The Fifth Sign

[revenancemods]

Who: Anyone who wants to participate
What: The zapapple harvest!
Where: Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, the orchard where the Zapapple trees are growing
When: Afternoon
Warnings: None yet.

A lightning storm crackles over the orchard, lighting the sky with electricity for minutes on end. Only when it fades does a rainbow arch across the sky. As if by magic - and it may well be - the gray apples on the trees suddenly grow to three times their size and gain rainbow stripes. It looks like the zapapples are ripe and ready for picking. There's buckets and barrels in the barn - best get started before the sun goes down and they disappear.

As for that howling in the distance...well, surely it's nothing.

[Anyone can join; this plot is friendly for combatants and non-combatants alike; no tag order; further instructions as events warrant. Have fun!]

Comments

Zapapple Harvest

[revenancenpcs]

[Harvesters go here!]

[lessabrasive]

The ground shook furiously, spilling several apples from the trees to the ground below as Lin pointed her horn towards the earth beneath her hooves. The green light sparkled brightly at its point before vanishing in a flash, and a wall of dirt sprang up, stretching out across the field to provide a partial road block. A temporary shield, really, one that would force the oncoming force to go around it - assuming they were bright enough to try that rather than go through.

That done, Lin left the line of defenders to it, turning her attention back to those who'd opted to finish the gathering. "Line up the baskets around the bases before you start kicking at the trees!"

[statisticallyterrible]

The oncoming hoard might have seemed the most pressing, but the trees were what mattered most. Chell sent her bat and Kri-kri out to help drag baskets into place around the trees--thankfully the tension apparent in the air kept the Cyber Yog from bickering at all. Good, he had the right build to help with bucking. Chell was built more for speed than strength, so the more they could get to help with the harvest, the better.

[sailorlaughter]

Pinkie, meanwhile, didn't appear to be worried at all. She was zipping around a lot faster than she'd previously been, though.

"C'mon guys! Let's get to it!" This was directed primarily at her spirits. Toothy couldn't do much more than climb up and knock apples down individually, but he was going at it quickly, working on the side of the orchard most people hadn't gotten to yet. Lord Tubbington, meanwhile, lumbered about until he found a tree, and then jumped up and down near it a few times until the tremors shook them all down. Pinkie had relegated herself to basket duty for him, for now. Apple bucking worked TOTALLY different muscles than bounding and bouncing - it was HARD!

[lessabrasive]

Entirely different indeed. Her own owl spirit swooped back and forth, knocking some apples from branches where he could, while her pricklemane --having given up on batting zapples back into the buckets, rolled into a spikey ball and crashed into the trees bodily. Not quite as effective as a bucking pony, but those that the Meowjesty's jumps didn't bring down were loosened enough that the extra effort finished the job.

There was a nod for Chell from Lin as the unicorn mare trotted back and forth, moving some baskets with telekinesis. Wolves eating apples wasn't the strangest idea she'd heard, but given the size of the pack descending (along with the nightmare cohort) she didn't want to given them any satisfaction if she could manage it.

[juniorganymedian]

Jeeves was happy enough to defer to Lin on this as she seemed to be doing the most practical thing. He supposed his pretend back condition could be explained away to Pinkie as relenting in the heat of the moment. So, while Descartes plucked apples one-by-one with toothy down at the other end of the orchard, Jeeves began applebucking.

He was a large stallion, but it still took him a few tries to knock all of the apples down off the first tree. This was completely unfamiliar - and frankly embarrassing - action and activity for him. The next tree went faster, and Jeeves used the moment between cantering from tree-to-tree to calculate how long this might take. Lin's barrier would probably not last the entire duration.

[sailorlaughter]

"You guys!" Pinkie called out from somewhere up in the branches of one of the trees. She was trying out a new apple-picking method. "I had an idea! What if we just GAVE some of the apples to the wolves! I mean, there's a TON here, we don't really need them all." It usually took about this many to satisfy all of Ponyville, plus the out-of-town business Filthy did, but there weren't nearly so many ponies here now. Plus, the timberwolves were seeming a LOT more interested than normal.

[sailorgenerous]

Rarity moved between the trees, magically plucking an entire trees' worth of zapapples at a time and placing them in baskets and barrels, working with the precision of someone who'd helped out at harvest season before, albeit with quite a bit more urgency this time around. "They're Timberwolves, Pinkie!" Rarity called back. "They tried to eat Spike once! Do you really think they'll listen to reason? And there are Nightmares too!" Had there been more reasonable creatures demanding zapapples, Rarity would have been more than happy to negotiate. With Timberwolves, however, all bets were off.

Spike took his cue from Lin's Pricklemane, planted his tail in the ground between several trees, balled up, and swung in a circle, delivering spiky blows to all the trees within his radius and knocking zapapples to the ground.

[statisticallyterrible]

Pinkie did bring up the question of why they really needed these fruits so badly, anyway. Chell caught one she'd kicked loose before flying up over Lin's barrier and looking over the conflict below.

Into the fray, she tossed the spare apple, where it lay unnoticed. The wolves, it seemed, were simply more concerned to getting to the still-laden trees than any fresh-picked apple.

Kri-kri huffed as it bucked down another tree. Obviously, the carnivorous flourna known as Cannabis Lupus is not a scavenger, but a hunter, and would only be interested in fresh prey in the height of its virility upon the branch.

[fearmylaserface]

Well, Epsilon wasn't going to try to join the fighters when there were others more capable. So the harvesters have a blue dragon helping out after dragging a basket to a tree. He was awkward as he did it, but he's trying to see if he can climb a tree to help. He can't knock the apples down like the ponies.

[juniorganymedian]

Jeeves did consider the merits of Pinkie's suggestion. Removing even part of their enemies from the fray would help. The nightmares were something he'd become unwillingly familiar with facing, after all. The timberwolves were new. He caught sight of a pegasus flitting up and over the barrier with a zapapple in her hooves. When she did not return for more and the howling continued, he suspected the attempt at distraction hadn't worked.

Down fell another tree's-worth of apples as he bucked hard after pulling a group of baskets over. It was as he was huffing and hurrying to the next tree that he noted the dragon. Jeeves thought for just a moment before deciding that he could spare the moment to be of some assistance. It would be one more set of hands working.

"Do not be alarmed, sir," he called to the dragon to catch his attention. "I am going to lift you to the branches." He waited for some form of acknowledgement before just throwing the creature about.

[lessabrasive]

"These are dreams of zapapples. And there's nightmares mixed in there. I have no desire to find out what they plan on doing with this fruit!"

When Chell took off with one of the apples, the grey unicorn paused to watch. The lack of audible reaction to the tossing it over the baiier earnd a grimace from Lin. "Well. That doesn't bode well. All right, people, step it up!"

Up goes the baby dragon (the blue colour means it has to be the mouthy 'ai' from York and North's world), and Lin eyes his location carefully as she trots onwards towards the next set of trees. She hadn't meant quite that literally, but if it worked? She wasn't about to complain.

The pricklemane eyed Kri-Kri as he hopped on by, heading after his person. That made no sense.