Frantic to the point where she was almost out of breath, Babs Seed found herself trapped at a dead end while being pursued by a group of characters that were all too familiar to her. Cursing her bad luck in the worst language a filly of her age could know, she could only helplessly watch and hope that there was some means of escape. Feeling particularly desperate, she began to poke at nearly every inch she could reach on the wall in front of her, praying that a single touch could activate a secret passageway on the other side. It wouldn’t matter where it took her. It didn’t even have to be in Manehattan, so long as it was a place where the shadows could never find her. Anywhere that wasn’t where she was right now would be fine.
As soon as the shady individuals touched her, she lashed out, ready to fight them with all the energy that she could muster. She was outnumbered, she could tell—after all, what were the odds that somepony like her could win in a battle against at least five ponies twice her size? But she refused to believe it. She refused to believe the lies they fed her. And she wouldn’t be going back if she had anything to say about it.
Within a few minutes, she found herself pinned to the wall, face to face with the band of criminals she thought she’d gotten rid of for good. She knew they wouldn’t do any physical damage to her at the moment; her long-term purpose to them was far more valuable than that. So, for now, she could count on still being alive. As for it being a life worth living, she knew that she wouldn’t be so lucky.
“It won’t be long before the people at the facility find out about this,” she threatened, prepared to fight these ruffians until the very end. “As soon as word gets out that you only adopted me to pull me back into your schemes, the police will get involved. I can’t believe you’d actually be stupid enough to dare pull those same stunts again!”
“They know nothing of it,” assured one of her captors in a smooth voice. “You think we’d be that reckless after last time? We even had one of our informants sign the official forms for us. She has an unsullied criminal record, so they’d never even suspect you’d be in any danger. For all they know, you’re off in a loving household right now, just another check on their list of successful clients. Not to mention, I believe you know her quite well.”
A single name was uttered into the brown filly’s ear, and it was at that moment that she finally began to crack. It couldn’t be, could it? Babs had trusted her more than anypony else.
“W-what did you threaten her with if she didn’t?” she moaned. “You had to have done something to her.”
“That’s what you’d like to think,” another voice answered. “But the truth is, we didn’t have to do anything to get her to comply with us. See, she never liked you in the first place. Nopony ever did, and nopony ever will.”
Finally showing signs of surrender, she then began to wriggle with despair and on that night, she cried more than she ever had before. She could feel somepony try to embrace her, but she could tell that it was empty and hollow. Not even the warmest touch could keep her from her despair.
****
It had been about two in the morning when Coco Pommel began to hear muffled sobs coming from the room next to her own. At the moment, she was curled up in the same bed as the helpless filly who’d emitted those sounds, but she couldn’t help but notice that no matter how softly she stroked the dampened fur beside her, nothing seemed to change. With that, she decided to go for a harsher approach, shaking the filly’s body for several seconds before she could see her companion’s green eyes open.
“Get away from me!” Babs yelled, staring in disdain at the other figure in the room. “I trusted you, and you sold me back to them! You said you’d show me the beauties of life I never got to see, but all you did was put me back in that terrible factory!”
“I never did anything of the sort,” countered Coco. “And I never will. I hate those despicable excuses for ponies every bit as much as you do, but it’s going to be okay. They’re in prison right now, where they belong.”
“But they escaped! Why should I put any faith in anything you say, anyway? They told me that nopony really loved me in the first place. Everypony sees me as something to be used and nothing more. All I am is a bad seed to them.”
“Nonsense; there are plenty of ponies who love you. I mean, your cousin was able to forgive you for what you did to her, from what you told me. Sometimes, your memories try to bring you down and make you less of a pony than you really are. Those tend to be the worst sorts of nightmares.”
“If it was a nightmare, then where was Princess Luna?” questioned the filly. “Scootaloo told me that she’s supposed to come in and help, so it had to have been real…”
“Perhaps the princess didn’t intervene because she wanted to test me as a mother,” Coco answered, playing along with Babs’ suspicions. “She wanted to see if I could really comfort you in your time of need. Of course, you may not end up taking what I say for the truth, but have you ever seen me do anything that would make you suspicious? Have you ever seen me hurt you in any way? Even if you don’t believe me, I’ll still love you. I’ll do whatever I can to bring joy to your life, and I’ll keep on persisting until you accept me again. So, do you trust me now?”
The room went quiet for a few moments, and at first Coco feared that her daughter was still scarred from the incident. Just then, though, Babs began to scoot towards her laying figure, curling her face into her chest. As she felt another heart beating on top of her own, the white earth pony smiled, taking the filly closer into her embrace.
“That’s what I thought.”
