Three thousand miles away, two ponies scream as they fall into the canopy of a jungle.

Fluttershy, the one with wings, has to tuck hers in to avoid all the whipping branches and grasping vines in every direction, though she’s not able to pull them in before a sharp crack is heard, and Fluttershy cries out in pain.

The two land, Applejack mere moments before her friend. The battered pegasus lands, whimpering, and the farm mare quickly goes to check on her, wincing at the sight of the dislocated wing. “Ah, that’s tough... alright, Fluttershy, gimme a couple moments, an’ I’ll get some stuff to make a splint...” she says, looking around and realizing this isn’t the Everfree forest or some other small patch of woods she’s familiar with. The trees go so far up their tops are hidden by a high-flying fog, the ground underhoof littered with broken fronds, thick underbrush, and enough moss and fallen branches to take away all semblance of good footing.

Applejack sighs. “Well... shoot. Ah guess I’ll have ta use a... what’s the name fer a fern leaf? Eh, whatever...” she mutters to herself, grabbing a tough-enough looking fern and ripping up the fronds, keeping an eye out. As she pulls the plant up and starts dragging the large, broad-leafed frond to her friend, something moves in the underbrush.

She looks about in fear, then moves closer to Fluttershy, who also looks fearful. The movement in the brush comes from the other side of them, making them whip their heads towards it, only to twitch and look in another direction as a third source of sound moves nearby, and the two press closer together, Applejack wishing she had her rope lasso.

The noises stop, and the ponies are, for the moment, warily optimistic. That changes quickly when, which a screech, a tall, blue-green reptile leaps from the underbrush. A rounded head with two feathered crests atop it, feathers coming from their stubby elbows, and even feathers on their backs and tails, they look almost like cartoon versions of raptors, but the bloody looks in the leader’s eye is far from child friendly.

The crested Yoshi snarls at the two, then grins when they scream in fear, a mean look in its eye as two move stride from the brush and prevent the pony’s escape.

“You two look losst, little morsselss.” the leader hisses, grin revealing far too many sharp teeth for him to be an omnivore or an herbivore. “Maybe you’d like to come back to our village; we’d love ta... have ya for lunch!” the leader cackles as he lunges forward, the bare, clawed feet pushing him forward...

Only for him to dodge at the last second around a spear as a short figure, only knee-high to one of the ponies, drops in front of him. The diminutive figure brandishes the spear, face hidden behind a pale, three-hole mask with four stripes down one side in a series of colors. A deep, royal-purple robe covers the entirety of the shyguy’s body.

While the shyguy doesn’t speak, the yoshi certainly does. “Oh, it’s a snack with a stick!” he snarls, leaping at the shyguy again, only to be batted away by the but of the spear, swung in a wide arc. The leader stands up again, then looks at the other two crested yoshi. “Don’t just stand there! Get them already!” he shouts, spurring the others into sprinting at the shyguy.

WHU-CRACK

The sound of the wooden shaft smashing one yoshi to the ground, followed by the almost-gentle ‘snikt’ of the spear’s tip drawing a line in blood across the other’s cheek, leaving both to scramble back, screeching in pain.

The leader, sensing he’s outmatched, snarls and backs off, but not before promising, “You may’ve won now, but the pack’s coming for you, and we’ll eat all of you!” The crested yoshi snarls one more time, before yelping and ducking under a well-thrown spear, one of several on the shyguy’s back.

The strange clothing of their saviour catches the ponies’ attention first, mainly because their pale, white masks cover everything their simple robe-like clothing and grass skirt doesn’t. Their mask, which shows a constant expression of surprise or curiosity in their perfectly uniform open black eyes and similarly-open o-shaped mouths hide them from any prying eyes. Even the mask’s warpaint is the same across the entire tribe: a pair of red horizontal lines under each eye, with the rainbow of smaller marks below the left eyehole.

The shyguy reaches up a cloth-shrouded hand, offering it to the cowering ponies. Applejack, deciding to be brave, reaches out with a hoof and gently sets it on the shyguy’s hand, and he gives a surprisingly strong tug to help AJ back onto her hooves, befor eoffering the hand to Fluttershy next.

