Chapter 1. Like An Ocean
From the outside, Apple Road Studios looked almost exactly like a pleasant mansion, not too different from Sapphire Shore's own home. Even the hallway looked like it could belong to any rich, musically obsessed pony. It wasn't until you got down into the basement that the true nature of the place revealed itself.
The basement was really the centre of the whole place, the beating heart that kept the rest of the building alive. In most businesses' buildings, the corridors above ground were always teeming with life and the basement was the place were the forgotten things went. But in Apple Road Studios this was reversed. This took some time to get used to for the many temporary workers who came and went like in a revolving door, usually staying for only an album.
Somehow, the basement managed to be both vast and claustrophobic at once, there was plenty of room for any arrangement of musical instruments, up to and including a full string orchestra, but all space not strictly necessary was sealed off with mobile soundproof walls, giving the place a cramped feel.
There was a smaller room divided from the rest by a one-way mirror that hosted the recording equipment and mix board. The high-tech equipment gave the room a futuristic feel that contrasted with the musical instruments lining the walls, nearly all traditional acoustic instruments except for one: a large magically charged keyboard that was the object of attention for Sapphire Shores and two other ponies.
“Well, how about this melody?” Sapphire asked and placed a hoof on the keyboard. She used the other hoof to twist the thick metal knobs on t tastefully chromed control panel.
After each adjustment, she tapped gently on the keyboard and absorbed the sound that emerged from it. She took each tone in, analysed it, tasted every aspect of it and judged its flavour, before making yet another adjustment. She transformed the sound from a smooth sine-wave to a jagged sawtooth before she placed both hooves on the keyboard and started to play a simple tune.
The melody that emerged from the device sounded somewhere between a sea shanty and a playground taunt. it had a slightly childish rhythm, but was filled with old longing. While it was somewhat melancholic, there was something about the low notes grabbed a hold of your hooves and made you want to dance with frantic but slow rocking motions, like that of an ocean wave.
Once she was done playing, she looked over to her producer who was standing next to her with look of a wine connoisseur right before he spit the taste sample out into a cup.
“It’s about 50% 'Scales n Beats' by Livinr0dent and 50% ‘Rocks on the Beach’ by the Heartstrings Orchestra” he announced . “And I do detect some retro influence In there too.”
He adjusted the sunglasses he wore in order to not reveal too much of his reaction at once. They didn't do their job very well, tough. If the furrow in his brow wasn't enough of an indication, the disapproving tinge in his voice gave him away immediately.
“Sapphire, you can't create a hit song simply by copying ten year old hits,” he pleaded. “The world is longing for something new!”
Sapphire Shores swallowed the beginning of a hostile growl and nearly spat out the words over her shoulder: “And I'm giving it to them, Mistpouffer! Don't you hear it? The edge? The attitude, this is not your grandmothers pop music!”
“No, more like your great-grandmothers pop music,” Mistpouffer quipped.
His sunglasses reflected Sapphire Shore's ice-filled glance back at her. But as she turned away, the producers face softened somewhat and he hung his head down in mock-surrender.
“Sapphire, I showed you the polls, didn't I? You care classified as 'almost relevant' Almost relevant! We're slipping out of the public eye, Sapphire. How do I put it nicely?” he asked himself.
Sapphire knew full well how he'd put it, it was the same word that was buzzing through her own mind. She closed her eyes and braced herself.
“Miss Shores, the ponies think you are getting OLD!” Mistpouffer said. “Taking a style of music that was old-hat ten years ago and then make it sound even more old-fashioned isn't going to endear yourself to the public.”
Sapphire Shores snorted. “Al right,” she said. “How about this?”
Once again, she fiddled on the knobs. The sound-wave flattened and it gained an almost hollow quality. Then she placed both hooves on the keyboard and played a variation on the same melody, this time bouncier and with more staccato. Sapphire had almost completely transformed the tune, the longing and the smell of the ocean was gone, this time the melody sounded like it wanted to fight something.
