A Sensation of Falling
"Would it help if I gave us a bit more light?" Twilight asked. Her horn glowed a little, supplementing the single candle Applejack carried.
"Wow," Rainbow Dash said. "It really doesn't. Now I can see even better that we're surrounded by I don't even know how many tons of rock. All just wanting to fall down on us and crush us."
"Nonsense!" Twilight said. "If these tunnels weren't safe, they would probably fall on the earth ponies who use them every day. We're only coming down here once, so we're probably EXTRA safe. Right?" She giggled nervously.
"You're extra safe, y'all," Applejack reassured her friends. "The gravity here is the best cared for, most regular like in all of Equestria."
***
As with so many things, it had started with Rainbow Dash getting overly full of herself.
"Pegasi are the MOST important ponies in all of Equestria!" Rainbow Dash bragged. "Without us, nopony would have any rain or snow. All the plants would die of...thirst. And who would keep natural hurricanes or tornadoes from blowing everypony away? Or keep rainbows from leaking rainbow juice and making a big mess everywhere? Nopony, that's who!" Rainbow Dash nodded smugly.
Twilight snorted. "Don't we need the sun, too? Or the plants would die, and we would get too cold?"
"Well...sure. But alicorns aren't really PONIES. They're more like...horses. And besides, only one of the alicorns raises the sun. So that's like, only one out of four alicorns that are even any good."
Fluttershy, who had a lot of practice counting bunnies, whispered, "Five. Five alicorns, Dashie. Don't forget little Flurry Heart."
"That's right!" Dashie replied. "One out of FIVE. That makes most alicorns even MORE useless."
Twilight said, "I think in a pinch, Luna could raise and lower the sun."
"But does she? NO! Somepony who COULD do that, but never DOES it, is even worse than somepony who CAN'T help out." Rainbow looked very smug about her own logic.
Twilight frowned. "But unicorns can raise and lower the sun, too, if you have enough of them. They're our emergency backup in case there's a problem with Celestia and Luna."
"Hmmph. So they SAY. But I never see them DO it."
Fluttershy said softly, "Those also serve, who only stand and wait. That's what a poem said."
Twilight complained, "Unicorns do SO MANY things. More things than you could even count, Rainbow. We--I mean, THEY're specialists."
Applejack chuckled. "Congratulations on your promotion to alicorn, Twilight. Ah guess you've hardly gotten used to it yourself."
Twilight smiled. "Thank you, Applejack. I guess that's true. But I know ALL ponies are important."
"Ha!" Rainbow Dash said. "Sure, if there weren't any earth ponies to farm, we would have to eat grass and wildflowers and weeds. So I guess earth ponies are KIND of important? But not as important as pegasi."
Twilight didn't even bother to defend the importance of unicorns. She didn't think this argument was important.
Applejack said, "So you think pegasi are important, because without pegasi, no rain would fall on the grass or the flowers."
"Sure! That's just a fact of life."
Looking as smug as somepony who had just caught a rampaging draconequus in a foolproof trap, AJ asked, "So what good is rain, if it doesn't FALL?"
"What? Of COURSE rain falls. That's what rain DOES. If you're lucky enough to HAVE rain."
Applejack shrugged. "For rain to fall, you need gravity. And do you think gravity just happens on its own?"
Rainbow laughed so hard she fell over and rolled around on the ground. "Ouch! I think I just twisted a feather. It's your fault, AJ, for making me laugh so hard."
"Ah said, do you think gravity just HAPPENS?"
Dash looked over at Twilight. "Twilight? Make her stop. You know how gravity works, right?"
Twilight shrugged. "Not really. There was a unicorn who TRIED to figure out how gravity works. But Isaac Newtpone was killed before he ever figured it out. An apple tree fell on him and crushed him."
"Ah'm awful sorry," Applejack said. "But we had t' do it. Protectin' trade secrets and all. If some dumb unicorn started tryin' to interfere in gravity, all kinds of awful things could happen. Ponies need gravity to be lahk the most earthy of earth ponies. Consistent. Reliable. Don't even try t' take a single day off. If gravity changed for even one single minute, it would mess everythin' up. Buildings would float up into the sky, and then fall back down with everythin' a little out of place, and everythin' would collapse."
