Ch.24: Family Reunion
A Hairy Problem Chapter 24: Family Reunion
“Applejack!”
“Applejack!”
“APPLEJACK!”
The orange pony cracked her eyes open. As far as she could tell, for some reason she had passed out shortly after she’d killed Sable Loam.
“Applejack, are you alright?!” sounded out a voice. It was vaguely familiar, but Applejack was still pretty dizzy in the head so she couldn’t place it.
“Unnhh…hol…hold on…” she muttered, slowly rising off the ground. She felt several sets of hooves grab on to her, assisting her back on her own set, letting her know that she was back in her regular form, if not totally back in mental capacity. Blinking a few times, Applejack could finally start seeing her surroundings. Her friends and family were surrounding her, concerned looks on their faces, while Royal Guardsponies were all over the place. Just within her limited field of vision, Applejack could also see a heavily injured Iron Will sitting down and receiving medical treatment from a Guard medic.
“Well, did it work?” impatiently asked Rainbow Dash.
“Did..did what work?”
“Killing Sable Loam! Are you back to normal? I mean, you were glowing after you passed out and you turned from your wolf featured form to your regular pony body, then stopped glowing.”
“Ah…Ah don’t know, really…was that supposed to make me fully a pony again?”
“Yes, at least that’s what the book said,” Twilight mentioned.
“What book?” asked a voice Applejack was surprised to hear. Looking at the direction of the voice, it was in fact Princess Celestia. Both she and Princess Luna were here, fully dressed in battle armor for some reason, but Applejack hadn’t noticed.
In response, Twilight pulled out the copy of Magical and Maniacal Monsters of Malicious Mayhem and telepathically handed it over to her mentor. The magic aura around the book changed from purple to yellow as Celestia examined the book closely, a smile coming to her face.
“I guess in the end he did get his revenge on his former leader,” mused Celestia.
“Who got revenge, sister?” asked Luna.
With her hoof, Celestia pointed out to Luna that the author of the book was one Bronze Shield.
“Bronze Shield? Isn’t he that one pony with the cutie mark mange?”
“The same.”
“Um, Princesses?” sheepishly asked Twilight, “Who is Bronze Shield?”
“Bronze Shield was Sable Loam’s right hand pony back when Sable led his centurion away from the guard and to Sombra’s Empire. He turned on Sable after becoming disillusioned with him and abandoned the werewolves shortly before Luna and I made our move to free the empire. He was the first of the few surviving werewolves of the time to both re-pledge his allegiance to the twin thrones of Equestria and to tell us of the monstrosities Sable had turned himself and his men into. I’d say if there was any writing to be trusted about werewolves, it would be written by him.”
“Wait…cutie mark mange?” asked Applejack, before turning to look at her flank. She was overjoyed to see her triplet of apples, which had faded to almost being nonexistent out of her lycanthropy, had now returned to their full color luster, as bright as the day they had appeared so long ago. “Mah cutie mark, it’s back!”
“That means you’re back to normal, right?” Apple Bloom wondered.
“Only one way to find out” said Applejack, who began to focus on turning into her wolf form. Before the fight with Sable, she’d somewhat worryingly been able to figure out how to shift between forms simply by thinking about it. But now, try as hard as she could, she could not make herself turn into her monstrous form. “Ah…Ah think I’m finally free of that curse!”
“This calls for a party!” immediately declared Pinkie Pie, rearing up to stick her forelegs in the sky. But as she looked up, she asked “why is that star so bright?”
This prompted everypony to look up, and before even the princesses or Pinkie could react, they were hit with what was could have been a falling star, encapsulating all the ponies involved with Applejack’s werewolf secret in a blinding light that outdid anything Celestia was capable of.
Celestia came to, standing on her four legs, in a place she could not recall ever having been in before.
“Celly?” asked Luna, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, “Where are we?”
“A plane of existence above that which we normally can’t even attain…there are powers at work here nopony of even our status can ever hope to achieve, but I don’t know why.”
