The rains didn’t stop for another two weeks.  The waters flooding the orchard and small basin didn’t leave even when the rain lightened into showers and travel through Appleoosa became possible once again.  Braeburn himself only left to get groceries from the store and sent a few towards Applejack and Twilight.  The rest of the time, he surveyed the orchards and looked at the splintered pieces of wood and destroyed remnants of the mine shaft and tunnels.

Three trees.  Three more trees had been torn down due to a combination of incompetence from the miners and the lack of respect from the supervisors.  Both Blueblood and Captain Lancer were at fault in Braeburn’s eyes; Blueblood started getting dismissive and no paying attention while Lancer was more militaristic and just wanted whatever was in his way to be gone.  The three trees plus the two wrecked during the prospector’s time earlier made for five trees gone, causing Braeburn to think that any more trees and he’d start losing money by the next season.

Was over-flooding the orchard a little much for that?  Maybe, but Braeburn wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.  If Blueblood kept on being so dismissive of his property and would bring in someone like Lancer when he left, he had no more business being on Braeburn’s farm.  Braeburn had regretted doing the act, to be fair to himself, but words wouldn’t work with them anymore.  Braeburn had tried to no success; Blueblood kept returning.

But even after the rain stopped, Blueblood didn’t return.  Even after the floodwaters subsided and most of the rubble from the broken mine shaft and elevator had washed away, Blueblood didn’t return.  Even when the sun started to come out again and dried up the ground except for small puddles near the trees, Blueblood didn’t return.  A few of his guards were seen in the town watching Braeburn as he went about his business, though they looked beaten and battered to the point that the stallion could probably easily beat them on if he provoked them to fight.  But none even so much as talked to him, preferring to steal glances in his direction when they thought he wasn’t looking.

But Braeburn knew better.  They knew the flood was engineered.  The trees they threw down the river might have helped it along, but the water level would hardly have changed if that was the case.  But the dirt that was carried to the ridge, the late night spent piling it up, the suspicious tip about building a wall to prevent the mine from getting washed out… that was planned.  Of those who Braeburn managed to catch looking at him, most would give a look of disgust before turning their heads away.  One was even restrained from attacking him by two other guards, something which Braeburn thought sad because the guard who tried attacking him was a former Appleoosan, one he had known for years.

It wasn’t just the one Appleoosan who lashed out at him.  The farmers who Braeburn had helped get through the previous summer all shunned him except for Quick Draw and his family, for whom the harassment had stopped.  The townsponies became quiet around him and some became afraid to approach him, as though there was some aura around him that set entire places into unrest until he had left.

One evening Braeburn decided to have a drink at the bar and walked up to the building, loud and full of conversation.  As soon as he entered the doors and a few ponies looked his way, first a few then all of the ponies started to be quiet as though not even daring to talk to him in hushed whispers.  They all looked at him as he approached the bar and even averted their gazes as he looked in their direction.  Braeburn called the bartender over, ordered a root beer with a splash of moonshine as he had before, and sat patiently as the bartender mixed the drink.

Braeburn didn’t like the quiet.  It was unnerving to him.  He was used to ponies just sort of relaxing in his presence, seeing him as a friend and a helper.  He turned around on the stool he was sitting at and faced the ponies sitting in the bar, all staring at him as though transfixed on him.  Some had cards, others had dice, others simply had drinks, but everything was still.  Even the wind had stopped as the ponies stood still as statues.

“What?” Braeburn addressed the crowd.  “Haven’t you ever seen a stallion order a drink?”

With that remark, most of them simply turned away.  A few others returned to what they were doing but even then they took wary glances towards Braeburn every so often.  The bartender brought Braeburn his drink and stayed by him until he had taken a few sips, watching him drink.  Braeburn noticed this and set his drink on the counter.

“You waiting for me to pay?” he asked.

“I just wanted to make sure everything is to your satisfaction,” the bartender said.  “Sir,” he added hastily.

