The Odd Circumstance of a Drunk Badger
The Tombstone Tourist: Chapter 2
“Well that just ain’t right,” said Rainbow Dash in her usual tone of flat decisiveness. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Fluttershy blinked. She hadn’t expected things to take such a turn as this.
As with many of her common activities with Rainbow Dash, her weekly video-game night had come about from a misunderstanding. Upon hearing that Fluttershy had an Xbox360, Rainbow Dash had instantly decided that Fluttershy must enjoy gaming as she did, and invited herself over with a stack of her own games that included things like Halo 3, Dead Space 3, and Mass Effect 3. All of which alarmed Fluttershy greatly as hordes of aliens were mowed down in front of her in a hail of bullets and laser fire.
Her own games, Kinectanimals, Zoo Tycoon, and Viva Piñata, lay mostly forgotten.
When Rainbow Dash had thus arrived with her dusty old Xbox original, intending to show Fluttershy the delights of such classic games as Destroy All Humans!, and Mercenaries—
“Wait, why do I still have this?” Rainbow Dash mumbled, tossing the box over her shoulder into Fluttershy’s waste paper bin.
— Fluttershy had intended the information about the mystery in the cemetery to simply be a topic of conversation; idle gossip to distract Rainbow from showing her more graphic scenes of wanton annihilation of perhaps-not-so-innocent video-game characters. If she had to watch another mob of Grunts being slaughtered with an energy sword while Rainbow Dash shouted insults at their corpses, she honestly thought that she might just hide under the bed and start sobbing.
Unfortunately, Rainbow Dash had taken an entirely different idea.
“Come on!” she barked, standing up. “Let’s go.”
“G-Go?” Fluttershy asked, looking uncertainly at Rainbow Dash’s proffered hand.
“Let’s go stake out the cemetery. Find out who’s messing with your animal’s tombstones.”
Fluttershy gulped.
Despite having returned several times to the grave site, and finding fresh evidence of further disturbances to the area, she’d never had any idea of... well, doing anything about it. It wasn’t like whoever it was that was doing it was doing any harm. Or so it seemed to Fluttershy.
“Um... Rainbow Dash? Why, err... why would we do that?” Fluttershy asked. “I thought we were going to play your video games.”
“Oh come on, we both know that you hate my games,” Rainbow Dash said dismissively. Losing patience, she took Fluttershy’s hand and pulled her up. “Besides, this’ll be more fun.”
“Oh, Rainbow Dash, I don’t hate—.“ She stopped herself. “Wait, if you know that I don’t like them, then why do you—“
“To the cemetery!”
And so it came to pass Fluttershy thought, dismally.
“Rainbow Dash,” she said nervously. “I don’t think we’re allowed here at night.”
“What makes you say that?” Rainbow asked offhandedly, staring hawkishly around at the lamp-lit landscape around them. “And couldn’t you have worn anything a little darker?”
“Oh, erm, well,” Fluttershy said, pulling nervously at her fingers. “Well, the locked gate kind of made me think we’re not allowed in.”
“Pfft,” Rainbow said with a roll of the eyes. “They lock up the park too and people still go there.”
“And the sign next to the gate, saying the cemetery is off-limits after nightfall,” Fluttershy continued.
“Fluttershy, are you going to help me keep a lookout, or what?”
Fluttershy scrunched her mouth up, peering tentatively around in case anyone was watching them back. They’d chosen a spot next to the largest monument, a greyed mausoleum bearing a classical look of pillars and pediment, with a small and impractical portico at its front. In the shadows to the side of it, outside of the glare of the yellow lamps hanging over the scene, stood Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy crouching behind her. From their vantage point, the little cluster of Fluttershy’s white markers shone in the starlight like teeth in the misshapen mouth of the willow tree’s shadow, perfectly visible between the tombstones all around them.
