The Secret Life of Big Macintosh

by WardenPony

First published 24th of August, 2012

There's more to Big Macintosh's life than just apple bucking...

There's a lot more to Big Macintosh's life than just apple bucking...

A collaboration between the members of the Spanish Announce Table Goes First.

Chapter 1

Big Macintosh let out a grunt as he kicked his hooves back, slamming both back legs against the apple tree. He landed his strike with precision, making the tree shake violently and release its bounty of red fruit, which bounced down from the branches and into carefully positioned baskets on the ground below.

Big Mac smiled to himself. No matter how long he’d been working on his family farm, no matter how many times he bucked an apple tree, he always felt the satisfaction of a job well done. There was an art to his task, and it appealed to him both for the physical exertion that it provided and the almost zen-like peace it brought his spirit.

Gathering up the apples, Big Macintosh moved on to the next tree. Applebloom, his youngest sister, scampered alongside him, huffing slightly from exertion as she maneuvered several baskets into place below the branches of the tree. Meanwhile, Applejack—the middle foal of the apple family, but the true head of the farm—began hauling the baskets of apples away, stacking them into a cart nearby.

The day was hot, but not unpleasant. The apple trees provided shade for the hard working ponies, helping ease their work. In their own way, the trees did their part for the family. The apple family gave to the earth, and the earth gave in return, providing for them as they did for the trees. A perfect—almost symbiotic—relationship.

Something caught Big Macintosh’s eye—a glint of light on the farthest edges of the orchards, nearest to the Everfree Forest—and he paused in his bucking. He languidly turned to Applejack as she returned from the cart of apples, and she caught his expression. The farm filly smiled at her older brother. “You tuckered out, Big Macintosh?”

“Eeyup,” Big Mac replied.

Applejack nodded, “All right then, I’ll take over buckin’ for ya. Get yourself some water an’ come on back when you’ve caught your second wind!”

Big Macintosh trotted away, heading for the barn and the water pump located out behind it. He stopped to get a drink, glad for the brief reprieve, before glancing around. Satisfied nopony was watching him, he galloped towards the edge of the orchard.

Arriving at the edge of the Everfree Forest, Big Macintosh peered into the dark undergrowth for a moment before stepping into the shaded darkness of the forest. He stood silently, waiting patiently, before a dark figure winged down from the forest canopy. With an almost silent clack of padded armor, a bat-pony of the Night Guard landed before Big Macintosh, his yellow eyes faintly glowing in the darkness. Big Mac nodded to the guard, and the guard simply retrieved a sealed scroll from a saddlebag and hoofed it over to Big Macintosh before flying away into the dark forest once more.

Big Macintosh opened the scroll and read the contents, his lips forming words unconsciously as he processed the information. He read the scroll once more to ensure he’d remember, and then proceeded to eat the paper. He left the forest just as quickly as he’d entered, returning to the orchards and his two sisters.

Looking up from her work, Applejack gave her brother a grin. “Feelin’ better, big fella?”

“Nnope.”

Applejack paused mid-buck, her face growing concerned. “What’s the matter, Macintosh? Are ya feelin’ sick or something?”

Big Macintosh nodded emphatically. “Eeyup.”

Frowning, Applejack approached the big stallion and pressed a hoof to his forehead. “Hm, I can’t rightly tell if ya feel hot or not. Maybe you oughta check in with Granny, see what she has to say?”

“Mmaybe,” replied Big Mac, making a sick face.

Applejack snorted at her brother. “Don’t give me that sass! I know you hate Granny’s medicinal concoctions just as much as the rest of us, but that ain’t no excuse to try t’ ignore it! You could end up gettin’ sicker than a hog in a haystack.”

Applebloom piped up from behind Applejack. “What does that even mean?”

Rolling her eyes, Applejack turned on her little sister. “It means that Big Macintosh could push himself too hard and end up hurtin’ himself!”

“Oh.”

Applejack rounded on her brother once more, gesturing towards the farmhouse. “Go on, git. You tell Granny you’re feelin’ under the weather. She’ll set ya right.”

Sighing, Big Macintosh ambled away towards the farmhouse, leaving Applebloom and Applejack to finish the work for the day. He didn’t feel good about it, but he had important things to tend to.

Arriving at the farmhouse, Big Mac entered the kitchen. The smell of cooking apple dumplings and a hearty stew made his stomach rumble. In the middle of the kitchen, humming an off-key tune to herself as she stirred the stew, Granny Smith stood, back legs wobbling slightly. Big Macintosh cleared his throat and smiled as his grandmother turned to glance at him. She smiled, her eyes crinkling up with happiness as she saw her eldest grandcolt. “Well hello dearie! Done with the harvest for the day?”

Big Macintosh replied, voice clear and devoid of his usual languid drawl, “Granny, I need you to cover for me again.”

Granny’s face grew serious and her eyes became sharp. “Another summons? Land sakes, child, it was never this way with your momma and poppa!”

Smiling, Big Macintosh shrugged at his elder. “I know, Granny. But you know I have to go.”

Exhaling slowly, Granny Smith wobbled over to the huge stallion and embraced him. “I know, dearie. You be careful, y’hear?”

Big Macintosh picked up the old mare in his strong forelegs, twirling her around and making her laugh like a filly half her age before setting her down gently again. “Thanks Granny. I love you.”

Granny snorted and acted irritated, though she reached up with a shaking hoof to dab at her eyes. “Y’ come home soon, Big Mac. Last time you left, AJ stayed up for days on end buckin’ apples to try to show you up!”

Nodding, Big Macintosh slipped out of the kitchen, heading upstairs to his room briefly. When he returned downstairs, he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and an old black canvas duster. Big Mac gave Granny Smith a peck on the cheek, and then went out the back door to the farmhouse, disappearing into the evening light.

Granny sighed to herself, watching her grandson go, and then wobbled upstairs to Big Macintosh’s room. She knelt down and reached under the bed, pulling out an ancient gramophone and assembling the device in the corner of the room. She retrieved a record from Big Macintosh’s closet and set it on the gramophone, and set the needle into the first groove. The gramophone’s needle glowed with a dark blue aura of magic, and suddenly Big Macintosh stood in the room, unmoving and unblinking. Granny spoke to the apparition. “By blood an’ by seed, I bind ye! Do my bidding, image!”

The image of Big Macintosh turned to face Granny Smith and nodded to her. Granny squinted at the odd magical glamour, barely able to see the faintest blue aura surrounding the form of her grandcolt. She nodded back to the image after a moment. “All right, ya creepy thing. Git in bed and sleep. An’ snore some, too!”

The image of Big Macintosh slid into the bed, and appeared to fall asleep. It even snored, though the sounds came from the gramophone rather than the image. Granny nodded to herself and left Big Macintosh’s room, closing the door and locking it behind herself. She waddled back downstairs to the kitchen and resumed her cooking.

An hour later, Applejack and Applebloom returned from the orchards for dinner. Granny greeted them with a scowl. “AJ, your brother’s got a nasty case of trotting cough. I gave him somethin’ fer it, an’ he’s gonna be takin’ it easy and sleepin’ it off fer the next few days.”

Applejack and Applebloom frowned with worry. Applejack spoke up, “Well, I can pick up the pace for a few days, Granny. I just hope he starts feelin’ better soon!”

Nodding, Granny returned to the stew. “He’ll be back t’ his old self again soon enough. Just don’t disturb him none, y’hear! An’ that goes double fer you, young’un!”

Applebloom snapped out of a daydream involving Cutie Mark Crusader Hospice Helpers—yay!—and looked immediately guilty. “I won’t, Granny! I promise!”

Granny chuckled, and began to serve up bowls of piping hot vegetable soup for her grandchildren.

The sound of hooves on stone echoed through the ancient ruin located deep in the Everfree Forest. Big Macintosh halted in the entryway of the dilapidated castle, removing his hat briefly and peering into the dark room, his eyes narrowing. He could smell the subtle scent of the Night Guards, like moist soil or the forest floor after a rainstorm. Two armored bat-ponies stepped out of the darkness, approaching him. They flanked him and led him deeper into the ruin, up a long flight of stairs to a dusty throne room. There, in the light of the setting sun, Princess Luna sat, staring out into the darkening sky. She turned as Big Mac and the two guards entered and smiled at the red stallion. “Thou hast arrived quickly. We assume ye were not followed?”

Big Mac shook his head, taking his hat off and respectfully bowing before the princess. “I took the proper precautions.”

Nodding to herself, Luna turned away from Big Macintosh, her focus switching to the night sky. She closed her eyes and her horn began to glow. As the sun sank below the horizon, the moon rose up into the night, guided by the alicorn’s magic. Her task finished, she spoke again, “We suppose thou art surprised to be summoned by us instead of mine esteemed sister?”

Big Mac shook his head. “My oath lies to the realm and those who lead it.”

“We are glad that thou seest the circumstances thusly, Sir Macintosh. There are many in Equestria who distrust us.”

“I can understand, I suppose. However, if your sister trusts you enough to tell you about me, then I trust you as well, Princess,” said Big Macintosh, approaching Princess Luna.

Luna smiled, seeming flattered by this declaration. “We... I thank you, Sir Macintosh.”
Big Mac chuckled. “Think nothing of it. Now, why have you summoned me?”

Her horn glowing with magic, Luna summoned a scroll out of thin air, and gave it to Big Macintosh. As Big Mac unrolled the scroll, Luna explained. “While I was... away, my castle here in the Everfree Forest fell into disrepair. Over the thousand years, the spells protecting this place wore away, and eventually my vault of treasures was left undefended. When I returned, and after your sister and her friends cleansed me of evil, I discovered that several artifacts were missing from my coffers, no doubt stolen over the last twenty years when the magic sealing the vault failed. Most of these are replaceable, but there is an item that is of the utmost importance to me that has gone missing.”

Big Mac stared down at the scroll, looking down at an ink drawing of... something. He tilted his head slightly, trying to figure it out. Luna coughed, waiting impatiently for Big Macintosh to exclaim something dramatic. Big Mac’s head tilted the other way, and he scowled. “I don’t get it.”

Luna scowled. “Please tell me you know what those are.”

Something in Big Macintosh’s head switched to a default setting. “Nnope.”

“They’re socks.”

Big Macintosh stared down at the ink drawing once more. “Oh. I guess that the drawing wasn’t very great?”

Sighing in frustration, Luna asked, “Big Macintosh, you’ve never seen socks before? They were all the rage, the latest fashion accessory!”

Smirking, Big Macintosh said, “A thousand years ago, maybe. I’ve never seen anypony wearing anything like that before.”

Luna shook her head, mollified. “That... may very well be true. Socks have fallen out of style, but regardless of fashion, my socks are more than mere accessories.”

“They’re also cozy?” quipped Big Macintosh with a sly grin.

“... Yes. But that’s beside the point! My socks have been imbued with incredible magics that I wove into their very fabric. They will have never decayed or been damaged. Their color, shape, and size can be changed at will. They are impervious to the elements. Most of all, though, they give the wearer great power!”

Big Macintosh asked, “What sort of power?”

“The power to control improbability.”

“... What?” asked Big Macintosh, completely lost.

Sighing, Luna explained, “They give the wearer the ability to manipulate probability, but only to effect improbable outcomes. For example, if one were to roll a die while wearing these socks, they couldn’t make the die come up ‘one’, but they could make it come up ‘apple’. Or ‘Z’, for all they could care, even if the die never had a ‘Z’ on it to begin with.”

Big Mac whistled, impressed. “That could be very powerful.”

“It is very powerful, if extremely limited in its application. I created the enchantment on a whim, and realized after the fact that they could be dangerous in the wrong hooves. Which is why I need you to find them.”

Big Macintosh stared at the princess for a moment, before bursting out laughing. Princess Luna scowled. “I don’t see what’s so funny!”

Shaking his head and smiling, Big Mac explained, “I just never thought I’d see the day that I would be called to pick up a thousand year old laundry for the good of the realm.”

Luna smirked, “Be that as it may, you are a Knight of the Order of the Apple, a title that has been passed down in your family secretly, from father to son, for generations. Your duty is to the realm and to my sister and I.”

Big Macintosh bowed, still chuckling, “As you wish, my princess. I’ll retrieve your socks.”

Luna smiled, “I’ll need all four of them. We can’t have any go missing. Each one holds the same level of power as the others. Even if a single sock was to go astray, the results could be catastrophic.”

“All four. And... you wouldn’t suppose that they’re all still together?”

“Doubtful.”

Big Mac frowned. “And... they can look like anything?”

“Any kind of sock, yes, but they are limited to only that form of clothing.”

“So... what you’re saying is that I have to find four socks that could look like any other kind of sock imaginable.”

Luna smiled. “You see my difficulty.”

“Well... how do I get this done, then?” asked Big Macintosh, starting to feel worried.

“You’ll have to search for their effect: Improbability. Things happening in a way that makes no sense whatsoever. Odd and strange occurrences.”

Big Macintosh nodded. “All right. And you said that they couldn’t have been stolen until the magic sealing your vault failed?”

“Twenty years ago, yes,” replied Princess Luna.

Big Macintosh sighed. “Well... looks like I’ve got some research to do.”

Princess Luna clapped her hooves together, delighted. “Excellent! I shall teleport you to the Ponyville library! The town has an extensive collection of newspaper publications, and since Ponyville is the closest town to this castle, it is probable that whoever stole my socks lived there. If there were odd occurrences of improbability, then the newspaper may be able to shed some light on the whereabouts of my socks.”

“Very well, Princess Luna. I’ll retrieve your socks, be they in Ponyville or at the ends of the earth,” said Big Mac, bowing low.

“That would be very... improbable,” replied Luna.

Big Macintosh winced at that last word. “Exactly.”

Chapter 2

As the swirling coalescence of light and dark that accompanied the teleportation spell gave way to the dim interior of the library, Big Macintosh’s keen mind sprang into action. Wasting no time at all, he located the first shelf he’d search, a wide table, and a tall candle. He set the candle upon the table, lit it, and turned to face the rows of books in one smooth motion, but froze before he could touch the first tome. Something had moved, even though nopony should have been around. Twilight and Spike hit a delay on the way back from Canterlot and the library closed hours ago.

He exhaled quietly, then whirled around to find... bananas. Dozens and dozens of bananas spilling out of the end of an oversized green sock, none of which he recalled noticing a few seconds ago. Dim as the library may have been, it would have been difficult to miss. There also didn’t seem to be a reason for bananas to be filling a sock. Or a sock to be on the table. Or for any sock to be that large. Or bananas to be left out when nopony was home. Big Macintosh raised an eyebrow and stared into the befruited scene. Was finding something highly improbable immediately upon beginning the search for highly improbable things probable or improbable?

The bananas shifted and the surface of the sock began to writhe. Something else occupied the emerald article... something alive. He tensed his legs, ready and willing to strike down whatever foul agent had the audacity to sully royal property. Several seconds passed in silence before a mushy yellow wave exploded out toward Big Macintosh’s face. Blinded by the onslaught of fruit, he had no way of detecting the enemy’s attack. Something warm and moist clamped onto his front left hoof. Stampeding through the empty library in an awkward, three-legged gallop with a near-zero field of view, desperately flailing his remaining appendage in a futile attempt to dislodge the surprisingly painless attachment, Big Macintosh slammed face-first into a large bookshelf and collapsed on the floor.

Having neither gone unconscious nor felt any pain where he’d been attacked (only a curious and continuous gentle pressure)—but plenty of pain from his self-inflicted injury—he calmed down. Wiping away some of the mush covering his eyes, Big Macintosh discovered the identity of his toothless aggressor. Pinkie’s young gator Gummy blinked back at him, happily gnawing away with his slobbery, but harmless, mouth.

“Hiya Macky!”

Swiveling his head toward the sudden exclamation, Big Macintosh found Pinkie Pie bouncing in place with a smile on her face.

“Do you like Bananas?” she asked. She scrunched her face up and gasped. “Oh! I’m sorry, don’t worry, it’s not a trick question or anything and you can totally just say eeyup or eenope or eemaybe or eeonlyonTuesdays. My Party Cannon (TM) couldn’t even reach the moon!”

Keen though his mind may have been, Big Macintosh wasn’t prepared to deal with the living embodiment of hyperactivity. A bead of sweat rolled down his banana-stained face. “Ee...yup?” As the word rolled out of his mouth, he rose to his hooves.

Pinkie smiled and nodded. “Neato! ‘Cuz there sure are a lot of ‘em here and my tummy’s full and Gummy doesn’t really like bananas. You can eat as many as you want and nopony’ll get mad. Except maybe Twilight if you leave the peels all over the place and she slips and falls over and over and over until she gets so mad she invents a new spell to get rid of all the banana peels in a three mile radius but then something goes wrong with that spell and—”

Not only was trying to follow a conversation with her taxing, but her wild and unpredictable actions could easily mask any other improbable events. Big Macintosh needed an out. More than that, he needed a lead, and this sock was his only one so far.

He motioned toward the table. “Miss Pie, is that your sock?” he asked, careful to keep his speech slow and serene.

Pinkie quickly looked back and adopted a puzzled expression. “Which one?”

Big Macintosh’s eye twitched. Perhaps he was more like Twilight than he thought.

“‘Cuz if you’re talking about the big green one on the table, then no, that’s not mine.”

“Do ya know if it belongs to somepony?”

She shook her head. “Nopey-dopey!”

Once again, fortune smiled upon him. This wouldn’t be so hard after all. He shrugged and trotted toward the table.

Pinkie jumped between Big Macintosh and his prize. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.

“I was—”

“That’s Gummy’s! It’s been in his family for generations, isn’t that right?” she asked, pressing the gator to her cheek. Gummy blinked one eye, then the other.
He scuffed a hoof along the ground. Of course. She’d said it didn’t belong to anypony, and Gummy wasn’t a pony. Also, ponies aren’t alligators. Everything she said checked out... probably. Shaking his head, remembering his mission, and briefly wondering whether or not Pinkie was contagious, he set himself on the most straightforward course he could manage. “Odd question, Miss Pie, but is there anything I can do that’d earn me that sock?”

“You’ll have to ask him!” she said. “Wait, what’s that, Gummy? You’re done with it? Oh! Okay then.” She smiled at Big Macintosh. “I guess it’s mine now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Now is there something I can do for ya in exchange for it?”

She giggled. “Oh boy, is there ever!” she said, picking up a piece of paper from the floor beneath her.

He gulped.

A thick, bold line of ink swept across the page, eliminating one more item from the list.

Paintball.

There had been flames. HOW? Big Macintosh pushed the memories of the last few hours out of his mind. His eyes shivered above the last line on the paper as a deep, primal fear rocked him to his core. Everything was almost over. There was just one more trial to overcome... With all the courage of a young colt trotting into a haunted mansion to impress his friends (read: between none and very little), he covered his eyes with a paint-splattered hoof and peeked a fraction of an inch beneath it, hoping to see the words before they saw him.

Party.

...Party?

He tilted his head to one side. Pinkie Pie was known for parties, but he was at a loss as to why or how he could assist her. “Miss Pie?”

“Yeah, Macky?” she chirped.

His eyes darted about, scanning for anything sinister. He trusted that the mare-shaped creature in front of him didn’t mean any harm, but he had no faith whatsoever that there’d be none. He pointed at the paper and feigned exaggerated confusion about his ability to read via expertly presenting his very real and unaugmented confusion about what it meant. “Am I readin’ this right?”

Pinkie hopped over to him, her smile never even quivering, before she leaned down next to him and blinked at the paper. “Huh... that is weird. Why would there be a party before the end?”

“That’s what I—” he started to say before dropping that train of thought entirely. His eyes grew wide as his ears drooped. “Before the end?”

Pinkie reached for the paper and batted at the bottom of it, prompting more to fall down. “Yeah! Part one was tons of fun, and I can’t wait to get to the rest!” she said. The list had been folded, and they were only through the first page. Big Macintosh’s eye twitched for a few seconds.

“I’m... I’m awful sorry, Miss Pie, but I don’t think we can finish.”

She frowned slightly. “You’re right. I don’t even know what some of the words on these other pages mean.”

“...How can you not know what they mean?”

Whatever small twinge of sadness had tainted her earlier evaporated under the warmth of a renewed grin. “The same way I don’t know what effervescent or chartreuse or hypothalamus mean!”

Big Macintosh stared blankly.

“What? I’m not Twilight,” she said with a shrug. One hoof tapped repeatedly against her chin. “At least... I don’t think I am.”

“I don’t follow. You wrote down things you didn’t understand?”

“Of course not, silly! I just told you, I’m probably not Twilight. And if I’m not Twilight, then why would I make a checklist?”

“I... you don’t...” Big Macintosh’s jaw slid around, occasionally dropping a word or two, but never letting out a complete thought — not that there were any complete thoughts to let out. “The list?”

“Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! I know this one!” Pinkie shouted, jumping up and down, holding one limb in the air like a schoolfilly. “I found it! I found it and lots of things on it sounded like fun and I needed to distract you for a while.” She stopped jumping and looked down. “Sorry I tricked you,” she said before meeting his gaze again with renewed determination burning in her eyes. “But it had to be done.”

An uncomfortable ache spread through Big Macintosh’s skull. He groaned softly and pressed a hoof to the side of his head. He dreaded the answer, but he had to ask. “Distract me from what?”

“The sock! You were gonna take it!”

“And that’d... upset Gummy?”

“It would upset all of Equestria, Macky. That sock has a destiny to fulfill, and it can’t do it stuck to you!”

Glancing toward the table, he noticed a distinct lack of oversized green sock. “Where’d it go?”

She giggled. “I just told you! It’s off to fulfill its destiny. It left about a few minutes ago while you were playing with Gummy.”

A small puff of smoke drifted out of one of Big Macintosh’s ears. His jaw slackened slightly. “I think... I think I’m gonna go home and go to bed,” he said. It was late, there was no progress to be made here, and down the road before him lay only madness. In the morning, he’d resume searching the library as he originally intended. He turned and stepped toward the door, pushing it open without saying another word. He could still feel Pinkie’s grin aimed at him.

“Watch out for the shark!”

He paused briefly, considered responding, decided against it, completely ignored the non-sequitur, and trotted out into the night.

A rhythmic beep filled the softly-lit room while everypony sat still. Big Macintosh hadn’t sustained any real injuries, though the clinic staff were easily convinced to insist that he had when he flashed the Seal of the Order of the Apple. Granny was home preparing the holo-Mac as the seconds ticked by.

The fog of confusion lifted shortly after the impact. Whatever the cause, he felt relieved that his thoughts were clear again and even moreso that he now had a longer-lasting excuse for his absence from the farm. He suppressed a grimace at the thought of his sister overworking herself to keep everything running smoothly.

Finally, Apple Bloom broke the silence. “We were so worried about ya’!” she squeaked, tears streaming down her face.

He picked her up and wrapped her in a reassuring hug. “I’ll be fine; Doc says so. Just need rest.”

“I don’t get it, Mac. How did this happen if all you were doin’ was gettin’ some fresh air?”

He sighed. “Strangest thing, a big ‘ol statue of a shark fell outta the sky.”

“A shark?” Applejack asked with a bemused expression on her face. “What in tarnation was a statue doin’ up in the air, and why in the hay would anypony around here have somethin’ like that?”

Big Macintosh shrugged. “Better not to ask. None of my business, anyways.” Very likely less mentally damaging not to ask, as well.

“We’re jes lucky we got so many backups comin’ in ta help out at the farm while you’re out of commission. Don’t ever let nopony tell ya family ain’t the greatest thang in Equestria.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Backups?” he asked.

Applejack beamed. “What with the sudden duststorm and all, Red and Golden Delicious and the rest of theirs can’t do much at all out there. I reckon they’d much rather make themselves useful here. So don’t you worry none; we got a whole heap o’ Apples on the way to help out an’ we don’t even haveta feel bad about taking them away from their work, ‘cuz they ain’t got none at the moment.”

“Whoa now, what duststorm? When?”

She chuckled. “Lots of strange things lately. Just last night, Red Delicious was frettin’ about a whirlwind of dust and sand stoppin’ everypony from getting anything done. It’s weak enough nothing’ll be damaged, but strong enough nopony can safely work in it. I said we could use a hand with you bein’ sick, and now with you bein’ injured it’s twice as true.”

Big Macintosh smiled. With his sister safely convinced of his inability to work, the farm under control regardless, and any worries about his health put to bed by the knowledge that the clinic would take good care of him, he was free to take as long as necessary to complete his mission. “Glad ta hear it.”

“Well I’m glad ta hear you’re alright. Hope ya get better soon, big brother,” Applejack said, joining her siblings in a big hug before pulling away and turning to face the door. “C’mon, Apple Bloom. Let’s leave ‘im be.”

“Git well soon!”

“I will.”

As their hoofsteps gradually faded around the corner, Big Macintosh breathed a sigh of relief. He reveled in the momentary peace, knowing it was likely the last of it until Luna’s socks were found.

“Twilight?” Applejack gasped. “What in tarnation happened to you? I wasn’t aware I’d be making two visits here today.” Her voice echoed through the hall.

Twilight’s voice rang just as clearly. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say that if I never see another banana again, it’ll be too soon.”

He suppressed a chuckle. Pinkie was a... remarkable specimen, and he didn’t dare doubt for even a second that she was right about that sock’s destiny. The only question left was whether it was one of the socks he was looking for or not. Any and everything that had happened could just as easily and stupidly be attributed to Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie as it could to Luna’s socks being magically enchanted. He had no reason to believe he’d found anything, and he had no more questions he was brave enough to seek answers to.

...Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Something at the back of his mind bothered him about the convenience of an entirely non-destructive dust storm springing up at exactly the right time and place to free up enough Apples to keep Sweet Apple Acres afloat for the duration of his quest. As far as he knew, Pinkie wasn’t involved. He squinted out the nearest window, straining his eyes in a futile attempt to see the storm for himself from such a ludicrous distance, but he couldn’t make out anything other than a tiny splotch on the horizon. There hadn’t been a severe dust storm anywhere but the desert since... about twenty years ago. He blinked and put together one more question. How probable was that?

Chapter 3

The Secret Life of Big Macintosh

Chapter Three

He couldn’t breathe, but that’s not what worried him. Big Macintosh’s fear came from his confusion: Where was he, and how had he gotten there? The trace amounts of oxygen left in his brain burned away as his memory struggled to snatch any snippets of his dangerous predicament.

Three words, and three words only, responded to his memory’s call. They bounced carelessly, tauntingly, along the insides of his skull. As his eyes rolled back, those three words shouted, stabbing his mind with flashes of colorful pain.

Apples.

Socks.

Sharks.

“Big Macintosh, my quiet friend! It’s good to see you here again.”

“That don’t exactly rhyme, Zecora,” Big Macintosh said in the doorway with a playful wink.

She shot him a bemused glance. “If you listened, as of late, my rhyme and meter are approximate.”

“Clearly.” Macintosh grimaced, though a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

Zecora huffed. “Not all can change their speech like you. I speak the way I promised to.” Her eyes grew wide with a little gasp and she tried to peer around the stallion. “Of promises I have set in stone, did I just break one? You are alone?”

Macintosh chuckled and stepped into the hut, closing the door behind him. “Don’t worry, Zecora,” he said, setting his straw hat on a small table among a number of mysterious flasks. “I’m alone. I came to ask for another favor.”

The zebra laughed. “Another? Big Mac, at this rate, you’ll owe to me your soul and fate.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Macintosh admitted.

Zecora waved a hoof; the rings around her knee jangled musically. “I kid, my friend, I only tease! That which you need is yours, with ‘please’. To help a Knight of your grand Order I could not do beyond my border. It is an honor, one most high—” She bowed. “—to have a place in your mind’s eye.”

“Sometimes you don’t make any sense,” Macintosh said with a grin.

“The sense it makes is perfect here,” Zecora said, lifting a hoof to her temple, “but, in the rhyme, can be unclear.”

“I respect your ways, Zecora. You know I do. Your magic’s of the mightiest sort—more so than Miss Twilight in a number of respects—and that’s why I come to you.”

Zecora nodded, both in gratitude and encouragement to go on.

“There’s an unusual duststorm brewing on my family’s farm.” Before Zecora could ask, Macintosh clarified, “Not here in Ponyville. It’s my cousin’s property, Delicious Orchards, just north of Fillydelphia.”

Zecora tilted her head. “A storm of dust, up by the coast? Of all things strange, that seems the most.”

