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Contraptionology!

by Skywriter

Chapter 15: 15 - Hard Bucking

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* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

www.scrivnarium.net

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Fifteen: Hard Bucking

So there we were, Bell and me thundering furiously across the grassland leading from the Pepper holdings up on the Ridge back down to Sweet Apple Acres, Rainbow Dash fluttering along behind us. It weren't a situation she was real happy with, truth to tell, based on how she was folding her forehooves 'cross her chest. Also based on the constant complaining.

"Come on, A.J.!" protested Dash for about the hundredth time. "What's the point of signing the fastest pegasus in all Equestria if you're just gonna leave her on the bench?"

"For about the hundredth time, Rainbow Dash," I said, "you stick with us slowpokes. In case we need you, hear?"

"This isn't a good use of my awesomeness!" she continued, not paying a whit of attention to me. "I could've been to Sweet Apple Acres and back, like, five times by now!"

"Time a hundred and one," I said, testily. "Let me remind you that y'ain't got the foggiest idea how to use my nuclear still in the first place, and Bell's got all our raw ingredients besides. Ain't no point in y'all getting there afore us, given that." I nodded over at Bell, whose gallop was weighed down by an entire hogshead barrel of the hottest of his family's crop, a state which hardly seemed to slow the big stallion up at all. Bell nodded back at me, his long and sweat-dampened mane flowing freely in the wind of our passage, and I felt my brisket tighten in a positively fillyish way. I swear, the second I get Ponyville safe and sound again, I'm finding me a nice quiet hayloft with that colt where the two of us can, ahem ahem, compare our respective fruits...

"I could at least see if your equipment's in one piece!" said Dash, thankfully ignoring the tiny detour in my head. "At least we'd know!"

"You're sticking with us, Rainbow," I declared. "End of discussion."

Rainbow muttered something that sounded an awful lot like it began with the words "Twilight Sparkle". I practically snarled at her. "Care to run that past me again?"

"I said," said Rainbow Dash, "Twilight Sparkle would think it was a good idea. She knows that a good leader sends ponies out on missions, rather than just grabbing them and sitting on them. She knows that—"

"Well, y'aint dealing with Twilight Sparkle!" I spat, my hooves pounding against dirt. "And I'll thank you kindly to remember that Twilight Sparkle's way of doing things got her dang fool brain extracted from her head, whereas mine remains in my noggin, right where it ought to be."

"Wow," said Dash. "Touch-y. I'm not talking about science-poisoned Convolved Twilight here, A.J. Just regular old Leader Twilight."

"They ain't that different," I said, staring straight ahead, my jaw set in a grim line.

"Um, hello?" said Dash, rolling her eyes. "Book-burning?"

"Rainbow is correct, Señorita," said Bell, gulping air through his reddening nostrils. "Your wizard friend is a victim, not an enemy."

"Well, she ain't the demon trees," I said, "but that ain't the only war we got going on. Once we put Discord away, the fight against her and her kind is gonna continue."

"That is the science liquor talking, Applejack," warned Bell.

"No it ain't!" I shouted. And then, a speck quieter, I added, "It's my Pa."

"'Scuse me?" said Dash.

"Ain't nothin'," I muttered.

We galloped on, quiet then but for the noise of hooves and breath and bodies in motion.

* * *

"See?" said Rainbow Dash, gesturing at the huge darkened mess of my distillation apparatus. "See? You're dead in the water, Applejack!"

"I know, I know!" I grouched past a mouthful of hammer even as I continued to bang away at my capacitor array for, honestly, no dang fool reason whatsoever. Powerless is powerless. If I'd've just kept the thing small, maybe I coulda whipped up a quick solar collector or something, get at least a little juice to this accursed contraption. But no, in the burning thrill of the moment of creation, I had nothing on my mind but bigger and faster, stronger and shinier. I had hung the entire functioning of the nuclear still on the line I had run to the hydroelectric plant at the Ponyville Dam. That line was dead and cold now, and with it, all my machines. Figures.

I huffed a sigh, spat the hammer from my mouth, and wiped the sweat and grime off my brow with one bandaged-up forehoof. "Is it maybe even a little possible that we've got a line-down somewhere on the way there?" I asked. "This could be a simple fix."

"Gee, I don't know," said Dash. "Maybe if we had known in advance it was going to be like this, I could have gone to check on that!"

"There is sense in what Rainbow Dash says," said Bell, "but I think we all know in our hearts the truth of the matter. Your entire town is filled with the same science-sickness that grips you, Applejack. When your ponies' ambitions outran what power they had available, they all drew the same conclusions you did, and turned to the electricity of the dam to fuel their feverish creations."

