“So,” Mark said, as Starlight shut down the magic field and the others gathered around the cleared area by the life support system, “who do I learn more about today?”

“I was just thinking,” Starlight Glimmer said slowly. “I sat down with the dictionary today and went through everything beginning with “apple”. I finally found ‘applejack,’ which is another name for apple brandy. It also refers to ‘jacked,’ which apparently means ‘really strong,’ which fits. So now I have a better name than Hard Cider for her.”

“Did you find the breakfast cereal?” Mark asked.

Starlight settled for giving him a look. She went on, “So let’s talk about Applejack today. I’ve known Applejack for a few years now, but I don’t really have any stories about her. What about you, Cherry?”

“I’ve known her almost my whole life,” Cherry Berry said. “And the only stories I know are a bit embarrassing. Like the time she caused a bunny stampede-“

“A what?” Mark asked.

“- or when vampire fruitbats invaded her farm and she ended up getting Fluttershy turned into a vampire pony.”

“A what??” Mark asked.

“And, y’know, I don’t want to tell those stories,” Cherry Berry concluded, “because it’s not fair to her. She’s a really good pony, not an… um… Enos, yeah. Not Enos. Definitely not Cletus or Roscoe.”

“I know what you mean,” Starlight said. “She’s strong, she’s brave, she stays calm, and she’s always there, but she doesn’t really have adventures on her own, does she?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” Cherry Berry said. “She’s always there for everypony. It’s amazing, too- she runs the biggest farm in Ponyville, and she still has time for so many other ponies.”

“That was what got her in trouble with the rabbits,” Starlight said. “I read Twilight’s book about how Applejack was so tired from working on her farm and helping everyone else out too, she got totally loopy. She wouldn’t even sleep nights, she was working so hard.”

“Yeah. She was the only pony one year to go to… um… big snooty pony party in capital? She went there to work. Could have met ponies, had fun, but no, she wanted to support her family.”

“I remember that,” Spitfire said. “My lieutenant bought a pie from her. Said best pie ever. But there was big table of free food there. She wasted her time.”

“Er…” Cherry Berry shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, exchanging glances with Spitfire. This was another little anecdote that made Applejack look like an idiot. “Well, her heart was in the right place.”

“Maybe you could start by telling me who she is,” Mark said. ‘Maybe a story will come up that way.”

“I only know her from the briefings,” Dragonfly said. “Applejack, Element of Honesty. Easily fooled so long as you tell no direct lies. Incredibly strong and talented earth pony farmer. Skilled rodeo performer. De facto leader of the Apple extended family, with members in every corner of Pony-land and beyond. If you’re fighting her and you end up directly behind her, you’re about to take a prolonged and involuntary nap- her kicks are brutal. Her lariat skills are even better.”

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “How does an earth pony even make a lasso, never mind use one?”

“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said. “I’m not a rodeo pony. Anyway, skilled and experienced monster fighter. Almost never gets rattled. Extremely competitive and stubborn. Senior mission control flight leader, pony space center.”

“That more than I know,” Fireball said. “I only know her from sometimes talk on radio when I was on space station.”

“I don’t know much either,” Spitfire said. “Most of what I know Rainbow Dash tell me.”

The conversation, which had been rather sickly for a while, now died altogether. “So,” Mark said, attempting to defibrillate the patient, “monster hunter, huh? What kind of monsters?”

“Well, us changelings for one,” Dragonfly said, and promptly got a smack on the head from Spitfire. “Ow!”

“What I say about bragging about being evil?” the pegasus warned.

“Well, let’s see,” Starlight said. “Since I first met her she fought a, um, mix of bear and insect bigger than both… a, um, I saw one in your books- chimera, that’s the word, tiger-goat-snake mix… sea monsters, manticores, hydras, carnivorous plants, and, um, wild dogs made of wood infused with dark magic.” She shuffled her feet. “And, um, me.”

Spitfire stood up and walked over to Starlight, who immediately covered her horn with her forehoves.

“Sit down, Spitfire.” Cherry Berry wasn’t going to have this sort of thing spread, one way or another.

Spitfire glared at Starlight, pointed her hoof at her face and then at the unicorn in an I’m-watching-you gesture, and went back to her spot.

“Oooookay,” Mark said. “Wild dogs… wolves? Made of wood?”

“That’s right,” Starlight said. “Applejack’s family farm backs onto the Forever Free Forest. Every once in a while monsters come out of it, especially wood-wolves, and Applejack fights them off.”

