The Bucking Fabulous Wartime Misadventures of Rarity and her Special Friend Applejack!
Chapter 1 and Only: Cabin Fever in Cabanne
“Oh please, I am not at all interested in participating in something so crude… IT.IS.ON!”

By: Grace Brisby Marie Shepard.

This is an entirely fictional story, played out by unfortunately non-fictional characters.
In writing this I mean no offense to the Ministry Mares, who were undoubtedly much more intelligent, developed and in control of their hormones than this seditious tome plans to portray them.

The war, on the other hoof, was likely just as brutal and black as this story would soon have you believe.

Foreword:

If you are reading this, then I am dead.
Or, I have suddenly developed an uncharacteristic confidence in my ability for depraved literature.

If neither of these things has come to pass, then:

Caliber, I politely order you to put this book back in my saddlebags and wipe the knowledge of its existence from your memory. But feel free to take whatever it was that you were looking for in the first place.
Your pills are in the front pocket, along with the rifle clips that you gave me back at the station.
I know I don’t often call upon the power of whatever wonderful contract is keeping you with me, but for Celestia’s sake: I command you… run… it’s for your own good.

Ash, the story that follows cannot be classified in any genre except: ‘Blatant Affront to the Goddesses’ or
'A Violently Homosexual Romp'
Turn back now or you might be converted… in more ways than one.

And let me say this to the both of you… I can’t even imagine how nice it is to have you back.
You now know what happens when you leave me alone.
This happens…

The Bucking Fabulous Wartime Misadventures of Rarity and her Special Friend Applejack!

[By the way, that ‘Violently Homosexual Romp’ thing might have been an exaggeration.]

[Unless it’s still you reading, Ash, then know that it was a massive, massive understatement.]

“Yessir, yer sources are sound. Ah am Applejack, th’ Ministry mare of War-Time technology. Ah have a honey colored mane, an orange coat an’ eyes like the most lovingly polished emeralds. Ah’m a little older than Ah was before, back when they came and got the rights to put mah stories in that fancy old new Stable, but Ah still have white freckles on mah cheeks and a cutie-mark that does iserve as a bitter reminder of a simpler time , now that you mention it.” she answered, nodding. “What a specific question.”

The journalist finished jotting down the mare’s answer on his levitating notepad, then retook his seat amidst the lecherous sea that had formed in the cobbled square. Applejack stood, ordained in only the finest excuse for a military uniform, at the base of the Celestial cross – an ancient stone monument that still stood in honor of her country’s first sunrise. “Try to keep them concise from now on, darlings.” The seamstress spoke up from beside her. “By the way: I am Rarity.” She smiled. “Just in case you wanted to check up on that.”

They didn’t.

A war wasn’t exactly the springboard from which a dressmaker could launch her rise to fame, no, war might bring a country’s patriotism to a boil, but it did little for their sense of fashion.
Today was a day for soldiers and, despite the sting brought on by the press’s spurning; Rarity was more than willing to step back and let her very special friend Applejack have her unappreciated moment in the spotlight.

She had, however, made sure to dress up the country mare, even going so far as to craft an entirely new set of digs - perhaps even an entirely new style – by way of the military green, though decidedly fabulous, outfit.

Applejack, her sunlit mane repressed under that unbearably permanent hat, continued to answer the journalist’s war-related questions, while Rarity was content enough to lie in wait for the blustering that she so adored.

Whenever she was tackled with a surprisingly intelligent, and perhaps even dangerous, question, Applejack had the habit of taking comfort with the offensive fashion criminal that had sought asylum on her head. As she toyed with the rawhide material, her cheeks became alive with the bridled fires of embarrassment, now at a loss for words that was uncommon to the characteristically blunt mare. The rouge made her young again, Rarity thought, though it was far from superficial.

It went beyond simple appearances, beyond the reaches of what even the most expensive makeup could replicate, and gave something more than beauty, something like life. [Damn girl, you go on with your silky self… Ah Jeez, That kind of ruined it didn’t it? …I need a pencil, or else my writing career isn’t going anywhere fast.]

At these sanctified times, when Rarity was immersed in the memories of better days and the regret over wasted years, she didn’t realize that the very same fire was kindling beneath her marshmallow visage - blossoming the same roses that a midday sunbeam or a fine, spiced wine would bring to life beneath her cheeks- melting the statuesquely photogenic politician, and reviving the dreamer who had been walled over so long ago.

“Yes,” Applejack answered again, losing the glow at a new, familiarly moronic question. “Equestria is at war.” She shot an amused look back at her distracted friend, pulling the seamstress out of that nostalgic haze, and triggering an unrestrained giggle.

