Heart of Loyalty

by PonyAmorous

Chapter 11

Fluttershy pushed her way through the dense overgrowth that attempted to choke off what passed for a path in this section of the Everfree. The sound of crunching vegetation mixed with the continuous creak and rattle of wheels as Applejack followed closely behind her, pulling their cart over the rough terrain. She shook her head and spat out a mouthful of twigs and leaves after a particularly quarrelsome branch whipped back to slap her in the face.

They had been at it for three days now, and still no sign of Twilight. By now their manes and tails were about equal parts hair and vegetation. Fluttershy managed to sneak in a brief moment to fantasize about her next spa day with Rarity before returning to her constant anxiety that only grew stronger as their list of places to check for Twilight grew smaller.

Twice they had passed through the region of the forest that had been damaged by the wildfire. Fluttershy's anxiety had heightened at the stressful memories that had brought up. She recalled the burnt and blood spattered pair of goggles with strands of Twilight's mane stuck in the strap. She still didn't know what that was all about. She didn't know what Twilight's involvement in the fire had been, or if it was even related to anything that was going on now, but remembering those goggles also brought up the memory of what she had seen through that window and the tearing feeling in her heart that had accompanied it. She had found herself walking extra briskly through the area.

Pushing through a final layer of bushes, they emerged into a clearing. On the opposite side of the clearing sat a solid wall of granite, a small path leading up the side to a cozy little cave. A river bent in front of the rock wall like a moat, deep enough to wade in chest high, but slow enough as to not pose any danger of being swept away in the current. Fluttershy stretched her wing and gently flapped her way to the cave entrance to peek inside while Applejack waited at the edge of the treeline. After several moments, Fluttershy flew back giving a disappointed shake of her head.

"No signs that anypony has been here recently. There's just a family of bats, and I think they've been there for a while."

Applejack gave her own disappointed sigh, followed by a quick look around. "Well, I guess this is as good a spot as any to break for lunch. And on the bright side, it looks like we might finally be able to get a bath. I ain't fussy about a little dirt in the coat, but it sure would be nice to get some of these knots out."

Fluttershy nodded in agreement and moved to help unpack what they needed from the cart. Leaving Applejack to finish setting up, she went to gather some of the colorful wildflowers growing by the bank of the river, hoping to add something special to the meal. Applejack had been teaching her a lot about cooking in the past few days, and she had begun to show a real talent with flower petals and the delicate touch required to grill them properly without burning them.

After a satisfying and flavorful lunch, they both found themselves wading into the cool river. Fluttershy gave a quick gasp and bit her lip at the initial shock of cold water lapping at her stomach, but quickly relaxed as her body began to adjust. Pulling in a deeper breath, she closed her eyes and plunged herself under the surface, enjoying the feeling of days of accumulated sweat and grime being pulled out of her coat. Returning to the surface, she stretched out her wings, fluffed out the feathers, and began flicking them in and out of the water. She gave a sigh of relief as she felt the oily residue and bits of forest debris carried away by the water.

She looked over to see how Applejack was enjoying herself, and was caught by surprise when she found herself staring. The farmpony's bright blonde mane, now free of both hat and its characteristic braid, was almost unrecognizable. Now thoroughly soaked, it flowed down her neck into pools of liquid sunshine that spread across the surface of the water. Well, sunshine littered with the odd tangle and a sizable number of leaves and twigs, one of which Applejack was working to dislodge with no small amount of cursing under her breath. Finally pulling it free, she glanced up to see Fluttershy staring.

"What?"

Fluttershy's cheeks quickly reddened "Oh! Um, nothing. It's just...your mane."

"My mane? What about it?"

"It's...big? I mean bigger than I thought. I mean, it looks that way in the water. I mean-"

"Yeah, yeah. I get what you're sayin'. But really, you're one to talk."

Fluttershy looked down to where her own mane was spreading over the water like a rosy pink blanket. She glanced back to see a similar river of pink fanning out behind her from her tail. She gave a soft giggle.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

Fixated by the way the strands of hair shifted in the gentle current, Fluttershy began to swish her tail back and forth. Soon she was
dragging it quickly across the surface to watch the ripples pass through it. No longer paying attention to her surroundings, she whipped it hard in a quarter turn, throwing up a thin sheet of water to splash into Applejack's surprised face.

"Oh my goodness! I'm sorry Applejack. I didn't mean to-" she was cut off by the sudden wave of cold water that engulfed her.

"No problem at all," Applejack responded with a smirk.

Fluttershy said nothing. She stared straight ahead, unmoving except for a slight trembling of her lower lip.

