"He’s got a face only a mother could love."
“There they are! Heh, right where I left ‘em.”
Applejack and Braeburn were standing in a dirt corral, overshadowed by a positively gargantuan mountain of hay bales, with ponies descending from its outcrops. Three fillies crossed the empty space side by side to join them. In the time it had taken the stallion to notice they were gone, Scootaloo had splurged on a colossal novelty fake cactus hat, while Apple Bloom had opted for buying a headband with green pennants. Sweetie Belle had wisely chosen a caramel apple instead, knowing that any chapeau that she brought home that was horrid or in bad taste would be confiscated for being a crime against fashion.
“Ouuuuuch! My foreleg! Hurts so much…!” Braeburn moaned as he shrank away from Applejack’s displeased stare. His lower lip pouted, not unlike a fish with collagen injections.
The stallion’s whimper was met with giggles and snorts from the young ones, who clearly didn’t believe him in the slightest. Braeburn’s eyelid twitched. Quite possibly they found his complaint insubstantial, or worse, his pain amusing.
“Y’all can’t go runnin’ off like that, y’hear?” the mare chastised, leaning in. “Backstage ain’t no kind of playground!”
“Sorry, Applejack. We won’t wander off again.” Apple Bloom looked her in the eye as she said it.
Braeburn sputtered and turned to Applejack. “Hold up just a sec, cousin! That ain’t all they’ve got to be sorry ‘bout! I’ve been injured, and they’re laughing like it ain’t a big deal!”
The mare snickered a little. “Sounds like your pride’s been hurt more than that leg, Braeburn.”
“I ain’t kiddin’ with you, Applejack!” Braeburn declared, speaking over fresh peals of laughter from the fillies. “You can get hurt bad in this business!”
The mirth abruptly came to a screeching halt, and they all looked away, to the ground or elsewhere. They were silent for a few seconds as Braeburn’s eyes shifted left and right.
“Well, shucks cousin,” said Applejack, pulling her hat off to cover her chest. “I’m mighty sorry. If you don’t mind me askin’, how’d it happen anyway?”
“Oh don’t worry,” said an orange-red stallion with a green mane, as he jumped off the bottom layer of the hay stack and passed them by. “He’ll tell you.”
“What did he mean by that?” Apple Bloom inquired.
Braeburn shook his head hurriedly and shrugged. “Who did? I ain’t heard nothin’! You must be imaginin’ things. Anyhow, as I was ‘bout ta say…”
Braeburn galloped hard down the dusty track. The sound of his hoofbeats mingled with those of the stocky male buffalo charging beside him, who was matching his speed, but breathing in sharp pained gasps. A hoofful of ponies cheering and whooping looked on from the fence. Risking a glance from the corner of his eye, Braeburn saw a single drop of sweat roll down the bull’s face. With a mighty primal scream, the stallion sprung for the horns of the beast, locked his forelegs around them, and swung over its back to the other side before plunging into the dirt with his back hooves and wrenching the bull’s neck. The buffalo was thrown off balance and brought crashing down, carving a trench through the earth. Braeburn was dragged along for a stretch, holding on with the remains of his strength, until they stopped at the other end of the corral.
“What have you done to my warrior!?” a deep voice bellowed.
Braeburn rolled over stiffly, patted some dust free, and slowly came to his hooves. Suddenly he felt a hot blast of air blow into his face and he blinked in surprise. The stallion was now face-to-face with the noble leader of the local indigenous tribe, Chief Thunderhooves. Although he was already a particularly beefy buffalo, his ceremonial feathered headdress helped him cut an even more imposing figure. The overall effect was similar to standing directly behind a jet engine as it turns on and the exhaust nozzle flares. Braeburn did his best to hold his ground, but there was nothing he could do about his shaking hooves.
“When I was told you needed a replacement opponent for your rodeo’s steer wrestling event, I was not expecting… this!” Thunderhooves jabbed a hoof in the direction of the downed bull, who was still face down and enveloped in a dust cloud. “This was proposed to us as a sport of honor!”
