Things are gonna get weirder, I guess. If you're not happy with this, there's nothing I can do.
The following day seemed to crawl at a snails' pace for Braeburn, not that there were actually any snails in Appleoosa. It was too hot and too dry, they would just shrivel up and die in the heat. Braeburn, on the other hand, was denied such a simple fate. Most of the day consisted of him standing in town square, awaiting the next batch of visitors. The problem was, there weren't much of them arriving today, only a few lone individuals and the occasional family of four or five, coming off the railway line in dribs and drabs. He had tried his best to put the spare time to use, adding detail and information to his tour that was often omitted due to time constraints, but eventually, even those few visitors tired of him. There weren't enough visitors to provide Braeburn with a satisfyingly hard day's work, and not few enough to allow him to return to the apple orchard.
Braeburn hated being idle. Maybe it was the Apple family blood that flowed through his veins, but he was possessed of the same preference for action as Applejack and Big Mac. It was the idle time that started to send his mind into action, though. Throughout the day, he stood baking in the sun, oblivious to the fact that he was probably going to be carcinogenic at the end of the day, instead choosing to think about all those things he usually didn't have time for.
Like the peculiar events of yesterday night. For starters, he still couldn't figure out why the name Vinyl Scratch sounded so awfully familiar. He tried to remember the last time he had heard it. Where had he heard it? And who had brought it up? A slightly high-pitched female voice and an undertone of excitement was what he could recall so far. What else? He had only heard it on the periphery of his auditory ability due to the background noise before it was repeated again and became a subject of conversation. Where was this?
The smell of savoury foods also came to mind. The smell of the apple pie was peculiarly unique. That was it. Apple pie. It was at the Apple family reunion in Ponyville. It had been Applebloom, in a slightly argumentative debate about the musicians of Equestria. Eventually, the conversation had spread throughout the whole group of Apple family members, and had mutated to take in the case of whether dubstep was actual music or just a pile of...organic fertilizer. He remembered laughing at how Granny Smith had been very...vocal, on the issue.
But she couldn't be, could she? It was a coincidence at best, perhaps a shameless lie at worst (Braeburn didn't like to assume the worst of ponies, unless presented with overwhelming evidence). What would a famous musician like her, a famous, MODERN musician like her be doing in a rustic, out-of-the-way town like Appleoosa? To take a break from the city? Then why did she buy a house? He knew modern celebrities liked to pull stunts ('like nudity'...Braeburn shuddered at the thought) but from what he could tell about her, she seemed rather somber, compared to the whole...current generation, too somber, in fact, to buy a whole property on impulse. It would certainly explain about how she was able to pay for it in cash, though.
For all the progress Braeburn had made on the matter, he still couldn't explain why Vinyl Scratch would want to take up residence, permanent or otherwise, in Appleoosa. Only towards the end of the day, as he leaned over a banister and watched the sun, a dying orange sphere sinking into the horizon, did he notice that he had failed to see Vinyl anywhere today. The town was small enough that he could greet at least two thirds of the residents, and spy the rest from a distance too far to facilitate speech. 'So maybe she really DID come here for a little peace and quiet,' he thought as he headed to the toilet for a shower.
By the time he had fastened his boots and put on his faded brown leather jacket and ten-gallon, the automatic lights in the enclosed, tiled public bath area had already turned on with a flicker of warm yellow light. By the time he had stepped out, he could see that the brilliant orange and red tones of the sunset had already faded to a slightly brilliant purple lingering above the horizon, while the rest of the sky was in turn changing to midnight blue.
He made a split-second decision and veered off to the right, heading for Lonely Baron, the town's lone cantina. Tonight, it was half full of visitors from outside the town. The town's own resident population, mainly a few bison and laborers from the orchard, occupying a few half-vacant circular booths in the back. There was a peculiar buzz in air tonight, something that was exciting the bar's occupants, especially the visitors. Wading through a mixed bag of somber, quiet and somewhat awkward to thoroughly buzzed ponies and rowdy ponies to the counter of the bar, where there was a half-filled row of stools, arrranged, in a typical fashion, parallel to the elongated countertop. Braeburn headed for the far left stool, next to the bar's thin plywood walls. Calling the attention of the local bartender, a bespectacled, unassuming gentlecolt who was more tactful with the use of his tongue than it would seem otherwise.
Braeburn started off the conversation. ‘Hi, Jug.’