"Fluttershy?" Applejack moved closer, concern etched on her face. "Are you alright? Ah, shoot. I'm sorry if that was too much. I didn't mean to-"

Before Applejack could even register what was happening, two wings flared out, dipped into the water, and sent twin waves crashing into her sides simultaneously. She never even saw a flicker in Fluttershy's pout before she was buried underneath the onslaught. Once she had recovered and wiped the water from her eyes, Applejack could see that the previously trembling lip was now covered by a hoof in an effort to suppress a fit of giggling. Now it was war.

After an exhausting splash fight, both ponies pulled themselves to shore and collapsed in panting heaps. They rolled onto their backs, soaking in the warmth of the sun as they waited for it to dry them. Fluttershy turned her head to the left and saw Applejack looking back at her. Their eyes met, sharing the same unspoken thought.

So what next?

***

"Are you sure about this?"

"Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You'll be fine."

"But it's huge! The one I keep at home in my drawer isn't nearly as big."

"It'll be fine. I'm going to put it in now, okay? Just try to relax."

"Okay. I-ow! OW! It hurts!"

"I know it hurts at first, but it'll start to feel a lot better soon."

"OW! No! You're tearing it! You're tearing it!"

"I am not. Don't be such a baby Applejack."

"Well sorry I don't practice this every other day with Rarity like you do. OW!"

"You mean you and Rainbow Dash never did anything like this?"

"Not like this no. This wasn't really our style. OW! OKAY. STOP! STOP! Let's just do you first and then we can come back to me."

With a roll of her eyes, Fluttershy disentangled the hair brush from Applejack's mane. These tangles were proving a bit more difficult to remove than first thought. She took a seat and ran the brush through her own mane several times before removing her hoof from the strap and passing it over to Applejack. She helped guide the overly cautious orange hooves for a minute, showing them the best way to navigate through the larger tangles before releasing them to handle the more difficult to reach areas by themselves. Feeling the brush strokes grow more confident as Applejack realized she wasn't going to break anything, Fluttershy turned her attention back to preening her wings.

After several minutes, the brush strokes stopped. Applejack turned the brush to her own mane, getting used to the pull required before passing the brush back to Fluttershy. The task was over after several more minutes, this time with only a minimal amount of grumbling as Applejack attempted to mimic Fluttershy's surprisingly effortless stoicism. A second round of brushing to clear out their tails later, and Applejack was retying her ribbons and placing her well worn hat back on her head.

"Okay, time to roll out." Applejack gave a stretch and began to gather up what remained of their cooking gear to pack back into the cart. "What's the next place on the list?"

"We should reach it if we keep following this river downstream. It'll probably take about two hours." Fluttershy gave an anxious flutter of her wings as she looked down at her hooves. "It-It's the last place on the list. If we don't find anything there then...then I don't know."

Looking back up, Fluttershy caught the last flicker of a contemplative frown flashing across Applejack's face. She could also almost swear she saw the glint of something small and metallic disappearing underneath her hat as she slipped the familiar harness back over her shoulders.

"We'll just have to figure it out when we get there then. Come on, let's go."

***

"Okay, so it should be just around this bend and-...what?"

For a moment, Fluttershy was sure that they had become lost. Looking out at the destruction in front of them, she was sure they had somehow wandered back into the the section of the forest burnt by the fire. It took several seconds for her to confirm that they were in fact in the correct location, and that despite several charred trees, the scene as a whole wasn't consistent with a large scale fire.

"What? What is-WHOA NELLY! What happened here?"

"I don't know."

Both ponies gawked at the carnage of smashed trees and rubble littering the area. Whatever had come through here had torn up trees by their roots, snapped them in half, shattered them, burnt them, and done Celestia knew what else. There was a cluster of strange jagged fingers of rock pushed up through the ground, though most of them had been smashed into piles of rubble. The side of a nearby rock face looked as if it had suffered a major landslide recently, and the entire area was peppered with scorch marks. A few spots even seemed to have a glassy sheen to them.

Fluttershy gave an audible gulp before turning to Applejack. "I-I'll search this area for tracks. Y-You investigate that rock slide area. If you find anything that looks like tracks or markings, let me know and try not to disturb them."

Applejack gave a nod of acknowledgement and carefully began to step her way to the large pile of rubble. Fluttershy spread her wings and shifted to a low hover, careful not to contaminate the area with any of her own hoof steps. She carefully scanned over the wreckage, searching for any clue as to what could have possibly caused all this. She called back her findings to Applejack as she searched.