“Now see here, Chief!” The town sheriff, a mustachioed stallion with a silver badge on his vest, was suddenly right between the two of them. “What we got here’s a failure to communicate, and as Sheriff, it’s my job to keep the peace when there are any disagreements between parties—”
Chief Thunderhooves rounded on him immediately. “You call this a ’disagreement?’ This is no mere differing of opinion, Silverstar! This once proud brave has been disgraced in your… one-sided mockery of competition! How will he face his family and his ancestors?”
As they had been quarreling, the buffalo in question had managed to get to his hooves and the dust cloud had dissipated. A massive purple lump had grown above his eye, completely covering it. One horn was cracked and he smiled a semi-toothy grin as he picked up a couple molars from the ground.
“That ain’t a problem, your Chiefiness. He’s got a face only a mother could love,” Braeburn quipped.
“Why in tarnation would you say that to Chief Thunderhooves?!” Applejack shouted, staring Braeburn down. “Ain’t you got any sense?”
“I’m not sure he does,” said the green-maned pony, now standing near Scootaloo. The fillies looked up at him curiously. He merely grinned in response.
“Seriously, what is your deal?” Scootaloo asked.
“Forget him,” said Apple Bloom, looking back to Braeburn. “Listen, that don’t mean rodeos are dangerous, buffalo are! If he hogtied you and whooped your flank for rubbin’ salt in the wound—”
“Salt? Did somepony say salt?” rasped an older blonde stallion with a combover mullet and a black vest, walking up to the other stallion.
“That ain’t how it happened, little filly!” Braeburn exclaimed. “I’ll have you know I did the flank-whooping, thank you very much!”
Sweetie Belle chomped out a bite of her caramel apple and swallowed it. “Go on, Mr. Braeburn. What happened next?”
“You have insulted my warrior and our traditions for the last time, pony!” Chief Thunderhooves blustered, spraying a fine mist of saliva into Braeburn’s face. “There is only one course of action now.”
Braeburn and Sheriff Silverstar held their breath. The onlookers watched from the fence intently. A solitary tumbleweed drifted and bounced along.
“We shall settle this on the field of combat!” roared the Chief.
“But Chief,” said Braeburn timidly, “we don’t have a field.” He patted the ground with a hoof. “This is dirt.”
Chief Thunderhooves snorted. The spittle on Braeburn’s face dried instantaneously.
“You think you can wrestle buffalo? This is your chance. We shall meet again at nightfall.”
And with that, the Chief swiveled around and stomped away, and the defeated buffalo meekly followed close behind him. The moment they exited the corral, the surrounding ponies erupted with whooping and cheering, flinging their hats and kicking their hooves spiritedly. Braeburn barely noticed the Sheriff put an arm behind his neck and guide him away, out of the lot and to a barely-standing covered wagon just on the other side of the fence. At the far end, Chief Thunderhooves and his disgraced brave entered a stately-looking tipi and closed the flap behind them.
“Partner, I got bad news, and I got worse news. Firstly, I reckon you’ve only got a hoofful of hours ‘till this showdown at sundown,” said the Sheriff, pushing Braeburn up into the wagon.
Braeburn clambered over the edge, sat down on the wooden bench inside heavily, and closed his eyes. “That’s just swell. What’s the worse news?”
Sweetie Belle polished off the caramel apple. “Where the hay are all these ponies coming from?”
The two stallions that had butted their way in were now joined by a small circle of other ponies. Some were stifling guffaws, while others passed bits to each other secretly. Braeburn didn’t seem to notice them at all. Nor did he notice Applejack’s gaze of sheer passiveness. It was the sort of face one has when watching infomercials early in the morning, waiting for actual TV programming to start.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Applejack was also responding in a flat and uninterested way, using the voice she had reserved solely for telemarketers, at least up until this point.
“Who cares, Sweetie Belle?” Scootaloo lifted the novelty hat from her face. “This story’s gettin’ so good! I didn’t know buffalo wrestling was a rodeo event!”
