Vinyl Scratch gets re-acquainted with the rather-odd ponies of Ponyville.
Vinyl Scratch has a couple of days to waste between gigs, so she decides to spend some time in Ponyville and get re-acquainted with the rather-odd ponies who live there.
(The "Crossover" tag is for a dash of Doctor Whooves in Chapter 1.)
Hustle and bustle. The same ponies, bumping into each other again for the hundredth time in as many minutes. Tempers were frayed to the snapping point. Standing behind her twin turntables at the back of the room, the only thing Vinyl Scratch could think of to do to make this situation bearable was to play something...anything. Music, she had so often found, had powers beyond that of any mortal unicorn’s horn. Unfortunately, music was the one thing she was forbidden to make. At this rate, she figured, the angry crowd would descend into a rampaging mob in less than an hour. Something had to be done—but what?
A pony stood in the doorway for several minutes, silently taking in the scene. Finally, he pulled another pony aside and asked the most important question he could come up with: “So what’s this all about then?”
Vinyl Scratch perked up her ears. This was the first new arrival in hours. The newcomer was at the opposite end of the hall from her, but she could easily pick his voice out from the others.
“It’s a party,” replied the annoyed voice of the second pony. Vinyl had heard this pony’s voice in multiple conversations over the course of the evening so far. If anypony was going to pick a fight tonight, he’d be the one. So far, though, he was zero for eighteen in his attempts to get a rise out of anypony else.
“Yes, a party scheduled to start at 4 pm, on a Tuesday,” the newcomer replied, as if that fact was an insult to his sense of propriety. From his voice, Vinyl judged him to be a earth pony with a Northern accent (for even Equestria has a North), but there was something...extra...about him that she could not identify. “Also, this is not much of a party; everypony is so long in the face. Well, we’re ponies, so I should say...longer than usual. And you’re all walking around in a circle instead of stopping and looking at the exhibits. Of course, considering that it is now 10:15, that’s not that unusual, but you’re not even doing the circling part very well—there’s so many of you in this tiny space that you’re all bumping into one another, ebbing and flowing like the stopped-up drain of a sink being attacked by a crazed otter with an oversized plunger!”
This babble of talk had managed to gain the attention of most of the crowd, which quieted down to hear how this pony would be put in his place. The pony the newcomer had engaged in dialog stood silent for several moments, soaking up the antagonistic encouragement of the others as he tried to come up with the most devastating reply possible. “Well, aren’t you the clever pony!” was the best he could come up with.
If he was hoping to push the new pony’s buttons, he failed completely. “Ah, you noticed!” the new pony gleefully replied. “I find it always helps to get things off on the right...hoof to get that established up front. Now then, if this is a party, who’s the guest of honor?”
“That would be Prince Steadfast,” said the voice of a third pony, stepping forward to take his turn. “This here Sports Wing is being dedicated in his honor.”
“‘Sports Wing’?” asked the newcomer incredulously. “Looks like the basement to me. And is Prince Steadfast the pony whose gigantic papier-mâché head I walked under to enter this museum?”
“That’s the one,” said the third pony, in a mixture of curiosity and hopefulness. The necks of the crowd leaned forward expectantly, for they knew that the new pony was on the edge of a precipice.
“For a sportspony, he could stand to lose some weight!” the new pony remarked with what sounded like a cheeky grin. “And did you say ‘is being dedicated in his honor’ as opposed to ‘has been dedicated by’? Are you saying that he has kept you all waiting here for him to arrive for six hours? What kind of pompous, self-inflated blowhard does he think he is?”
Every pony let out their collective breaths in awe. Finally, someone had dared to say what they had all been thinking. And then, a few moments later, they all realized that he had actually said out loud what they had all been thinking, about the most-influential pony any of them would ever hope to meet in their entire lives. Suddenly, they all seemed to find the exhibits on Vinyl’s side of the room very, very interesting.
Vinyl raised a hoof to her mouth in a vain attempt to cover up a grin at the pony’s audacity. It is one thing to be eccentric, Vinyl thought to herself, and quite another to insult royalty! It’s like he’s some sort of tourist in his own country! She also realized that he had managed to completely diffuse the tension that had been building in the room all this time.
“Timepony, you’re crazy!” exclaimed the first pony the newcomer had talked to before retreating, expressing the general opinion of the room.
“Wait!” exclaimed the earth pony, “how did you know I’m a time...oh, right, the hourglass on my rear.” He raised his voice for the rest of the crowd to hear. “Yes, that’s right, just an ordinary time pony, here to inspect the...um, clocks, like that one over there!” He quickly made his way straight for the unicorn disk jockey’s table, causing her to back up from her table a couple of paces. Yet the closer he got, the more she felt a strange and thrilling sort of electricity building between them. Vinyl suddenly had the conviction that this was a pony you could trust with your life, with the lives of everypony you ever cared about. Moreover, this was a pony around whom things happened, and to stay around him would make you a pony whose life mattered.
Vinyl suddenly caught herself leaning towards him, and leaned back with a lurch, breaking the spell. She was a pony with a career, and a small amount of notoriety. She wanted nothing more. She didn’t need her life to matter in the greater scheme of things. All of this happened in a matter of moments. The pony arrived, and noticed nothing.
“Did you see the way they all reacted just now?” he asked her. “It’s like everypony came to this party for no other reason but to kiss the Prince’s cutie mark!”
“Everypony came to this party for no other reason but to kiss the Prince’s cutie mark,” Vinyl Scratch deadpanned. It was a potentially career-ending joke, if repeated in the ears of the wrong pony, but this pony could be trusted.
“Does everypony include the DJ?” he asked with a hint of disappointment in his voice.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in an aristocracy,” she replied in a low but defensive voice. “To get a prince to remember your name will set you up for life, but get one of them to think you snubbed them for any reason, and you might as well move out to the country, because your life in high society will officially be over. And high society is the majority of my clientele.” She then raised her voice to normal levels to add “I do wish you’d fix the clock—it’s missing one second every three hours and completely throwing off my sense of rhythm.”
