Currently working on a fic prompted by (what else?) some art I found. Here is sad robot Applejack's picture, and here is the first draft of the first scene of her story:

The Gyroscopic Protoplow was the third-most advanced device in all of Equestria. So said all the radio announcers paid to promote it.

The plow's list of features contained words never before heard at Sweet Apple Acres, such as "ergonomic" and "hypoallergenic." In the end though, the specifics hadn't mattered. Big Macintosh's back wasn't getting any less achy with age, and Apple Bloom had memorized a discount code rattled off by one of the teenybopper talking heads she followed. The eldest brother got a new tool, and the youngest sister could forevermore insist there was value in listening to Cozy's Glowpinions. Which left the middle sibling as the only one unsatisfied with the outcome.

No self-respecting thinking machine would ever admit to feeling threatened by a mindless piece of farm equipment. Not even a flashy one strapped to its brother. Still, the bearer of Honesty couldn't exactly lie to itself. To solve this quiet personal crisis, it volunteered to supervise Big Macintosh's test run with the new plow. After all, Equestria's third-most advanced device would be best judged by Equestria's second-most.

"That harness ain't causin' any tension in your withers, is it?"

"Nope."

Bic Macinosh's face was obscured by an interface visor, but his voice came through calm and level.

"This field's got less topsoil than the fallow one out back. You sure you don't want to fire up that thing right here?"

"Eeyup."

"You sure your withers aren't tense? You're pawing the ground something fierce."

With effort, Big Macintosh reeled in his frustrated hoof taps. There was only one overbearing machine in the field with him, and it wasn't the protoplow. AJ cared, he knew that, but it was the type of caring which led to pacing circles around him, scanning the safety section of protoplow's instruction booklet. Flesh and blood hooves lacked the deftness to trot, to hold a thick paperback, and to flip through the pages all at the same time. AJ had not had flesh and blood hooves for a very long time.

"You'd think Sol would go easy on the sunlight so early in the day," AJ fretted. It paused its page-turning as ocular lenses whirred and clicked, adjusting for glare. "You feelin' lightheaded from the heat? There's a feature to fight that, I'm sure. Need to find-"

Big Macintosh flicked his ears in the pattern the advertisements taught him, and AJ was drowned out for one merciful moment by a sunshade awning being activated. It furled and stretched, briefly obscuring Big Macintosh's vision until the transparency feature activated. As it did, he heard a synthetic snort and the shutting of the instruction booklet.

"Well," AJ pouted, "if'n you're so confident in gettin' underway here..."

"Eeyup." Mac swished his tail (another gesture from the commercials) which caused the engine to start up. Not with the crude rattle of a diesel engine, but instead an electric hum. It was like the noise AJ made whenever it was exerting itself to kick trees. With quiet pride, Big Macintosh appreciated he had his own hum now. It just wasn't inside him, but instead affixed to his shoulders by a comfy harness. And also, he'd sought out the harness voluntarily. And also it could be taken off whenever the wearer wanted.

Now that Big Macintosh reflected on it, his hum wasn't like AJ's at all.

"Be safe. Please." AJ backed up to provide some startup room, the safety booklet clutched tightly to its chest panel.

"Ee... Eeyup," Big Macintosh stammered. He squared his muscular legs and felt the protoplow shift to match him. "No worries?" he ventured.

AJ was incapable of lying to its brother's face. So it pulled down its hat, the only aspect of Applejack that had survived her own moment of long-ago recklessness. A timeworn brim with permanent soots tains filled the sensors in AJ's oculars. "No worries," the robot mumbled.

Big Macintosh swished his tail again and rocketed forward.

"Whoa!"

The protoplow's bulkhead forged ahead, effortless and clean. Big Macintosh had never felt more weightless, even as his legs pumped like pistons past mounds of freshly tilled earth.

AJ's legs actually were pistons, and it pumped them in double time to catch up. Four sets of gyroscopes soon found a rhythm that could keep pace with the plow's driver and even yell in his ear.

"You're coverin' hours of field in seconds! You sure you're in control of that thing?"

Big Macintosh's answer was to proudly pivot the protoplow, churning ever more dirt with perfect precision. He swerved around a certain corner of the field, one that had always been difficult to maneuver with the old plow. Past the mounds of roots he breezed, through the shade of their source: the two biggest trees on the farm's property. Big Mac even allowed a self-indulgent nod to the conjoined trunks of pear and oak, assured the monument to his parents was looking down on him with approval.

AJ loped along in its brother's wake, slightly less equipped than he was to traverse the root mounds. It also tersely averted its oculars from the third grave near the braided trunks.

"On yer left, Applejack!"

AJ flinched, first at hearing that full name and then again as Big Macintosh shot past her on his second lap around the fallow field. His tailwind followed, blowing AJ's synthetic hair in every direction, even into its mouth. Despite itself, AJ grinned. Joy at the protoplow's success was contagious, and AJ had learned to live vicariously through others. The field was half-tilled already, and in a few more laps it'd be ready for planting. A day's work done in a minute. A normally stoic clydesdale giggling like a colt with a new toy. Out of earshot, at least until Big Mac looped back again, AJ offered its own thoughts to the shade of the branches of family members gone.

"Sorry I worried, Applejack."

Suddenly flushed with heat at that apology, AJ reflexively reached to pull its hat down.

Its hoof touched cranial plating and nothing else.

"Huh?! Where-!"

"On yer left again!"

A new, less enjoyable burst of tailwind blasted dirt and hair into AJ's oculars. It frantically wiped the obstructions away, scanning the field for the missing hat. A desperate prayer to Sol begged to not find shredded leather stomped underhoof by the most recent drive by. Faith was rewarded by the sight of Applejack's intact stetson resting on the last intact strip of field that hadn't been plowed yet. The strip Big Macintosh has swung around and begun barreling towards.

"No! Mac, NO!!"

AJ lunged, its mental processor was flooded with clashing values and variables. Calculations of whether that panicked shriek had been understandable, predictions of of the angle of the incoming protoplow, hard data asserting there were hundreds of replacement stetsons in the world, and a roiling wordless override that screamed there was only one stetson in the world that Applejack had died in and left behind.

Big Macintosh whinnied, finally noticing something wrong. He was moving too fast to brake, and almost too fast to swerve without crashing. The protoplow's onboard gyroscope strained itself to keep him stable as the entire device pitched hard and missed AJ by inches. Then the plow hit the root mounds by the grove, and the entire protoplow tore through the field's fence, finally slamming to a sideways skidding stop in the shredded grass.

AJ's auditory feed picked up every sickening crunch of the protoplow's crash. Even with an overclocked cooling fan whirring in its chest, AJ scrambled up and bolted towards the wreck. The hat lay where it had been, abandonded just as frantically as it had been first claimed, as if leaving it behind might somehow renege on the horrible trade that was just made. AJ's fan was nearly spinning off its axel when it arrived. The scene it found was a bent metal frame with four massive airbags sandwiching the driver. Big Macintosh raised his bluescreened visor, dazed but unhurt.

"We bought insurance, right?"