COLTBAND
By John Derk
Act One
Country Cabaret
Drums, bass and lead guitar, fiddle and banjo greeted Rainbow Dash through a haze of prairie dust and cigar smoke in the rustic interior of Appaloosa’a City Hall. Three of the five instruments sported by the band were Rainbow’s favourite; the fiddle and the banjo, however, ruined it for her. And words like “honky-tonk,” and “giddy-up” were as foreign as to her as the clumsy partner dancing about the floor.
The only thing familiar, besides the two friends who brought her along only to disappear into the crowd not five minutes after entering this make-shift club, was the pungent smell of hard apple cider. It wafted toward her unadjusted nostrils from plastic cups, the breath of the rowdy ponies and buffalo, and what was spilled into the straw covered ground.
At a loss for anywhere else to go in the crowded hall, the cyan coloured pegasus pony with the rainbow striped mane and tail, made a dash for the bar. Her eagerness came from a place of “missing out” specifically with apple cider, as it was only a seasonal commodity in her hometown of Ponyville. In her one track mind she bumped a feathered appendage like the ones on her own flank.
“Hey! Watch it!” shouted a blue pegasus stallion, as a plate of nachos slipped off his right wing which he had extended to carry it. “My nachos!”
Rainbow Dash caught it with sonic speed reflexes, and looked up startled; not just to see the only other pegasus in the club, but one of her idols: Soarin the Wonderbolt.
Her heart pounded.
“Whoa! Nice catch! Thanks again—” he said loudly over the music, and his eyes settled on her mane, tail and finally her eyes, “Hey! It’s you! I remember you from the Grand Galloping Gala. You caught my apple pie!”
“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash shouted in reply, then fumbled for something else to say. “deja vu, heh?” she forgot to shout.
Soarin just looked her over.
“You’re missing something!”
“I don’t like hats!”
“Me neither! I meant, where’s your drink?”
“I’m getting one! I just got here!”
“Hold on!”
Soarin turned to the bar.
Rainbow Dash caught some looks which she interpreted to mean, “what’s she doing here? Where’s her drink? And why doesn’t she have a hat?” So she bobbed her head like she would to music she liked, that being classic rock or metal, but she soon discovered was not the right moved as ponies smiled or laughed out loud as they looked away. Luckily, before any awkwardness could progress out of this, Soarin came back yelling in her direction.
“Here!”
Soarin gave her a big red cup with a big head of foam.
Rainbow Dash took it and took on the smell of apple cider fresh from the tap.
Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! she barely heard herself think, Soarin—one of the Wonderbolts—just bought me a drink!
“Thank you!” she screamed like the fan-filly she was.
Soarin simply shook his head with a grin and tossed his head in the direction of the far end of the long tables where there was still some room away from the crowd. Rainbow Dash’s heart pounded louder in her own ears than the overwhelming country music.
“It’s Rainbow Dash right?!” he said, sitting across from her and sipping his own apple cider.
“Yeah!”
There was a pause as he waited to see if she’d say anything else.
“Third time’s the charm,” Soarin continued, “You’ve saved my pie, my nachos, and I think I remember you saved me from hitting the ground too!”
“I guess I’m kinda fast,” Rainbow Dash said with a short giggle, “I mean yeah. I’ve saved my friends a few times here and there too, and dodged a rockslide,” with a big swig of cider all her false-modesty evaporated, “and I’ve broke the sound barrier three times now, AND dived into a barn so fast it generated a rainbow mushroom-cloud explosion... so I AM pretty fast.”
Rainbow Dash would have sold her soul just to find out what Soarin would have said to that, but fate brought Pinkie Pie out of nowhere bouncing right in between them on the table. The bubblegum pink pony with the fluffy magenta mane wore a neon green cowpony hat, several sizes too big.
“Ride ‘em cowpony!” she hollered, “hey! Oh wow! A wonderbolt! At a cabaret in Appaloosa? No way!”
For Pete’ sake, Pinkie Pie! Rainbow Dash bellowed inside her interior monologue, Plot-block much?