The ground pony chuckled. “OK, first: can a DJ have a sense of rhythm when she’s not playing anything? And then: one second in three hours—really? Are you the ‘time pony’ in this room instead of me? (Sort of a two-part question there.) And third (or maybe fourth), getting back to the root problem: why aren’t you playing anything for this extremely captive and bored audience of cutie mark kissers with no place to plant their lips? Aren’t they part of your clientele as well?”
Number three (or four) was the question Vinyl Scratch was in no mood to answer, having had to deal with it since the party started, so she raised a hoof and pointed. “The bar’s ten paces that way.”
The visitor thought this over for a moment, undoubtedly using the moment to take in the record players, the stack of neatly-arranged records, and finally Vinyl Scratch herself: a unicorn mare, her coat with a color she had been confidently informed was called “white rose”, her cutie mark a double quaver, her mane blue striped with cyan, and finally the oversized reflective glasses that defined her DJ Pon-3 stage persona. “O…K,” he finally said. “I could use a drink.”
It was easy enough to over-hear the conversation that followed at the bar, a variation of the same conversation she had been having with irritated guests all night: “Yeah, I’d like a glass of…”
“Look, mister. Prince Steadfast is getting the first drink of the night. No ands, ifs or buts.”
“But…”
“It’s a courtesy. To the prince. Now go find something else to do until he arrives.”
“Well that’s the stupidest rule I ever heard of!”
The bartender said nothing, so the pony returned to Vinyl’s table. “I respectfully withdraw my earlier questions,” he said, “and substitute a new one: How is that business of yours?”
For any other pony, Vinyl would have said something nice. Instead she once again told the truth: “Business is awful, and has been for quite some time now. I was lucky to be Miss Minster’s second choice for entertainment at this party after her first choice turned her down.”
“May I ask who that first choice was?” the time pony asked.
“It was Octavia’s Ensemble. You know, it was strange,” she confided, “every single member of the group came down with the same ailment at the same time, which prevented them from making the date: debilitating neck pains. What do you think could have happened to cause...” Vinyl suddenly facehoofed. “Wait, I just got that joke. They must have been as aware of Prince Steadfast’s reputation as I am. Well, no matter. I really needed this job, no matter how much ‘neck pain’ might result.”
“That’s too bad,” the pony said sadly. “An artist of your caliber should be able to play where and what she chooses.”
Vinyl shrugged. “It’s a hazard of the entertainment industry. Fame and fortune comes and goes. It’s cyclical.”
“So is everything in Equestria,” he replied, dead serious. It was like his mask had suddenly dropped.
Vinyl failed to catch the significance of this, and simply nodded. “Indeed.”
The stallion leaned in close. “Listen, do you mind if I give you a little business advice? The next time an unusual business offer comes your way, say yes.”
He said this with all the portentousness he could muster, as if the fate of worlds depended on one entertainer’s annual income. Vinyl shook her head to clear it of the odd vibe she was picking up from the time pony. “Seems like rather obvious advice under the circumstances, don’t you think?” she replied.
“Well, you’d think so, but as a matter of fact…”
“Fillies and gentlecolts, if I may have your attention, please!” The voice was that of Miss Adelaide Minster, the director of the Equestrian Museum, and the source of the no-play and no-drink orders that had made everypony so miserable. Rather intelligently, she had been absent from the basement gallery for most of the past six hours. “I have here a message from the Sports Wing’s inspiration and this party’s guest of honor, the Prince. He regrets to inform you that urgent affairs of state prevented his appearing at the opening tonight. However, I also have good news: he will be available for the rescheduled opening of the Sports Wing on Thursday night at 7 pm. That’s the day after tomorrow, at 7 pm. I hope to see you all there, but I regret to inform you that it is an hour past closing time and you all really must leave as soon as possible.”
“‘Urgent affairs of state’?” the pony with the hourglass mark asked incredulously.
The DJ grinned mischievously. “Well, what do you think happened?” she whispered to him.
He dropped his voice to answer. “I think he read the urgent telegram from Madame Director and said, ‘Oh, you mean this Tuesday?’” Vinyl started to laugh, but then she heard the approach of a familiar set of hoofsteps and tried to warn the time pony to stop his impersonation. “‘What kind of foal schedules a grand opening for a Tuesday afternoon, anyway?’” he continued. “And…she’s right behind me, isn’t she?” He turned around to address the museum director. “Closing time, you said? Guess I’d better be going.”
“Wait!” Vinyl cried out, trying to get around a bank of equipment to catch up with the departing stallion. “You never told me your name! Who are you?”
She was stopped by the outstretched hoof of Miss Minster. “What are you doing fraternizing with guests?” she asked accusingly. “You had a job to do tonight.”
Which you refused to let me do, Vinyl thought. Instead of answering, she got busy packing up her equipment.
After waiting in vain for an excuse of some kind, just so she could shout it down, the director continued. “I’ll expect you back here Thursday at 5:30 sharp.”
Vinyl sighed. “There’s the matter of pay for tonight…”
“What pay? You didn’t do anything! Your contract was to play for the Prince, and you won’t see a bit of compensation until you fulfill that obligation!”
Vinyl seriously considered telling Miss Minster how she truly felt at that moment, but two things stopped her. First, the unstated threat of a prince’s snub. And second, the looming payment to repair damages caused by the recent parasprite attack on her office/home in Fillydelphia. As a result, Vinyl restricted herself to a curt “Yes, ma’am”.
The Equestrian Museum was located at the base of a mountain range that was west of Canterlot and north of Ponyville. Since it was equidistant from both centers, it was served by two public transportation stations. The trip to Canterlot was in the form of an express flight from the Trans-Equestria Dirigible Service, while the trip to Ponyville was on the County Coach line.
Vinyl entered the TEDS station and sought out the telegraph operator, sending a terse message back to Philo, her uncle/manager in Fillydelphia, after carefully counting the bits in her saddlebag:
GIG NOW ON THURS. CAN’T GO HOME. I CAN DO THIS MYSELF. CANCEL PR. POTTER GIG.
She sat down to wait for a reply. She just knew that her uncle was at the local telegraph office, waiting. Philo was only technically Vinyl’s manager; he knew nothing about the entertainment business and completely failed to understand her music. His true purpose at her gigs was to provide emotional support and to make it harder for employers and fans to get close enough to figure out her secret. The only reason Uncle Philo couldn’t accompany his niece to the museum opening was because he had to care for Vinyl’s ailing grandmother. Vinyl winced as she realized that she forgot to include anything in the telegram addressed to Grams.