“I was thinking this with a heavy beat,” she announced. “A hoof-stomping kind of beat.” The producer buried his face In his hooves.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Instead of sounding like ten years ago, you only sound like nine years ago... Have you even LISTENED to any current hit records?”
“Yes,” she snapped back. “Because last time I checked the hit-list, I had at least five singles on there. I'm still on top Mistpouffer, I think I know what I'm doing.”
The producer made a sound from deep down his throat that sounded like an advancing army. “Does the words 'downward trend' mean nothing to you?” he asked. “Once things start to slide, they'll just keep on sliding, unless we do something to stop it. Sapphire, I mean it, we need something NEW!”
“Fine!” Sapphire shores said, gazing at her producers through narrowed eyes. “I'll give you something new!”
She twisted all the knobs to their maximum setting and she pressed down as many keys as she could hit into one loud pseudo-chord. The edges of the synthesizer lit up as the magic roared and sparked inside. The notes blended into a discordant mess that moved rapidly between the sound of air-horns and startled animal-howls.
“So? Did THIS sound fresh and new enough for you, darling?” she asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Smoke was practically coming from the ears of Mistpouffer and Baritone, the sound engineer. If there still was a hostile glint in his eyes behind the sunglasses, it didn't show in the rest of his face. The noise seemed to have flushed away the anger of the producer, and instead of being enraged, he just looked drained.
“Allright,” he said . “I think we all need a break. Ten minutes. You need anything, Sapphire?”
“A glass of wine, a bed with silk sheets, a good romance novel and some peace and quiet,” Sapphire said under her breath. “Or failing that, at least a cup of herbal tea.” She gazed at the keyboard as though it was her mortal enemy.
Mistpouffer was still reeling from the after-effects of the musical assault, but after he brushed his moustache back into shape and adjusted his collar, he was soon back to his old self.
“Herbal tea it is, then.” he concluded. "I'll ask Mjölna to get it."
Sapphire slumped down into a bean bag and before her eyes a brief image flashed of her taking every single knob in the universe and putting them into a large bonfire. It was a pleasant image and at the moment much more soothing than her usual meditative fantasy, which consisted of a vast empty beach, with waves crashing over it.
Mistpouffer, Baritone and the junior engineer, Noteworthy, were still working around her. The producer was syncing up her guiding vocal with the rough mix to one of the album tracks and the sound engineers were re-recording the drum-parts together with a studio musician, a surprisingly young male pony with drumsticks duct-taped to his hooves.
Sapphire Shores strongly suspected that “let's all get some rest” meant “let's try to get as much work as possible done before Sapphire decides to go all pop diva on us again...”
She closed her eyes in a demonstrative manner, she did her best to shut out the incessant rhythm of the studio musician banging his drums with mechanical precision and the esoteric jargon exchanged between Baritone and Noteworthy about cables, sound levels and microphones. Not only did her ears get assaulted, but her nose as well; the studio smelled of ponies more focused on their jobs than personal hygiene.
She briefly considered asking for a bottle of perfume and spray it around in the air, but decided against it. The only thing that would accomplish would be to change the smell from “week-old socks” to “week-old socks covered in expensive perfume,” which wasn't exactly better. It would help if the studio had any actual windows she could open instead of narrow slits covered with foam, only really visible from the outside.
The clock on the wall pointed its arrows on two numbers, but they were almost meaningless. The deadline was looming and their schedule had long ago stopped being set by the actual progress of night and day and instead by how long they could go before Sapphire started to rant about beauty sleep.
Sapphire held a hoof against her palm and felt a nerve pound underneath her skin. Even this beat seemed to match the song she was working on, like not even her own body was going to let her forget about it. Sapphire emitted a sigh of resignation. 'We're still missing a verse on this thing, might as well work on that', she thought.
“Noteworthy!” she called out and the pony in question winced noticeably at the mention of his name while the studio musician punctuated her request with a loud out of place crash.
“What is it ma'am?” he said, trying to mask his annoyance.