"It looks like most of these trees were ripped straight out, but I don't see prints from anything large like a dragon or a hydra."

"Not much to make out over here either except...yep, looks like a little bit of blood on some of these rocks. Anything you can tell from that?"

Fluttershy quickly flew over to examine the find, but gave a shake of her head after a single look. "Not really. It's at least several days old and most of it seems scorched pretty badly."

"Well, what about this?" Applejack asked as she turned over another rock to reveal a broken, but still quite large dark blue feather.

Fluttershy squinted as she appraised the mysterious find. It seemed almost familiar. "Hmm...well it looks almost like a pegasus feather, except too big. Still much too small to belong to a roc, even a baby one. I can't think of any species of great bird that could do anything like this though." Still confused, she flew back to her own area and resumed her search. "There's some more specks of blood around here, and-wait! Hoofprints!"

"What?! Where?!" Applejack came charging over, hopping across fallen tree trunks in an attempt to avoid contaminating the ground.

"There. At least two distinct sets. They're both highly erratic, like they were jumping around at random. The extra indentation and wind sweep around some of them look like launch marks from a pegasus."

"Is it them?! Rainbow Dash and Twilight? Were they here fighting with whatever did all this?" A noticeable note of panic was creeping into Applejack's voice as her thoughts drifted back to the scattered bits of dried blood.

"I don't know about Twilight, but the pegasus marks look too big to be Rainbow Dash." Something tickled at the back of Fluttershy's mind. Something she was overlooking. "Applejack. That feather. Does something about it seem familiar to you?"

"Well now that I think about it, yeah. Like I've seen it before somewhere. I just can't seem to put my hoof on it though."

"Right. Something about the color?"

"Exactly. That really dark, kinda blackish blue. What did Rarity call it again?"

"Midnight B-OH MY GOODNESS!"

The pair took another look at the devastation around them. The heavy silence was eventually broken by a low whistle from Applejack.

"Well...damn." Applejack opened her mouth to continue, but found she had nothing to follow up with.

Fluttershy didn't respond. She stood in motionless silence as her face grew increasingly pale. Without warning, she bolted forward into a gallop.

"Whoa! Hold up!" Applejack shouted as she ran after her.

It was only a few moments of frenzied galloping until Fluttershy found what she was looking for. She stared ahead at what had once been a cozy, romantic getaway for two, filled with fond memories of watching water lilies drift in crystal clear pools while listening to the gentle crash of a waterfall. Now those pools were cloudy and choked with rubble and debris. The cozy cave for two had been completely blown apart and collapsed, a large black semicircle burnt into the ground around the former entrance. A cold wave of panic began to rise from her stomach. She threw herself at the collapsed entrance, struggling to shift the large rocks out of the way.

"Whoa! Fluttershy! Calm down a second!"

"No! Twilight! What if she's in there?! She could be hurt! Or...!" She couldn't stand to finish the thought, returning to frantically pulling at the rocks.

"Twilight's not in there!"

"What? How do you-?"

"I may not be able to identify as many exotic animal tracks as you, but I can at least follow a set of hoof prints left at a full sprint, especially since you already pointed them out to me. If you weren't so focused on charging over here, you probably would have noticed that those prints were pointed away from here, meaning Twilight must have gotten away from here in one piece in order to run into Luna back there."

Fluttershy paused. "That...that makes sense I supose." She gradually allowed herself to relax and took a deep breath.

"Right. That's assuming they are Twilight's prints of course, though I don't know any other pony that would be squatting in the forest and getting into a scrap with Luna. Anyway, she's not here now. Anything helpful you can spot here?"

Fluttershy gave a quick look around and shook her head. "No. There was definitely fighting here. Some faint pegasi landing marks, some drag marks where ponies were knocked over, but it's all old. This all happened days ago, and it all leads to what we already saw anyway."

"So, what do we know then? Twilight was here. Luna was here. There was fighting and..."

"And that's pretty much it."

"Well I guess that leaves the question of who won. The way I see it, either Luna captured Twilight and either the princesses are keeping it under wraps for now or we just missed the news running around in the woods, or Twilight managed to escape and we're back to square one."

Fluttershy nodded. "That seems about right. Unfortunately, there really doesn't seem to be any way to tell which it is."

"And we still don't know anything about Rainbow Dash." Applejack gave a disappointed frown. "So what now?"

Fluttershy started to pace as she tried to come up with an answer. This was it. This had been her only lead and it had ended without her any closer to finding Twilight. Why did she think she could do this in the first place? What made her think she could so easily succeed where the the guards and the princesses themselves had been struggling? She needed help.

Well, time to go get help then.

