to the spikes, Applejack sent out a focused tremor throughout them, leading up towards the new ones coming at her. The spears of dirt exploded well before they could reach her and Applejack got the satisfaction of seeing Karza’s surprised face.

Once she reached the end of the spears she jumped off them and continued running at him, thinking he might start flying up to avoid her. But instead he had some other tricks to use on her first. He raised his hoof and a huge wall of earth came up in front of Applejack and started shifting towards her—both trying to block and push her back at the same time.

There was no way she could jump over or around it so Applejack dug her back hooves into the dirt and held her front hooves up towards it right before it smashed into her. Even as strong as she was she couldn’t stop such a massive wall of dirt but all she wanted to do was brace herself against it so she didn’t get thrown down and rolled along the ground by it. Much like the boulders she wasn’t just relying on her innate brute strength to stop this. Applejack took a deep breath and focused for just a second, drawing up another tremor and using it to blast a hole in the wall of earth directly in front of her. The middle part of the wall was blown outwards and Applejack ran through it while the rest slammed into the remaining earth spears.

“Hah! Don’t think you can keep using the same trick!” Karza gestured and the ground beneath Applejack’s hooves turned to mud.

Not wet as mud, but the goopy consistency was the same. The dirt pulled at her hooves and she sunk down into it slightly under her own bodyweight. Applejack grunted and tried to pull herself free but there was no place to go to anyways. Her running had turned into a fight to even keep moving at all without accidentally falling flat on her face.

“Ahahahaha! How miserable, you peasant!” Karza laughed at her predicament. “Now… what would happen if I made the ground even thinner?”

Applejack’s eyes went wide as the dirt suddenly lost any sort of consistency and she sunk into it as if falling into a lake. She shut her mouth to keep the dirt out and flailed her hooves around to try and swim up and back out of it to safety. Suddenly though she felt some of the ground beneath her become hard again and shoot her back to the surface. Applejack went flying out and when she landed the dirt was hard again, she crashed down atop it with a pained grunt and glared in Karza’s direction.

“Laughable. Even with your strange power it seems you cannot actually compare to me. You can’t even remotely do what the mighty Karza can!” He sneered.

“Why don’t you get a little closer and say that?” Applejack challenged.

“Haha—oh no, I’m not falling for that,” Karza laughed. “And I think I’m done with you for good this time. You’ve proven to be nothing more than an annoyance at best. Though it has been somewhat entertaining dealing with you, I have far better things to do.”

A slab of earth came up on each side of Applejack and slammed into her, wedging her in place. The dirt beneath her hooves melted slightly to allow her hooves to fall into them before rehardening and keeping her stuck. And then a shadow appeared over Applejack’s head and she looked up—seeing a huge boulder floating over her. Applejack began to struggle and try to free herself but the earthen holds were too strong.

Karza smirked, standing far off but directly in front of her. He raised his hoof in the air, holding it up towards the boulder as if he was holding it there himself. “Doing something like burying you deep underground or drowning you would be too miserable, even for my tastes, so I’ll end you in a far swifter manner. Goodbye.”

He dropped his hoof and the boulder fell towards Applejack.

“Gotcha,” Applejack smirked and put all the strength in her body into her back legs while firing a tremor out of them and into the ground as well. She kicked off the ground right as it was all blown to pieces, the slabs of earth breaking and falling away, and launched herself at Karza. The energy from the explosive tremor propelling her far faster than she could’ve ever gotten on her own. Behind her the boulder slammed down on nothing and Applejack was still flying right at Karza.

The caped earth pony’s jaw dropped in shock—he seemed to hesitate on whether to go up or down and instead just froze.

Applejack started skidding over the ground and she extended her hoof towards Karza, planning to tap his front left leg to break it. She stopped in front of him and he took a single startled step back while she reached out and tapped his left leg—sending a tremor into his bones.

Instead, his leg exploded.

Applejack now looked in shock as dirt and clay splattered over her face. She could only blink as Karza’s entire left leg had been blown away and cracks, cracks like in a breaking clay pot, were spreading up his body, his neck, and even just barely reaching his face. The front of his body started to fall away like pieces of ceramic and Applejack saw that his insides were empty. He was just a hollow pony made of dirt and clay.

“You’re… you’re… what?” Applejack barely managed to get out, dumbstruck.

Karza’s face was frozen in the same expression he had when she touched him. His body was frozen exactly where it stood. His mouth was frozen shut. And yet he spoke.

His voice somehow came from him as clear as before-

“So you’ve managed to destroy this puppet? I am surprised, but it isn’t important in the end. Karza may be destroyed but I’ve learned everything I needed to with him. It was quite the enlightening experience and now I know that I’m ready to move on. You also have shown me some interesting things, Applejack, so in turn I won’t harm Maple Town. Congratulations, do what you wish, this is only the beginning of the end.”

The rest of Karza then fell apart, falling to the ground into nothing more than a pile of dirt. Even the cape and his mane and tail had just been dirt.

Applejack, for a little while still, could do nothing but stare and gawk in surprise and confusion at it.

“What in the hay is going on out here?” She finally heard herself say. But she had won, sort of? Karza wasn’t a real pony, and she didn’t know who was really speaking to her just now, or what it meant. But at least for the moment things seemed okay. Maple Town wasn’t in danger and there was nothing stopping her from moving on to Elysium’s View.

Applejack took a deep breath and shook her head, getting ready to start walking west. She paused though as she saw something glinting in the pile of dirt. Frowning, Applejack reached down and swiped some of “Karza” away to reveal a small piece of shiny metal. She picked it up in her hoof and tilted her head at it—a tiny smelted heart no larger than a marble. It was warm to the touch but cooling off quickly.

“What’s this?” She wondered, looking back down at Karza’s remains and the metal heart she was now holding. Applejack had no clue, but she figured it was important so she opened up her bag and tossed it inside. There was nothing else she could do right now with it.

Applejack wiped a bit of sweat and dirt from her brow and left the battlefield behind—walking west to Elysium’s View and hopefully the last thing she would have to do out here before returning home.

Comments

[RoboRed]

...Whoa.

There's something much bigger going on here. I wonder how many more puppets/constructs that whatever-that-was has lurking around.

[redmar]

This is concerning since Karza was just a puppet and this was all some sort of test.