The day after an all-night rave, Vinyl Scratch is disturbed by a knock at her door. A chipper, earnest filly greets her. This will not end well.
Vinyl Scratch, having overdone it at her latest gig and lost her voice, is trying to sleep it off when, first thing in the afternoon, there's a knock at her door. Greeting her is a friendly, earnest filly wanting money for… something. Filly Scouts, apparently. Seems they help those in need, whether those in need want it or not. Can Vinyl keep her sanity and her home intact over several days of kids visiting her? Considering these kids, probably not. A series of short vignettes.
This story takes place (and was almost entirely written) prior to "Crusaders Of The Lost Mark".
The house stood on its own block just to the northeast of Ponyville’s city centre – or what passes for it in such a small town. Unlike most homes in the neighbourhood, which tended to be unusually close together in an utterly hodgepodge layout reflecting the town’s long history of lacking proper city planning, this place had been given a wide berth, as if the other houses were actively trying to stay away from it. One would not be able to understand why from its appearance – a modest two storey home built in the same whimsical wood frame thatched roof style as every other house around it, with a mailbox just outside the front door stamped with a pair of barred eighth notes. Really the only thing that seemed out of sorts was that this house’s front door was adorned with a doorbell instead of a knocker.
Sweetie Belle tiptoed tentatively up the three steps to the door, a bead of sweat slipping down her bone-white cheek. Hoof trembling, she pressed the doorbell as gently as possible.
BWRRRRR!! WUB-WUB-WUB! BWRRRRR!! TWEEEEEEET!!! came the sound from inside, muffled more than one would expect, though it was clearly an absurdly loud chime. It was so counter to Sweetie Belle’s expectations that she took a step back in shock… and promptly tripped down the steps.
Once her eyes and brain stopped rattling, Sweetie Belle recovered and stepped – slightly less worriedly – back to the door. What little confidence she had evaporated as she prepared to press the doorbell again, though at least now she knew what to expect. Luckily for her, just as she reached out her hoof, the door opened.
Sweetie Belle found herself face to face with the house’s occupant, a white unicorn mare like herself, but older, though probably still younger than Rarity. Like Sweetie Belle, the mare had a two tone mane and tail. Unlike her, this mare’s mane was neon, cut short and styled in a severely modern fashion; her tail was the same – a shorter version of Rainbow Dash’s tail style, Sweetie noted. She wore violet-tinted glasses that almost entirely obscured her eyes, making her mood impossible for Sweetie to read. Most importantly, at least to Sweetie Belle, the mare had a cutie mark, identical to the one on the mailbox. Sweetie recognized her.
“Oh, hi!” Sweetie said, chipper but still tentative. “You’re that pony my big sister hired for her fashion show last year.”
The mare nodded her head, expressionless, proving Sweetie Belle was not insane, at least not on this point.
“So, uh, I was just in the neighbourhood and, uh, I…” Sweetie trailed off as the mare cocked her head in confusion.
Realizing her faux-pas, Sweetie remembered her manners. “Oh right. Uh, my name is Sweetie Belle. What’s your name?”
The mare opened her mouth, coughed, then grimaced for a second as her horn emanated a magenta aura and she levitated a small whiteboard and marker over to herself. In below-average penmanship, she wrote, “Vinyl Scratch”.
“Hi, Vinyl. C-can you not talk?” asked Sweetie, genuinely concerned.
Vinyl sighed and shook her head no.
Taking a deep breath, Sweetie continued, holding up a catalogue. “I’m sorry to bug you this afternoon, but it’s that time of year again, th-the time for Filly Scout Cookies! Me and my friends are trying to get our cutie marks, and we figured merit badges might be a good start (pretty sure we haven’t tried this one before). So we’re going around the neighbourhood taking cookie orders. But I didn’t know you can’t talk, so if you want me to leave, I’ll just go.”
Vinyl tilted her head down, appearing to stare into Sweetie Belle’s big, green, puppy-like eyes for a moment. Then she smiled as she slowly turned to go back into her house, beckoning Sweetie to follow.
