Chapter 20:2: Apples and shadows
Sharks swim even in the calmest of waters. (Old saying)
Sora felt as if his head was going to explode and slowly forced his eyes open, getting dimly aware of his strange position. He was lying on his back, or rather most of him was lying on his neck, while the rest of his back was leaning towards a tree of some sort, and his lower region bending over so that his feet almost touched the grassy ground he was lying on. That would explain the headache. He swayed his feet to the side, resulting in a rough crash to his side and the headache was quickly getting friendly with its partner dizziness.
"Ow," Sora managed to huff out groggily as he tried hard to clear his mind. He tried sitting up, but his legs felt a bit strange, not quite bending the way he wanted them to. Once he was sitting up, no matter how strange it felt, Sora decided to open his eyes again and blinked a couple of times to clear his vision. He was sitting in what looked like a forest of apple trees. And a number of steps away from him he spotted what looked like a pale peach colored small horse with black mane and tail. The animal seemed to have crashed to the ground head first, looking pretty much out of it. There was something off with it though. Sora thought for a while as he tried to figure out what was wrong, then realized that the horse had a straw-hat-adorned Jolly Roger marking on its hind and a very familiar straw hat on its head.
"Luffy? Wait a minute…" Sora mumbled and looked down on his hands, only to find out he didn't have any hands. He had tan colored hooves. And the reason for his feeling of strangeness while sitting, was simply due to the fact that his legs were now the hind legs of a horse. Looking at his hind, he noticed he too had a marking, but his showed the Kingdom Key, a silhouetted heart and some stars. His sand colored tail flapped with annoyance at the unexpected transformation. Then he realized that he couldn't see Will anywhere. He got up on all fours and took a few swaying steps forward to get a clearer view of the area, turning his head really slow in order not to worsen the headache.
"Will? Where are you?" he called out, stepping closer to Luffy as he did. The pirate-turned-horse started to move and slowly opened his eyes.
"Could you please not yell, Sora? My head hurts," he mumbled as he tried to get up.
"I can't find Will," Sora explained and gave his friend a supportive shove of his head against the pirate's side to get him up on his hooves.
"Wait, are you a horse?" Luffy asked, blinking his drowsiness out of his eyes. Then he looked at himself and whistled. "Oooh, I get it. We're transformed again." He turned his head and smiled wide. "Cool! I've got a tattoo!"
Sora rolled his eyes at the comment. "We need to find Will, so stop chasing your tail, ok?"
Luffy looked up from his circling and took a look around. "So, where is she?"
Sora was about to smack his right front hoof into the pirate's head, when a familiar voice was heard from one of the tree crowns above them.
"Guys, I'm here," Will called out to them and the two rushed to the tree where her voice was coming from. "I'm sort of stuck…"
As they got there, they saw a purple horse tangled among the branches of the tree, head down towards the ground. Her red mane was partly covering her eyes, parting in the middle of her forehead where a short spiraling horn was placed. The black and green fairy wings on her back were flapping without success as she tried to wriggle herself out of there.
"No fair! She got wings!" Luffy wailed, earning himself an annoyed glare from both Sora and Will.
"Is everything nothing but a game to you?" Will muttered. "Can't you just stretch up and get me out of this mess?"
Luffy blinked and got a look in his face that clearly told them he hadn't thought about that.
"Sure," he said and balanced himself to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forelegs to reach up and grab her. Some branches broke and leaves and apples fell as Luffy pulled to get her free from the tree's grasp. She folded her wings and closed her eyes and soon enough she was back on the ground with a heavy thump, landing more or less on top of her helper as he tumbled backwards.
"Wow, this stuff is hard without fingers…" Luffy mumbled as he got up in a sitting position as soon as Will managed to get off of him. "Nothing to really hold on with."
"Lucky you can stretch enough to circle stuff then," Will pointed out and shook her head to get her mane all on one side of her neck.
"So, I'm guessing the Heart transformed us to fit in again," Sora said slowly as he once more looked around them in a try to find someone else in this vast apple-tree garden. "But where are we?"
Will shrugged her horse shoulders and flexed her wings, trying them slowly, before taking a jump up in the air to use them. Amazingly enough, the fragile looking fairy wings on her back did keep her aloft and she quickly moved herself higher up to get a look at the area from above.
"There's a farm of sorts further up this path," she said once she was back down on the ground with the guys and pointed with one of her hooves in the direction of the buildings she'd seen. "Shouldn't take too long to reach it."
After performing a quick healing spell on himself to get rid of the headache, Sora took the lead, galloping through the apple tree forest, eager to get going. He felt a need to keep himself busy in order to keep the dark thoughts out of his head. And galloping at full speed seemed to work pretty well. The speed and the wind in his mane and tail was exhilarating. Luffy used his flexibility to get ahead of him, stretching out his legs to get longer strides and stretching his back to get an even greater advantage. He smiled wide as he passed him.