“You must have friends in Appaloosa like we do!” Pinkie Pie plopped down on a chair next to Soarin. “Oh, duh! Rainbow Dash is your friend! Of course! How silly of me!”
While Pinkie Pie giggled loudly with an occasional snort, Rainbow Dash sat grinding her teeth. Friend!
“No! Haha!” Soarin laughed, to Rainbow Dash’s concern (“No” what?), “If I knew Rainbow Dash would be here, I would have pumped some more iron at the gym. You know, cuz I’m sitting across from the fastest flier in Equestria.”
Rainbow Dash coughed on her cider really hard.
“Ya ar’right Dash?”
She nodded as she continued coughing, and somehow Pinkie Pie was on her side of the table patting her back.
“Anyway, I’m here cuz Braeburn invited me. We go back a long ways.”
“Great bubbling caramel!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, while onstage the song finished and the hall was momentarily quiet, “you’re old time friends with Braeburn?”
He cocked his head back like he was offended.
“We’re good friends! Not old friends!”
Pinkie Pie stood blankly, afraid he was mad. Many ponies nearby had heard in the quiet between songs and were looking at them.
“Haha! Had you going!” he laughed, just before the music kicked back in, “Where is that guy anyway?”
Pinkie Pie bounced up and seemed to hover in the air for a second as she spoke, “with Applejack! Be right back!”
Soarin blinked right after her outburst, and Pinkie was standing right beneath the spot she had been hovering.
“Aren’t you going to go get them?” Soarin asked.
“I just did,” she squeaked and grabbed a red cup that no one remembered who it’d belong to with her teeth and gulped the whole drink down, “I prefer Green Apple Acres Cider, but this stuff’s good!”
Rainbow Dash nudged Soarin, and in a loud whisper into his ear said, “You missed her zipping away and back again when you blinked.”
Soarin laughed until the nodding of Rainbow Dash’s head affirmed her seriousness.
“She’d have to be faster than you Dash,” he club-whispered back, “at top speed!” And he finished off his beer in a manner not unlike Pinkie Pie had just done, taking in the pink pony now bouncing up and down, and no longer facing them.
“Yeah, that’s Pinkie Pie,” Rainbow Dash said in normal shouting-speaking voice, and gave a silly laugh. The speed thing couldn’t bother her when Soarin was referring to her as “Dash.”
Ohmygosh! This means we’re pals! Rainbow Dash’s internal monologue squeaked like a raspy Pinkie Pie, and if I play my cards right, maybe more!
While finishing her thought Rainbow Dash missed another blur of a golden-yellow with a cattle rustler’s hat somehow attached in that speed. She shook her head after realising that blur had tackled Soarin to the ground. In her own flurry of rainbow colors, she leapt onto the table expecting a fight.
“Braeburn you plot-hole!” Soarin roared, knocking the sandy-yellow stallion’s hat off and giving him a noogie with his right fore-hoof and locking him by the neck with the other.
Rainbow Dash made eye contact with Applejack across this scene, which they had played out between themselves many a time.
“Dude! Easy on the hair!”
“Agh, put your hat on!”
Pinkie Pie stomped her hooves merrily, “you two are SOOO much like Dashie and AJ!”
They got up. Soarin handed Braeburn his hat, and while the typical greetings were exchanged (the “you haven’t changed” bits and what-not) Rainbow Dash was distracted by the thumping of many hooves on the table beneath her.
“DANCE!” many shouted.
She looked around the smoke filled cabaret as the crowd transformed from its formerly chaotic state, to an audience that would chant until they got their way.
Was it just because she had chosen to stand at this elevated level? Did her bright colors contribute?
Then she realised, as she looked behind, that another hoofed animal had stepped to her level and likely drew a lot more focus with his immense stature; which was causing the table to bow.
“Dance,” came the buffalo’s deep resonant voice.
It did not sound like a request.
Rainbow Dash only trembled in place, hearing what she later confirmed was the band’s fiddle player adding a coaxing trill to the rhythmic assault.
