Applebloom leaned out of the family's old farm truck and looked up at the large, 2-legged, mechanical thingie that her, Scootaloo and Sweetie had stumbled across while during their expeditions into the Everfree Forest.

“Wuts it at now?” She yelled up at Scootaloo.

The pegasus looked down through the hatch for a moment then leaned over and yelled down.

“It's climbing but it's only 11%!”

“Horseapples.” The earth pony muttered under her breath. “This gonna take all day.”

The fillies had found this thingie in an obviously newly created clearing in the forest. An area of over 200ft had been flattened by a large metallic egg-like container that had apparently plummeted out of the sky and broken open and created the area of leveled trees and uprooted undergrowth in the process.

The CMC were certain that this was source of the bright flash and thunderous explosion that had been heard during a recent thunderstorm. I mean it hand literally rattled the farmhouse when it happened, but there was so much lightning and hail that neither AB's big sister or brother had gone out to investigate. Then the next day they'd been too busy cleaning up from the wild weather that had come boiling out of the Everfree Forest.

This was probably why nopony, besides them, had come out exploring. So the CMC were the first to find....well, um, this thing. It had taken some effort but eventually the foals had figured out how to open the hatch on the roof. After scrambling inside into what Applebloom called the cab, it had then taken what seemed like forever to get the thing to turn on and stand up.

Then another hour or more was spent figuring out how to control the vehicle. Fortunately Applebloom's experience in occasionally running various pieces of farm machinery paid off, and eventually the fillies had started heading back to Sweet Apple Acres with their newfound prize; as it stomped its way through the forest.

Applebloom figured she'd found the most awesome thing for when the autumn applebucking season came around.

“I mean would ya these here legs this thingie has got! All ya have ta do is just give a tree a little bump with them and the apples will just fall out of it! We'll have the harvest done lickety spit!”

Unfortunately AB's dreams of an effortless harvest ran out of steam at the edge of the forest when the big walking thingie stopped moving. After much frustration, and saying some words that Granny Smith definitely would've disapproved of, the earth pony figured out that power cell/battery had run out of juice.

So leaving Sweetie and Scootaloo behind after telling them to not to push any buttons or pull any levers the filly had scrambled down out of the thingie and then galloped back to the farm. Wanting to surprise the family with her amazing discovery Applebloom found the old red pickup trick and scrambled into the cab.

She'd selected this truck for several reasons. First it was the oldest truck the family had so nopony would be using it. Second Big Mac had on several occasions had let Applebloom drive it around on the farm property, and third, and most important, Big Mac had shown the filly how to hot wire start the truck.

So in no time she had the thing running and was heading back up an old logging road that ran right by where the thingiehad stopped moving. Yeah she was underage, and she had no license, and registration had expired recently, but AB knew that she was carefully the odds of her encountering the sheriff were very unlikely.

So now AB sat in the cab and kept the motor running as they tried to recharge the thingie's batteries. She really hoped she wasn't going to be late for dinner because Granny was making apple cobbler for dessert, but even if she was a bit late she couldn't wait to see the looks on everypony's face!

This is one of the pieces I started during my Star Wars themed Picarto stream, and this is the story that popped into my head as I was working on the drawing.

NOTE. When I was collecting reference for this piece I realized that over the decades there's been several subtle variants of the All Terrain Scout Transport or AT-ST. So made a hybrid for this piece.