‘Evenin’ Braeburn,’ came a familiar reply. ‘Any special reason why you’re here today?’
‘Not really, but now that I am,’ Braeburn leaned himself further onto the counter in front of him, setting his right forehoof on the table and his left one at his side. ‘What’s all the fuss about here anyway?’
Jug raised an eyebrow, then shook his head rather unconvincingly. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Are you sure you can take any more drink?’
‘Oh, come on, Jug,’ Braeburn rolled his eyes, relaxed his posture and asked again. ‘Speech might be one o’ your strong suits, but play-acting just don’t come so naturally for you. So tell me again what’s the buzz around here?’
Jug finally broke into a small grin, and offered Braeburn a glass of ale, which the latter accepted, leaving two bits in place of the brown wooden mug which he now held firmly between his two hooves, clasped close to his body. ‘Well,’ the bartender began, ‘the tourists have been going crazy all day, for starters, some o’ them just pop their heads in, do something like this,’ at this point, Jug imitated a slack-jawed stare of amazement, and the two of them chuckled before continuing. ‘Some o’ them, well they stop for drinks, but they’re not here for that, now, are they?’
‘No?’ Braeburn asked in skepticism. There wasn’t much else they could be here for. Tourists generally didn’t mix with the natives or the workers from the orchard, considering them to be too brutish and crude, and perhaps too prone to violence. And besides them, there wasn’t anyone else to talk to in the little cantina.
‘Not at all. All the tourist, even those that weren’t here for her—‘
‘Who?’
‘Just a moment, I’m getting to that. Anyway, what I was about to say was, they’re all here more or less just to get a look at her.’ Jug indicated with a discreet sideways motion of the head, a white-coated mare, whose tail was streaked with electric and cobalt blue, and whose eyes were covered by a set of unmistakable and somewhat garish opaque purple, thick-rimmed shades. She was currently resting her head on the table, swirling a glass of some miscellaneous dark-yellow alcohol in a sort of preoccupied, half-waking stupor. She was seated in the corner booth at the right of the bar, the opposite side from the orchard workers. Indeed, even as Braeburn observed the scene, everypony else in the bar seemed to be casting furtive, amused, even mesmerized glances at her.
‘Been tryin’ to get stoned since mornin’. If she asks me for another drink I got my mind set to get the sheriff, just in case her liver gives way.’ Jug turned to regard Braeburn with a sort of amused stare, as the latter simply eyed Vinyl with some measure of surprise. ‘You know her, sport?’
‘Yeah, I do. I’ll get back to you later, Jug.’ This somewhat preoccupied and uninformative answer was all that Braeburn offered as he vacated his seat, drink in hand, in favour of Vinyl’s booth, of which she was the lone occupant. Either nopony else dared or wanted to approach her, but why they wouldn’t want a chance to meet a star, he had no idea. He was thinking to find some answers through a chat with Miss Scratch.
Upon closer examination, it appeared that she was indeed heavily intoxicated, almost to the point of inebriation. She continued to swirl a bottle around in the air above her head, slowly gyrating the bottom of the transparent green container, which was probably beer, from the looks of it.
‘Miss Scratch?’ Braeburn asked somewhat furtively. She stopped swirling the bottle for a few seconds, and then continued without offering any further acknowledgement. Braeburn decided to take his chances and continued to approach the booth, though he was now a little more cautious. After all, he hardly knew her when she was sober, who knew how she would act when drunk. When he was about a metre away, he repeated his question, this time sounding even less sure than before. ‘Miss Scratch?’ He sat down on the opposite end of the row of seats, deciding to push his luck yet again.
Vinyl, her expression unreadable behind the opaque vermilion-tinted layer of glare protection, turned her head in a slow, lolling manner to regard him. She turned back to regard her bottle again after some time. ‘I don’t really know who you are, but I have a hunch about why you’re here. No autographs. I’m nopony special, so screw off and leave me alone.’
‘Miss Scratch, it’s me, Braeburn.’
She turned her head again, slowly, in a half-awake manner. ‘Oh. It’s you.’ She took another swig from the bottle, then added, ‘go away,’ thrusting forehoof pointedly and jabbing Braeburn in between the ribs. Then she turned away, letting her head fall back to the table with a thud and roll comically sideways.
