Vinyl Scratch is in Wub Wub Wub!

Authors Note: Thank the lord for Fire Soul! I had just about given up, and even if I did get more writing done, it was extremely unorganized and I would never have gotten far. He helped me out and set my story straight, as well as given me a very interesting plot suggestion for the rest of my story. Check out his stories! http://www.fimfiction.net/user/Fire%20Soul

Those teal eyes, wide and unfocused, her mouth slightly agape, seemed to be deep enough to pierce the very air that surrounded them. Fluttershy’s leg muscles tensed slightly as she leaned back slightly, her eyes bloodshot from the excessive crying. Her voice left a faint echo against the gridded limestone wall behind her.

“Rainbow… I-“ but she was cut short at the stamp of Rainbow Dash’s right fore hoof striking the dirt path, bringing her multicolored mane close to Fluttershy’s head. Rainbow Dash’s voice was shaking and squeaking.

“Fluttershy… I love you… I love you Fluttershy! Please… please please please Fluttershy I love you. I always have. You’re everything… I want you’re heart and your soul… I want you I NEED YOU!”

Fluttershy’s cringed at the onslaught of alcohol that soon filled the air around her nose, courtesy of the drunken mess before her. For a split second, Fluttershy’s stare went completely blank, not a single emotion to be read. As quickly as it began, her expression turned into a deep scowl, her teal eyes raging with the blunt traumatic force of a Morningstar.

“Rainbow Dash! How could you? How could you?!” Fluttershy’s voice slowly climbed in volume, and in strength of the words she said, until her sentences became a various crescendo of words. “You ignore all of your friends, who just want to help you, you get drunk constantly,” Fluttershy slowly rises off the ground, beating the wings to the rhythm of her words, until she is angled down and staring wide eyed at Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow’s back arched inward as she forcibly lowered herself caught in the line of Fluttershy’s intense gaze while the yellow pony continues with her onslaught.

“AND to make it all worse, you attack the pony I love?! What is wrong with you!”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes went wide, stricken with awe at the emphasis on love, as her heart was cleaved in twain with the power of an emotional scythe, forcing a burning pain up through her heart and out her eyes. A trail of tears rolled over her rosy cheeks, slowly backing away from the angry yellow and pink bee in front of her. Fluttershy only continued forward, pressing on.

“DID YOU HEAR ME RAINIBOW DASH?”

Rainbow Dash slunk back, turned on backwards on her heels, and shot away, flapping her wings as hard as her muscles would allow, fully aware that there was no chance that the mare left behind her could follow. The extremities of the wind continually pressed the wind on the tears welling up on Dash’s eyes, pushing the salty tear infused wind back into her eyes, making her blink rapidly.

Slowly descending to the ground, heart beating out of her chest, Rainbow couldn’t bear the pain of what her pony love had just said. Love… Fluttershy loved Vinyl. Dash began racking her brain for anything to make the pain go away. One answer always returned. One magical elixir that rid her of her torment. Booze. Alcohol was the answer, the painkiller to her emotional distress.

Rainbow’s eyes darted around, surveying her location for a continuous source of liquors. On the corner of two streets sat a large rectangular brown building, with a simple sign on the front reading “Hoarse Horse”. Rainbow shuffled her hooves over towards the door to the bar, and nudged it open with her head, pushing through to the inside.

The interior of the bar was decorated in a fashion befitting a typical sports bar. To either side of the entrance and along the outlying walls were small bar booths, cushioned seats surrounding a standard square table with ponies flanking either side of the table. Scattered throughout the middle of the bar where circular wooden tables with matching chairs. She turned her attention towards the opposite side of the bar.

At the opposite wall from the entrance stood a long wooden counter traversing the entirety of the wall. Behind the counter stood many large shelves of alcohol and running beer taps. Rainbow scooted past the array of wooden tables and ponies and makes her way up to the barstools along the wooden counter.

Sitting down at a barstool in the center, Rainbow gives a quick glance to either side to see if there is anypony who might recognize her. The only recognizable pony is to her right. On the seat a few to Rainbow’s right sat a pile of purple fur, head against the counter, slumped over in a mess of purple frizzy mane hair. Soft snores can be heard bouncing off the bar counter. A quick look at her flank, depicting a cluster of grapes and a juicy strawberry identifies the drunkard as Berry Punch.