"In other words..." Dash clopped her hooves together. "Power plant: boom! Any other ideas, cowpony?"

"Nope," I said, darkly, continuing to hammer away, more as an excuse to hit something than for any actual productive reason. "Best I got rattling around up here is somehow turning our entire orchard into Equestria's largest apple battery, but we'd need about a hundred thousand copper pennies and a hundred thousand zinc nails for that. And we don't got neither. So no."

Dash flittered over. "Don't feel bad," she said. "The hot sauce thing was a stupid idea anyway."

"You know something, Rainbow Dash," I said, spitting the hammer out again, "you may be good at a lot of things, but reassuring ponies sure ain't one of 'em."

"Thanks!" said Dash, ignoring the entire second half of my sentence. "I really am good at a lot of things, aren't I?"

"So," I said, full-on refusing to get caught up in Rainbow Dash's own Rainbow Dash Mutual Admiration Society, "what all happened between now and back when you thought my idea was 'awesome'?"

"I learned details!" said Dash. "Okay, check this out: you want me to fly up way high, feed Iggy the Salamander some amazingly-hot hot sauce, and then drop him, in flames, onto the Discord Grove. You're hoping that my altitude'll put me out of range of the distraction effect, right?"

"Yep," I said.

"But I drank that punch, same as you!" she said. "I'm a Convolved pony! I don't need to be close to those lemon trees for them to mess with my head! What if I dose Iggy and then the Grove just plain stops me from dropping him, huh? Kablooey!"

"That's just it, Rainbow," I said. "Via careful observation of the execution of your cardboard-themed science project, I done come to the conclusion that there are certain peculiarities about, well, you, that make you uniquely resistant to the effects of the intelligence-augmenting science poison."

"What exactly are you saying?" said Dash.

"Basically," I said, "I'm using you as my secret weapon here because you're so gol-darn stup—"

Dash blinked at me, looking wide-eyed and blank.

"Stup... endously, uh, radical," I finished.

"Hey yeah!" she said. "You're right! I'm way too radical to get slowed up by a bunch of dumb ol' trees! All right, I'm back on board with your plan, A.J.!"

"Glad we got that straightened out," I said, keeping my voice carefully even. "Unfortunately, it don't do us a lick of good unless we actually have some amazingly-hot hot sauce in the first place."

"I have selected only the very hottest of hot peppers from my family's stores," offered Bell. "We could prepare a salsa in the conventional way."

"Won't do, Bell," I said, shaking my head. "This is unnatural juju. We need unnatural juju of our own to fight it. Our hot sauce can't be just regular old pony-prepared levels of hot."

I raised my chin and narrowed my eyes, then; the shadows of the still shed seemed to darken and gather up around me. "We need hot sauce," I said, "that's so all-fired hot that ponies will weep when we so much as mention its name. We need hot sauce that'll soak into a pony's very bones when they eat of it. We need hot sauce that's so durn hot that if a filly tries some as a yearling, it'll still be coursing through her veins when she's a grown mare and starts thinking about having foals of her own; hot sauce that'll just up and laugh at that silly ol' placental wall and dive straight into her womb so when the time comes for birthing, she won't break water, she'll break Tabasco bucking Sauce! We need hot sauce that'll pass from generation to generation, across the ages, through the blood, traveling through the years like an ancestral curse, a fire that never goes out, a stark reminder of the folly of a sad, silly mare who, one fateful day, made the star-crossed decision to nibble just one tiny bite of the magnificence we are about to birth into the world!" I took a deep breath. "FILLIES!" I practically screamed. "GENTLECOLTS! WE'RE GONNA NEED OURSELVES SOME DANG HOT HOT SAUCE!"

Thunder. Lightning. I reared up and cackled madly, my eyes rimmed all around in white. For one blissful moment, I was the universe and the universe was me.

Bell and Rainbow both stared at me in shock. Bell found his tongue first. "Madre Ciela," he said. "What will you name this abomination?"

"Pepperjack," I said, settling my forehooves back down, everything about me glowing. "Pepperjack Extra Bold. The hot sauce that'll make all Equestria explode... twice."

"So awesome!" squealed Dash. "Anything with an ad that makes thunder and lightning go off has got to be something worth buying! That mini-thunderboomer was you, right?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I was sorta 'in the zone' there for a second."