"Oh this is FUN!" he laughed and bucked, his body snapping back to its original size before he continued the gallop.
Sora caught himself smiling at it and felt honestly amused by the whole thing and truly happy for a moment. He caught a glimpse of Will flying above them, doing loops and twirls as she went.
"Having fun?" he called out to her and she replied him with a high whinnying and dove down towards him in high speed, slowing down in time to just fly alongside him.
"This place seems so peaceful, don't you think? It's like you can't be truly sad here, or something," Will said with a smile. "And flying like this is, well, awesome!"
Sora was quick to agree with her. The place seemed to absorb all negative feelings and feed back positive ones instead. It felt good.
When they reached the farm Will had seen, they slowed down and took a moment to just breathe and get their act together before walking into the yard between the houses. The place was strangely quiet and suddenly Sora got on his guard. Something wasn't quite right.
"Uhm, shouldn't there be someone here?" Luffy said slowly as he looked around. Then he sniffed in the air and licked his mouth. "I smell apple pie!" he said and trotted ahead, despite Will and Sora trying to stop him in cautious whispers.
"Luffy! You can't just go off like that!" Sora muttered as he found him by the door to the barn.
Suddenly a Shadow heartless appeared, quickly followed by others and Sora got his keyblade out, while Will charged up her electric energy in her horn. Luffy jumped aside just as the first Shadow attacked and Sora dove for it, cutting it apart with the keyblade and then turned to take care of the rest.
Will shot off a beam of pink sparks and disintegrated three of them while Sora and Luffy took care of two and by the time the three that Will had taken out were reforming themselves, Sora was ready and cut through all three of them in one go.
He looked at the heart-shapes floating away from the places where the heartless had been and sighed, though he didn't dare to relax just yet. It had been long now since he'd last fought such easy enemies and the mere fact of how easy it had been defeating them, kept Sora's senses on alert.
"Hey, did you get that blade from Inu-Yasha?" Luffy asked, staring at Sora's keyblade and made the keyblade wielder himself notice the change in his weapon for the first time.
It looked more like a sword than a key now, with a white bone-like material making up a long, curved blade. At the hilt the blade split in two parts; one broader to make out the main shape of the blade and one thinner, like a wire, going out in a wide curve following the other part's shape. At the top of the blade the wire shaped three dents in the blade's profile before it met up with the other part at the top. The hilt itself was covered with a tuft of silvery white fur, much like the hair on Inu-Yasha's head, reaching down in a curve and almost meeting with the bottom of the handle. The handle was wrapped in old linen cloth and at its end dangled the keychain Inu-Yasha had given him before their departure. Sora smiled. The Demon Fang sure stood up to its name.
With a shrug Sora let the weapon disappear. "Yeah, he gave it to me right before we left."
Luffy didn't listen though, having picked up the scent of apple pie once more. He kicked open the big wooden doors to the barn before neither Will nor Sora could stop him and walked inside with a smile on his face.
"Oh, apple pie…" he hummed as he tried to find the source of the smell that teased his nostrils.
"Who's there?" a voice called out from the dark inside the barn. Sora instantly moved forward and got in front of Luffy.
"I'm Sora and these are my friends. We just happened to pass by and decided to take a look and my friend Luffy here thought he smelled some apple pie," Sora explained quickly.
There came a short giggle from the darkness, followed by a hushing and then two figures stepped out from the shadows, one bigger and one smaller. The small one proved to be a pale yellow foal with red mane and tail and the bigger one was a warm orange colored horse with corn yellow mane. While the smaller one had a big pink bow on her head, the bigger had a worn brown cowboy hat. Both of them looked rather cautious as they got closer to Sora and the others, but the smaller started to smile as she spotted Sora.
"Your mane looks kind of funny," she said with a giggle. "And I've never heard of anypony having that kind of name."
"Apple Bloom!" the other huffed at her and Sora recognized the voice as being the one that had spoken before.
"I hope we're not doing something wrong by coming here, we just got a bit curious," Sora said and stomped down hard on Luffy's tail in order to keep him in place. The pirate whined.
"I'm hungry, Sora…"
"Don't be a baby," Will remarked as she got inside as well, folding her wings.
The orange one looked at them as if they'd gone mad.
"Wrong? By the apples no, I'm just glad to find another pony here to talk to!" she said with a relieved smile. "I started to think me and my sister were the only ponies still here," she added and came closer, reaching out a hoof to Sora, who placed his hoof against hers. She gave it an energetic shake. "I'm Apple Jack, pleased to meet ya'. Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres, Sora! And your friend did smell apple pie, only, we haven't got all that much left of it. He can have the piece that's left if he'd like."
Luffy was gone even before Sora had a chance to stop him.
