Again Celestia’s sun rose from the east. Rainbow Dash got up slowly. Today’s the day. She thought. She was growing increasingly nervous, but she knew she had made up her mind about it. There was no backing out now. She only brushed her teeth and she went outside. She didn’t bother clearing the clouds, that can be done later. She headed towards Sweet Apple Acres, where Applejack would be helping out her family.  But there doesn’t seem to be anyone there when she arrived. She headed in and knocked on the door of the wooden estate. The door was answered by a red pony that she knew by the name of Big Macintosh. “Hi, is Applejack here?” asked Dash.

“Nope. She’s on a delivery” replied Macintosh

“To where?” Big Macintosh pointed towards east and pointed north “She’s going to some place called Lu Guo or something, it’s in this different language. Like her sister, Big Mac also speaks with the thick Southern accent. Just runs in the family I guess. At least everypony can still understand what he’s saying. “Ok, thanks for the info, Big Mac” And she hurried along towards the North road.

Applejack walked down the road. A foreign pony came last week and asked politely for a sample of their apples. They spoke with a strange accent; it’s as if they spoke another language, which they probably did. The kingdom that they live in isn’t even English. But they seem to like the apples and asked for a delivery and paid her in a currency that they called taels. They vary in different colours, gold and silver. Gold ones are obviously the one worth most while the silver ones are worth less. They said they would pay them a hundred silver and 50 gold taels for the delivery of apples. She pulled the cart of apples; she was used to doing this type of heavy lifting as she had done it numerous times before. Only half a kilometre to go. At that moment a pony ran up and pulled out a curved blade. She stared at the blade he was wielding, it had a curved blade. It looked like a katana and a Turkish Kijil combined together, she noted the tattoo of a dark cloud on her legs. She was guessing it’s a robber; the pony put an offensive stance whilst Applejack reached for her rope. She lashed the rope at the pony, but it deflected it with the sword. Another one soon joined his companion in the fight and said something to him in a foreign language “Ni hai zhai deng se mo? Sa le ta!” Applejack didn’t know what it meant, but they were definitely referring to her. They obviously had years of training with those weapons. She thought.

Rainbow Dash hurried along the road, dashing up as fast as she can. I should’ve asked Big Mac how long she has been gone for. She thought to herself. But she hurried on as fast as her wings allowed her to.

One of them lunged at her with the weapon with lightning speed, while the other one came in with an overhead slash with the sword. She managed to dodge both and swung her rope at their wrists in an attempt to disarm them, but they were obviously skilled with their weapon. They took another lunge, they seemed to be taking her easy. She dodged the second stroke. Normally a skilled fighter would immediately take advantage of its weaker opponent and finish it off as quickly as possible. But they seemed to be waiting for her to make her move, maybe they were inexperienced? She was going to find out. Time for the element of surprise.

Rainbow Dash ran through the road and spotted a cart immediately. “Applejack, there you a-” She suddenly noticed two ponies surrounding her, both turned to look at the newcomer. It was then that she noticed the two razor sharp blades they were carrying. By Celestia!

Applejack saw the opportunity to disarm them and swung her rope the third time at his wrist, this time it impacted down hard, and he dropped the blade. Applejack immediately lunged for the blade and picked it up to face her second opponent. “Da de hai man how de” her opponent said with a grin. The first one recovered almost immediately and stepped into an offensive stance. One hoof facing upwards and the other pointing towards her. Now this was completely foreign to the orange mare. She knew how to fight, but she had never seen this stance before in her life. The stance seemed advanced, now the element of surprise was gone; she only had a sword which she doesn’t know how to use.

Dash immediately saw the threat in front of her and lunged for the disarmed one, thinking it would be the easiest to defeat. She threw a punch at his head with her hoof but it turned around and blocked t with ease. It was then followed by a kick to the stomach, which sent her sprawling to the ground. Applejack lunged for the disarmed opponent, but that failed too. The second one came in and blocked the lunge. And followed up with a series of overhead slashes and side slashes, all delivered with lightning speed while Dash struggled with the disarmed one. Applejack managed to dodge all of them, but one eventually cut her ribcage. A small stream of blood ran freely from it, but Applejack had suffered worse than this. But a small wound was all he needed; he lunged towards the orange mare, hoping this stroke would finish her.