“That’s right. She does it all the time. I remember one time…

This was back when Applejack and I were just out of school. My family had learned that I couldn’t be trusted to harvest cherries without eating myself sick, so they sent me to, um, Applejack’s father’s mother, named for a good sour baking apple. Applejack put me to work, even though they really didn’t have enough money to pay me. Farming is like that; if you have a good harvest prices are so bad you make nothing, and if prices are up it’s because nobody has a crop and you’ve got nothing to sell. Farming takes a lot of very hard work to live by.

Anyway, zap apple time had just been. Zap apples are a magic fruit. Applejack’s, um, grandmother makes a jam from the harvested zap apples that sells for big money all over pony-land, and that’s mostly what keeps the farm going. All the other crops only about break even, from what I hear. But zap apple time is also wood-wolf time. When we hear them howl at night, we know zap apples are coming.

So we were in tending some regular apple trees when we heard growling and smelled something like the poo box. Wood wolves are made of rotten tree limbs and moss and vines and like that, so their breath stinks.

Wait- magic wood needs to breathe?

Wood-wolves do. So we had about two seconds warning before two wood-wolves came out of the Forever Free, coming straight for us. A wood-wolf is six times the length of a pony and almost three times as tall. They can be deadly, and they can’t be tamed, can’t be reasoned with. They’re not like manticores or even hydras. They’re just evil. And these two wanted to kill Applejack and me so the forest could take back the zap apple trees.

Well, of course we ran. But as we ran under a low-hanging branch, Applejack wasn’t beside me anymore. She swung up on the branch, over, and down- WHACK!- right on top of the first wood-wolf’s snout. It went down, and Applejack went with it, lining up her rear hooves and kicking it straight in between the eyes. That was it for that one- it fell apart right off.

But the second one was right on top of her after that. I thought she was a goner. I screamed for her to run, but instead she found a piece of the dead wood-wolf that had a vine attached to it. She tossed the piece of wood into the second wolf’s mouth, and it jammed there- wood-wolves don’t like to let go of something once they bite. And then she grabbed the loose end of the vine and ran with it around the wolf’s rear legs. The wolf tried to pull her back, but the vine just pulled tight and ripped those rear legs clean off.

The second wolf tried to twist around to bite her, but she wasn’t there. It couldn’t find her, and it turned around again just in time to see her rear hooves coming right at it. And that was that.

We spent the rest of the day picking up the bits of wood and hauling them off to be burned. You have to burn wood-wolves. Otherwise the spell comes back after a day or so. And it’s rotten wood, so you need a lot of good wood to get it started.

So we got almost none of our work done that day. And when we went to see her grandmother, Applejack didn’t brag about killing two wood-wolves. She apologized for not getting her work done!

And that was only, hm, about three years after we got our cutie marks. Still just kids, really. And even then she was like she is now; doesn’t brag, doesn’t even like to show off. But give her a job and it’s as good as done, so long as all it needs is honest hard work.

“Whoa! You mean she saved your life when you were still kids?” Mark asked, incredulous. “Where the hell were your parents while this was going on?”

“My parents had their own farm,” Cherry said. “A lot smaller than Applejack’s, so we earned extra money sometimes helping with my aunt’s farm down south. But Applejack’s parents died when she was pretty young. Her little sister was just a baby. So now it’s the big brother, the little sister, and AJ, and their grandmother, and whatever help they can get from friends and family come harvest time.”

“Oh. Whoa. That’s rough,” Mark said. “Is that why she’s named Applejack? Does she drink a lot?”

“No more than- oh wait, you mean, does she get drunk a lot?” Cherry asked. “No. Her family makes cider, but she only drinks a mug with friends. She’s not like my cousin Berry Kick.”

“They make applejack too,” Starlight said quietly.

The thing you have to remember is, the Apple family pride themselves on their cider, soft or hard. They only offer it for sale for a short season in mid-fall, after the leaves change. Other farms use windfalls and half-rotten fruit, but the Apples insist on quality. They have part of the farm specifically for growing apples for cider. Ponies line up for days to get one drink.

Dash told me once. I think if sea were made of cider, Dash would grow gills.

Er, moving along… But the Apple family doesn’t sell apple brandy of any kind. They do keep a few barrels of cider every year and age it, and you have to be a very close friend of the family to get even a sip of that. But if you mention apple brandy, you’ll get the door slammed in your face. They don’t sell it, and they don’t even admit it exists.

