Vinyl Scratch's Uninvited Guests

by Soufriere

Part 3 - Apple Bloom

The house on the small rise on Ponyville’s Northeast Side could best be described at this point as being in a state of disrepair. Even when the weather was warm and inviting, as on this day, it still gave off a sense of foreboding. Perhaps its unpleasant feel was due to the hole in the front wall and the broken front door placed haphazardly back into its broken frame to simulate (poorly) an actual barrier… which to be fair it had been until just a few days earlier.

Vinyl Scratch was awake – unusual for her, considering it was not even noon – sitting on her dusty sofa in her dusty living room. She really needed to clean. The lack of front door meant all sorts of new dirt found its way into her house, intermingling with and layering itself on top of the old dirt, swirling around in visible eddies. Maybe one of these years she’d get on that.

She sneezed. Great, she thought as she wiped her snout with a handkerchief monogrammed “O.M.” that she’d permanently borrowed from her friend, At this rate I’ll never get my voice back.

A knock at the door shook her from her ruminations.

Actually, the knock itself was light, its instigator clearly aware of the precarious state of the door. The door’s subsequent crash onto the floor, however, was very loud indeed.

Right eye twitching involuntarily behind her glasses, Vinyl trudged to the broken doorway to greet her visitor… with a large blunt object to the face.

On the stoop stood an extremely embarrassed-looking yellow filly with a green Filly Scouts vest and a red mane that sported a big pink hair bow, staring at Vinyl with huge, disarming orange eyes. For her part, Vinyl’s return expression behind her glasses was an irritated glare.

“A-ah’m sorry!” the filly squeaked in a thick accent.

Vinyl knew only one family of ponies in the area who spoke like that. She levitated her trusty whiteboard and marker to herself and scrawled out a single word: “Apple?”

The filly cocked her head confusedly. “No, Ah already ate. Thanks though.”

Vinyl facehoofed, but the filly continued, her eyes wandering as if to desperately keep a tether on her thought tangent.

“To be honest, Ah ain’t always the biggest fan of apples. When ya live on an apple farm an’ it’s all apples all the time, kinda get sick of ‘em.” Suddenly, her expression sported a look of utter fear as she turned her head to look behind her, her eyes darting in every direction physically possible. “Uh, please don’t tell mah family ah said that. Promise?”

Vinyl cocked her head in confusion.

“Please!!” the filly insisted, nearly in hysterics.

Vinyl nodded her head in assent. The filly immediately calmed down.

“Thanks,” she said as her panic ramped back down to sane levels. “Miss, uh…?”

“Vinyl Scratch”, the titular pony wrote on her whiteboard.

“Right. Anyways, Ah just realized Ah haven’t told ya mah name. Ah’m Apple Bloom, and Ah’m sorry ‘bout that. Yer door, Ah mean.”

“You didn’t break it,” Vinyl wrote on her board.

“Phew!” Apple Bloom phew’d. “Ah was worried for a second. Uh, who did break that door, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”

Vinyl rolled her eyes as she wrote “Skootalew”.

Apple Bloom looked shocked for a second, then she facehoofed. “Of course she did. Great. Now Ah got even more mess to clean up! Ya know she thought it’d be a good idea to use a bunch of unsealed, half-full paint cans as support for a ramp, an’ then land on a bed of chicken feathers? Y’ever dealt with chicken feathers? Covered in paint? Took Sweetie an’ me over a month to fix the treehouse! Ah don’t even know what kinda cutie mark she thought she’d get outta that. ‘Mess’ cutie mark, maybe? Surprised I didn’t end up with a mop n’ bucket on mah flank. Can’t send her anywhere,” she groused.

Vinyl levitated the whiteboard to tap Apple Bloom on the forehead to remind her of the sentence still written on it – “You didn’t break it”

Understanding this, Apple Bloom calmed down somewhat, but was still clearly unhappy. “Was it a few days ago? Yeah? Then Ah may as well have. She was only here because Ah asked her to sell cookies. She didn’t wanna an’ Ah made her anyway.”

Vinyl motioned for Apple Bloom to back down the stairs. Once she did, Vinyl stepped out far enough that she could gesture at the hole in the second floor front wall. As Apple Bloom studied the damage, Vinyl erased her board and wrote “Sweety Bell.”

Upon seeing the second name, Apple Bloom closed her eyes for a second, as if trying to keep an internal scream from escaping. “Seriously?” she eventually asked.

Vinyl nodded slowly.

Apple Bloom sighed. “Look, Ah’m real sorry for those two. All I wanted to do was sell some cookies an’ get a cutie mark. It didn’t work with apples, but it’s been a while since then, so Ah thought we’d try sellin’ somethin’ ponies look forward to but can only get once a year. Everypony loves Filly Scout Cookies… trademark. Ain’t no way we could lose there, right?”

Vinyl Scratch lolled her head. Apple Bloom had a point.

“Do ya still have our informative catalogue and order form?” asked Apple Bloom. Vinyl nodded, prompting the filly to continue. “Then just write down whatever cookies ya want – we take cash or credit, by the way. While you’re doin’ that, I’ll fix up this here door.”

“Uh…?” Vinyl wrote on the whiteboard, promptly shoving it in Apple Bloom’s face.