“How long have you lived in Equestria?” Macintosh asked.

Surprised, Zecora answered, “If my memory is clear, Winter marks my seventh year.”

“Then you wouldn’t know,” Mac realized, nodding. He took a deep breath through his nose and said, “Twenty years ago, a series of unexplainable duststorms battered the greenest parts of Eastern Equestria. I was only a foal at the time, but I can still remember how worried everypony was around here. We knew our orchards wouldn’t survive a random storm like that. None came, thank Celestia.” He met Zecora’s eyes. “This storm over Delicious Orchards… it doesn’t seem to be hurting the trees, but it’s bad enough to keep my cousins from working the land. It seems like just the situation where I might find… what I’m looking for.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and pretended to scan the masks on the wall.

Zecora smiled. “You need not worry; of your task I promise I will never ask.”

Macintosh chuckled lightly and looked down. “Thanks, Zecora.”

“Anything to help a friend. Now, do you want this storm to end?”

Perking up, Macintosh shook his head. “No, no, definitely not. In fact, as long as it’s active, my cousins are helping Applejack at Sweet Apple Acres, giving me more time for my mission—and peace of mind, for that matter. What I need is a quick path to Fillydelphia.”

Zecora lifted an eyebrow, spurring Macintosh into elaboration. “I can’t risk taking the train,” he said, shifting his eyes to the hut’s round window. “If anypony recognized me and reported to my sister, I’d have one heck of a mess to clean up. No; I need an alternative mode of transportation to cross half of Equestria as quickly as possible.” He offset his jaw and looked back to the zebra. “Any ideas?”

“A journey to the fields by the eastern sea traversed as quickly as can be.” She nodded thoughtfully and moved to an overhead cupboard, swinging its doors open with a nudge of her snout. Inside was a small pair of Zebraharan drums and a large, rolled scroll. Zecora took the curled parchment in her mouth and brought it to the table on which Macintosh had placed his hat. He placed it back over his ears, leaving room for her to smooth out the large square of yellowed paper. On it was painted a map of Equestria.

Zecora pointed to the Everfree Forest with the tip of her hoof. “For speed and secrecy, the fastest way seems to be rafting to Horseshoe Bay.” She slid her hoof along the river that flowed east from the forest, stopping at a round inlet above the Hayseed Swamps. “In one or two days, you will arrive at Baltimare. Fillydelphia, you see, is not far north from there.”

Macintosh’s wide eyes were locked on Manehattan Island. “Applejack… walked there?” he asked quietly.

“Hmm?”

He shook his head. “Nothing, sorry. Ride the river down to Baltimare, you say?”

“If ‘quick and quiet’ is what you seek, no other route will take less than a week.”

Macintosh nodded. “Then it’s perfect.” He glanced hopefully at the zebra. “You don’t happen to have a little boat I can borrow, do you?”

“I do not think a boat would serve you well,” she said, rolling up the map, “unless in Baltimare you plan to dwell. A disposable raft you can leave to the river would be a more practical craft to deliver.”

“Good thinking, Zecora,” Macintosh agreed, straightening the black canvas duster that draped over his back. “I’ll get to making one right away.”

“One more piece of advice I feel I must impart,” Zecora said, stopping him with a hoof on his shoulder. “The river is a swamp here in the Forest’s heart. The strong flow of its water will not be your assister until the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.”

Macintosh snorted. “I’m familiar. I’ll go there now and build my raft. Do you have anything you’re willing to part with that might be helpful on the journey?”

A lively glint in Zecora’s eye confirmed the Knight’s question. She spun around and began to rummage through her many bizarre belongings, muttering to herself in her native tongue. Macintosh picked up simple words like “where”, “stupid”, and “magic”, but his Zebraharan was still at elementary levels. His missions for the Order, though increasingly frequent, had never taken him south of the Badlands.

“Ah! Here they are! I believe these will help.” Zecora turned again and laid three items at Macintosh’s hooves. “A canteen, a torch, and a length of green kelp.”

Macintosh was careful not to lift a skeptical eyebrow and waited for the zebra to explain.

“All three are enchanted with ancient zebra charms. Treat them with care, Sir Macintosh; I’d hate to see them harmed.” She narrowed her eyes sternly before continuing. “The canteen is eternal, and whatever liquid fills it will never drain until another liquid substance kills it.”

“You mean to say that whatever drink I put in there will never run out?”

Zecora nodded. Macintosh smiled and took the round, brown canteen from the floor.

“The torch’s fire needs no source except the words of a needful horse.”

Experimentally, Macintosh lifted the thinner end of the torch in his mouth. “Light up,” he managed to say around the wood. Its other end ignited instantly, casting a sparkling blue light that bathed the hut in a steady glow. “Perfect,” Macintosh said, looking gratefully into Zecora’s proud eyes. Shaking the torch put the fire out and Macintosh added it to the stealthy saddlebag under his cloak.

“The kelp is of the rarest breed,” Zecora said, twirling the long, green strip of rubbery seaweed around her hoof and offering it to the red stallion. “When eaten, air you will not need.”

Macintosh blanched at the stuff. “Uh… what do you mean?”

“If any small amount you rip off and eat, you will still breathe in places that air does not meet.”

“So it lets me breathe underwater?”

“In water, in caves where the air does not flow, in tightly closed spaces—to these you may go.”

“Great,” Macintosh said in a low voice, taking the slimy plant from around her hoof. He held back a gag and tucked it quickly into a pocket of his duster. “I hope I don’t have to use that,” he admitted, grimacing. “I don’t like seaweed.”

“Then I too, for your sake, hope you need it not,” Zecora said, “though it may save your life in a perilous spot.”

“I’ll remember that,” Macintosh promised, tipping his hat to her. “So long, and thanks for all the kelp. Er, help.”

Zecora chuckled. “You’re quite welcome, dear Apple Knight. I pray your paths are pure this night.”

As the Sun set on Ponyville, its biggest and reddest inhabitant moved quickly through the Everfree Forest. After a brief run-in with a manticore, Big Macintosh was only minutes from the ruins—with a number of sharp teeth and a large, poisonous stinger added to his arsenal. They could be fashioned into useful weapons somewhere down the road, just in case his mission led to dangerous circumstances. He couldn’t imagine how a search for socks might escalate to physical violence, but he wasn’t taking any chances, especially when those socks were woven with the fabric of improbability. Quite literally, anything could happen.

He reached the river before he found the castle. Though it was shallow enough for him to cross on hoof, fishes of various sizes and species often leapt from the surface, arcing lazily through the Moonlit air. Attributing the senselessness to magic—something he, as an earth pony, did often—Macintosh trotted to a rotting tree on the river’s mushy bank. With one swift buck to its blackening trunk, Macintosh split the dying plant into scores of useful chunks of wood. He removed two lengths of rope from his hidden saddlebags and began to fashion a large enough raft.

Fifteen minutes later, as Macintosh was hard at work, the river’s glassy surface began to tremor and churn. Pausing at his project, Macintosh looked upstream. A single frothy wave was careening along the river at startling speeds. Pulling his half-completed raft away from the riverbed, Macintosh watched as the thick white line whisked past him, disappearing around another bend. Mere moments later, the water had returned to its original calm.

Macintosh frowned. That had certainly been unusual, but was it improbable enough to investigate? He decided against it, focusing on the task at hoof. Before another fifteen minutes had passed, the resourceful stallion slid his raft into the gently flowing water and hopped aboard, lying on his stomach and using his tail as a sort of makeshift propeller.

Zecora had suggested that his trip to Baltimare would take more than a day. He made himself comfortable, coasting down the center of the river, trying to admire the strange beauty of the flanking forest. Before long, as the river picked up speed, the number of trees dwindled to none and Macintosh pulled his tail from the water. The gentle rush of the river reminded him how long it had been since he last slept. Luna’s softly glowing Moon invited him to slumber and leave her bizarre assignment to Future-Macintosh.

Macintosh’s skinny legs pounded against the tree. Again and again he kicked the trunk with all his might, sending flakes of bark twirling madly through the air. He growled in the back of his throat as he bucked, his young voice cracking under the strain.

He kicked and he bucked and he slammed his raw hooves, grunting and squeaking and crying all the while, for almost five whole minutes before his rage was interrupted.

“Now, what did that poor tree ever do to you?” a soft voice wavered. Macintosh’s blurry vision caught a short green mare to his left. Her question was bathed in concern and kindness.

“Go away, Granny,” Macintosh said with a sniffle, kicking the tree twice more. “I don’t wanna talk to nopony right now.”

“You sure about that, Macintosh?”

He didn’t answer, bucking and bucking with greater ferocity.

“One day you won’t be able to do that, you know,” Granny Smith said. “If you give it all you got, them hind legs o’ yers’ll split a trunk in two when you’re as big as yer daddy was.”

Macintosh gnashed his teeth. “Don’t you dare bring him up right now! I told you to go away!” His throat felt like an egg beater had spun around inside it. The bucks grew weaker with every tear and sob that left his face. “I don’t wanna th-think about them anymore!”

“Oh, Macintosh, surely you don’t mean that,” Granny Smith pled.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he shrieked between gasps. “What’s there to think about? How they’re gone? How th-they’re never comin’ back? How you w-won’t even tell us what happened to ‘em?”

Granny voice grew stern. “Macintosh, I told you many times: there was an accident.”

“What kind o’ accident kills two ponies at a pastry competition?” he sneered. “That may fool Applejack, but I ain’t a foal no more. I’m nearly a stallion! I know they weren’t where you say they were—heck, I wonder if they were ever where you s-said they were!”

A fresh wave of warm tears squeezed between his eyelids. He dropped to his quarters and curled up against the battered tree. “I just… I cain’t believe their just gone…”

“Oh, Macintosh,” Granny said again with a well of sympathy. Stepping forward, she let out a heavy sigh. “You’re right, Macintosh. You ain’t a foal no more. You’re growing into a fine young stallion, strong of body and keen of mind. But there are some things—some secrets—that you’re still too young to know. Even if I told you, you just wouldn’t understand yet.”

Macintosh made a noise as if in pain. Wilting, Granny Smith made her way to the skinny colt’s side and wrapped her wrinkled forelegs around his shaking frame. To her relief, he buried his freckled face into her coat.

“You will know someday, Macintosh. You’ll get the whole truth.” She sighed again, sadly this time. “The whole truth. When one swift buck from your Apple Family kickers can crack any o’ these trees clean in half, just like yer father’s could, then you’ll understand. Then you’ll be ready. It’s just a matter o’ time.”

He could only whimper into her shoulder. She stroked his straw-colored mane with a gentle, loving hoof, waiting for the quiet night to calm his sobs and—

Macintosh gasped as a cold wave of river water rushed onto his raft. It soaked the fur of his belly and made him leap to his hooves, causing the wooden square to wobble. Macintosh locked his knees, staying as still as a statue until the raft resumed a steady float. The first beams of Sunlight were shooting from the horizon like spotlights; their reflections on the river danced in Macintosh’s eyes.

He snorted through his nose and pulled the hat from his head, blinking away the images of that vivid dream. Holding the hat to his chest, he angrily tossed his mane. His dreams hadn’t been haunted by his parents’ death for years. Frowning, he surveyed his surroundings in hopes of a distraction.

The water was choppier than it had been when Macintosh fell asleep. Looking over his shoulder, the Knight noticed another river emptying into his own a few hundred feet back. Its additional water disrupted the flow, which also explained his rude awakening. Shaking droplets of water from his back legs, Macintosh tried to picture Zecora’s map of Equestria. If his memory was reliable, two rivers converged about halfway to Horseshoe Bay. Another look at the Sunrise, a quick estimation, and Macintosh suspected he would reach Baltimare close to midday.

With a patient breath, he lowered himself back onto the raft and began to admire the bright, lively forest which grew along the riverbeds. The trees flew past him on either side, reminding him of the river’s imperceptible speed. He relaxed as deeply as possible, both grateful that Zecora’s wisdom was saving him a lengthy trek, and knowing full well his next chance to relax would not likely be soon.

As was designed, the raft fell to pieces as soon as Macintosh untied his rope. He watched the chunks of wood speed down the river and drown at the mouth of Horseshoe Bay while he coiled his ropes into storable circles. Once they were tucked beneath his duster, Macintosh turned and began to gallop north.

In his youth, Macintosh had never been a particularly strong pony. He worked the farm as best he could, helping his parents gather apples, squeeze cider, and prepare Zap Apple Jam. It wasn’t until he matured—many years after their deaths—that the Apple family genes kicked in. Intensive farm labor had transformed a shy, gangly colt into a composed, burly stallion. Little did the inhabitants of Ponyville know that the quiet farmer’s plow was not his only tool of exercise. During his year of rigorous training under the Order of the Apple, Macintosh learned endurance along with strength, speed along with agility, and combat along with strategy. His hooves hammered over the grassy outskirts of Baltimare, carrying him at near-pegasus speeds toward the great City Hall.

The alabaster building was as beautiful as it was imposing. As he neared the giant, domed hall, he appreciated its Baroquine architecture, noticing ancient Equestrian symbols sculpted seamlessly into its décor. Even the Order of the Apple’s crest was hidden among the entablature. The nearer he came to the city, the slower his pace became, until he slipped right into the bustling crowds of Baltimare’s afternoon.

He made his way across the city to the eastern edge. The giant ocean gleamed on the horizon. The distant crashing of its waves was friendly to Macintosh’s ears. He had crossed that ocean nearly a dozen times now, mostly to settle political disputes with the griffons or Haissan.

Turning northward, Macintosh could see Fillydelphia’s tallest skyscrapers above another forests’ treetops. If he hurried, he could reach the city before Sundown, but would likely be too exhausted to do much else. He wrinkled his snout. At times like these, he envied winged ponies.

Then again, there was a reason the Order of the Apple came from a family of exclusively earth ponies. Pegasi were too headstrong and impatient for the work of a secret Knight; unicorns were too intellectual, prone to overthink their assignments. The Princesses required exact obedience to their often unusual demands. Macintosh was still unaware of some of his completed missions’ purposes, but he had sworn himself to the Order and fully trusted the Princesses. He would do what he was asked to do when he was asked to do it, whether he completely understood its benefits or not. That was the Order’s creed.

He made his way to the sandy coastline and began his long gallop north. He was a machine, each part of his body snapping back and forth in perfect harmony and rhythm, thrusting his frame along the shore like a train engine rather than a pony. Sand sprayed from his hind hooves in a cycling geyser. His shortcut tail flapped in his wake like a royal flag, the banner of one advancing into war. Macintosh’s war, however, was mostly with time. Time, socks, and improbability.

He rested two or three times along the empty beach, munching on a measure of oats or gulping down a nutritious apple. Before too long, the forest to his distant left gave way to Fillydelphia. The city, too, he galloped past, focusing his eyes on the orchard covered hills enveloped in a swirling smog of sand.

The closer he came to the Delicious Orchards, the more his face and cloak were pelted with tiny, harsh granules. He grimaced at the grit and pushed on, refusing to slow his gallop until the farm’s main homestead was within a hundred feet. At that point, the air was so thick with raging sand that Macintosh had to keep a hoof pressed on his hat.

“Uncle Strudel!” he bellowed over the roar of the storm, pounding on the front door with his free front hoof. “Open up, Uncle Strudel! It’s Macintosh!”

The door swung open, revealing a thin, mustachioed stallion wearing green lederhosen. “Ooohhh-ho-ho!” he crooned, extending his hoof under Macintosh’s hat and violently rubbing his scalp. “Noogie-noogie-noogie!”

“Gah!” Macintosh swatted his hoof away. “Uncle Strudel, I’m alone! I’m on a mission!”

The old stallion’s goofy smile vanished in an instant. “Well why didn’t ya say so, you overweight lummox?” He snorted and stepped aside. “Hurry up and come in if you’re gonna. Lettin’ in too much sand.”

Macintosh grumbled under his breath. While his cousins, Golden and Red, were delightful mares and excellent bakers, their father Apple Strudel was far less than pleasant—when he revealed his true, grizzled, Order-veteran self to Macintosh, at least.

“So.” Apple Strudel slammed the door shut and gave his scarlet nephew a sidelong glance. “The big girls have you doing more of their laundry, do they?”

Macintosh couldn’t help but chuckle. “Quite literally. I’m looking for Luna’s magic socks.”

Apple Strudel’s expression didn’t change. A stale silence hung in the air between the secret Knights.

Eventually, the elder stallion shrugged. “I found stranger,” he droned, trotting slowly to another room. Macintosh followed him, doubting his honesty.

“They’ve been missing for twenty years and they can take on any size or style,” Macintosh said. “The socks control improbability.”

Strudel lifted a brow. “That’s… unusual.”

“You ever deal with something like this?” Macintosh asked. “Any advice for me?”

“Don’t panic,” Apple Strudel counseled. “And make sure you have a towel with you.”

Macintosh reeled. “A towel?”

Again, Apple Strudel’s shoulders twitched apathetically. “They’re useful.”

“Yeah, okay,” Macintosh said succinctly, rolling his eyes. “I’ll cut to the chase. I think this storm has something to do with the socks.”

“Oh?” Apple Strudel pursed his lips and looked to the ceiling. “Hmm…. It is quite improbably fortunate, what with your farm needing help at the moment.”

“My thoughts exactly.” His emerald eyes peeked out the window. “Where’s the sand coming from, Uncle Strudel?”

Apple Strudel chortled coldly. “How should I know? I don’t have the faculties of body to do any explorin’ these days, especially in this blasted weather.” He scowled. “I probably don’t have to ask you to do the detective work for me, but I do ask that you’ll come back and report when you figure it out. I’ve been mighty curious for more than a week now.”

“Will do,” Macintosh promised, shaking the sand in the brim of his hat into a waste basket. The noise of the stuff as it fell to the bottom caught his attention. He took a few grains in the flat of his hoof and held them close to his eye.

“These are… pretty small…” he said.

“Well, it is sand,” Apple Strudel mocked.

“No, I mean… it’s fine,” he said, holding the grains toward his uncle. “Doesn’t look like regular land-sand to me.”

Apple Strudel narrowed his eyes at the stuff, his brow rising ever higher. “Luna’s nipple, you’re right. That’s sea-sand if I ever saw some.”

“I just came from the shore,” Macintosh said, tossing the grains to the ground. “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Wasn’t paying much attention, though. I’ll go down and give it a closer look.”

“Better bring a towel,” Apple Strudel said seriously.

Macintosh smirked. “In case my hoofsies get wet?”

Frowning, Apple Strudel pulled a large grey towel from a low cabinet in the kitchen and tossed it Macintosh’s way. “Just take it.”

Macintosh shrugged and stored the folded towel into the airtight saddlebag under the cloak on his right side. “Anything else you care to give me?”

Strudel snorted again. “I’m sure that zebra of yours gave you plenty of goodies,” he said with a sneer.

Clenching his jaw, Macintosh turned and left the house without another word. He lowered his head against the wind, letting his hat deflect most of the sand. From hill to hill he trotted back to the ocean, surprised to find the gale of sand grow stronger toward the water. Was all this sand really coming from the shore? What sort of devilish wind was spewing this much for this long?

Trudging through the orchards straight into the whipping wind, Macintosh took notice of the damage to trees—or, rather, the lack of damage. Though the sand was visibly bombarding every apple, the fruit seemed largely unaffected, swaying gently from their stems. He offset his jaw as he studied one closely. The skin was not even scratched in the least.

The brim of his hat hid his view of the ocean until his hoof touched the shore. At that point he braved a peek into the storm and dropped his jaw at what he saw.

From the side, it was invisible. Dead on, Macintosh was gazing into a hole in the ocean. As if a giant rodent had burrowed a tunnel into the water, a cylindrical tube began right at the shore and descended at an angle to what seemed like the bottom of the sea. The entrance was vomiting metric tons of fine, bright sand in a cyclonic wind that bathed Delicious Orchards in a magical, senseless storm.

“That’s… impossible,” Macintosh breathed.

His granny’s voice swam through his head, imbued with wry encouragement. “Magic is as magic does, just funny that way.”

“Eeyup,” Macintosh said, pulling his hat tighter over his ears and approaching the gaping vortex. “Real funny.”

The watery tunnel acted much like a slide, or perhaps the barrel of a gun. As soon as Macintosh set hoof inside the massive fissure’s inner wall, it swept him up and threw him down into the darker depths.

Macintosh refrained from yelping, gritting his teeth and peeling his eyes in spite of the wind and sand. He sat on his haunches on the strangely solid slope, allowing his canvas duster to billow wildly behind him. The changes in pressure did a number on his ears. Popping a whole apple into his mouth, he chewed on the stem and seeds to help his inner ears adjust.

The light grew eerily dim as he dropped at a steady speed. He tried not to imagine what bizarre creatures of the deep were watching him descend behind the circular wall of water.

A fish the size of his Cutie Mark jumped through the open space some distance below Macintosh. He watched it fall into the other side and disappear among the nearly black water. Curiously, he pushed one hoof through the wall as well. It created a beautiful, crisscrossing wake along the vertical liquid plane. Macintosh smiled at its otherworldly beauty—and gasped as a many-toothed creature latched on from the other side.

He pulled his hoof back into the tunnel, wincing at the large, misshapen fish that chomped and growled at the end of his limb. Trying to shake it off, Macintosh lost his balance, spinning and twirling with the magical current and losing his sense of direction. At some point the monstrous fish let go of his hoof, but Macintosh’s fear only doubled at his loss of control.

And then, suddenly, the slope leveled out. Macintosh slammed into a shifting pile of white sand at the bottom of the ocean. The tunnel continued east, further into the water, with a dry, sandy ground on which a pony could comfortably trot. The Knight squirmed out of the mound of sand—clearly the supply of the storm, seeing as the wind caught uppermost layers and shot them up to the mouth of the tube—and regained his composure in the comparatively stagnant, horizontal path.

There was no wind there. It seemed to start from nowhere at the bottom of the slope. Swallowing the mushed remains of the helpful apple in his mouth, Macintosh straightened his cloak and hat and marched over the sand.

Light from the surface dwindled to none the farther into the ocean he trot. Pulling Zecora’s torch from his pack, he lit it with a vocal request, illuminating the path ahead with a soft blue glow. He wondered where it would lead. Whether or not the tunnel had anything to do with Luna’s missing socks, it was worth investigation. The Princesses would want to know about something this bizarre.

The cylindrical water tunnel flowed and bent around him, casting strange shadows by the light of the zebra-charmed torch. He steeled his nerves against the wavering movements, ready for danger without cowering from it. Every deliberate step left a small crater in the powdery sand.

A particularly large shadow to his left caught Macintosh’s attention. He ignored it, moving forward with intense determination.

The shadow moved along with him.

With a knot in his stomach, Macintosh stole a quick glance at the concave wall. To his worry’s credit, the tall, dark spot along the water resembled the form of a pony. The Knight excused it as his own silhouette and bit the torch tighter, dispelling any traces of fear…

Until the seagreen face of a pony burst through the water and smiled at him.

Macintosh let out a low scream and sprinted down the magical corridor, leaving his fallen torch in the sand. His hooves thundered beneath him, reverberating in the narrow tube and heightening his panic. He skid to a stop, scattering grains of sand into the surrounding ocean, and pulled the manticore’s stinger from his pack. Breathing hard, he faced the left wall with the impromptu weapon held defensively between his hooves, waiting for a watery attack.

A dripping hoof tapped him on the shoulder. Macintosh spun around—roaring—and tried to plunge the stinger’s point into the creature’s neck. He ended up swinging aimlessly through the air as the hoof pulled back into the ocean with a quiet splash. On the ground, instead, was Zecora’s torch, illuminating the frazzled stallion with a calm, sapphiric glow.

He breathed through tightly clenched teeth for a while, staring at the torch in disbelief. Glancing at the stinger in his grasp, he suddenly tossed it away, lifting the peaceful torch in the crook of one foreleg. Holding it close to the liquid tunnel, Macintosh peered into the darkness beyond.

“Who are you?” he croaked, fighting to control his shivering limbs. His ears twitched as he drew in a giant breath. “Who are you!?” he called into the water.

A pair of shining eyes appeared near the torchlight. Macintosh gasped and stared at them for many silent seconds. They stared, unblinking, back at him. Though distorted by the medium between its eyes and his, Macintosh took note of their dark blue irises and smiley squint. Their familiarity was as shocking as it was beautiful. There was no question: those were pony eyes.

“What are you?” he whispered.

As if in answer, a pale green hoof emerged from below the glowing orbs. Macintosh stepped back in fright; the hoof paused in its path. They were still. Gulping, Macintosh slowly moved forward; so did the hoof. Before long, it had broke the surface all the way to its elbow. Examining the foreign limb, Macintosh noticed a line of small fins growing through its short, matted fur, like the spiny scales of a dragon made of gossamer and morning dew.

The pair of disembodied eyes seemed to “smile” even wider as the hoof swayed back and forth. It took Macintosh a moment to realize it was waving at him. A goofy smile adorned his face as he lifted his free hoof to wave back.

It pointed down the tunnel in the direction Macintosh had been going and jabbed the air a couple times. As soon as Macintosh nodded, the hoof slunk back into the wall. The eyes vanished into the darkness of the deep and left the earth pony alone.

“Whoa.”

Placing the torch between his teeth, Macintosh took off down the long, straight corridor, eager to see those eyes again. Could it be true? Was there any chance that a race of ponies lived in secret beneath the sea? The notion alone seemed highly improbable…

And with that thought, Macintosh’s awestruck smile broke into a full blown beam.

“Do you think he is the one?”

“Of course he is! How could he not be?”

“Clarify what you mean by ‘the one’, High Tide.”

“The one to save us. The one to set us free.”

“Of course he is! Just look at him… what a hunk!”

“Attractiveness has very little to do with capability, Sea Shimmer.”

“Well, sure, but you gotta admit: he’s cuuuuuute!”

“I will admit that.”

“… As will I.”

“Come along, girls. We must prepare the city for him. The Garment can only do so much.”

“And by that you mean everything, right? Heehee! Who knew a magic thingamabob could be so useful if you just asked it to be?”

“It has certainly given us hope, but we cannot rely on it to finish the job. We must intervene”

“Awwww… whyyyy? Can’t we just float back and watch him take those bullies down? I bet it’s gonna be one Desert of a show!”

“He knows nothing at this point, Sea Shimmer. We must inform him of the enemy if he is to vanquish them for us.”

“Wavebreaker is right. The poor stallion must be terrified.”

“Hmph. I guess you’re both right. Hiiihhh… Okay, let’s go help him out.”

“He seems to have taken a liking to you, Shimmer.”

“Huwaaaie! Really? You think so?”

“Do you see the look on his face? Unless the land-ponies are really as backward as the old tales suggest—which I doubt is the case—he appears terribly excited to find you again.”

“Eeeeeeeep! Haha! I knew it! He likes me! Heeheeheehee…”

“Oh dear, Wavebreaker. Heheh… what have you done?”

“I apologize already.”

The tunnel led into a large dome of senselessly suspended water. It peaked some fifteen feet above Macintosh’s head. The darkness was so absolute in the space that the torch’s light didn’t reach more than two ponylengths in front of him.

The sand beneath Macintosh’s hooves gave way to a cold floor composed of many large, smooth slabs of grey stone. The clop of his iron horseshoes echoed unpredictably, assaulting both of his ears at random. Having no idea what to expect, he moved across the atrium cautiously, aimed for the center of the dome. Its clinging darkness scattered from the blue light by his face, and a motionless figure suddenly loomed just beyond his range of clarity.

One of his eyes twitched, but he did not slow his stride. The nearer he drew to the dome’s central effigy, the clearer—and more baffling—it became. When every detail was illuminated by the magic light, Macintosh’s jaw fell slack with disbelief. The torch clattered to the cobblestones and rolled to the statue’s base, painting its painfully familiar face with streaks of jagged shadows.

“No way,” Macintosh muttered. His whispering danced through the dome all the same.

Before him stood the massive likeness of a great white shark. Shaped into a pose of action, the statue seemed to be swimming at prey, bent into a projecting S and holding its deadly jaws wide. Macintosh grimaced at the details in the gritty stone, following its body with his eyes. The beast was suspended on a pillar of dark polished stone which, in turn, sprouted from a wide, square base. Upon the base was a shiny plaque engraved with inequine characters, and lying behind the plaque was…

Macintosh’s abdomen clenched. Taking a few quick trots nearer to the statue, he drank in the blessed vision lit by his grounded torch.