A milky grey pony in his mid thirties steps up to the counter across from rainbow dash, attentively drying out a glass with a cloth using the magic from the horn atop his head. His voice comes out as a mildly light and cooingly smooth slight western accent.

“What’ll it be miss?”

Dash paused for a moment, attempting to remember the strongest drink she could think of. Her voice came out strained as she said “Beer and a shot of absinthe.”

The bartender nods as he turns around to the tap, and begins pouring the beer into the angled glass. He pushes the mug of beer over to Dash while pouring the shot into a typical shot glass, passing it again over to the blue mare, then returning back to his cleaning.

Rainbow dash immediately picked up the shot glass in her teeth, and dropped it bottom first into the mug of beer. She grasped both sides of the mug with her fore hooves, and wrapped her mouth around the rim of the mug, lifting it up to her mouth, drinking as much of the mixing drink as possible. While most of the alcohol slid down her throat, small dribbles ran down her coat.

Fluttershy bound through the door to her home, a small trail of tears running down her face. She leapt face first into her couch and held the cushion against her face. Vinyl Scratch emerges from the kitchen, a look of confusion and empathy on her face. Vinyl kneels at the front of the couch and nuzzles the side of Fluttershy’s face, gently speaking into her ear.

“Shy? What’s wrong Shy?”

Without lifting her head, Fluttershy responds.

“I-It’s Rainbow Dash.” With that name, Vinyl seems to tense up.

Fluttershy merely sighs, and rolls upright, but keeps her gaze focused at the floor. She regaled Vinyl about coming home from Sweet Apple Orchards, running into dash, yelling at her, the alcohol on Dash’s breath, and Dash running away. Vinyl sat down next to Fluttershy and slowly petted her mane, and calmed her to sleep.

Applejack knocked on the door to Fluttershy’s cottage. The door opened a crack, and a small light blue eye peaked through, along with a pale pink curl.

“H-hello?”

“Hi sugercube. I just wanted to make sure you were doin’ okay.”

“Y-yes… I’m okay…”

“Do ya mind if I come in sugarcube?”

“Sure…” Fluttershy opened the door to allow Applejack inside, closing the door behind her. Fluttershy walked over to the couch and sat down while Applejack followed suit, taking a seat opposite her on the couch.

“Hon, I’m worried. Have you seen Rainbow Dash lately?”

“N-no… I haven’t… not since last month… on the way home… from Sweet Apple Orchards… where she…”

“I understand. Neither have I… we need to set that girl straight.”

“But Applejack… do you even know where she is?”

“No… but I can take a wild guess. You said that she had alcohol on her breath mighty fierce, right?”

“Y-yeah… I could smell it when she talked…”

“Well I’ll just have to check every darn bar in Ponyville until I find her!”

“Applejack… p-please… calm down…”

Applejack bolts upright out of her chair, standing up. “Darn it Fluttershy, she has to learn that she’s hurting people!” Applejack stomps away from Fluttershy and out the front door. Standing on the front path to Fluttershy’s cottage, she tries to think about the bars in Ponyville, and sets off to find the few still standing.

Applejack began trotting down the path, saddlebags resting on her back, as she gets to the streets of Ponyville, passing many pony and building alike, until she arrived at the bar named “Hoarse horse”, where she cantered inside.

Passing the crowd of drunken ponies inside the bar, making her way up to the cloudy white bartending unicorn. Applejack pulled a picture of Rainbow Dash and puts it on the bar counter. Looking at the bartender, Applejack inquires,

“Have you seen this Pony lately?”

The bartender held his eyes closed for a minute, then nodded towards the back corner of the bar, to a square booth. Applejack gave him a suspicious but relieved look, and put the picture back in her saddlebag. She turned on her heels, and started to march towards the back corner booth.

Applejack poked her head into the booth in the corner of the building, to see a mostly empty booth, aside from on the farthest side of the booth, was Rainbow Dash, lying outstretched, with her hooves resting on the head of another pony, placed on top of Rainbow’s stomach, all lying atop the leather seat cushions. The pony lying on her had scraggly purple mane atop a lighter purple body, with the cutie mark of grapes and strawberries. Beer mugs and shot glasses litter the hard wood of the table, some upright, most knocked over.