“Well, that’s kind of a bummer, since I was just about to ask that of you, Princess,” Sandalwood drawled. She, Lyra, the Apple Family, and the Mane Six were all gathered in one group along with the princesses in what appeared to be an otherworldly realm. There was no ground to speak of, but a visible horizon separated the slightly green tinted luminescent floor and what seemed to be a sky made of the night, filled with constellations.
“Are…are we dead?” asked Fluttershy.
“I don’t think so,” added Twilight.
“Well, I would hope this isn’t the afterlife,” said Rarity, going into involuntary critic mode, “as nice as the setting is I do kind of wish it wasn’t so…open and…empty.”
“Don’t worry, this isn’t the afterlife, and you’re not dead.” Said another new voice, once that the Princesses seemed to instantly register as familiar. Celestia and Luna looked at each other, then in the presumed direction from where the voice had come from, together uttering the name of their God;
“Mom?”
As if in response, a large figure emerged as if both materializing from nothing and out of a thick fog. She was an alicorn, much like the Princesses, but unlike Celestia and Luna she wore no crown nor royal accessories. Her coat was off-white, her mane and tail a moderately dark shade of maroon, her eyes a pure blue, and her cutie mark, oddly enough, was an ink well with a feather pen. The regular ponies were stunned at the existence of another alicorn, as counting Nightmare Moon as a separate entity there had been only four true alicorns within the past thousand years, with the youngest being Princess Cadence.
“Princess…” Twilight whispered to her mentor, “you and Luna just asked if this was your mother. If she is, then doesn’t that make her…”
“Yes, my faithful student. This is our mother: Queen Faust.”
Upon hearing their ruler say this new alicorn was of a royal rank higher than even she, they all immediately bowed. Faust just laughed. “Oh, Celly, I haven’t been queen for centuries, do you and Luna still insist on being mere Princesses for the rest of your lives?”
“To be fair, Mom,” Luna commented, “at the time we had to assume the throne after your passing, we were worried immediately assuming the title of queen would make the populace think we were evil.” Luna then looked away as she said “My…incident…with Nightmare Moon a few decades later certainly didn’t help matters.”
Faust merely smiled as she walked up to her youngest daughter, nuzzling her. “Oh, Luna…even in the afterlife I feared the Nightmare had forever changed you, you have no idea how happy I was when you were restored.”
Faust then turned to the Mane Six, saying “And I can not thank you six enough for saving my daughter from herself with the Elements.”
“Uh, pardon me for askin’, but…” Applejack began, taking off her hat and holding it on her chest, “didn’t Princess Luna just say you, um, died almost a thousand years ago?”
“I didn’t ‘die’ as in my heart stopped beating and I fell to the floor instantly, but it was my time to move on from the plane of physical existence into a higher one.”
“Why?” asked Twilight.
“It’s…complicated, to put it simply. Just understand that even as immortals we are allotted a limited amount of time in the physical realm and then we must move on. Though I am not in truth dead, my time in the material world is over and for all intents and purposes I am functionally gone from the world."
“Then, er, could you explain just what is goin’ on and if all of us are actually dead or not?” continued Applejack.
"Think of it...as a vacation," Faust said, the corners of her mouth rising slightly in a smile, and without a doubt those present suddenly learned where the royal sisters' sense of humor came from. “But how rude of me; I didn’t tell you what’s going on.”
Faust backed up a bit and cleared her throat, “This isn’t the true afterlife, but a place akin to the concept of ‘limbo’. A waiting room for the afterlife, if you will. However, while I am in a sense dead on the physical plane, none of you are, so our spirits are free to commune in this plane as long as it is allowed by the higher powers.
“You mean there are beings of even greater power than you, your highness?” asked a bewildered Twilight Sparkle. While she was the only one who voiced it, it was evident enough on all of the ponies that they had been thinking along similar lines.
“Of course, but they’re rather stern with how they allow lesser creatures to access other planes of existence and have only allowed this instance to happen because of the circumstances at hand.”
“Circumstances? Like what?” inquired Apple Bloom.
“Why, isn’t it obvious, young one? It is your sister becoming free of the lycanthropy curse cast upon her by Sable Loam.”