Braeburn took another gulp of the drink in front of him and wiped some froth away with his hoof.  He slammed the glass down on the table, causing some of the drink to spill out and on his hoof and a few chairs behind him to go skidding across the wooden floor.  He smirked for a second before giving his reply to the bartender.  “Bring another one out here for when I’m done with this one.”

The bartender nodded and went off to get a second drink of root beer and moonshine.  A few chairs settled themselves back into place, but Braeburn hardly noticed.  The second drink was set down before the first one was finished.  Braeburn reached for the drink to pull it closer as the bartender flinched as though expecting Braeburn to hit him only to relax when all the stallion did was move the drink along the counter.  Even so, his ears flipped back and flat against his head as though irritated.  When the drink was finished, the bartender shot over and grabbed the empty glass as Braeburn started the second drink.

By the time the second drink was finished, Braeburn was feeling a little light-headed though not completely without his mental process.  Having nothing better to do for the rest of the night, Braeburn paid his tab and walked out of the bar, nearly falling over as he walked out the door and leaning against the side of the bar to steady himself.  The potency of the moonshine that evening surprised even him and he assumed a stronger batch than usual had been made.  Braeburn stayed where he was for a long time until he was sure he could walk, hearing the conversation in the bar strike up yet again as he walked down the street.

Braeburn didn’t walk very far.  He went to the hotel and walked up the stairs to the fifth floor and knocked on the door of suite 502.  He was about to knock again when he heard hoofsteps approaching the door.  The door opened to reveal Applejack, who did not look very pleased at all.  The radio was buzzing in the background, playing a local news broadcast.

“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?” she asked impatiently.

“I wager there was one in the bar,” Braeburn said.  “But I don’t go to a bar to look in a mirror.  If I wanted that, I’d go to my bathroom.”

Applejack stepped out of the way as Braeburn walked into the room.  “I’ve been lookin’ for you all day.  You weren’t at your farm, you weren’t at any one of the stores, and I even checked the bar earlier today and didn’t see anythin’.  Where have you been?”

Braeburn looked around the suite.  “Where’s Twilight?”

“What’s it matter to you?”

“You answer me, I’ll answer you.”

Applejack gave an exasperated sigh.  “I last saw Twilight going to help mend the bridge leading out of town that was destroyed by the floodwaters.  Now, where the hay have you been, Braeburn Apple?”

“Walking,” Braeburn replied, sitting down on a chair.  He spit into a nearby trash can, making Applejack shut her eyes in disgust before opening them slowly.  “I needed some fresh air to clear my head after three weeks of being shut in my house.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you came by.  We need to talk.”

“And we aren’t right now?”

Applejack growled irritably as she closed the hotel door.  “There was a news report on about the destruction of the mine shaft.  Five dead and at least four times that injured.  I’m hopin’ that walk cleared your conscience, because you’ve got a lot of thinkin’ to do if they ever figure out it was you.”

“Oh, they know,” Braeburn said.  “Haven’t you seen the looks on their faces?  The way they all avert their gaze whenever they look at me?”  He spat in the trash can again.  “I hate it.  I hate how I’ve gone from a respected citizen of the community and friend of nearly everyone here to the stallion that everyone wants to avoid.”

Applejack nodded.  “No one talks to you anymore?”

“Quick Draw and his family do,” Braeburn admitted.  “So do Cold Steel and Coal Dust and his family.  Haven’t heard anything about Silversmith, though.  But most of the town has started to avoid me.  Even the farmers I helped out this past summer want nothing to do with me.”

Applejack nodded again.  “Terrible, isn’t it?” she said sympathetically.

Braeburn raised an eyebrow.  “You think I deserve it, don’t you?”

“Not entirely.  Trying to kick Blueblood out of town is a noble cause, especially if he gets it any further in debt.  But killin’ his men?  I have a feelin’ that even if Celestia were to get wind of this whole situation, she’d be as likely to punish you as much as Blueblood.  As of right now, he’s still government.”

