//------------------------------// // Part 2 - Scootaloo // Story: Vinyl Scratch's Uninvited Guests // by Soufriere //------------------------------// A gentle summer breeze blew through the narrow residential alleys of Ponyville’s Northeast Side, creating a pleasant cooling effect during an unusually hot day. The mild winds eventually converged at the isolated little house on the small rise. Clearly the place had seen better days, judging by the extensive damage to an upper part of the exterior. So had its sole occupant, Vinyl Scratch. After a previous hectic week of work immediately followed by that little visitor, she was content to rest in preparation for her next gig, which she was certain would come. Eventually. *knock-knock-knock!* Vinyl turned over in the heap of blankets and Celestia-only-knows-what-else that passed for her bed, sighing in irritation. After her incident with a well-meaning but destructive Filly Scout a couple days earlier, she had disabled her electronica-inspired doorbell; she could still hear a good old-fashioned door knock, however. Opening one bloodshot eye, she glanced at her bedside table. Through the blur she could tell she had already thrown her alarm clock against the wall, either by hoof or her innate Unicorn magic, where it lay crumpled in a heap with at least a dozen others. Nonetheless, she levitated the topmost one to her in hopes that she had only mostly killed it. As luck would have it, it continued to faithfully recount the time despite the abuse heaped upon it, which had resulted in a massive dent in the side. Unfortunately for both Vinyl and the clock, the face displayed a thoroughly undesirable time – 12:30. First thing in the afternoon! Vinyl groaned, tossed the clock (surprisingly gently) back into the pile, and attempted to ensconce herself even more in her squalor. *knock-knock-knock!* Well, whatever it was that was making that sound, it clearly was not going to go away. Who the hay is it? Vinyl wondered. An attempt to vocalize her thoughts resulted in a pathetic croak. Evidently, that sick rave she had overseen the previous weekend had wrecked her vocal chords far more than she anticipated. Fun, but perhaps in hindsight not worth such damage. Looks like the whiteboard and marker would still be necessary for a while longer. With all the speed of molasses, she reluctantly removed herself from her resting place. A narrow shaft of sun managed to make it through a gap in Vinyl’s light-blocking curtains; she winced as she adjusted them to recreate her desired cave-like setting. Glasses, glasses, where are they? Vinyl silently asked herself in an effort to get her brain to boot up. Nightstand? No. Trash pile? No. Alarm clock pile? No. Somewhere in the bed? No (lucky for her; those shades are expensive to replace if broken). Damn. It turned out previous-night Vinyl had been thoughtful; her sunglasses were sitting safely on her dresser next to the washbasin, which had become home to a two-foot tall weed. She’d named it Arnold. She gingerly stroked its frond for a second before continuing to wake up. Donning her shades, Vinyl tentatively made her way down the stairs. She tripped two steps from the end but managed to recover before she reached the front door, avoiding a potentially embarrassing faceplant. Might her visitor be someone wanting to hire her and her equipment? Perhaps a record executive from Canterlot or Manehattan who had heard her mixes and would perhaps be interested in signing her? Or maybe even, dare she consider… Octavia? Her old friend would be the type to pay her a cheer-up visit despite needing to practice for an upcoming tour with the Royal Orchestra. When Vinyl opened the door, instead of any of that, she was greeted by an orange Pegasus filly with a short purple mane and no cutie mark… wearing a green khaki uniform. Great. Another one, Vinyl thought. “Greetings, sir or madam. My name is Insert-Name-Here—uh, I mean, Scootaloo,” Scootaloo said robotically while staring at a sheet of paper. Clearly something like this was a few light years out of her element. “It’s that time of year again. Could I interest you in some Filly Scout Cookies? We use the money from the cookie sales to pay for local projects that benefit ponies in need.” As Scootaloo looked up from her script, she finally saw who she was talking to. “Whoa! Your mane is so awesome!” Scootaloo said without thinking. Vinyl couldn’t help but silently chuckle. Not wanting to risk her voice any more than she already had, she levitated the whiteboard to herself and scrawled out “Thanks”. “Did you get in trouble for styling it like that? Lots of ponies give me weird looks for having short hair. They say it’s not ‘becoming of a girl’ or something.” Vinyl smiled and rolled her eyes, though Scootaloo was unable to see it behind her near-opaque glasses. “Yeah, Sister Marey really got mad about it. Said I had bad influences and smacked me with a ruler, and said she didn’t want to see me again until I apologized and promised to grow it out like a proper filly. I came back two hours later; not like she could really kick me out. What does she know? I like my style and my friends like my style and that’s all that matters!” Vinyl nodded. She then levitated the whiteboard to herself and began writing. Scootaloo continued talking, not realizing that Vinyl finished about three seconds into the spiel. “See? You get it! Do ponies still give you trouble for it? I don’t want to be made fun of even when I’m a full-grown mare. Why should they care? Do I tell them their manes are ugly? No! Well, sometimes. This one time I said to Sister Marey I thought her mane looked like a wet pile