“Are you busy?”
“Not right now, no,” he lied.
“Could you be a dear and fetch me my notebook?”
Noteworthy sighed and disappeared from the studio. When he returned, he was holding a cobalt-encrusted notebook in his mouth, like a dog playing fetch.
“Thank you darling,” she said as he gave it over to her.
“No problem ma'am,” Noteworthy said, trying to be polite. “Now can I please go back to doing my job?”
“Sure you don't wanna stay and hold me company?”
“Sorry, I gotta go nag on the drummer some more. He's making the crashes too loud, the mike's amplification spell can't handle it, it keeps turning into the sound of whistling birds!”
A quirk of the magic used to make recording equipment is that if the sound became too loud, the magical charges would interfere with each other and transform the sound into random noises. Some of the more experimental modern musicians had started to use this to their advantage tough. A whole genre had recently emerged out of taking the sound of a single magic guitar and transforming it into a whole orchestra worth of non-musical sounds. It took a pony with a sharp ear and a strong stomach to fully appreciate the subtleties of the genre.
However, magical distortion was still a huge problem for more conventional music, like the brand of baroque pop Sapphire Shores played, and it took a dedicated effort from the two engineers to keep it to a minimum and knowing what paid the bills, Noteworthy was eager to continue this struggle. He looked almost relieved when an increasingly impatient Baritone started waving him over.
“Come on,” he hissed to him. “If we don’t get this fixed before Mistpouffer notices, he might start doing the thing... y’know where his moustache puffs out, it’s really creepy.”
“I’m coming!” Noteworthy replied and went behind one of the foam-padded walls where Baritone was waiting for him, leaving Sapphire alone.
She looked down towards her notebook. The wire that coiled trough the pages of the notebook had uncoiled itself at the top and it protruded in a rough spiral and Sapphire couldn't help playing with it, she pushed the impromptu spring down with her hoof and let it shoot up a centimetre or two. Once that became boring she finally opened the notebook and started to read trough her neat all capital letters handwriting.
“IT'S HARD ENOUGH TO FLY
FOR A PONY WITHOUT WINGS
I CAN'T KNOW EVERYTHING
I CAN ONLY TRY TO SING
FOR ALL THE SONGS THAT WE MADE
WE'RE STILL LIVING IN THE SHADE
BUT WHAT THE TIDES WASHED ASHORE
IT'LL HELP A LITTLE MORE
BUT LIKE A WHSIPER, IT'S”
“It's what?” She muttered to herself. “It's bad, that's what it is.”
This was too early in the process to worry much about fine details such as having the song actually be about something. Right now, she was just trying to get the rhythm and flow of the words right, but this draft didn't even do a good job with THAT.
She wasn't a genius songwriter by any means, even she had to admit that the her most popular song, “Like an Ocean” was less regarded for the lyrics and more for the music. Also, the controversy surrounding it leading to a legal dispute with the “Concerned Parents of Equestria” certainly hadn't hurt its notoriety.
The trick to her song writing was that nine out of ten verses she wrote was absolutely horrible, and only one was actually worth keeping, she just had the good sense to scrap the rest. So, just like a hundred pages before it, this page got torn off, crumbled up into a ball and tossed towards the trash-can. It danced around the edges for a while before loosing momentum and fell down just next to the can, in a pile of half a dozen others.
Something was written on the edge of the trash-can, it took Sapphire Shore a while to notice. “Need help? I can get a songwriter! - MP” it said in a tall art-deco script
“Smartass,” she muttered to herself, and then looked around, in case there was any donkeys around who could potentially be offended. She began to long for something that could take her mind off her writers block.
Baritone and Noteworthy where finally figuring out some of the problems with the audio, something esoteric involving dynamic range compression and Noteworthy was halfway into coming up with a solution when his thoughts was interrupted by a shrill, all-too-familiar voice.
“Noteworthy!” Sapphire Shores shouted from her corner of the studio. He ground his teeth together and let out an annoyed growl.
