Places to Go, Sights to See...

Though Inidigo said his words politely, there was a bit of a sting of malice in them. For one he didn't much like fancy ponies but excluding that he most definitely didn't like ponies who had to make it their business to stroll up to a pony they didn't know that was clearly angry and needed to cool down and strike up a conversation. Not only was that poor in etiquette, but was an activity reserved for sociopaths who only want to poke ponies to see their reactions. He was going to make it his own business to divert attention away from Shala so she would have ample opportunity to calm down so she wouldn't break anything over anypony's head.

"Just don't mention anything having to do with time, as if that wasn't clear when she became berserk at the mention of it."

As Gloom continued to prod Shala, Victoria could recline and collect her thoughts. Instead, she turned to Indigo Surprise.

"You need not worry, my sweet," she began, playfully flicking a knot in Indigo's mane. " -for I suppose such absolutes elude these cozy inns... though surely constants of enterprise are not unknown ta' you, good sir," She insinuated.

Then, having surveyed the tavern's assortment of beverages beforehand, Victoria rested her eyes on a common wine. "Ys'please; how is the pinot grigio?" She asked as a formality. This struck her as the appropriate choice for the occasion: It was light, clean, and perhaps tasteful if unremarkable. Moreover, she reasoned it would spare her acute awareness.

Shala ignored Gloom's question and adressed Victoria. While she did not understand most of what she was even talking about, she knew she was interested in the wine.

"Pinot Grigio? Tried it, it sucked. Not really my kind of drink." She waved a hoof. "I'll make you one if you want."

Shala was thankful that Indigo was here to give other ponies a clue. She was not in the mood to explain herself. And this Victoria pony was using far too many fancy words for her to even want to think about.

(I deleted your post, follow the post order)

ooc// Post order? That's new to me. I mean, with due respect, responding impromptu would probably make more sense given that some of the replies don't concern the other characters, nor do they exclude them.

edit: Hmm, kk. Sorry about that.

(Posting orders keep events flowing at the same pace. That keeps people from going off into the corner to talk for several hours while leaving all of the other players suspended in time)

(Apologies. It was not explained, and even i did a post out of order earlier which i should have gotten in trouble for. Btw, please feel free to join us in the chat room. Bottom of the forum main page. :) )

Gloom stared at Shala waiting for her to answer, but when she started talking to Victoria, he just hopped up on his chair and let out a sigh. "Uhh hey Shala, can you get me another Bacardi 151?" He asked politely.

(OOC: Sorry for being a little inactive lately, i have been very busy.)

Indigo's reaction was instant. He smacked the hoof away that dared to touch him and his hair. "Who do you think you are?! Coming in here, bothering a distressed mare and putting your filthy hooves in somepony's hair?! I don't know how you were raised, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be petted like some kind of animal by some snob I don't even know!" He got up from his stool and stood tall and glared at her, every subtle twitch of his body language screamed 'fight', but as a defensive pony it was just a show of force. He wouldn't actually act on his intentions without actual cause.

She slowly withdrew her outstretched hoof and delegated to it a lamenting glance.

"Well in that case, I certainly shall not partake in the damning," Victoria concluded, subtly instigating at the sight of his new-found menace. She considered how painful strangulation would be at the hooves of the lean stallion, but dismissed her fears stubbornly such that bodily harm would not impede upon her wicked jurisdiction. And so, despite discovering now that Indigo was much less a reserved pony as he was one subject to his volatile temper and passions, Victoria resumed her passive-aggression.

She calmly lifted her muzzle and met his glaring eyes with stern apathy.

"You're a natural D'artagnan," she began sarcastically, "-But for heaven's sake darlin', take a seat. You don't suppose we may be, 'mm, jumping to conclusions? O-or even that, perhaps, your having demanded the respect of a 'snob' is, in itself, 'snobby'?" she rebuttled, placing malevolent emphasis on his choice of word. "Though, if perhaps you find bludgeoning mares in a Ponyville bar valiant..." She trailed off, ending with a silent, feminine gesture.

Shala was again at loss for the use of fancy words. She did know enough though that right now, tensions were high. Indigo was a good friend of hers, and this new pony actually offered her a toast. Whatever they were getting mad about, Shala was not going to have it in her bar on her shift.

"Both of you better calm the *yay* down or I'll show you how much more distressed i can get! Indigo! Sit down! Fancy talk pony! Sit over there. Both you drink your swill or take it outside." Shala smacked a hoof down on the counter top loudly before groaning. She put a lot of effort into keeping herself from showing it, but her head throbbed with pain. The ticking never went completely away, and the rising anger was not helping it. She would need more to drink after this. A fair bit more.

"Uhh, Shala?" Gloom said while pointing at his empty glass.

Indigo pulled a bottle of booze from behind the counter with his magic and was about to bash it over Victoria's head, but stopped when Shala snapped him out of it. He had let his rage take over his actions, but he didn't let down his steely glare. He placed the bottle back on the shelf and did something his mentor told him to do if such a situation arised. Something that would make a mare feel worse than a simple beating. He spat in her face.

"Brute!" Victoria shrieked indignantly, fluttering her wings violently but yet refusing to separate. Swiftly producing an embroidered handkerchief, she made a futile attempt to remove the saliva plastered to her face.

"Wretch! Never in my life!" She paused generously and composed herself, exhaling deeply and returning to a bitter and stately erectness. "Shameful it is," she resumed with an iron monotone, "that you insist upon flaunting that horrendous attitude; that obscene rhetoric. And how crude is the pony who threatens another to get his way! Hmmph. Surely you were raised in a barn." She added in a surprisingly arbitrary voice. Internally, Victoria was intrigued. Indigo's temper could evidently be aroused if certain strings were pulled. In that way, she pondered, perhaps there lay particular weight in his existence. This notion satisfied her, and she secretly preserved the intention to pursue his intricacies.

