Looking For Trouble

by CoffeeMinion

Chapter 1: Canterlot High Basement, 5:03pm

“You couldn’t just leave well enough alone,” Sunset said.

Her rugged hand reached through the lonely pool of light cast by a lantern hanging above a rickety table. It hovered over the cold metal of a revolver for a few heartbeats, fingers curling toward the powder burns on its muzzle. Then it moved to a beat-up black cassette tape player next to the revolver, and pushed a button. For long moments, the machine issued sounds of rapid whirring interspersed with garbled squeaks. Then those were replaced by a low sound of the mechanism gaining tension as the tape reached its beginning.

A loud *click* split the air as she pressed the player’s stop button. Her prisoner jerked.

“Do you realize the position that this leaves me in?” Sunset asked. “I’ve taken care of him, but that doesn’t get the rest of us off the hook, does it?”

Sunset shook her head, then eyed the gun. “I don't know what I want to do with you. All I know is that I’ve got one body that's gonna need a hole dug, and if I’m digging one anyway…”

She reached down and pressed play. “I want you to hear what he told me, in his own words. Then maybe you can tell me why what I was doing mattered when we're done.”

For a moment the tape player made no sound save for a low hiss. But then there was crackling, followed by a deep voice:

Name’s Troubleshoes Clyde, ma’am. Yep, hand to Harmony, that’s actually m’name. Reckon I ain’t never been the luckiest fellow around the North Amareican desert. I suppose that’s pretty clear by now, what with these ropes and everything…