"Had to be you," said Dash, limping over to the door of the still shed, her leg-brace clomping heavily against the wooden floorboards. "I mean, that didn't come from a natural storm. Just look at it out there!" Dash pushed open the door. "There isn't even a cloud in the—"

"Hi!" shouted a voice at the door, right into Dash's face, knocking her straight back onto her dock.

"Yaaah!" said Dash.

Bell and I watched as a tiny pale-gray thundercloud flitted its way into the still shed, bearing on its back a tiny pale-gray pegasus pony.

"Hey Rainbow Dash!" said Derpy-eyes, craning her neck downward at the fallen Dash, and then waving a hoof at Bell and me. "Hey fellas!"

"Derpy-eyes," I said, still not quite remembering that peggy's actual real name, "what in tarnation are you doing here?"

"Oh!" she said. "The Professor said he didn't need me around any more!" Derpy smiled, sunnily. "He was making really close friends with his new best friend the Mayor up in his little tent, but it was a really funny sort of friend-making where you have to yell and scream a lot. I got a little messed up, because I can't tell the difference between the kind of yelling you do when you're making science and the kind of yelling you do when you're making friends, so I kept hitting him with lightning bolts while he was doing it."

"Uh huh," I said, trying not to think about any of this too hard.

"So he gave me all the rest of his money and told me to go away!" she finished, beaming.

"Likely story," said Dash, grunting a little as she tried to clamber back to her hooves, favoring her bum leg even more now. "You're a spy for the Professor! Admit it!"

"Simmer down, Sally," I said, helping Dash to get her balance. "She ain't no spy." I turned back around to Derpy-eyes. "And I can see from the lack of lemon-light around your head that you ain't one of the Convolved, which makes sense, on account of you being too busy doing the Professor's evil bidding during the hypercube dance to suck down any poison punch."

"Mm hm!" said Derpy-eyes.

"So I gots me a question," I said. "As one of the few sane, relatively normal adults even left in this neck of the woods, how could you let any of this go on? How could you sit there on your cloud, blissfully taking bits from the Professor and bucking bolts for him, without even stopping for one single minute to question whether or not you had thrown completely in with the forces a' darkness?"

Derpy opened her mouth and took a little breath.

"And so help me," I warned her, "if you up and tell me right now that you 'just don't know what went wrong', I swear on all that is holy that I will scream and scream and scream."

Derpy shut her mouth, her cheery expression completely unchanged. She began rummaging around in her saddlebags.

"What," I said. "What are you doing there?"

Derpy emerged with a pair of wooden corks. "Earplugs!" she declared, shoving them in her ears. "Thanks for letting me know you were about to scream, Applejack!"

She took another little breath, all set to continue, but I sighed and waved her off. "Never mind, never mind, I get it," I said. "I guess in the end I can't fault your choice of side all that much, seeing as Discord and the Professor are about to win everything, all for want of one little shot of electrical power to my still. So you may as well take your thundercloud there and head on back to—"

It hit Bell and me and Dash absolutely simultaneously.

"Thundercloud," we said, at once.

"Yes," said Derpy, nodding sagely, looking down at her little cushion. "It is."

"Applejack?" said Rainbow Dash, pointing at my still. "Exactly how much juice would you need to get that crazy contraption of yours up and running?"

"Wouldn't even require the whole contraption, really," I said, frantically running through the numbers in my head using exceptionally fancy mathematics. "Ain't no fermentation going on, which means all we need is that fractionating column. I figure I could kickstart 'er and keep her running through a full distillation cycle if I could just get my capacitors charged up with..."

The last few digits clicked into place. "...one point twenty-one jigawatts!" I exclaimed, thrusting one hoof in the air.

"I think you mean 'gigawatts'," corrected Rainbow Dash.

I rounded on her. "Oh, look who's giving the lecture on science genius terminology today," I said. "It's Miss 'Iodine On My Radiator' herself!"

"Ladies," said Bell, sternly. Then he turned to Dash. "Rainbow Dash, can this be done with the lightning we have?"

Dash eyed Derpy's cloud, then sniffed it and took a little taste of one corner. "Sure, normally," she said, smacking her lips. "This cloud's got most of its bolts bucked out already. Never fear, though! We can always get a fresh new thunderhead!"

"There aren't any!" said Derpy.

"What?" said Dash. "There's gotta be new clouds somewhere. We've got the whole Heartland Airspace to work with!"

Derpy shook her head firmly. "The Mayor built a big Winter Wrap-Up machine next to the Professor's camp for her science project. She's been clearing all the gloomy skies all day!" Derpy fixed Dash with a serious glare, at least as best as were possible given her, uh, specialness. "All the gloomy skies," she said, soberly.

