Another Track

by Owlor

The Bottom Line

Chapter 3. The Bottom Line

The stairway creaked as Mistpouffer stepped on it, ruining his weak attempts at stealth. And with sneaking out of the picture, he opted for intimidation. He nearly roared and his collar puffed up as he sprinted up the stairs. But his rage just echoed across an empty hallway, with not a sign of Sapphire anywhere. Grumbling slightly, Mistpouffer re-adjusted his collar and began stalking down the corridor.

“I know you’re here somewhere,” he said to nopony in particular as he listened intently, analyzing the slightest sound. “Stop acting like I’m your mean old father grounding you for the night just because I don’t get paid to deal with your horse apples.”

He passed a row of very similar doors. The upper floors of Apple Road studios were mainly an office building, but by unspoken agreement, each of the biggest artists of the recording studio had a room dedicated solely to them. Officially the room was usually an office or an archive depending on how active the artist currently was, but it in practice it usually turned into a storage facility for golden records, awards and memorabilia.

One of the doors were half-open,and it seemed to swing back and forth by a fraction of a millimeter, but then again, it could just all be in his head.

“Aha!” the flashy producer exclaimed and trotted towards the door. But when he pushed it aside, he found the room unoccupied.

Sapphire’s ‘trophy room’ was one of the more extravagant in the building, since she gave it a lot of personal care and attention. While some of the other trophy rooms looked a bit like something you’d find in a low-end museum, Sapphire had used her eye for detail to give the room a very clean and tidy look, yet with a few touches that reflected her personality.

For example, there was a touch of vanity in how nonchalantly the platinum records were hung in neat rows right above your field of vision, like they where simple wall-decorations and not sales certifications for ten million sales each, that’s almost one record for each record player in Equestria.

The room also contained a pin-board with a timeline of her carrier and photos illustrating her high points. Mistpouffer couldn’t help but notice that the amount of photos seemed to increase exponentially, and not necessarily because her actual accomplishments increased at the same rate.

There simply wasn’t a lot of photos of her earlier part of her carrier, the earliest photo was a black and white newspaper photo of a young mare with most of her features hidden by long blue hair. Attached to it was a short review article for a coffee shop concert:

‘The Bottom Line is once again scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to re-live their glory days as one of Manehattans premium small scale music clubs. The selection of artist ranges from “not ready for prime-time” to the downright amateurish, with some glimmer of potential. Standing out was the vocal performance of Earth Pony Sapphire Shores, whose strong vocals and stage presence did just enough to make up for the simple instrumentation that gave her songs a rather weak foundation. Perhaps a collaboration with a unicorn musician could prove just what this young artist need to kick-start her carrier...’

The article had no year attached to it and just floated vaguely outside of the time-line along with a few other somewhat cryptic photographs, One of an old decrepit building, one of a pair of rusty horse shoe and a third of an old guitar with several hotel room keys glued to its body.

There was definitely signs of Sapphire in this room: the photo of her smiling together with the singer Wolfsbane had his face scratched off by a guitar pick some scraps of song lyrics where pinned to the wall and one of envelopes on the desk bore one of her trademarks, a doodle of a nautilus shell. And Mistpouffer studied these signs with all the dedication of a tracker before giving up on this thread. In retrospect it didn’t make sense for Sapphire to hide in her own trophy room, where it was pretty much guaranteed that they’d go look for her eventually.

Disappointed, he went back out into the corridor. As soon as he out a hoof on the floor, he heard a creaking sound. Without hesitation, he stormed trough the door next to Sapphire Shore’s trophy room and found himself face-to-face with a large wax statue of a bazooka-playing pony. The fearless stallion put two neat hoof-prints in the abdomen of the sculpture before he regained his composure and noticed his mistake.

“Sorry, Miles Day,” he whispered to the statue. “you really shouldn't startle me like this.”

Miles Day was one of the first earth pony pop musicians to get a wide audience and critical acclaim, back in the days when earth ponies was considered to be naturally inferior for their lack of magic. And while his trophy room wad darkened and mostly forgotten, his legacy was still visible. Pretty much the entire gang around Sapphire Shores where earth ponies after all, and to some extent followed in the trail that Miles had blazed decades before.

“I’m being stupid,” Mistpouffer told himself. “This corridor always creak.”

The gears in his head started turning, there was only one floor left to search, but it’s littered with cubicles forming potential hiding places. If he could lure Sapphire down into this creaky door, he’d have her dead to rights. At the very least, he’d be able to hear her if she still tried to hide.

The upper floor looked surprisingly modern, with minimalistic furniture and curtains made out of stiff cardboard flowers covered in felt that hung from the walls in order to improve acoustics. Most of the floor consisted of cubicles separated by narrow corridors going inwards in a spiralling pattern.