****
After one very hectic, albeit cuddle-filled, night, Coco woke up in a rush, realizing that she had overslept yet again. She hated her habit of doing that; it just ruined her entire schedule. Not to mention the fact that her new boss, though he was nowhere near as bad as Suri and actually seemed rather affable by comparison, was not somepony who tolerated lateness. If all else failed, she supposed she’d have to use some of the bits she’d been saving up for a cab if push came to shove and she really couldn’t walk there quickly enough.
“This again?” Babs questioned groggily as she rubbed her eyes awake. “It’s Saturday, Coco. Don’t you get the day off?”
“I’ve heard that sometimes we do, but the show is already running so far behind schedule that it isn’t anywhere near the realm of possibility now,” she answered, though in her head, she was dwelling on the fact that Babs was still calling her by her first name. Wasn’t it a bit odd for foals to do that with their parents? Thinking back, she knew that she herself had never had the audacity to do such a thing.
As she reflected on it in the shower, taking care not to let the warm water lull her into running even later, she supposed it did, in fact, make sense. The two had only been living together for five days; before that, they’d simply been friends with a bit of an age difference in between. Of course the filly wouldn’t think of her quite as a mother yet, as sad as that sounded. She’d just assumed that, because she’d started thinking of Babs as a daughter from the minute she’d adopted her that her beloved foal would think the same way. For the first time, she began to wonder if Babs really did remember her birth parents and if she saw her as intruding on the job that should’ve been theirs.
I guess this sort of thing just takes time, she concluded as she eased herself out of these thoughts. They’d been consuming her mind for longer than she’d perceived; by the time she was able to snap out of it, both of them had already taken showers and she was now drying the wet bundle of brown fur off.
Even if I am intruding, it’s certainly better than leaving her to the streets and the factory. I’m definitely doing a good thing, and I don’t regret it for anything, even if she never sees me as anything other than a friend who lives with her.
“Sorry for last night,” she could hear Babs saying in a funny muffled voice. She supposed she should’ve waited to see if the filly would say something before wiping her face off with the towel, as a lump of it had wound up in her mouth. Coco gently pulled it away and stopped drying to show that this time, she would be listening intently to what her daughter had to say.
“That was certainly the most interesting apology I’ve heard in a while.”
“I’m trying to be serious!” Babs pouted with a slight blush. “Quit laughing!”
“Sorry, sorry, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been messing around with your face like that. I just thought it was cute.”
“Anyway, I shouldn’t have rejected you all because of some stupid dream. I can’t believe I did that. I would never believe anything those idiots said to me in real life. I just didn’t want to lose you like that. I’d have no idea what I’d do if it turned out that you really had been working with them.”
“Well, you’ll never have to find that out, now will you?”
“Yeah, but why do you have to go to work on a Saturday? It’s no fair; I was looking forward to doing something with you since I don’t have school today.”
As the two began to further hurry up so that they could get out the door on time, Coco explained, “Honestly, I was planning on taking you with me to see the theatre I’ve been working at. As long as you don’t cause too much trouble, I’m sure the director will be okay with it. Just make sure to stay close to me, since the theatre’s really big and I don’t want to lose you.”
“Okay.” Babs had brightened up at the idea of getting to see what happened on Bridleway during play preparations. “But don’t you think they’ve been working you awfully hard?”
“Well, you didn’t get weekends off either back when you were working on the streets.”
“But you said that was unethical. Wouldn’t that mean that the director’s a bad pony, too?”
“There’s a big difference between working a filly that hard and doing the same for a full-grown pony,” Coco clarified, knowing that Babs still didn’t quite understand the breadth of all that had happened to her. “Besides, it isn’t the director’s fault this is going on. Ever since the play started about a month or so ago, some of the lead actors in the play always show up extremely late, normally to get coffee or something frivolous along those lines, and sometimes it takes hours for practice to start. I can still do my job for the most part, but some days, I still get delayed because they show up late to fittings as well. My boss thinks that they’re snooty and entitled for doing so, but he can’t fire them because the big names are a lot of what gets ponies to want to see it.”
“I certainly don’t envy him,” muttered Babs with a roll of her eyes as the two ended up getting into a cab. “Sounds like a lot of
stress just for a couple of actors. Gosh, what is it with this town and jerks, anyways?”
“Every town has them. I guess being one of the biggest cities in Equestria just means that we end up with more of them.” Coco just shrugged in response. “On another note, didn’t you have a couple of friends back in Ponyville like that? I’m surprised you were able to put up with them, with how judgmental you’ve been about Suri and all.”