A long, wool sock of midnight blue lay pulsing and quivering beneath the sculpted shark. Macintosh sighed with elated relief and reached out a similarly quivering hoof to pick up the magical tube.

“Stop!”

A strange voice ricocheted around the liquid sphere, making it impossible to identify the source. Macintosh leapt back and scanned every lit part of the room.

“Who’s there?” he thundered, rising to his full height. “Step into the light!”

“Step?” asked a high pitched voice, similar in tone to the first but surely different. “What does that mean?”

A groan joined in the echoes next.

“Sea Shimmer! You promised to be quiet!”

“You said I could answer if he asked me a question,” the bubbly voice reminded.

“He didn’t ask you a question, he asked Wavebreaker a question!”

“Nuh-uh! He didn’t say her name! Did you hear him say her name? I didn’t hear him say her name! Hey, Wavebreaker, did you hear him say your name?”

Macintosh’s ears twitched, flattening and straightening in an attempt to pinpoint the voices. It seemed like they were coming from directly above him, but that couldn’t be right…

“Girls, please!” hissed a third voice, the same that had shouted “Stop!” “Both of you, quiet down. Can’t you see your making him panic?”

Macintosh became aware of his shuffling hooves and slammed them down into a bold stance.

“Where are you?” he finally asked, frustrated with his ears’ calibration.

“Heehee! We’re right up here, silly!”

Swallowing once, Macintosh lifted his gaze. At the uppermost curve of the dome, three faces hung upside-down from the water, allowing their manes to sway and drip onto the stony shark.

Manes… faces…

Pony faces.

All became still and completely silent, save for the gentle slosh of the surrounding dome. Macintosh’s swelling eyes analyzed each face: all three were mares, and pretty ones at that; their coats were pink, yellow, and pale green with blue, pink, and turquoise manes, respectively. The pink one bore a stern, but kind, expression, and appeared to be the oldest. The yellow one, who looked a great deal like Fluttershy, was glaring at the third face with annoyance. The green one, who Macintosh assumed was the owner of the bubbly voice, wore a giant, carefree smile that even Pinkie Pie would have gawked at.

“Hi!” she called down to him. Her voice seemed distant, somehow, as if coming through a gramophone. “I’m Sea Shimmer! Remember me?” She stuck a green hoof into the air bubble and waved enthusiastically.

A smile came back to Macintosh’s lips. “I-I do remember,” he said, chuckling. “Hello, Sea Shimmer.”

“You can call me Sea Shimmer, if you want, but most ponies just call me Shimmer. Unless they’re mad at me, then they like to use my whole name for the extra oomph!”

“Stop shouting, Sea Shimmer!” the yellow one growled into her ear.

Shimmer giggled. “See?”

“How did you get up there?” he asked. Realizing the backwardness of his situation, he added, “Or rather, how did you get down here in the first place?”

“We live down here, silly!” Sea Shimmer chirped.

Macintosh’s brow went up. “You do?”

“Sea Shimmer, please,” the pink one said in a level voice. “Let me explain it to him.”

“Ng’awwww… fine.” The green face pushed her lips to one side and rose into the water, disappearing from sight.

“What is your name, landpony?” the pink face continued.

Macintosh blinked. “Macintosh Apple,” he replied. “And yours?”

“I am Wavebreaker,” she said, nodding politely. “This is High Tide, and you’ve met Sea Shimmer. We are the Prince’s royal messengers.”

“The Princess?” Macintosh repeated, rotating his ears towards the overhead ponies to cancel out some of the atrium’s reverb. “Did Luna send you to follow me?”

“Luna?” Wavebreaker asked. “I am not familiar with the name. We are servants of Prince Calupan, God of the Sea, and we require your assistance, Macintosh Apple.”

The silence in the dome became tangible, pressing on Macintosh’s back like a cart full of dirt.

“Uh… you can call me Big Mac,” he managed to cough.

“Big Mac?” Sea Shimmer’s voice erupted from behind him. He whirled around, surprised to see her seafoam green face poking out of the water at eye level. Her bright blue eyes were half closed, her turquoise mane draped and dripping over half of her face. “I’d love to see why they call you that.”

“Sea Shimmer!” High Tide shrieked, vanishing from above. Wavebreaker sighed and shook her head, which began to migrate down the wall like a droplet on a windowpane.

Sea Shimmer’s smirking head was yanked forcibly into the ocean by a yellow hoof. Wavebreaker took her place, looking to Macintosh with sad, purple eyes.

“How did you…?” he mumbled, glancing back and forth between the peak of the dome and her new location. He gulped. “Do you really… live down here?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Sea Shimmer’s piercing voice attacked the air once more from an unseen spot of the dome.

“It’s not that hard, Big Mac! Then again, we don’t have any extra hooves to slosh through all the—”

“There you are!” A splash, and then silence.

“Extra hooves?” Macintosh asked, turning back to Wavebreaker with a bewildered expression. “What in Equestria is she talking about?”

Wavebreaker tilted her head. “What is Equestria? Is that what you call the land?”

Macintosh’s faced pulled into a confused grimace. “What? Yes, the… that land up there, it’s in Equestria… it’s a whole country, takes up most of the North Amareican continent…”

His words faded away as he watched the pony’s movement—or lack thereof. Her face was staying almost completely still, sticking out of the watery wall like a permanent fixture. If anypony he knew was in that water—assuming they could somehow sink to the bottom of the ocean—all their kicking and paddling would throw their head every which way, not to mention how quickly they would tire…

“What are you?” he asked, feeling his heart pick up the pace.

“We are seaponies,” she answered plainly. A thin, pink tendril broke through the water beneath her face like a snake, startling Macintosh. It stayed where it was, shifting left and right amidst the water with a gentle curl. He stared it in horror until something finally clicked: the head and the tendril were coming from the same body.

“Sweet Celestia…” he breathed, taking off his hat in respect and reverence.

“Do not be frightened,” Wavebreaker continued with a warm smile, pulling her tail back into the sea. “We are much like you, landpony. And as members of the same family, we plead for your help in our time of suffering.”

“Suffering…” he said, turning his head toward the shark statue. He pointed at it with his hat. “How did you get that sock?”

Wavebreaker’s brow creased. “Excuse me?”

“The sock. The sock in the middle of the dome,” he said, thrusting his hat in its direction. “How did you find it?”

“I think he refers to the Garment.” High Tide’s voice came from the right. Her yellow face glided along the wall until it came to a stop beside Wavebreaker’s.

“Ah.” Wavebreaker nodded. “Of course. The Garment has been among us for nearly twenty years. It was discovered among the wreckage of a large sunken craft of landpony design. If our scholars translated its markings correctly, the vessel was named the Trotanic.”

Macintosh gasped. “Of course. The Unsinkable Ship.”

“Unsinkable?” asked High Tide. “But… it sunk.”

“The chances of the Trotanic sinking,” Macintosh remembered, nodding gravely, “were over a million to one. It was very… improbable.”

The seaponies looked at each other. “It’s funny you should say that,” High Tide continued. “For many years, the Garment was locked away deep in a temple of runes on account of its… unusual affects.”

“Say no more,” Macintosh said, holding up a hoof. “I’m on a mission to find this very sock, and three others like it. Their magic controls improbability—making that which is unlikely to happen, happen. What I don’t understand is how you managed to make it do this.” He gestured to the dome and the tunnel leading into it.

“What, the thingamabob?” Sea Shimmer asked, emerging on the other side of Wavebreaker to High Tide’s visible dismay. “I love the thingamabob! I wish I had twenty!”

“Who cares?” growled High Tide, offering Macintosh an apologetic glance.

He waved his hoof. “No big deal. I want more information.” He looked at Sea Shimmer. “What do you know about the sock?”

“That it’ll do what you ask it to, as longs as it’s crazy enough!” she chirped, suddenly zipping up the wall and twirling on its surface, splashing on the mystical barrier between the water and air.

“You asked it for this?” Macintosh asked Wavebreaker.

“The Garment was infamous for its power,” she explained. “We thought that, perhaps, if we found a way to control it, we might be able to free ourselves from our bondage.”

“What bondage?” Macintosh asked.

High Tide bowed her head as Wavebreaker continued in a conspiratorial whisper. “The seaponies of Oatlantis have slaved under captivity for generations. Rebellions have risen and fallen like the tide, but our kind is no match for their power. We thought the controlling the Garment would give us a fin up. Instead, when asked for a way to set us free, it created this. We believed it was a sign that somepony was coming from the land, somepony that would set us free.” Her tired eyes brightened and a smile graced her lips. “You are that somepony, Macintosh Apple. You must be.”

“You just… asked it?” he clarified. “How do you mean that?”

“I wasn’t there,” Wavebreaker admitted. “None of us were. The Magicians brought it to the center of the city and—”

“Worked their magic!” Sea Shimmer cackled at herself, spinning directly above Macintosh and pelting him with droplets of cold water.

High Tide groaned and disappeared again, followed by the predictable disappearance of Sea Shimmer and her makeshift rain. Clearing his throat, Macintosh trotted closer to Wavebreaker and her part of the wall.

“Is it… sentient?” he asked.

“The Garment? I do not know.” Wavebreaker shook her head. “But it cannot be moved. I apologize for shouting at you when you approached it, but the last time a pony tried to relocate the Garment, the tunnel of air began to collapse. I did not want you to drown.”

“Well, then, thank you kindly,” Macintosh said, placing his hat back on his head, “but I will need to find a way to take it back with me to the land.”

Wavebreaker pursed her lips in thought. “If you help us,” she said, “then the Garment is yours.”

“And how exactly can I help you?” he asked, stepping even closer to her pink and weary face. “Who keeps the seaponies captive, and where is Oatlantis?”

“Silly Big Mac!” Sea Shimmer said from nopony knows where. “You’re already in Oatlantis!”

Suddenly, a thousand lights ignited in the ocean. Macintosh shielded his eyes from the sudden exposure, stepping away from the glittering wall of the dome. He gnashed his teeth and squeezed his eyelids tightly, slowly peeling them to peek around his lifted hoof.

Wavebreaker was in exactly the same position, smiling sweetly at the stallion—but he could see all of her through the slightly distorting bubble. Her body, while quite similar to an earth pony’s until the waist, extended seamlessly into a long, curling tail the same color as her coat. It drifted calmly through the water as she hovered, nearly motionless, just outside the dome, her head poking through to the base of her neck.

Behind her, the scenery took Macintosh’s breath away. He was standing in the center of an underwater metropolis, complete with towering, golden buildings and streets inlaid with cobblestones. Tall, decorative lampposts lined both sides of the streets, spilling light all through the water to reveal its color and life.

The city was virtually empty aside from himself and the three seapony mares, but even as he watched, more of the two-hoofed equines took to the streets from their homes and apartments. Many of them noticed him and quickly swam his way, extending their curly tails behind them and slithering forward like graceful eels. They were as diverse, colorful, and expressive as the ponies in his hometown. The only things they lacked were a pair of legs for bucking.

Slack-jawed and silent, Macintosh watched the seaponies gather around his bubble with looks of shock, excitement, and even relief. He heard their muffled murmurs through the barrier of air, but only Wavebreaker’s voice was clear:

“Daytime,” she succinctly explained. “Welcome to Oatlantis.”

“I think the Universe is confusing ‘convenience’ with ‘improbability’,” Macintosh finally said.

Wavebreaker blinked, something she did often while her face was in the dome of air. “Is that bad?”

“It’s a little frustrating,” he admitted, “and confusing, but certainly not bad. It seems far too good to be true: that I, searching for this very sock, would be the one to find tunnel? That you would need the help of someone with my expertise?”

“What are the odds?” High Tide asked with a wink.

“I found them!” a male’s voice echoed through the dome. A brown seapony with a silvery mane stuck half of his body through the barrier by High Tide and set a soggy crate on the ground. “Goodness, that thing is heavy out of the water.”

“Heheh… thank you, Nautilus,” Macintosh said, standing up to open the crate. Inside were a number of metal scraps, scavenged from the wrecks of various ships, that the seaponies stored in a warehouse for reuse.

“Are those the right kinds, Big Mac?” the seastallion asked.

“They’re perfect,” he said, smiling. “I’ll need a few hours to arrange them properly, but I think they’ll do just fine.” Turning to Wavebreaker, he asked, “Just how big are these things?”

She pointed to the statue behind him. “That is an accurate representation of their average size.”

Macintosh twisted around, scanning the stony shark with a predator’s eyes. “I see,” he said, frowning. “This won’t be easy.”

“But you can do it?” High Tide asked.

Macintosh’s ears twitched. “How long do I have before they make their first rounds?”

Nautilus lifted a hoof to his face, around which was bound a strangely marked watch of sorts. “They come at midday,” he answered, “in about six hours.”

After a long sigh, Macintosh rummaged through the wooden crate and removed a long iron rod. “It’s worth a shot, anyway,” he said with a shrug. He bit his lip. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but why doesn’t your prince deal with them?”

All three seaponies inside the dome frowned. “How would he do that?” asked Nautilus.

Macintosh shuffled his back hooves. “Doesn’t he have all sorts of magical powers? Ain’t he an alicorn?”

“A what?” High Tide asked.

Macintosh cleared his throat. “Never mind,” he said, sticking his snout into the crate and examining several pieces of metal. “I’ll be ready when the sharks come. You’re sure that’s all I have to do?”

“Hmm?” Wavebreaker asked. “Oh, yes. Yes, that will mark this as our territory and keep the sharks away forever.”

“I hope you’re right,” the Knight said, planting himself beside the crate and setting aside several pieces, “for all your sakes.”

Midday came quickly. As a series of harrowing gongs rang through the water, many ponies swam into the nearest, largest buildings. It seemed as though the brilliant lamps of Oatlantis dimmed as a heavy silence blanketed the town in the wake of its sonic warning.

Sea Shimmer whisked through the city streets, leaving behind a horizontal column of bubbles that shot toward the distant surface. Between her anxious hooves was a slippery black bag. She struggled to keep it in her grasp as she gyred and gimbled her tail at full speed.

She barreled around a corner and squeaked in fright, flattening herself against the wall of the nearest building. Though her destination was in sight, the statue was no longer the only shark in the water.

“Ha!” a bluish beast with a conical nose barked. “Tell me, Dorsal. Why does the first pony we see always try to hide?”

A pale orange female smirked beneath her wide-set eyes. “Instinct, I imagine. She things we’re going to eat her.”

“Eugh!” The blue shark stuck his tongue out past rows of serrated fangs. “Eating a seapony? They’re far too bony for my taste. Takes hours to pull the ribs out of my teeth. I can’t think of anything more painful.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a sizzling projectile lodged into the base of his throat. His upper fins automatically reached for the wound even as his mind slowly registered the pain. His pupils shrunk with every failed breath until they rolled back in his head.

“Cutthroat!” the female hammerhead shouted, diving below him to examine the entry. The third shark—a bulky great white—eyed the scene with nothing but disappointment and began to search for the source of the shot. His attention was pulled to Sea Shimmer as she hurried down another street away from the center of the city and its dangerous company.

“What are you waiting for?” Dorsal shouted at her hulking companion. “Go after her!”

“She didn’t attack,” he said, barely moving his lips.

“What? Of course she did!”

“It came from below,” he said, dropping his gaze. “What is it, anyway?”

Dorsal turned back to the blue shark and grimaced at the greenish ooze leaking from between his jaws. Though his extremities twitched, the fish was obviously dead. Holding in her lunch, Dorsal stuck her fin into the gaping hole in her late companion’s neck and extracted the projectile.

“It looks like some kinda… giant thorn,” she said, carrying the thing to her leader and letting the blue shark’s body drift away. As she held it out for the great white to take a look, three smaller shells ripped bleeding holes into her fin.

“Aaugh!” she screamed, pulling the damaged fin close to her chest and letting the larger chunk sink. “What the Desert was that?”

The great white sighed. “Find cover,” he suggested, staring down at his sculptured likeness on the seafloor. “They are not likely finished.”

“Does this having something to do with that freaky tunnel they made? I told that thing was trouble!”

“Find cover,” he repeated, swinging his massive tail in a slow cycle. While Dorsal swam for the safety of an alleyway, her leader descended to street level. He sneered at the cobblestones arranged among the sand. Why ponies were so bent on making everything stylish, he would never know.

“Show yourself, pony,” he called out in a low, bored voice. “I know you’re down here. Your stunts may have incapacitated my crewfish, but we are both aware you do not have the… heheh… ‘firepower’ to kill me.” He smirked, turning his head left and right to scan the city center. That useless bubble made it hard to view the whole area at once. “Swim out and face the consequences of your incredibly stupid actions. Scavenged landpony technology won’t help you now. Seaponies are not built to use their tools.”

A glowing chunk of pointed wood suddenly burst through the magical membrane around his statue. He had only enough time to glance at it before the makeshift torpedo took his right eye’s place in its socket.

“Raaaawwwuuurrgghh!” the great white roared, throwing his massive head back in agony.

Inside the bubble, Macintosh smiled.

“Sorry, Jaws,” he said. “I ain’t no seapony.”

Behind him, a splash was followed by a frantic voice.

“Big Mac! Hey!” Sea Shimmer said, leaning into the bubble from above and panting heavily. “Nice shot! I brought those rocks you asked for! Sorry for taking so long.”

“You’re just in time,” he said, directing her with the wave of a hoof. “Swim up above and drop ‘em down to me.”

She nodded, gliding along the outside of the bubble until she was directly over the statue that Macintosh had built his launcher behind. “Whoa,” she said, dropping the black bag into his waiting hooves. “What’s that thing?”

“No clue,” Macintosh admitted, opening the bag and removing three red gems, “but it works.”

“That’s a nifty bag,” Sea Shimmer complimented. “Kinda hard to hold, though. Why’d you need those rocks to be dry?”

“Easier to heat,” he answered, grinding all three gems together under his hooves. Their magic activated quickly, heating to temperatures too scalding for Macintosh’s hooves. He reached into the same black, airtight bag and—rolling his eyes—removed a thick towel. Draping it over his hooves, he grabbed one flamestone and placed it in his machine.

“Whoa!” Sea Shimmer shouted, pointing at the glowing gems. “I didn’t know those shapey rocks could do that!”

“Only the most special ones,” Macintosh said, grinning. “Who knew getting my cloak repaired could be educational?”

“Huh?”

Macintosh didn’t answer, aiming the barrel of his weapon at the writhing shark beyond the bubble. Locking it in place, he stepped back and delivered a swift buck to the panel at its side. A series of makeshift gears spun, thrusting a metal rod into the back of the barrel at breakneck speeds. The rod collided with the flamestone, launching it through the air, membrane, water, and flesh, and lung tissue of the shark.

“Yeah!” Sea Shimmer cheered. “Talk about heartburn!”

The pale hammerhead poked one eye out from her hiding place. She gasped at her gushing boss, howling and thrashing in the central plaza. She darted into the center of the street and glared at the tiny sea pony hovering above the dome of air who dared to laugh and pump her hoof at the great white’s demise.

“You disgusting little sea urchin!” Dorsal shrieked, rocketing forward with twitching jaws. “I will teach you the meaning of eviscerate!”

“Whuh-oh!” Sea Shimmer took to her namesake. Empty hoofed, she spun her tendril like a propeller and whisked down an adjacent, empty street, staying just ahead of the raging shark. “Big Maaaac!” she screamed in fright, and though the red earth pony couldn’t hear her in his magic bubble, he immediately noticed her struggle.

Grunting, he repositioned his clever arrangement of rope and metal scraps, swiveling the barrel on a loose ball and socket with one hoof while dropping a searing flamestone into its open end (with the help of his uncle’s towel). Following the erratic hammerhead with his right hoof, he readied his left to smack the panel and launch the burning gem. As the cat-and-mouse sea creatures flew overhead, Macintosh punched it as hard as he could.

He missed, largely due to the great white shark that leapt from the far curve of the dome and nearly clamped down on his hind legs. Without thinking, Macintosh kicked into the air and bucked the creature on the tip of its snout. It flopped to the stony ground and roared, wriggling toward him like a ferocious swollen slug. Backing away from the beast, Macintosh swept his eyes in a grand, observant circle, breathed in deeply, and assumed an offensive pose.

“You’ve killed me, you landpony scum!” the shark gurgled, blood leaking from the corners of its mouth. “What did you think this would accomplish? You think I’m the only shark in the ocean? This changes nothing! The seaponies will always cower in our penumbra!”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Macintosh growled. The shark lunged forward with a hollow, guttural shriek; Macintosh dodged toward the statue, loading and aiming the final flamestone in a single sweep of his towel-wrapped hoof. Spinning on his front hooves, Macintosh delivered a rattling buck to the metal panel. The bubble was filled with an angry red glow and a pervasive ringing, but the roaring of the great white shark was gone… replaced by the sizzle of the smoldering hole at the crown of the predator’s skull.

Macintosh slumped against his launcher and sighed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of burning shark flesh. He lifted his head to search for Sea Shimmer somewhere above the bubble—when the tail of the steaming shark delivered a powerful, posthumous twitch.

Ironically, the dead shark’s tail launched the launcher into the stone shark’s tail. It sent a thin crack along the belly of the sculpted beast, compromising its connection to the darker column. The stone shark teetered forward as if to swallow Macintosh. He leapt away just as the statue collapsed, grinding against its polished pedestal and catching the sock on its pelvic fin.

Macintosh’s irises had less than a second to shrink.

The sock, annoyed and disgusted with its new position, made three immediate changes to its environment. The statue disappeared; the dead shark turned into a string of cheese; and all of the magical cavities of air boring through the ocean, including the dome around the empty pedestal of central Oatlantis, collapsed in a concussive clap three times as loud as thunder.

Macintosh was slammed on all sides by the water, rendering his frenzied mind totally unconscious.

The damaged statue of the shark was hurled through time and space, because a few seconds earlier that had been terribly unlikely.

Of all the times and places it could have reappeared, the statue popped into being quite remarkably near its origin point: only a few days earlier, several miles above a small village called Ponyville.

Along with its relocation, the statue was given a rather unique and advanced form of sentience that allowed it to think while it gravity’s grasp. Here is a complete documentation of its first, and final, thoughts while it fell to Equestrian soil:

Aaahhh! What’s going on? Who am I? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Okay, okay, calm down… take a few deep breaths… huh, that’s interesting, it doesn’t seem like I’m able to breathe. My insides feel rather dense and solid. Hmm… if I can’t breathe, how do I know what breathing is? Are other creatures able to breathe? How do I know that other creatures exist?

Goodness, so many questions, and none of them answerable. I ought to focus on things I can answer… that will certainly be better for my psychological health.

Hmm… what is this curious noise all around me? It seems rather quick and harsh, and it feels as if it’s coming from below. I ought to give it a name… what about… wind? Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I’ll call it that until I can come up with something better.

Wow, I rather like this wind! It feels amazing on my belly, especially inside that long, scraggly line coming from that chip on my… well, I suppose I should start giving everything names at this point… I’ll call that thing… my tail! Yeah, tail!

It seems like that should have more of a purpose. I can’t even move it. Oh, well… one step at a time…

Oh, goodness! What is that big, round, flat thing that’s coming at me very fast? I ought to give it a nice name, as well. It needs a big, round name to match how it looks… ow… roun… ground! That’s it, ground!

And what’s that little spot on the ground? It’s quite a different color than the rest. I’ll call most of that color green, and that little spot… red! Goodness, that’s a grand name. Red. Well done, me. Perhaps my purpose in life is to name things?

Hmm, maybe that red spot isn’t as small as I originally thought. It’s still quite little compared to me, though. And look, it’s moving! And breathing! It must be another creature! I’ll call it a… pony! A little pony! And now it’s mine! My little pony!

Oh, what an adorable little pony it is! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me?

And that’s where its thoughts stopped, because the statue landed squarely on top of Big Macintosh and, due to its lack of structural integrity thanks to the crack in its underside, shattered into several, insentient pieces.

He couldn’t breathe, but that’s not what worried him. Big Macintosh’s fear came from his confusion: Where was he, and how had he gotten there? The trace amounts of oxygen left in his brain burned away as his memory struggled to snatch any snippets of his dangerous predicament.

Three words, and three words only, responded to his memory’s call. They bounced carelessly, tauntingly, along the insides of his skull. As his eyes rolled back, those three words shouted, stabbing his mind with flashes of colorful pain.

Apples.

Socks.

Sharks.

…

Sharks!

His eyes snapped open, burning in the salty ocean water. He was suspended limply in water just above an empty pedestal, his cloak billowing around him like a ghostly, ebon aura. Every inch of his hide felt as if it had been slapped and his brain pounded mercilessly. Ignoring the pain, he turned his dizzy head in all directions, searching for Sea Shimmer and her bloodthirsty aggressor.

He saw them flash past a pair of towering skyscrapers—or surfacescrapers, he imagined they were called—darting down a perpendicular street. With bubbles spewing from his nostrils, Macintosh tried to paddle closer, desperate to save the screaming seapony.

A hard, black veil obscured his vision, stealing his peripherals first. Beginning to panic, Macintosh looked straight up, unable to identify the distant ocean surface. He searched for an alternate solution on the ground beneath his noodly hooves. His open saddlebags lay at the base of the pedestal, but nothing he could see in them could offer the air he needed.

Something clicked in his mind: he didn’t have the means to satisfy his need for air... but he had a way to eliminate it. Shoving a hoof into his duster’s pocket, Macintosh removed a clump of slimy, stringy seaweed. With scrambling hooves, he managed to untangle the ball, slipping one end of the long green strip between his teeth. He bit down hard, ripping off a mouthful of the bitter plant. Chewing rapidly, he swallowed the stuff and closed his eyes, waiting for its magic to take effect.

He waited. And waited. And waited. And suddenly, he realized there was nothing to wait for. Upon opening his eyes, his vision was restored. Grinning, Macintosh tucked the rest of the seaweed back into his pocket and swam downward, gathering his saddlebags and latching them to his body beneath his cloak. His enchanted torch, still glowing blue, was floating beside a string of cheese and two inactive flamestones. Clamping the torch in his mouth, he began his slow swim to join the aquarial chase.

Fortunately for Sea Shimmer, Macintosh was not the only pony coming to her rescue. Inspired by the landpony’s tenacity, Wavebreaker and High Tide—emerging from their hiding place inside a golden building—flanked the foaming hammerhead and shouted to their companion.

“We have you covered, Shimmer!” High Tide said.

“Hey! You didn’t use my full name!” the pony called over her shoulder, beaming. “I knew you liked me deep down under that stingy yellow coat!”

Scowling, High Tide slammed into the shark’s right side, wrapping her hooves around Dorsal’s wide head and covering her eye. Wavebreaker did the same to the other side of the shark, blinding the giant beast.

“Aaaaugh! Get offa me!” she yelled, swinging her head back and forth. The seaponies held on tight, pulling the speeding shark down toward the cobblestone streets. When they were only a few ponylengths from the ground, they leapt in opposite directions, leaving Dorsal to smash her face on the slabs.

Broken and moaning, Dorsal sprawled prostate on the ground, her wide-set eyes spinning senselessly in their sockets. Four red hooves pressed down from above, increasing her pain and restricting her breath. Focusing her vision, Dorsal’s eyes locked on a scowling stallion with gleaming emerald eyes.

“Get outta here,” he spoke without air, his bass voice rumbling through the water like the hum of a cello. “Two dead sharks are enough to mark the seaponies’ territory. Let’s not make it three.”

He pushed a hoof deeper into her ribs. Wincing, Dorsal nodded. Macintosh hopped off, floating menacingly above her, until the shark wiggled off the street and took off into the deeper ocean, far away from Oatlantis.

If he could sigh at the moment, Macintosh would have. The next few minutes passed in a blur. Seaponies poured from the city’s many buildings, cheering for their freedom and swarming Macintosh with thanks and praise. There was some sort of ceremony in which Wavebreaker carefully bestowed him the sock, filled with a number of small, decorated runes that apparently counteracted its magic. As soon as he began to feel lightheaded, the seaponies carried him back to the beach, thanking him profusely and begging him—especially Sea Shimmer—to return soon.

Their giggles rang in Macintosh’s head even as he stumbled through the frothy waves and dropped into the warm, dry sand. The bizarre tunnel was closed up, and the sandstorm over Delicious Orchards was gone. Glancing over his shoulder, Macintosh raised an eyebrow at the calm surface of the water, hardly believing that, at the ocean’s bottom, a race of two-hooved ponies were rejoicing at their newfound liberation from an oppressive predator.