"What about Cloudsdale? She can't have shut down the entire Weather Factory, right?"

"Dangit, Rainbow!" I said. "There ain't no time for you to get all the way up there to Cloudsdale and back! Now y'all did a great job bucking a bolt out of that thing just now when I was ranting and raving about my hot sauce. I just need you or Derpy there to squeeze one more out for me."

"I can't," said Dash, sullenly.

"Please, Rainbow," I said. "Equestria needs us."

Rainbow scowled. "You don't get it!" she said, shaking her bum leg up and down. "I can't. I can't buck worth spit with this brace on!"

"Well, then, it's up to you," I said, turning back to the little grey pegasus. "How about it, Derpy-eyes? You wanna help us save everything?"

"Sure!" she said, bouncing up and down on her cloud. "Everything is where muffins come from!"

"All right, then," I said. "Bell, get them peppers you harvested down to the yard. I need you to make a good fine mash out of them, keeping as many seeds in the mix as possible. You can use one of our wine-pressing vats for the job. That is, if your prissy little teetotaler hooves can stand to touch something that's all about making booze."

"I hope they can stand it," said Bell. "After all, I should very much want to touch you someday."

One point, Bell Pepper. "Wiseacre," I said, with entirely faked grumpiness. "All right, giddyup, Bell. Sweet Apple Acres is at your disposal." Bell hoisted the hogshead up on his back again and set off in the direction of the pressing vats, while I turned my attention back to the peggies. "Meantime, you weatherponies get to bucking and bleed some more lightning out of that cloud. I want to hear some electricity in here, savvy?"

"Got it," said Rainbow Dash. "What are you gonna be up to?"

"I'm goin' off to do what I do best," I said. "Think."

"Pony," said Dash, after the briefest of pauses, "I never thought I'd hear you say those words."

"Yeah," I said, turning towards the door. "Me neither. Today's been a real kick in the head."

I ducked out of the still shed and back into the early-evening sun as Dash and Derpy got to strategizing about their upcoming buck. "Okay," said Dash. "I can't be the primary bucker, but what if I'm on the cloud stabilizing it with my wings?"

"Sounds good!" said Derpy. "You get up here on top, Rainbow Dash!"

"Awright!" said Rainbow. "I'll get my wings going, and you get ready to buck me hard, okay?"

"Okay!" said Derpy, cheerfully. And then their voices were lost to the distance.

* * *

I took a long amble around the Acres in the reddening sun of evening. I had promised Rainbow Dash that I was going off to think, and I was fixin' to keep my word on that, but frankly, there really weren't much to think about. Bell knew his business, the pegasus ponies knew theirs, and my job at this point was basically to throw the big ol' switch when they were all finished. Too much idle brain-time for a mare of my intellect, I decided. I remembered Twilight Sparkle, going crazy waiting on the stars to come out; when that mare had too much time on her hooves, the desperation had driven her to roll out her partial-pony teleport spell early, and we all saw how that ended up.

I could already feel myself heading down those same paths, truth to tell. My Large Hadron Cider had seemed like a perfect success at the time, what with it letting me see the manifestation of Discord over the lemon grove and all, and the warm glow of satisfaction had spared me (for a spell at least) from the worst of the convolvement. Now that the joy was fading a bit, though, the niggling doubts were beginning to show up again, like picnic ants. Sure, the L.H.C. was a truth-beverage. No question of that. But was "truth" really the same as "honesty"?

Not quite, I decided, and the merest suggestion that maybe I hadn't fulfilled the Professor's assignment to the letter, well, it set my brain to bubbling and fizzing again. I tried to reason against it, tried to tell myself that this was the poison talking, not my actual head, but it was no use. The link between apples and honesty remained elusive, and the poison would not, could not, rest until it found the answer. It was driving me downright crazy. Crazy-er.

I grunted in frustration and made a sharp turn over to the old steeplechase course, fixing to burn off some of this insidious brain-devilment with good honest athletics. The place was in a bit of a shambles when I arrived, thanks to Mac's relentless sonic plowing this morning, but there was enough of it left that I was able to work up a good turn of speed. And hey, them craters? Just a few more unscheduled jumps to hurdle, is all. Weren't long before the fizz of the science poison had faded to a dull murmur underneath the noise of wind and breath and my pounding heart. I hadn't ditched it entirely – infected, convolved science-Me kept trying to snag my attention by waving around a bunch of revolutionary jumping-augmentation blueprints in my head – but for the most part, I felt like Applejack again, and dang if it weren't a wonderful feeling, like downing a cup of fine gold liquor on a cold winter night. I tell you something, you don't never appreciate how good it is to be yourself until you ain't been yourself for a time.