Rainbow Dash pulled up a set of dark goggles with olive-green lenses. Setting them carefully over her eyes, she stuck out her tongue as she tweaked a dial. A quiet clicking sounded from the goggles, sounding to Fluttershy in the near silence of the graveyard like the joints of some elderly witch making her slow way through the cemetery, kidnapping naughty children who weren’t supposed to be there to cook into non-vegan stew. Fluttershy gulped.
“Cool, huh?” Rainbow Dash whispered, grinning at Fluttershy and possibly misinterpreting the wide-eyed look on her face for awe. “Borrowed them off Pinkie Pie.” She held up a hand, forestalling a question. “Don’t ask. I don’t know why she has them. Want to try them out?”
After a little prompting, Fluttershy eventually did try them on. They were unexpectedly heavy, and made her head feel like she was going to fall face-forward whenever she moved. As her head swung around from the weight a third time, she caught sight of something, and promptly held the goggles with her hands to steady them. Narrowing her eyes, she leaned forward, trying to see what it was.
“Here,” Rainbow hissed helpfully, leaning over and adjusting the dial again. The green image of Fluttershy’s vision began to un-fog, stabilising into what was unmistakably the willow tree. And below the tree, a bright green blob came slowly into view. At first she couldn’t be sure what it was, but then it looked sideways.
“Mr. Nizbit!” Fluttershy cried, throwing off the goggles. Speeding from their hiding place whilst Rainbow Dash dived for the goggles, she tore across the grass and pulled the badger up into a hug.
“Oh, Mr. Nizbit! Where have you been?”
Most people would be wise to avoid running up to a badger in the middle of the night and pulling it into a hug if they have any wish to avoid having their face torn off, badgers not being well known for their mild tempers or understanding natures. Happily, by the time Rainbow Dash had stumped over with her torch, still wiping grass from her chin, she found Mr. Nizbit effectively restrained by Fluttershy’s enfolding arms, and quite incapable of mauling anyone.
“I was so worried!” Fluttershy went on. “Did something bad happen to you?”
Fluttershy listened to Mr. Nizbit grumble out an explanation.
“What’s he say?” Rainbow whispered.
Fluttershy didn’t answer immediately. For a moment she simply frowned at Mr. Nizbit as he expostulated something, until Fluttershy reached down, and wiped something off of his lip.
“Eww, Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash gagged, as Fluttershy brought the finger close to her face. “Gross!”
Fluttershy ignored Rainbow, and sniffed the finger.
“Rotten,” she said.
“Wha?” Rainbow asked articulately.
“He’s been eating rotten apples. A lot of them, I think.”
“How do you know that?” Rainbow asked, scrutinising the badger closely as he continued to chatter on. For the first time, Rainbow seemed to notice that the badger had a glazed and bleary look to his eye.
“He’s drunk,” Fluttershy said quietly. “The apples were fermented.”
“Wow,” Rainbow replied, snickering a little. “You don’t think he got into AJ’s cider storage do you?” She chuckled, and then turned suddenly serious. “You didn’t get into the cider, did you?” she demanded of Mr. Nizbit, glaring at him an inch or so from her face. “I’m warning you, buddy—Eahh!”
She leapt back as Mr. Nizbit hissed and bared his teeth.
“Dash, you’re upsetting him,” Fluttershy chastised, holding Mr. Nizbit close and petting his head.
Rainbow Dash’s mouth gaped. “Me!?” she demanded, but Fluttershy ignored her.
Looking down at Mr. Nizbit, it became clear to her that she wasn’t going to get anything out of him just now. She looked around for where he could have come from that had rotten apples; she couldn’t remember there being an apple tree anywhere around here.
“We must have missed ‘em,” Rainbow said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Missed who?” Fluttershy asked.
“Whoever’s been messing up the graves. Or maybe it was him.” She glared at Mr. Nizbit.
Fluttershy frowned a little. That was possible of course, especially if Mr. Nizbit had been coming here inebriated. But several days in succession? And it didn’t explain the charcoal at all.
The following morning, Fluttershy had to marvel at Rainbow’s stamina. She herself was still yawning and felt a perpetual itch behind her eyes, whilst – despite not actually finding anything – Rainbow seemed positively ebullient about their night’s adventure.