“It could be worse!” the contrastingly high pitched squeak of Pinkie Pie’s voice cut through the chants like a laser beam into Rainbow Dash’s fallen ears, “they could be chanting, ‘Fight! Fight!’ OR... it could be better! They could be chanting, ‘Chug! Chug! Chu—’”
A hoof, likely belonging to Applejack muffled Pinkie Pie after that. Rainbow Dash didn’t look their way, she could only dart from the buffalo’s eyes to the growing number of chanters forming around her.
Just how would a pony and buffalo partner dance? she could just hear herself think, I don’t even know how it works between ponies.
“I said, DANCE!” the Buffalo boomed with an extended fore-hoof.
Rainbow Dash reluctantly reached back to what she feared would probably toss her around until one of her legs broke, when Soarin fluttered onto the table beside her; bowing the table further.
“No, dance off!” Soarin countered.
The buffalo bared his teeth, in was on its way to a snarl before it widened to a grin. He then crouched for take-off, which alarmed nearly all the onlookers, even just in concern for the dangerously deep curve bowing the table nearly to its threshold, before the great beast took off rolling through the air in a great barrel roll.
THUD!
He landed beside them as the table rattled the two Pegasus ponies up and down, and with just a quick, loud snort, four more buffalos joined him from the crowd. Then they waited, with hooves scraping the dirt floor through the straw.
“Hey Fiddlesticks!” Braeburn shouted at the fiddler in the band, “play Everypony, Buckstreet Boys!”
“ALL OF MY YES!!!” Pinkie Pie shrieked after gasp that nearly cleared the smoke out of the room.
Before Rainbow Dash cloud blink, the hyper Pink pony was beside her, without her neon green cowgirl hat, which fell to the ground now that it only had her vapour trail to rest on. Pinkie quivered in joy.
The fiddle playing mare took the microphone.
“We’ll give ‘er a college try,” she said, “but you know we ain’t that type o’ band.”
“Yeah, we know,” Braeburn said, giving Soarin a hoof-bump, “but we are.”
“NO GALLOPING WAY!!!” Pinkie’s jaw dropped. She seemed to be the only one to have whatever this revelation was. “You look so different now—”
“AJ, take outer left, Dash, outer right,” Braeburn ordered, “Soarin, inner left with my cousin, and I’m with Rainbow Dash on the right.”
Braeburn stalled playfully, giving Soarin a wink.
“Who—um, who’s gonna be your fifth?” Pinkie Pie asked with the most obviously hopeful tone Rainbow Dash had ever heard. Her eyes were even glistening in anticipation.
Soarin grinned, “Why don’t you be in center Miss Pie?”
Pinkie Pie let out the breath she’d been holding.
“It’s Pinkie,” she said in coolness, then cracked with a “squee,” then shrieked with a loud, “OH MY GOSH! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE—AND I’M—AHHH!!!” as she bounced into formation.
Rainbow Dash gave a confused look to Applejack, to which her friend said, “Ah’ll tell ya later, just follow her’s an’ the boy’s lead.”
“CAN WE GET ON WITH THIS ALREADY?!” the main buffalo of the opposing group of five blasted at them.
Braeburn and Soarin nodded to the band, and the music started up.
The buffalo looked at each other, perplexed at the Colt-band style music so out-of-character for a country cabaret.
“What the hay is this?” one of them asked.
The pony team had already began their attack, with Pinkie Pie, Soarin and Braeburn moving in sync with perfect fluidity as if they’d rehearsed, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack doing pretty well to keep up.
Pinkie Pie finally spoke when they’d finished, “It’s just bin brought!”
***
“Okay, now that we showed those buffalo up,” Rainbow Dash said over her new cider, on the house, giving Pinkie Pie a suspicious squint from across their smaller table that the cabaret runners had cleared for them up on the mezzanine, “you gotta tell me what the hay went on down there. Did you three plan that dance off?”
“No way! Those buffalo are big meanies, and I wouldn’t even plan a birthday party with them. Their chief is a nice guy though.” She finished one of her red cups of apple cider (on the house) and grabbed another of her three, having been the only pony to order multiple at once.
“I know. We both met Chief at the same—anyway!” Rainbow Dash took another swig, “what was that song you three knew so well you could dance the whole thing without missing a beat?”