“I'm not your personal assistant, Sapphire. I'm just here to set up the microphones and make sure that the audio works. FIND SOMEPONY ELSE TO ORDER AROUND.”
He said the last part into a microphone and the loudspeaker amplified it tenfold until it was like it was written in letters the size of small houses. The sound was mostly clear and crisp, but it did sound a bit like a whale was singing along to his outburst in the last few syllables. The sudden chock did put Noteworthy's mind back on track however, and he turned towards his co-worker with an urgent expression.
“Wow, this one works great! It sounds a little flat the lower registers tough, do we have a magic flux-divider?”
Baritone checked inside a small box labeled “Misc. and portable holes” but found nothing, he announced this with a quick shake of his head. From her corner, Sapphire Shores looked a bit more humble as she smiled towards the outspoken sound engineer.
Am I being too bossy, darling?" She asked. "If Mjölna is out," she said at a louder volume, "I guess I'll go and get them myself."
The last part sounded almost like a magical incantation,and the words seemed to summon her producer, who appeared from behind the two sound-engineers.
“Go get the bloody fanletters, Noteworthy, I need her here,” he demanded. Mike sighed and disappeared out the narrow door.
Mistpouffer sat down next to Sapphire. As he looked over, her facial muscles tensed up and she did her best to try and ignore him.
“Are you ready to talk about your single?” He asked with an unnecessarily polite voice, tough it was clear from his demeanour that break-time was over. “I'm all for taking things easy, but the earlier we get this one done, the better.”
“You really have no concept of taking a break, do you?” Sapphire snapped from the side of her mouth.
“No, I don't,” Mistpouffer admitted. “Maybe you can rest on your laurels, but I have to work my flank off.” His demeanor softened up somewhat as he continued.
“I've looked trough your suggestions and drafts and..” he paused, desperately attempting diplomacy. “They are great... as album filler, but they just aren't hit single material.”
“What do you mean? I worked hard on those, and I've seen lazier songs on the hit charts. I've HAD lazier songs on the charts...” she admitted.
“It's not that,” Mistpouffer said. “Some of these may be a decent single for some other band, it's just not a single for you, it doesn't fit your image.”
“Which image?” Sapphire Shores asked. “I've had several: a singing cowgirl, a glamorous space alien, a femme fatale, an old-school cabaret singer, a pink burlesque dancer, and the less said about my “Luchadore”-period, the better...”
Mistpouffer’s face distorted in something that resembled pain, like an actor trying too hard to emote. The memory of the more regrettable periods of Sapphire’s carrier flashed trough his mind, embarrassing enough to show on his face.
“I mean your normal image, not any of your... characters I guess you call them. Ponies know you from the song “Like an Ocean” and that's what they want to hear. This isn’t anything like that.”
This hit a sore spot and Sapphires ears tensed up noticeably. Mistpouffer twiched, half-expecting Sapphire to attack him, but instead she just dropped the notebook, which landed on its edge, causing one of the gemstones to pop out.
“I can't write that one AGAIN” she said. “'Because I already wrote it once, and if I DID write it again, you'd complain bout that, wouldn't you?” Mistpouffer met her accusatory with a blank face behind her sunglasses.
“Well, yes,” he said bluntly. “'cus I don't want ANOTHER Love by Moonlight, I just want something that somepony who listens to that song would also listen to, do you get what I am saying?”
Sapphire Shores just snorted and the room fell into demonstrative silence. Breaking the silence was the creak of the basement door as Noteworthy returned, dragging four large bags overflowing with letters, and slightly dusty from being pushed trough the dingy basement corridor. He let go of the bags and one of them flopped down with forlorn 'flupp', leaking stray fan mail down onto the floor.
“Mjölna sorted them,” he announced. “And she labelled the ,which would have been extremely helpful... if I could read runes.” He gestured towards the cryptic letters written in black marker directly on the fabric. It took Sapphire a solid minute to realize that the strange markings was supposed to be a language, and even then it was impossible to decode.