of… you’re waving something in front of me.” Indeed Vinyl was. The whiteboard had a single word on it. “Cookies?” Scootaloo gasped. “Right! That thing! Yeah, sorry about that. You might not have noticed, but this isn’t really my style.” Vinyl coughed. Scootaloo did not notice and continued, slowly backing away from the front door to give herself more room to gesture as she told her tale. “It was Apple Bloom’s idea. She thinks if we sell enough cookies we might get cutie marks in business. I don’t know if I really want that, but… at this point we’re all desperate. So she got our colt friend from the paper who owns a copy-thing to print out a few thousand order forms.” She held one up and sighed. “I think she made more forms than there are ponies in Ponyville. Our entire clubhouse is filled with all this stuff, floor to ceiling.” She threw her forelegs wide, looking up at her visualized mess of foal-business. “After she set it all up, I got worried that pretty soon some pile of papers or cookie boxes might come crashi— what happened there?” Scootaloo suddenly pointed her left hoof toward the roof. Vinyl poked her head out the door and slowly turned to face the thing that broke Scootaloo’s monologue, although she knew exactly what it was. On the façade of the second storey of her house was a Sweetie Belle-shaped hole, unpatched, glowing with a magenta aura – a sound-dampening field spell she had cast on the room long before, to avoid more complaints from her already irritated neighbours. “Sweetybell” Vinyl scrawled on the board. “No way,” replied Scootaloo incredulously, “I can’t believe Sweetie Belle would knock a hole in your house like that. She may be a klutz, but even she’s not usually that bad.” Vinyl held up the whiteboard again. “Bass Cannon.” “What’s that?” Scootaloo asked. “Is that like Pinkie Pie’s party cannon?” “COOKIES.” (underlined twice) Vinyl insisted through her whiteboard. She beckoned Scootaloo inside. Vinyl’s living room was still not particularly livable, although she had at least made a minimal effort to dust off the coffee table and remove the… unsavoury substances… so that fillies of impressionable age and temperament would not ask questions. She took the Filly Scout Cookie Catalogue and Order Form™ that Sweetie Belle had left and spread it out before them. Scootaloo stared at it with confusion – clearly she was unprepared for any pony actually being interested in Filly Scout Cookies. “You, uh, actually want to buy some?” Scootaloo asked with a small measure of shock. “Yes…?” Vinyl wrote (punctuation included). “Well, it’s just… no pony so far has actually wanted to buy cookies. More often than not, I get the door slammed in my face. That’s what I get for not being as ‘cute’ as Sweetie Belle or having the business chops Apple Bloom does,” groused Scootaloo. Vinyl pointed to a picture of cookies on the third page of the catalogue. “Oatmeal? Okay, didn’t expect that from a pony as cool-looking as you.” Vinyl tried and utterly failed to conceal a smile, secure in the knowledge that this filly gets it. “So,” Scootaloo attempted to find her inner salesmare, “How many boxes would you like?” Having neither voice nor fingers to give an answer, Vinyl once again wrote on her handy whiteboard: “5” Scootaloo’s already-large eyes went wide at this. She’d only expected to sell one box. “Wow. Thank you! Just, uh, fill out that order form thing there and I’ll get this back to Apple Bloom and she’ll take it to whoever sent us out here and then—” Vinyl cocked her head in confusion. “I… don’t have a pencil or pen with me,” Scootaloo admitted with a blush. Vinyl looked around her living room but of all the junk around, not one object other than her whiteboard marker was suitable for writing, and that marker was wholly unfit for use on thin paper. Furrowing her brow and scratching her chin in thought for fifteen seconds or so, she eventually came up with a possible solution. “Upstairs. Table by toilet.” she wrote. “Why would a pencil be there?” Scootaloo asked, confused. Vinyl shrugged, the universal indicator for I have no {censored}ing idea. Scootaloo looked around, realized just how disorganized Vinyl’s house really was, and figured that was as good an explanation as any. She started up the stairs. Vinyl started to follow her, but she waved her hoof in protest. “No, no. You stay there and keep looking at that catalogue. Maybe you’ll find more boxes you’d like. They told me the shortbread ones are really good.” Upstairs, Scootaloo found herself on a u-shaped landing with three doors. The one in the middle, immediately opposite the top of the stairs, led to the toilet, though the door itself was shut tight. Sure enough, there was a small table next to the door that in a normal pony’s home would probably have a plant on it to catch the sunlight from a bay window, but this house lacked such a window so the table was instead occupied by an empty terracotta saucer, in which sat a pencil. More enticing were the other two doors. The one on the right was ajar. Peering inside, Scootaloo saw that it was simply Vinyl’s bedroom, with all of the mess that entailed. Arnold waved its fronds at her from the nearby washbasin. Slightly disgusted, she turned around and bid the bedroom adieu. The door on the left was also ajar, but upon approaching it, Scootaloo felt a tingle on the back of her neck – the universal indicator that a magical field is active. She had felt a similar sensation when visiting the Carousel Boutique and Golden Oaks Library (after Twilight appropriated it). Obviously, any room that has a spell cast on it must have something interesting inside. Scootaloo approached the door