When I was finally out of breath and spent, and I'd tortured my injured forehooves enough, I pulled off the track and did a nice slow cooldown along the neighboring barn-line, and it was at that point I stumbled across the glass-fronted case containing all the blue ribbons I'd won over my many years as top rodeo pony of Ponyville, right where I knew it would be. Check that: almost right where I knew it would be. The concussive force of Mac's science project had knocked it clean off the barn wall (nails and all) and the glass was crazed and cracked in spiderweb patterns where it had fallen, but all my ribbons were blessedly intact. I took a moment to admire 'em, and coming down off my athletic high as I was, it felt mighty nice for a moment.

And then, I had another thought, and that thought just killed it for me. I was the blue-ribbon-winning-est pony that Ponyville had ever produced, sure. No Canterlot wizard could ever change that. But the thing about them ribbons in that case?

They were old.

None of them was fresher than a year, and to a racehorse, a year is forever. In a flash, I remembered the creeping sense of dread and desperation that had led to my choice to enter the Equestria Rodeo Championships in Canterlot a while back. I remembered all the brassy declarations I made, my promises to donate the considerable cash purse right back into the town coffers to fix up the big ol' pavilion in the town square (which had, come think, gotten its storm-damage from activity remarkably similar to what was going on up at the still shed right now, same guilty party and all.) I remembered what it was like to be down there in the sawdust of the Canterlot Arena, giving it my all, only to be shown up at the last every single time by some filly five years my junior. It weren't a question of talent. I was the most gifted rodeo pony in Equestria. It's just...

...well, I ain't young like that no more. Don't get me wrong, now, I'd still call myself a spring chicken, or at least a real early summer one. In most pursuits I wouldn't even have reached my prime yet. But the sight of them sleek young colts and fillies from Dodge and Appleoosa just tearing through the barrel-weave with muscles that never burned at the end of the day, with hooves and bones that never ever ached in the morning, well, it was about enough to break a pony's heart.

Rodeo's a young pony's sport. And as I sat there in the bullpen, watching myself get pushed out of the top slots over and over again, I found myself thinking of Twilight Sparkle. Fussy little Twi, sitting snug in her library back in Ponyville devouring book after book, still at the top of her particular game and fixing to stay there for a good long while. Brains don't get tired like bodies do. Not until the dotage hits you, but 'cept in real strange cases that ain't for many, many years. Twilight was just gonna keep on becoming a bigger and bigger deal in that town, my town, long after loyal, dependable Applejack had been put out to pasture with nothing left to her name but a broken-down old nag's body, a hoofful of memories, and a display case of faded old ribbons...

Can you blame a pony for wanting to cut ties? For looking to make a fresh start? For farming herself out to a prosperous-looking cherry orchard somewhere far away from Ponyville and praying never to see any of her friends or family ever again? Sure, it was crazy. But it was also me taking the initiative and saying to Ponyville exactly what it was fixing to say to me in just a few years, which was, "Seeya."

I shook my head and turned away. Pa's ghost, or spirit, or whatever that was, was right. Things were changing too fast, and maybe only he and I could see it. Once we were all free of the science-sickness and Ponyville was safe, it was up to me to save it all over again, save it from this damnable "progress". And to do so, I would have to deal with Twilight Sparkle.

Somehow.

A noise from nearby, a very deliberate, attention-getting hooffall. I knew it was Bell Pepper without looking, and a tiny part of me also knew that he had stepped loud enough for me hear specifically to give me a chance to compose myself before demanding my attention. I know it sounds like a simple thing, but at that moment, I loved him for it.

I turned to him. "Heya, Bell. How's it going with the mash?"

"It is as ready as it is going to be, Señorita Applejack," said Bell, walking gingerly up to me. "I had thought the frogs of my hooves would be immune to the burn by now, but it seems I have done my gathering job almost too well." He nodded back over to the hogshead barrel, which was both less full and more pungent than it'd been before. I could practically see the air wavering above it. "This is the hottest pepper mash I have ever experienced. I will not perhaps be able to touch my eyes ever again."

I grunted my approval. "Good work, hoss," I said. "All right, so we got our base. Now we just gotta feed it into the fractionater so's we can rip us some absolutely pure capsaicin out of it."