“You don’t know?!” Pinkie Pie spat through her second apple cider (on the house).
“Ever heard of the Buckstreet Boys?” Braeburn asked coolly.
“No, I usually listen to rock and heavy metal,” said Rainbow Dash.
“Good stuff!” said Soarin.
“Blegh!” said Applejack.
Braeburn swished and sipped his pint of apple cider.
“You’re lookin’ at two o’ them,” he said.
Pinkie Pie quickly responded to this by pecking Braeburn on the cheek, then giggling, and finishing her second cider. Applejack raised an eyebrow at this, though nopony noticed.
“You were super famous?!” Dash exclaimed, “I mean before being a deputy or a... a Wonderbolt!”
“We didn’t become a big deal or much of a sensation,” Soarin said, “but the five of us got quite a taste of the celebrity fine life in those days.”
“But you’re a major celebrity now!” Rainbow Dash argued.
“An athletic one yes,” (swig) “but the musician life was different.”
“How?”
“The concerts. The crazy fangirls.”
“You do airshows, and, uh,” Rainbow Dash whipped her hair back with a quick flick of her head, “the fangirls are probably just as crazy.” She hiccoughed.
Pinkie Pie coughed on her third apple cider (on the house).
“Rainbow Dash,” Applejack said, “yud be comparing yourself to Pinkie Pie.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve never been to a colt-band concert?” Braeburn asked.
“No.”
Pinkie Pie gasped. Unfortunately she still hadn’t put the cider down and inhaled much in the sudden reaction. She coughed wildly for some time. Finally, through coughs, she managed to say, “you should perform one more time!”
Braeburn let out a jolly laugh, as Soarin chuckled.
“They’d run me out of town!” Braeburn belted.
“I’d have to learn to sing again!” Soarin said.
Pinkie Pie only rose into a higher octave in response, “I give singing lessons!”
“Ya do?” Rainbow Dash and Applejack spoke together.
The pink pony gave a happy squint. “Do now.” She gulped her last cider, and covered a giant burp with her hoof, before turning to Braeburn, “and you just did a dance off to your own pop music and with your old coltband dance moves, against buffalo of all things.” (giggle) “The town’s already gonna be talking about that!” (squee) “You might as well show us all where it came from.”
Braeburn adjusted his hat. Pinkie felt her head for her own hat and seemed perplexed not to find it.
“There’s another thing,” he said, “I haven’t seen the others in a long time.”
“Who?”
The question came from Rainbow Dash, though Applejack looked equally curious.
“Hoity Toity...”
Rainbow Dash and Applejack gasped.
“Prince Blueblood...”
They gasped again. Pinkie smiled along, knowing each answer already, until...
“And Shining Armour.”
As Rainbow Dash and Applejack gasped a third time, and Pinkie Pie even joined in.
"We know all three of those guys!" Pinkie piped, "Or, we all know Shining Armour, and Rarity knows the other guys.
Soarin flicked his empty cup onto the table.
“Our ex-manager is completely unreachable.”
“Who’s that?” Pinkie Pie asked eagerly.
“Fancy Pants,” Braeburn and Soarin said as one.
Pinkie Pie fell over backwards at this, and Braeburn and Soarin both caught her from each side, as Applejack and Rainbow Dash spoke their reactions:
“Well Ah’ll be!”
“No flipping way!”
Pinkie was brought back to sitting, and looking like she about to burst, she belted in her craziest fangirl squeal, “RARITY KNOWS HIM TOO!!!”
“We need to celebrate!”
Pinkie Pie clapped her hooves at the nearest waitress pony; a mare of light blue coat and even lighter blue mane, wearing bright pink cowgirl hat.
“Five Zap-Apple Ciders!” Pinkie called, “please Shoeshine!”
Shoeshine smiled with a nod.
Focused turned to Applejack.
“Twouldn’t be too hard to’t least connect up ‘gain with the uthers. Ah mean, Shining Armour is Twilight’s brother—”
“Twilight, the one whose read a lot of books?” Braeburn asked.