“Then why are you here, mother?” asked a confused Celestia.
“Because I’ve been wanting to talk with you and Luna ever since she was restored, as you both have long since come of age and I am so proud of you, but the powers that be didn’t see that as reason enough for such a meeting to happen.”
“Then why does mah gettin’ cured of mah hairy problem have somethin’ to do with that?” asked Applejack.
“Because my true purpose here is that I am the escort for two special ponies who want to talk to all of you, now that the curse on Applejack has been lifted.”
Big Mac almost immediately figured it out. “You…you don’t mean…”
The eldest alicorn nodded. “Being a psychopomp has its privileges,” she said with a soft smile.
Two more shapes emerged from the fog of nothingness towards the assembled ponies. However, they were regular size ponies, both of them Earth, and were clearly a married couple. The stallion was as large as Big Mac, with dark green fur and a mane/tail coloration of light brown, while the mare had a periwinkle coat with a two color mane and tail of purple and white. But it was the cutie marks that revealed their identities to the majority of the ponies who had never seen them before. The stallion had three seeds, while the mare had a single cornflower on her flank.
“Oh mah stars…” said Granny. “Appleseed, is it…is it really you?”
“Yes, mom, it’s me,” Appleseed answered, a tear coming to his eye.
“And is that you, mom?” added Big Mac, still trying to comprehend the sight of his mother in front of him.
“I would hope you would still remember me, even after all this time,” Cornflower said with a smile, before looking at her daughters. “My, how you two have grown!”
Applejack could say nothing, but Apple Bloom slowly moved forward. She could not remember having ever seen these new ponies before, but deep down she knew that they were the parents she’d never known.
“Wait, are... are y'all mah…Mom? Dad?” the yellow filly asked. Upon the affirmative nods from Appleseed and Cornflower, Apple Bloom launched into a dash and tackled into her parents, trying to hug them both at once. Big, fat tears came from her eyes as a missing part of her life was finally given back to her; the memory of what her parents even looked like, and more importantly what they were like as individuals. The Apple parents, in turn, embraced their youngest daughter, and the rest of the Apples moved in to make it all one giant family hug. For the first time in over a decade, the Apples were once again a family reunited.
“Let us give them some privacy” Faust suggested, smiling at the ill-fated couple finally seeing their children grown up. Her horn glowed a bright blue, and in a flash the three alicorns were whisked away to another location within the plane to hold their own family reunion.
“Look, Bloomie dear, I know you want you cutie mark, but you can’t force it. As the youngest in a family who has lived for generations on letting nature run its course, you should understand that.” Said Cornflower to her youngest daughter.
“Aw, come on, surely you must know some kind of supernatural tricks or somethin’ that Ah could use, maybe even tellin’ me what mah special talent actually is ‘cause y’all have seen the future?” pleaded Apple Bloom.
Appleseed laughed, “Just ‘cause we’re no longer among the livin’ doesn’t mean we’re now oracles or anythin’ Bloomie. Plus, anythin’ we can do now wouldn’t apply to you, since you’re still alive, an’ we want to see you continue to grow up.”
“Awwww…” whined Apple Bloom, “although now at least Ah can tell other ponies that even mah parents tell me and mah friends we gotta stop tryin’ to earn our marks that way.”
The six members of the Apple Family laughed, generating an aura of good feelings that continued to help provide much needed closure for those still living. Off to the side, the Mane Six, Lyra, and Sandalwood had formed their own group for discussion, giving the Apples the space they needed.
Appleseed, however, decided it had been long enough. “Hey, y’all, can you come over here? Ah guess it’s time we told everypony our side of this whole werewolf story.”
“But, we already know about what happened to you ten years ago, from various sources,” Lyra mentioned. Regardless, the other ponies gathered around with the living Apples.
“We know, but there is some information that you can’t possibly have learned from the world of the livin’,” pointed out Appleseed, who proceeded to nod to his wife.
Cornflower in turn steeled herself, taking in a deep breath, before she began to evaluate what the gathered ponies already knew. “Okay, so how much about werewolves do you all know?”