"What level of heat concentration are you striving for?"

I ran the numbers in my head again. "Hundred and... fifty three," I said, absolutely certain of my figuring. "And a half," I added.

Bell frowned. "One hundred and fifty three Scoltville is not terribly hot, Señorita. That is maybe a pimento, at best. No offense intended to my nephew of the same name."

"You mistake me, Bell," I said. "I don't care about no fancy organoleptic scale. We're talking raw percentages here."

Bell frowned even more deeply. "A hundred and fifty three and a half..."

"...percent pure capsaicin, yes," I said. "If this was alcohol, it'd be 307 proof."

"That is impossible," Bell stated. "I do not mean to doubt the powers of your science, but we are talking about something that literally cannot exist. By definition, Applejack."

"Yeah, well, I'm stubborn," I said. "Universe tells me I can't do something, I'm gonna ask it for a game of chicken. We'll just see who flinches first, all right?"

Bell nodded. "There is a non-zero chance that you will destroy everything," he said.

"I know!" I said. "Ain't it fun?" I sobered then. "Seriously, Bell, your work is done here. You could easily get to minimum safe distance before I fire up my contraption."

"If you are aiming to destroy absolutely everything," he replied, his lips stiff with determination, "then by your side is as safe as anywhere."

"That's my boy," I said, grinning, "C'mon up to the still shed with me and help me break some natural laws."

"Mother Sky help me," said Bell. "But yes."

"Yee," I said, "haw."

* * *

"Harder!"

Whump.

"Harder!"

Whump.

"HARDER!"

Whump.

"CELESTIA IN CANTERLOT BANISH ME TO TARTARUS," cried Dash, "BUCK! ME! HARDER!!!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" came Derpy's voice, colored with despair. "I can never buck hard enough for you, Rainbow Dash!"

"Hard bucking is the only kind of bucking there is!" said Dash. "At this rate, I'm never gonna be able to get off!"

"Off of the cloud," clarified Derpy.

"Yes, off of this cloud!" said Dash. "I mean, I have to sit here on top of this cloud, holding it steady, until you get a lightning bolt out of it! I want to get off, Derpy. I need to get off! I'm positively aching, here!"

"Your leg?" asked Derpy.

"Yes, of course, my leg!" said Dash. "Having to sit on this cloud has got my brace at a really weird angle! What did you think I was talking about?"

"Just checking!"

"Right!" said Dash, a manic tone in her voice. "So I'm aching, I need to get off, and the only way I'm gonna get what I need is for you to buck me and buck me HARD!"

Standing outside the door of the still shed, Bell and I glanced at one another.

"I am happy," said Bell, "that there is not some kind of double meaning to any of these words."

"You said it, Bell Pepper," I said. "Well, sounds like them fillies in there are having the Wolf's own time bucking out sparks." I spat into the dirt. "Typical pegasuses," I said.

"It is unfair to hold them to our standards," said Bell.

"Nopony'll ever buck like a earth pony," I agreed. "Maybe we can teach 'em a little lesson, though."

I turned hock and gave the shed door a good kickopen, revealing Dash perched up on her cloud with Derpy standing close by, one of her hind legs hanging there in the air. Dash blushed a little at my appearance. "Hey, Applejack!" she said, a bit frantically. "We were just—"

"—Bucking, I know," I said. "Sounds like y'all were having a speck of trouble with it. Maybe Bell and I can help?"

Dash scowled. "You actually think we need help with bucking?" she said. "Derpy and I have been bucking for years!"

"That may be so," I said, "but I ain't seeing no electricity."

Dash held my gaze for a second, but then dropped it. She slipped down off the cloud and sat there all slumped underneath it. "Derpy's not bucking me hard enough," she said, miserably.

"I can never satisfy her," agreed Derpy, hanging her head.

"Silly peggies," I said. "Dash, Derpy, allow me to let you two in on a secret: You don't always have to buck 'er hard."

Dash quirked, looking back up at me. "You don't?"

"Nope," I said. "In fact, sometimes that's not right to do. Every tree's got its own little likes and dislikes, and every bush does as well. Ain't that right, Bell?"

"That is correct, Applejack."

I nodded at Bell and turned back to the peggies. "Now I ain't saying I know exactly how it feels bucking a cloud versus bucking a tree, but some things are the same no matter which way you swing. And if I understand my science correctly, and I do, because I am a dad-gum science genius mare already, both trees and clouds are made up of bunches and bunches of little tiny bits. And sure, sometimes those bits want it good and hard, but sometimes, you need to be gentler with 'em." I squared up my haunches with the little thundercloud. "Now, watch. If I was a cloud-bucker like you two, I would line myself up, and then lift my hind leg nice and easy, like this." I demonstrated. "Then I would haul back just a fraction of an inch, and just give 'er a little tap, like so."