She instantly regretted asking that question when she noticed Babs blushing and placing her tail on her flank in embarrassment. Her ears also appeared to be drooping from the memory.
“I-I’m sorry for asking. I should’ve known it was too personal. I didn’t mean anything bad by it. I was just surprised—“
“Honestly,” the brown filly replied, “I was surprised too. We all do desperate things to get attention sometimes, don’t we? I just thought acting like you had power kept others from wanting to hurt you in life and made them think you were invincible. Man, was I stupid back then.” She began to laugh profusely, but the bitterness in her voice made Coco look at her strangely. Surely, there was a lot more to that incident that Babs wanted to tell her…
Before she could ask anything more, though, the cab had stopped at the theatre, and the topic was dropped once again.
****
Perhaps not surprisingly, the first sound that they heard upon entering the theatre was—
“I thought you said practice probably hasn’t started yet,” Babs said.
“It hasn’t,” Coco responded.
“Then why in Equestria do I hear somepony starting to play a song?”
Coco promptly managed to groan and facehoof at the same time. After that spectacle of annoyance, she then decided to up the ante by gesturing to a royal blue unicorn stallion with his mane in short blond curls, who also apparently happened to be playing the ukulele. To be more precise, the instrument was gray, a color that many would consider to be strange for a ukulele.
“I think we should wait a while before we make our presence known,” advised Coco. “It’s never a good sign when he picks the gray ukulele.”
“Why isn’t it a good sign?” Babs wondered, still finding the entire situation to be more than a little odd.
“My boss can be very weird sometimes. For one thing, he collects abnormally-colored ukuleles. Apparently, he’s even color-coded them by mood. Gray represents angst. So therefore, whenever he gets a bit too annoyed by something, well—“
Her conversation was quickly drowned out by the eccentric director ending the instrumental sequence of his tune, one that would otherwise be considered much too depressing to play on such a lighthearted instrument. In a flamboyant and overly dramatic voice, he then began to sing:
Stuck backstage, nothing to do
When “no small parts, only small actors” isn’t always true
If you think you can be late, you must be new
The only other rhyming word I can think of is blue
So I’m blue
(No, literally!)
Blue without something productive to do
Blue without somepony as annoying as yooooouuuu…
Why is the lead late?
Why can’t I get a date?
Can this really be a director’s fate?
No, I can no longer waaaaaittttt…
Oh, angst! I just want to get up on this stage
If I’m without it much longer, I know I’ll rage
Rage against entitlement, irresponsibility
Delays, trying to reach, noting but irritability
This is what I put up with daily
So until you come
I’ll serenade you
With my angsty ukulele…
To everypony’s relief, the song did not last much longer than that, and soon after, it became clear that the stallion playing it on the stage was clearly doing so in a rather satirical manner, as he perked up a bit too quickly upon seeing Coco’s presence to really be in that angsty of a mood. Nevertheless, Babs still found the entire situation to be odd, awkward, and basically every other synonym for such emotions.
“You get used to it,” Coco answered with a slight shrug. “At least it’s better than being ordered around and having to get everypony’s coffee all the time.”
“I guess,” replied Babs, still trying to regain her bearings after the incredibly random song. Just then, the unicorn cantered over to the two, eagerly shaking Coco’s hoof while uttering multiple sighs of relief.
“At least I have somepony here I can count on for punctuality,” he muttered. “If everypony were as dedicated as you, we wouldn’t be running a week behind, now, would we?”
“Oh, I’m sure the leads will stop being so immature when the stakes are raised high enough,” Coco advised. “You really ought not to judge them. This could just be their way of showing their nerves. This is supposed to completely eclipse Hinny of the Hills in ticket sales, after all. No matter how experienced they claim to be, anypony would be at least a little nervous right now.”
“I know, I really shouldn’t be so hard on them, but I just have a lot of pressure to make this production run smoothly, and frankly, the boss doesn’t really like the way things are going right now. I have to do everything I can to keep everypony’s jobs intact. Unfortunately, you came in to the theatre world at exactly the same time the most ruthless producer in these parts came out of retirement. Normally, nopony even thinks of making these many cuts!”
“What necessarily does this producer do exactly?” Babs questioned, not realizing that the director had no clue who she was. “I’m kind of new to this whole thing.”
“Well, random filly who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, at the end of the day, I’m one of only a few middlemen running this show. While I can offer direct advice to the actors and such, I still have to surrender to the higher-ups. Basically put, I can dispute the producer’s decisions, but if I openly challenge him to a certain extent, then he can take away the funding for the musical just like that. He’s basically the pony who determines whether or not we even have a show to begin with.”