“Oh. Thank you!” replied Sweetie as she cantered into the house.
The interior of Vinyl Scratch’s home was, to put it lightly, a mess. Surfaces had clearly not been dusted in several months. Random papers littered the small living area taking up most of the non-kitchen part of the ground floor, along with piles of plastic wrapping, packing materials, and cardboard boxes large enough for a grown mare to fit inside. In the middle of the room, in front of a disused dusty green sofa, sat a coffee table adorned with things that were not coffee… and possibly not legal in Ponyville.
“Yo-your place is…nice. It looks… lived-in,” Sweetie said, trying her best to make conversation with the mute Vinyl.
Vinyl coughed. She frowned again and quickly scrawled a note on the whiteboard for Sweetie to read: “Lost my voice”
“Oh, that’s awful. Do you need me to help you find it?” asked Sweetie with utter sincerity.
If Vinyl had been capable of speech, she would have been left speechless. Instead, she face-hoofed.
Sweetie Belle cocked her head at this, her brow furrowed, a slight frown on her face. Before Vinyl could write out an inquiry on her board, Sweetie’s expression abruptly changed to upbeat.
“I’ve got it!” she said in a near-scream, her voice cracking. “Filly-Scout Cookies may be a great medicine, but it’ll take a couple of weeks for the boxes to get here. In the meantime, I’ll help you get your voice back!”
“Please Don’t.” Vinyl wrote as quickly as she could, waving the board in front of Sweetie’s face just to ensure she noticed.
“But…” Sweetie’s countenance drooped just as quickly as it had perked up a second before, “I want to be useful.”
Vinyl nodded slowly. She scratched her chin for a minute. That was enough time for Sweetie to swing back to confident.
“Ah! Don’t you worry, Ms Vinyl Scratch! I got this,” Sweetie said with a smirk, a firm determination behind her words, as she trotted up the stairs.
Vinyl Scratch made it to the upper floor of her home in time to see Sweetie Belle open one of the three doors in the short hallway. Inside, Sweetie found a room in such a state of disrepair as to make the living room seem immaculate. Sheets and random accessories were strewn about the place. A floor lamp in one corner was covered by a checkered blanket. There appeared to be a bed against one wall, but it might have been a trash pile. Various food wrappers, bags, and cans of drinks Sweetie was too young to try filled in the gaps where the wood floor might have otherwise been visible. In one corner lay fifteen broken alarm clocks. The single window was covered with a light blocking curtain. A washbasin on the wall nearest the door had become home to a rapidly growing species of weed.
“Shoot. I’ll never be able to find a lozenge in all this mess,” Sweetie muttered to herself. She turned furtively and trotted to the door across the landing. Vinyl attempted to stop her from opening the door but failed.
Sweetie Belle’s eyes went wide as she beheld the room’s contents. It was a second bedroom, again with a single window, but devoid of everything except for a mass of musical equipment. Two six-foot-tall speakers flanked a setup complete with two analog turntables, a mixer in between, a box for connecting all of that together in addition to a microphone and headphones, and a little synthesizer for inserting extra sounds into songs on the fly. Everything was edged with neon blue glowy material (currently not glowing) and emblazoned with Vinyl Scratch’s distinctive eighth notes cutie mark.
“Wow,” Sweetie said, stunned out of anything more coherent. What is that?
“It’s My Setup.” Vinyl wrote on the whiteboard, her face failing to conceal a grin.
“That’s so cool! No wonder Rarity hires you. It’s like you’re—Oooh! What’s that ??”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes had wandered and set themselves upon an object opposite the window. It was a cube, about three feet on each end (not counting its locked wheels), completely black, and perfectly smooth except for a single large red button on top. From her childish vantage point, Sweetie could barely see the button; she quickly realized she could reach it if she jumped.
She shuffled toward the mysterious cube, her mind devoid of any thought but “button”.
Vinyl noticed Sweetie’s movement and tried to call to her, but all that came out was a pathetic croak. She levitated the whiteboard and hurled it at Sweetie, realizing halfway that possibly destroying her only current method of communication was a bad idea, and so stopped it mid-hurl to place it gingerly down on the floor.