I reached back with Kicks McGee – and yes, I name my hooves, so sit on it – and mimed out a kicking gesture, fully expecting to hit no resistance, and it came as a measure of startlement to me when Kicks touched the soft, puffy chill of raincloud and connected solid. A rumble of thunder echoed around in its gray little depths, and a tiny little gobbet of water trickled out of the bottom of it, landing with a plop on Rainbow Dash's head.

Dash and me looked at one another. "Glory be," I said. "It looks like I still got my voodoo hooves."

"The cloud-walking spell!" cried Rainbow Dash. "You can buck clouds!"

"Well, what do you know?" I guffawed, a flicker of excitement rising in me. "I'm a cloud-bucker, too!" I gave the thundercloud a few more solid kicks, and the little dribble turned into a full-on downpour, dumping itself all over Rainbow Dash and the shed floor beneath her.

Dash laughed right along with me, the rain slicking her mane down over her eyes. "You're making me so wet right now, A.J.!" she exclaimed.

"So get back on top, then! And prepare yourself to get bucked silly!"

"Oo, I like the sound of that!" said Derpy, fluttering over to join us.

I grinned back at her. "Well, how 'bout you get up there too, hon?"

"Can you do that?" said Derpy, zipping up and positioning herself on top of the cloud alongside Rainbow Dash. "Can you buck both of us at once?"

"Filly," I said, "you have got no idea of the scope of my bucking powers."

Bell cleared his throat. The three of us girls looked over at him.

"Should, ah..." Bell scratched at his mane with one hoof. "Is it right for me to be watching this?"

"Why?" asked Dash.

We stood there for a moment, all blinking at one another.

"Never mind," said Bell. "It is hard to put into words."

"Too much talking anyway!" I crowed. "Not enough action! Derpy! Dash! Wings up!"

The peggies complied with my demands, and a windstorm began tearing through my old still shed, kicking up dust and pulling my science notes into tiny storms of paper. There arose a roar and a howl. I was dimly aware of Bell fetching the hogshead from outside and emptying its contents into the distillation tank, but only dimly. I was in another place in my mind: my bucking place.

Time slowed to a crawl. My skin prickled, as though I was somehow able to feel every tiny particle of air that was striking it, millions of times a second. Like I was watching from a great distance, as if I weren't even wearing my own skin, I saw myself trusting my weight to my forehooves and then coiling my powerful haunch- and leg- muscles behind me, my tail lashing about like a thing possessed.

A cloud is just like a tree, I repeated to myself, the words echoing in the vast cavernous space of perfect sublime clarity that was, temporarily, my mind. Millions and millions of little tiny bits. My vision expanded like I was looking at the world through a powerful microscope and for a moment I could see the cloud as it really was: a vast galaxy of spinning, whirling, moving pieces, a thing of space and motion and boundless, unfettered power.

I struck the cloud with a perfect, gentle, powerful, gee-golly wondrous double-barreled two-hoof buck.

Time stopped.

And then, Grower help me, the lightning came. And my world vanished altogether.

When next I knew sense, I was lying next to Rainbow Dash on the dampened still-shed floor. We were breathing hard but perfectly in time with the one another, and for a moment we abided in bliss, hardly even two separate beings any more, so great and terrible was our Harmony.

Derpy flittered over with a hoofful of sweets. "Sucker?" she asked.

I selected a green apple-flavored one and popped it into my mouth, its white stick poking out between my lips and moving slowly up and down while I worked at the candy. Dash took a blue raspberry one and did the same. We lay there for a while in silence.

"That," said Dash, giving her lollipop a long, slow lick, "was a good buck."

"I'll say," said Derpy, settling in next to us.

"Girls!" shouted Bell, from over at the other side of the shed. "Girls! I think we have done it!" Dash and me rolled out from under the cloud, tore past the still-glowing capacitor array which had received the fruits of our bucking, tore past the gloriously fizzing fractionating column, and joined Bell near the spirit safe on the far end of the contraption. Derpy joined us too, hovering eagerly over my right shoulder.

We stood there, the light from our positively righteous-looking creation illuminating all our faces from beneath.