“Ah, buddy, she’s got a hurt wing; she needs’ta get that splinted afore we can get a move on.” she tells him, and he lowers his hand, stepping closer, before looking at the hardwood shaft of his spear. Something flashes from under his robes, and the cut end of the spear falls free. With deft motions, he takes the cut wood and the torn frond and lashes Fluttershy’s injured wing to her side, pausing only for a moment when she whimpers until she tells him to continue. Applejack, for her part, whistles in appreciation of the fast and efficient combat dressing of the wound.

Once the splint is, very effectively, applied, the shyguy takes his spears and, raising them above his head, begin motioning for the ponies to follow them.

The two follow closely, staring in wonder in all directions at the continuous, untouched jungle in every direction, until their guide steps onto a well-concealed mat of woven bamboo and plant-based rope, and the ponies hesitantly step on it, and the shyguy taps the tree with his spear. A moment later, Fluttershy is squealing in terror as the platform zips skyward, stopping just under the canopy, the pegasus clinging to the platform with desperate strength, Applejack sighing as she peels Fluttershy up and turns.

When she sees the shyguy village, though, her jaw practically drops off, as the tiny little figures are, while using primarily wood, thatch, rope, stone, and bamboo, have managed to build what looks like a massive factory, a smith off to one side and the other side producing an endless array of glider wings, more robes, fresh spear hafts, pre-made woven hut walls, and so much more. As well, a trio of shyguys, all bearing spears, have come to attention at the sight of the one leading Applejack and Fluttershy, none of them bearing the multicolored stripes on their largely undecorated masks. Their own robes are a more plain purple in color, and the sweet scent of berries gives away the source of the normally hard-to-find color of dye.

With a bit of hesitation, the ponies and shyguys watch each other, both sides attempting to discern the others’ species. In a fit of confusion, one shyguy breaks off from the trio to approach and begins talking with their supposed leader. The speech consists of chirps and indiscernible vocal noises, though no actual words are formed.

Fluttershy blinks, then responds in a fluent series of similar chirps and whistles, startling every single shyguy in range to hear her.

“Uh, what’d ya just say, Shy?” Applejack asks as the four shyguys int he ‘guard’ step closer, making Applejack nervous.

“Oh, uhm, sorry, I was just saying it’s a bit rude to speak about somepony in another language you think they don’t know.” she says, sounding abashed.

The leading shyguy walks over to Fluttershy and, indicating her wing, makes a questioning motion, before pointing at Applejack. Basically asking general information about who they are. Not that AJ understood a single noise either the creatures or her friend made.

“Oh, uhm,” she pauses for a moment, thinking over her vocabulary of animals signals and terms, before giving a few low chirps, a whistle, and a soft whinny. The leader of the shyguy group nods, then points to AJ again, and Fluttershy whistles twice, makes an odd chittering noise, and a more forceful whinny, and the shyguys nod again.

“Uh, not ta be rude or nothin’ but we kinda did just completely skip lunch...” Applejack states, noting her stomach rumble a bit. She had been working on the farm all morning, and this picnic was going to be her personal reward for a job well done. “Ya don’t suppose they eat, like, nuts or bugs or stuff, do ya?”

The shyguys all look to each other, then all give chittering giggles, hands covering their mouths as the laugh at the awkwardness of the farm pony’s question. The leader says something in the way of some short hoots and a soft click, and then begins moving off, and Fluttershy only hesitates for a moment before following him along, and AJ sighs and follows her.

What follows is a whirlwind of action and movement, the shyguys setting up a feast for the entire village, a small, low-volume bell ringing out to call them all in, and the cacophony dies down as everyone heads for the large feast table, loading it up with a bucket-brigade-style series of lines pulling stockpiled food and supplies out and getting them to the table without a single trip or misplaced motion.

“Is this... for us?” AJ questions, a little surprised.

Fluttershy giggles. “No, no, they’re just setting up lunch and inviting us. We’re going to be guests of- oop!” her last noise is from a group of shyguys beginning to tug her carefully off to the side, both to set up a line to haul in baskets of berries (which are bigger than the ponies) as well as a few small, yellow-green melons; and to get them next to a few shyguys who are clustered around a figure in a tall, imposing mask that stands out as very different from the others - but Fluttershy doesn’t fear it, as she recognizes the mask’s design as almost the same as the one Zecora has to indicate her stash of healing herbs, and is meant to ward off disease and ill fortune.