“Ah get it,” said Apple Bloom. “After what Sweetie and Scootaloo did, can’t really blame ya for not trustin’ me. But Ah do have experience with fixin’ up their messes (and my own). This door won’t take five minutes to put back on its hinges. Ah got some tools out in the wagon. Lemme go get ‘em. It’s the least Ah can do ta make up for the other two. Once I’m done an’ you’ve filled out the form – if ya want to – Ah’ll leave and you don’t ever have to see me again.”

Apple Bloom gave the most pathetic-looking hurt-puppy face Vinyl had ever seen. How could any pony say no to that? More importantly, why did all of her neighbours believe Sweetie Belle was the only one who traded on her cuteness? Vinyl felt duty-bound to finally finish filling out the order form she had started on days earlier. In addition to the Oatmeal she’d wanted from the beginning, the mint cookies and the shortbread would do nicely.

---

It turned out that Apple Bloom was not bluffing. Within just over five minutes, the front door was back in place and its frame was as repaired as it could get. Vinyl surveyed Apple Bloom’s handiwork, nodding with an impressed air. “Nice.” she wrote on her whiteboard.

“Well, it was the least Ah could do after hearin’ what the others did,” Apple Bloom replied.

As Vinyl reached behind her to show Apple Bloom the order form to ask some questions – When would the boxes be coming and why had they become so expensive? – the filly’s attention suddenly shifted upwards. “What’s that there?” she asked semi-rhetorically.

Vinyl looked up and saw a large crack, running the height of her front wall from the now fixed front door up to (and about halfway across) the ceiling. It also ran across a major support beam.

“Looks like the damage was worse than Ah thought,” stated Apple Bloom with an air of authority she most likely did not possess. “Cain’t believe those two. Wel’p. Guess Ah’d better get back to work.”

“You Don’t Need To” wrote Vinyl on the whiteboard, but Apple Bloom ignored it as she trudged back outside, where weather conditions were suddenly deteriorating as a mass of clouds settled over the town.

Apple Bloom returned a few minutes later, as the wind began to pick up, wearing a saddlebag and pushing a painter’s ladder. Vinyl wanted to ask where she got it, but figured she was better off not knowing.

Propping the ladder just inside the front door, Apple Bloom was able to get a much closer look at the offending crack. “See this, Miss Vinyl Scratch?” Apple Bloom said, “This here’s one of those support beam thingys. It’s bad to have a crack in it. There was this one time when our Crusader Clubhouse had a big ol’ split in the wood. A freak windstorm broke the wood an’ made the roof cave in. I fixed it after, though… well, it took me a few tries.”

Vinyl tapped her hoof as she looked around, grimacing. That was not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“Aha! Here we go!” Apple Bloom nearly shrieked upon zeroing in on a specific spot in the offending support beam. “All’s I need to do is shore up this bit here, an’ yer house’ll be good as fixed! And, as a way to say sorry for mah friends, I won’t charge you a single bit.”

She reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a hammer, along with a nail and small plank of wood – Vinyl wondered how an Earth Pony could possibly hold any of those things in her hooves, although the hammer was in her mouth, but again decided not to pursue it. With as much strength as she could muster, Apple Bloom held the little board against the beam, and swung the hammer.

Nothing happened.

Vinyl sighed in relief.

Then, a sickening pop shot through the house as the beam split in two. The crack resumed its journey across the ceiling – and everywhere else for that matter – in earnest, loosing bits of plaster along the way. Apple Bloom lost her balance and fell off the ladder as the walls began to shake; Vinyl caught her with a basic levitation spell and placed her gently on the floor.

Before Apple Bloom could thank her saviour, Vinyl wrote one last message on the whiteboard, almost-illegible due to speed: “We Should Go.”

They galloped out the front door and hit the deck a few yards away just in time to hear a massive rumble and crash as the roof caved in, taking the rest of the house down with it. The horrible noise brought out the neighbours, though they immediately lost interest when they realized whose house was making such a racket.

When the dust cleared, Apple Bloom realized she was clinging to Vinyl, who turned away and coughed. Blushing, she quickly disentangled herself as they both surveyed the damage. The only thing remaining of Vinyl Scratch’s home, aside from a pile of debris, was the front door, standing tall amidst the rubble as a light drizzle began to fall.

It did not take Vinyl long to scour the remnants of her home for the few precious things she could salvage – her change purse (sitting next to the now very dead Arnold The Weed), a mixtape, her headphones (protected inside a rather banged up case), and the whiteboard. Her equipment was totalled, but she had had the forethought to insure it, so it would be replaced eventually. Any insurance adjuster in the world would consider those three fillies as a ‘natural disaster’ unto themselves. Miraculously, her alarm clock, christened Piece Of Horseapple the Sixteenth, had survived, as had the Filly Scout Cookie catalogue and order form. She opted to leave both of those behind as she began her journey, slowly trudging southeast to the main road out of town.

Apple Bloom regained her senses and, seeing Vinyl leaving, called out, “Wait. Where’re ya goin’?”

Vinyl’s throat was now coated with microscopic dust from her former house, so she was even less able to respond than before. She thought about writing a message, but decided against it. Best that Apple Bloom not know her destination – a little conservatory on the outskirts of town owned by her friend Octavia, who she was sure would have no issue with a wayward mare who’d lost her home to crash on her couch for a few months.

Searching through the dusty mound of wood, thatch, and plaster, Apple Bloom noticed something, and immediately gave chase.

“Hey! You forgot to finish fillin’ out yer order form! Don’t you still want Filly Scout Cookies?? Come back here!!”

Author's Note:

Please Read Me.

Comments

[silverthorn]

This is top notch.