“Gonna need to borrow these again for the next night,” she was saying to Pinkie, waving the night-vision goggles from the top of the school steps. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah!” Pinkie giggled, waving an airy hand. “Don’t worry, I got like five of them.”
Sunset gave her an inquiring look. “Why?”
“So that we can all play Last Night Recon together one day,” Pinkie answered dreamily, clasping both hands together and sighing.
“Do I dare ask?” Sunset asked Applejack, who shrugged.
“Oh, it’s super easy!” Pinkie cried. “It’s a game Maud came up with when we were kids. Basically we go out at midnight into a deep, dark, spooky forest, armed with sharp rocks and wearing these goggles.”
“Sharp r-rocks?” Rarity asked accidentally shutting her pocket mirror on her finger.
“Ooh,” Applejack said, her eyes lighting up. “Ah remember that game at the Hearths Warming gatherin’.”
“What do you do with the sharp rocks?” Sunset asked, as though slightly frightened of what the answer might be.
Before Applejack could answer, the air was suddenly rent by the self-important tones of Adagio Dazzle. Adagio really didn’t need to greet them quite so loudly, or maybe that was just Fluttershy’s private opinion, given how her personally preferred greeting volume was closer to the Did someone hear that? level.
As though plucked from a Hollywood music video, Adagio and her sisters sauntered forward in a cool triangle-formation, rather like they were about to burst out singing. They didn’t, but did stride towards Fluttershy and her friends in what Fluttershy took to be an aggressive way, although this didn’t alarm her. She’d long settled it in her mind that this was just how the sirens walked anywhere at any time. The exception was Sonata, who as usual was airily distracted, rather like a child in a toy shop.
Fluttershy’s eyes zipped down, drawn to something white on Sonata’s hand.
“Are you feeling any better?” Fluttershy asked her. “Adagio said that you were bitten by an animal.”
“Oh yeah,” Sonata grinned, holding up the hand and blushing. “It was a total accident though, I think.”
“You think?” Rainbow asked, one eye narrowed suspiciously.”
Aria snorted, having just given Rainbow and Applejack high-fives. “Oh yeah, listen to this story,” she sneered, giving Sonata the Let’s hear it look.
Sonata shot back a scowl, her cheeks reddening. “I told you, I was just rummaging through the apples, and it bit me!”
“What did?” Applejack asked. “Ah done told you those apples was gettin’ old when you had ‘em off me, but ah didn’t except y’all to be getting physically hurt from ‘em.”
“You sold them rotten apples?” Rarity asked, a slightly distasteful tone to her voice.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aria explained. “We needed them that way. They’re better when they’ve fermented a little.”
“Oh,” Rarity said, brightening a little. “You’re making something with them?”
“A few things,” Adagio said blithely.
“Didn’t take you for the cooking type,” Rainbow Dash said bluntly.
Adagio shrugged. “When you’ve lived as long as we have, you either go insane, or you get a hobby. And believe me, insanity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“We’ve had a lot of hobbies,” Sonata added cheerfully.
“Gotta say though,” Aria said, looking sidelong at Sonata. “Getting bitten over applesauce and cider; what would Old Nanna Crumble have said about that?”
“I don’t know what did it,” Sonata said, folding her arms and pretending to ignore Aria. “It was dark. It had sharp teeth though. Like a short-legged dog.”
“They do reckon that dogs are omnivorous,” Applejack said fairly.
“Well, whatever the case, let’s pick up in history class,” Rainbow said, gesturing for the double doors. “The bell’s about to ring.”
Despite her unassuming personality, Fluttershy was not an unintelligent person. Although she almost never spoke up in any classes – with the odd exception in biology and yoga – Fluttershy was generally an A-student, with top marks in those classes she excelled in, and slightly above average in those she struggled in.