But… well, Twilight Sparkle worked really hard to teach me how to be a better pony. I’m still learning. But there were times that I thought it was a lost cause. It just all seemed so tough, so… well, impossible. And one time I screwed up bad. I’m not going to give you the details, because… well, to be honest, because it embarrasses me, but it might also give your friends ideas if and when you learn how to use magic. Let’s just say it took a lot of cleaning up and apologizing.

That night I was staring at the stars from a balcony of Twilight’s castle- this was before the school. I was wondering if I was cut out for this, if it wouldn’t be better for everyone if I just lived in a cave in the mountains for the rest of my life. I even had the perfect cave picked out.

Then Applejack comes out and asks me what’s wrong. I say, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m all right.” And you don’t do that to Applejack. You can misdirect her, you can fool her, but you can’t lie to her face, because she knows.

She shook her head, then pulled this little pottery jug out of her saddlebags, uncorked it, and poured me a little bit- about, oh, twice as much as one of your test tubes, Mark. “Here,” she said. “Have a sip and go to bed. Everything will be better in the morning. Well, afternoon, I mean, but you know.”

I took a sniff. “What’s in this?” I asked.

“Apples,” she said. “Well, mostly apples. It’s a family secret. We don’t talk about it.”

It smelled good and it tasted better. I can still remember the smooth apple flavor and how warm it made me feel inside. Unfortunately that’s the last thing I remember before waking up in my bed the next morning with a killer headache and a pot of fresh coffee and two pain pills on the nightstand next to me. By the time the hangover cleared I felt much better about everything. Which led to another buck-up, but that’s another story.

Cherry Berry stared, slack-jawed, at Starlight Glimmer. “You’ve tasted the Holy Appleshine?” she asked in Equestrian. “I thought that was only a legend! I thought that was a thing grandmas and grandpas told about Granny Smith’s parents to show how much better the old days were when Ponyville was being founded!”

“Cherry, calm down!” Starlight replied. “It was only the once. Applejack’s never offered again, and I sure never asked again. The Apples really don’t talk about it! Besides, English!”

“Er, is this cider really that big a deal?” Mark asked. “I tried apple brandy in college once. Didn’t much care for it. I like beer much better.”

Starlight and Cherry turned glares on Mark that could have frozen him colder than the air outside the cave farm. “Beer,” they sneered.

Dragonfly looked at Spitfire. “So, I guess a welcome-home drinking party in Ponyville is out of the question?”

Spitfire gave the changeling another tap on the noggin, then asked, “Commander, may I hit the changeling for saying dumb thing?”

“Don’t ask permission after you’ve already done it!” Dragonfly snapped.

Author's Notes:

This was harder than I expected, and I'm not happy at all with ending this on a booze joke, but my head and back hurt, I'm tired, and I need a good night's sleep before the all-day drive home tomorrow. So this is what there is, right down to me stealing a lame gag from Log Horizon to wrap it up.

Going through the episodes, a few things come out about Applejack. First and foremost, she is not a thinker. She is perfect backup or muscle, but any episode that features her will make her look foolish in one way or another- stubbornness, anger, overprotectiveness, jerkass-mode honesty, etc.

As far as the cartoon is concerned, you can rely on it- any decision Applejack makes based on thought is certain to be the wrong decision.

Of course, this is why people refer to Applejack as Best Background Pony. She stands out by not standing out- by always being there when needed and providing her strength, skill, and common sense to a group. It's when she goes it alone that things inevitably go wrong. But, as a consequence of this, none of the stories in the cartoon that focus on Applejack are in any way complementary to her.

(Which is a shame, because the ending to Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 5000 is my favorite moment in the whole damn show.)

So, instead, you get two stories of Applejack that are about her courage, strength, and kindness- even if the kindness takes the form of, "Have a delicious Mickey Finn, it'll all be better in the morning." I admit it's a very easy way out and plays on fan headcanon (since, of course, there is no actual liquor in the cartoon), but it's all my brain can produce tonight.

Further edits on yesterday's chapter will have to wait. For now my back is screaming at me, and I'm to bed to watch YouTube until I pass out (which won't be long).

Incidentally, if any of you are interested in T-shirts, fourteen days remain on my 2018 Kickstarter. My publicity efforts have failed multiple ways on this, so I probably won't try this again, but here's the link anyhow:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869505034/wlp-shirts-2018-summer-shirt-lineup#