For the second time that day, I was happy that I'd invented that magnetic-field tankard earlier, because I wasn't sure any vessel of true matter could have contained the brain-warping magnificence of Pepperjack Extra Bold. Pepperjack Extra Bold: the world's first truly unnatural hot sauce, the sauce that was so spicy that it actually broke the laws of physics by its very existence. Gone was all the normal red and orange color of the peppers Bell had used as a foundation. The crystalline sludge at the bottom of the tankard was pure white, trending toward ultraviolet, and there was the distinct sense that at least a small portion of the light striking the substance was getting just plain confused in its attempt to reflect off of it and eventually giving up and going home. It smoked, as though it was burning the very air above it and possibly sending some of it off to another dimension entirely.

"Okay," I said. "Nopony eat that."

"We did it!" cried Dash. "We got hot sauce!"

"Yes, but let's hope it ain't too late," I said, crossing back to the door and peering at the darkening sky with a worried look. "We gotta get this stuff down to Ponyville before first starlight, and I don't know if we've got time to get there by hoof."

"Um, hello?" said Dash, hoisting her wings and waving them about. "Flight? You keep forgetting about flying?"

"Yeah," I said, mulling it over. "I guess you could fetch Iggy and bring him back here, but I was hoping to just snag him and cut straight on up to the grove."

"Here's an idea," said Dash. "I could do the whole procedure myself! I'm more than capable of feeding a lizard, A.J."

"No way, no how, sugarcube," I said. "I don't trust anypony but yours truly to supervise this operation. And there just ain't no way I can keep up with you. I cain't fly."

"Wait a second!" said Dash. "Yes you can! Here, check this out!" Dash zipped back over to the now snowy-white thundercloud and kicked it around with her one good leg until it resembled less a cookie and more a breadstick. "Ta-da!" she said, gesturing grandly.

"Ta-da what?" I asked. "You made a cloud-log?"

"No," she said, "I made a cloud-scooter! Get up on top of this thing, cowpony!"

I backed away a step. "You ain't thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing, are you?"

"Yep!" said Rainbow, hoisting her own leg up over the side. Leaning down close to the barrel of the cloud, she arched her back up, and with a quick buzz of her powerful wing-muscles, she zipped both herself and the entire cloud over to me. It stood there, idling, puttering a little with thunder.

"I," I said, "am gonna regret this something fierce." I squared my jaw and threw my leg up over the cloud-log, positioning myself behind Rainbow Dash.

"This is boss," said Dash. "You don't know how many times I've wished you could fly with me sometimes, Applejack."

"I know how many times I wished I could fly," I said, snuggling in behind her, feeling the cold thrumming of the cloud-scooter between my thighs. "Zero. And that includes just this afternoon when I was falling to my death, mind. This ain't natural, Rainbow."

"Says the mare with a half-pint of hundred and fifty-three percent pure hot sauce in her hooves."

"Well, hate to say it, but you got a point there, Rainbow." I turned back to Bell and Derpy. "Bell," I said, "if I had another cloud-walking hex going spare, I'd give you one, but as matters stand you can't even touch this cloud, much less ride on it. So I guess here's where we part ways."

"I understand," he said, all stony-faced. "Please be safe, Applejack."

"I'll try my darnedest," I said. "Derpy-eyes, you're a flyer, but I doubt you can keep up with Dash, even weighed down as she is with a cloud-scooter and a crazy-as-spit earth pony. You head on up with Bell back to the Pepper holdings. If we don't make it – and right now, I'm feeling like there's a very good chance of that – you tell them Peppers everything you know about the Ridge, about the lemon grove, and about the Professor's campsite. Just in case it falls to them to fix this mess. It may not be much information for them to go on, but it's sure as heckfire better than nothing. You copy?"

"Copy what?" asked Derpy-eyes.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Do you understand?"

"Oh!" she said. "Yep! Can do, Applejack!"

"Good," I said, as Rainbow Dash buzzed us over to the door of the still shed, flexing her wings in preparation for takeoff. "Me and Dash are gonna attempt the idiotic by using the impractical to do the impossible, and if that ain't a textbook definition of contraptionology, I don't know what is."

"Good luck," said Bell.

"Celestiaspeed!" said Derpy, waving.

I locked my hooves as best I could around Rainbow's midsection. Her wings shifted into a full-burn flap, causing the air to whine around us.

"Rodeo pony," said Dash, over one shoulder, "you better be ready for a ride."

If I had anything to say in reponse to that, it was lost to the wind.

Dash and me rocketed into the evening sky.

Next Chapter: 16 - Full-On Convolvement Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 32 Minutes
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