‘Not only is the basement basically a maze, the whole upper floor is a Celestia-damned labyrinth too, was this place built by a minotaur or something?’ Mistpouffer tought with dismay as he made his way trough the corridors, listening intently to any sign of Sapphire.

There was a scuttling sound from right around the corner, and the producer stormed towards it. He could just barely see the hint of something disappearing around the next corner and he picked up the phase.

“I got you now!” he roared. “There’s only one way to go and that’s a dead end.

The flashy pony stopped in his tracks as soon as he rounded the next corner, there was nopony there. A paranoid part of his mind wondered if Sapphire had suddenly acquired flight and was floating above, but that thought disappeared as he looked closer. Staring back at him was a confused and very terrified rat.

“Squeak?” the little animal pleaded as Mistpouffer sighed deeply.

“Sorry to bother you, mr. Rat, keep on doing what it is you’re doing,” he told the rat and went back down towards the basement, his moustache and collar hanging low in resignation.

The basement still looked like a mess after his outburst and both Baritone and Noteworthy seemed to do their best to ignore it. ‘Waiting for Mjölna to fix things, I guess,’ Mistpouffer noted. ‘What a lazy bunch, they should get off their flanks and clean up the mess... the mess that I made,’ he realized.

With barely a greeting to his co-workers, he grabbed the nearest foam-wall in his mouth and started moving it into place. The two sound engineers exchanged glances, battling amongst themselves who’d approach the hot-headed producer and tell him the news. Eventually, as Mistpouffer finished cleaning up at least the worst mess, he noticed the two ponies hesitant looked and approached them, with stern eyes behind his mirrorshades.

“And why are you two dawdling around like this?” he asked. “If there’s something you want to tell me, SPIT IT OUT!”

The two sound engineers took a step back in unison as they saw their boss’ moustache doing that thing where it protruded outwards, like million of miniature tentacles were trying to catch them. This was never a good sign. Noteworthy lost the quick staring contest that took place between the two and blurted out:

“We, found a note, sir...”

“WHAT?! Have you called the guards? Mistpouffers eyes grew to the size of plates and they could see every red vein in his sclera.

“No but-”

Mistpouffer pulled Noteworthy uncomfortably close, to the point where the moustache startled tickling his snout. Cold beads of sweat appeared on the blue pony’s brow.

“Listen to me,” the producer growled in his ear. “If you don't go back in time right now and make it so that you went to get the guards the moment you found the note, I'll fire you so hard your great-grandchildren will be standing in line for the soup kitchen, do you understand?!”

It took Noteworthy a few seconds to understand what the boss meant, but when he figured out, he stammered out:

“I-i-it is not THAT kind of note, sir!”

In a stroke of bravery, Baritone approached the scene. He produced a sloppiy dolfed piece of paper behind his back and held it up for Mistpouffer. The note simply read:
'Imma needa night off, see ya tomorrow, <3’ in Sapphire’s best attempt at cursive.

Mistpouffer wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or more annoyed, so he simply let the note drop down onto the floor.

“Well, at least she's okay,” he remarked. “Good, because otherwise I’dve taken her corpse to a zebra shaman somewhere to raise her for long enough to complete the album, and I don't think a ‘zombie torch singer’ look that would fit her.”

Mistpouffer studied the ground for a while, just long enough for the two engineers to bask in the newfound calm, then he jolted up, rushed to the coathanger and grabbed his hat and coat. His outdoor wear had the same glossy quality as his indoor wear, the coat was white and shiny and the hat was studded with gemstones.

“hey boss, where are you going?” Baritone asked.

“Where do you think I’m going?” Mistpouffer replied, already half out the door. “I'll find her, I'll drag her in here and I'll MAKE her finish this album!”

Comments

[Bad Horse]

Says 8 comments... but there are no comments here.

Seems this story gets shorter every time I check it. I thought it had 5 chapters once.

[Owlor]

Its the same length as before, I just combined the chapters into longer ones cus the short chapter format wasn't working out, and I had to sacrifice the comments in the process.

[Themaskedferret]

Nice story, are you going to do anything with it? *hopeful* i'll try and leave better comments in future honest

[Owlor]

1884040
Not right now I'm afraid. I'm saving that one for when I can get an editor, cus what I'm trying to do with this one requies the language to be more solid than I can get it on my own. To be honest I've had a lot of doubts about my fanfic writing recently, it's kinda felt I've lost my touch at making crowdpleasers like "Cool Jazz", my recent stuff has either its been too bogged down by in-jokes, or been in that twilight zone where it's too dark for most regular fans, but not dark enough for the dark fans.