In the meantime, Sweetie Belle hoisted her front half onto the cube for ease of button pressing. “What does this button do?” she asked as she pressed it with a satisfying ‘click’.
At once, the room began to rumble. The cube opened up underneath Sweetie Belle, causing her to drop back to the floor, whereupon she found herself staring at twelve speakers – eight from the book-like front of the cube and four more that had popped out from the back. Before her mind had the time to process this, however, they activated.
That bass line was so substantial and loud that it knocked Sweetie Belle off balance, sending her tumbling backwards, head over hooves, until she crashed through the wall, falling to the ground ten feet below and taking a significant chunk of wall and window with her.
Vinyl Scratch, unable to stop Sweetie Belle’s unintentional defenestration, ran toward the newly-created hole in the side of her house, her glasses falling off in her hurry. Outside, all she could see was a pile of wood and glass partially obscured by a cloud of dust. She moped over to her bass cannon and pressed the red button again to deactivate it. After the speakers had retracted, she could hear – as best as a professional nightclub DJ can hear at any rate – the gaggle of her neighbours that had gathered outside her home to rubberneck at the wreckage. She also heard a rustling of wood and glass and a high-pitched voice coughing as its owner exited the destruction with only a few scratches.
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.
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!!”
Manehattan, the City of Lights, the Big Applesauce (or, for its detractors, the Big Horse-Apple). Located on a large, vaguely triangular island along Equestria’s eastern coast, it has been the most populous city in the kingdom for more than two centuries, easily eclipsing the staid and stodgy capital: Canterlot. Part of this is due to Manehattan being an extremely active port and trading centre, with all the industry and jobs and population that that entails. Another reason is that, in direct contrast to Canterlot’s overwhelmingly Unicorn population (who work very hard to keep it that way), Manehattan has always been open to all races – it even has a district on the north side that is home to a small population of Civilized Dragons, and another district nearby that, according to rumours, is a haven for Changelings.
All of this diversity means the city is the absolute heart of Equestrian culture. Nearly every single artistic movement (aside from Canterlot’s High Society or the Lowest-Common-Denominator films made by Los Pegasus’s Applewood) has had its genesis in Manehattan. This applies doubly to music; the city has multiple thriving scenes, covering just about any genre one can imagine. Including electronica and dance music.
Vinyl Scratch strutted triumphantly along Princessway, the main thoroughfare through the island running from the Financial/Government District in the southeast to the Great Bridge in the northwest and abutting one side of the Great Maneahata Park that takes up the centre of the island. She had just, the previous night, begun crashing on the couch of a friend of a friend named Coco who worked in the Garment/Fashion District, and wanted to get a walk in to give Coco space.
The reason for her glee was that she finally had her voice back. Plus, insurance finally reimbursed her for her lost home and equipment after more than two months of haranguing. Plus, her old friend and rival Octavia Melody, during her residency with the Manehattan Orchestra, landed Vinyl a gig doing DJ-ing at Eighty-Six-It, the most popular nightclub in the city. She would get to ply her trade with the best in the business, like Deadh0rse and The Galloping Gravestone. Maybe, if she could form lasting connections here, she could finally move out of Ponyville and to a real city.
As she daydreamed of her new better life in Manehattan, Vinyl tripped on something and tumbled forward head-over-tail for a few feet. She blushed slightly as she stood up and dusted herself off, hoping no important pony saw that. When she turned around to see what it was that threw her off, she found herself face to face with a slightly chubby burnt-orange filly with green eyes and freckles sporting a hot pink mane nearly as stylishly coiffed as her own… who sported a green khaki vest and no cutie mark. When she spoke, her voice seemed unusually deep and boyish for her size, and carried the thick accent of Manehattan’s Upper Docklands District.
“Hey, uh,” the filly said. “Wazzup? I’m not real good at this, but my cousin out in the country talked me into trying it. So, uh, you wanna buy some Filly Sco—”
Vinyl Scratch turned around abruptly and walked briskly toward the nearest train station.