As for Professor Potter, he was one of the few teachers from Vinyl’s music school with a passion for music composed in his own lifetime. Pulling out of his diamond wedding anniversary would prove a severe blow to their friendship, but Vinyl hoped that he would understand that she had no choice but to put royalty, in the form of Prince Steadfast, first.
Even if this particular prince is the latest in a long line of Steadfasts that count “character assassination” among their list of hereditary hobbies, the DJ thought bitterly.
Her ruminations were interrupted by the expected reply from Uncle Philo:
I UNDERSTAND. EXPECT ME AT TEDS STATION FRIDAY AT MIDNIGHT.
Vinyl nodded in satisfaction. She was afraid that he’d dash all the way up to the museum as soon as he got her telegram, but he had paid attention to the most important part of the message: I can do this myself.
That message used half of the money she brought with her to the museum; idle spending money, but now all she had to live on for two days. With her finances in their current state, there was no question of the unicorn taking any form of public or private transportation that night. And returning to Fillydelphia was out of the question. As was usual for most roads in the general vicinity of the capital, both the east and the south roads leading away from the Equestrian Museum were so well maintained that a pony could navigate either one even on a moonless night—assuming there was such a thing as a moonless night, of course. As she harnessed herself to her audio cart, Vinyl pondered where to stay for the next two days: east to Canterlot, or south to Ponyville? Canterlot had the more-comfortable accommodations, and the greater chance of arranging some more business from her contacts. But Ponyville was decidedly cheaper, and in the end that alone settled the matter. The fact that she was born there had no influence whatsoever, or so she told herself.
The young DJ was able to compose six new dance mixes in her head during the long trot to Ponyville. Once she arrived, she took the long way to the town’s only inn, a path designed to pass by Rarity’s shop.
Rarity and Vinyl had been blank-flanked classmates a seeming eternity ago, and the two had tried to keep in touch ever since Vinyl found her calling and moved to the music capital of Fillydelphia.
“Vinyl Scratch?” a familiar voice swam out of the darkness. “Is that you?”
“Rarity!” Vinyl exclaimed, turning to face the sound. “I sure am glad to run into you. I heard you were out of town.” Actually, she had heard that the designer pony had set out on a mad expedition with her friends to the Barrier Peaks with no chance of surviving, but this was Rarity, so Vinyl hadn’t worried one bit.
“We just got back,” Rarity replied. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on my way to the inn to get a room for a couple of days.”
“Oh if you’re staying in town, then I insist that you stay with me.” The enthusiasm in the designer’s voice sounded forced. Beneath the artifice, Rarity sounded tired, and worried.
Vinyl made a mental note to ask her friend what was troubling her whenever they had a moment of privacy. For the moment, though, she matched Rarity in seeming cheerfulness. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said with a grin.
“Money troubles again?”
And that was the end of that pretense. “It’s a cyclical business, you know.”
“That’s an excuse and you know it! You need to build up more contacts, and tomorrow I’ll get you introduced to a couple of ponies I know.”
Vinyl sighed. “Very well. Tonight, though, we should catch up.” She gestured towards the shop. “After you?”
“I’m afraid not. I only came to the shop to clean up. My friends and I were going to have a bit of a party at the library.” Rarity hesitated for a bit. “Would…would you like to come?”
“I really don’t know most of your friends,” Vinyl said, feeling awkward.
“Well I was thinking maybe I could hire you for the party, if you’re not too tired. I’ll pay you the standard rate.”
Vinyl recognized this gesture for the charity it was, but she wasn’t tired, and the frustration from the museum meant she was going to be playing loud music tonight in any case. Besides, this was an opportunity to finally meet the rest of the group Vinyl had secretly dubbed the “Gang of Five.”
Woops, that would be “Gang of Six”, now that the Princess’ pupil had joined the group. The pupil with the pet talking dragon. Now that was somepony she just had to meet.
Thanks to the sound of his claws on the entryway tiles, Vinyl knew that Twilight Sparkle’s dragon would be answering Rarity’s knock before the door even opened.
“Welcome back…Rare-ity! Who’s your friend?”
Vinyl smiled, both because the voice perfectly fit her conception of what a boy dragon should sound like, and because of the very obvious emotional tone that dragon put into Rarity’s name.
“This is DJ Pon-3,” Rarity said. “She’ll be providing the music for our little wind-down session.”
“Oh, that’s great!” the toothy dragon exclaimed. “I don’t know how much longer we could have put up with Pinkie Pie’s singing! The name’s Spike, by the way.”
Vinyl bowed deeply. “It is a great honor to meet a Keeper of the Terrestrial Fires.”
“Aww, I’m no dragon diplomat,” said Spike. “In fact, I didn’t even know about that title until a week ago! Have you ever met an adult dragon?”
Vinyl shook her head. “No, but I would love to, someday. I hear they produce some of the most amazing music in the whole world.”
“Huh.” Spike pondered that thought. “I’ll have to ask Twilight about that. But the party’s awaiting–follow me!”
Vinyl strode confidently into the hallway leading to the public room, followed by Rarity.
“Ladies and…more ladies,” Spike announced mischievously, “may I present the musical entertainment of the night: DJ Pon-3!”
“Aw, I was just getting warmed up!” pouted a high-pitched voice from the corner of the public room, before joining two other ponies in gathering before the new arrival.
Rarity stepped forward to make the introductions. “Pon-3, these are Rainbow Dash…”
“The one and only!”
“…Applejack…”
“A pleasure making your acquaintance.”
“…and Pinkie Pie…”
“Hi, Vinyl!”
“…have you met Pinkie already?” asked Rarity.
“Hasn’t everypony?” Vinyl replied laconically.
“…right.”
Rainbow Dash took over for the final introduction. “Fluttershy is the one over there behind the ficus. Say hi, Fluttershy!”
A sound barely audible to the others was emitted from the direction indicated.
“Thank you, Fluttershy,” Vinyl replied. “I do what I can to keep up my appearances. And I am also glad to have met the rest of you…” …minus one. “Now if you could tell me where to set up?”
“We’ve got a clear table to your right against the wall,” said Rarity.