“Well…” started Twilight, “From what we have learned, Sombra was the one who originally created the werewolf curse about a thousand years ago, to grant the wishes of Sable Loam and his centurion to be more like wolves.”
“But more importantly, lycanthropy can be spread when a non-cursed pony’s blood comes into contact with the fluids of a werewolf, usually the saliva with a bloody bite to the neck if most cases are like what happened to Applejack,” added Sandalwood, causing Applejack to cringe at the mention of how she contracted lycanthropy.
“There was also reportedly two ways lycanthropy could end for the victim. Normally, the victim would succumb to the curse and irreversibly turn into a full wolf. In the extremely rare case that the victim was of a bloodline with a specific blood quanta, and bitten by a werewolf with the same effects as Sable, the end result would instead be no degradation into a wolf and they would become immortal.”
“Ah don’t know whether or not Ah was gonna end up a full wolf or not” said applejack, “Ah’m just glad we’ll never have to ever get to finding that out!”
“Actually, honey,” interjected Cornflower, “we know the answer, but we’ll get to that in a minute. First; what does the name Fair Vista mean to you all?”
“Fair who?” asked Pinkie, “I don’t know anypony by that name, and I know everypony’s names in Ponyville!”
“Fair Vista,” Applejack repeated. “Sable went on about her right before Ah fought him. Somethin’ about how ah was supposed to replace her as his mate or somethin’. Makes me wonder how far gone that mare had to have been to allow him to be that close to her, unless she was brainwashed into it.”
“Fair Vista was a pony who only lived for the moment,” Appleseed stated. “She willingly chose at the drop of a hat to not only abandon her established life in Baltimare, leaving behind a lovin’ husband and her own daughter, but also to be turned into a werewolf all to live life as one big adventure.”
“Pardon me asking, but how do you know all this?” asked Rarity, ”I mean, no offense, but you’re…well, dead. Plus, you don’t seem to have any history with that pony.”
“Queen Faust told us,” said Appleseed, “or rather, she showed us with her magic, relatively around the time we did eventually die. She felt that we needed to know the truth behind our deaths, maybe to assure us that it wasn’t our fault that we ended up abandonin’ our children in the hooves of mah mother, the same way Fair Vista abandoned her child to only be raised by her father.”
“But the irony of it all,” added Cornflower, “is that Fair Vista was my ancestor. Her daughter would grow up and continue her bloodline for several generations, long enough that Fair Vista was not even a memory by the time I moved to Ponyville and married your father. But for over 240 years she remained alive and by Sable’s side. Her final, real act, was attacking us and turning us into werewolves.”
“Hold on,” said Twilight, “that means Fair Vista’s bloodline had the necessary blood quanta to be immortal. So if you’re a descendant of her, then you would have been immortal, and so all of your children would be as well.”
“Thankfully, only Applejack fell victim to lycanthropy, and she had been cured by ending the very monster who had caused us so much strife.”
“The same could not be said for me, however,” said Appleseed. “While Cornflower here would have been able to live on, Ah don’t have...whatever that thing you said was the thing allowin’ for that, and Ah was gonna become a wolf. By the time Sable sounded that howl that winter’s night, it was hard enough for me to just say full sentences.”
“That night…” continued Cornflower, “Sable had summoned us against our will into that blizzard to try and use us the way Vista had intended; to act as the cornerstone of his new werewolf army. However, he was so overcome with grief upon seeing us that he attacked us on sight. We did our best as werewolves ourselves to retaliate, and while we did some damage to him, he overpowered us and left us to bleed out in the cold weather. All we could think about was how we’d never be able to see our children grow up, but instead be burdened with the task of keeping the farm alive.” She then looked at each of her children in turn, Appleseed drooping a foreleg around her, as tears began to form in her eyes. “Your father and I…the fact you’ve thrived, grown, and that we can see you all at least once more…it makes us so happy.”
Big Mac moved forward and embraced his parents, with the rest of the Apples following suit. It was a tearful moment, the moment of closure that while not evident, was something the living Apples had badly needed for over a decade.
It fell to the emerging form of Queen Faust to task of breaking the bad news.