“I think this one says “stalkers,” Noteworthy informed her. “And this one is “creepy”, this one is 'the baffling', this one contains the misspelled and all around clueless ones, and this last one contains the hate mail.”
“Give me the last one,” Sapphire Shores demanded. “Leave the rest anywhere.”
“So, you don't want to be lavished with praise today?” Noteworthy said with an evil grin.
“I don't NEED praise, I already KNOW that I'm fabulous, I just need to figure out what I'm doing. Besides, these are usually the most entertaining ones.”
It was with a gleeful, almost sinister smile that Sapphire Shores opened the letters. Getting fans is easy; most ponies have a loneliness inside of them, things they shout to themselves inside their own mind that most other ponies just never seem to get.
Most art has an ability to get past our mental defences and reach the part of us that would otherwise be left lonely, so if you can smuggle any degree of individualism past the likes of Mistpouffer, you're bound to find at least somepony who connects with your music.
It wasn't until you got haters that you knew you've made it big. If you can reach the kind of ponies whose mind is like a wall, even if it's just to annoy them, you've become more than a celebrity, you've become an icon. Sapphire didn't read most of the letters, but she skimmed them and her mind picked up on the recurring words and phrases.
The phrase 'indecent' popped up a lot, her excessive amount of clothes and make-up was thought to be dangerously provoking and corrupting. Some even went so far as to accuse her of being an outright liar and a fraud since she hid her true looks behind fashion and cosmetics, but these ponies obviously didn't understand glamour.
She skimmed trough most of those letters only to toss them over her shoulder. This was something she already knew, heck, her entire carrier was pretty much based on the fact that some ponies found too much clothing offensive. What she really wanted to know was if her little stunt with Photo Finnish had ruffled some feathers, and she was pleased to find out that was indeed the case.
The ponies were kinda strange when it came to mare-on-mare. On one hoof, close personal friendship at a young age where expected, even encouraged, but as soon as you grew old enough to settle down, you where expected to find a nice stallion.
'Bad example for the youths,' 'Decadent celebrities,' the accusations piled on, each more delicious than the last. This was way more fun than the friendly rivalry they had a while back. The best part about it was that it was self-sustaining. The more the two mare's would deny it afterwards, the more ponies would believe it.
The idea was conceived like most of their shenanigans, during an evening of yahtzee/unpaid counselling over at Photo's tastefully cubist mansion. It was her little “gift” to Photo Finish as thanks for her invaluable fashion advice. Somehow, that mare knew what would become popular at least a year before it actually caught on. If Sapphire didn't know better, she'd swear Photo was a unicorn. Photo had undeniable talent, but she had trouble recovering from that fiasco with the shy small-town Pegasus photo model.
She needed to “clear her name”, so to speak, a little carefully engineered scandal to stir the ponies who liked to make a big deal of this kind of thing, allowing her to start over with a blank slate the next time she had some mad brilliant idea to rock the fashion world, such as putting a pony with a blue jeans vest on the cover of her magazine.
One letter was accompanied by a note from Mistpouffer saying 'Mjölna put this in the 'misspelled' bag, but I'm not sure if it's even written in Pony'. This confused Sapphire, because at first, the mouthwriting on the letter looked like the same runic alphabet that Mjölna used. But on a closer examination, it'd appear that this was actually supposed to be Pony.
The letter rambled at great length about the things the writer was sure the two celebrities where doing behind the scenes, because she had “heard about it somewhere.” As Sapphire read trough the letter, her eyes widened noticeably.
'Wow, I'd never have thought about HALF of these!' Sapphire thought to herself and she made a mental note to play this up for her stage persona somewhere in the future, something like her androgynous space alien, 'Ziggy Starhooves', but with hints of bisexuality and BDSM.
This had all the makings of a good alter ego, it was naughty, bordering on perverted in some ponies' mind evidently, but it was still only naughty in a “'safe' way. It was far enough outside most ponies comfort zone for it to ruffle some feathers, but not far enough outside it that ponies will be genuinely put off.