Braeburn raised both eyebrows, but looked rather unsurprised. He sat down and leaned his weight on the table, cradling his drink and still eyeing Vinyl cautiously with a slight frown, though choosing to adopt a relaxed posture. He frowned and was about to make another attempt at finding out what was wrong, when Vinyl cut him off. Not bothering to face him this time, she simply said, her curt and would-be lethally sharp tone blunted by a slurred speech and heavy tongue. ‘Look, kid,’ she took another swig. Kid? Braeburn wondered. She really was inebriated, in that case. He really should have been listening to her instead, so he brought his attention back to her voice. ‘…don’t know if all of you country folk are this downright blunt, but haven’t I made it obvious enough that I’m just not in the mood tonight?’
Vinyl waved Jug over, and the barman approached the table in his usual business-like manner. At that moment, a very bombastic and slightly obnoxious-souding pony boomed to the barman from across the cantina, momentarily muting out the soft background music, which Braeburn recognized as a cover of ‘Piano Colt’ being played on the small upright grand sitting in the corner.
‘Waiter, her drinks are on me!’ Braeburn turned just around to see a rather large and well-toned stallion, a large, looking straight at them with a large, stupid grin on his face. His circle of friends were cheering and clapping him on the back, making quite a ruckus. Braeburn hurriedly turned back to face the alabaster mare, looking as if he had just discovered he was standing beside a few sticks of high explosives, set to blow at any moment. His panic was not wasted on an undeserving situation.
Even with her glasses on, it was now evident how very, very ticked off she was. She was facing directly at the stallion that had incurred her wrath. Currently, she had one clenched hoof supporting her on the table, and the other on the back of her seat doing the same. She was presenting her front to her target, an aggressive, challenging stance, gritted teeth and a low guttural growl. Then without warning, she swiped her now-nearly-empty bottle off the table top and smashed its round bottom against the top of the table, showering a startled Braeburn and herself in a spray of alcohol and dark green-tinted glass fragments that flew every which way through the air. He had barely raised a hoof in time to shield himself from the crystalline shower, while Vinyl didn’t even flinch, despite there now being several shallow cuts on certain areas of her face, arms and torso. Even Jug, who thought that he might have seen it all already with a job like that, took a back on reflex. ‘Oh dangit, not another one,’ he commented with a tired yet strangely expectant undertone.
Vinyl’s attack was surprisingly swift for somepony who was, by all standards, just about wasted. Braeburn wondered if he could have fed a particularly grouchy cat with tequila and got the same sort of response. He was off his seat split-seconds after she was, and grabbed her charging form from behind by the elbows, locking her arms and holding her back. She was surprisingly strong too, and he grunted with effort as she struggled, flaying her head around wildly. ‘Woah there, silly filly.’ Another grunt. ‘It ain’t worth it, trust me. I couldn’t even get through the skull of the last one I brained, and my bottle was full, too.’
She screamed and lashed her head backwards, hitting Braeburn hard in the forehead. ‘Ah!’ His grip slackened and she wriggled out of his grasp. She pivoted around and, somehow, even with her coordination shot, kicked him in the groin. Braeburn doubled over in pain, drawing a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth.
She kicked him once more, sharply in the abdomen, and Braeburn curled up defensively, more to ward off another blow than out of pain or fear. Seriously, he was just waiting for her to turn her back before trying to grab her again. Vinyl looked about ready to pounce upon the stallion, who was not trembling in fear and scared to the point of not knowing what to do other than stay on his feet and whimper. The rest of the bar’s patrons had either had the good sense to exit the premises or else retreat to a safer area to watch. Jug was nowhre in sight now.
Braeburn rolled his eyes, getting up and taking wide, unhurried strides after Vinyl. He had loosed a length of rope from his belt, one ordinary end of which he grasped with his mouth, the other end, which was tied in a lasso in his right hoof. He was starting to think that he might be too late, as Vinyl closed in on her target, a distance of half a room closing to a matter of five metres odd, with the distance decreasing with every drunken step she took. The stallion simply stood there dumbly like a foal awaiting a punishment, not daring to step out of line for fear of greater retribution. Come on, run you dumb arse, he thought silently.
Vinyl was about a metre off and made a last lunge, with the broken bottle held firmly behind her at an angle, ready to be brought into the offender’s upper torso and face. Oh Celestia no, please no, official statements are so boring to give… He threw the lasso, hoping to be able to slip it around Vinyl’s wrist and at least distract her, if not subdue her.