"Fluttershy?"

"We go to plan B."

Fluttershy had made it through more than her fair share of difficult situations, from the mundane to the world threatening. She wasn't the strongest of ponies, nor the smartest, bravest, fastest, or anything like that, but it didn't matter because she had friends she could depend on. Talented friends whose strengths she could borrow and make her own to get through even the most impossible of situations. This time was no different. Fluttershy turned and began to walk back to where they left the cart, Applejack falling in behind her with a confused expression.

"Fluttershy? What's plan B? Where are we going?"

"To get help."

"From who?"

"I know a guy."

Author's Note:

So this was going to just be the first section of a MUCH longer chapter, but screw it. It's sizeable enough to stand on its own and Season 5 premiers today, so celebrate with some Flutterjack scenes!

Interesting sidenote, I had pretty much never given a single thought to Flutterjack as a ship before I started writing this story. Never even crossed my mind as a valid ship. Now I seem to be accidentally winning myself over to it.

Comments

[Raistlin]

"Fluttershy? What's plan B? Where are we going?"
"To get help."
"From who?"
"I know a guy."

fimfiction-static.net/images/story_images/72739.png?1356647149

"I understand. You found paradise in Equestria. You had a good trade, you made a good living. The Princess protected you and there were courts of law. So you didn't need a friend like me. Now you come and say "Don Discord, give me justice." But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me "Master of Chaos". You come into my house for a favor."

[Biker_Dash]

"Are you sure about this?"
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You'll be fine."
"But it's huge! The one I keep at home in my drawer isn't nearly as big."
"It'll be fine. I'm going to put it in now, okay? Just try to relax."
"Okay. I-ow! OW! It hurts!"
"I know it hurts at first, but it'll start to feel a lot better soon."
"OW! No! You're tearing it! You're tearing it!"
"I am not. Don't be such a baby Applejack."
"Well sorry I don't practice this every other day with Rarity like you do. OW!"
"You mean you and Rainbow Dash never did anything like this?"
"Not like this no. This wasn't really our style. OW! OKAY. STOP! STOP! Let's just do you first and then we can come back to me."
With a roll of her eyes, Fluttershy disentangled the hair brush from Applejack's mane.

yeah... for some reason, a manebrush was the LAST thing I was thinking

[MustacheMerlin]

Steven Magnet? Some animal? An OC? DISCORD?! Who could it be?

[PonyAmorous]

5822822
Yeah. If I had remembered in time, I would have just posted that bit for April 1st.

[Biker_Dash]

5823737 That would have been perfect!

[Archangel of the Silent]

Ahhhhhh AppleShy!!!!

[Lily Gingertail]

Good chapter.
I kind of hope you go back to the TwiShy but i have no power over this so you do what you do, because i'm actually enjoying it so far.
~Tobben

[Reeve]

I bet the metal thing under AJs hat is the necklace RD gave her in the last story. Also I really don't believe AJ and Fluttershy will end up together, seems to contrived.

[Weehawk]

I'm definitely keeping up with this story, disappointed when I run out of more to read of course lol. Liked the innuendo bit there as it was quite amusing. Not that I was falling for that, but I was curious what was actually going on XD
Originally came to this for this ideal of dark shipping, wasn't expecting all the action.

MOAR story plox

[wlam]

5826613
It'd also be rather cold of her, considering that she only just learned that Rainbow not only didn't break up with her out of her own free will, but that her feelings probably wouldn't have changed at all by the current point in time - if not for her getting brainfucked by Twilight.

[PonyAmorous]

5839873

Actually, they did break up on their own. Twilight only implemented her spell a year after Rainbow Dash and Applejack had broken up.

[wlam]

5841243
Huh. Sorry, guess I misremembered that.

[alevegaliolios]

Well it's been quite some time since a fanfiction hooked me as much as this, what a shame I had to reach the last chapter so quickly
But still, great job on this
Oh and posessive Twilight is still best Twilight

[flynnrenning]

Please finish this story soon! Even if I take exceptional care of myself I only have about 20805 days left on this planet and I'd like to finish reading the entire story some time within that time frame!

[MLPFiMFTW]

I check this every day.

I can't help myself.

[chingis09]

AJ and Fluttershy. Hurm...

[iloveportalz0r]

Returning to the surface, she stretched out her wings, fluffed out the feathers, and began flicking them in and out of the water. She gave a sigh of relief as she felt the oily residue and bits of forest debris carried away by the water.

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5822347 That image link no longer works. Try this one:
cdn-img.fimfiction.net/story/nrvg-1432462193-72739-full