“It’s still power that went to his head.  He got the chance to do something he showed off as reasonable then went reckless with it.”

“That does not mean you need to go around killin’ his men just to say he needs to leave!” Applejack shouted.  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re gettin’ as reckless as him if not more so!”

“You weren’t there in Dodge Junction,” Braeburn replied calmly.  “You didn’t see what I saw.  What Coal Dust and Cold Steel had experienced.  Poverty.  Ignorance.  Oppression.  That is what happens to us if Blueblood goes too far.”

“That might be so, but who will stand with you?  Those who are on your side probably couldn’t even take on Appleoosa, let alone an army of trained soldiers!  Why couldn’t you just solve this thing diplomatically?”

“We had set up a compromise,” Braeburn said.  “He could build his mine shaft on the empty space where the two trees had been torn down by the prospectors if he stopped messing with my farm.  By the time the rains had come around, three of my trees were torn down and none of them were reported to me, and none of them came with an apology.”

Applejack fixed Braeburn with a hard stare.

“Trust me on this, Applejack,” Braeburn added.  “Diplomatic issues don’t work anymore.”

Applejack sighed.  “Did you even give him a chance or did you immediately go for the ditch when you were sure he was comfortable with the agreement?”

“No.  I waited.  Things were going fine at first; he checked in with me from time to time and made sure his men didn’t do anything.  If there was some broken branches, they were cleaned up and sent out for firewood.  But then he started getting dismissive.  He let one of my trees come crashing down without even reporting it to me.  I confronted him but he avoided the issue.  The idea was sealed to go through when he set his military commander at the helm and two more trees went down.”

“But there are five dead and twenty injured,” Applejack said.  “If I’m rememberin’ correctly, some of them are still in our hospital.  Some of them are Appleoosans, for that matter!  I thought it was your job to protect Appleoosa from Blueblood, not to go killin’ off everyone.”

“They were Appleoosans,” Braeburn said, raising his voice for the first time.  “The minute they decided to go to work for Blueblood, they turned their backs on this place.  They no longer care.  They are no longer working to protect Appleoosa anymore.  They want some of what Blueblood has.”

“And what does he have?”

“Promises.  Promises of money, fame, power.  Promises of stability, promises of not having to worry about whether or not they’ll have enough money to feed their family, promises of having their kids be able to make it on their own.”

“It certainly seems to me like they’re gettin’ it, so far.  I bet you that if y’all just let Blueblood do his thing, none of us would be in this mess we’re in right now.”

“But at what cost?” Braeburn fired back.  “At what expense would we be not in this mess?  What if…  What if Ponyville had some expensive metals under your farm?”

“Braeburn, please, that’s crazy talk.”

“What if Blueblood went over to Ponyville and wanted to build a mine there?”

“Braeburn, stop with this nonsense.”

“What if you were forced to make a choice between protecting your farm and having Blueblood take it over?”

“Braeburn!” Applejack yelled.  “Please, just quit talkin’ nonsense!  Nothin’ like that would happen to Sweet Apple Acres, I swear it.”

“You don’t think that I thought that myself!?” Braeburn roared.  “You think that I never thought that nothing would happen to my farm!?  Look what I’ve gotten myself into!  Look at what’s happening to me!  If you told me a few months ago when you came down from Ponyville to visit that my farm and my town was going to be held hostage by a prince and some committee he set up to get himself more power and gold, I would have told you that was crazy talk.”

“It still is!” Applejack shouted.  “We’re startin’ to compare apples to oranges here!  My farm is not the same as yours, my town is not the same as yours, my predicament is not the same as yours!”

“Well, you’re stuck here with no way to get back to Ponyville right now, aren’t you?”

Applejack couldn’t even respond.  She just looked at Braeburn with disgust.  The stallion could see her eyes were beginning to water up.