An explosive crack split the air, which was thick and with suspense and, to some extent fear. Vinyl stopped mid-stride, turning to face the source of the alarming noise. Even the fearful and honestly very stupid pony that had incurred her turned to face the entrance of the bar. Braeburn expertly recoiled the length of rope with a well-rehearsed tug, and the lasso knot changed direction abruptly in midair, into his open hoof, then turned a well. It was Sheriff Silverstar, silhouetted against the setting sun, one hoof holding open the swinging doors to the pub, and the other holding an old but well-maintained Colt six-shooter, pointed at the ceiling with its barrel still smoking. ‘Now if all four of you would come with me to the office. I need a statement. Yes, Jug, that includes you.’ They filed one by one out of the bar doors, which the sheriff, never short of professionalism, held open for them, the stallion still whimpering softly every now and then, while Vinyl did so huffily, having grudgingly dropped her weapon. Braeburn and Jug brought up the rear, whispering with hushed tones.
The former turned to Jug and asked accusingly, ‘where in the hoof were you when the action started?’
Jug shrugged. ‘Ringin’ up the sheriff. You can’t blame me for that, can you? She got you too, you know.’
Braeburn, taken aback but ever good-humoured, replied in amazement, ‘No she didn’t!’
‘No?’
‘Naw, I was just—‘
Sheriff Silverstar cut him off at this point, while keeping his eyes on Vinyl. ‘You have the right to remain silent, boy.’
Braeburn, spirits somewhat dampened, replied with a toned-down ‘Yes, sir.’
Statements, as Braeburn had expected, were a long and uninteresting, not to mention particularly stressful situation. They were requested to wait in a dull wood-walled room, devoid of all details or ornaments, save two benches placed along adjacent walls and a small square table in the corner. The sheriff had then called them one by one into a similarly fashioned room, which was smaller and only possessed a single desk and chair. The sheriff had installed a set of stronger, brighter lights, which, being well-maintained, were less of the flickering sepia that lit the rest of the town after daylight hours. It served to give the whole law enforcement office a strongly clinical feel despite its rustic build.
The first to be questioned was the visitor. It took about forty-five minutes in all for the sheriff to get all the information he needed out of the panicky, timid stallion, who kept jabbering and repeating details, and insisting repeatedly that he ‘did nothing wrong, officer’. Sheriff Silverstar, despite the full measure of his patient, quietly placative disposition, finally lost his patience and shouted the detainee into place, and into a greater degree of cooperation.
Vinyl’s statement took even longer, since there was a certain amount of background information that had to be uncovered in order to understand her given reaction. It didn’t help much that she was drunk, and, as a result, kept missing out on certain details. Even when she was able to provide them, they were still inconsistent and tended to change when revisited or being confirmed. The sheriff took nearly twice as long to get the information out of her, but when he reappeared to the detainees, Braeburn, who knew him well, could tell that his expression was just slightly softer and his eyes more forgiving.
Jug and Braeburn were questioned in the corresponding order, and were by far the most accurate and unbiased statements given that evening, much to the sheriff relief. It was about ten in the evening when the group was given the permission to return to their places of residence or lodging, being informed that they may be asked to return to the office if more information was needed. Braeburn, tired and restless from inactivity and from the tourist’s whining, happily obliged, and headed off towards the orchard. Jug had closed the bar when he had left with the rest of them, and had also decided to call it a night. The tourist simply bolted as quickly as his legs would carry him. Vinyl, now deprived of the bar in which to loiter around, simply walked along the street slowly, groggily, past the boundaries of the town and to the edge of the orchard, where she sat quietly in the cool evening breeze, looking over mile after mile of orchard, bordered with tall red rock outcroppings ending in dusty mesas, or shifting, inconstant sandy scrubland or desert, the sand now tinged blue in the evening light. It was a beautiful sight, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted to find somewhere where nopony would pay her any mind, somewhere where, if she couldn’t drown her sorrows with alcohol, she could do so with tears. It started with a sigh, a ravaged, frustrated noise that bordered on the edge of becoming a scream of rage. Then, after the sudden crescendo, it died off into a series of soft sobs and sniffs, punctuated by the keening wails of a weeping pony. Vinyl cried alone for a good part of the evening as the rest of the world moved on without her, then she went home, caught a few hours of sleep, probably less than five, but she didn’t care, and returned to the bar and asked for a bottle of gin.