'Plus, I bet Photo Finish already have a studded leather collar somewhere that I can borrow,' Sapphire Shores thought to herself.
Chapter 2. Cold Herbal Tea
Mjölna felt a stab of pain in her left leg and instantly froze. She examined the sensation and compared it to the her mental map of sore spots throughout her body: Upper left shoulder, bruise, bar fight; lower right front leg, bruise, resisting arrest; left front leg, sore muscles, dragging Sapphire Shore's daily crop of fan-mail around.
A small dash of panic hit her, since she didn't recognize this sting. But, when she turned around, she found nothing but another small bruise, which she could've gotten anywhere. Breathing a sigh of relief, she added this to the list.
As she entered the basement studio, she nearly dropped the tea she had been tasked to get in surprise. She had to admit, as chaotic as their extended recording sessions could be, she wasn't quite prepared for this. All of the foam walls had been haphazardly turned around, forming a maze trough the massive cellar. It was easy to think of the studio as a cramped space, forgetting that the lower part of Apple Road studios both can and has hosted entire orchestras.
Mistpouffer appeared to be playing hide-and-seek, poking his head around the foam-wall corners. As Mjöna entered, the producer turned a around, his enormous collar puffed up like a pair of wings, once again startling the brave warrior pony.
“Have you seen Sapphire?!” he yelled and she could only emit a confused whimper in response. Full-grown dragons were both less scary and easier to deal with than angry record producers.
“No? Then help me find her!”
Mjölna shrugged and obediently joined Mistpouffer in searching through the newly made labyrinth. It was like the producer had opened a portal to a strange wonderland, the studio hadn't been used at full capacity for at least a couple of years and traces of old recording sessions still remained, like insects trapped in amber.
Behind one of the screens they found a collection of strange musical instruments: a Melontron, a Conundrum, some kind of metal violin with an aluminium horn attached to it and various other forgotten pieces of music history that occasionally saw use by more experimental acts. Behind another screen they found what was evidently the hideaway for a sound engineer. Mjölna tried not to notice the saucy magazine filled with clothed ponies that had been forgotten on a bean-bag.
Eventually, Mjölna met up and nearly collided with Mistpouffer, whose search had apparently been just as fruitless as hers. Sapphire was simply nowhere to be found.
“I'm gonna check the top floor, you stay here in case she comes back!” Mistpouffer ordered.
He disappeared out of the studio and Mjölna was left alone. At first she did a few half hearted attempts to restore the walls to their former place, but her sense of loyalty was running low and eventually she figured that the producer could very well clean up his own mess.
Instead, she just sat down on the cold floor. It was frightfully quiet, the basement was designed to be a sonic void, completely silent unless anypony knowingly makes a sound. Once her ears got used to the emptiness, he picked up on a small hiss, a cold timid sound she wasn’t entirely sure didn't just come from her own head.
The hissing became more urgent and she could finally pinpoint the source. One of the foam-covered windows had been busted up and a cool wind leaked in. And from outside, she heard a whispered voice.
“psst, I'm over here,” it said.
Mjölna went up to the window, brandishing the cup of tea like a weapon.
“I-is it you, Sapphire?” she asked, and Sapphire responded by a melodic “mhmm”.
Relieved, Mjölna let her guard down and went up to the window.
“Uhm... here's your tea, ma'am,” she said and offered the cup to the mare behind the window and an elegantly decorated hoof reached down to get it.
“Thank you, Mjölna” Sapphire said. “Now could you come up here for a sec?”
“Sure!” Mjölna climbed up trough the window and the night hit her like a cool caress. Suddenly she understood why the picky pop diva had been so keen on getting some fresh air into the studio.
Sapphire was leaning against the wall of the building, Her 20.000 bit dress parked right on the moist, dirty ground. Both her hooves was draped around the teacup and she was enjoying the heat steaming from it like nothing else really mattered.