“What are the odds?” he asked himself under his breath, chuckling softly. As more and more oxygen filled his lungs and mind, his experiences solidified in his memory. Along with the past, thoughts of the future took precedence. He gazed triumphantly at the sopping, midnight blue garment in his hoof. But Princess Luna’s daunting words still echoed in his ears.

“I’ll need all four of them. We can’t have any go missing. Each one holds the same level of power as the others. Even if a single sock was to go astray, the results could be catastrophic.”

“One down,” Macintosh panted, draping the sock around his neck, “three to go.”

He cleared his throat, ran the wet towel over his mane, and took off at a brisk trot toward Uncle Strudel’s homestead.

Chapter 4

“Hey, quit shoving me!” yelled one stallion.

“You started it!” retorted the second, kicking a hoofful of sand at the former. The two combatants gnashed teeth, and before long they were screaming and charging each other in random displays of power. Or intolerance, as Big Mac thought.

But his smile was undying as he walked through the heart of Fillydelphia. The towel perched atop his head had since dried beneath the newly rediscovered sun; the dust storm had departed, yet the fine grains of sand now settled over every inch of the city. The townsfolk were already up and about, busily doing what they could to clean the streets, even though the occasional brawl did hinder progress some.

He sighed through the midnight blue sock held firmly in his teeth, giving it an annoyed glare. He had no intention of letting the thing wander from his sight after seeing what it was capable of, let alone try to tap into its raw power. He began thinking on ways to properly store it, and the rest of them for that matter, but every idea that entered his mind left just as quickly. Should he toss it inside an obsidian safe, and then put safe inside another? Perhaps bury it deep underground in some inconspicuous spot? Surely, there had to be something that would work. How does one lock away something capable of bending quite literally all of reality to its very whim?

Big Mac blinked. He briefly considered asking Pinkie Pie, but after their last encounter he quickly shoved that thought aside; no one must know the details of his mission save himself and the Princess. Two souls already know what he’s up to, and that’s company enough. There was no need to crowd a third into the mix of things. Admittedly, he had been rather careless so far, and although his actions might have seemed justifiable at times he could no longer risk it; from here on out he had to be more vigilant, more unassuming, and above all just play smart.

He continued his musings up to and through the Delicious Orchards. Before he could even consider securing the next sock, wherever in the world it could be, he made it his first priority to find a safe place to keep the one he already had. His mouth was not sufficient, and it was starting to get soggy.

“Told ya’d need a towel,” a voice teased from down the path ahead. Big Mac looked up, seeing Uncle Strudel sweeping sand off the dirt trail with a broom. He shot him a bemused expression, but that quickly faded with a small chuckle. Just Uncle Strudel being Uncle Strudel, he summarized.

Yet Uncle Strudel was doing his best to suppress a fit of giggles of his own.

Big Mac gave him a look, before realizing what he was laughing at and his face fell into a cold stare. “Don’t say it,” he deadpanned.

But Uncle Strudel said it nevertheless. “Boy, I’d tell ya to stick a sock in yer mouth for talkin’ to me that way, but ya beat me to it!” he yelled, falling over into the sandy dirt, clutching his sides in a fit of laughter.

Big Mac grunted at the horrible joke, and with a flick of his strong neck the used towel on his head went sailing, smacking his uncle right in his stupid face. The stallion quickly gagged, finding the fabric made its way into his own mouth, and spat it out onto the ground as he twisted in the dirt.

“It’s sweat,” Big Mac said with a straight face. “’Least you better hope it is.”

The two stared at each other, sharing an awkward silence before Uncle Strudel reeled again, rolling around uncontrollably. Big Mac only grinned through the fabric in his teeth, waiting patiently for his uncle to eventually get a hold of himself.

“Whew, boy!” Uncle Strudel said with a cough, standing back up. He picked up the towel and threw it over his back, and once more returned to sweeping the dirt. “Take it ya were successful?”

“Eeeyup,” Big Mac responded. “Any idea where I should keep this thing? It’s too dangerous for any conventional means.”

“Ya mean ya didn’t bring one?” Uncle Strudel raised a brow. “What of that saddlebag ya carried here?”

Big Mac looked like he was about to speak, but then froze at the feeling of weightlessness over his back. He grimaced, letting loose a low growl in frustration. “Must’ve left it with the seaponies,” he hissed at his own negligence. Everything he got from Zecora, everything he took underwater with him was gone, and there were no hopes of getting any of it back. Heaven forbid if the seaponies started messing with any of them, let alone that Sea Shimmer. Would an ever-burning torch work underwater? What if a creature who doesn’t breathe air to begin with eats something that would make them not need to breathe air? He shuddered at the thought.

Uncle Strudel tilted his head. “Seaponies?”

“Eeeyup.”

“Thought those fellers were just mythos,” he muttered. “Ya know, like that zombie alicorn of the underworld or whatnot.”

“Who knows?” Big Mac shrugged. “Digressions aside, do you know of a secure location where I can store this?”

Uncle Strudel scratched his chin, and after some thought he pointed off into the orchard. “The Cantatas in Albuquercolt can probably help ya with that. ‘tain’t far from here, just a few somethin’ miles inland across the plains.”

Big Mac followed his hoof, turning to take the first steps on the next leg of his journey. “Thank you kindly,” he said.

“Couldn’t here ya boy! Sounds like ya got a sock in yer mouth!” he heard the voice of his uncle cry, before that was overtaken by crude cackling. Big Mac rolled his eyes, wasting no time to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

Big Mac’s pace was steady, his hooves simply pushing aside the underbrush of the Saddleback Plains. The cityscape of Albuquercolt slowly came into view after cresting one of the many hills, silhouetted across the setting sun. A gentle breeze raced over the tall grasses, swaying it like the bristles of a brush. He decided then to take a second to rest and enjoy the picturesque view, falling back onto his haunches on a soft pad of dirt.

Then a shadow passed over him and he looked up to the cloudless sky. His brow furrowed in concern as the form of a pegasus moved above him, but then it lightened at seeing exactly who the pony was.

Ditzy Doo haphazardly landed in front of him, almost falling face first.

He couldn’t help but chuckle.

Eyes spinning, Ditzy looked back up to him with a big smile. “Hi there, Big Mac!” she happily greeted. “I got a letter for you!” With those words she hastily scrambled onto her haunches, tossing her mailbag on the patch of earth between them and began to feverishly sort through it.

“Hehehe, swell acting Ditzy,” he complimented. “You sure are good at not breaking character—” Big Mac froze. He would have continued but sucked his lips in when Ditzy gave him an angered glare.

“Don’t use my real name, Sir Apple!” Ditzy looked up and frowned. “I’m on a mission right now as are you, so the name’s Derpy!”

Big Mac shuffled uncomfortably and Ditzy went back to rifle through her mailbags. “Oh, sorry about that Derpy. Didn’t realize you were—”

Head completely consumed in canvas, she spat, “Forget it,” thus ending the conversation.

Big Mac sighed, opening his mouth to let the soggy midnight blue sock fall into his hooves. He should’ve known the other division members were likely on covert operations as well; in fact, he couldn’t think of a time when a division wasn’t on an assignment. While the Knights of Apple are an Order of earth ponies, there’s also the Cavalry of Feather which is an Order of pegasi and the Mages of Cantata being unicorns. The “Triple Trotente” as they were called, being a collective of three select and prominent families of the three pony types, tracing their lineages back millennia to the very three tribes that first founded Equestria.

Nowadays, even though the families do keep in touch, so much so that there’s one member of each order designated to live in every Equestrian city, such times were infrequent. Direct contact on assignments between them weren’t unheard of either, albeit they were extremely rare and oftentimes only involved very important matters. Whatever reason Ditzy was here for, it had to be of dire importance.

“Here you go,” she finally said, dragging a large brown envelope from the pits of her mailbags. With an expressionless face she handed it off the Big Mac, who fidgeted.

“Erm, can you hold this for a second?” he asked, offering her the saliva-riddled sock.

Ditzy gave the article a curious, somewhat disgusted look, but she obliged and let him set it on an outstretched wing.

“Is this what I think it is?” she questioned. “One of the legendary Improbable Socks?”

“Eeeyup,” Big Mac answered, tearing open the envelope. “Princess Luna has assigned me to seize and return them to her.”

Ditzy whistled, one of her eyes going askew. “Lucky! I wish I could get a mission as awesome as that. All I ever do is rescue missing foals and search for fallen constellations,” she sighed, hanging her head.

“At least you haven’t combated leathery demons before,” he said with a hint of annoyance before laying his eyes on the letter. It was stamped with the royal seal, directly from Celestia’s office for sure, but something was wrong. His head tilted in confusion as he tried to decipher the hidden message of the parchment in his hooves.

“It’s blank,” he deadpanned, presenting it to Ditzy as if he expected her to know why. But all she did was shrug.

“I’m just the messenger, so don’t look at me! Princess Celestia had me deliver it,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work then. Hey, you want a muffin?”

Big Mac’s stomach grumbled, realizing the only thing he’s eaten recently was sea water and magic seaweed. “Eeeyup,” he answered with a smile, releasing the blank paper to the wind. He eagerly reached over into Ditzy’s mailbag and after some brief searching pulled out a steaming piece of confectionary delight. His mouth salivated as the scent of baked goods flooded his nostrils—

Ditzy slapped the muffin out of his hoof and onto the ground.

Big Mac looked at her speechless, but his expression faltered at seeing the serious one she held.

“You can’t just go about eating things willy-nilly like somepony’s first published work being something they never wrote!” she yelled.

“I don’t think that’s a correct analogy, and it’s just a muffin!” he defended. “Why, what’s in it? Neurotoxin?”

“Aunt Jemima,” she answered swiftly and picked the muffin back off the ground.

Big Mac scrunched his nose. “What, the pancake mix or the syrup?”

Ditzy looked at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, her irises spinning.

Big Mac gulped. “D-did you cook your…”

“It’s plastic explosive.”

“…Oh.”

Ditzy dropped the apparently edible bomb back into her mailbag and pulled out a different one. “Here, this one isn’t dangerous: neurotoxin-free!” she assured with a smile, tossing it through the air.

Without hesitation Big Mac grabbed the thing, afraid for his life at what might happen if it hit the ground. Skeptically, he raised it to his mouth and nibbled. It tasted like bananas, which made him cringe, but it was still food. Content it wasn’t short circuiting or exploding, and that his internal organs weren’t shutting down, he glutinously shoved the rest of the muffin in his mouth. “Thank you kindly,” he said, spitting chunks. Ditzy giggled, flicking her extended wing and tossing the sock back at Big Mac, where the soft fabric landed gracefully on his head.

She stood upright, threw the mailbag back over herself, and began stretching her wings. “Well, I have to go find my sister before she kills herself,” Ditzy said with a slight groan, as if it were a regular chore. Even though he was still chewing Big Mac raised a hoof to call her out on it, but before he could so much as speak she was gone.

A sudden realization crossed his mind right then: yet another pony now knows about his mission. And considering where he was going and what he intended to do…

“Horseapples!”

Big Mac trotted down the dark and empty streets of Albuquercolt. His hooves clicked and clacked on the hard cobblestone, echoing off the silent buildings on either side of him. He clenched his teeth, affirming that the sock was still grasped tightly between them, and pushed himself forward, absolutely certain that the Cantata family would be more than willing to assist him with his mission.

By the Dog’s Bollocks, he wished he brought a map.

He paused in his steps, taking a quick look down either side of the street. Before he could even let the following thought develop, he had to get out of plain view. Thinking fast, he bolted down an adjacent alleyway and scrambled inside a thankfully empty dumpster.

Surrounded by silence and overwhelming dark, he could finally think his thought. Should he dare put on the Improbable Sock? If he recalled correctly, which to his disappointment he was having a hard time doing, the current sock he had didn’t just act on a whim. It had to be manually manipulated as the seaponies did. Unfortunately he didn’t have a shark statue to place it on, but he did remember that one of the seaponies had asked it to summon him, and it did, although in a rather impromptu fashion.

So, should he just ask the sock where the Cantata family lives? But it’s so dangerous and improbable, there’s no telling what could happen! But if he didn’t find where the Cantatas live and get help soon, he may never figure out where the other socks are. He assessed his options, not liking either of them, and after much thought he reluctantly turned to the article in his grasp.

“Uhm… where does the Cantata family live?” he asked the sock.

The sock did not respond.

“Of course that didn’t work,” he muttered. Once more he thought about slipping the sock over his hoof, but such improbable power could easily get out of control. It was too great a risk, especially in such a populated area.

Suddenly his world was torn asunder.

Big Mac flew forwards, slamming his head into the metallic wall of the dumpster with a residual clang. Then the world tilted and he fell back, smacking his skull into the backside of the dumpster. Then he was falling straight up, except he had no idea where up was at this point, and crashed face-first into one of the dumpster’s many walls. Big Mac yelped in pain as the next direction he went tumbling was straight out of the dumpster’s top, landing in a heap of something on his back.

He gritted his teeth and rolled his tongue around, confirming that the midnight blue sock was in his possession. Smiling through his newly acquired migraine, he opened his eyes, blinked at seeing Luna’s moon high above, and then swiftly turned around to see where he was and exactly what was going on.

Bananas. Thousands of them.

“Aaugh!” he screamed, kicking the yellow fruit away from him. But his attempts were futile at best, as it suddenly became clear that he was having no effect at displacing their numbers. Big Mac grunted, taking a quick glance at his surroundings and seeing he was still inside the alleyway from before. The dumpster was currently serving as an island in the sea of fruit he was swimming in, and then the moonlight above was lost to a sea of black. Big Mac sighed, at this rate rather in annoyance if anything, and glanced up. His face fell, his breath escaped him, and his nerves rattled to the bone.

A literal tidal wave of bananas came crashing down on him. There was not enough time to even gasp for air as the sudden potassium-enriched flood engulfed him, drowned him, and washed him out of the alley and into the street.

Big Mac spun and wriggled, completely submerged beneath the cascade of fruit, doing his best to find some sort of footing. Until finally, his hooves found solid ground and he scraped at it for dear life, doing his best to stand tall against the onslaught.

Then as soon as it all began, it was over. Or at least it had lessened to a manageable degree. Big Mac smiled wearily at seeing the bananas levels had lowered to about chest-height. Then he glanced up, back at the alley where this whole banapocalypse had begun, and shuddered.

A very hauntingly familiar green sock hovered nonchalantly above the alley, spewing bananas like a water hose with no foreseeable end in sight.

Thinking quickly, he waded through the forming sea of fruit towards the near side of the street. A streetlight somehow appeared unharmed and he grabbed onto it, doing his best to shimmy to the top of the pole. From there, Big Mac readied himself and leapt to the adjacent building, grasping the bottom of an attached fire escape. He heaved himself up the escape, all the way to the top of the building, and before long he was jumping from rooftop to rooftop until finally he reached his destination.

Big Mac leaned over the edge of a building, smiling through the midnight blue sock and at his own cleverness. The green sock, completely unaware of his presence, continued to spit bananas while hovering above the alleyway below. Big Mac grumbled; somehow he never even expected to make it this far. But nonetheless, right here right now, a second sock had presented itself to him and could easily be acquired. Surely it was the work of improbability if he’s learned anything over the past few days.

Backing up to get a running start, Big Mac sprinted across the rooftop and leapt, intending to come down on and grab the sock before any more shenanigans could happen.

However, much to his chagrin, the sock was gone. As was the ocean of bananas that would have cushioned his three-story fall. Instead he wailed, shaking his limbs helplessly through the air until he belly-flopped onto the hard concrete below with a sickening smack.

There was pain. Oh, there was a lot of pain; a type of pain that could only be described as belly-flopping onto hard cement after a three-story fall. Specifically it was in his limbs, which felt like they were being stabbed with various pins and needles every time he tried to move them. Coming back into consciousness Big Mac gave a seething growl, realizing his vision was engulfed in complete blackness and that the rest of his senses were ringing in utter disarray. Somehow he had the feeling he was hearing out where he thought his nose should be, which even though he was no medical professional he could easily deduce that that should not be happening.

“Oh hey, you’re awake!” a voice suddenly chirped, its happy tone echoing off the inside of his snout. Big Mac held his breath, relieved that at least he was still alive, although by his estimates badly broken. Finally he found the strength to say something.

“Whaaaazaaaah?” he moaned and then coughed. The voice giggled at his incomprehensible whimper.

“Don’t you worry, mister!” the voice spoke again. “Mommy’s going to take good care of you!”

He could feel his face pale as a cold spike ran down his back. He stuttered, “…Mommy?”

“Yuppers!”

“Mom…” Big Mac gulped. He tilted his head the best he could off in the direction of the voice. “Am I… am I dead?”

At first there was silence, but then the voice returned with a flabbergasted yell, “What?! No! You’re in bed, silly!”

Big Mac gave the nothing he could see a stare and followed up with an exhausted sighed, not entirely sure if he should feel relieved. His tongue slowly brushed across the inside of his mouth searching for any trace fibers of the holy launder, and then feverishly when he couldn’t find it.

“Tabala!” a new voice suddenly interjected over his increasingly frantic searching, this one stern and imposing. “Stop bothering our guest; let him sleep!”

“But Moooom… He’s awake!”

“He is?” the second voice said in apparent disbelief. Big Mac was so engrossed he almost missed hearing the scrambling of hooves and a resonating crash from somewhere nearby, followed quickly by the steadfast hoofsteps of somepony in a rush.

Then whatever had been covering his face came off, and Big Mac found himself confronted with a blinding light.

“Well I’ll be; he’s awake!” the second voice, sweet and obviously female, said merrily over the undaunted glare. “Anything I can do for you?”

“The light hurts my eyes…” he said in almost a hiss.

“Whoops! Sorry about that,” she said, turning the lamp fixture away. Big Mac blinked, bringing his eyes back into focus. As his vision reset, he found himself staring eye-to-eye with a beautiful, cyan unicorn. Her purple mane draped lazily over her green eyes, and she greeted him with a warm smile. Her head craned off to the side and she said, “Tabala, could you be a dear and get our guest a glass of water?”

“Yuppers!” the voice of presumably this Tabala answered, and then there was the sound of giddy hooves skipping off and away. Big Mac sighed again, his brow furrowing in irritancy, and looked back up to the mare who stood beside him.

“Hey—” he began before getting interrupted.

“Oh, where’s my manners! You’re probably wondering who I am, where you are, and all that jazz, huh? Heehee… Jazz…”

Big Mac gave her the best sideways glance he could manage from laying down, still upset over the current turn of events. One second he was pouncing a part of a Royal Deity’s ancient hoofwear, and the next he found himself in a… bed? Sure enough, he raised his head slightly and saw a bunch of blankets pulled up to his neck. He turned to mare with one eyebrow raised.

She took the gesture as a sign to talk. “Well, the name is Pandora, and you are currently in my home in Albuquercolt, recovering from four broken legs,” she calmly stated. Then a thought visibly showed in her head and mischievous grin slowly crept across her face, one that accompanied her fluttering her eyelashes at him. “And you are currently occupying my bed, Mister,” she said melodiously, bringing a hoof up to and playfully dragging it across his chest.

Big Mac, a stallion who has rarely ever so much as felt emotion in his life, could feel the fire erupting out from under his cheeks as she suggestively leaned towards him. And he couldn’t move.

“But you know, it must be awfully cold under those covers with nopony to share them with…” she continued, pressing every closer to Big Mac’s trembling form.

“Mommy, I got some water!” Tabala singsonged, reentering the room. Pandora turned and gave her daughter a blank stare before reeling over, falling onto the ground with a thud and laughing uncontrollably.

“Mommy?”

“Your face!” Pandora wheezed from the ground in response, her hooves pounding on the hardwood floor.

Big Mac did his best to absorb into the mattress he lay on, never to be seen again.

At that moment a little pink filly hopped up onto the bed, a glass of water in her telekinetic grasp. She gave Big Mac a worried face, her large, bright blue eyes blinking from under her equally blue mane. “Did Mommy make you feel icky?” Tabala asked him.

Big Mac only sunk further beneath the covers.

Tabala furrowed her brow and rolled her eyes, settling them on her mother. “Mommy!” she yelled. “Stop making ponies feel icky!”

Pandora snorted between giggles, but stood back up nonetheless. “Heehee, I’m just joking around with you, Big Red,” she said with a wink.

“Big Mac,” he corrected.

“Very well then, Big Mac. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

“Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”

Pandora couldn’t have misheard him, yet she chose to ignore his simple question. “Tabala, don’t bother our guest too much, please.”

“Hey, wait—” Big Mac tried to interject but was silenced by Pandora slamming the bedroom door shut in her leave. His eyes spoke distaste, and he turned to the filly standing on top of him.

“Are you thirsty?” Tabala asked him.

“No thank you,” he deadpanned.

She sighed and floated the glass away. Tabala looked back to him with an apologetic look and said, “Sorry about Mommy. She tries to be funny but she keeps being icky.”

“Have you seen a sock?” he asked, completely sidestepping her excuse. Despite his condition he could not forget the task at hoof, and he’d be damned to let the one thing he had in his possession slip right through his hooves. “It’s blue, and I had it with me when I… passed out.”

Tabala gave him a sideways glance, before a spark of realization popped in her eyes. “Oh! Was it really wet and soggy?”

Big Mac scrunched his nose. “Eeyup…”

“Yuppers!” she chimed, bouncing off of the bed and then sliding underneath it. With little choice Big Mac curiously watched the ceiling, his ears twitching to the noise of the filly scuffing beneath him. After about a minute of this, Tabala remerged with the midnight blue sock in her aura. “Was it this one?”

“Eeyup,” he sighed in relief, gently nodding.

“I’ll give it you if you answer a question.”

Big Mac stared at her innocent smile. “Fine…”

Tabala giggled, tauntingly floating the sock above him. “You’re an Apple, aren’t you?”

Big Mac glared at her out of instinct, not entirely sure how else to react. How’d he get uncovered so easily? Beads of sweat formed on the tip of his brow as he did his miserable best to play a straight face.

“Come on, Mister Apple. You can tell a Cantata, can’t you?”

“Er…” he stuttered, mental gears stalling. “Yes…?”

Tabala clapped her hooves merrily with a grin on her face. The aura around her horn faded, and the sock she had held fell down onto Big Mac’s forehead. It was still wet.

“I haven’t met another Order member before!” the little filly cheered. “Well I suppose Princess Luna, but she’s more of administrator so she doesn’t count. Wait a minute!” Big Mac watched as Tabala scampered away to a nearby dresser, practically ripped a drawer out of it, and rifled through its contents mercilessly. He quickly pulled his neck to the side to avoid being hit by flying objects the filly was tearing out, among them being a crude drawing of happy flowers, a pair of scissors, a box of crayons, and vial of who-knows what.

“Ah ha! Found you!” she exclaimed, pulling out a thick book and then slamming the drawer violently shut. She giddily hopped over to him and opened it up to a random page. Big Mac felt his face fell upon reading the title cover.

“’Welcome to the Order: A Newfoal’s Training Guide to Serving the Royal Princess(es) and Protecting Equestria. Series Five, Volume Seven: Inter-Order Interactions,’” she read aloud. Big Mac audibly groaned; his twelve years of training were grueling, his time spent in Canterlot being something he’d rather forget. This poor filly was logically still in training, and for that she had his sympathy. But by reciting some of the worst classes of his life, she was very quickly beginning to lose that respect.

Tabala cleared her throat. “’Chapter eight, Subsection three, page one hundred and sixty-seven,’ she read. “’During the event of a member of one Order asking for another Order member for help, the latter it legally obligated to oblige or else face being banished and imprisoned in the place you were banished.’” She looked up to Big Mac with a hopeful face. “Do you need my help?”

Big Mac looked at the glimmer in her eyes. If he could move his hoof he would probably be dragging it across his face right then. “Eeyup.”

Tabala squeaked with happiness. “Oh! Oh! What do you need help with? Is it some super-secret mission? Oh, I know! You want to use the science of magic and chronicle the double rainbow for when you fall!”

That was the worst jumble of words he ever heard; his blank stare unrelenting. “Eenope,” he calmly said, leaving the filly completely unfazed by his answer. He looked up slightly to the article resting on his brow. “You see this?” he began, fully captivating Tabala’s attention. “It’s one of four socks that belong to Princess Luna, and they are capable of bending all of probability. For instance, if you were to dip a quill in black ink, you might actually write in the color square.”

Tabala tilted her head. “But square isn’t a color!”

“But you see, that is a probable outcome with the laws of improbability,” he explained. “Anything that would not feasibly happen under any circumstance, very likely will happen. Such power is extremely dangerous, and that’s why I’ve been tasked with finding and returning them to Princess Luna. But there’s a problem.”

“And that’s what you need me for!”

“Eeyup. I need something to carry them in for when I get them, something capable of containing such dangerous artifacts.”

No longer to contain herself, Tabala eagerly jumped up and down in place. “I know! I know! I have something that can hold anything!”

With that outburst, she bolted over to the dresser again and this time actually tore the drawer out of it. Tabala hopped inside the newly formed crevice and then popped back out, a nondescript metal box dangling from her mouth. She happily walked up to him and presented the container to him.

“A ‘My Little Person’ lunchbox,” he deadpanned. “Do you, I don’t know, have something a little less… girly?”

Tabala shook her head with a smile. “Sorry. I don’t really like the show, but my mom gave me this for my seventh birthday and she enchanted it to contain the most wicked and vile things in existence. Even nonexistence!” she chimed. “It can hold anything and nothing; she even told me it can be used to capture scary monsters!” Sliding her tongue under the handle in her mouth, Tabala undid the simple latch and opened the box. “See?”

Big Mac’s mouth unhinged, staring deeply into the container. Tabala gave his reaction a quizzical look, and she turned around to see what was inside the box as well. Her face contorted in a similar fashion, and very slowly she reached inside and pulled out the object within.

A bright pink, frilly, laced, knitted, very decorative sock and a tiny notecard.

Tabala nonchalantly tossed the sock onto the bed, causing Big Mac to recoil sharply at her carelessness, and read the notecard.

She recited, “Hello there! I am the Improbable Sock of Convenience! I see you already have my brother, Inflexibility, and I do believe you have encountered Inconvenience twice now. Although, as it should already be known, we can use our powers randomly and basically whenever we feel like it. However! If you wear us, and it’s improbable enough and within our individual premise, we would happily oblige to do as asked. But only if you ask nicely!”

Big Mac and Tabala stared at the notecard, darting their gaze between it and the pink sock that currently lay on the bed.

“Well, that’s convenient.”

“Eeyup.”

Their awkward silence continued for several more moments, both them not sure exactly who or what to look at. Until finally Big Mac said and said, “So, I can have that lunchbox?”

Tabala blinked, going straight to back to her joyful self. “Yuppers!” she acknowledged, quickly swiping to the two socks already in possession, as well as the notecard, and stuffed them both inside the lunchbox. She happily dropped it onto the bed beside Big Mac’s head. “I’m helpful!” she said smiling.

Big Mac chuckled. “You sure are.”

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“Uhm…” Big Mac looked around the room. With Zecora, the seaponies, Uncle Strudel, Ditzy, and now this young filly, it was coming increasingly apparent to him that he couldn’t finish his assignment alone. While he was against revealing the details of mission in every form, every help he got so far was in the right direction. Now, he had two socks in his possession he more than likely would have never found on his own, let alone as quickly. With a reluctant sigh, he turned back to Tabala. “Eeyup…”

Tabala’s smile almost split her face in eagerness.

“Would you happen to know anypony who’d be knowledgeable about these socks?”

“Yuppers!” Tabala almost squealed. “I got an aunt who’s super smart about history, myths, and stuff!”

Big Mac curiously raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

She nodded. “She can be very… crazy, at times, but she’s super sweet if you get to know her! She’s really into… cryptozoology? I think that’s what it’s called. She draws lots of these weird, two-legged things. Oh! And she likes to ramble. A lot.”

Big Mac’s face fell. “And she lives…” he forced himself to say, just for the sake of confirming.

“Ponyville! Her name is—”

“I know who she is,” Big Mac interrupted, his face completely immersed with irritancy. Just about everypony in Ponyville knew who that mare is, and just about all of them would rather forget her too. Not only that, but everypony there thinks he’s sick. To go seen back in his hometown would surely raise suspicions. He cleared his throat and turned back to Tabala. “Any other leads?”

“Uhm…” she pondered, bringing a hoof to her chin. “I know there’s a museum dedicated to the night in Cloudsdale, and I know one of its Lunar Guards are with the Calvary of Feather, but for some reason it’s only open at night. You can check there, I suppose.”

His brow furrowed ever so slightly less. He’d much rather go to Cloudsdale, but there’s the obvious problem of not being able to walk on clouds. Somehow he’d have to find a way, and to the best of his knowledge an earth pony walking on clouds was impossible. He faced a tough choice: either go through what could only be described as Tartarus itself, or do something along the lines of growing wings.

“Anything else?” he practically pleaded.

“You can ask Mommy,” she suggested, “But be careful. She can be icky sometimes. Any other questions?”

Big Mac looked to the lunchbox sitting by his head, and then to his apparently broken limbs. That’s when he realized they weren’t even in casts. “Can I get to a hospital? Please?”

Chapter 5

The cavernous marble hallway greeted his hoofsteps with a murmuring echo. With a flap of his canvas duster, he passed the security line. A guard glanced at him, his gray mane shining from the sunlight wafting in through the wide-stretched windows of the museum. He raised a hoof to stop the large, trotting figure, but all the stranger needed to do was lift the trailing edge of his cloak with a rear limb. The sunlight caught the large green apple mark on his flank, and the guard’s face paled with simultaneous respect and dismay upon seeing it. Trembling slightly, the elder stallion backtrotted and motioned the large figure along with a nod of his muzzle.

With a tilt of his wide-brimmed straw hat, the stranger continued. The Manehattan Museum greeted him generously, its wide alabaster halls full of landscape art and statues and glass-encased skeletal remains of Equestrian beasts long past. A general hush filled the ivory interior, punctuated briefly by shuffling old couples observing one work of art or another. In the distant fringes, a line of fillies and colts followed an aged schoolteacher as she led the elementary procession of foals from the far end of the museum to the gift shop. Several of the children stopped to gawk at the stranger’s massive size, but he passed by them, undaunted, his gargantuan hooves plodding over the checkerboard sea of glistening tile beneath him.

His trek was a slow, patient, and altogether passive one. No sense of urgency quickened his limbs. Whether purposeful or not, his presence was altogether as unseemly as the shadows of the place. He gravitated towards the furthest end of the historical exhibit, past widely stretched portraits displaying the chronological history of the Lunar Empire, from tragic birth to startling climb to even more tragic end.

He paused only once, besides a large hanging tapestry that depicted the creation of a holy vault of moon-lit relics. He tilted his massive muzzle to the side, his jaw tensing upon the sight of four strips of velvety fabric being presented by a group of humble unicorns to an ancient alicorn sitting on her onyx throne. Upon a glistening brass disc, the quartet of finely woven facsimiles lingered before the emotionless gaze of the Queen of the Night. One article was pink, and the second midnight blue; both stirred a jolt of familiarity in his heart. A tiny growl escaped his lips upon seeing the third sibling of the bunch, colored with mischievous emerald. Glancing at the fourth article, he had to squint, for its material appeared to blend with the brass structure of the plate upon which it was being lifted.

No longer able to afford distractions, he pivoted towards the darker end of the exhibit and shuffled on. Past the viewing spectators and security guards of the place, the cloaked stranger’s stroll took him towards a hallway furthest from the sunlight. A series of metal poles stood, adjoined with a velvet yellow rope upon which a sign hung that displayed: “Off Limits - Pardon Our Dust.”

With an innocent whistle, the figure merely had to stretch his massive haunches, and soon he was stepping over the flimsy barricade. With a shrug of his shoulders, he proceeded into the shadowed bowels of the place. Here, the sign had served its purpose, for an immense carpet of dust was lining the black and white tile. Statues, paintings, and forgotten ornaments lingered in the corners of the dimly-lit place, hidden under ghostly shrouds of canvas and burlap that made them look like malleable boulders in the mystical haze of the forsaken museum chamber.

He tilted his gaze down, pausing only briefly to notice a startling detail. There were two sets of hoofprints there, both twice as small as his. What was more, they were aimed towards opposite ends of the room he was now in, leading off to the very edge of his peripheral vision.

Just then, a pair of shuffling noises pierced both of his ears at once. He instinctually coiled his muscles so that his rear half got into a bucking position. His adrenalized heartbeat was put at ease by a voice that was as annoying as it was harmless.

“That’s as far as you move, dear old fella.”

Another voice, almost as chipper and twice as spritely, chimed in: “Reckon you’re as loud as a ramshackle rhinoceros in this place!”

With a deep groan, the figure looked up, a pair of bright green eyes glinting from beneath his broad-rimmed hat.

“You both can come out now,” Big Mac said in a dull drone. “I wasn’t followed.”

Two spindly shapes slid out of the shadows. In the penumbra of sunlight peaking in from the adjacent corridors, an identical pair of barbed weapons glinted in their grasp, but soon disappeared behind matching tunics as they gave a double flick of their forelimbs.

“Droppin’ the accent, big boy?” the one with a crimson mustache remarked. “That isn’t very like you!”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Big Mac grumbled. “And I don’t like having to meet you here anymore than you do.”

“Awwww, don’t be such a sad sack!” said the former’s shaven sibling. Flam’s devilish grin appeared in a haze of light, followed by his soft emerald eyes. “This is the time that tries ponies’ souls.”

“Yes, a time of great socks and circumstance,” added Flim, shuffling up to his side. “Can’t we shake hooves like days of olde? Before the apple split?”

“It never split,” Big Mac monotoned, his eyes as hard as scalpels. “It was sliced in twain, because somepony’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great—”

“Oh blessed orchards!” Flim exhaled dramatically with a mock pratfall. “Not this again.”

“At least he’s persistent,” Flam added.

“—great great great great grandmother felt it was a wise decision to form a schism from the solitary order.”

“Big Macbuck, the solitary order was a monopoly forced by the hoof of your secluded, self-serving sycophant of a moon princess!”

“I’m sure you left out some ‘succotash’ in there, brother of mine!”

“Shhh—I’m monologuing, Flim!”

Big Mac sighed, ran a hoof over his forehead, and muttered, “Look, the fact of the matter—”

“The fact of the matter is”—Flam leaned forward with a knowing smirk—“your attachment to me and my paternal half here is a matter of blood, not duty, and towards that end, you can trust us whole heartedly!”

Big Mac stared icily at the pair. “You almost drove my family and me out of Sweet Apple Acres four months ago.”

“Did we mention that you smell?” Flim began, only to be angrily shoved aside by his brother.

With an exasperated sigh, Flam nevertheless smiled at the heavily-muscled workhorse and spoke, “We know that which you seek, but we’re not entirely sure why you desire it.”

“Surely you’ve heard about the pilfering from the vault,” Big Mac said.

“And what vault would that be, fellerino?”

Big Mac’s face contorted in an iron frown. “The only vault that matters!”

“Ah! But you presume much!” Flam pointed with a smirk. “It’s the only vault that matters to you!”

“Why should it do several kinds of unsavory things to our jimmies?” Flim muttered, unenthusiastically examining the end of his hoof.

“Of course it affects you two!” Big Mac exclaimed. “It affects everypony! The socks were woven simply because they had to be. If there was no need for improbability in this universe, we would not need the socks.”

“Who gets to wear the little booties is what I would like to know,” Flim said in a snorting tone. “The static electricity they’d give off would be enough to power Fillydelphia for a year.”

“Not even Princess Luna would dare to wear the sacred articles,” Big Mac said with a sullen expression. “For in her hooves, they would wield a power far too real to imagine.”

“Seems a very unwise thing for an alicorn to hold posession over,” Flam uttered, his eye bearing momentary glint of wisdom. “Especially an alicorn susceptible to collapsing into a demonic fugue state that occasionally inhabits the moon for a thousand years.”

“I really do not understand the necessity for a moral analysis here,” Big Mac said. “I’ve agreed to meet with you because I need your help in rounding up the last two socks.”

“Last two?” Flam made a face.

“But of course, brother!” Flim leaned in to murmur aside. “Four limbs! Four socks!”

“Ah!” Flam remarked with a bright-eyed nod. “Good thing Luna wasn’t born a stallion or else we’d have a fifth one to go searching for still”

“Snkkkt—Hahahaha!”

“Haah haah haah!”

A heavy clap of thunder rolled through the chamber. The carpet of dust rose up from the ground and settled with a gray sigh as the vibrations ended around Big Mac’s slamming forelimbs. Leaning forward with a glacier of a growl, he exclaimed, “Do not speak with such jocularity and disrespect of our princess! She has sacrificed too much over the millennia to assure that the tenuous structure of our universe stays intact! Haven’t you wondered what other beings in the grand annals of time might have otherwise attempted to upset the laws of probability!”

“Oh, but we can, distant ‘cousin,’” Flam uttered, pacing loosely around the mountainous stallion. “Sorcerers, soothsayers, and conjurers a’plenty!”

“Why, you can’t swing a dead cat around Equestria without running into a showmare thinking she’s the heaven’s gift to equines!”

“Let me give the intimidating speech, brother.”

“Nnnngh...”

“The fact of the matter is, there could very easily be any number of secret cabals out to get their hooves on your precious socks of improbability,” Flam continued in a hissing tone. “As a matter of fact...” He smoothed back his crimson mane, smirking nonchalantly. “We may have heard of one at the forefront of such an audacious conspiracy.”

Big Mac squinted curiously at him. “Who...?”

Flam glanced at Flim. Flim wagged his eyebrows. With a dance-like stride, Flam piroutted to Big Mac’s other side, leaned up, and whispered something into his ear.

Big Mac gasped far too loudly for his own good. “‘The Temple of the Hoodie?!’”

“Shhhh!” Flam’s lips spat out a vicious hiss as he clung tightly to Macintosh’s big muzzle. His sharp breath became a whispery siren, piercing the sedimentary shadows of the place until the faintest crum of detritus fell off a distant sheet before submerging the dark-lit chamber once again in sacred silence. Through the resounding tinnitus in everypony’s ear, a phantom groaning sound echoed, like a great weight of ominous clouds billowing over the concrete shoulders of the monolithic museum building. After ten numb seconds, everything was still once again, and the three stallions breathed evenly once more.

Starting with the two brothers: “Do not speak idly of the Temple,” Flim said. “There is evil in their congregation that does not sleep. Even the trees and the leaves serve as their eyes and ears. It is said that their influence stretches beyond the golden bands of Celestia.”

Big Mac gulped and finally said, “I did not realize that they had grown so powerful.”

“Nopony knows; nopony who has lived to tell of their infamy, at least,” Flim said, scratching his chin in thought. “But with several thousand years to do mischief in the absence of your princess and beholder of the sock...”

“It’s a miracle that they don’t have the other two socks that you so seek!” Flam remarked. “How do you know that you’ve made any progress?”

“Because I have two of the royal articles already in my possession,” Big Mac said.

“What, you mean beneath that ghastly attire of yours?”

“No,” Big Mac said with a frown. “The Sock of Inflexibility and the Sock of Convenience are safely in the guard of the Mages of Cantata.”

“Ew, those mana-huffers?”

“And...” Big Mac continued, glaring at the two. “I must seek council with the Cavalry of the Feather in Canterlot if I am to retrieve the last two.”

“And which socks might those be?”

Big Mac took a deep breath and said, “The Sock of Inconvenience, which is not so difficult to locate as it is cumbersome to capture. That is the least of my concerns. Once I have the fourth sock, I can combine it with the first two socks in order to summon the power to acquire the final piece.”

“I do not believe we have heard of this fourth sock’s name,” said Flam.

“There’s a reason for that,” Big Mac explained. “It is incorporeal.”

“Incorpo-whatsit?”

“It blends in with its environment, hiding from sight and color. For that purpose, we have called it the Sock of Zero.”

“Well, that’s not a very promising title, now is it?” Flim said, giving a confused expression. “What purpose could such a thing serve?”

“It exists because it has to. It must occupy and abstain, possess and subtract, distill and rob all at once.” Big Mac’s nostrils flared as he added gravely, “It is everything and nothing, the missing gap in mathematical and logical comprehension. It incorporates all of the comprehension of ponykind, and yet none of its expectations. In a way, we are all the Sock of Zero, and it is none of us.”

“Now I know why our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother split off from these yahoos!” Flam uttered, adding a dry chuckle.

Flim smacked him across the forehead.

“Augh! What was that for?”

“Because you were second.” Flim then turned to smile innocently Big Mac’s way, speaking “I see that it would be a great deal of difficulty in locating the Sock of Zero, or—perhaps—a great deal of non-difficulty, if I am to correctly digest your paradoxical pontificating.”

“In that case...” Flam finished rubbing his aching skull in time to smile with just as much gusto. “We have that which you need, and that which the Order of the Apple has been severely lacking all these pathetic centuries.”

“Indeed,” Big Mac uttered with a nod of his huge head. “If it lives up to legend, then it would give me powers of foresight to see beyond the hiding places of the Sock of Zero.”

“Not only that, Mactista!” Flim said with a wink. “It surpasses legend! It’s positively too hot for the Triple Trotente of Luna’s beloved kingdom to handle!”

“And we are the only ones left who can supply you a drop of it,” Flam added, reaching deep into a saddlebag that he was dragging out from behind a shrouded statue. “They say that there are less than fifty mugs of it left in the world, and they would be telling the truth. Albeit, not all things old and wise enough to possess this nectar would be willing to share it with mortals as fragile as you and I.”

“May I at least see if you brought it?” Big Mac asked, glaring.

“Hmmm... It depends,” Flim said, leaning in with a suspicious squint. “What payment have you to provide us?”

“The very graceful lack of my hooves impounding your skulls,” Big Mac said.

“Hmmm... That seems like a bargain!” Flim remarked. “What do you say, dear brother of mine?”

“Let’s let him take a gander!” Flam reached deep into the saddlebag and pulled out a translucent canteen filled to the brim with a sloshing, platnium material. Sudsy bubbles lifted towards the cap of the item, twinkling with incandescent sparkles of otherworldly energy.

“So it is real...” Bic Mac’s breath left him in a sigh of wonderment. “The Ambrosia of the Gods...”

“One gulp of this, Sweet Apple Knight, and you will enter a realm that was once sacred to the race of alicorns that populated this corner of the constellations,” Flim explained in a low, haunting tone. Once more, there was a resounding groan above the ceiling of the place, like an oceanic echo shivering through the museum’s foundations. “You will be treading a graveyard of abandoned mindscapes, a second life constructed by the minds of sheer godlike intellect, a place where immortals sequestered themselves in small, holy numbers to plan out the course of all sentient civilizations for eons to come. When they died out, their celestial quaff would have disappeared with them, if not for the diligent actions of a few noble souls—orders far more ancient and loyal than your own.”

“With this, you can find your precious, elusive Sock of Zero,” Flam contributed. “And you will enter a realm that not even the Temple of the Hoodie can track you in.”

Big Mac removed his hat. With a shuddering breath, he exclaimed, “Cider Space.”

“The one and only dreamscape of eternity,” Flim whispered, his green eyes fiery and bright. “They say that once you enter Cider Space, you don’t come out as the same pony. Something about you has changed, and if you will it ardently enough, you can change into whatever you want to be once you come out of it.”

“Whether you want to be younger,” Flam said.

“Or older,” Flim sing-songed.

“Or handsomer.”

“Or prettier—”

“All I want”—Big Mac extended a thick hoof, frowning—“Is to retrieve the last of the socks, and your canteen of Cosmic Cider is the one key I need to do that.”

“Perhaps what can be a key for you can be a key for us,” Flim remarked.

Big Mac squinted. “How do you mean...?”

“Ohhhh...” Flam casually sloshed the canteen around in his grasp, his eyes rolling over the ceiling. “Nothing too extravagant. You could take us to dinner... show us a tour of the Order’s Orchards...”

“Sign a contract,” Flim muttered swiftly.

Big Mac’s face spun towards him. “You mean to suggest... reunification?”

“Face it, Macerooni! Business lately is dry!” Flam blinked, glanced at the canteen in his grasp, and chuckled nervously. “Relatively speaking, of course. Ahem.”

“What my oafish brother means is that we could benefit from unschisming the schism, as t’were.”

“Unacceptable!” Big Mac frowned intensely. “Your family has done too many treacherous deeds to be accepted once more in Luna’s fold!”

“But what of yours?” Flam remarked with a wag of his eyebrows. “Hmmm? Surely that blonde filly back at the farm is not the head of the chicken coop where you live. And that elderly mare-do-wonky is far too wrinkled to lead the pack on her lonesome.”

“The Order of the Apple has a dark and dismal future indeed,” Flim remarked. He leaned in and rasped in a soft, pitiable voice, “With very little seed to go around...”

Big Mac stared dully into the shiny surface of the canteen, watching as the rising suds of the holy ambrosia distorted the cold lines of his sullen face. “I have... had my concerns as of late.”

“And having to hide it behind such a quiet exterior!”

“And a simplistic accent!”

“And such constant, laborious, unappreciated labor!”

With a snarl, Big Mac performed a massive shrug, forcing the two stallions back after they had gotten far too uncomfortably close. “You know nothing of me! Either hoof over the Cosmic Cider or—”

“Or what?” Flam chuckled, holding the canteen behind his back. “You are nothing on your own!”

“And just what useful allies do a rhyming zebra, a cantankerous uncle, and a ditzy mailmare make?!”

“None at all! Is that right, Flim?”

“You got that right, Flam!”

With a cold breath, Big Mac’s face contorted. “How do you know so much?” his voice shuddered beneath the groaning ceiling of the dusty museum room. “Have you been spying on me all this time?”

“Nonsense! That’s the Temple of the Hoodie’s job!” Flim balked.

Flam shook the canteen around like an inglorious rattle. “And you do wish to get a leg up on them, hmmm?”

“One thing at a time,” Big Mac stated. “I need to consult the Cavalry of the Feather in Cloudsdale to see if entering Cider Space is the necessary step to finding the Sock of Zero.”

Flim leaned in, shaking his forelimbs from side to side. “Now don’t be too hasty there, Macafrass—”

“And I can’t forget to find a hospital,” Big Mac said. “After all, I can’t be expected to trot any distance after having broken all... of... m-my...” He froze in place, his face paling. Slowly, he glanced down at his four legs. “...broken all... of my limbs?”

Flim and Flam were standing dead still. The suds inside the canteen suddenly froze.

Big Mac’s jaw dropped as his heart race increased. He fell to his haunches, only this time the dust didn’t move. Slowly, he raised his forelimbs up to his gawking face. “Wait. This is...” He blinked. “How?”

“You should tell us about the hospital you were thinking of going to, Macky,” Flam said in a droning, mechanical tone.

“Yes,” Flim added. “Tell us.”

“I... I...” Big Mac stammered, gazing up at the shadows of the place. The groaning filled the chamber again, like a gigantic body of water lurching above the dusty shadows. “Albuquercolt... I was in Albuquercolt...” He swallowed dryly. “The Sock of Infelixibility... the Sock of Convenience...” His face winced as if he was being knifed in the gut. “I left with them as I went to the hospital. I... I needed a way to heal all my limbs at once, a magical way. None of the doctors would be able to help me. Not even the Mages of Cantata could help me...”

“So where did you go, Big Mac?” Flam asked, a pale sheen coming to his temple.

“Yes...” Flim added. Rivulets of gold-colored sweat ran down his temple like candle wax. “We would like to know.”

“I...” Big Mac’s head recoiled from them with a retching face. “Why am I telling you two so many things? Why have I been spouting my mouth off this entire time we’ve met?”

“You shouldn’t be alone in this journey,” Flam droned.

“You should be one with us,” Flim hummed.

“One with the Apple.”

“One with the truth.”

“Two personalities, identical, absorbing everything I have to give...” Big Mac shivered. “Horseapples!” He stared up at them, his brow furrowing. “I’m... I’m in Cider Space...”

“Your order is an old and trivial exercise in futility, Apple Born,” Flimflam said.

“Too much of a burden for mortals to bear,” Flamflim gurgled as he began melting.

“Quiet, you!” Big Mac launched up to his hooves and snatched the canteen out of Flamflimflam’s grasp. He spun the cap off, and a tiny swarm of seaponies fluttered out. They spun colorful loops around his red head, giggling and singing in cadence. He gasped as the museum shook around him, groaning even louder, tipping towards the north side.

“So you decided to pledge your entire life to a moon princess!” Flimflamflimflam chuckled, leaning against each other like a wax pyramid as their four eyes became two above a single, gaping grin. Yellow streams of fruity juice trickled down the walls, forming brown mud with the dust and grit of the place. “And yet you’re just as pathetically bound to the unforgiving soil as every earth pony who’s pulled the plow before you! Ahh haah haah haah!”

Their bubbling cackles filled his ears. In a panicked fit, he stumbled backwards, only to slip on a current of orange cider. He fell and glided out of the dark corridor, smashing through the velvet barricade as the floor of the museum tilted even further, flinging him into a suit of armor. He glanced up, breathless.

“No wonder your parents left you and your siblings!” A Flimmityflammity face melted in the helmet, its mouth and teeth sliding down the polished neck and breastplate as it cascaded towards him. “An earth pony would get more respect from being a court jester! Haah haah haah!”

“Nnnngh!” Big Mac snarled and smashed the suit of armor with his front limbs. It collapsed in a splash of cider, drenching him as he scrambled up to his hooves and galloped down row after row of landscape art spilling forth frothy ambrosia. The windows of the museum above started to shatter and crack. Big Mac looked up, his eyes twitching to see tempestuous currents of golden liquid smashing against the translucent glass.

Just then, he slammed into an equine figure.

“Ooof!” He stumbled back and watched as several ponies fell over like dominoes. A teacher and her foals rattled to the floor, stiff as ponyquins, their faceless white skulls bobbing in the rising layer of apple juice that swiftly filled the careening interior.

“If I lived as stupid and absurd a lie as yours, I’d keep it too,” the voice echoed, having at last become one.

“Who are you?!” Big Mac shouted, wailing towards the cider-drenched walls of the place. Currents and swift rapids of yellow sauce fountained against his knees, but he buckled against the massive force of it as benches and skeletons and antique statues glided past him. “Why did you bring me here?! What knowledge did you wish to rob from me in the dreamscape of the alicorn gods?!”

“Oh, but you brought yourself here, noble Apple Born!” More rivulets formed in the window panes above. The entire museum was under gold water, drifting, falling, submerging to the bottom of a giant lake of cider. “You brought yourself to me, for you were too lazy and scared to tackle Inconvenience. You couldn’t have bananas, so you allowed yourself the vacant abyss of your mind. You’ve allowed yourself nothing.”

Big Mac gasped, his eyes twitching as he stood like a stone bluff against the currents. “The Sock of Zero...”

“I do not wish to be found,” the rumbling voice said, crashing more waves against Macintosh’s quivering form. “Nor do I wish to be lost. I wish to be what I am, the great void between purpose and purposeless. Invisible is my blood. Incomprehensible are my tears. You do not deserve to possess me, son of apple seeds, as you did not have any right to lose me.”

“I had no part in the matter!” Big Mac shouted. “The vault was broken into twenty years ago! I was just a foal—too young for the order—when the Socks of Improbability were pilfered!”

“But another member of the order was there,” the voice said, piercing Macintosh’s ear drums as the cider rose up to his bobbing chin. “And he too can’t be found. I know this, for I was there when he wished to be lost, as he wished for the Socks to be lost.”

“No. It c-can’t be true!” Macintosh gasped sharply before the flood finally overtook him. “F-father?”

Just then, the groaning intensified by tenfold. He waded about and gazed towards the entrance of the museum. With a huge crash, every door to the place shattered wide open, and an unfathomable wave of golden froth roared in, drowning and encompassing every dry space left in the thunderous interior.

Big Mac spun and twirled through the orange miasma. He swam towards the surface, only to strike a pure wall of black and white checkerboards. Cursing into a froth of bubbles, he spun around, kicked off the floor, and shot towards the surface of the raging pool of cider. He finally burst through, clinging to a floating finbone of an ancient sea serpent from the prehistory wing. Paintings and clusters of antique pottery swirled past him as he bobbed closer and closer to the glass ceiling of the place.

All around him, the Sock of Zero’s wrath was surging in from all angles, flooding the museum with improbable wrath and fury. Above the fractured glass windows, huge beastly shadows surged through the currents, circling the submerged museum like sharks zeroing in on their prey.

“Con sarn it!” Big Mac hissed, slipping into his countrified accent as the dreamscape collapsed all around him. “T’ain’t real! None of it!” The Apple Knight smacked his soaked head and hissed out loud, “Must think! Must concentrate! This isn’t real! This is just a part of my head, linked to the godly ambrosia. If I wish to get out of Cider Space, then I need to get out of my own head!”

His audible thoughts were interrupted by a bench gliding up against his spine and shattering. He grunted, slipped free of the skeleton, and bobbed up and down for several seconds until his massive hooves caught a tall marble pillar. He clung to the cylindrical pylon as the bubbling waters rose all around him.

“My own head... My own head...” He panted as the museum groaned and shook around him. “What do I care about more than anything else? Enough to wake me out of a dream and serve Her Majesty?!” He glanced all around at the billowing orange waves. His mouth hung open in a heavy gasp. “My duty! My legacy! Of course!” He grinned briefly into the fruity monsoon. “The tapestry!”

Just as he said this, a giant crack resounded overhead. He glanced up.

The windows finally gave way. With a shatter of glass, the weight of the oceanic cider broke through the ceiling. The entire museum was completely flooded. The surface—and its supply of oxygen—was nowhere to be seen. Big Mac stood the risk of drowning for eternity in the niche of dead gods. He had only one chance...

Holding his breath, the big red stallion dove deep into the currents. He swam past floating statues, paintings, old-fashioned dresses, and archaeological finds. He ducked low beneath an arch of marble as pony bodies—reduced to ashen facsimiles of their past self—bobbed past him. He momentarily got tangled with a line of velvet rope. Hissing and sputtering bubbles, he lost half of his breath just in the act of disentangling himself. Finally free, he kicked and dashed his way through the spiraling currents with the tapestry in view.

The huge sheet of fabric danced in the surging currents. Princess Luna’s woven face undulated under Big Mac’s shadow as he arrived. Immediately, he grasped the center of the tapestry where a pony was holding up a brass plate full of socks. Big Mac sneered and folded the middle of the sheet heavily around his hoof. He aligned it so that the translucent fourth sock blending with the brass material occupied the majority of his forelimb. He felt resistance, as if something quivering and alive beneath the ancient fabric was pushing away at him.

A last stream of bubbles left Big Mac’s nostrils. His lungs were imploding. Blackness devoured the edges of his vision, and everything was turning cold as ice in his extremities. Through thin eyes, he focused on the tapestry, leaning in and clinging to it like a foal might nuzzle a comfort blanket. With his last breath, he murmured a few choice words, his muffled voice vibrating the soaked sheet.

Just then, the invisible sock on the illustrated brass plate glowed with platinum brilliance. All the color from the cider poured into the shape of the fabric. As the flooded museum turned into a black and white imitation of what the dreamscape once was, the entire tapestry shrunk and formed a solid ring around Big Mac’s forelimb. It pulsed even more brightly, then sucked all the juices up like a sponge. As the fluids of cider space flew into the sock, so did the ambient energy of all Cider Space.

In the end, Big Macintosh’s eyes opened to find himself sitting up in bed, perfectly dry, with a glowing stocking over the end of his bandaged hoof. The sock strobed with finality, and then dimmed, turning translucent as the Zero Article blended with the red coat and white bandages of the stallion’s right hoof.

Just then, a mare’s voice gasped from across the room. “Big Mac! You’re back!” Pandora ran over to his bedside and grasped his outstretched hoof. An empty mug sat on the bedside table, its lid laced with a thin layer of orange froth. “Did you find it? Did you get what you needed from the dreamscape beyond?”

He sighed long and hard, settling back into the soft pillows as he breathed with calming heaves. “See for yourself.”

Gently, so as not to apply too much pressure to his injured limbs, Pandora felt the end of his hoof. Her eyes widened as she quite evidently felt the folds of the invisible article. A happy grin was plastered to her face. “You found it! You got the Sock of Zero!”

“It sure as hay wasn’t easy...”

“Oh, Tabala’s going to be beside herself with joy! She was believing in you all this time. I had to force her to bed or else she would have spent the next twelve hours in here, waiting for you to return.”

“I almost didn’t make it out,” Big Mac said sullenly. He twitched uncomfortably, his bandaged limbs numb to his aching spirit. “The Sock of Zero... proved to be rather aggressive.”

“Aggressive?” Pandora’s face twisted in confusion. “How do you mean?”

Big Mac gazed out the window at the bright blue sky. “The Sock’s voice provoked me, perhaps in an attempt to distract me from my goal. It must have known that Cider Space was the only means by which I could capture it, so it took on a cruel personality and tried to drown me with more than just alicorn ambrosia...”

“Like what?”

“It took on the image of two of my families’ most hated rivals,” he said with a shuddering breath. “And then... and then it read my mind.”

“Read it in what way?”

“Granny has never been all that honest about what happened to my folks,” Big Mac said, flexing his hoof as if to be sure that the Sock of Zero was still there. “She’s always implied that they died while fighting for the Order. Still, it always struck me as a mighty bit coincidental that my father and mother would disappear the month—if not the very day that the Lunar Vault was broken into.”

Pandora shrugged. “Maybe it was the Temple of the Hoodie all along.”

“Yes, perhaps. I—” Big Mac froze. His eyes turned to hard emeralds as he swiveled his face over to stare at Pandora. “What... How would you know about that?”

She simply stared at him.

His brow furrowed. “That was all in my mind! Flim and Flam, they—” He was interrupted by a loud groaning noise. He looked out the window.

The sky had turned orange and sudsy.

“That which is most elusive is that which is most handy,” Pandora said in an unearthly voice. Big Mac felt her dainty limbs tugging the invisible Sock of Zero off his hoof.

Powerless in his bandages, Big Mac could only gasp from the bed as he turned to see her trotting backwards with the translucent object hanging from her clutches.

“Finally, the Temple has what we need,” Pandora said. She pulled the Sock’s end impossibly wide open with both forelimbs and ducked her head inside. There was a bright flash of light, piercing the amber haze of the flooded bedroom. When the light faded, a blue alicorn hovered at the foot of his bed, her upper body clad in an ink black sweatjacket. “The Sock of Zero serves us now,” she murmured as her eyes glowed a burning ivory beneath a billowing mane of midnight blue stardust. “I present to you the Beginning and End of all things, the Omnihoodie.”

“Who... Who are you?!” Big Mac struggled to sit up, his eyes squinting. “And why do you look like—?”

“Believe me, I am not your beloved Princess, or at least not the foolish part of her that thinks she owns the body she now inhabits,” the alicorn said. “I am Woona, the innocent, the infantile center of purity she left behind when Nightmare Moon took her to the heavens.” The alicorn’s young complexion hardened into a rigid frown. “For nine long centuries, I suffered without a form, without a body to occupy and enjoy the senses of this world that I had been deprived of. Finally, an order of devoted ponies found me, a far more loyal bunch than your putrid Triple Trotente.”

Big Mac snarled knowingly, “The Temple of the Hoodie...”

“They showered me with love and affection. And for their efforts, I shall give them the world as the Omnihoodie sees fit to conquer.”

“If you think you can get away with using the Sock of Zero for such hideous treachery—”

“There is no secret Luna holds that I do not possess intuition of,” Woona stated. “If anything, I should be thanking you.”

“If I had known that you were waiting for me in Cider Space all this time—”

“Not you, but your father,” Woona remarked with a slight smirk as the hoodie floated her higher towards the ceiling. “Or else this sequence of events would have never started from the beginning.”

Big Mac was sweating profusely. The dreamscape groaned through the structure of the house outside as he stammered, “I refuse to believe that he was a traitor like you.”

“Soon, it will not matter. The Sock of Inconvenience continues to do that which I have always wished: to distract Equestria while the Temple, my glorious new children, achieve their rightful dominance in the world of mortals. Soon, all will gallop in line to the holy rhythm produced by the Omnihoodie.”

“I will never follow you!” Big Mac snarled. “To my dying day, this stallion will fight you on every front!”

“What a devoted little colt you are inside.” Woona’s eyes pulsed. “Let me show you what power I have to flip your inane little world upside down.”

The bedroom flooded with cider. Big Mac heard himself screaming as the juices coalesced around his muscular limbs. Like the waves of a beach, the cider receded, and he felt gravity pulling him down. The ponylanded with a grunt in the center of a large bed. Eyes wide, the Knight sat up and looked around.

It was the room of a Albuquercolt hospital. The Knight was alone. An IV stood next to the bed, dripping with the last remaining drops of magical orange liquid.

Big Mac groaned in defeat. Nevertheless, a quartet of hooves lingered below, and none of them were bandaged anymore. They weren’t even remotely aching from all of the fractures they had suffered just days before.

“Well, at least Cider Space restored my broken limbs. Still, I have to contact the other Orders, ‘cuz now I’ve got bigger problems—” Big Mac froze upon the sound of the voice coming out. It was a great deal more high-pitched than normal. In a nervous sweat, the Knight hopped off the bed, wobbling from a sudden shift in balance. With a nervous gait, the pony trotted towards a tall mirror besides a medical cabinet and looked straight at it.

A slender red mare with bright green eyes blinked back, her long blonde tresses shining from the desert sunlight gleaming in through the windows.

Little Macintosh glanced down at her hooves, careening. “Awwww shucks,” she stammered, then fainted in a dazed heap.

Chapter 6

When Macintosh came to, he was seated on a chair next to an empty hospital bed. An older mare was looking at her with concern. “Miss, you alright?”

Little Macintosh stumbled through a response as his memories returned to him, “I-I’m not a ma—” She blushed, and brought a hoof up to massage a throbbing headache. “I mean, I think so; thank you.”

The nurse smiled weakly at her. “You gave us quite a scare, being unconscious in a patient’s room with no sign of him. What happened to the poor stallion? All four of his legs were broken; it’s not as if he could have just walked out.” Her gaze sharpened. “He did disappear right around when you showed up…”

Little Macintosh glanced at the empty bed. Doing his best to avoid outright lying, she said, “Erm… I never saw a stallion in here. The only pony I’ve seen is me; and you o’course. I just had a bit of a dizzy spell for a moment.” Little Mac’s eyes flicked toward the door. He didn’t have time to be interrogated by a random nurse. She had to get the Sock of Zero back from Woona and defeat the Temple of the Hoodie before it was too late. And he had to stop being confused about what pronouns to use. For now she was stuck being a mare, so there was no sense in giving herself even more of a headache by persisting in using masculine pronouns. In sudden relief, she lowered the hoof from her temple as the headache eased considerably.

The nurse simply stared at her for a moment, then sighed. “Well, it’s not like a young filly like yourself could have carried him away on her lonesome.” Her eyes flicked to Little Mac’s cutie mark. “Not much dealing with apples here in Albuquercolt, in fact, nothing at all that I know of; you visiting for yourself, or on business?”

Mind racing, Macintosh answered, “I’m here to order sauerkraut for my family back in… Fillydelphia. The cabbage from here is world-famous.”

“Oh, don’t I know!” The nurse’s eyes gleamed with sudden excitement. “It’s so good for growing fillies and colts too. I make sure my foals eat a big bowl of it every morning! In fact, my brother-in-law, his family owns one of the largest…”

The nurse went on about all the many, many, many ways her family was a part of the sauerkraut business and just how that business worked for several minutes. Little Macintosh simply stared in amazement before remembering her mission. When the nurse paused for breath, in the middle of a diatribe about which vinegars produced the strongest flavors, she interrupted, “Really, that’s fascinating, but I have to get going. Orders don’t place themselves.”

“Goodness, I’ve done it again; Choral Breeze is always telling me I do love to talk too much. And now I’ve held up a fine, sauerkraut-appreciating soul from getting to her business. If you’re sure you’re alright, I’ll just pop out and bring in a release form and you can head on out.” The nurse turned away and headed to a desk in a central area just outside the patient room.

Once she was fully engaged in digging through a file cabinet, Little Macintosh leapt off the chair and sprinted into the hallway. Glancing left and right for an “exit” sign, she found a door that led to a concrete stairwell and dashed through it. Running was still a little awkward, but she was already getting used to how her new body felt. Being turned into a mare could have been a lot worse; at least it seemed like she was still in the same shape as she had been in before. The effort of running down two flights of stairs and out of the glass double doors of the hospital didn’t even leave her winded.

She made sure to put the hospital building far behind her before looking back to see if she had been followed. The streets around her were empty—too empty. Suddenly, a loud roar filled the air and a green sock soared right into Little Macintosh’s face. It happened so fast that she could hardly flinch in surprise before the sock rebounded and crashed into an unlucky shop window. It then froze the window mid-shatter, flew back toward Macintosh, deposited a pair of bricks at her feet, blew a loud and very wet raspberry, and flew away to break two more storefronts before vanishing from sight. Then the police arrived. Just as they came in to view, one of them shouted: “You there with the bricks! Don’t move!”

Naturally, Little Macintosh did the opposite: she looked around for an escape route and ran down an alley as fast as she could.

By the time she was confident that she had lost the pursuit, Little Macintosh was drenched in sweat, breathing hard, and completely lost. Albequercolt wasn’t a particularly large city, but it was still large enough to become hopelessly lost in. Little Mac spotted a park and sat down on one of the benches to catch her breath and gather her bearings. She had to find Tabala and Pandora’s house and make sure that the first two socks were still safe before going after Woona and the Temple of the Hoodie. Thinking of the Sock of Zero and Woona reminded her of what the sock had said about her father. Was it true, or was the sock merely preying on her deepest fears? Little Mac realized that the only way she would find out would be to find Woona again, and that wasn’t going to be pleasant.

She didn’t know where Pandora’s house was, but it had to be close to where Big Macintosh had fallen and broken his legs. If she could just find wherever that was, she would have a good place to start. As she looked around for any buildings that looked familiar, she avoided any officers she caught sight of. She didn’t think that the first group of policeponies had gotten a good look at her, but it was better to be safe than in jail. Improbability aside, the sock had just been plain malicious.

It took nearly the rest of the day to find Pandora’s house. First, Little Mac had found a small crater in the cobblestone that vaguely reminded her of herself, then she had spiraled away from it knocking on doors. That is, until she found one door knocked off its hinges and Pandora lying on the floor just inside.

She rushed over to the still form—she was breathing, but unconscious. Little Mac gently shook her with a hoof and called her name. “Pandora! Wake up! I need to know what happened here.”

Pandora groaned, and stirred. Abruptly, she stiffened and stared in shock at Little Macintosh. “Wha—? Who—?” Her eyes widened as they took in a green apple cutie mark. “Macintosh? No, it—”

“No time to explain, first tell me what happened here.”

She shivered as she said, “The T-temple of the Hoodie. They came out of nowhere. I-I tried to stop them, but there were too many of them.” Tears started to fill her eyes as she stared at Little Macintosh. “Dear Luna, they took her; they took Tabala.”

Little Mac did her best to remain calm and provide an anchor for Pandora, but things were quickly spiraling out of control. “Did they take the lunchbox? Pandora, Do they have the socks?!”

Pandora collapsed to the ground once more. “Y-yes. It’s over. The Temple has won.”

Little Mac growled. “Not yet they haven’t.” Her eyes hardened in building anger. “We just have to find them. Do ya know where they went? Is there any spell you could use to track them?”

Pandora shook her head. “There’s nothing I can do. No one knows where the Temple is hidden… Wait”—she rose to her hooves—“There might be someone who knows: my sister, in Ponyville.”

Inwardly, Little Mac groaned, but there didn’t seem to be an alternative. They would have to go to Ponyville. “Then we have to get to Ponyville as quickly as possible. Is there still time to catch the overnight express train?”

Pandora nodded. “If we hurry. The mages have access to a private car whenever it’s needed; one of our cousins owns the western railway.”

The two made for the train station, Pandora leading since Little Mac still had no idea of the layout of the city. As they left the house, Little Mac thought she caught a glimpse of green fabric out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to get a better look didn’t see anything. It didn’t take long to get to the train station, and the process of booking a private car for “Cantata business” went off without a hitch. The train even left on time.

Once they were settled into the luxury sleeper car, they chose a pair of bunks across from each other. Pandora closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep almost before the train even left the station. Little Mac tried to relax too. The train ride would last all night and then they’d have a lot to do in Ponyville. At least being turned into a mare had one advantage: no one would suspect that she was actually Big Macintosh. Just as she got comfortable in the bunk, Pandora opened her eyes. She stared at Little Macintosh for several moments before finally saying, “I don’t understand. Who are you? What happened to Big Macintosh? The last I saw of him—two days ago—he was in the hospital with four broken legs with a plan to go to Cloudsdale when he healed. Where did you come from? Did he call for reinforcements?”

Little Mac sighed. How could she explain what had happened? How could she expect anypony to believe it? She hardly believed it herself and it had happened to her. Well, Pandora was a Cantata; maybe she even knew a way to get rid of the spell. “I am… I was Big Macintosh. The Temple of the Hoodie’s leader did this to me while I was in Cider Space.”

“Cider Space? But he—you were in the hospital. How could you have ended up in Cider Space?”

“I don’t remember. I remember thinking about going there, but the last thing I remember before I was there is asking to be taken to a hospital.” Little Mac shrugged. “All I do know for sure is that I found the Sock of Zero, but that was when the Temple ambushed me and did this to me.” She gestured at her obviously feminine figure. “I don’t suppose ya could undo the spell or anything, could you?”

Pandora’s brow knit in concentration and her horn flashed a brilliant blue for a few seconds. “I can’t detect anything; you seem like a normal mare as far as I can sense… But with Cider Space involved… I don’t think anyone fully understands it.”

Little Mac nodded. That was what she had feared. There likely wasn’t any way for her to turn back into a stallion shy of revisiting Cider Space or alicorn magic. She glanced out of the train window at the pitch black countryside. For the briefest moment she thought she saw a green speck keeping up with the train. “It’s late, and we’ll have an early start in the morning when the train arrives in Ponyville. We should get some sleep.”

They woke to the sound of the train’s whistle as it marked the last mile to Ponyville station. Through the window they could see the shadow of Mount Canterlot stretching nearly to the platform, indicating how early it still was. Little Mac took a deep breath of the country air. Cities were nice and all, but something about all those ponies living so close together gave the places an odor that was just a little off. Nothing beat the air of the open country.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Big Macintosh, but it smells—”

Little Macintosh continued to watch as the train began to slow. “Wonderful? I know.”

“—like manure and dirt.” Pandora arched one eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ll ever really understand you country ponies.”

Little Macintosh laughed. “Every pony prefers how their own place smells; you’ll hardly notice anything in a few minutes. And when you go home, you’ll think it smells wonderful too.” They were both silent until the train began pulling into the station. Then, Little Macintosh turned back to Pandora and said, “Don’t call me Big Macintosh in front of any of the townsponies; I don’t want to risk any of them recognizing me in this state.”

As the train came to a stop, Pandora frowned Little Mac’s way. “What; is being a mare so terrible?”

Little Mac opened her mouth to reply, but then stopped to think. Apart from the momentary disorientation when she’d first been transformed there hadn’t been anything wrong with being a mare. She didn’t feel weaker; if anything, she felt better than she ever had before—just as strong, but lighter, quicker. “I’m just not… myself. In any case, none of the ponies here know I’m a member of the Order of the Apple, and it’d just lead to too many questions.”

There was a knock at the car’s door and it slid open to reveal a conductor. “We’ve arrived in Ponyville ladies. Do you need any assistance with luggage?”

Pandora smiled at the stallion. “No thank you; we’ll be all right on our own.”

The conductor nodded and retreated back toward the front of the train. Following a quick glance, the two mares exited the caboose and stepped onto the nearly deserted platform. Only one or two other passengers had been on the train and they were busy with luggage. Little Macintosh turned to Pandora. “Everything opens early in Ponyville, so I think your sister’s shop should be open. Hopefully she knows enough to at least get us started in our search for the Temple.”

Pandora nodded, and Little Mac stepped off the platform only to stop dead. There, not twenty yards in front of her, was the green Sock of Inconvenience. She started to sprint at it, hoping to finally catch the infernal article. She closed to fifteen yards, ten yards, five, when an orange form blocked her path, walking down a cross-street. With no time to react, Little Mac slammed into the other mare, and both of them tumbled to the ground. “What in tarnation!?”

Little Mac broke out of the tangle of limbs to look at where the sock had lain just before—nothing. She grumbled, “Horseapples. Got away again,” before it fully dawned on her just who she had run in to. Her face froze halfway between horror and rage as she realized just what the sock had just done. “Almost like the stupid thing has a grudge against me,” she muttered.

An all-too familiar voice said, “Now it’s one thing to run into somepony, but to not even offer to help them up is plain rude. I have half a mind to—wait a tic. You look mighty familiar. You’re an Apple ain’t ya?”

Before she could stop herself, Little Mac said, “Eeyup.” She winced at her own stupidity before slowly turning to face her sister, a look of embarrassment on her face. “Sorry for runnin’ into you and all; I just thought I saw”—she spotted a pile of hay—“a needle in that haystack! We wouldn’t want anypony to accidentally eat it or anything…”

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “That’s real kind of you.”

Just then, Pandora reached them. “Macintosh, why’d you suddenly go galloping into the town?”

Applejack frowned. “Macintosh? I’ve got a brother by that name. Big Macintosh.” She stared hard at Little Mac. “You look almost exactly like ‘im”—her eyes grew wide—“Sweet Celestia! Y’all must be his long-lost twin sister! Why, even yer cutie marks are the same!”

Both Little Mac’s and Pandora’s jaws dropped in complete surprise as Applejack continued. “Granny never said anything ‘bout another sister, but that’d make sense if Momma and Papa took her with ‘em—Then that must mean—you know where our parents are!” She looked expectantly at Little Macintosh.

Little Mac looked blankly back at her. Applejack continued. “Of course you do. Oh! This must mean they sent you to tell us—everypony back at the farm is going to be so excited! I’d better go find Apple Bloom and we can all head back to the farm together so you can tell us all about it! Now you wait right here; I’ll be back before two shakes of a whisker.” And with that Applejack galloped off, jumped into the air once, and clapped her hooves together in a giddy jig.

Little Mac muttered to Pandora, “You just had to say ‘Macintosh,’ didn’t you?”

Pandora replied, “Sorry, I forgot. I didn’t say Big Macintosh.”

Little Mac sighed. “Let’s get out of here and to your sister’s shop before she gets back. Maybe if we’re lucky if we’re gone she’ll think she must’ve hallucinated us after she got knocked to the ground.”

“If you say so. It’s your family.” The two quickly trotted away from the spot, heading in the opposite direction Applejack had. They passed four buildings before reaching the music shop and stepping inside.

“Good morning! Welcome to—Sis? What are you doing here?” A mint-green unicorn, seated behind a wooden counter looked up at them.

“Hello Lyra, long time no see.” Pandora smiled weakly. “I just wish this was a social call. We need your help. It’s Cantata business.”

Lyra frowned and glanced at Little Mac. “It sounds serious. Let me lock up the shop.” She slid off the stool behind the counter and walked—on her hind legs—to the front window to turn an “open” sign over. Then, she locked the door. She gestured toward a door on the opposite side of the counter. “Let’s talk in the office.”

The office was a mess. The walls were covered in anatomical diagrams of the various species of Equestria that walked on two legs. Next to one was a picture of a tea cup with an arrow pointing to the handle labeled with large, red letters, “WHY?”

“Excuse the mess; I don’t usually have company and I was working late last night. It’s amazing what things you’ll think of at three in the morning.” Lyra levitated an odd-looking metal claw onto one of her forehooves as she sat down behind the desk. As she fiddled with the strange instrument, she motioned for the others to sit down in the pair of chairs covered in books. “Go ahead and just push all that stuff to the floor. I’ll get to it later.” She raised the claw and grabbed a quill from its spot in an inkwell. “I worked on this thing all night! It’s a prosthetic hand!”

Little Mac looked at Pandora, who shrugged. Little Mac said, “Lyra, I’m sure it’s incredible, but we need to ask you about the Temple of the Hoodie.”

Lyra froze. She looked Little Mac in the eyes and said, “I can’t imagine any reason you would need to know about the Temple. They don’t do anything that would interest a member of The Order of the Apple.” At the look of shock on Little Mac’s face, she grinned. “It only makes sense that you’re one of them; why else would my sister bring you in here at the same time as Cantata business.” She looked at Pandora. “Sis, you of all ponies should know that I don’t know any more about the Temple than any member of the Cantatas. I don’t even like sweaters.”

Pandora frowned. “Lyra, they took Tabala.”

Lyra blanched, but replied, “Then I’ll help you any way that I can, but I still don’t know what you expect me to do. If you can find them, I’d be more than happy to help you rescue here, but you’re the one who told me everything I know about the Temple.”

Pandora turned to Little Mac. “Can you head into the shop and grab a lyre?”

Frowning in confusion, Little Mac headed out into the main room and returned with a golden lyre. “Will this do?”

Pandora nodded. “Perfect.” She turned back to Lyra. “I’m sorry to have to do this, but you did say you’d help any way you could.” She began playing a haunting melody.

Lyra said, “What does a lyre have to do with me—” She stopped speaking and her horn began to glow as she listened.

Little Mac looked confusedly between the two sisters and waited. The song ended, and Lyra’s horn flashed brightly before going out. She sagged in her seat for a moment.

When she spoke, her voice was slightly huskier than it had been before. “Pandora… we worked so hard to bury these memories. It was such a dark time for me”—she looked up—“why would the Temple take Tabala? Even with my memories, I don’t understand.”

Pandora’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry, sister. We have to know anything you can tell us about the Temple. We have to save Tabala.”

“And stop them from using Luna’s socks,” Little Mac added. “They took Tabala because she was keeping two of the socks safe for me. She’s probably the only one who can open the case they’re in.”

Pandora nodded and looked back at Lyra. “You have to help us.”

Lyra paled. “I can tell you where the Temple is, I even know why they want the socks.” She looked back at Little Mac. “Do they have any more than the two…”

Little Mac answered, “They have three of them: the Sock of Convenience, the Sock of Inflexibility, and the Sock of Zero.”

Lyra shook her head. “And the Sock of Inconvenience?”

Little Mac shrugged. “It seems to have a grudge against me. It followed us all the way from Albuquercolt.” She tilted her head to the side. “What’s the ‘Omnihoodie?’”

Lyra’s eyes widened. “If you know enough to even ask about the Omnihoodie, then we’re in greater danger than I had thought. The Omnihoodie has the power to become Woona: an alicorn more powerful than Nightmare Moon. Woona can control the power of the socks to a degree no mortal could hope to. For instance, if I had the Sock of Convenience, I could possibly find a way to get rid of my memories again, even though it was originally a one-time-use only spell. If I had Woona’s powers, I could just create a new way entirely out of nothing, and combined with the other socks, she could rewrite reality. That’s what the Temple’s goal is: to create an entire reality where they are the masters. When combined with Woona’s power, the socks can do that.”

Little Mac frowned. “There must be some way to stop them.”

Lyra nodded. “The Omnihoodie can only become Woona for a short time—seconds at most—before having to revert back to her normal state. If she’s using a sock, however, the amount of time is increased exponentially. As I understand it, each sock increases the time by a power of four. But she has to use all the socks individually before she can use any with another. There’s a window of opportunity to strike before she can use the socks in combination, or at their full potential.”

Pandora asked, “Then how much time do we have?”

Lyra frowned. “Each historic Omnihoodie needed to recover for different amounts of time. You could have anywhere between a day and a week from the moment she initiated the transformation until she can do it again. She will likely use each of the ones she has in her possession in an effort to summon the fourth. Unless somepony else already has control of it, there’s no way to stop her from calling it to her.”

Little Mac sighed. “I’ve been trying to capture the Sock of Inconvenience since the first time I saw it. We’re probably better off going straight for the Temple, but we still don’t even know where it is.”

Lyra laughed. “Well, that’s easy. All you have to do is go over Neighagra Falls and you’ll be inside the Temple. Oh, you have to be wearing a hoodie when you go over, or you’ll just end up at the bottom of the river.”

“Neighagra Falls?” Pandora moaned. “That’s only a few miles north of Albuquercolt and Fillydelphia. If only we’d known before we left.”

Lyra raised a hoof. “Knowing how to get into the Temple is one thing, but have you seen anypony wearing hoodies recently? Not only is it still only early Fall, hoodies went out of style years ago. Only flanksters and members of the Temple wear them these days. They’ve become a bit of a rarity.”

Little Mac sat up in excitement. “Rarity! That’s it! She could probably make us some hoodies in no time at all. I’ve never known a better seamstress.”

Pandora slid off her chair. “Well then, we’ve got no time to lose; let’s go meet this ‘Rarity.’”

The three left the office, Lyra locking the shop behind her once they made it onto the street. Little Macintosh led the way saying, “It’s just around the center of town, only a few blocks this way.”

As they trotted down the street, Little Mac caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye only to turn and see the unmistakable green of the Sock of Inconvenience floating at the far end of a cross street. “There’s the sock again.” she whispered back to Lyra and Pandora. Just as she was about to try to chase it down she saw Applejack and Apple Bloom walking down the parallel street. Abruptly Little Mac turned back and hid behind the side of a building. It was better to miss a chance of failing to catch the sock than to run into Applejack again.

Pandora looked at her. “What’s wrong? I thought you saw the sock.” She turned to peer down the cross street again, but Little Mac pulled her back.

“I also saw Applejack. Remember how we don’t want my sister to see us?” Lyra just watched them with a confused look on her face.

Pandora winced. “Well what are we going to do? Is she looking for us?”

Lyra peered around the corner. “Well, she’s not coming this way, and I highly doubt she’s headed toward the Carousel Boutique.” Lyra looked at Little Mac. “‘Sister?’ I thought her only sister was Apple Bloom… Who are you anyway?”

Little Macintosh sighed. “It’s not important right now. Let’s just get the hoodies and see if we can still catch a train back out toward Neighagra today.”

As the bell over the door to the Carousel Boutique announced their entrance, a lilting voice greeted them. “Oh, hello; I’ll be with you in just a moment.” A meticulously groomed mare was putting the finishing touches on a dress resting on a mannequin. “There we go; maybe a half-seam on this part here, but first: customers! Welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique. What can I do for you fine ladies?” She gave each of them a quick, evaluatory glance. “Oh, Miss Heartstrings, I’m sure I say this every time I see you, but you simply have the most fantastic shade of green for your coat—quite a rare color too. You simply have to let me design something special for you.”

Lyra smiled at her. “Well maybe one of these days I’ll take you up on that. Unfortunately, we’re in a bit of a bind and need your talents for… something else.” She looked at Little Mac.

Little Mac looked slightly uncomfortable as she asked, “This will sound strange, but we’re looking to get three hoodies.”

Lyra corrected her, “Two. I won’t be going to the… party. So I won’t be needing one.”

Little Mac frowned but said, “Two then.”

“Say what now? Hoodies? They’re terrible out of fashion right now, but”— Rarity pursed her lips in thought—“hmm… come to think of it, I might actually still have a couple in storage in the basement. If you’ll just wait here for a minute, I’ll go check.”

As she turned to go, Pandora whispered, “You won’t be coming with us? But—”

Lyra cut her off. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you why it would be a bad idea for me to go back there.”

Little Macintosh frowned. “Back there? You mean to say you’ve been inside the Temple before?”

Lyra gave a little laugh. “Ha ha! It wasn’t painfully obvious from how much I knew about them? I used to be a member. In fact, I was next in line to be Omnihoodie before I abandoned the Temple. Still, not only would it be dangerous for you if I went, it’s hard enough for me just remembering everything about them. I’d rather not be tempted back into it all by going.”

Pandora sagged. “I understand. I’m sorry I had to awaken the memories, Lyra.”

“You have to do anything in your power to save your daughter. I can’t be mad at you for that.”

Little Macintosh found herself appreciatively admiring the dress Rarity had been working on. When she started imagining herself in the dress though, she stopped herself. Pandora gave her a knowing smirk. “It is a lovely dress. Even a stallion would have to admit it.”

Little Mac was saved from having to reply by Rarity re-emerging from a door toting a pair of dark sweatjackets. Neither had hoods. “These are the only two even remotely usable jackets I could find. No hoods yet, but I should have the right fabric to add them around here—aha! There it is.” She pulled out a yard of the same fabric the two jackets were made of and levitated a pair of scissors to cut it out. “I try to hold onto every type of outfit I’ve ever made. You never know when an old style is going to re-surface as the most chic thing.” She winked at the three mares. “Just a little insider fashion secret. Every fashion comes back at least twice. Just look at bowties; they’ve been back with a vengeance since Doctor Whooves next door wrote his last best-seller. And there’s always going to be a market for magnificent hats.”

Little Macintosh beamed at her. “Thanks so much for helpin’ us out with the hoodies, Miss Rarity”

Rarity smiled back at her. “Just Rarity, please, and think nothing of it. I’m glad to help. Though I have to wonder what kind of party you need hoodies for.” She raised an eyebrow at them before laughing. “No need to tell me. I can tell your need is genuine and anything I can afford to do for other ponies, I should do. Now if one of you two would step up here, I can start fitting it…”

It took most of ten minutes to get Pandora’s hoodie fit properly, and another ten for Little Macintosh’s. Rarity took the two pinned garments in a grip of magic and said, “Now I should be able to get these ready for you in the next hour or two, but you probably don’t want to wait here for them. Aloe and Lotus’ spa down the street offers the most wonderful massages and hooficures.” She smiled. “Plus, if you tell them I sent you, you’ll get a discount. They’re such good friends.”

Lyra answered, “We just might do that. It’d be good to relax today. Thanks Rarity; we’ll be back later this afternoon.”

Once the three had left the boutique, Little Mac said, “There is no way I’m going to the spa.”

“I can’t believe y’all made me go to the spa.” If Little Macintosh hadn’t already been bright red, her combination of anger and embarrassment would have been obvious to every passing pony.

Pandora giggled. “You had to lie low someplace Applejack wouldn’t think to look anyway. What harm is there in getting a chance to relax?”

Little Mac groaned. “But you didn’t have to insist on the warm mud bath or the—”

Pandora interrupted. “Oh come on, you can’t say you didn’t enjoy it at least a little bit. I saw that look on your face during the massage session.”

Lyra laughed. “Even I’ll admit it was a lot more pleasant than I had thought, and I never go out.”

Pandora gasped. “You mean to say you have such a wonderful spa here in Ponyville and you don’t visit as often as you possibly can?”

Lyra said, “I did mention how I never go out, didn’t I? I usually just work at making more instruments or on my xeno-zoological studies. You’d be amazed at all the different kinds of bipedal creatures there are.”

Little Mac responded, “I’m sure we would be, but while we were at the”—she shuddered—“spa I found out that the only train that leaves toward Neighagra today is scheduled to depart early this afternoon and it’s already”—she looked up at the sun—“half-past one. How long did we spend in there?”

Pandora nodded at her. “You’re right. We really should pick up the hoodies and get going then.”

Lyra stopped walking along with them. “Well, in that case I should get going. It was good to see you sis, even with the circumstances the way they are. No matter how things turn out in Neighagra, promise you’ll come visit again sometime soon? And bring Tabala?”

Pandora smiled. “I promise. It was good to see you again too.” They exchanged hugs while Little Macintosh watched slightly awkwardly.

“Good luck you two.”

Little Macintosh winced. “With what we’re up against, I’d almost wish luck would just take the day off.” They all laughed, and Lyra left them to head back to her home. They walked into the Carousel Boutique and were welcomed by Rarity’s smiling face.

“Ah, welcome back. I’m sure they’re all finished up, but if you wouldn’t mind trying them on quickly just to make sure?” She hoofed them each one of the heavy dark-grey articles. “I do hope they work for you.”

As they tried the sweatjackets on, the door opened to reveal a purple baby dragon carrying a pair of books. “Hi Rarity, I got those books you asked for—oh cool! Dig the swell hoodies!”

“Oh, thank you, Spikey Wikey; those are just what I needed.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek as she levitated the books onto a counter. “I’ll make sure to bring them back once I’m finished.”

Little Macintosh coughed. “Miss Rarity, how much do we owe you for the hoodies?”

Rarity shook her head. “Oh, I couldn’t charge you a single bit for those. To be quite honest, it was more than enjoyable to work on something completely different. No, no! I insist! They’re yours. And if I do say so myself, you two manage to pull them off quite well.”

Pandora beamed at her. “You really are the Element of Generosity aren’t you. Really though, we can’t thank you enough. If there’s anything we could do…”

Rarity just smiled. “Well, I suppose you could try to convince Lyra to order a dress. I really would love to make something for her.” She winked.

Pandora laughed. “I’ll see what I can do the next time I’m in town. Until then, once again, thank you.”

Spike was still basking in the warmth of Rarity’s affection when Little Macintosh and Rarity left to head for the train station. They were just about there when they heard the sound of the train’s engine starting up. A call of “Last call for boarding!” echoed over empty platform as they started to sprint to the station. Little Macintosh looked up at the sun. The train was leaving early! There had to be some reason for that. Glancing around wildly as they ran for the platform trying to get somepony’s attention, Little Macintosh finally spotted it: the Sock of Inconvenience under the steps up to the station’s platform.

Still sprinting, she murmured to Pandora, “Forget the train; it’s already too late. But keep running toward it. We may be able to catch the sock after all.”

“The sock?” Pandora followed Little Mac’s quick glance and spotted a hint of green. “Right. So what’s the plan?”

“I’ll go for the left side, you take the right. We should be able to trap it between the two of us.”

Pandora nodded, and they ran in silence the rest of the way to the bottom step of the platform stairs. The train started pulling out of the station and Little Macintosh yelled, “Now!” They split apart and dove for the sock. Pandora’s horn flashed as she tried to use magic to stop the sock from escaping. The sock, realizing it had been tricked tried to run left, away from Little Mac, then right, away from Pandora. Seeing no escape in either direction, it tried to go straight up through the wooden staircase.

Little Macintosh watched in frustration as the sock began to rise. She shouted, “Pandora, I’m going up!” and jumped up, through the suddenly splintering wooden staircase to snatch the sock in her jaws. The shattered bits of wood all had a dark blue glow around them. The sock wasn’t done fighting yet. Even as Little Macintosh fell back to the ground it tugged randomly in every direction to no avail. Little Macintosh’s oral grip held fast. “Helph me hol istill!”

Little Mac waited until Pandora was ready before spitting the sock out onto the ground. Both mares held it down with a hoof as it wriggled wildly against the restraint before suddenly going limp. Breathing hard, Little Mac said, “I think we finally got it, even if we had to miss the last train to Neighagra for the day.” Pandora just stood next to her, panting.

Chapter 7

Little Macintosh and Pandora walked silently through the streets of Ponyville towards Lyra's house. The Sock of Inconvenience was clenched firmly in Mac's teeth, but the momentary jubilation that they felt upon grabbing the sock wore off quickly, replaced by dread and hopelessness. The train to Neighagra Falls hadn't just been the last for the night; it had been the last for the week, as repairs were going to put the train down for a few days after. As a Knight of the Order of the Apple, Little Mac wanted to say something to Pandora, tell her that everything was going to be alright, that the presence of one of the socks would help them. But for the first time on her quest, Little Mac couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. She couldn't see any way that they would come out ahead now.

"Tabala…"

Pandora's voice just made Mac shudder. "It's okay, Pandora. We're going to—"

"Why did they take her?" Pandora asked nopony in particular, shaking her head. "Why? The socks I understand, but why my daughter? What could they want with h-her, Macintosh?"

Before she could begin crying, Mac's chivalrous instincts kicked in. She pulled Pandora's hanging head up and looked her in the eyes.

"You listen to me, Pandora," she quietly said. "We are going to get your daughter back. No matter what happens with the socks or the Temple of the Hoodie, we will get her back. It's my duty as a Knight of the Order to save her. I promise."

"But what about the socks? We have to get to the Temple as quickly as possible, but there's no way to get there for several days."

"I… I don't…" Little Mac started to say, realizing she had no answer to the question. Looking up, she saw a familiar house, and beckoned towards it. "Come on, we need to get our rest. Lyra might have an idea."

Pandora slowly nodded her head as they reached the door, and Little Mac nudged it open. Lyra was trying to jam what looked like a sock with five extensions in it over her hoof when she looked up and saw them. Her eyes lit up as soon as she saw the sock.

"Whoa, you got one of the socks! Awesome!" she excitedly yelled, but she cocked her head to the side. "But wait, I thought you two were going to Neighagra."

"When we grabbed this, we missed the last train," Pandora said, sitting down. "There's… there's no other train for days."

Lyra's face fell, shaking her head. "No! T-there has to be some other train, right? Maybe close to Neighagra!"

"The engineer said all trains to and near Neighagra are closed for several days," Little Mac said. "I do not believe it's just a coincidence that this happened just when the Temple of the Hoodie retrieves three of the four socks. They are about to make their move. I suspect Woona's reincarnation is imminent."

Little Mac fell back on her haunches as Lyra walked over to Pandora, who was holding back tears and shivering. Even as Lyra patted her on the back, Pandora couldn't shake the fear from her head. "They have the socks, they have Tabala… There's nothing we can do, Macintosh. They won."

"Don't say that!"

"We have absolutely no way to get to Neighagra now, much less a way to get there by tomorrow! They're probably preparing to summon Woona right now. It's impossible, Little Mac. We've lost. There's no way that we can get there in time."

Little Mac stomped one of her hooves into the ground. "There has to be! There has to be some way that we can stop this! Don't give up now, Pandora!"

"Why? We missed the train to grab that stupid sock! There's no way—"

"There's a way."

Little Macintosh and Pandora stopped their augment and turned. Lyra was standing next to them, her eyes wide as saucers. Her lips were curled into an insane smile, one that both gave Little Mac hope and goosebumps at the same time. Pandora was the first to speak.

"Lyra?"

"There's a way. " Lyra repeated, her voice getting louder before she jumped up and sprinted out of the room. "There's a way!!"

Without another word, Lyra rushed out of the room, and out the back door of the house. Pandora and Little Mac glanced at each other, then followed her out. As they got to the back of the house, they were baffled to find Lyra grabbing at a patch of grass with her teeth. Finally getting a firm grip she pulled back, revealing a giant hole in the ground. She rushed over to the side of her house and flipped down a panel revealing a large crank, and started to turn it furiously, a twinkle in her eye. Little Mac and Pandora stared at her.

Pandora stepped forward. "Lyra, what are you—"

"I've been working on this in my spare time for over five years!" Lyra excitedly screamed, turning the crank more and more with a smile on her face. "I always saw ponies down at Sweet Apple Acres pulling carts behind them, but it was always so inefficient. It started as just tinkering around, seeing if I could build a motorized cart. I got help from local mechanics, some propulsion specialists in Ponyville, and a few weird unicorns. It started as just a little project to tinker with, but the more that we've worked on it, the faster it's become. I figured it'd make me faster than any bipedal creature in Equestria, but after five years, it's faster than anything in Equestria! I don't use it much, but last time I did, got it to go nearly ninety miles per hour!"

Pandora and Little Mac stared at each other in shock as a large, tarp-covered object rose up from the ground. Pandora turned back to Lyra. "Ninety miles per hour? That's faster than any train in Equestria! Without stopping, we could get to Neighagra Falls within the hour! We might have a chance to stop the Temple of the Hoodie before Woona can do anything!"

Pandora galloped back into the house to grab supplies, just as Lyra backed away from the crank and took hold of the tarp covering her invention. She pulled it off, and Little Mac's eyes widened to see what was contained underneath. A cart with four wheels stood near to the ground, but a second compartment at the front of the cart intrigued him. A large char with several switches and levers attached stood at the front, and two large wooden pedals protruded from the floor in front of it, along with a large captain's wheel. Little Mac stared in wonder, but her eyes widened even further when she noticed the contraption attached to the back of it. It was a large metallic square with gears and pipes jutting out all directions, but something about it looked very… familiar.

"Where did you get the deign for this engine?"

Lyra beamed as she reached into a compartment on the side of the cart and put a pair of goggles on her head. "Got the design from those ponies who tried to take over Sweet Apple Acres. Forget their names, though. Skip and Zip, maybe?"

Little Mac grumbled to herself upon hearing the information, but shook the apprehension out of her head in the name of the mission. She jumped onto the back of the cart just as Pandora came rushing back out with a saddle bag, tossing it into the cart and jumping on next to Little Mac.

Lyra leapt into the large chair at the front of the cart and began pulling at various levers and switches, causing the engine in the back to start rumbling. Pandora and Little Mac both wrapped their hooves around the sides of the cart, as Lyra looked back with a smile on her face.

"Hold on, the DeLyraan isn't exactly the smoothest ride out there."

Little Mac blinked. "The what?"

Before Little Mac could ask a followup, Lyra jammed her hoof down on the large pedal, and the cart took off down the Equestrian landscape. Mac and Pandora held on for their lives as the cart bobbed and weaved through the trees, Lyra twisting the wheel back and forth and occasionally turning a dial or jamming another switch to the side. When the ride had finally gotten a bit less bumpy, Pandora peeked over the front, staring at the trees and landscape flying by her.

"What did you bring with?" Little Mac asked.

"I just threw the Sock of Inconvenience into the nearest bag I could find," Pandora replied. "I'm not sure what else is in there."

Little Mac leaned forward. "Okay… I guess we didn't have much time to prepare anyway."

"I'm sorry," Pandora said, dropping back into the cart and looking at Little Mac. "I wanted to pack more, but I rushed. As soon as I thought about the socks, and about Taba—" Pandora had only gotten through half of her daughters name when she sniffled, turning her head away and staring back at the world passing by her. Little Mac patted her on the back, and Pandora tried to compose herself. "Why? W-why did they take her? She h-had nothing to do with any of this."

"Don't worry, Pandora. I'm sure they only took her so she could open the case to the socks. There can't be another reason," Little Mac said. From the front seat, even over the roar of the engine, she heard a nervous sigh. The cart slowed down a bit, and Lyra turned her head to look back at them.

"Okay, listen. I didn't want to say anything, but you have to know the truth. When I was next in line for the Omnihoodie, some of the elders of the Temple kept telling me to be on the look out for 'one of pureness.' They never elaborated, they just said that if I found one, I should let them know. They said that young fillies would be 'perfect vessels.' That was sorta a big clue that I wanted out of the Temple…"

Lyra trailed off, unsure of how to continue, then turned back to the path ahead. Little Mac had no idea what to say to Pandora, who was staring blankly over the side of the cart, shivering. Mac reached over and patted her on the shoulder, and Pandora turned to her companion.

"Don't you worry," Mac said. "We're going to get Tabala back, and she's going to be safe. I promise."

Pandora tried to put on a reassured smile, but her shivering body betrayed her. The rest of the ride took place in silence, both Pandora and Little Mac staring ahead at the foreboding waterfall slowly growing in the distance. As they came closer to the falls, Lyra slowed the vehicle down and drifted to the side, taking cover behind a large patch of trees and gradually coming to a stop. Turning the cart off, Lyra turned around to look at the two riders.

"Okay, we're here. I'll stay out here waiting for you."

Pandora turned her head. "Are you sure that's safe?"

"I'll be fine, I'm good at blending into the background," Lyra said with a smirk, then pointed over to the cliff. "You just have to swim over the cliff while wearing a hoodie, and you'll gain access. Most likely they'll have another identification test just in case. Whatever they ask you, respond with the phrase 'Obsidian, my brother,' and they'll let you in. I'm going to assume that if there's something going on, it'll take place in the main chamber of the temple. Just follow the first path you find, you'll go straight there."

Pandora and Little Mac nodded, putting their hoodies on. Little Mac threw the saddle bag over her back as Pandora took a few steps towards the falls, but was stopped when Lyra jumped at her and wrapped her hooves around Pandora from the side in a hug.

"Be careful, sis," Lyra quietly said, letting go of the hug and looking into Pandora's eyes.

Pandora smiled back at her sister, then turned and nodded at Little Mac. Mac nodded back, and the two took off into the trees, towards Neighagra Falls. After a few minutes of running, they both slowed their pace as they came to the edge of the water. Other than the loud rushing of the waterfall, the top of Neighagra falls was quite peaceful, the river being surrounded by gatherings of rocks and trees. Pandora and Little Mac didn't notice any of it, though, as they trotted quietly along the side of the river, stopping a few meters away from the edge of the waterfall.

Little Mac stepped forward and very carefully peeked over the edge of the cliff. There was nothing out of the ordinary—just the furious rushing of water straight down—but if Lyra was correct, going over the edge while wearing a hoodie would somehow result in gaining access to the headquarters of the Temple of the Hoodie. Staring over the edge, it occurred to Little Macintosh that she had reached the apex of her quest for Princess Luna to retrieve the socks, but that the stakes were higher than even the princess could have anticipated.

Little Mac looked over at Pandora, who was pulling the hoodie over her head. "Are you ready? Once we go over the waterfall, there's no turning back."

Pandora slowly nodded her head, and jumped into the water. Little Mac followed, and the two remained floating as they approached the falls. They shared one last, pensive glance before Little Mac dunked her head underwater, just as she felt herself go over the edge of the cliff.

Almost immediately, Little Mac flailed her limbs as she plummeted. In a panic, she opened her mouth, and water rushed in, leaving her gasping for a last breath. For a split second she saw Pandora falling next to her, but in another instant water filled her vision and she saw nothing. For a few moments, Little Mac wondered if they had done something wrong, if the hoodies weren't working, but suddenly above the roar of the waterfall she heard a mechanical whirring, and her body hit a large, soft slope. Her body shot down the slope and the world went dark for a few moments, before light shot through her vision again and she plummeted off the slide and down into a cavern, landing on a large mattress. She shook her head out and pulled the hood over her head just as Pandora landed next to her.

"Are you okay?" Little Mac asked. Pandora opened her mouth, but closed it again immediately as she stared behind her companion. Mac turned around to find a third pony standing there, a dark stallion wearing a long black hoodie. He stared at the two of them as they stood up and faced him, before he finally spoke.

"What is the color of hoodie?"

Pandora gathered her strength and took a long breath. "Obsidian, my brother."

The pony nodded. "Come along, the ceremony is nigh."

The unknown pony turned and beckoned them down a long, rocky tunnel. Pandora shot Little Mac a nervous glance, and the two followed him, looking at the temple around them. Carvings of a twisted Alicorn adorned the walls, along with four long black drapes, each one depicting a different sock. As they walked, several more ponies in hoodies joined them, and Pandora and Little Mac leaned their heads down, trying as best as they could to blend in.

"Let's stay in the back and remain inconspicuous," Little Mac whispered. "We'll be there soon. I'm sure wherever this ceremony is taking place, Tabala and the socks are there."

Pandora nodded as the two turned a corner with the group. She slowed down to move to the back of the line, and Little Mac shifted to the side. As she did, Little Mac's hoodie got caught on a jagged rock. She struggled with it and jumped backwards as the hoodie got tangled up, finally pulling it away. As she did, a gasp from one of the hooded ponies in the group stopped her dead in her tracks.

"That Cutie Mark... she's a Knight of the Order of the Apple!!"

Little Mac looked behind her to see that the hoodie had been pulled up, her apple Cutie Mark exposed. She instinctively backed up towards the wall as Pandora ran to her side, and the small group of assembled ponies all turned to them, approaching menacingly. A few steps later, Little Mac and Pandora were backed up against the wall, now surrounded by a half dozen angry members of the Temple of the Hoodie.

"...What do we do?" Pandora quietly asked, her back pressing up against the rocky wall. Little Mac took a long breath, closing her eyes.

"We do this the ugly way," Little Mac replied, then opened her eyes up again and looked at the nearest hooded pony. "Sorry about this."

With that, Little Mac leapt forward and drove her front hoof into the face of one of the ponies, dropping him down to the ground instantly. Another of the ponies jumped forward at her, but Little Mac dodged out of the way and swung her back leg, tripping the pony up. Before the second pony could stand up, Little Mac turned around and grasped the pony by the back legs, swinging him around and throwing him into another of the ponies. She shook her head out to regain her equilibrium, just in time to see another pony charging at her, tackling her into the wall. The pony swung his front hoof a few times, Little Mac dodging each punch, until Pandora suddenly jumped onto the pony's back and wrapped her hooves around his head. The pony stumbled back, and Little Mac took the chance to turn around and crouch down, then swing her legs back with a mighty buck to the chin just as Pandora let go and dropped off of the pony. The pony crumpled down into a heap on the ground, and Pandora and Mac stood next to each other, facing off with the remaining two ponies.

The members of the Temple of the Hoodie nodded at each other, then both reached back and grabbed long stalagmites, breaking them off the floor and brandishing them as they approached, separating Pandora and Mac. One of them thrust the stalagmite at Little Mac's legs, but Macintosh jumped into the air over it, then came down with all four hooves on the rock, shattering it into several pieces. The hooded pony looked in panic at the remains of the stalagmite for a few moments, then threw what was left of it aside and charged, grabbing Little Mac around the head. Macintosh twisted her body and escaped the clutch, then spun around and lifted her right hoof, driving it into the side of the pony's head. The pony wobbled back and forth, and Little Mac punctuated it with an upwards swing of her front hoof, sending the pony toppling back to the ground.

Little Mac turned around, and saw Pandora running away from the other pony, who was wildly swinging the stalagmite. Little Mac jumped forward to stop him, just as Pandora took a sharp left and ran forward, straight towards a wall. The hoodie turned and followed her at full speed, with Mac rushing behind them to try to catch up. Just as Little Mac was prepared to leap forward, Pandora jumped up into the air and planted her back hooves on the wall in front of her, pushing off and spinning in mid-air into a kick to the side of the head of the pony, who immediately fell to the ground, completely unconscious. Little Mac came to a skidding halt, staring down at the pony before looking up at Pandora, who just smirked.

"What? A mare's gotta know how to protect herself," she said.

"True, but a kick like that? It would make Manea White blush," Little Mac responded, then looked down at the six slowly recovering ponies on the ground. "Let's go before they remember where they are."

Pulling the hoodies over their heads again, Little Mac and Pandora took off deeper into the cavernous temple. It only took a minute of running for them to hear voices coming from deeper in the cave, and they slowed their pace down as they came to an opening in the temple wall. With a quick nod of her head, Little Mac walked through the opening, with Pandora right behind her, and they found themselves on the second level of a massive room. They were alone on the second floor, but the main level of the room had at least fifty ponies, all dressed in matching hoodies, surrounding a central slab of rock, covered by a black sheet. Standing behind the rock was a pony wearing a much more elaborate and elegant than the others, pacing back and forth has he spoke with a voice filled with grandeur.

"The time is upon us, my hooded brothers!" the pony yelled. "We now possess three of the Socks of Improbability, meaning the fourth shall present itself soon. Not only did we find two more of the socks, but in doing so, we were able to find one of pureness! The time of Woona is nigh, and this is her vessel!"

With loud cheers from the assembled ponies, the leader reached a hoof down and pulled the sheet off. On the slab were the three Socks of Improbability, each one in one corner of the slab. There were four pegs driven into the rock, each one with rope tied between them and the limbs of a small filly, struggling to escape her bonds.

"Taba—" Pandora started to yell in panic, but Little Mac reached over and put a hoof over her mouth, silencing her. Pandora held her mouth closed tightly as Tabala frantically looked around at the ponies around her.

"You jerks are gonna get it!" Tabala yelled, pulling at the ropes to no avail. "I know somepony who's gonna stop you!"

The long-robed pony just laughed. "Oh, I highly doubt that, my little pony. Our moment is now, and nopony can stop us. With the three socks assembled, the fourth will be naturally drawn to them. When that happens, Woona will make her glorious return, and then Equestria will be ours!"

From the upper level, Little Macintosh surveyed the scene. There was no way she and Pandora would be able to subdue the multitude of ponies assembled, but their goal was now in plain sight, tempting them. Little Mac carefully thought about the plan of attack, but her thoughts were derailed when she felt a sharp tugging at her back. She turned her head, and to her shock, the saddlebag containing the Sock of Inconvenience was pulling at her, slowly floating into the air. A glow came from the bag, and when Mac looked back at the slab, the three other socks were glowing as well. One of the ponies near the front of the group stepped forward.

"Saddleazar! Look!"

The long-robed pony turned to stare at the three socks, stepping forward and carefully examining them. "Hrm... that would mean that the fourth sock is close! Closer than any of us could have anticipated!"

As the pony looked around, the tugging on Little Mac's saddle bag became stronger and stronger. The bag untied itself, and Little Mac reached up to grab it, tying the sleeve of her hoodie around it. She tried to pull it down, but with one mighty tug, the saddle bag burst away, tearing the entire hoodie off of Little Mac in the process. The front of the saddle bag opened and the Sock of Inconvenience floated out, the bag falling back to the ground next to Little Mac. The commotion was enough to draw the attention of the Temple members, who all stared up. The pony at the front smiled as he stared at the floating sock, then turned to look at Little Macintosh, his face curling into a sneer.

"That Cutie Mark... Who are you?"

Little Mac stood up strong, stepping forward. "Give me your name, and I shall give you mine."

The pony laughed. "My, you have guts. My name is Saddleazar, and I am the 39th Omnihoodie of the Temple of the Hoodie. I will proudly stand at the right hoof of Woona when she returns to rule over all of Equestria!"

"My name is Bi—" Little Mac stopped herself, shaking her head. "My name is Little Macintosh, and I'm here to retrieve the socks and return them to their rightful owner."

Saddleazar shook his head. "Yours is an impossible task. The socks are in our possession. In but a few short minutes, Woona will make her return!"

"So that's your plan? To let yourself become a slave to Woona, to give her your body as a vessel?" Little Mac replied, only to be responded to with a cruel laugh.

"You think you know the truth of the Omnihoodie? You fool. The Omnihoodie's goal is not to become Woona forever… It is to act as Woona's transfer to a permanent host."

Little Mac stared at Saddleazar, then down at Tabala. A chill shot through her spine as she sputtered the word out. "Transfer?"

"Woona's spirit will take over the body of one of pureness. Her strength will destroy the worthless body, rebuilding it into her true, magnificent form. I am not the final vessel for Woona... I am merely her proud servant."

Pandora couldn't take it anymore. She pulled the hood off her head and leaned over the edge of the second floor. "Tabala!"

The filly's face froze, and she tilted her head towards them, her eyes filled with tears. "Mommy?!"

"It's okay, Tabala!" Pandora shouted. "We're going to rescue you!"

"Yeah!" Little Mac added. "Don't worry!"

Saddleazar scoffed. "Another Apple, come to save the day and take the socks? Pathetic. Why does this clan make such an effort to protect the socks? Years ago when we raided the temple, that meddling stallion got in our way, and now you?"

Little Mac opened her mouth to speak, but Saddleazar's words stopped her. She thought about what he had said—the Apple clan had protected the socks before, specifically when they had been stolen years ago—and her eyes widened.

"No... m-my father? He protected the socks?!"

With a chuckle, Saddleazar nodded. "Oh, are you the daughter of the pony who kept the socks safe all those years ago? How sweet." He laughed harder. "That stallion made things quite difficult for us, you know. We believed that getting the socks would be as simple as walking into the temple, and yet somehow that stallion found out about it and was there, waiting for us. He put up quite a defense, you know. When it became clear he was losing, he used the power of the Sock of Zero to teleport the socks to random points in Equestria. If it wasn't for that, Woona would have been summoned ages ago."

Little Mac's head lowered further, her teeth clenched. "What did you do to him?"

Saddleazar smiled. "Wouldn't you like to know? But enough talk, I tire of this. It is time for the Temple of the Hoodie to take its rightful place at the top of the New Woonar Order!"

Saddleazar reached down with a crazed look in his eye, grabbing the Sock of Zero and the Sock of Convenience. Before Little Mac could react, Saddleazar jammed his hoof into the first sock, and less than a second later, a loud boom shot through the chamber. Little Mac and Pandora crouched down to keep themselves sturdy, but when Saddleazar placed the second on his other hoof, a shockwave blasted outward that sent Little Mac and Pandora crashing back into the wall. As they pushed forward again, Saddleazar stood on his hind legs, holding his front hooves in the air and laughing as a dark, swirling cloud formed at the top of the chamber. It flashed a deep purple several times as Saddleazar pointed to the floating Sock of Inconvenience.

"Final Sock!" he yelled, his voice now augmented by a second voice, one full of hate. "Come to me! Together we shall transfer Woona into her new vessel, and Equestria will belong to the Temple of the Hoodie!"

Pandora seemed frozen in place, unable to will herself to move as the Sock of Inconvenience began to slowly float downwards towards Saddleazar, who was reaching down to pick up the third sock. For the first time since her quest began, Little Macintosh was truly scared: she had absolutely no idea how to stop the transformation, and it appeared that Saddleazar, partially merged with Woona, was far too powerful for her to defeat on her own. As she frantically looked around, she saw the Sock of Inconvenience floating downwards, now barely within reach. Little Mac turned down to the saddle bag on the ground and jammed her hooves into it.

"Please, please let there be something useful in here…" she muttered, but to her surprise, she only felt one object inside, bundled up and crammed at the end of the bag. She quickly pulled it out and unfurled it, staring at it in her hooves.

A towel.

"You have got to be kidding me…"

Without another moment to think, Little Mac wrapped each end of the towel around her hooves, then turned around and leapt into the air, hooking the towel around the Sock of Inconvenience. She gave a tug downwards, but the sock remained on its steady path downwards, dragging Little Mac off the balcony and over the many members of the Temple of the Hoodie. Saddleazar just laughed and reached down for the third sock, as Little Mac began tugging furiously at both sides of the towel, able to make the sock rotate and shake but not change its path towards the center of the room. Little Mac stared at the sock, rapidly shifting her weight over and over to try to do something, anything.

The sock suddenly slowed down, and Little Mac could swear that it turned a deeper shade of green. The front of the sock opened up, and after a few seconds, a loud Putewie rang out as it spit a single object out. The object fell and bounced against the floor, coming to a stop at the feet of Saddleazar. He momentarily stopped reaching for the third sock, bending down and examining the object.

"Is that… a banana?"

Little Mac stared in shock, then looked back up at the sock, which had begun to vibrate. "Oh, no…"

Before Little Mac could react, the mouth of the sock expanded, and proceeded to spit out thousands upon thousands of bananas. The members of the Temple of the Hoodie were pelted with the sudden onslaught of fruit, scrambling around each other as the floor rapidly became completely covered with bananas. Pandora started to climb down from the balcony as Saddleazar panicked at the front of the room.

"They're just bananas, you idiots! Shove them out of the way and—" he began, but he was stopped when a banana bounced into his mouth. As he hacked and tried to recover his breath and the potassium paroxysm continued, Little Macintosh finally saw her opening. She unhooked the towel from the and dropped down, landing with a soft squish on the bananas that now covered every inch of the floor, and she sprinted towards the still-recovering Saddleazar, passing by Pandora as she was frantically untying the ropes that held her daughter down. Little Mac shoved through the members of the Temple, all confused and trying to deal with the banana barrage, and managed to reach Saddleazar, who had only just recovered from the banana hitting his throat. He turned around, just in time to get a sharp punch to the side of the head from Little Mac. Even with Wonna's power coursing through him, the punch was enough to stumble Saddleazar back, and Little Mac leapt forward, grasping both of Saddleazar's hooves and tearing the socks off.

Another shockwave shot out of Saddleazar as the cloud above him dissipated almost instantaneously, and he shot back, his head slamming against the wall. He slumped down as Little Macintosh turned and grabbed the third sock from the slab, bundling it together with the first two. As he did, the fourth sock stopped its track and fell straight down, this time caught by the back hoof of Pandora, who had just finished untying Tabala from the slab. She threw her daughter onto her back as Little Macintosh grabbed the fourth sock, scrunching it in with the other three and wrapping them in the towel.

"We've got the socks, let's go!!" Macintosh yelled, clutching the towel betwixt her teeth and leaping over the sea of bananas towards the only other entrance to the room she could find. Pandora lifted a slightly woozy Tabala up onto her back and galloped off after, and they ran out of the banana-filled room.

Saddleazar, still clutching his head, pointed at them. "Grab them! They have the socks!"

Little Mac and Pandora raced through the cavern hearing the hoof steps of members of the Temple behind them. As the caves became more numerous, Little Mac looked around wherever she could, unsure of which path to take. Just when she thought that they were going to loop around, her ears perked up as she heard a faint sound.

"Hurry!" Little Mac yelled, turning right. "I hear water this way. We must be near an exit near the waterfall!"

They continued galloping towards the sound of rushing water, twisting and turning through the cavernous temple as the hoof steps behind them started to grow louder. With one more turn to the right, Little Mac's heart skipped a beat as she saw an opening in the cave wall, water falling past it, and the moon illuminating the Equestrian sky. She tossed the bundled towel to Pandora.

"Go find Lyra and get the cart ready."

"What are you going to do?" Pandora asked.

"Stop them from following us!"

Pandora nodded and jumped through the opening, landing on the rocky ground and rushing towards the forest as Little Mac came to a screeching halt near the entrance. In the distance she could see members of the Temple of the Hoodie rushing towards her, and she turned, her back facing the side wall.

"Come on, buckin' legs, don't fail me now." she said to herself, crouching down. As the hooded ponies raced towards her, she reared back and threw her legs back, bucking the side of the wall with a mighty kick that would make any member of the Apple family blush. A crack formed in the wall and quickly raced up to the ceiling, just as the Temple of the Hoodie neared. Just as they were threatening to bear down on Little Macintosh, the ceiling and wall crumbled, sending rocks tumbling down everywhere. The temple members jumped back as rocks slammed in front of them faster and faster, until the entire cave, floor to ceiling, was blocked off by rocks. Little Mac could hear ponies desperately digging through the rocks, so she turned to the other side of the wall and gave it a big buck for good measure, sending even more rocks down from the ceiling and thickening the barrier. Little Mac smiled and ran out the entrance, now seeing Lyra's cart in the distance, racing towards her.

As Lyra maneuvered the cart through trees, Little Macintosh looked back at the now distant image of Neighagra Falls There were no signs of the Temple of the Hoodie following them, nor were there any members hiding in the trees. She turned around and grabbed the towel, holding her breath as she unfurled it. Carefully peeking inside, she saw all four of the socks bundled together neatly in the center, and she let out a long sigh of relief. She folded the towel back up, then looked upwards to the starry sky.

"It's over. We did—"

Before she could continue, she was suddenly tackled down to the floor of the cart by Tabala, who was hanging around her neck with a hug.

"Wow, Macintosh! That was totally awesome! You showed and were all 'Die, monster!' to that weird guy, and he was all "No! I'm going to put this pony inside this other pony!" But then you shot bananas at him and got the socks!" Tabala squeaked, jumping up and down while still grasping Little Mac's neck. "Also you're a girl now which is totally awesome too!"

Little Mac laughed. "Thanks, Tabala, but I think there's somepony else you should be thanking."

Tabala let go of Little Mac and turned around, but before she could say anything, Pandora grabbed her daughter and held her tightly in a hug, nuzzling her cheek. Tabala hugged her mother back, and Little Mac could do nothing but smile as she watched the mom and daughter embrace. They were finally separated when the cart shook violently from a bump in the road, and Pandora turned to Little Mac.

"I... I want to thank you for helping me. I don't think I would have been able to get back Tabala without you."

"Think nothing of it," Mac responded, smiling again. "It's my duty as a Knight of the Order of the Apple. I owe you my thanks as well, Pandora. I wouldn't have been able to complete my mission without you and Tabala."

"Well, thank you," Pandora said. "I hope that you find a way to turn back to a stallion. You shouldn't have to live the rest of your life as another gender." She paused, then blushed slightly. "Plus, you're kinda cute."

Little Mac blushed as well, but was jolted out of her thoughts by the cart shaking violently again. "Lyra," she said, turning to the driver. "Any chance you can be a bit more careful? The Temple isn't going to be able to catch us."

"I'm being as careful as I can!" Lyra yelled, turning to look at her passengers. "I don't get why there's so much turbulence. The road is pre—" Lyra stopped mid-sentence and the color drained from her face. Pandora, Tabala, and Little Mac stared at her, then slowly turned around, their own eyes widening in shock.

A black, swirling vortex seemed to be floating up from underneath the cart. It hovered behind them, growing outwards until a hoof-like appendage made of the dark vortex itself shot out and slammed into the cart, rocking it again. They struggled to keep their balance in the cart as another appendage shot out, this time with glowing eyes and a mouth, screeching.

Lyra's eyes widened. "Oh no... That's Woona! Did the Omnihoodie put the socks on?!"

Dodging a strike from the cloud, Little Mac grabbed Pandora and Tabala and pushed them out of reach. "Yes, but only two of them! He never finished the summoning!" Little Mac yelled as the vortex pounded on the car again.

"That's not good. Two of the socks on means she was summoned from the ether, but without a vessel to attach herself to, her remnant psyche is still here!" Lyra yelled, speeding up the cart. "I have a feeling she wants the socks!"

Lyra twisted the wheel to the right, sending the cart into a sharp curve and momentarily throwing the vortex to the side, but it quickly caught up with the cart. It pounded a ghostly hoof on the back, and Little Macintosh saw her opening, turning around and throwing her legs back with a buck... But all it did was cause her to lose her balance, as her hooves went straight through the cloud. Little Mac scrambled to the back of the cart as Woona's hoof slammed down on the back again.

"What do we do? How do we stop her?" Pandora yelled, tightly hugging a panicking Tabala.

"I don't know!" Lyra yelled back. "She's not a physical entity right now! The only thing that's even holding her in existence right now are the socks!"

Little Macintosh stared at Woona's spirit, which continued to pound on the back of the cart. Mac stared at the swirling vortex, then down at the towel that sat bundled up next to her. Without another thought, she unfolded it quickly and grabbed one of the socks.

Pandora stared in shock at her. "What are you doing?!"

"If the socks are the only thing that are holding her to the world, then there's only one way to hurt her!" Little Mac said. With a deep breath, she jammed the sock over her right front hoof.

Almost immediately, Little Mac's limb felt like it was going to be torn apart from the inside. Her body was on fire and frozen solid at once, and a thousand garbled voices were having seemingly random conversations in her head. Despite everything, she still managed to keep her sense about her, shakily standing up. Woona pounded a black hoof on the cart again, and this time Mac responded by swinging the sock-adorned hoof into the appendage.

This time, contact was made. There was a cracking sound and a flash of light as Woona screamed in pain, jerking the hoof back and losing distance from the cart. Mac took deep breaths, crouching down, but Woona returned to the back of the cart seconds later, again slamming hooves into it. Mac's teeth chattered a she stared at Woona, then shook her head and jumped back over to the socks. She pulled the Sock of Zero onto her left hoof, again sending a mighty shockwave across the cart and momentarily freezing Mac in place as she tried to fight through the swirling cacophony of sounds now blaring in her head, and the colorful hallucinations dancing in her eyes.

Before Mac could step forward, Woona leaned down over the cart, her mouth only inches away from Pandora and Tabala, who were huddled together in fear. Woona let out a scream that shook the entire cart, and Mac panicked, grabbing the other two socks. There was a half-second of apprehension as she stared at them, but when she saw the black form of Woona in front of her, threatening Pandora and Tabala, she shook the fear out of her head, and pulled the final two socks over her back limbs.

Little Mac could no longer determine reality from hallucinations, or even what was happening. Her body was wracked with pain, as if each individual cell was trying to teleport to a different place in Equestria. Her sight was completely clouded with colors that couldn't be described and images that couldn't possibly exist, while the deafening roar of voices, music, and sounds that are never heard was threatening to drive her mad. She collapsed against the side of the cart, unable to handle the improbable world that she had seemingly entered, forgetting who she was, where she was, or anything that had happened ever.

"Can't... Have to remove..." she thought to herself over the roar, and reached one shaking hoof towards the other in an attempt to bring herself back. But as she did, a single sound cut through everything: Tabala screaming. For a moment, she could see through the impossibility, and saw Woona's face right in front of Pandora and Tabala, reaching for them.

In that brief moment, Little Mac gained clarity again.

Little Mac pushed herself back to a standing position, then crouched down. Woona turned towards her, staring down at her hooves.

"GiVe Me ThOsE sOcKs!!"

Little Mac pushed off the cart as hard as she could, launching herself into the air and curling her hooves into her body. She propelled forward and began to come down over Woona's head. Woona looked up in shock, and Little Mac stared down at her as she dropped back down.

"Nnnnope!"

With that, she unfurled her legs as she fell, coming down on Woona's head with all four socked hooves.

There was a boom that seemed to echo throughout all of Equestria. Woona screeched in pain as her head imploded, as Little Macintosh was launched out of the cart by the subsequent shockwave. As she flew, she saw Woona's body crumpling in on itself and disappearing in a dark flash, just as she felt herself splash down into thick water.

Then, everything went white.

"Well you're the one who spent the most time with her! You wake her up."

"No way! Besides, half the time I was with her, she was a he."

"Does that change anything?"

"It means she visited Cider Space, and confronted Woona. More than a mere pony, he or she is the alpha. Able to fight through that which is impenetrable. Resolve strong enough to withstand that which is unstoppable. He who—"

"You're not helping anything with your prose, Zero!"

Little Macintosh opened her eyes to find herself floating in the middle of nowhere. Everything was white around her, and her mind was in a haze. After a few seconds she looked up, and saw four lights floating above her, each one a different color.

"Where am I?" she muttered to herself. One of the lights began to flash as a voice echoed in her head.

"Oh hey, you're awake!" the voice said in a cheerful tone. "Welcome to Purgasocky!"

"To… what?"

A second light flashed. "A place that is neither here, nor there. It is not on your plane of existence, nor is it an alternate world. A realm where sight and sound are meaningless, instead giving way—"

"You're doing it again, Zero." a third light flashed. "Let me simplify it for you. This is where us Improbability Socks can communicate with each other. You're the first pony to ever join us here!"

"I am? Am I dead?" Little Mac asked, trying to see anything around her, only to be met with more white.

"Nah, you're fine. We just wanted to thank you personally for finding us! It's been lame to be separated for so long."

"So thanks! And, uh, sorry for being such a jerk out there with the bananas and stuff. It's kinda hard to control myself, ya know?"

"Uh, sure. Happy to be of service to Princess Luna," Little Mac said, staring blankly up at the lights.

"Oh! Speaking of, we have an important message for you to deliver to Luna when you see her next. Please pay attention, this is urgent."

Little Mac did her best to straighten her body, leaning forward to pay close attention.

"Yes?"

"Can you tell Luna to use, like, a high-power soap to wash her hooves? It's a lot rougher than you think to deal with stinky hooves."

Little Mac blinked. "I thought you said I was the only pony to wear all four of you at once."

"Sorta. You're the only one to wear us specifically for our improbability. Luna wears us cause we're comfy, our powers don't really come into play when we're just being used as socks. We're okay with that, as long as she keeps her hooves clean. Seriously, it's like she stands in swamp ooze or something."

"Uh... I'll be sure to tell her."

"Thanks! Well, that's about all. Sorry to bug you."

With that, the whiteness around Little Mac began to fade to black. As things went completely black, the green light flashed again.

"Oh, and as an extra 'thank you,' we're gonna give you a little present. Don't expect us to do it again, though!"

"Macintosh!? Macintosh!?"

Little Macintosh's eyes opened, but she didn't see anything. She reached up and felt her face, realizing that she was completely covered in mud and weeds from whatever creek she landed in. In the distance, she could see Pandora rushing around, looking for her, so she raised a hoof up into the air. Pandora came to a halt, then turned and rushed towards her.

"Macintosh, you did it! Woona's gone! Are you alright?!"

Little Macintosh stumbled up to her hooves, stretching out her body.

"Urgh... I'm hurting, but I'll be fi-" Little Mac froze upon hearing her voice, now much deeper and more familiar. Shaking the muck off of her body, Little Mac held out a hoof and looked down at it.

His hoof was larger and thicker, a hoof built from years of apple bucking. Pandora stared at him.

"What the... You're a stallion again?"

Big Mac blinked, looking back over his body. "I guess so."

"But only alicorn magic could change you back, and even then it wasn't guaranteed! That... that's impossible!"

There was an awkward silence. Big Mac thought back to Purgasocky, and the last thing the socks had said to him before he left. He chuckled to himself, and walked back towards the cart.

"Nah, it isn't impossible. Just improbable."

The cart slowly pulled to a halt behind Lyra's house, and Tabala excitedly jumped out of the back of the cart, rushing to the front seat to talk to Lyra. Big Macintosh and Pandora exited the cart, Big Mac slinging the towel containing the socks over his back. He turned towards the Everfree Forest, but a hoof on his back stopped him.

"Macintosh... I want to thank you again for getting my daughter back," Pandora quietly said, averting her gaze. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

Mac patted Pandora on the back. "It's just part of my duty, Pandora. I'm a Knight of the Order of the Apple, and we live by a code of honor. Remember, I wouldn't have been able to complete this all without yours and Tabala's help."

Pandora blushed. "Are you sure you don't want to sleep at Lyra's for the night? You look exhausted."

"I have a task to complete. Thank you, but I must be going to the temple in the forest."

Pandora nodded, smiling. "I hope we get to see you again some time."

Big Macintosh returned the smile. "I assure you, we will see each other again."

He turned towards the forest again, but this time was interrupted when Tabala leapt at him and hung off his neck with a hug.

"You have to come visit us again, Big Mac!"

He tussled the filly's hair, smiling. "Don't y'all worry, I'll definitely visit. I promise."

As the filly let go of Big Mac, he nodded at Lyra, who was lowering her cart into the ground again, and waved back to him. With one last glance and smile at Pandora, Big Mac clenched the towel containing the socks in his mouth, then turned and walked towards the Everfree Forest. When he reached the edge, he paused and surveyed Ponyville to make sure that nopony was following him. In the distance, he saw the lights in Lyra's house go out, and he smiled to himself before turning around and breaking into a mighty gallop, dodging through the trees and creatures until the abandoned castle came into view.

Mac came to a halt in front of the castle, opening up the towel again to make sure that all four socks were there. Looking them over, he let out a long, relieved sigh, happy that his mission was finally over. But in the back of his mind, something was bothering him: the Temple of the Hoodie. The socks may have been returned, but he knew that they would be planning again. Whether those plans would involve getting the socks back or something else, he wasn't sure. All he could be sure of was that the Temple would not be defeated by a rockslide… only slowed.

After folding the socks back into the towel, he carefully entered the abandoned castle. As down as he walked through the castle, each hoofstep echoing off the walls, and he carefully scanned the sides of the main room. When he finally found a discolored rock, he carefully removed it from the wall, taking out the small flare inside and lighting the end of it, shooting it through the open ceiling and into the sky. He watched as it sailed higher and higher, eventually exploding into a bright firework that sparkled for several seconds. Mac only had to wait for a half minute before a bright light shimmered behind him, and he turned around to find Princess Luna standing. He immediately crouched down in a deep bow to her, laying out the towel at her hooves and displaying the four socks.

Luna looked over the four socks, nodding. "Amazing, Sir Macintosh. You have my eternal thanks for retrieving the Socks Of Improbability."

"It was my duty, and pleasure, to serve you, Princess Luna," Macintosh said, standing up. "But I must warn you of something. In my search to retrieve the socks, I ended up at odds with the Temple of the Hoodie."

Luna nodded her head in concern. "I see. They still remain a threat in Equestria, then."

"They nearly completed a ritual that would have allowed them to—" Big Mac went quiet, unsure of how to continue. He had no idea if Luna knew of the existence of Woona or not, and he decided to play it safe. "It would have allowed them to take over Equestria. They have been stopped for now, but they will attack again."

An eerie silence filled the castle as Luna contemplated. "I see," was all she said, before turning and gazing out a hole in the wall. "A thousand years ago, the Temple of the Hoodie was merely a small group of rebellious ponies. To think they are now more powerful than ever…"

Luna turned back to Big Mac. "When the time comes, Sir Macintosh, I will require your assistance again. If the Temple of the Hoodie is going to strike again, then we will need our strongest defenses. Which means that Celestia or I would be contacting you again."

BIg Mac nodded. "As a Knight, it is my sworn duty to obey for the protection of Equestria. Should the time come that you need my services again, I would be more than happy to oblige. Besides, I now have a personal matter to settle with them."

Luna's head tilted to the side. "What personal matter would that be, Sir Macintosh?"

Macintosh paused, and his head lowered, thinking about Saddleazar's words. "Their leader knows what happened to my father. I'm betting he knows what happened to my mother as well. In fact, the Temple of the Hoodie may have been involved." He looked back at Luna, his eyes tilted in anger. "I'm going to find out what happened to them. No matter what."

The princess nodded her head. "I understand, Sir Macintosh. I thank thee for your loyalty and expediency in this matter." Luna said as her horn glowed, and the four socks floated in front of her. "You can consider this mission put to rest, and are dismissed."

"Before that, I have a message for you from... well, from the socks."

Luna stopped, turning around with her right eyebrow raised. "From the socks?"

"Yes. They're perfectly fine with you wearing them for their sock capabilities, but they request that you wash your hooves thoroughly before you do."

Luna stared at Big Mac, who was awkwardly fidgeting at the ground. She sighed, shaking her head as she turned away.

"You are truly a valuable knight, Sir Macintosh, but you have a strange sense of humor."

With a flash, Luna disappeared. Big Mac gazed at the empty space that Luna previously occupied before he took a long, relieved breath and turned to leave. He exited the castle and started to walk in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, but after only a few steps, exhaustion overtook him. He paused, then turned around and walked in the other direction, towards the faint light of a hut deep within the forest.

The next morning, Big Macintosh stood on the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. Zecora had been kind enough to put him up for the night, allowing him to regain his strength, but he had left early in the morning to get back home. Surveying the farm put a smile on his face, and he slowly walked towards the back door of the barn, making sure not to be seen. In the distance, he saw Applejack bucking trees, while Apple Bloom carried bushels of them towards a shed. The smile on his face faltered a bit when he realized how many trees were now overflowing with apples, likely a result of his absence for days, and the cousins having to go home at some point.

Making sure that they didn't see him, Macintosh snuck to the back door and carefully pushed it open. Inside, Granny Smith was at the stove, stirring a pot of something. She turned around as Macintosh walked into the room, then she smiled and turned back to the pot.

"Well, lookie what the cat dragged in," she said. "I take it things went well?"

Sitting down at the table, Macintosh nodded his head. "Equestria's safe... well, for now. I have a feeling that I'm going to be contacted again within a few weeks."

"Lordy, again? Those princesses are workin' you harder than they ever worked yer ma and pa," Granny replied.

At the words "ma and pa," Big Macintosh thought back to the Omnihoodie's words again about his father. He opened his mouth to tell Granny Smith, but instead chose to remain quiet. It just didn't feel right to him to arrive home and immediately ask about something that Granny had kept quiet about for so long. "Yes, but it's my duty as a Knight of the Order of the Apple. I'm the only member of the Apple family here who can go on these missions, so it is my obligation to do so."

Granny Smith stared out the window, slowly stopping her stirring. She sighed, then sat down next to Big Mac.

"Ya know, I'm glad you brought that up. I've been doin' some thinkin' while you've been gone, and Mac, I think it's about time."

"About time for what?"

"For her to join."

Big Mac paused for a second, trying to comprehend what Granny Smith had said, then his eyes widened. "What!?"

Granny nodded. "You've been summoned so much lately, and whenever y'all come back yer more exhausted than a sheepdog at a wool convention. It's time that the Knights of the Order of the Apple got a new recruit who could help y'all."

"I know you've been talking about it for a while, but is she really ready?"

Granny Smith tilted her head, beckoning Big Mac over. He trotted over, and they stared out the window at the figures int he distance. Just as Apple Bloom placed a basket down and scooted back, Applejack was carefully lining herself up with a tree. WIth a sly smirk, she galloped forward and leapt into the air, driving one back hoof into the side of the tree. With a massive shake, a barrage of apples cascaded down from the branches, neatly filling up the basket, save for a single apple that landed several feet away. Applejack tilted her hat downward, then kicked the apple up into the air, bouncing it off her other hoof and onto the top of the basket.

"She's talented, she's young, and she's more confident than a six-horned unicorn in a magic show. Everythin' that the Knights of the Order of the Apple look for."

Big Mac looked down at Granny Smith. "But what about her friends? What's she gonna tell them when she disappears for days?"

Granny just smiled and winked. "Same things I told yer friends when you disappeared for days."

A chuckle escaped Big Mac's lips as he looked back out. "So you really think she's ready?" The words had barely escaped his lips before a newspaper swatted him in the back of the head. He looked to his side to see an exasperated Granny Smith holding it in one hoof, grunting.

"Land sakes, you been listenin' to anything I've said? Yer sister is ready, Big Mac!"

Big Mac sighed, turning to the door. "Well, might as well go get her now then."

"Now yer' thinkin'! I'll get some cider out."

Nodding, Big Mac opened the door and walked into the field, just as Applejack bucked another tree in the distance. As soon as she saw her brother, Apple Bloom's face lit up and she gave a happy wave to him as she carried a basket of apples to the barn. Big Mac smiled and waved back, then continued his walk up to Applejack, who was lining up another kick when she noticed Big Mac.

"Mac! How y'all feelin'?"

Big Mac scratched the back of his head. "World's finally stopped spinnin', so I think I'm good."

AJ chuckled, then turned back to the tree. "Good to hear, Mac. 'Cause we got a lot to catch up on. The cousins had to leave a day ago, so we're behind." She paused for a second. "Which reminds me, I ran into this mare…"

Big Mac's eyes widened. He had completely forgotten about his curious encounter with his sister when he had been… not himself. "Oh… ya did?"

"Yeah! And she had a coat like yours, hair like yours, and a Cuti—"

"Changeling," Big Mac sputtered out.

AJ blinked. "Changeling?"

"Changeling."

There was an awkward silence, and AJ tapped her hoof to her forehead. "Aw shoot, I forgot about changelings! Hang dangit, I was hopin' it'd be a new sister or somepony who knew about our parents. Ah well, back ta work I suppose."

As AJ went back to the tree, Big Mac followed her. "Actually, AJ, I wanted ta' ask you something."

AJ stopped and looked over at Big Mac, who had begun to paw at the ground awkwardly. "Sure, but is everythin' alright, Mac? Ya look like the weight of a thousand apples is on yer mind."

"Well, erm…" Big Mac began, his words trailing off. "It's pretty important."

There was a tense silence, and Applejack stepped towards her big brother, patting him on the shoulder. "Mac, whatever y'all gotta say, just say it."

Big Mac momentarily turned away, looking back towards the barn. In the window, he could see Granny Smith setting up a few glasses of cider on the living room table. She glanced out the window at Big Mac, smiling and slowly nodding her head before she pulled the drapes closed. Big Mac took a long breath, then turned back to his sister.

"AJ… Can I borrow Apple Bloom for the afternoon? I wanted ta' get some chores done around the house."

After a pause, Applejack responded with a laugh. "Shoot, Big Mac, is that all? Here ya had me worried somethin' bad had happened! Why on earth would ya be so awkward about that?"

Big Mac smiled shyly. "Guess I figured ya had a lot of work for her to do. Didn't want to tear her away from ya if—"

"Nonsense. Hey Apple Bloom!" Applejack yelled. Almost instantaneously, Apple Bloom came bounding out of the farm and slid up to her older siblings. Applejack patted her on the shoulder. "Yer bein' drafted to Team Big Mac for the afternoon, he's got some chores for ya to do."

Apple Bloom held her hoof up to her forehead in a mocking salute. "Yes ma'am!"

With a nod, Applejack turned back to the tree and paced around it, planning her bucking strategy. Big Mac walked off towards the house, Apple Bloom happily trotting behind him. After just a few seconds, she ran ahead and began walking backwards in front of her big brother.

"So what kinda chores we doing? Sweepin', finally cleanin' out the attic?"

Big Mac smiled. "Actually, Apple Bloom, yer granny and I just wanna talk for a while about somethin'."

Apple Bloom's pace slowed and her face well. "Jus' talk? Wait, is this about the birds an' the bees? Cause Applejack already told me about those, and then Scootaloo found this magazine at Rainbow Dash's house where these two ponies—"

A hoof patting her on the back cut Apple Bloom off as Big Mac shook his head. "Nah, nothin' like that. Pretty dang important, though."

"Well, is it at least excitin'?"

Bic Mac came to a halt, staring at Apple Bloom for a few moments before bursting out laughing. He dropped down to his haunches, chortling so hard his body shook as Apple Bloom just scrunched up her face.

"Hey, don' laugh at me, Mac! Tell me, is it excitin'?"

Wiping a tear from his eye, Bic Macintosh stifled more chuckles, reaching out and tussling Apple Bloom's mane.

"Heh heh… Eyyyyup."