“Wake up, Applejack,” Braeburn said, calmer than before but with the same venom.  “Blueblood has Appleoosa in a choke hold.  We either band together to get him out of here before anything worse happens, or we get trampled under their hooves.  It doesn’t take advanced education to see what’s going on here.”

Applejack’s expression didn’t change.  “What happened to you, Braeburn?  What happened to the stallion that I once knew?  The cousin that helped me to become more outgoing with others?  Don’t you remember the times at the farm, before moving off to start Appleoosa?”

Braeburn barely registered anger.  He inhaled noisily through his nose.

“Back then, it was so much easier.  You would help me and Mac on the farm, then afterwards we would go and hang out with the others in town.  You were always makin’ friends with everyone; even the most reserved pony would suddenly be full of life around you.  Anyone could feel safe around you.  But they don’t anymore.  You aren’t the stallion we knew back then.  I don’t feel safe around you.  Twilight doesn’t feel safe around you.  Appleoosa doesn’t feel safe around you.”

Braeburn snorted.

“That’s why some of them have gone to Blueblood.  I’ve heard it in their conversations.  Some of them don’t know where to go if Blueblood will take the town to ruin or if you are going to kill everyone who tries to stop you and end up destroying the town before Blueblood takes it.”

Braeburn stood up, trying to make himself tower over Applejack.  “This town will die if Blueblood gets his hooves on it.  I will die before Blueblood gets his hooves on it.”

Applejack stood firm as she could and nodded.  “Fine, then.”

“But know this, Applejack: you are safe.  Twilight is safe.  Blueblood wouldn’t think to hurt someone of such a high rank without there being very steep consequences.”

“That doesn’t change anything.  This town is not going to survive no matter what route it takes to end this conflict.”

Braeburn walked to the door out of the suite and opened it.  He turned around to Applejack.  “Give Twilight my regards,” he said.  “She seems to still see something in me.”  Then he closed the door and left before Applejack could even respond.

Braeburn did not return home right away after leaving the hotel.  The first place he stopped was at the broken bridge outside of town where he asked the ponies still there if Twilight was anywhere nearby.  The ponies working said that she had left a short time before to head back to the hotel where Braeburn had just come from.  Braeburn went back to the hotel and talked with the concierge only to find that he hadn’t been paying attention when Twilight walked back in.  Upon hearing this information, Braeburn left the hotel and went outside into the night to walk back to the farmhouse.

The night was so dimly lit by the waning moon that Braeburn could hardly see the path back to the farmhouse.  Almost immediately as he approached, however, he could tell something wrong.  The lights in the kitchen and the living room were on despite his turning them off before he left.  Braeburn walked carefully up to the house and wondered what could have invaded his house and been so bold to turn his lights on.  He opened the door only to find nobody in the kitchen and only a single, simple glass cup removed.  The faucet dripped as though recently used, hitting the metal of the sink with small pings that proved to be the only noise for a long while.

Braeburn was treated to something entirely different in the living room.  At the far end of the living room was Blueblood, sitting in one of the arm chairs as he sipped a glass of water from what Braeburn recognized as the missing cup.  On either side of Blueblood was one of the pegasus guards, each holding a spear.  Two other unicorn guards appeared behind Braeburn from the hallway and blocked his exit with a revolver each.  Braeburn looked at them, sizing them up and realizing neither had his personal gun before turning back to Blueblood.

“I thought we had an agreement, Braeburn,” Blueblood said as he set down the glass.

“I thought we did too, Blueblood,” Braeburn responded.

Blueblood lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth.  “I personally was wondering what could have caused someone to specifically engineer a flood that killed five of my men and injured another twenty when he had specifically allowed me to mine on his land.”