With a hearty sigh, Applejack leans into the booth, putting her maw right next to the sleeping blue pony’s ear, and with a deep breath, shouted with discontent.

“RAINBOW! WAKE UP YOU DRUNKEN SWINE!” With the loud and sudden noise, the hazy blue pony flailed around in her seat, desperate to get some leverage to pull herself upright, sending the sprawling purple pony underneath the table, still half asleep.

Rainbow finally was able to grasp the ledge of the table, and pull herself semi upright. Her once rosy eyes were now dulled and empty, heavily affected by the bottles of Everclear stacked and strewn on the table.

Rainbow’s eyes continually fluttered, opening and closing in sporadic patterns, attempting to get used to the light and focusing on the dark orange apparition merely feet away, but still remained a darkened blur. Silence between the two settled in the air, broken by the cacophony of the other bar patrons, and the low hum of an country singer detailing his faith in the lord, despite the extremities of that around him. Rainbow Dash rubbed her eyes with her hooves, only to see her orange and blonde friend bearing a scowl.

"Hhhhaaaaay AJ," she said, wobbling a little in her seat. "Whuh'zup with'th' long face?" Rainbow attempted and failed miserably not to laugh at her own joke, but Applejack's anger only intensified.

“God dang it Rainbow, it’s not even noon yet and you’re more drunk than a filly in a cider cellar. What is wrong with you?”

"Nothin's wrong wih'-" she started to say, but was interrupted by a very uncouth and loud burp. Almost directly into AJ's face. "-me. S'wrong with YOU?"

“Rainbow! Look at yourself.” Applejack slowly and continually moves closer to Rainbow Dash while talking. “You’re drunk… you’re always in a bar, you haven’t done your job in weeks, and you’re ignoring all your friends…”

“N' yer an or'ng' BITCH!”

Applejack inched as close to Rainbow as possible, and put her hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder, atop her ratty and unkempt mane.

“I think you need help.”

Rainbow Dash bashed Applejacks fore hoof away with her liquor sapped strength, standing up on unsure legs, staring down the orange and blonde pony.

"ShCREW YOU, I doh' need y'r help!" she shouted at her Southern friend, turning away and trying to stomp her way out of the bar. Sadly, and rather amusingly, this only resulted in her tripping over her forehooves and going face-first into the floor. "Buckin' floor, shcrew yer Mother too," she grumbled quietly to herself. Multiple attempts were made to get up, and only the fourth try garnered favorable results for the plastered pegasus.'

Applejack let out a deep, throaty sigh, and attempted to follow Rainbow Dash outside the bar. Passing through the door, Rainbow Dash is clearly leaning up against the side of the building for support. Applejack called out to Rainbow Dash, trying not to tear up at seeing her friend do distraught.

“Rainbow please! You need help sugarcube…”

Applejack began inching closer to Rainbow Dash, enough to put put a hoof on the back of her shoulder. Rainbow Dash knocked Applejack's hoof away from her, stumbling around in a backwards circle in the process on her hindlegs, before managing to get back down on all fours without collapsing into a drunken heap. "I dun' need nun'y'all. S'right, y'all, 'cuz yer accent....s'cute," she mumbled towards the end, her wings spreading and flapping out of sync, slowly getting her off of the ground, but in a wobbly, swaying way. "Dun' need nobody! Doinnnnn' JUS'FINE WITHOU'CHA!" she shouted down to Applejack while slowly, shakily flying away, tears running from the corners of her eyes. "So jus' lemme 'lone!"

Rainbow Dash started to transcend the horizons of the buildings, far out of reach of the sorrowful earth pony. Applejack could only sit and watch as her broken friend escaped her line of vision over the roofs of Ponyville.

His eyes slowly opened, revealing the dusky and often described as lifeless grey eyes, half covered by the stringy bangs of his fuchsia purple mane. After taking a moment to let his eyes become accustomed to the light, he sat up right in his king sized bed, surrounded by bunched up sheets and covers, strewn all across his bed, a clear sign that he had been tossing and turning in the night, as he often does.

Throwing the covers off his body and onto the side of the bed, he slowly rolls off the bed and stands up on slightly shaky feet, as he made his way down the hallway of his house, taking a moment to pause in the open doorway halfway between his room and the bathroom. Peeking his head inside, there amidst all the posters of the Wonderbolts and Rainbow Dash sat the sleeping orange ball with the same fuchsia hair as his.