tentatively and gently jabbed it with her hoof, hoping to not be electrocuted – she’d learned that lesson the hard way after a run-in with Twilight. Luckily for her, the door slowly swung open without so much as a creak. Her eyes went wide with anticipation at what she might find… the other two would be so jealous. Her expression quickly turned to confusion upon seeing that the only things inside the vaguely cubic room were a bunch of boxed-up equipment and, in the middle, a large black cube on wheels with an enticing big red button on its top. Scootaloo stared at the button for a moment. “Really?” she asked no one in particular. Fighting, for the time being, the desire to press it, she decided to examine the cube. She found its hinges without much effort, as well as a hidden latch. With a bit of effort, Scootaloo opened the cube manually to reveal the massive speakers inside. “This must be the ‘bass cannon’ she was talking about,” Scootaloo correctly inferred. Another cursory glance at the margins revealed a hole in the exterior wall. Obviously where Sweetie Belle had had her unfortunate run-in. A sane pony would, upon working out what had happened, opt to leave the room and the bass cannon in peace. Scootaloo, however, had an idea. Carefully, she manoeuvred some of the equipment behind the bass cannon. Then she slipped her hoof under the bass cannon to try and lift it up enough that she could slip another piece of equipment underneath it. Once all was said and done, the bass cannon’s front was pointing upwards at about a forty five degree angle, balancing on its two back wheels. The upshot of this was that the tempting red button was even more within reach than it had been. In front of the cannon, Scootaloo had moved one of Vinyl’s stools – actually a drum-throne in this case – and situated it in the line of fire. Scootaloo smirked, pleased with her flash of brilliance. She unfurled her useless wings, began flapping them, and pressed the button. Vinyl had gone through the cookie catalogue front-to-back at least sixteen times. The carob-covered mint ones looked particularly appetizing, as did the shortbread. Maybe if she landed another gig she would be able to afford more of the colourful, inviting boxes of sweet treats. Had the prices always been that high? She distinctly recalled Filly Scout Cookies being more affordable when she was a filly. Regardless, she could give up some of her “relaxing” activity for a month or so. Because cookies. Before Vinyl could peruse the possibilities for a seventeenth go-round, though, her torpor was shattered by Scootaloo shouting joyously at the top of her lungs… “Sound-Surfing Cutie Mark! Oh yeah!!” And then… BWAAAAAHHH!! WUBWUBWUBWUB-BWEEEHHHH!!! YRNYRNYRN! Immediately, Vinyl leapt up and made a beeline for her equipment room, her shades falling to the floor in the process, but once she reached the foot of the stairs, she found its door had been blasted open by the force of the bass. She also noticed, hovering out of the room into the landing, Scootaloo flapping her wings as fast as possible in an attempt to stay airborne. “I’m doing it! I’m flying!! This is so awesome!!!” she screamed in an attempt to be heard over the thumping bass. Vinyl stared at the spectacle above her, too dumbstruck to react. Scootaloo’s adventure in flight was short-lived, however. Once she was out of the room, and coincidentally right in front of the stairs, the force provided by the bass cannon dissipated enough that her tiny wings could no longer support her weight. She realized what was happening far too late, having only a single second to mouth “Uh-oh” before dropping to the floor like a bag of flour. Unlike a bag of flour, Scootaloo bounced upon impacting the wooden landing. Had she thought to stop flapping her wings at that point, things might have ended with a humiliating but ultimately harmless fall. As it was, her attempt to right herself during the bounce knocked her off-center and gave her extra momentum to go tumbling pathetically down the stairs, her impacts every fifth step punctuated with furtive grunts and “Ow”s. Vinyl stepped out of the way as Scootaloo hurtled towards her. Perhaps she could have stopped the unfortunate filly one she reached the bottom, but probably not. Either way, she already had laryngitis or blown-out vocal chords or something – she realized at that moment that going to the doctor about the problem would be wise – best not to risk fractured bones or worse on top of that. Scootaloo smacked the penultimate step and bounced again, her momentum sending her straight at the closed front door, which upon impact was ripped off its hinges, the frame shattering into several large pieces. It did nothing to halt Scootaloo’s unwilling journey into the overbearing warmth and brightness of the outside. After retrieving her glasses, then (for the second time in less than a week) taking a minute to power down the bass cannon, Vinyl carefully made her way through the remains of her doorway, gazing out upon the pile of wood that used to be the entrance to her home. A crowd of ponies had failed to gather round to witness the mild devastation; the few who happened to be nearby tried desperately to ignore it, preferring to focus their attention on that fascinating blue dragonfly darting around, isn’t it neat? Atop the wood pile, amidst a quickly dissipating cloud of dust, lay the crumpled, possibly legit-broken form of Scootaloo. Slowly, the surprisingly hardy filly – unhurt save for a few scratches – raised herself to her hooves, shook off what dust she could, and gave her personal assessment of her experiment. “That did not turn out like I expected!”