“Ah can’t wait to try it out! What would a cutie mark for that even look like?” Apple Bloom stared at her flank. “A buffalo, maybe?”
A wooly multi-ton sack of fat and muscle barreled into Braeburn, sending him up into the air. He flailed wildly before coming down again into a folding table to the sounds of sympathetic oohs and aahs. Although the stallion survived, the table was much less fortunate. Braeburn groaned as he woozily tried to stand up again.
“And the table is cracked in haaaaaaalf!” cried out a voice somewhere to his right. “The Chief is really bringing the pain tonight, folks!”
Through his blurred vision and a bright spotlight shining on him, Braeburn saw the buffalo he’d wrestled earlier, sitting next to Sheriff Silverstar at a counter with two microphones. Wooden bleachers had been erected around the ring and packed with ponies and buffalo alike, all of them on their hooves, cheering and stomping. The ring itself had been hastily constructed from a canvas mat and rope wrapped around barrels placed in the corners. Chief Thunderhooves, clad in a spandex one-piece, was running for the opposite side.
“True, this has been a rough debut match for Matburn, but he’s still getting to his hooves! He’s taken lick after lick in this wrangle, and I reckon he ain’t down and out yet!” Sheriff Silverstar pointed a hoof at his co-host with gusto.
The buffalo commentator leaned into his microphone, watching the action intently. “Thunderhooves is heading for the rope! He bounces off and—oh! OH! It’s a flying calf kiiiiick!”
The Chief had taken a flying leap and struck the pony in the face with the back of his rear leg before landing again. Braeburn fell to the mat and rolled about in agony as Thunderhooves roared heartily with laughter, rushing to the ropes to cheer back and pander to the audience.
“Matburn doesn’t look like he can take much more of this! There’s no way he’ll exit this squared circle conscious, much less with a victory!” The injured bull pointed to his forehead lump. “You think this is bad? By the time Chief Thunderhooves is through with him, he’ll have bumps on top of his bumps!”
“Sugar and salt licks, what’s that?!” exclaimed the Sheriff.
Outside the ring, a clown with a yellow bow tie, white face makeup, and a red bulbous nose trotted up with many pies precariously stacked on his cowpony hat. He stopped at the ropes, licked his hooves, selected a pie from the middle of the tall trembling tower of tarts, whisked it out, and slid it over to Braeburn.
“Why, it’s Yoink, Appleoosa’s very own rodeo clowning legend and wrestler-with-a-clown-gimmick!” Silverstar stated. “And he’s brought along tasty victuals for—”
The stallion’s floundering hooves had found the pie, and while Thunderhooves was still showboating, Braeburn tapped the buffalo chief on the shoulder, and smashed the pie straight into his snout when he turned around.
“Oh no! Oh, what a terrible, improper, sheer misuse of culinary treats! I can’t watch!” The buffalo commentator covered his unblocked eye with a hoof and visibly shook with distress.
Silverstar nodded sagely. “I’ll betcha that’ll be mighty hard for the Chief to clean outta his fur, not t’mention his headdress! He looks like one mad cow, lemme tell ya!”
Braeburn was backing up slowly, laughing nervously, biting at a hoof as Thunderhooves advanced menacingly on him while slowly licking the remnants of pie dripping off his face. Suddenly the clown skipped around the outside of the ring with a pie balanced perfectly on his head and gave it a toss right between the two. There was a moment where the two fighting wrestlers exchanged looks between each other, the pie, and back again. Yoink honked his nose.
As if that was a signal, Thunderhooves dove for the pie first, and Braeburn’s own leap of faith sent him sailing right over the buffalo chief and into the ropes. They buckled under his weight and repelled him again, just as Thunderhooves stood up, with the pie held in his outstretched hoof. Braeburn’s collision dented the baking tin.
“Looks like Matburn’s been roped—” began Sheriff Silverstar.
“—Into a sticky situation!” the cohost finished.
Braeburn jumped back up and put some space between him and his opponent as Yoink began tossing pie after pie at random. The wrestlers danced about the deserts dotting the ring, scooping them up and flinging them from a safe distance. Some hit their mark. Many missed and ended up in the audience, or more accurately, on the audience. The stallion reached down for the umpteenth time and came up empty. He looked to Yoink, but the stack of pies on his head was now gone. The clown shrugged, reached under his hat, extracted a folding chair, and haphazardly pitched it over the ropes. Braeburn watched in horror as it landed next to Thunderhooves.
“I just can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Sweetie Belle.
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo nodded, looking out into the crowd. Somehow in the time Braeburn had gone on to tell about the wrestling match, it seemed that the entirety of Appleoosa had managed to gather around. A particularly entrepreneurial pony selling caramel apples was capitalizing on their presence as they hung on Braeburn’s every word. He was making faces and wild gestures to his arm, describing in detail how the chair came down on it repeatedly.
“It’s like, so sad,” Scootaloo said with a sigh. “I mean, couldn’t they have just talked it out?”
Apple Bloom turned about. “C’mon, girls! What’re we waitin’ for?”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle cocked their heads and eyed her askance.
“Well, ain’t it obvious? We gotta find this Chief Thunderhooves and help them work out their differences, in a non-violent, adult manner!” Apple Bloom grinned wide. “We’ll be Cutie Mark Dispute Arbitrators!”
“Cutie Mark Dispute Arbitrators! Yay!” they whispered in unison, and snuck off into the crowd. Applejack didn’t notice their disappearance at all as she had fallen asleep on her hooves.
The fillies weaved and navigated through a sea of legs until they reached the end of the crowd and ran off into Appleoosa, down the dusty main road, deserted and abandoned like a 1990’s internet bulletin board system. They passed empty storefronts and saloons, and even the horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages were nowhere in sight. Suddenly Sweetie Belle squeaked and pointed to the office of Sheriff Silverstar, where the lawpony himself was dozing with his back against a post.
“S’cuse me, sir,” began Apple Bloom as they trotted up to him, “Weren’t you there when Chief Thunderhooves and Braeburn were wrestling?”
The Sheriff yawned. “Abso-tively, lil’ missy. Saw ‘em with my own two eyes. Why d’you ask?”
The fillies looked to each other and back to him.
“Well, we’re looking for the Chief, ‘cause we want to set things straight!” said Scootaloo.
“Set things straight?” Silverstar asked, opening an eye to examine them. “Shucks, that’s what they were wrestlin’ for in the first place!”
“But they really hurt each other!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
Silverstar sighed. “…Dadgum it all. Where’s he at now?”
Braeburn lay on the mat, barely aware that a referee unicorn was raising his hoof for the first count. The chair was at the edge of the ring, bent out of shape and broken, not entirely unlike he was. Suddenly a microphone dropped on a cord from seemingly nowhere, which was particularly strange considering that there was no ceiling. Thunderhooves snatched it up. The crowd quieted down for the most part as he turned to Braeburn. Even the referee halted.
“Looks like Thunderhooves got something to say!” Silverstar hissed.
“Matburn! What do you say we make this a truly interesting match?” the Chief said, deliberately and menacingly.
Braeburn groaned faintly.
“I’ll forfeit… if you can throw me.”
Braeburn whimpered.
“But, much like how your kind has made changes to this once proud land,” Thunderhooves continued, “I shall make changes to this ring!”
The mat began to rumble underneath them. Braeburn stiffly got up, wincing as he was forced to stand on only three hooves. He looked around wildly as Chief Thunderhooves broke into deep laughter. On every side, metal fencing was rising up from the ground, grinding and scraping louder than the screaming onlookers, finally reaching high above and clanging together. Yoink, who had been sitting on the sidelines and blowing up balloon animals for his own amusement, suddenly tossed aside the highly complex Princess Celestia he had been making, procured a lit torch from underneath his hat, and stuffed it through the fencing. The ropes were set alight in moments.
“Nowhere to flee, Matburn,” yelled Chief Thunderhooves, “and nowhere to hide!”
Braeburn gritted his teeth. The chief was backing up slowly to the far corner of the ring. Both commentators watched fervently, standing up and leaning over their table. Thunderhooves stopped and scraped a hoof against the mat. The pony closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Chief Thunderhooves roared and charged directly for him, spittle flying from his mouth, and feathers falling away from his headdress. Braeburn opened his eyes and crouched low. As the Chief’s horns came a mere hairsbreadth from his face, the stallion swept up with his good front leg, catching him by the waist, and swung Thunderhooves backwards using his own momentum. Both pony and buffalo hit the mat, but Braeburn landed on his back, while the Chief was planted face-first into it.
“No way! Unbelievable!” cried the buffalo commentator. “Even with a broken leg, Matburn’s managed to throw him! He’s thrown Chief Thunderhooves with a Flapapplejack!”
The Chief shook his head and huffed as he lay on the mat. “…Impossible! Inconceivable! I… will not lose!”
Grunting with exertion, Braeburn drug himself with his good leg over and clambered on top of the buffalo, but Thunderhooves continued to rise. Suddenly, Braeburn dug his front legs underneath his opponent’s own limbs to clasp them over his head, and placed a back hoof into the buffalo’s back. Their screams of anguish mingled together as the unicorn referee slid over from the opposite corner and slammed his hoof three times into the mat for the countdown. His judgment and their screams were unheard over the audience roaring with enthusiasm and astonishment.
Sheriff Silverstar hopped up onto the table and swung his hat about triumphantly. “Dag-hoof it, Matburn’s won! Matburn has won by a sugarcube hold!”
“And, well, that’s that, cousin!” said Braeburn exuberantly.
All at once, the audience Braeburn had unknowingly gathered burst into raucous laughter and guffawing, interspersed with the sounds of bits changing hooves. Applejack jerked awake, wiped a trail of drool from her chin, and looked about as her cousin shrank backwards and bit his lip.
“You done, Braeburn?” she asked.
The crowd suddenly parted, allowing Sheriff Silverstar and the Cutie Mark Crusaders to pass. Immediately, Applejack marched purposefully up to them and gave her younger sister a withering look in the eye.
“Apple Bloom! I know Braeburn’s story was as phony as a wooden bit, but you and your friends shouldn’t have walked away like that… again, might I add!” she admonished. “Now thank the nice Sheriff for bringing you back here!”
“Wait a second, sis! Are you sayin’ Braeburn was… was lyin’?” Apple Bloom asked.
The crowd erupted once again in laughter as Braeburn turned as red as the apple on his flank.
“That’s ‘bout the long and short of it,” said Sheriff Silverstar, stroking his mustache. “It’s true, Braeburn and Chief Thunderhooves wrestled. But they were hoof wrestlin’, no more, no less. Furthermore, Braeburn was beaten fair and square, and his leg’s only sprained, not broken.”
“…And it was over the last slice o’ apple pie, too,” added Braeburn timidly.
“So you all knew, and just watched him tell it?” Sweetie Belle piped up.
“That’s right!” the elderly stallion with the combover rasped. “We’ve heard him tell this tall tale in so many ways, we started takin’ bets on how he’d change it! And boy howdy, it’s been wild!”
“This is so disappointing,” said Scootaloo, letting her hat fall back over her face.
“Alright y’all, get back to work! Story time’s over,” said the Sheriff. “We got ourselves a rodeo to put on, and don’t you forget it!”
Slowly the crowd dispersed one by one, leaving behind Applejack, Braeburn, and the three fillies. Not a single pony was left inside the corral but them. For a long time, they were all very silent. Braeburn awkwardly massaged his leg and coughed.
“Say, cousin,” said Braeburn awkwardly, “how’d you know I was fibbin’?”
“Well, I went to Madisoat Square Gardens a little while ago, and watched the Mystery Mare fight Cloverleaf.” Applejack replied offhoofedly. “See, your story was plum packed with details and fightin’ and wrestlin’, but there’s one problem.”
“What’s that?” Braeburn asked.
Applejack shrugged. “You can't have gotten yourself hurt. It’s all fake anyway.”