With a quick smile, he continued down the hallway, grabbing a towel and heading into the bathroom. He set the towel and climbed into the shower, turning it on and letting the warm water hit his head, as he places one hoof on the wall, and hangs his head, letting the water fall off of his long locks. After washing his hair and body, he turns the water off, and climbs out of the shower, toweling off his mass of wet fur.

Completely dry, he starts his morning hygiene regimen of brushing is teeth, combing his mane, and shaving his face. He stopped to look into the mirror at the pony in front of him. The pony in the mirror had a dimming silver coat, and long purple mane on his head, and a thick and straight tail with small half crescent curls up and down his tail

Still completely tired, he trudges into the living room to see his daughter with her face in a bowl of cereal. Crossing over to the kitchen counter, he starts his coffee percolator and readies his mug.

“Use a spoon Scoots.”

Grumbling quietly, Scootaloo stands up and retrieves a spoon from the kitchen drawer, and begins eating her cereal with the silverware. She looks at her father, and in a sarcastic tone, she calls to him.

“Better?”

The father couldn’t help but smile at the left over milk and cereal still clung to her jaw. Slowly cantering over to the kitchen table, he frazzles Scootaloo’s hair.”

“Much. Now eat your cereal or you’ll be late for school.”

Scootaloo starts talking to herself while gathering her supplies in her school pack. “Would have gone better if you’d just let me eat…” Scootaloo made her way to the front door with her stuff.

“Have a good day Scoots!” He called back as Scootaloo walked out the front door and already began to start talking to the young unicorn Sweetie Belle. He poured himself a cup of coffee, and drank it as is, black and bitter, eager to wake him self up. Putting the mug into the dishwasher, he puts his saddlebag on top of his back, and trotted out the door, locking it behind him, as he started to make his way along the sidewalk, eventually arriving at a small wooden building with the sign “Wood Works” on top of the building.

He opened the door, and let himself inside, to see a large interior filled with small carpentry machinery, and lumber stacked upon lumber. Inside was his partner, a red pony with a grey mane, known to him as Drill Press, his co owner of their small wooden construction operation.

“Mornin’ Drill.”

“Howdy Tim.”

“Still working on that dining room set?”

“Unfortunately, yeah. It’s going to be a while too.”

Tim made his way towards the front counter, taking his place behind it, drawing up blueprints for a new project, waiting for a customer to come in, while Drill Press worked in the back with the machines. On a slow business day, a couple ponies would come in needing some repairs or crafting done.

Near the middle of the day, a small purple unicorn with highlights in her hair walked into the shop, and came up to the counter. Tim looked up from his drawings to see the unicorn facing him at the counter.

“Hello and welcome to Wood Works! My name is Timber Saw. What can I do for you today, Miss…”

The unicorn looked up with large unwavering eyes, and a smile on her face.

“Twilight Sparkle. I was wondering if I could have a bookshelf made.”

After discussing the size of the bookshelf and how tall the shelves would have to be apart, Timber made a few calculations about the cost of the wood, and how much they would charge for the construction of the bookshelf it’s self. Coming to an agreement, the small pony paid the agreed amount of bits, and made her way out of the store as Timber began cutting out the needed lumber for the project, getting as far as jointing and planning the wood into a nice looking products.

The clock on the wall and the light of the sun outside both told him that it was time to head on home. Saying a final goodbye to Drill Press, and locking the store, he cantered home whistling a tune at the satisfaction of another routine day. Taking a while to get home, he was thoroughly tired from the day when he arrived at his house, walking in and dropping his saddlebag of gear off by the door.

“Scoots, I’m home!” he called out, but there was no reply. It was a 50 50 chance. Sometimes she was home, other times she was out with her friends, or her idol Rainbow Dash, but when he got to her room, Scoots was in her bed, face down into her pillow, quietly sobbing her body wrapped up in blankets.

A sense of urgency washed over Timber’s face seeing his daughter in distress, as he rushed to her side and sat down beside her, rubbing the top of her mane gently.

“Scoots? Scootaloo, what’s wrong baby?”

Without looking up, Scootaloo stuttered in her response, unable to start sniffling.

“I-It’s R-rainbow Dash…”