“Appleseed, Cornflower, I’m sorry, but the time to send the living home is drawing near.” It was clear she, like the Apple parents, wished there had been more time to spend between them and their still living offspring.
Celestia and Luna then appeared out of nowhere to rejoin their subjects not as rulers, but as children who were bidding their parent goodbye.
“We’ll make you proud, mom and dad!” said Applejack, tearfully.
“Oh, Applejack, you silly little pony!” laughed Cornflower, “you all have already made us proud!”
And with that, there was a sudden explosion of light that enveloped all ponies who were present, closing the connection between the planes of existence and separating the dead from the living once more.
“Your majesties, are you alright?!”
Celestia blinked, realizing they had indeed returned to the plane of physical reality. One of the guards, a unicorn by the name of Glamdring, was frantically waving his hoof just in front of her face, apparently trying to get her attention.
“What? What is wrong?” she asked.
The guard seemed confused by his liege’s response. “The blinding flash of light? Didn’t you notice it?”
“What? Oh, yes, that. Tell me, soldier; how long have we been out?”
“Out? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, the flash was just a few seconds ago.”
Huh thought Celestia, it felt like we were in that alternate plane of existence for hours, yet no time seems to have passed here. Amazing.
She was going to say something else to the guard, but the noises of all the other ponies snapping out of what must have looked like a momentary stupor. “Ah…don’t worry about the flash of light, it’s of a matter neither I nor Luna am at liberty to discuss.”
“Understood, your majesty.”
Just then, another guard, one of the pegasus chariot pilots by the name of Foe Hammer, walked up and presented a slightly beat-up satchel to Celestia. “Princess, this was found on the body of the dead pony. As you seemed to express great interest in this individual, it seems appropriate that you should see what he had first hoof.”
Celestia thanked and then dismissed the guard, before proceeding to open the satchel. It was a rather unremarkable satchel, similar to those in use by the national mail service, leaving Celestia to wonder who Sable had stolen this one from. The contents were marginally more interesting; a few preserved pieces of food, an old canteen that still was half full of water, a smaller bag full of bits, but then Celestia found the good stuff.
First was the old piece of brass. Celestia immediately recognized the faded carvings on the piece as being a fragment of Sable’s old guard armor from when he still served the crown a thousand years ago. It had been enchanted with a disguise spell at some point, but it hadn’t seen much use recently. Then next was the locket. This too had a disguise spell on it, but in contrast to the old brass this charm had been used recently. Probably to sneak around Ponyville or other cities undetected.
Finally, she pulled out the old picture, and her eyes went wide open in shock. It was an old picture, probably only a decade or two after the technology had been invented, as she could not make out any colors of the subjects. However, she could instantly recognize Sable Loam as he was not disguised for some reason, and she did a double take upon seeing the other pony in the photo. It was Fair Vista, it had to be, but take away that cutie mark and she looked almost exactly like a slightly older version of…
“Hey, it’s Intellect-I mean, Sable Loam’s bag!” said Twilight, trotting over to her mentor’s side. The rest of the non-guard ponies drifted over as well, herd curiosity taking over. “Who’s in the picture, Princess?”
“You tell me, Twilight,” said Celestia, handing off the photo to her pupil.
Twilight’s eyes dilated as she registered who was in the photo. “No way.”
“Let me see, let me see!” shouted Applejack, wedging her way forward and taking the photograph. “Wha? Is this some kinda joke?” she said upon seeing who Fair Vista looked like.
“AJ, didn’t your mother say Fair Vista was an ancestor of your bloodline?” said Rarity.
“Well, yeah, now that you do mention it. Before things went south for him, Sable told me he was originally planning on converting Twilight that night he attacked simply to get revenge on the Princess, but he changed his mind and went for me so I could be his new mate, only he never said why. Ah guess this here is our answer to that.”
In the photograph, Fair Vista was an almost dead ringer for a slightly older Applejack, freckles and all. The only major difference was a slightly rougher mane and tail style and the cutie mark, but without the colors it was a mistake that could be easily made.
“So Sable really did have the hots for you.” Pointed out Rainbow Dash. “That is really creepy, just so you know.”
Applejack responded with a mock vomiting motion, to which everypony laughed. Taking the moment, Celestia turned and headed over to where Iron Will was sitting.
“So let me get this straight,” said the medic. “You were hunting werewolves because your king says if you bring him the corpse of one he’ll engage you to the princess?”
“Yeah, sounds stupid, right?” replied a despondent Iron Will, “Welcome to Iron Will’s life for the past few months. Chasing a legend simply because his parents nagged him to get married, and look where it’s gotten him.”
“I wouldn’t say it was a fruitless endeavor,” said Celestia, walking up and overhearing the conversation. Taking the hint, the medic bowed and walked off. While Iron Will was still beat up, he’d been mostly patched up and even without exposure to healing magic he’d be fine in a day or two with some new battle scars to impress the ladies with. “After all, you did end up getting the werewolf, right?”
“Kinda, sorta, I guess.” Replied the minotaur, dropping the third person as he was in the presence of foreign royalty. “But it doesn’t count, not in the end since I didn’t actually kill him. Applejack did.”
“But you made it easier for her to land the killing blow, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but in minotaur society it doesn’t matter who does most of the work, just who lands the finishing blow.”
“Then why did you let Applejack take your kill?”
“Because she needed to kill him in order to be cured of her own curse, that’s why. I wasn’t about to let something as trivial as an engagement for me, a minotaur who is already well off and living comfortably, prove to be more important than an innocent pony freeing herself from a curse that made her hate herself. I don’t think I could live with myself if I’d chosen to be selfish in that situation.”
“I consider that a very noble sacrifice.”
“Thank you, your majesty, but that doesn’t mean I can’t mope about having to throw away months of work with nothing to show for it.”
Celestia glanced over at the corpse of Sable Loam, still laying when life had left it. Oddly, unlike every other dead werewolf she’d seen, Sable’s body had not morphed back into its original pony form. Rather, it remained in its hairier, inequine wolf-like form.
“Iron Will, who was here to witness the death of Sable Loam?”
“Um, just me and those ponies over there. Why?”
Celestia smiled. “As Princess, I must be a good politician. And sometimes, politicians need to spin the truth. Luckily for you, I am in your debt for saving one of the Elements of Harmony from a threat even I failed to silence years ago, and I believe I can spin this to be advantageous to both of us due to all the witnesses besides yourself being devoutly loyal to me.”
Iron Will smiled back. “Go on…”
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This chapter was brought to you by the word 'feels'!
That ending made me smile!
Though it's sad to know that it's almost over...
And Fausticorn is always cool! I wonder if you are going to rise to that, oh one with that name.
Keep up the good work!
Is this the end? I can't quite tell. It would be a good ending but easily could keep going or have an epilogue.
Bah. I was expecting her to keep her wolf powers and stuff.
Interesting.
Well done
2930969
Don't worry, there's one more chapter.
2930585
Yep, that's what I was going for with that segment. After everything I put AJ through the least I could do is give the Apples some closure.
This is a sad, yet comforting, moment for the poor Apple family. At least they got to see their parents (children for Granny Smith) one last time. And, we see how Bronze managed to play a role in Sable’s defeat.
C&Cs:
“...end up a full wolf or not” said applejack.
> Capitalize ‘applejack’.
...even without exposure to healing magic...
> Comma after ‘magic’.
I love you for the Halo.
You just cannot live through High School and graduate with your virginity attached with that name. I so want that name,.
Ah! She said it! She said the thing!
A very strange thing happened while reading this chapter.
For some reason, I misread his name as Stable, here. And only here, not any of the other times before. Here's my thought process for the next few seconds: He's not Stable, dummy
He's not stable.
His name's a pun!
I don't know why I'm surprised.
If you tell me this was intentional, you'll make my week. If not, then...congratulations, your subconscious is even cleverer than you realized, I guess?
5155536 5226978 If you're also a fan of the Hobbit, or the Lord of the Rings, you know that Foe Hammer is ALSO the Westron translation the name of Glamdring, Gandalf's sword.
Glamdring