The cyan Pegasus was knocked to the ground again for perhaps the fourth time now, she tasted blood in her mouth. But she wasn’t going to let somepony like him kill her with bare hooves. She ascended into the air and dove down, hoping to land on top of her opponent and throw a wave of punches down and then go and assist her friend. The getting on top the opponent worked, but the punches didn’t. The opponent blocked the first punch and got up and had Dash in a painful lock.

Applejack dodged the lunge, missing her by centimetres and she looked across and saw Dash in the lock. “Rainbow!” she lunged towards the mare with her sword, the mare was taken by surprise, in order to dodge it; she had to let Dash go of her lock. He hoped that his companion would block the lunge, but he too was taken by surprise in his opponent’s sudden change of target. He raised his hands to defend himself and trapped the deadly blade with both his hands, but that gave Dash he chance she needed and threw a punch at her opponent’s face, sending him sprawling to the ground. And knocked him cold with a kick to the forehead.

Now it was two to one. But the last one was still experienced with his weapon. “I’ll attack from the left, you take the right” said Dash

“Rainbow, what are you doing?! He’ll hear you!” said Applejack

“So what? He doesn’t understand English” They both looked at him, he doesn’t seem like he understood. The opponent stared at Applejack, he thought that he was the one most likely to attack,, since she was the one that was armed. But he obviously underestimated the two mares, since Dash charged from the left towards the armed opponent. The opponent changed his stance to the left side, exposing his right side, which gave Applejack the opportunity it needed. Making the sword pointed towards his ribcage in her mouth, she lunged at him. Dash stopped mid-way for Applejack to make contact. Applejack’s sword made a slight wound on the mare’s ribcage while Dash kicked her rear hooves at his face, knocking him to the ground. Applejack finished him with a more forceful kick, knocking him out.

“All in a day’s work” said Applejack, as she tied those two opponents up with ropes. She stared at their cutie marks and their tattoos on their legs. The cutie mark is simply a dark cloud and the tattoo is also a picture of a dark cloud, but with two Chinese characters. They didn’t know what it says, but according to the tattoo and the cutie mark, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it says dark cloud. “C’mon now, let’s get these apples delivered” said Applejack

“Yeah, OK, is your wound alright?” replied Dash

“It’s fine, I’ve gone through worse”

“There’s something I wanna tell you, Applejack…”

“Oh? What is it?” Dash looked at Applejack’s eyes, they looked like…Dash pushed that thought aside and focused on what she was going to say “Well…I  just wanted to tell you that I…I mean, you’re cool. Yeah, cool. And also my bestest friend, regardless if that’s a real word or not…”Dash said awkwardly

“Öh? Thanks, Rainbow” Again, Dash was surprised that she accepted that, but she didn’t allow her eyes to give anything away. Just like at the cabin. Dash thought. But she chose to ignore that again and continue on the path towards Lu Guo. “I think we should go ask Twilight about the dark cloud, maybe she’ll know, she knows everything” said Dash

“Good idea, we’ll do that right after this delivery”

A few hours later, the two mares were back in Ponyville and were heading towards Twilight’s house. They knocked on the door, and it was answered by Twilight. “Oh hi there, come in” The two mares came in and explained to Twilight all the events that had occurred in the last three hours. Twilight thought for a moment as she consulted some books. “Oh, by Celestia” Twilight whispered

“What is it?” asked both Dash and Applejack. “Those ponies you defeated today, they were part of a ruthless clan called Dark Cloud. Chinese bandits, very skilled in martial arts, the ones you defeated today were the easy ones, the ones that didn’t have much experience. They have a connection with a larger and deadlier clan called the Long Clan. They’re a ruthless group of assassin’s that will kill anypony that messes around with their other clans. They’re location is in this other place called Wei Guo” said Twilight “So basically, you just got yourselves into huge trouble” Dash and Applejack stared at Twilight, utterly stupefied.

A few metres away, a unicorn with a cutie mark of a red dragon held her phone to her mouth using her magic and spoke in Chinese “They know”