Their hostile eyes remained locked.

Shala had had enough of this shenanigans. She magicked up a baseball bat from under the counter and leaped up over the bar and down right before the two. Using the bat, she forced them apart and gave each a glare of deathly anger that no one in ponyville had ever seen from her before.

Victoria got it first. "No more fancy talk! Go wash off in the bathroom, sit over there, and pick a drink of your choice on the house so you jabber less!"

She quickly swung to Indigo, not sparing him any less. "I don't know what she said to you, but if you spit on another pony again after i say you stop, ill break your jaw. Now sit over there and we can talk again when everyone calms the *yay* down!"

The frazzled mare stood between the two, looking back and forth until they both were sitting at least ten seats away from eachother. Shala would love to have more calm conversation with them and figure out what was their problem, but right now she was too furious to try. She appreciated Indigo stepping in for her, but things went too quick from there.

"Weeellll, this is a little too much *yay * for me." Gloom said as he put his empty glass down on the table. Gloom then started flapping is wings and started flying towards the front door. As he was flying, he turned his head to Shala and said "Thanks for the drinks, Shala.". As he was flying with his head turned, he hit his head on the door frame. "Oww. " he mumbled after he hit his head. He then opened the door and flew outside.

Indigo hauled Shala into his home for her to sleep off her booze binge on their first day in Ponyville, cooked breakfast for her the next morning, and had now tried to keep strange ponies from annoying her while she was having an episode. For her to talk to him like this was nothing short of traitorous betrayal. There was only one course of action. Be as shitty as possible and met her with an icy cold glare. "Is the time 4:23 and 36 seconds and 3 milliseconds, or 5:44 and 19 seconds and 2 milliseconds? Maybe I should check my pocket watch."

Victoria, in turn, savored a silent moment in the unoccupied tavern. She evaluated her first experience with these new ponies who themselves congregated far from their respective motherlands. The prospect of a new fancy - an engrossing opportunity to manifest her ulterior motives - illuminated her countenance with hellish resolve. She gnarled the end of a fresh cigar before igniting it, clenching it in her jaw, and briskly exiting the scene.

Shala stared at Indigo like a pony would to an oncoming train. Eyes wide, moments of reflection came to her. A time when she was younger. Only one pony in her life that she cared about had intentionally used her fear against her. Memories welled up from those times. Times in that room with clocks on every wall, none of them being right. Nevermind the bruises. The ticking echoed from the memory out and into her current state of mind. It was like someone hit a switch that changed everything.

She hardly recalled swinging the bat. She never even remembered when she stopped. All there was in her was the most purest essence of fear and fury that her body could express. Whatever there was of Shala moments ago was now hardly something to call a pony.


"ITS FIVE TWENTY TWO. FOURTEEN SECONDS AND POINT SEVEN NINE MILLISECONDS PAST!

Her voice screamed almost demonically, breaking beyond the threshold her voice could handle, giving it a screech. The bat swung at Indigo furiously, over and over. Tears began to stream from Shala's eyes. With each passing moment, her fury faded to pain.

Indigo's plan was to reduce Shala to a crying mass of hysteria like he was sure she would descend into if prompted on the time enough. Then he could walk right on past her and out the door back home. As such he was not anticipating her sudden burst of rage or the sudden thwack against his head with a bat that he caught the full force of. His horn began to glow and he raised up his front and slammed his hooves into the ground, sending a magical shockwave rippling through the bar, knocking over furniture and knocking the enraged drunken pony away from him.

Shala was knocked back several feet, tumbling a bit. She found a mess of tables and chairs around her, but they hardly deterred her from getting back on her hooves. She didn't care about logic or friendship. There was a monstrosity of anger and fear in her that wanted to be let out.

She charged back at Indigo recklessly, grabbing any and all chairs or tables she could take with her magic and hurled it at him as she ran up with her bat. She swung at him again, hardly taking aim so long as it hit him.

Indigo charged right at Shala doing the exact same thing. Anypony who walked into the bar wouldn't be able to see the two ponies duking it out from the large cloud of dust that engulfed the fight.

The fight was a mess. An actual dust cloud started to become apparent as chairs were broken and dust from places unreachable was disturbed. Eventually, things began to slow down.

Shala was hunched over, panting heavily. Her bat finally fell from her magic aura, having exhausted all her magic. She fell back on her side, bleeding from a few scratches and probably a black eye.

Then it finally set in completely. Shala felt her tears well up. Her actions fully realized. She had just attacked a pony she called a friend. One of the first ponies she met. All her emotion had come out, emotion she had tried to hold in. It terrified her, what she had done, what she could do.

She softly sobbed, trying to muffle her voice. This was why she moved, to get away from these feelings. It was why she drank. To forget them.

"...I-Indigo?" She asked, her voice croaking. Was he even there anymore?

Indigo coughed. His ribs had been hit a few too many times for him to breathe properly. "The hell... do you want..?"

Shala was hardly a fogiving pony. She hardly ever showed anypony the respect they deserved or needed. It was not till now that she uttered the words she hardly ever used.

"...S-Sorry...." She said weakly before biting her lip and resisting the urge to break out into new sobs. She was a ruined wreck. She'll be damned if she let any other pony see her this way. The life she made here was feeling long and distant now. Her job would be gone, and everypony would hear about what happen here. What if her name was in the paper? Would they notice and come to find her again?

"Just...get out..." She croaked at him, sounding tired but blunt. One thing she wanted right now was some alone time. Getting up, she limped her way back behind the counter, looking for her most reliable friend she could count on in times of stress.