“Under the window?” Vinyl asked, without once pointing her head in that direction.
“Yes, that’s the one. Other than the basement, Twilight has made minimal changes to the layout of this tree.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Speaking of which, where is Twilight Sparkle?”
“She’s still cataloging her…acquisitions from our trip,” said Fluttershy, nervously.
“They’re just presents,” said Rarity. “I don’t see why she should be spending so much time with hers.”
“So says the only one of us wearing her present around her neck,” Dash remarked.
“Yes, well…it compliments my eyes,” Rarity said.
Fluttershy moved to look out a window. “Speaking of which, I hope my present is doing well. She practically ate every carrot I had before I left her at my cottage.”
Rainbow Dash got up. “Maybe I should look in on my present…make sure it’s still holding up.”
“Rainbow Dash, your present is a stick of wood!” exclaimed Applejack. “I don’t think anything bad is going to happen to it if you leave it be for tonight.”
“A stick!” Rainbow exclaimed. “It’s a lot more than a stick! Don’t you remember what…”
“Rainbow…” Applejack interrupted, with a note of warning in her voice.
“…Yeah, alright. DJ, you may start the party, without the guest of honor.”
The unicorn made a mental note of the amount of tension she had noted in the voices of everyone present, even Pinkie’s during her introduction. Something big must have happened on that trip to the Barrier Peaks, and having only just met them, Vinyl accepted that she wouldn’t be learning what had happened anytime soon.
The DJ unicorn brought her equipment in and began to set up.
“Say, Vinyl…” said Pinkie, suddenly appearing beside her. “When did you get to know the layout of this place? Did you play for any parties before Twilight arrived?”
The disk jockey nodded. “I played for Rarity’s high school graduation–we go way back. More importantly, my mom was the librarian here before we moved to Fillydelphia. I grew up in this place.”
“And you still remember it all?” Pinkie asked.
“Like it was yesterday,” Vinyl replied. “My family has a talent for mental organization.”
“Oooo, how interesting!”
“And one more thing, Pinkie.”
“Yes?”
Vinyl smiled. “Please call me by my stage name when I’m, you know, on stage.”
“Oh, right…DJ Pon-3!”
The DJ shook her head. Pinkie was the only pony she knew who pronounced the name like everyone else, while somehow doing it in a way that you could hear the “3” as a “3” instead of as the word “three”.
Her equipment prepared, she set to work.
The job of a DJ is rather similar to that of a bartender; the goal is not so much to give the customer what they ask for, but rather what they need but do not know that they need.
What this crowd needed, as Vinyl had intuited, was not music for accomplishing a goal, but rather music for surviving a rather trying ordeal. Accordingly, she put a ballad on the record player and stood back to let her own particular non-magical form of magic take its effect.
An hour passed. “You know,” Dash told the others with a hint of longing in her voice, “maybe I can convince Twilight to come out here.” She then walked through the far door of the room into the back room beyond.
A couple more songs were played, and neither Twilight nor Rainbow emerged. Applejack sighed. “That foal pegasus can’t go five minutes without admiring her present! I’d better go in there before Dash gets it into her head that she knows how to throw that thing.” She walked through the door Rainbow Dash had used earlier.
Vinyl allowed the current song to play out, and then used her horn’s magic to lift the needle. The silence in the room had made it obvious where everypony’s attention was now centered.
Rarity walked by her station. “Could you come with me?” she asked. “Not you,” she added to someone behind her.
“Aww…” said Spike, who sulked over to a corner.
The two white unicorns (well…one “white rose”, the other “light azure gray”) approached the door to the back room. At the same time, Fluttershy cautiously made her way to the DJ’s station, both to get a closer look at what was going on, and to investigate the very odd-looking machinery that DJ Pon-3 used to equalize and mix her music.
“Could you tell me what they’re saying?” Rarity whispered to Vinyl.
The other unicorn frowned and shook her head. “I’m not going to get in the middle of whatever disagreement you gals are in,” she whispered.
Of course, Vinyl herself couldn’t help overhearing the conversation in the next room. Those ears of hers could sometimes be a curse as well as a blessing…
“Look at these books, all of this knowledge recovered from the Ancients!” said the first voice, presumably Twilight Sparkle. “We now know they speak the same language as us; only the method of writing it is different. Now look at these two objects–same image, and I would bet these are the same titles. That must mean that this is the sing-along version of this! If I could reproduce just one piece of their technology, we could learn about their entire civilization!”
“And what’s your opinion on this, Dash?” asked a second voice, belonging to Applejack.
“I don’t care about any books,” said a third voice, that of Rainbow Dash. “I just want to hear the part named after my present.”
Applejack tried a new tack. “This box and its contents aren’t even your presents; they’re Pinkie’s. Aren’t you going to ask her before you start experimenting?”
“Oh, I don’t mind!” exclaimed a fourth voice, that of Pinkie Pie.
Two eavesdropping unicorns suddenly turned their heads in confusion. “Wasn’t she out here a second ago?” Rarity whispered.
Vinyl spent several moments reviewing her mental map of the tree to figure out if there was some other way to get into the back room from the public room without using the door. As a result she missed most of what Pinkie Pie said next. It seemed to be something about getting the “maximum fun” out of her present.
Pinkie then walked out of the door and past the two. “You may resume lurking!” she informed them cheerfully after closing it.
Applejack sighed. “Have either of you thought this through?”
“I don’t think this would really be all that complicated, technically-speaking,” said Twilight.
“That’s not what I mean,” said Applejack. “Let me ask you something: are any of those…things…in the Royal Library?”
“No,” Twilight replied.
“Why not?” Applejack asked.
“Shouldn’t it be obvious? They’re very fragile. We nearly broke two of them on the trip back, and at least one of them is too cracked to play.”
“And this Ancient-to-Equestrian dictionary you plan to write–why aren’t there any of those in the Royal Library, if it’s as simple to write as you say it is?”
“Well…they must have all been lost over the millennia,” Twilight admitted.
“Lost…or removed?”
Applejack’s question was met with silence. “Before you do this,” she said, finally, “I just want you to consider what…and who…you might be up against.”
Twilight sighed. “You saw the last illustration in that history book. I have to do this.”