“From what Scene Stealer’s described to me—“Coco paused to gesture to her director, who nodded in recognition—“normally negotiating with the producers isn’t that much of a problem. But this guy’s a bit of a tougher nut to crack.”
“It’s ‘tougher orange to crack’ in this case, Coco,” Scene Stealer corrected. “And for the last time, please do call me Scene. It’s a lot less awkward, even though any thievery implied through my name is strictly idiomatic.”
“I thought she got the expression right,” Babs spoke in confusion. “Isn’t the expression ‘tough nut to crack’ right?”
“He meant it as a pun. The Oranges are one of the richest families in Manehattan, and the most powerful out of all of them is Mosely Orange, our producer and one of the biggest names in Bridleway. As a matter of fact, seeing as you’re an Apple, you’re probably related to him somehow.”
“Well, lucky for me, then,” replied Babs with a slight twinge of inexplicable bitterness in her voice.
The day went on and Coco continued working on some costume sketches that she had started a few days before. Her daughter remained relatively quiet in the same room, using some of the costume designer’s art utensils to work on her own little art projects. A few hours went by, and Scene had once again entered the room.
“Wait here,” Coco whispered. “I think he’s been meaning to talk to me all day. Be sure not to get into any trouble, okay?”
As Babs nodded, oblivious to the situation, her mother couldn’t help but wonder just how she was going to explain the events to her boss. Somehow, she knew just what he was going to ask, and she could only hope that he would take it better than Suri would have done…
****
“Are you really sure about this?” Scene asked, having taken his coworker to a small vestibule within the theatre. “I mean, a job and a filly is a lot for somepony who’s just starting out in the workforce.”
“You’re not opposed to me continuing to care for her, are you?” Coco asked in concern. “If you are, I could always try to find someplace else to work. It’s just that, even though I’ve always wanted to be a designer more than anything else, she gives me a new purpose in life. I never really thought about being a mother until now, but now that I know what it’s like, I want to be able to do both.”
“That’s not what I have a problem with. I’m just concerned for you. You came here to escape from a bad situation, and I don’t want you to get back into another one. I want to make sure you’ve been handling everything all right. I mean, it’s certainly admirable to adopt somepony, but did you really think it through?”
“More than anything. I’ve wanted to do this from the very moment I met her, but I wanted to make sure I was ready. It’s taken me years to come to this decision, and even if I end up being the only pony in her life, it’s worth it. Besides, I feel like I owe her. After all, I was the one who worked for—“
Coco had purposely tried not to tell the entire story out of fear that her superior would see her as a criminal or that he would never be able to understand the troubles she’d faced. But she just couldn’t keep it inside any longer. She’d never told anypony other than the police and the adoption officials about what had happened inside the factories Suri had used. The secret was beginning to take a toll on her.
Until Scene pointed it out, she didn’t realize that even the thought of those memories were beginning to make her tear up.
“Babs…when I first found her one day, she—she was making the fabric my old boss would use.”
“At such an age?” Scene questioned with obvious concern. Coco only nodded in response.
“She was being forced to, Scene. She was sick and she had ponies all around her who would whip her if she got even a single stitch wrong. It—it was terrible. Even now, she still has nightmares about it. And I’ve had to stay silent about it because if I didn’t, the one I used to work for would only lash out at me.”
Seeing that Coco was still crying, the royal blue unicorn placed his front legs around her body and let her lay her head on his fur, stroking her to calm her down.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “I’m glad you told me. If I would’ve known what you were going through, I would’ve given you the week off.”
“You don’t have to,” his companion answered politely.
“I care about my workers, so I will. You need to let her family know about what’s happened. Even if her mother and father are dead, the rest of her relatives can’t live in ignorance forever. They’re the ones who can comfort you two far more than I ever can. In the meantime, I intend to make this all right.”
For a few seconds, Coco immediately stopped crying, particularly struck by the previous statement.
“What do you mean, Scene?”
“Part of it concerns private manners that you aren’t yet aware of, but there’s something that’s more pertinent to the situation at hand. You used to work for one Suri Polomare, am I correct?”
“Yes,” Coco answered. “But why do you need to—“
“Because as long as she’s still out there, justice still hasn’t been done. It’s not enough to apprehend the criminals directly responsible for this atrocity. The middlemen need to be eliminated as well.”
“Wait!” the white earth pony shouted. “As terrible as she was, Suri never knew about—“
“That’s all about to change,” Scene responded. “Trust me; I’m going to make her know. And once she and everypony else finds out, the problem will surely be eliminated from root to stem.”
As he trotted off into the distance, leaving Coco behind, she couldn’t help but notice him pulling out his ‘vengeful’ ukulele from his saddle bag…