“Sooo,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering just short of the tree branches overhead, “you done yet?”

As the apples fell from the tree she’d bucked, Applejack sighed. “Dash, you asked me that twelve times already.”

“So what? I can’t help if you’re slow.” She settled into a tree branch and yawned.

“You think you can do better?”

“AJ, I was [i]born[/i] doing better.”

Applejack stopped halfway to the next harvest, tipped her hat back and looked up. “You wanna bet on that?”

Rainbow cocked her head, raised an eyebrow.

“‘Cause I’m thinkin’ you’d like to put your money where your mouth is, Blue Fast.”

“Please.” Rainbow laughed. “That just wouldn’t even be fair. I’d practically be stealing.”

Applejack pressed her lips together and started to walk away. “Yeah, you’re right. Probably take ya half the day just to get started.” She shook her head, smiling to herself under the brim of her hat.

With a rustle of leaves, Dash was up in her face. “Are you calling me lazy?”

“You wanna prove me wrong?”

“Ten bits says you are.”

Applejack chuckled. “Nah; if we’re gonna do this right, we gotta make it sting a little, losin’. Fifty or nothin’.” She stuck out a hoof.

Rainbow took it. “Deal.” She backed off a step, breaking into a grin. “And you are [i]so gonna feel it[/i] when you totally lose this one. What’s the plan?”

“Well, now, ain’t that an interestin’ question,” Applejack said, grinning. “I got one thing for ya, and if you can make it through that by—” she glanced up at the sun “—say half past two, those bits are all yours.”



Pouring the slop had been simple enough, even if half the stupid pigs hadn’t noticed it in the trough. As she took the shovel in her teeth and stepped through the gate, Rainbow couldn’t see why AJ had made such a big deal out of this. It wasn’t [i]that[/i] bad. Smelly, sure, but not [i]horrible[/i].

As soon as she set hoof in the pen, she figured it out.

If a hundred encourageable young fillies had robbed and jointly devoured Sugarcube Corner, faux-frosting and all, then vomited the mess of painted slate and half-digested graham crackers in the back alley behind Berry Punch’s winery, it would not have equaled one-tenth of the stench that struck her. Rainbow grimaced and marched on through the muck. She only had a short walk from the core of the mess to the wheelbarrow. It would only be a little while before it was over. All she had to do until then was not breathe.

This sounded much easier than it was in practice, she found.

Hooves caked in muck baked under the mid-afternoon sun, she was almost done and fantasizing about the smell of fresh air when she heard the sound she would for a few weeks remember as the Heralding of the End: the squeal of a pig who had just noticed his dinner.

Before she could get out of the way, the only-half-pink monstrosity it came from crashed into her, sending her to the ground and her shovel sailing. She landed in a patch of blessedly clear, earthy dirt, just short of the muck. Her shovel was not so fortunate. She could only look on in horror as the thing twirled through the air for a few short feet before plunging shaftlong into the largest pile yet unscooped with a deeply unsettling [i]thwop[/i].

She stared at the protruding shaft, a sense of impending doom building as she considered her options.

There was only one, really.

[hr]

The Apple family home stood eerily still as Rainbow and Applejack sat in the dark kitchen alone, curtains drawn. Only the settling of the rafters broke the quiet.

“So, uh, looks like you won the bet, Rainbow.”

Technically, she had finished an hour late, if one counted all the futile retching afterward, but Applejack had decided this was, all things considered, understandable.

Dash stared silently out the window behind and to the left of her head.

If silence had a volume, Applejack was fairly certain this one could have rivaled a Scratch-involved house party in its intensity. She gave a sharp cough and nipped into her saddlebags, spat a 50-bit piece on the table and slid it across. Rainbow made no move.

“So, uh…” Applejack said as she smiled, a sick, weakly thing, “I was gonna offer ya some Apple family fudge after ya finished, but I reckon now ain’t the time, is it?”