It had not escaped Fluttershy’s notice that a series of events seemed to be interconnected. Mr. Nizbit goes missing on the same day that Sonata is bitten by some unknown animal, allegedly whilst searching through a pile of rotten apples at her home. And then she finds Mr. Nizbit lagging drunk around the graveyard with rotten apple remains on his lips. It didn’t take Twilight or Rarity to put two-and-two together.
But there was one major problem with this connection.
The graveyard and the siren’s home, which Fluttershy and her friends had been invited to in the early stages of their armistice with the sirens when the latter had been intent on impressing their old foes, was on the far side of town in the posh district, where their centuries of accruing wealth had earned them a fairly comfortable residence.
There was no possible way that Fluttershy could think of that Mr. Nizbit could have travelled all the way across the city and back again. Not in a single day, and certainly not drunk. The idea was simply ludicrous. She concluded that it must have been some other animal that had attacked Sonata, which gave her some small measure of comfort to know that it hadn’t been any animal that she knew.
At the same time, Fluttershy was earnestly solicitous for Sonata’s health, given what she said had happened to her, and because Fluttershy found Sonata to be the most identifiable of the three sisters. Adagio was haughty and arrogant, and Aria often sour or rowdy, qualities that the others often found charming now that the three of them weren’t trying to conquer the world. Sonata on the other hand was more open, since she had a tendency to speak before thinking, and had a genuine curiosity about everything, which made her easy to engage in conversation. She didn’t intimidate Fluttershy as the other two sometimes did.
“You don’t have to,” Sonata said at the end of school as Fluttershy offered to re-bandage her arm. Sonata rubbed a little at the small red spot on the dirtied white fabric. “The doctor said it’d be fine.”
“Well if you’re okay,” Fluttershy said, pulling back her hand. “I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“I want to see something gross!” Pinkie interjected. Her grin slid slowly off her face as Fluttershy looked awkward, and Sonata blank. “I mean, if you don’t mind,” she added in a voice much closer to Fluttershy’s usual tone.
“Nah, forget that!” Rainbow said raucously, putting an arm around Fluttershy’s shoulders, making her jump. “Tell Sonata about what we did last night.”
“And that’s our cue to leave,” Adagio said quickly. “Come on, Aria.”
“I don’t know,” Aria said, looking between Rainbow and Fluttershy and smirking. “I think I want to hear this.”
“Come on,” Adagio said a little louder, tugging Aria’s collar. “Sonata, you get a ride back with someone else.”
“Okay!” Sonata called as Adagio and Aria walked away. She turned to Rarity, who didn’t immediately notice her whilst glued to her phone’s screen. Then she frowned.
“Look up. Love Pinkie.” Rarity read. Frowning, she looked up, and nearly had a heart attack as she found Sonata’s face inches from her own, her enormous magenta eyes sparkling with friendly merriment.
“Hey Rarity,” Sonata said in a slightly sing-song voice. “Could you give me a ride home?”
“Err...” Rarity said, clearing her throat.
“Fluttershy, tell her about the thing!” Rainbow said, evidently growing impatient. “About the our epic spy quest in the ♪ graaaveyaaaaard! ♪ ”
“Graveyard?” Sonata asked, retreating from Rarity’s personal bubble.
“Graveyard!?” Pinkie cried. “Oh! Did you—“
“What we did,” Rainbow cut across her, pinching Pinkie’s lips closed before she could begin a long tangential expostulation. “Is we went to the graveyard last night to find out some total creep whose been messing with Fluttershy’s animal cemetery.”
“Messing with your animal’s graves?” Sunset frowned.
“Well, that’s just indecent!” Rarity cried sympathetically.
“Why didn’t you tell us about it, Fluttershy?” Sunset asked.
“Oh, well, I didn’t want to cause any—“
“We had it covered,” Rainbow said confidently, patting Fluttershy’s shoulder bracingly. “We camped out there last night to try to catch the punk whose been doing it.”
“Mat sunds weely vun!” Pinkie commented casually, her lips still in Rainbow’s vice pinch.
“Someone’s been messing with your animal cemetery?” Sonata asked, her brow creasing a little. “Did they damage anything?”