Rarity recognized her cue and walked into the back room, followed by Vinyl. “In that case, perhaps we can be of service.”
“Rarity?” asked Twilight. “What do you know about compact discs?”
In an instant, Vinyl was drawn to the box that was the center of attraction in the room, seemingly pulled by a force similar to what Rarity had experienced when getting her cutie mark. “You’ve found CDs? Do you know how incredibly rare these are? The sonic quality on these is supposed to be unsurpassed! And the beats! Ancient beats unheard by pony ears!”
Rarity stepped between the hyperactive DJ and the magician. “Twilight Sparkle, may I introduce you to my friend, Vinyl Scratch?”
Vinyl pulled her attention away from the silent treasure before her to face her new acquaintance and bow slightly. “It is an honor to meet you, Miss Sparkle. I have heard a great deal about your exploits.”
“Why isn’t she shaking my hoof?” Twilight whispered to Rarity.
Vinyl’s heart caught in her throat. This was precisely why she took Uncle Philo to her gigs, to keep her from making obvious slip-ups like not hearing Twilight raise her hoof. Now she was going to hear it again: the worst word in the Equine language.
“Oh. Oooooohhhhhhhh.”
Vinyl sighed, deeply. Let the pity parade begin, she thought darkly.
“It’s good to meet you as well,” Twilight said, slowly, as if Vinyl’s ability to comprehend speech was compromised by her “condition”. Or perhaps her intelligence.
Vinyl gritted her teeth.
“Uh, Twilight…” Rarity began.
“Um, Rarity,” Twilight said at the same time. “I don’t see why…oh wait, I better not use that word…”
The tooth grinding became audible.
“…I mean, I don’t understand what you meant when you said you can help.”
“Not me, Vinyl here! She built almost all of the audio equipment she uses. It should be simplicity itself for her to build you a player for those little reflective records of yours!”
“That’s a great idea!” exclaimed Dash, joining the fray. “Why don’t we have her work on this one first! It’s dedicated to an Ancient sports festival. The fifth track is called ‘Javelin’–the same as my present!”
In an instant, Vinyl’s frustration was transformed into panic. “What?! Build a CD player? Oh, Rarity, I wouldn’t know about that! That electrical stuff of mine is just a hobby! They’re based on cobbled-together models and equations…and most of my equipment has a dangerous tendency to burst into flame at odd moments!” (In the other room, Fluttershy suddenly decided that she no longer wanted to get a close look at how a DJ worked.) “I really don’t think that I should be entrusted with such priceless Ancient artifacts!” she concluded.
“You’re being too harsh on yourself, dear,” Rarity told her. “You’re Equestria’s premiere expert on the subject of all things audio, and I’ll prove it–catch!”
Vinyl’s horn lit up and instinctually caught the small object that had been telekinetically tossed at it. Cautiously, she began to examine it.
The “horned sight” ability is the only form of vision available to a blind unicorn. At close distances, it reveals incredibly-detailed data, while at the widest distances it opens up incredibly broad vistas. As a young filly, Vinyl had referred to the two states as the “little wiggly dots” and the “big turning pinwheels”. Vinyl’s range in this respect was far wider than that of any other unicorn she had compared notes with, perhaps because, being sightless, she wasn’t blinded by the Silver and Gold Barrier effects that washed out the extremes for everyone else. Because of the rapid change in scale between those two extremes, horned sight is useless in performing the tasks of spatial orientation and facial recognition provided by two good eyes.
The other ponies (who had all by now gathered in the back room) ooh’ed and aah’ed, probably at the light show caused by the reflections made by her horn’s light on the reflective surface of the compact disc. She had quickly decided to ignore the side with the painted design and weird lettering on it.
“This is a remarkably-smooth surface, completely free of grooves or vibratory information,” Vinyl announced. “Are you sure this disc hasn’t been blanked somehow?”
“No, all of them are just like that,” said Dash. “They were good for blinding Applejack when she kept showing off with her present.”
“That reminds me,” Vinyl said, slyly, “how did you manage to find these ‘presents’ of yours, anyway?”
An uncomfortable silence gripped the room, as it became clear that Vinyl was not going to get an answer to that question. There goes the direct approach, she thought.
“Hey wait a minute!” exclaimed Twilight, who was standing near the curtains at the far side of the room. “Look at the patterns your horn-light is making when reflected off the disc!”
“Why don’t you describe it?” Vinyl said, coldly.
“Oh…right. These are very intricate concentric tracks, each made up of light and dark spots.”
“Well, there you have it–the exact same information as a vinyl record, but encoded in light instead of in vibrations. I am therefore completely useless to your investigation.”
“No,” Twilight corrected her, “that helped a great deal! I’m sure I can crack this now, thanks to what you’ve just told me.”
“Then you will no longer need my services, either of them, since it appears the party has ended. I’ll just pack up my things and go now. Rarity, I’m pretty tired–maybe we can have that talk you promised tomorrow morning?”
“Actually, I think I’m leaving as well. Just give me a moment.” She waited for Vinyl to walk out of the room before turning on Twilight.
“And as for you!” Rarity exclaimed.
“What? What did I do?” Twilight asked in confusion.
“You are going to read this book tonight, and tomorrow you will provide me with a list of at least three ways you screwed up.”
Vinyl smiled as she packed up her things. Rarity was the best.
Wednesday morning began with a highly-uncomfortable groveling session at the library. With that out of the way, Vinyl taught Twilight the diagnostic spell she used to play a record without a phonograph, gave the researcher the least-used record in her collection (“Muskrat Love”–it was a present from her grandma, OK?), and left her to her work with the shiny discs.
The rest of the day was spent at the Carousel Boutique. Rarity had scheduled several clients for fittings and adjustments, and she did her best to sell DJ Pon-3’s talents to each of them. In this, she was more or less successful, but alas, it was not the right season for a party or event that required those talents. The right ponies were out of town, or something big was anticipated, or finances (outside of the funds for the dress, of course) were temporarily in a less than optimal condition.
“Well,” concluded Rarity at 3:30, when she decided to close up shop, “perhaps your pessimism was somewhat justified.”
“What did I tell you?” said Vinyl. “This industry is…”
“…yes, well I believe we have quite well driven that joke into the ground. There are a few more hours until sunset, so why don’t we…”
Rarity was interrupted by a knock on the door and a call of “Yoo Hoo!”–both of which came from Pinkie. Rainbow Dash had apparently mastered the art of the javelin, and was prepared to show it off at Sweet Apple Acres.
“Why Sweet Apple Acres?” asked Vinyl, as Pinkie could be heard bouncing down the street to tell the others.
“She’s going to throw a great big pointed stick,” Rarity replied. “Just be glad she picked a place far away from most windows. Are you coming?”
Vinyl thought for a bit. “Actually, I need to throw together a couple of acoustical tiles for me to use tomorrow night. They’ve got me playing in a regular cave.”
“Acoustical tile? Let me see, isn’t that made from cork board covered with cloth?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are coming with me. The cloth’s right here, the lumberyard’s on the way, and Applejack will let you borrow the tools you’ll need to put it all together.”
“Well…”
“Spike will be there,” Rarity teased.
“OK, you talked me into it.”
When the seven ponies, one dragon, and one toothless alligator arrived together at Sweet Apple Acres, they shared mostly-mundane stories of the day’s activities. Pinkie Pie claimed on a cake delivery to have performed an impromptu exorcism upon an icebox possessed by “The Thing That Wouldn’t Stop It”. A confused Vinyl followed the others’ lead in not saying anything (or perhaps nodding sagely and not saying anything). Spike demonstrated a bit of “dragon throat singing”–the ability to sing two notes at the same time, a talent he had taught himself earlier that day while Twilight was working. Everyone concluded, in the politest possible manner, that his skill had room for improvement.
“Speaking of Twilight, have you got any further with that compact disc?” Rarity asked.
“I’m afraid I’ve hit a wall. It turns out that the grooves on a CD are nothing like the grooves on a record. It’s some sort of digital code.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Rarity assured her.
“Oh, I think I have figured it out, but that doesn’t really help me. Once I’m done with the demodulation and error-correction, I still have a stream of stop and start signals I don’t know what to do with.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Vinyl, finally lifting her head from her work with the acoustical tiles. “Give it to me at your fastest speed.”
“Well, alright…” said Twilight uncertainly, and her horn began to glow. Part of Vinyl’s spell was used to produce a sound, an extremely-rapid alternation of clicks and silence that resembled a concert of hornets.
“Yup, you’re stuck all right,” Vinyl concluded after a moment’s thought, and resumed her work.
“So, is everyone ready to see me make sports history?!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed impatiently with an object in her mouth.
“I’ll announce!” Pinkie Pie and Spike declared at the same time.
“I don’t see what’s the big deal about a javelin,” grumbled Applejack.
“The big deal,” Twilight answered, pulling a book out of her saddlebag, “is that the javelin throw is one of only two track and field sports inherited from the Ancients that no pony has ever been able to reproduce.”
“What else does your Big Book of Sports have to say about it?” asked Fluttershy.
“That is all the book had to say about it.”
“Is there a reason why it hasn’t been done before?” Vinyl asked, putting away her work with the tiles.
“Well, javelins are made from cedar,” Dash explained, “and that wood’s really flexible. The metal points on this one make it even more unstable. You could pick it up in the middle and toss it like an elephant tosses a log, I guess, but if that was the point, why make them so long?”
Vinyl applied some thought to the matter. “You could pick it up by one end with your mouth and toss it that way.”
“Which end would you pick up?” Pinkie interrupted.
“Uh, does it matter?” the DJ asked.
“Nope,” replied Pinkie, “just so long as it lands gold-end first.”
“I tried that,” Rainbow said, answering Vinyl’s original question. “It just fell.”
“…gold-end first,” finished Pinkie.
Vinyl tried to continue to ignore Pinkie. It wasn’t easy. “You could pick it up with your mouth and flick it sideways.”
“Naw,” answered Dash, “that’s where the flexibility gets in the way. A javelin will wobble like crazy unless you throw it absolutely straight. And I gathered you all here because I figured out how to do just that! Now, I’d like everypony to keep paying attention to the spot I’m standing on right now, ‘cause that’s where the history is gonna be!” With a sudden “whoosh!”, she launched herself straight up.
“Well,” Spike said, settling into his role as announcer, “Rainbow Dash has climbed way, way, way up high, carrying the javelin in her teeth.”
“I would say she is about 1.2 quintillion stories high,” Pinkie commented. “Ooh, she’s stopped climbing, and now she’s doing something…yes, she’s making a dive, and she’s transferred the javelin to under her left tucked wing.”
“Um, which end is she…?” Rarity asked nervously.
“Gold-end first!” announced Pinkie.
The other ponies breathed a sigh of relief.
I don’t get it, thought Vinyl.
Spike resumed the commentary. “She’s coming in. Faster, faster, faster…she’s released the javelin! It’s falling really fast, while Rainbow Dash has pulled out of her dive. Here it comes…”
With a loud “thwock” sound, the javelin embedded itself in the ground. Dash came around to land a few seconds later.
“Well?” she asked excitedly. “What do you think?”
“Well…” everyone said at once.
“Um, I think you’re supposed to throw it,” Fluttershy suggested in a meek voice.
“I did throw it!”
“Horizontally?”
“Oh,” said Rainbow, admitting defeat for the moment.
“Well I liked the ‘thwock’!” said Pinkie, giggling. “They should add the Thwock Dwop to the Equestrian Games! I mean Thwock Drop.”
“Pinkie, if you’re not going to be serious, then I wish you’d stop announcing,” Rainbow Dash said.
“I can be serious! Listen!” Pinkie assumed a deep (for her) and pompous voice. “Javelin throwing, more than any other event, calls for terrific muscular development.”
“That’s me!” Dash proclaimed.
“Plus height, weight and mental alertness,” continued Pinkie.
“Me, me and also me!”
“The javelin,” Pinkie intoned like she was accepting a Celestia Prize on the subject, “must be swung in a circle until terrific speed is attained…”
“Sure thing!” the speed pony exclaimed, yanking the javelin out of the ground before starting to spin, faster and faster.
“…and remember, hold on until I say to let go. Keep holding on! That reminds me of a verse from the immortal poem ‘If–’, by Redyard Quibbling:
“If you can make one heap of your winnings And bet on a round of Snatch-the-Cupcake,”
“Um, Pinkie…” said Twilight.
“And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a sad word, though it aches;”
The still-spinning pegasus started wobbling. The sane ponies took this as their cue to find shelter.
“If you can force your heart and nerve and stretchy-bits To serve your turn long after they are gone,”
“Pinkie…” Rainbow Dash said through clenched teeth.
“And so hold on when all else call it quits Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold On!’”
“PINKIE!”
“You’re interrupting my seriousness! Wait, was I announcing the javelin throw just now, or the hammer throw?”
Rainbow opened her mouth to complain, and things got very confusing after that.
“Does anypony know where it landed?” Dash asked a few minutes later.
“Well I know one thing: it didn’t land silver-end first.”
“Applejack, you didn’t think I forgot that, did you? I’d never let it land silver-end first.”
“It is a point to be remembered…I mean yeah,” Pinkie Pie said, remembering halfway through to switch back from her announcer voice to her regular voice. “Gold-end first might be a ‘thwock!’, but silver-end first would be more like a ‘BOOM!’, followed by a ‘!MOOB’, followed by another ‘BOOM!’”
Vinyl Scratch began to seriously reconsider her decision to hang around with this crowd, but there was one thing she just had to know: “Rarity, what present did you get?”
“Oh, this old thing? It’s just a gem.”
A mischievous glint flashed across Vinyl’s glasses, and she picked up a rubber hammer. “I wonder what kind of resonance it has…” she mused out loud.
The hammer was suddenly snatched away by Twilight’s magic and tossed in a random direction.
“I was just joking!” Vinyl exclaimed. “Rarity can vouch that I used to do that to her all the time!”
“You can’t joke about this gem,” a shaken Rarity told her. “Striking it would have very serious repercussions.”
Vinyl shrugged.
A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash had hunted down the rogue javelin and sat down to think. “I’ve just got to figure out the right way to throw this thing. It bounces too much to balance it while running three-hoofed.”
Twilight was consulting her sports book. “The rules of equine competition allow the use of simple mechanical devices in sport, so long as they do not create an unfair advantage and perform no appreciable work. For example, a hoof cup is used for the shot put event. Let’s try using a strap.”
A spare strip of the fabric Vinyl had been working with was used to lightly tie the center of the javelin to the flat side of Rainbow Dash’s upturned right forehoof. She began to run, but before too long the vibrations of the javelin had caused the strap to loosen and the pole fell to the ground. She tried again, several times, with the strap tied tighter and tighter, but the javelin kept escaping before any appreciable speed had been built up. On the final attempt, with a knot so tight it cut off Rainbow Dash’s circulation, the pegasus finally got to her desired speed and she attempted to launch the projectile, but it merely slid partway through the strap and dived into the ground, causing her to nearly plant her face into the soil. The others ran forward to help her up.
“Maybe a pony can’t throw a javelin,” Spike suggested.
“I’m not giving up!” Rainbow Dash insisted.
“Well,” Applejack said, “my Aunt Orange said she’d be attending a grand opening of some sports museum tomorrow night. Maybe I can ask her to ask whoever’s in charge for advice.”
“Actually, the exhibit’s first day of being open to the public was today.”
“How do you know that, Vinyl?” asked Pinkie.
“Because I was the entertainment at the grand opening last night…and tomorrow night.”
“Two grand openings? That must be the bestest, most wonderfullest sports museum ever!”
The next day, the entire group got off work early and accompanied Vinyl to the Equestrian Museum an hour before she was due to arrive. After putting her equipment in storage, the DJ pony joined the “Gang of Six” in the Sports Wing, which was nearly empty.
While Spike went to look for the curator, the others spent their time looking at the walls, which were decorated with murals and enlarged photographic prints celebrating the greatest champions of track and field.
“Twilight?” Rainbow asked at one point.
“Yes?”
“Your book said there were two sports that no pony had ever succeeded at. If javelin was one, what was the other?”
“Pole vault.”
“Pole vault?! How would…but…that’s got to be the silliest idea for an equestrian sport that I’ve ever heard!”
“Um, I think your book might need to be revised,” noted Fluttershy, standing in the area where DJ Pon-3 was later to perform. “Take a look over here.”
The group gathered together. “Wow, that photograph is enormous!” Applejack exclaimed.
“And in such high definition!” added Rarity.
Twilight stared at it for a while before something struck her. “Wait, is that a pole…and…?”
Dash saw it too. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Fluttershy confirmed their suspicions. “No, it definitely looks like Prince Steadfast vaulting over a three-story-high bar while holding the end of a pole in his mouth.”
“I’m seeing it,” said Rainbow Dash, “but I’m not believing it!”
“I don’t believe it,” declared Applejack. “How did he keep his legs and neck so straight? Gravity doesn’t work that way.”
“Can I help you?” Miss Minster asked from over their withers, her teeth clenched. Well, she may have said, “Can I help you?”, but what she clearly meant from her tone was “Go away kids, you’re bothering me.” A disappointed Spike was standing behind her.
“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash replied, “how come there’s no room on these walls for m…the first pony to throw the javelin?”
The question had an immediate effect on the museum director. “The javelin?!” she practically snarled. “This hall celebrates the greatness of Sport, and the triumph of Prince Steadfast, and you want to know about the javelin??! The javelin is a paltry, worthless waste of cedarwood. No, ‘javelin’ is a waste of a word on a thing so lowly it doesn’t deserve a name of its own. If I had my way every last javelin in the land would be burned and every last use of that word would be expunged, so that we could live our lives without its baneful existence. The Ancients surely devised the sport for the sole purpose of torturing innocent young foals with false dreams of triumph. Now I’m sorry to inform you that the hall needs to be converted over for a private, extravagant donor’s only event scheduled for this evening.”
You could practically hear the poor pegasus wilting under the barrage.
“And you better be getting your equipment!” she said to Vinyl.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The group slowly made their way up the stairs into the main gallery of the museum.
“Don’t you pay any attention to what that mare said,” Twilight assured Rainbow.
“She’s awfully mean for somepony appointed by Princess Celestia,” Pinkie pouted.
“What makes you think that the Princess appointed her?” Vinyl asked in confusion.
