Javelin
Chapter 4
The next day, the entire group got off work early and accompanied Vinyl to the Equestrian Museum an hour before she was due to arrive. After putting her equipment in storage, the DJ pony joined the “Gang of Six” in the Sports Wing, which was nearly empty.
While Spike went to look for the curator, the others spent their time looking at the walls, which were decorated with murals and enlarged photographic prints celebrating the greatest champions of track and field.
“Twilight?” Rainbow asked at one point.
“Yes?”
“Your book said there were two sports that no pony had ever succeeded at. If javelin was one, what was the other?”
“Pole vault.”
“Pole vault?! How would…but…that’s got to be the silliest idea for an equestrian sport that I’ve ever heard!”
“Um, I think your book might need to be revised,” noted Fluttershy, standing in the area where DJ Pon-3 was later to perform. “Take a look over here.”
The group gathered together. “Wow, that photograph is enormous!” Applejack exclaimed.
“And in such high definition!” added Rarity.
Twilight stared at it for a while before something struck her. “Wait, is that a pole…and…?”
Dash saw it too. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Fluttershy confirmed their suspicions. “No, it definitely looks like Prince Steadfast vaulting over a three-story-high bar while holding the end of a pole in his mouth.”
“I’m seeing it,” said Rainbow Dash, “but I’m not believing it!”
“I don’t believe it,” declared Applejack. “How did he keep his legs and neck so straight? Gravity doesn’t work that way.”
“Can I help you?” Miss Minster asked from over their withers, her teeth clenched. Well, she may have said, “Can I help you?”, but what she clearly meant from her tone was “Go away kids, you’re bothering me.” A disappointed Spike was standing behind her.
“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash replied, “how come there’s no room on these walls for m…the first pony to throw the javelin?”
The question had an immediate effect on the museum director. “The javelin?!” she practically snarled. “This hall celebrates the greatness of Sport, and the triumph of Prince Steadfast, and you want to know about the javelin??! The javelin is a paltry, worthless waste of cedarwood. No, ‘javelin’ is a waste of a word on a thing so lowly it doesn’t deserve a name of its own. If I had my way every last javelin in the land would be burned and every last use of that word would be expunged, so that we could live our lives without its baneful existence. The Ancients surely devised the sport for the sole purpose of torturing innocent young foals with false dreams of triumph. Now I’m sorry to inform you that the hall needs to be converted over for a private, extravagant donor’s only event scheduled for this evening.”
You could practically hear the poor pegasus wilting under the barrage.
“And you better be getting your equipment!” she said to Vinyl.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The group slowly made their way up the stairs into the main gallery of the museum.
“Don’t you pay any attention to what that mare said,” Twilight assured Rainbow.
“She’s awfully mean for somepony appointed by Princess Celestia,” Pinkie pouted.
“What makes you think that the Princess appointed her?” Vinyl asked in confusion.
“Well, this is the Equestria Museum,” Pinkie replied, “so she must have founded it, right?”
Vinyl shook her head. “The Princess does not own the word ‘Equestria’. Anypony could use it as a brand name for anything they want, no matter how shoddy.”
“Well, it looks like that’s what happened here,” grumbled Rainbow.
“And the reason she was so mean was because you touched a nerve,” Vinyl explained with a wicked grin. “My uncle told me that the museum is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Sports Wing was created for the sole purpose of gaining funding from Prince Steadfast. Miss Minster barely succeeded in getting it built despite his refusal to contribute a single bit, but only on condition that the investors get to be seen in the presence of the Prince, tonight. Oh, and there’s no javelin exhibit because the Prince got a splinter playing with one as a colt.”
“I still don’t like her,” Dash said, sullenly. “And I’m not any closer to figuring out how to use my javelin.”
“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “And we were told the time would come when you’d have to use it to save all of Equestria…”
Save Equestria…with a javelin?? Vinyl was brought to mind of an ancient Chinnish curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
“What am I going to do?” Dash wailed.
“It seems to me if you knew how an Ancient threw a javelin, you could find a way for a pony to do it,” suggested Vinyl. “Of course, nopony knows what an Ancient looked like, but I always thought of them as giant hairless squirrels.”
The pegasus let out a loud laugh. “Yeah, when I was a filly, I thought they were featherless ostriches! I guess you were closer to the mark than I was…um, as a reasonable guess…considering that nopony has ever seen one, that is…”
Twilight face-hoofed.