“We had a deal, Blueblood,” Braeburn said sternly.  “You wouldn’t mess with my land, and I wouldn’t mess with your mine.  For a long time, you checked in on me and I had nearly decided that the flood wasn’t going to be worth it.  It was when you stopped checking in on me, after two of your men came in at night with zero supervision and started digging upwards to knock down a tree that the idea came back, and when you refused to speak about the issue is when I decided it was necessary.”

“Why didn’t you confront me?”  Blueblood said.  “Under the pretenses of our deal, I would have done whatever it took to satisfy you.  You could have taken your complaint directly to me and I would have done something about it.”

“You did, though,” Braeburn said.  “You took the tree and dumped it into the river when you thought I wasn’t looking.  Then, when I hinted about the tree going into the river, you simply dismissed it and said you were heading off to Dodge Junction.  Then you placed that Captain Lancer in your position until you came back, and he didn’t check with me at all.  Two trees went down in one day because of your men, Blueblood, and you didn’t even bother to check and see what happened in your absence or to place someone more competent in charge.”

“That doesn’t mean that five ponies needed to be killed,” Blueblood said.

“It’s one per apple tree,” Braeburn said.  “Perfect considering you’ve trespassed both the grounds of my property and the grounds of our agreement with their actions.”

“There are worse ways to hurt a pony, Braeburn,” Blueblood said.  “Killing him ends his life, but sometimes that punishment is too harsh.  Take something else away from him and let him learn a lesson, then give it back and he will have learned not to do something.”  A trash can was brought over to Blueblood as he deposited the remains of his cigarette in it.  “I suppose I should take away your land for a little while as I originally promised to do, then give it back when you’ve learned who’s in change.”

“You’ve forgotten it as well, Blueblood,” Braeburn replied.  “I’m not here to enforce my own laws, but find the loophole in the ones you’re trying to impose on me.  That is that Princess Celestia’s laws stand firm over every single one of them, and if you are trying to take my deed away, you should be talking to Princess Celestia first as her signature is still valid.”

Blueblood glared at Braeburn, but didn’t respond.

“What?  Are you too afraid that if you do manage to talk to her about it you’ll be exposed for all of your other abuses of power? Taking over Dodge Junction when it was thought the deed was lost, for one?  Or how about building a compound outside of Appleoosa for your mining company?  Not to mention the fact that you threw someone out the window of a hotel suite and killed him.”

Blueblood got so angry with Braeburn he stood up from the chair and walked over to Braeburn.  With one swift movement, Blueblood’s front hoof lashed out and smacked Braeburn across his cheek, leaving a large gash and causing the stallion to be thrown across the floor.  “I am not like you!” Blueblood shouted.  “I am not going around killing everyone and believing I am a hero!  Neither do I think I am doing the right thing!  I’m only doing what is necessary!”

“That makes two of us, then,” Braeburn said.  The stallion tried picking himself up from the floor, only to have Blueblood smack the top of his head and send him right back down.  “And you’re not denying it which means I must have some reason to have done what I did.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting away with it,” Blueblood said through gritted teeth.

Two more guards stepped into the house through the front door.  “Sir, we found the other one in his home.  He’s been knocked out and the others are taking him back to the compound for questioning.”

Blueblood nodded.  “Guards, subdue him but don’t kill him.”

Braeburn didn’t have to think too hard about what that meant.  As soon as the guards came for him, the stallion started bucking and lashing out at the guards approaching him.  One got a similar scratch to Braeburn’s across his cheek, while another was bucked so hard he caused a crack in the wall.

Even with his strength, Braeburn could not hold off the onslaught, especially when Blueblood came into the mix as well.  Blueblood tackled Braeburn and slammed him into the wall, causing the stallion to drop to the floor.  He was about to get up when Blueblood took his hoof and back-hoofed him across the face.  Everything became blurry as the guards surrounded Braeburn holding a long string of rope.  One of the guards holding a revolver raised it up and brought it down; Braeburn felt a sharp sting of pain before everything faded to black.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 - Braeburn and the Diamond Dogs Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes