"I told you," the secretary said, a hoof reaching under the counter. "That she's busy!"

Torrential caught a glimpse of the wooden stock of a arbequues for a moment, before a rich voice called from behind the door.

"Consarnit, Haymaker, ah told yo' t'send him in when he got her'." 

The stallion shot a dirty look to Torrential, and grudgingly stepped away from the door. "You can go right on in..."

--------------------

The walls were lined with deepwood panneling, with across their surface. The only real furniture within the so called "office" was the large circular oaken table that dominated the center of the room, and a few sturdy chairs that gathered around it. A single oil lamp illuminated the room, sputtering against the darkness that gathered in the corners.

The mare, naked of battle armor, at the far end of the table. Various charts and papers spread out infront of her, as well as a bottle of Appleloosa's finest and a shotglass that she was in the midst of filling. 

On further inspection, to Torrential's surprise, it was not battle plans or strategic maneuvers, but instead diagrams and reports for this year's harvest and planting.

"I was told you were in a strategic meeting," Torrential said as he pulled out a chair. Applejack waved a dismissive hoof towards the bottle. 

"This here? This here is whut we call strategics in this here parts," the earthpony said, her lone eye shining in the lamplight. She knocked back another shot and smacked her lips.

"Now, whut kin ah do fo' th' ballsiess ho'nhaid in Equestria," she asked him.
………………………………………………………………………………
The story of exactly what happened that day in Appleloosa was open to debate. The further away from the capital it got, the more the details were affected by hearsay and rumour and even within the city itself the details weren’t all that clear. 

What everyone could agree on was that sometime during the morning, something blew a hole in the side of the Halls of Stone. The more tame rumours that started to spread were that it was an assassination attempt on the life of Applejack by explosives. The witnesses who had a good look at what had happened all claimed that an alicorn wearing a hat and with a jacket in his mouth had ploughed through the wall only to be engulfed by the muddy ground below and vanishing out of sight completely, Applejack taking a pot shot at him with an arbequues from the hole in the wall of her office, screaming "Git back here ye' winged varmint!" all the while. 

Those closest to where the alicorn vanished into the earth would swear that the muddy ground morphed into a snake head and shallowed the alicorn whole before turning into mud once again. 

One of the more dangerous rumours to be born of this event was, either by bomb or by alicorn, Applejack had in fact died. While such a lie was quickly stamped out of Appleloosa herself, it had already left the city before danger control could stop it. There was an old saying that a lie could fly around the world before the truth could get her shoes on and paranoid fear had given this one a strong breeze to soar on. 

The favorite one to tell around the camp fire however was the tale in which Applejack entered her office to discover her little sister Applebloom being 'made a mare' on her elder sisters desk by the alicorn known as Torrential and the events that followed after that speak for themselves. 
………………………………………………………………………………………
Miles away from Appleloosa the mud shifted into a surprisingly large snake, raising out of the ground for a moment before opening its maw wide, depositing a completely whole but very mud covered Torrential onto the ground before returning to the earth from once it came, leaving no sign that it had ever existed at all. 
Shaking his body a little and allowing some of the mud that caked him to fall off, he glanced back in the direction of the city of Appleloosa for a moment before simply saying to himself “Well… That didn’t turn out like I expected…” 
A small, somewhat proud smile appeared on his face as he started to walk east, the clouds for the latest rain already gathering to cover the sun for a time and give the land the water it required.