“Lovely night, isn't it?” she asked, glancing over to Mjölna. Somehow, the young mare managed to project the same air of authority as a schoolteacher scolding her for slacking off in class.
“Yeah, but the producer is looking for you, he seemed quite pissed,” she said, giving her a stern gaze back. A moment of silence passed, punctuated by the chirping of a few stray crickets, hopelessly lost at the edge of the big city.
“Mistpouffer?” Sapphire replied smugly. “Oh, he's always like that, I give it around.... five minutes until he snaps at me and cancel the whole project.”
“I'm gonna go tell the boss,” Mjölna said with a bemused voice, crossing her hooves in a rigid gesture.
“Please, can't you let me be disappeared for just a few minutes more?” Sapphire pleaded. Her weary glance was enough for Mjölna’s stern demeanour to melt.
“Okay” she said obediently. “I don’t like ratting anypony out anyway.”
She turned around to leave, but before she could climb down from the window, Sapphire stopped her by tugging her tail gently.
“Woah girl, nopony said you had to leave!”
“Is anything wrong Ma’am?” Mjölna once again looked into those pleading eyes.
“Oh nothing,” Sapphire replied in a sing-song voice. “I just rarely get to small talk with anypony these days.” She put the cup down on the ground and straightened out her dress. Noticing the dirt on it, she scrounged her muzzle together, but chose to ignore this crime against fashion.
“I just want one conversation that doesn't end with Mistpouffer shoving sales figures and graphs in my face or with the sound engineers muttering some nonsense about manufactured modular magic massacring the musical mood, or something like that.” She paused for just long enough to emit a brief sigh.
“I got a whole list of designers to check out,” she continued to lament. “But I'm running out of time before the album has to be out and after that I have to go on one of those dreadful talk shows to promote it.”
Mjölna just stared at the pop diva dumbfoundedly, this was all way outside her frame of reference, Sapphire looked sheepish as she realized how the petty annoyances of stardom didn’t exactly resonate with those not right in the middle of it.
“I'm sorry about my bitching,” she added, but Mjölna just shrugged and once again left the conversation to die among the chirping sounds of the late evening crickets.
'How ironic, I hired Mjölna because of her stoic demeanour, because I wanted an assistant that didn't ask too many questions, and now when I WANT some idle conversation...' Sapphire thought. She had been told, by several ponies in fact, that she had made a mistake hiring a pony with such a violent past, but Sapphire ignored the complaints. Turns out that she was right in the end, this was the one time she regretted hiring her and it was not because of her dodgy past.
“Say...” sapphire Shores said, trying to kick start the conversation. “When you wear clothes, what do you wear?”
Mjölna blushed a bit as she covered her face partially with her bangs, clearly this wasn’t a subject she was used to talking about.
“A buckled skirt made out of sack-cloth and a bronze helmet.”
“A helmet?!” Sapphire jerked up in surprise and nearly spilled the now lukewarm content of the teacup onto the already moist ground.
“Yes,” Mjölna replied, oblivious to Sapphire’s reaction. “It goes with the war hammer. I tried to put horns in it... the helmet, not the hammer, but they fell off.”
“I must admit,” Sapphire said, thoroughly amused, “I would've never figured a war hammer could be used as a fashion accessory.”
“you should try it sometimes,” Mjölna replied, smiling at the perceived compliment. “I guarantee it'll strike fear in the hearts of your enemies.”
“Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.”
'I dunno about fear, but it'd definitely amuse the paparazzi photographers,’ Sapphire thought to herself.
Sapphire closed her eyes and let an image play trough her mind of her trotting towards a concert in her typical 20.000 bit dress, looking like a glamorous cabaret-singer from 50 years ago, save for a huge bronze mace or a hammer in her belt, trailing after her like a fender after a boat.
Her expression in this fantasy, her usual self-assured look, complimented the fearsome appearance of the weapon nicely. She chuckled to herself at the idea, but dismissed it since there was probably some sort of law against ponies carrying dangerous equipment on stage, and if not, there soon would be.
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!”