“The unicorn from Canterlot who lead us ta save the world more tahms th’n Ah can count? Yeah, that’s her.”
“Right on.”
“And Rarity could get us all the others,” said Rainbow Dash.
“She does business with Hoidee-Toidee,” added Applejack.
“She’s great friends with Fancy Pants,” continued Rainbow Dash.
“And—oh,” Applejack bit her bottom lip.
“Oh yeah...” Rainbow Dash said through teeth clenched in awkwardness.
Soarin and Braeburn looked around the quiet girls, then to each other with confused looks.
“Rarity doesn’t want to talk to Blueblood again,” Pinkie Pie spoke with some tension as well, and then suddenly broke it with, “HAH! You should have seen it! There I was, dancing on the stage at this booooooooooooooring party in Canterlot, not noticing that Applejack is wheeling this HUUUGE cake into the main hall, and Rarity—she’s there with Prince Blueblood, her LOUSY date, not dancing but on the fringe of the dance floor. So I call, ‘STAGE DIVE!!!’ with my eyes shut, and jump way out above the crowd. Well those snobs never been to concert in their life—prolly never been young either—prolly think I’m attacking them—they gallop out of the way! No one catches me. Instead, I land on the front of AJ’s cart and BOING! Up goes the cake, flying directly at Prince Blueblood. He sees this. Oh yeah! He saw it with plenty of time to react. YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID?! He uses Rarity as a shield against the cake! He actually had to pull her into the way so that it would land all over her instead of him!”
No pony had even touched the last remains of their ciders during Pinkie Pie’s story.
“Then animals from the garden broke in, fleeing from a deranged Fluttershy, so that gets us running—actually it was Celestia who was like, “Run!” but you could tell she thought the whole situation was really funny. As we run, Rarity drops one of her glass slippers on the staircase. I saw it and was like, ‘Oooh! Now your prince is sure to find you!’ And she growls like I’ve never seen her growl before and stomps on the slipper. Totally shattering it!”
Pinkie Pie breathed.
“I don’t think she wants to see him again.”
Applejack let out a whistle.
“My, my. Ten apple ciders and she didn’t even slur a word.”
Pinkie Pie gave Applejack a clueless expression befitting her character.
“Why should apple cider make me slur my words?”
The other ponies all laughed.
“Your five Zap-Apple Ciders?”
Pinkie Pie leaned to Braeburn’s side to let the light blue earth pony waitress in the pink cowgirl hat rest the edge of the tray on the table while she removed one glass at a time and place them in the centre, being careful to set the drinks down with as little impact as possible. Even so, the electric-blue liquid in the glasses let out some static sparks as the hit the table.
“What the hay?” came Rainbow Dash’s awestruck voice.
“Is that actually an electric drink?” asked Soarin.
“This is gonna smite your little pony brains,” said Applejack.
Braeburn nodded in what looked kind of like a grave expression, if not for glint of mischief in his eyes.
He didn’t notice Pinkie Pie had stolen his hat while she had leaned on him.
“To the Buckstreet Colts!” cheered Pinkie Pie, raising her glass, “may they sing again!”
“To us!” cheered Braeburn, nudging Pinkie Pie on the head where his hat rested with his free hoof.
“To these awesome girls!” cheered Soarin.
“To servin’ buffalo on the dance floor with our fruity moves!” cheered Applejack.
“To, uh...” Rainbow Dash searched for something to add, before joining her glass with the others. They all looked, waiting. Shoeshine even stopped serving others to hear their toast.
“To this crazy night!”
“Aye!”
The five friends clanked their glasses together with great arcs of electricity crackling between them all. And all as one, they gulped their spark-flashing drinks in one shot.
It hit Rainbow Dash the instant the liquid sloshed against the back of her throat. Like an electric brain freeze that shook her whole head and caused her teeth to clench really hard involuntarily (thanks be to Celestia her tongue wasn’t in the way). The muscle spasm ran down her spine and she felt like her hair was made of ice.
Though her friends would say she did plenty else that night, all Rainbow Dash remembered was a thundering reverberation through her body a few seconds from the initial shock, and then darkness.