“Oh, it was nothing really,” Fluttershy said quickly, seeing that Sonata looked a little perturbed. “Really, I only noticed someone was there because they left some charcoal behind.”
This partial truth somewhat rankled with Fluttershy’s internal sense of honesty. Whilst not as robust perhaps as Applejack, Fluttershy simply didn’t have the nerves to maintain a lie, and so frequently had to present them to herself as partial truths, or tiny misdirections. To help cover herself, she asked Sonata if she knew the graveyard they meant.
Sonata looked around at Adagio and Aria driving away in Adagio’s white Subaru. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever been to that one,” she said distractedly. “It’s kind of on the other side of town, you know?”
“That’s what I thought,” Fluttershy muttered, remembering her previous line of reasoning.
“Huh?” Sonata asked.
“O-Oh, nothing!” Fluttershy stammered, smiling a little as she slid unconsciously backwards a step.
“So we’re going back tonight, right?” Rainbow asked, pulling the goggles out of her bag and slipping them onto her face. “We’ll totally catch this dirt-bag tonight. He can’t hide forever! Not from ‘Hawk-Eye’ Dash.”
“Hawk-Eye?” Rarity asked narrowly.
“My new sobriquet,” Rainbow said in an extra-refined voice.
“Ya’lls word of the week?” Applejack asked, sniggering.
“Hey, I can use big words as good as the next guy,” Rainbow said robustly, although the effect of her tone was slightly marred by the distant honking of a horn from the road beyond the school statue. “Coming dad!” she called. “Hey Fluttershy, wear something dark when we meet up at the graveyard tonight, okay? Don’t want this guy seeing us before we nab him.”
“O-Oh! B-But, Rainbow Dash—“
“Later!”
Fluttershy tried to call after her, but all of the words she attempted to summon forth died on her lips.
I’m actually surprised, Fluttershy realised. After all of this time, after so many times of this happening, I’m still able to be surprised by her.
- To be Continued
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6940650 I do love references, you know
6941082 It's not what one might call a world-changing scoop, but it gives a little insight into some character's lives.
6945181 I will neither confirm nor deny either of those things.
Despite everything happening being cute and funny (aside from the whole graveyard business), knowing Daniel's tendencies, I can't help bracing all the time for unexpected bloodbath.
Or vampires.
6958590 Hahaha!! That would be just like me, wouldn't it?
The story is already written, and I can promise you there are neither bloodbaths or vampires.
I'm trying to switch it up a little from my usual stuff with this story, although given the view rate maybe that wasn't the best idea.
6958903
I think it has less to do with it, but rather with this story being a fanfic overall. Most of the time people read mlp (or any other) fan fiction to fill up that mlp-shaped hole in their hearts/brains/whatever and the most appealing content most of the time is something that is:
1) Very clear in it’s purpose
2) Covers specific zone of interest created by the show or something else that is IN atm.
3) Fan service.
To make a parallel with some of your stuff –Evening Sonata came out in a perfect time for people starving for proper resolution and more of the characters overall they grow to like and sympathize with in the movie – sirens and Sunset. The story itself was a straight, and what felt like, a natural continuation of the events of the movie. Combine those with a great talent = tons of attention and love.
RoR on the other hand had less to do with mlp (in tone and content) but rather with fantasy epic, which is fine and good but not the reason people are reading these stories in the first place.
So does this story – from its presentation (vague title, gloomy cover art and description from a mystery novel rather than pony story) it doesn’t have that mlp feel to it nor mainstream appeal elements such as tits, explosions or any other kind of fan service. It’s very well written and I’m really interested in where the story will go, but I would lie if said that when I first saw this story in my feed I went “Oh yeah, this is gonna be good!” instead of “Huh. Ok, let’s have a look”.
6958972 Fair point. It's too bad I write what I want to write rather than what's trending at the time
That's a wonderfully in-depth analysis of the minds of the FIMfiction readers.
6958903 I know some people, like me. Added this to their read later list and take forever to get around to it.