“This guy smells like ‘Bloom after she comes back from Zecora’s...” Applejack points out, noting the interesting smells of varying degrees of sourness and sweetness emanating from the strangely-masked shyguy.

Fluttershy sits down, and the large-masked guy starts speaking to her in a low, whispery tone, some of the sounds echoing from the mask, others half-swallowed by it. But she’s nodding along, and AJ starts to feel a little left out. Then, she finds herself getting pushed simply by the flow of the crowd until she winds up just near a group of shyguys, who look up curiously. Each of them, she notes with surprise, don’t have the same white masks as the others. They have white paint on them, yes, and with ‘eyebrows’ painted on in red, but the masks themselves are made of scarred, well-worn metal, with lenses over the eyes flipped up, and a filter over the mouth-hole of each of them.

“Uh... I’ll just be... over there.” Applejack says, pointing with an open hoof back to where Fluttershy is, and upon seeing her hoof, the steel-masked shyguys begin chittering wildly, staring at the hoof. “Uh, did I do somethin’?”

One of the shyguys takes a careful look at the hoof and, tapping it curiously and generally feeling around it, makes AJ rather uneasy before a small ‘pop’ noise comes from the end of her foreleg. The metal masked ones look over the horseshoe which was, for the most part, only decently intact. The metal-guys (or whatever they were called) begin huddling around the horseshoe and then speed off into a more sturdy-looking hut.

“What the hay jus’ happened here?” Applejack asks, completely bewildered. A moment later, the metal-masked guys storm back out, and begin to pull her towards the smithy building, much to her surprise, and end up lifting her to make it easier, before setting her on a large bench and going after her other horseshoes, which are quickly tossed into a large smelter. “H-hay! Ah need those!” she yells, until a few moments pass and she realizes the shyguys are inspecting her hooves again with measuring sticks and the hammers come out. Fearing for her hooves, she yanks them back, but the shyguys show no interest in her as they begin to pour out a sturdy alloy into long channels, which they check, reject, toss back into the smeltery, and try again after throwing more ingredients in.

A minute or less of bewilderingly fast activity later, and they’re pouring out a set of horseshoes into sand moulds, and waiting to let them cool. Applejack looks around, stunned, as the sand is shaken from the shoes, and a whiplash-inducing spree of activity occurs as the shoes are passed down the line of seven or so shyguys, each pass off stripping them down and shining them up, until they’ve got a coppery sheen and a layer of sealant on the outside that also makes them duller in color and less likely to be visible.

They step closer, holding up the shoes, and the farmpony hesitantly holds out a hoof. The shoes are placed and nailed in with speed and precision, and she finds that they’re almost unimaginably comfy. The smithy guys crowd around, to see her reaction. She takes a step, then smiles. “Well, now, that’s pretty nifty! Sorry fer gettin’ all frightened back there... how can ah repay ya?” she asks, and the guys all shake their heads, waving their arms in a gesture of ‘no need’. “Well, iffen y’all’re sure... I’d hate ta feel like I’m takin’ advantage of ya.”

The Smithy Guys all shake their heads and, going over the measurements they’ve taken as well as the molds they’d made from said measurements, begin to chatter a bit lower amongst themselves. After a bit of time, they all look back to AJ and begin making odd motions. The one thing Applejack can figure out from the archaic pantomiming is the general idea of labor.

The farm pony, over the course of the next twenty minutes or so, finally puzzles out that they’re asking what job she does, and when she explains she bucks trees, they all seem just as confused by this as she is about their entire village.

Figuring she would do better with either an example or a translator, and lacking any noteable fruit-bearing trees around-slash-on the village as far as she knew, she decided to wait for Fluttershy who, was quickly directed to her friend once the shaman was done. The first thing Applejack noticed was that, along the twenty minutes they had been separated, Fluttershy’s wing was no longer in a splint but a very basic leafy bandage of sorts. The second thing she noticed was that the pegasus was happily chatting with the shyguys while laying on her side and covered in colored paint in various patterns.

“Well, they’re kinda weird, but I guess these little guys are bein’ pretty good neighbors...” AJ’s stomach rumbles again. “What say we get some grub?”

Fluttershy looks up, “Oh, hello Applejack, uhm, yes, “ she pauses to chitter to the others, who all hold up two fingers, and Shy nods. “Two more minutes, Applejack, let’s go find some seats-” she goes to stand up, and the shaman guy shakes his head, before pointing at a pair of large, comfortable-looking chairs being setup on one side of the big chair meant for the chieftain of the tribe.

“Anyways, while we wait, what were you up to?” Fluttershy asks, as the two begin to head for the chairs evidently meant for them, which finish being woven and stuffed on their way over.

“Well, as far as makin’ shoes go, these little guys know how to make ‘em comfy; but I’d need to buck a few trees to know if they can hold up to a harvest.” AJ explains, looking at her coppery shoes. “Well, they match my coat at least... heh, if Rarity could hear me now...” AJ trails off, chuckling a bit.

“They do look really nice on you, Applejack!” Fluttershy offers, before sitting on her new chair. “Oh, these are quite comfy.”

“Speakin’ of Rarity.” Applejack starts, taking her own seat. “And everypony else... where is everypony else?”

Fluttershy sighs. “I... I don’t know. The shyguy who rescued us... he came because he saw us falling into the jungle, and we weren’t being very quiet.” she says. Applejack blinks at the name.

“Is that... is that what these little guys are?” She asks, getting a nod in return. “Huh... alright. Well, can they get us home somehow? I’m pretty sure our friends are a might worried considering we... what exactly happened again? Some weird, giant hand grabbed Anthony...” AJ cringes for a second. “And then it pulled us through with ‘im but... we ain’t home or with Anthony at all.”

“I... I don’t know, Applejack. I think Twilight did something, but I don’t know; I only remember trying to pull Anthony out, and then getting shaken off, and then we were falling...” she says, shuddering at the memory, her uninjured wing flexing.

“Well, then whatever grabbed him... got him and got rid of us, but didn’t bother puttin’ us back.”

Fluttershy’s expression falls. “I hope Anthony’s alright.” she mutters.

“Eh, he can take care of himself, but I guess finding him before we head home would be the right thing ta do.”

“Well, why would anypo- anybody try to take him if they didn’t think they could? What if... what if somebody wanted to- to hurt him, Applejack?” Fluttershy says. She knows the implications would be worse if she said ‘kill him’, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it... and for someone like Anthony, she knew being crippled or similarly injured permanently would eb far worse than mere death.

“Okay... that does sound bad.” Applejack admits. “So what do we do to find him?” She turns to the shy guys beside her. “Any a’ y’all see a big... what’d he say he was? A human? One of them?”

The shyguys all turn to each other, a wave of quiet radiating outwards through the crowd from Applejack. One of them, a slightly large shyguy walking with the help of an extremely decorated and muh cruder-looking spear than the others, steps up and begins to speak in the chirps, whistles, and noises of their language, and Fluttershy listens intently. Then, she gasps, turning. “A-Applejack! There’s lots of humans here!” she says, looking shocked and amazed.

“Ya... ya don’t think whatever grabbed Anthony was tryin’a take him home or somethin’?”

“I-I don’t know...” Fluttershy says, then turns tot he shyguys again, and asks something in chitters, and waits for a response. When she makes a certain noise, every shyguy around flinches as one, the response not going unnoticed by AJ and Fluttershy.

She turns to Applejack, looking shaky and pale. “Th-they say ‘the fire-dragon-king’ took him, and... and that he hates humans!”

“Wh- How- Do they know where he is?” Applejack says, very confused and lost. She just wanted a straight answer from something she could talk to.

As if to answer her desire, a bulkier shyguy steps forward, carrying a fully steel pike on his back and a metal mask with a different pattern of holes, more akin to a flatter knight’s helm than the other guys’ masks. In a soft, lilting voice, he says, “Yes, but we cannot reach it alone.” His voice, while quiet, holds a form of charisma and surety to it that relaxes Applejack, reminding her of a warm voice tucking her in as a foal. Fluttershy is similarly affected, hearing the soft noises of the forest, muted and channeled into a kindness only nature can provide in that voice.

Between them, they’re ready to hear what this shyguy has to say, though he sounds grim.

“We must defeat the crested yoshi, and ally with the local bright yoshi tribe if we’re to get to the Mushroom kingdom; it’s your only hope of reaching Bowser in time to save your friend.”