"So, uhm, what's happened here then?" Sora asked while he tried to ignore the curious stare of Apple Bloom as the little one eagerly inspected him and Will.
"Well, beats me, really," Apple Jack said and scratched at her head with a hoof. "When I woke up this mornin', there was darkness all over the place, shadows movin' 'round like crazy and me and Big Mac rushed outside to get a look at things. Granny and Apple Bloom here stayed inside, but then these creatures showed up and…" Apple Jack fell silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and continued. "And now everypony apart from me an' Apple Bloom are just gone. We were 'bout to go out lookin' for the others when ya'll came here."
"Hey, you've got a key for cutie-mark? Cool! You're a locksmith or somethin'?" Apple Bloom said with a smile, turning her bright orange eyes to Sora.
"Err, no…" Sora replied and then turned back to Apple Jack. "Have you been outside of the farm to check?"
Apple Jack shook her head.
"No, but I figured I'd take Apple Bloom with me down to Ponyville after we ate some of the pie we managed to get with us. It can't be just Sweet Apple Acres that's been affected like this."
Sora nodded. "I think you're right. We'll come with you, if you don't mind."
"Fine by me," Apple Jack replied.
Luffy came trotting back from his quick meal, licking his lips. "That was some pie! Too bad there was so little of it."
Sora rolled his eyes at him and Apple Jack giggled, amused by the look on the pirate's face.
"Ya' know, if you're hungry, we do have apples on them trees," she said and Luffy was about to go out the door when Sora stopped him.
"You can eat later, Luffy. We wouldn't want Apple Jack here to be out of apples, right?"
Luffy snorted at this, but he stayed put when Sora stepped away from him.
"Sorry, but he's got quite an appetite," Sora explained to the confused host. "He's the kind of, err, pony that would eat the apples, then have the tree for desert."
"No worries," Apple Jack said with a laugh. "Can't be worse than my uncle Apple Core. He ate just 'bout a ton of them apples before he stopped."
"Trust us, he'd eat the whole apple farm if no one was there to stop him," Will said and gave Luffy an angry stare to keep him in place. Suddenly she felt a tug in one of her wings and looked down to find that Apple Bloom was inspecting it with what looked like awe in her eyes.
"You're a unicorn-pegasus? How cool isn't that! And your wings are so pretty, all see-through and stuff! And you're cutie-mark looks so awesome! What is it?"
Will hung with her ears, uncomfortable with the closeness of the small pony's inspection.
"Well, it's a symbol of the fifth element, an energy that courses through all things living. It's called quintessence."
"Apple Bloom, don't be rude," Apple Jack reprimanded her. "Forgive my sister, she's just a little filly and she's very interested in cutie-marks since she hasn't got her own yet."
Apple Bloom didn't seem to have heard her sister though, because now she was next to Luffy, circling him and staring at his hind marking with an excited look in her eyes. "Wow! Are you like a pirate or something?"
"Well, yeah," Luffy replied with a wide smile. "I'm captain over my own ship even!"
"Cool! And is that a real scar?" the small pony said, almost bursting with excitement as she gawked over the scar beneath Luffy's eye.
"You bet!" Luffy replied, smiling wide with pride.
"Wicked!"
"Enough!" Apple Jack barked at her sister and lifted her up in her mane. "We bettel get goin' now, ol dose shadows migh ge back hele," she said between her teeth to Sora while carrying a pretty grumpy Apple Bloom out of the barn. Sora and the others followed her outside and together they all trotted down the road leading away from Sweet Apple Acres.
After a while, Apple Bloom had calmed down enough to be allowed to skip down the road on her own, which resulted in a skipping contest between Luffy and the filly; both of them laughing giddily as they went on. Sora smiled as he watched them play along. He wished he could be more like Luffy sometimes. The worst part about that wish was that he knew he'd been almost just as carefree once. Before the heartless came and before the keyblade started to feel heavy in his hands.
"I sure hope my friends are alright," Apple Jack said, interrupting Sora in his thoughts.
"They live in Ponyville?"
"Yeah, most of 'em. Rainbow Dash lives up in Cloudsdale, and Fluttershy has her home a bit outside of town, but Twilight Sparkle, Spike, Rarity and Pinkie Pie all live in Ponyville. I just hope everypony's ok. Those shadows were, well, downright spooky if ya' ask me, lookin' like changelings almost. And the way the ponies on the farm just disappeared… well, I don't know what I would do if my friends disappeared like that as well."
"Don't worry," Sora said and put on a smile for her. "They're probably all fine and might not even know what's happened yet."
"Ya' think?"
"Sure," Will cut in. "And if the shadows show up, we'll be there to fight them. Sora here's an expert at that."
Apple Jack gave him an odd look. "Ya' know how to fight the shadows?"