It was at this point that Vinyl firmly decided that her “ignore Pinkie Pie insanity” rule would have to be extended to the entire group. After waiting a few moments for the uncomfortable silence to dissipate, she continued. “Well, I hope I’m right about the Ancients, because I’m not sure how an ostrich could do any better with a javelin than you have done so far. Now a squirrel on the other hand has those flat plates on the end of their arms, with wormy things on the edges. What are those called again?” Yes, I am pitching them a softball, Vinyl thought. Maybe this will bring them to their senses.
“Hmm…” said Pinkie Pie. “I don’t know if I have ever seen one of those…”
“Um, hello?” Spike asked sarcastically, literally waving the answer in front of their faces.
Now it was Vinyl’s turn to face-hoof.
“I think they’re called hands.”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Fluttershy! Anyway, a ‘hand’ could hold onto a javelin really tight, and then let go at the right moment. Not sure if it fits within the regulations…”
“Actually,” said Twilight, “I think that could actually work: put a shallow cup on the hoof with three or four elastic ‘fingers’ stretched around the pole, held shut with a catch. Then you rig a wire from the catch to the withers, so that when the leg is thrown forward, it releases the catch and the javelin can be thrown. Let’s go to the bookstore–I think I saw an official guide to sport devices. Thanks once again, Vinyl!”
“You’re welcome. I have to get ready for the party, and I haven’t been home in days, so I guess this is goodbye. It was nice meeting you all.” And weird. Very, very weird.
And so the Grand Opening gala started again, only minus a few very-regretful ponies who had spent their fortune to get there on Tuesday and couldn’t afford to sit around and wait for Thursday. And the crowd was going counter-clockwise this time. Unfortunately, the nameless pony Vinyl was hoping to meet again was absent.
The other major difference was the presence of Prince Steadfast and his retinue. They camped in front of the evidence of his triumph, which meant that DJ Pon-3 had to keep the volume turned down to avoid annoying the guest of honor. She spent her time listening to him insulting the fawning guests until they ran out of the room sobbing, and counting how many of them she recognized as clients, both new and old. For the sake of her career, she had no choice but to make this night a success.
“Athletic prowess has always come easily to me,” the prince informed the terrified ponies who claimed to be his admirers. “There has not been one sport I haven’t attempted that I have not immediately mastered, so when I heard about the sad state of equestrian pole vaulting, I knew I had to do something. Currently I am campaigning to have it added to the four festivals and the Iron Pony standard, so that way the sport can be shared with the world.”
“But as Equestria’s only pole vaulter, wouldn’t that mean you would win every event by default?”
“Oh, Ace, this isn’t about me…”
Ace was then quickly escorted out of the museum, so the prince could resume talking about himself. “Now where was I…and could you please turn that blasted music down!”
“Sorry about that,” Vinyl said, coldly, as she pretended to adjust the volume.
“I don’t even know why this function has a disk jockey in the first place! For someone of my stature and achievements, only a classically-trained string ensemble will suffice, playing the music written by my ancestors!”
At that moment, Vinyl dearly wanted to tell the group the story of the Leap-Zig Concerto, which had been composed by one of her ancestors upon meeting the first gazelle to ever visit Canterlot; it had been stolen by one of the Prince’s ancestors and claimed as his own composition. Instead she smiled darkly and said, “My music exists to serve your tastes, gentle Prince. How about if I play this recording of the ‘Cedar Splinter Quartet’?”
Prince Steadfast spat out his drink in the face of an “admirer”. “Th…that’s not a real string quartet!”
“Isn’t it?” She asked, holding up the doctored disk that Tavi had given her once as a joke.
The prince pushed the record away in disgust. “Is disk jockeying even a real job? Surely somepony by now has invented a children’s toy capable of dropping records upon a phonograph. And surely most of that equipment is merely empty boxes designed to make you look like you have a purpose.”
The prince stepped back to get a good look at this equipment. He took the opportunity to get his first good look at the wall photo, and then he gasped in shock. “What have you done to my triumph?!”
Vinyl tried to defend herself against whatever imaginary crime she was now accused of. “I haven’t…”
“There, where I’m pointing! The cloth-covered blocks you have glued to my triumph! Look at it! Look at it!! What are you, BLIND, you paltry, worthless waste of…”
That’s it!
Vinyl Scratch calmly raised one hoof and used it to show Prince Steadfast what lay under her glasses. Then, before the stunned stallion could say anything, she made her way past dozens of shocked aristocrats at a deliberate canter for the exit. As she passed Director Minster she said, “You heard him. I’m being paid to entertain the Prince, and he wasn’t entertained by me, so I will be taking my leave.”
By the time she reached the exit, Vinyl Scratch’s cutie mark might as well have fallen off of her flank, she told herself, for there was nobody left in all Equestria who would ever hire her again.