> 7817 con't
> Sweet Apple Acres is a thing
No. Sorry, did you read the g-doc where I laid out the setting? I'd have some sort of thing included in a full-novel to clear up "when" this was supposed to happen but ... Yes at this time the Apples own the land where the orchard will be grown, but it's just brambles and a makeshift fence right now. We know it wasn't too many ... months? Something... until Granny Smith Apple found the Zap Apples, but remember those were wild still and also needed time to cultivated and replanted and/or grown from seed.

> From what context does she know [Anon is a killer]?
The fact that he's been casually sleeping in the Everfree Forest. It gets a bit noisy, he says. But not "I'd love to not fear for my life in a meadow full of vicious carnivores" which is what a pony would have said about that.

> I'll let it pass for this case
Given the societal backdrop in which this is set, it seems perfectly reasonable to me. WE didn't have a drinking-age until, what the '30s? Somebody looked a bunch of firsts up once, for a pony RPG, this was one of them. Certainly in medieval times, there were certain feasts when the "kids" at twelve, fourteen, whatever, were allowed to get drunk before their first day of work which, yes, sometimes they'd have to call in sick because they'd never been hungover before.

<  >"Roasting, good morning"
> If this is what I think it is
No. And there are two reasons why I would need to rename the female lead and this is one of them. I hadn't heard that term as a slur until ... '14? '15? maybe later still. And it kinda pisses me off because it's not really like virgin eighteen year olds have beautiful vulvae; that's just how women are put together so get your mind out of the gutter and
sigh
The other reason is, and of course I looked this up AFTER writing this whole thing, that no beer maker experiments with roasting the hops twice. It does nothing positive for the taste or texture and damages the hops' ability to preserve the beer during storage. So it's a dumb name and that's where that stands.
But her cutie mark is brewing, I'm sure. Giant wooden vat over a fire, maybe.

> I find this part [guard bursting in] slightly abrupt
It is, but there's an off screen reason, and I personally don't have a problem with that, and that this is what follows this seems natural too.
You've by now read, heard, learned, that cops make mistakes, right? Sometimes those are horrible mistakes where people wind up dead. Sometimes an innocent bystander, sometimes the cop.
The "inn's" proprietor has been burned to a pile of ash, with just the hooves and a bit of forelock falling outside the circle of destruction. There's only the one room as it turns out, and the guard are assuming they've been burnt too. Since the ash is still warm, they're thinking (maybe only the lead partner?) that the guests could be involved, and whatever form their involvement takes, more will be learned if they don't wait for the killer to leave.
Should the killer be hiding in the room, I mean.
So, they burst in, find perfectly healthy guests who look badly startled, and that lead partner needs to blurt out SOMETHING that will seem reasonable enough to get them outside, so the guard can gauge the nature and approximate veracity of the guests reaction to seeing the pile of ash with some bloodied hooves sticking out.
"oops" their ghosts might later say.

> edgy ninja
> edgy brawler
Edgy killer.
He's not even trying to be "Edgy" it's just -- this is an extension of how he was raised, and when a teenager leaps into action from instinct alone, naturally it will turn out to have been the wrong thing.

> "My favorite film is Star Wars Attack of the Clones, Anakin is so, umf"
Yeah no one on halfchan liked her reaction. Again, edgy teenager reacting without fully thinking. She'd already decided to take the mook to Canterlot, and now that would mean she could never come home. "oops" her adult self might tell her filly self.