Sora sighed and nodded. "Yeah, I know how to do it. They're called heartless. They take hearts, turning the heart's owner into a heartless like themselves. The brighter the heart, the more they want it."
"But ya' know how to stop 'em?"
"Yes," came the short but honest answer. Sora didn't want to go into the details of it all and Apple Jack didn't seem to need a more thorough explanation than this.
"LOOK OUT!"
The scream came from somewhere above them and suddenly Sora felt something hit him hard in his back, causing him to fall to the ground rolling and for a moment all he saw was a wild fuzz of pink curls, before he managed to get back on his hooves and help the pony who'd crashed into him to stand up as well. Apple Jack rushed forward with a growing worry in her features.
"Pinkie! What's happened? Why did ya' just fall out of the sky like that?"
The pink apparition that was Pinkie Pie looked around herself in utter confusion for a moment, before she located her friend.
"AJ! It's HORRIBLE!" she screamed out and threw herself on the orange pony with her blue eyes big and crazy wide open. "My pinkie-sense went haywire and then… and then… BOOM! I was flying through the air like a banana out of its peal!" She fell silent and took a look around at the somewhat shocked faces looking at her. "Oh, goodies! New friends!" she beamed and went straight to Will, giving her a hug around the neck. "I'm Pinkie Pie, but you can call me Pinkie if you like! What's your name?"
Before Will had a chance to utter anything though, the whirlwind of pink was already at Luffy and repeated her act, then she continued on to Sora and was about to hug him as well, when she for some reason stopped and instead stared into his blue eyes and almost pressed her forehead against his.
"You're…somewhat familiar…" she said slowly.
"Yeah, you landed on me," Sora reminded her grumpily and she blinked and smiled.
"Of course! So, who are all of you guys?" she burst out and paused, before giving Sora a hug as well. "Sorry, almost forgot you!" she said in explanation as Sora backed off with flushed cheeks and confusion written in his eyes.
"Are you… for real?" he asked slowly.
Apple Jack and Apple Bloom chose that moment to burst out laughing, and soon the others joined in on it, Pinkie Pie giggling like an over-excited chipmunk.
"Oh, that's just Pinkie Pie for ya'," Apple Jack said as she a moment later managed to catch her breath. "Too random for her own good."
"Well I think you're awesome!" Luffy exclaimed and Pinkie Pie smiled wide.
"Wicked! Let's have a staring contest!"
And the two banged their heads together, their eyes growing big and blank as they started the game with serious dedication. Will and Sora gave the two a long look, then turned to Apple Jack.
"I never thought I'd ever meet someone who's just as hyper active as Luffy," Will said in a giggle.
"Oh ya' ain't seen nothin' yet," Apple Bloom said. "One time she…"
"Quiet!" Apple Jack suddenly hushed her sister and perked her ears, as did the others. Even Luffy and Pinkie Pie interrupted their silent battle and listened. There was the sound of an explosion coming from Ponyville.
"What in all the apples is happening over there?" Apple Jack said and started to trot towards the town.
Pinkie Pie took a big skip forward and started to bounce alongside Apple Jack. "Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you? Twilight's been blowing things up all morning. First she blew up her bed, then some books, then…"
"She what?"
"Her horn was itching or something, at least that's what Spike told me. It was right before my pinkie-sense went haywire and I ended up flying over to you guys."
"Why didn't ya' say so!" Apple Jack grumbled and started to pick up pace, turning her trot into a full out gallop. "We have to help her out before she blows up something else!"
"Aye-aye," Pinkie Pie replied and produced a yellow workman's helmet seemingly out of nowhere and put it on her head. "Let's go!" she said and continued bouncing oddly after Apple Jack, somehow without any trouble keeping the same speed as the racing pony.
Sora, Will and Luffy were already galloping after Apple Jack, Luffy grabbing Apple Bloom and putting her on his back as he went past her. As they came closer to the town though, Sora and Will both noticed something that the others didn't. A certain chill in the air that told them to get ready for something more than just helping out Apple Jack's and Pinkie Pie's friend. And as they entered Ponyville, they had their suspicions confirmed.
"Heartless!" Sora called out and had the keyblade in his mouth within a second, bearing it down on the first shadow that jumped at them.
Author notes: Yeah, yeah, shoot me, curse me and all that, but I LOVE My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic. So of course I had to have that world in the story! And introducing the world, I had to pick my two most favorite ponies of the series to show up first; AJ ( Apple Jack) and Pinkie Pie. I did aim for getting Raindbow Dash into this first part in the world, but decided to not do it, because it didn't really fit within my personal limit of pages per chapter (8, maximum 12 pages in Word, for those interested). Hope you like it! Oh, and as always, if you're interested in looking at some illustrations for the fic, check out my DeviantArt- account! ( . ). / Silverspegel