They, along with the other four, had come to enjoy the press’ idiocy; as it gave a more forgivable face to that dauntless, now everyday, oppressor. Better to think of them as curious children than scavenging vultures, though the constant attempts at slander and humiliation, the ceaseless surveillance, didn’t make it easy: What kind of child wanted to spend their entire day watching a half dozen mares go on adventures?

As if to dispel any doubt surrounding Ministry Mare Applejack’s answer, the sirens of Cabanne began to wail, warning of an unprecedented and unknowable attack, an impossible attack.

Smoke was rising from behind the wide ring of palisade walls that surrounded the city’s lower markets, flooding the sky like ink through clear water. The clouds formed wide currents of light straits, wound over and around what almost looked like a patchwork of mist. They gave the pale blue behind them the appearance of heavily worn metal, a surface defaced by scratches and clearly very aged.

The moon lingered quite a ways above the horizon, and it was as if every cloud had knowingly parted from its sights, so that the day’s intruder could stare down at the fierce battle that sang out in reports and roars from beyond the ancient, woodwork walls.

This was a tourist town, a place for morale building appearances and juvenile memorial… not war.

“The zebras, they’re at the gates!” A golden-clad guard hollered, her hooves pounding across the stone plaza, setting a rhythm to baseline her panting voice. “An entire regiment!” Rarity and Applejack [The special friends] exchanged another look, but the jovial air between them had already been burned away by the heat that would soon be baking the entire city, drowned out by the roaring from Cabanne’s nigh impregnable maw.

“How!?” Applejack demanded. “How could they have made it this far into the country without us knowing!?”

“The Zebras are reputably sneaky and it would be entirely believable that they managed such a feat.” The guard explained believably. “Considering how they must have made it to Littlehorn; can anypony really say that what’s happening now is impossible, or even implausible? The Zebras could totally have managed something like this.”

“Yes,” Applejack stroked her chin in agreement. “Everything that you are saying is historically accurate.”

Rarity, while alarmed at the attack so audibly taking place, couldn’t help but to examine the guard as she continued her strictly military exchange with Applejack. The fashionista would have no say here, and so submit the soldier to the full extent of her hot-red-fabulous judgment.

Unfortunately, the mare was quite difficult to find disgusting (to put it as unflatteringly as possible).
The revealing clad of gold and leather framework reflected her eyes and tawny mane, and for a hardened warrior her body seemed soft and exploitable, round in just enough of the right places. [No turning back now]

“Ah don’t care what yer orders are! Ah’m going out there!” Applejack, of course, was the posterfoal for wasted potential, and if the two arguing mares had to be compared she would certainly come out on top… with ample help from Rarity, of course. The designer blushed at the latently homosexual [I warned you] imagery that she was conjuring up. It would be nice to see the two of them fight for her… in some mud or perhaps a cake.

“Are you hearin’ this, Rare?” Contestant number one – in this corner wearing skimpy, red trunks – asked.

“Oh yes, darling! I can hardly believe my fabulous [Get a thesaurus, for Celestia’s sake] ears.” Rarity answered smoothly, barely needing to break from her saucy daydreams.

Applejack sighed, in the real world this time, and met the guard’s auricle eyes. “Listen, Sugarcube-”

“Apologies Ma’am!” The mare stiffened up into an awkward salute. “Commander Shameless Self-Insert of the third division, presenting arms.” And what pretty arms they were, thought Rarity. [So, what? You’re just going to abandon humility completely, huh?] “I’m just a little flustered.” Oh, you don’t even know the meaning of the word… yet, Rarity thought again. She couldn’t help it: The mare looked fine as hell. [Damn Straight]

“At ease, soldier… And you can get out of mah way while yer at it.” Applejack said quite forcefully, sending shivers down Rarity’s spine. [The Characters in this production are entirely fictional and any resemblances in terms of appearance or name are purely coincidence… In other words: Rarity probably didn’t behave like a pig in heat.]

“No… no ma’am… I am to escort you to safety, where we will await extraction by Twilight Sparkle and her team of super wizards.”

“Hmm… Maybe not everything you are saying is historically accurate.”

“Applejack,” Rarity cooed at her most pleading. “If her orders are to bunker down with us, then we really have no choice, do we? I would certainly hate to get this mare into any kind of… trouble.” Maybe one kind.
[Note to Self: When a pony is in love, I should hope that they rarely conspire to instigate threesomes with random soldiers… no matter how ‘banging’ or ‘flank-spankable’ that soldier may be. For a mare who claims to value love, I’m not doing a very good job of forcing it between these two respected historical figures.]

“She’ll be in a whole mess of trouble if she doesn’t shimmy her flanks out of mah way.” The creamy gray girl stood resolute, though the rifle holstered at her side remained stoically ignored, as if even looking at it would make her guilty of intent to commit a very treasonous assassination. “Ah need to be out there fightin’! Ah’m just as much a soldier as this little thing… What good am Ah tucked away in some hole?” [No Comment]

“Applejack…” Rarity set her hoof gently on the mare’s padded shoulder, and drew the intensity of her eyes off of the shivering subordinate. “What good are you buried in some hole?” [NO COMMENT!]

At that moment, the seamstress let herself out of the hideaway of questionable thoughts that she had created, and truly began to see what was happening around her. She had put up blinds by way of a somehow chauvinistic attitude to this bearer of bad news, letting herself take refuge behind juvenile whimsy and impassioned imaginings, making herself ignore the truth: They were at war and, even if it were in mud or the sexiest cake conceivable, the fighting outside was nothing to fantasize herself away from.

Applejack must have seen this change in her special friend’s [If I say it enough, then it had to be true] eyes, as her resolve was slowly beginning to break.“They’re dying out there… Ah have to…”

“Die with them?” These orders wouldn’t have come unless all was already lost, unless the battle was well and truly hopeless. “No. We’re going with the Commander… we don’t want Twilight Sparkle to have nothing but a pair of pointless casualties in place of her two best and most important friends… in place of the elements.” Her darling nodded, though there was still a sadness in the country mare’s eyes that she was pained to see.

“What would happen to an element of harmony…” Shameless asked, gaining some courage at her superior’s abandoned resistance. “If its bearer were to fall?”

“It dies with ‘em.” Applejack answered, her own words deciding the course that she would follow.

“So, it doesn’t… like, pass to the pony standing closest… or something like that, y’know?”

“Of course not, darling.” Rarity waved the guard’s silly notion away. “That would be ridiculous.”

“Yeah…” she kicked at the cobblestones. “Yeah, that does seem silly… now that I think about it.” Applejack broke out of the mild embrace to watch the mare as she processed this apparently disappointing information.
“You’re sure, though? It’s not like that’s ever been tested, right?” [Be sure to look into this]

“Weren’t you s’posed to be taking us somewhere safe?” The sound of battle was getting louder now, and the press had all but dispersed: some charging into the fray to record this historic event, others taking shelter with civilians and tourists beneath the tapestry roofs and behind the fruit stores of the market around them, and a despicable few hovering around the Ministry mares, hoping to get one final story to milk into incredibility. Rarity could already see the headlines above the picture of their briefly, if intensely, locked eyes:
CABIN FEVER IN CABANNE! SCANDALOUS AFFAIR REVEALED!
MINISTRY MARE RARITY DONE GOOFED AS HUNDREDS ARE MASSACRED!
BATTLE OF THE BULGE: PREGNANCY SCARE FOR MINSITRY MARES!

“Oh… right.” Shameless seemed to have recovered and looked back towards the rising plumes of smoke. She stared on for a while, and a silence broken only by screams and gunfire grew between the three mares.

“Ah’m sorry for fussin’, Commander.”
Rarity felt the warm distraction return as Applejack clutched the fraying hat to her chest, her eyes glistening for a soldier’s empathy that the dressmaker could never truly understand, but this time the amorous escape came in another form… a form that meant much more than she knew. [Boom! Subtlety!]
“Ah can’t imagine what you must be going through… knowin’ the folks who’re out there.”

“They’ll come back.” Shameless Self-Insert said decidedly, making the promise more to herself than to anyone else. “So let’s give them a reason to.” She began marching towards the great terraces and tiered heights of Cabanne proper, leading the two Ministry Mares away from tourists and terrorists alike, and leaving the towering cross of Celestia’s rising behind.

[They’ll come back]

[Final Note to Self: As much as I’d like to hate this… to chastise and regret every choice that led to this story’s creation… There’s something to be had from it, almost as if in exchange for the massive loss of dignity and self-respect: There is an escape here. Though, I ought to leave now, to finish exploring this ancient place. Maybe I’ll find something to remind me why these mares deserve more respect than I’ve given them or, at least, a less rampantly ‘hot-to-trot’ depiction. It’s clear that I may have been overly influenced by Caliber’s talk of ‘Bucky Flankspank’ at the lake, and that I still have a lot to learn about love.]

[Maybe come back to this after you’ve looked around the city a little more]

[Possible Twist Ending: This Story is actually in first person, but Rarity likes to refer to herself in the third person.]