Twilight remarked, "I honestly never even thought about it. I just thought Newtpone was some kind of harmless loonie."
Applejack shook her head. "If Newtpone had succeeded even a little bit...why, his first experiment coulda destroyed half of Equestria. Gravity ain't somethin' ya want t' mess around with."
Rainbow Dash laughed again. "You sure talk big, Applejack. But can you PROVE it?"
"Ah'm honest. Y'all know that."
"You're honest...but might you be MISTAKEN? Maybe other ponies have LIED to you, and TRICKED you. Maybe earth ponies don't have anything to do with gravity at all."
"Ah can prove it. But you might be sorry ya asked me to."
"Ha! I'll bet you can't prove it."
"Ah'll bet Ah can."
"Now, now," Twilight said. "Let's not get carried away."
"Ah'll prove it to YOU TOO, Twilight. See if Ah don't. Ah swear it..on mah hat! There, now you HAVE to come along."
Twilight resigned herself to cooperating...within reason.
***
"It's not much farther," Applejack promised. "Th' district gravity control center is just around th' next bend."
"How...nice," Fluttershy said as she shivered.
A moment later, the ponies turned a corner and entered a large, open cavern.
"You see?" Applejack said. "Just lahk Ah said. Just lahk it's ALWAYS lahk Ah say."
Rainbow Dash looked around at the dark cavernous space. "I can't SEE some of the rocks all around us. But I know they're there, so it just makes it even worse. Like they're sneaking up on me."
"And on me too," agreed Fluttershy softly.
Applejack waved a forehoof at some large metal tanks. "Those're tanks where the gravity is stored," she said. "Earth ponies stand next to the tanks, or climb on top of them, and think heavy thoughts. The gravity that's already in the tanks sucks the fresh gravity raht in, and that's how more gravity gets inside."
"Hmm," Twilight said. "So how does the gravity get OUT?"
Applejack waved at a grid of pipes. "Check valves slowly release the gravity into the pipelines. Spaced out along the pipelines, release valves drip gravity into the ground. And that's how gravity works. Any questions?"
Rainbow Dash shuddered a little, thinking about how deep underground they were. But she didn't give in. "Can you PROVE it?"
"What?"
"You showed us some metal tanks, and a bunch of pipes and thingmadoodles. But do I know if they really DO anything? Maybe this is just a bunch of trash left over from something else, that somepony buried in a garbage dump. Maybe we're under a garbage dump right now."
Applejack said angrily, "Are you callin' me a liar?"
"I'm not calling you a liar. I'm just saying you didn't prove it, and PROVING IT was what our bet was about."
Fluttershy said, "I don't think Applejack is a liar. So let's just go back up."
Pinkie Pie's head peeked up from behind a huge tank. "HEL-lo!"
Twilight asked, "What are YOU doing here? Not that we wouldn't WANT to invite an unpredictable, playful party pony to a huge industrial site where the smallest mistake could collapse all the buildings in Equestria."
Pinkie said, "My friends were having an argument. I just want to help everypony be happy!" She ducked back behind the tank.
"Great," Twilight remarked. "Anypony else have anything to say?"
From halfway across the cavern, Pinkie squealed, "Over here! I've found something! AJ, what does THIS do?" Her hoof fiddled with a metal handle.
"Don't touch that!" Applejack said. "That's...you could...well, I guess that KIND of makes sense. But please put it back to how it was before."
"Ok!" Pinkie agreed. She fiddled with the handle again. "Oops! That's too far the other way. I'll put it back to how it was originally. There you go, good as new!"
Pinkie Pie ducked her large body behind a small pipe, and was gone.
Pinkie having already mysteriously disappeared, the other ponies of the group agreed to return to the surface.
***
On the surface, outside the tunnel mouth, Rainbow Dash said, "Something seems wrong. I don't know what it is...but something. Maybe the barometric pressure is a little off?"
Twilight shrugged. "I have no idea. I'm not any good at this weather pony stuff. Fluttershy, what do you think?"
"I don't know. I feel afraid, like something might be terribly wrong. But I feel that way all the time."
Twilight said, "I'm sorry."
"Oh, it's ok. I'm used to it."
Rainbow Dash shouted, "I've GOT it! Everypony follow me!"
As Rainbow ran, everypony tried to follow her, or at least tried to.
***
"Well," Twilight said. "It certainly is...foggy, today, in this one spot." She looked at the ground-hugging fog and mist.
A little dragon burst out of the fog. "Twilight! Thank goodness you've come! This fog was so thick, I couldn't find my way out. And that's not even the WORST thing that's happened to me today."
Twilight looked at Spike, noting that his scales seemed to have several new dents. "What's wrong, Spike?"
"I was just on my way to visit Rarity, walking along...thinking about this cool new comic book I was just reading, about a baby reptile who can FLY. Without wings, I mean."
"Uh-huh. What happened next?"
"Suddenly, my legs couldn't reach the ground anymore."
"Huh."
"I shot up into the air, like I was in one of Trixie's cannons. I went up right into the clouds."
"Ohh...KAY. Was that all?"
"I was lost in the clouds...and then I felt myself falling. I mean, the air was moving all around me, and I hit the ground REALLY HARD." Spike looked around. "I guess the clouds fell along with me, which is weird."
"Yep," Applejack remarked. "That'll happen, when somepony fiddles with a valve the way Pinkie Pie did."
"What?" Rainbow Dash said. "You're saying this is the fault of the EARTH PONIES?"
"Ah didn't MEAN to do it. Ah reckon Pinkie either made a mistake, or she figured it would stop somethin' even worse from happening later. You know how she is with her Pinkie Sense. It ain't...exactly a normal Earth pony thing, you know?" Applejack whispered, "Ah reckon Ah don't properly know WHAT kind of pony she is."
Pinkie Pie popped out of the fog, and pointed a hoof upwards. "Look!" she said. An enormous airship plowed through the sky. It sped through the empty space where the clouds had been before they fell to the ground. "There's an airship with the steering all broken and running out of control, right where Tank isn't!"
Shortly after the last lifeboat glider escaped, the entire dirigible exploded dramatically, raining pieces everywhere, some of them on fire. From the opposite direction, in Ponyville, the friends heard shouts and screams.
"I forgot to tell you," Spike said, reaching into the ground-hugging fog. Spike pulled out a tortoise with a propellor strapped to the top of his shell. "When I fell, Tank fell right on top of me. I don't think he was hurt at all." Spike did a gentle bro-hoof with one of Tank's front feet. "Reptile buddies."
"Oh," Rainbow Dash said. "This was my house. THAT'S what was wrong with the sky. My cloud house was missing."
Fluttershy agreed, "I knew it had to be something. Or nothing. But since Dashie thought something was wrong....probably something. And it was."
Rainbow Dash sighed. "I don't even know what to make of all this. I might think if I hadn't argued with Applejack, this never would have happened. But I know Pinkie Pie would do anything to protect my buddy Tank. Smashing my house into little pieces is hardly anything, as long as Tank is ok."
"I'm sorry about your house," Pinkie said. "But I didn't know what else to do. When I got my Pinkie Sense about the out of control airship, we were all deep underground, to far away to reach Tank in time. So I did what I could."
Dashie sighed again. "Maybe the moral of the story should be, even if my house is all smashed up and destroyed, at least my friends did it, so it's kind of ok?"
"That's a great moral!" Twilight agreed.
"So," Rainbow said, "in the name of friendship, whose house should we smash up next?"
Author's Note
Is this a farce, or a parody, or a sequel, or a prequel? Sure!
Three out of four of the above usually have...inspirations? So let me mention
Liquid Truth's "Oxygen Factory"
Admiral Biscuit's "The Soup Must Flow"
Hasbro's "Non-Compete Clause"Any story in which something sad happens, and ponies stand around mostly repeating themselves and each other for at least forty-five minutes.
AuroraDawn single-hoofedly invented an entire subgenre that this story briefly parodies partway through. And while I DO mean the AuroraDawn who you think I mean, I don't necessarily mean the arresting image that you think I mean.
Tank, just because he's 30% more awesome.