“Well, this is the Equestria Museum,” Pinkie replied, “so she must have founded it, right?”
Vinyl shook her head. “The Princess does not own the word ‘Equestria’. Anypony could use it as a brand name for anything they want, no matter how shoddy.”
“Well, it looks like that’s what happened here,” grumbled Rainbow.
“And the reason she was so mean was because you touched a nerve,” Vinyl explained with a wicked grin. “My uncle told me that the museum is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Sports Wing was created for the sole purpose of gaining funding from Prince Steadfast. Miss Minster barely succeeded in getting it built despite his refusal to contribute a single bit, but only on condition that the investors get to be seen in the presence of the Prince, tonight. Oh, and there’s no javelin exhibit because the Prince got a splinter playing with one as a colt.”
“I still don’t like her,” Dash said, sullenly. “And I’m not any closer to figuring out how to use my javelin.”
“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “And we were told the time would come when you’d have to use it to save all of Equestria…”
Save Equestria…with a javelin?? Vinyl was brought to mind of an ancient Chinnish curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
“What am I going to do?” Dash wailed.
“It seems to me if you knew how an Ancient threw a javelin, you could find a way for a pony to do it,” suggested Vinyl. “Of course, nopony knows what an Ancient looked like, but I always thought of them as giant hairless squirrels.”
The pegasus let out a loud laugh. “Yeah, when I was a filly, I thought they were featherless ostriches! I guess you were closer to the mark than I was…um, as a reasonable guess…considering that nopony has ever seen one, that is…”
Twilight face-hoofed.
It was at this point that Vinyl firmly decided that her “ignore Pinkie Pie insanity” rule would have to be extended to the entire group. After waiting a few moments for the uncomfortable silence to dissipate, she continued. “Well, I hope I’m right about the Ancients, because I’m not sure how an ostrich could do any better with a javelin than you have done so far. Now a squirrel on the other hand has those flat plates on the end of their arms, with wormy things on the edges. What are those called again?” Yes, I am pitching them a softball, Vinyl thought. Maybe this will bring them to their senses.
“Hmm…” said Pinkie Pie. “I don’t know if I have ever seen one of those…”
“Um, hello?” Spike asked sarcastically, literally waving the answer in front of their faces.
Now it was Vinyl’s turn to face-hoof.
“I think they’re called hands.”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Fluttershy! Anyway, a ‘hand’ could hold onto a javelin really tight, and then let go at the right moment. Not sure if it fits within the regulations…”
“Actually,” said Twilight, “I think that could actually work: put a shallow cup on the hoof with three or four elastic ‘fingers’ stretched around the pole, held shut with a catch. Then you rig a wire from the catch to the withers, so that when the leg is thrown forward, it releases the catch and the javelin can be thrown. Let’s go to the bookstore–I think I saw an official guide to sport devices. Thanks once again, Vinyl!”
“You’re welcome. I have to get ready for the party, and I haven’t been home in days, so I guess this is goodbye. It was nice meeting you all.” And weird. Very, very weird.
And so the Grand Opening gala started again, only minus a few very-regretful ponies who had spent their fortune to get there on Tuesday and couldn’t afford to sit around and wait for Thursday. And the crowd was going counter-clockwise this time. Unfortunately, the nameless pony Vinyl was hoping to meet again was absent.
The other major difference was the presence of Prince Steadfast and his retinue. They camped in front of the evidence of his triumph, which meant that DJ Pon-3 had to keep the volume turned down to avoid annoying the guest of honor. She spent her time listening to him insulting the fawning guests until they ran out of the room sobbing, and counting how many of them she recognized as clients, both new and old. For the sake of her career, she had no choice but to make this night a success.
“Athletic prowess has always come easily to me,” the prince informed the terrified ponies who claimed to be his admirers. “There has not been one sport I haven’t attempted that I have not immediately mastered, so when I heard about the sad state of equestrian pole vaulting, I knew I had to do something. Currently I am campaigning to have it added to the four festivals and the Iron Pony standard, so that way the sport can be shared with the world.”
“But as Equestria’s only pole vaulter, wouldn’t that mean you would win every event by default?”
“Oh, Ace, this isn’t about me…”
Ace was then quickly escorted out of the museum, so the prince could resume talking about himself. “Now where was I…and could you please turn that blasted music down!”
“Sorry about that,” Vinyl said, coldly, as she pretended to adjust the volume.
“I don’t even know why this function has a disk jockey in the first place! For someone of my stature and achievements, only a classically-trained string ensemble will suffice, playing the music written by my ancestors!”
At that moment, Vinyl dearly wanted to tell the group the story of the Leap-Zig Concerto, which had been composed by one of her ancestors upon meeting the first gazelle to ever visit Canterlot; it had been stolen by one of the Prince’s ancestors and claimed as his own composition. Instead she smiled darkly and said, “My music exists to serve your tastes, gentle Prince. How about if I play this recording of the ‘Cedar Splinter Quartet’?”
Prince Steadfast spat out his drink in the face of an “admirer”. “Th…that’s not a real string quartet!”
“Isn’t it?” She asked, holding up the doctored disk that Tavi had given her once as a joke.
The prince pushed the record away in disgust. “Is disk jockeying even a real job? Surely somepony by now has invented a children’s toy capable of dropping records upon a phonograph. And surely most of that equipment is merely empty boxes designed to make you look like you have a purpose.”
The prince stepped back to get a good look at this equipment. He took the opportunity to get his first good look at the wall photo, and then he gasped in shock. “What have you done to my triumph?!”
Vinyl tried to defend herself against whatever imaginary crime she was now accused of. “I haven’t…”
“There, where I’m pointing! The cloth-covered blocks you have glued to my triumph! Look at it! Look at it!! What are you, BLIND, you paltry, worthless waste of…”
That’s it!
Vinyl Scratch calmly raised one hoof and used it to show Prince Steadfast what lay under her glasses. Then, before the stunned stallion could say anything, she made her way past dozens of shocked aristocrats at a deliberate canter for the exit. As she passed Director Minster she said, “You heard him. I’m being paid to entertain the Prince, and he wasn’t entertained by me, so I will be taking my leave.”
By the time she reached the exit, Vinyl Scratch’s cutie mark might as well have fallen off of her flank, she told herself, for there was nobody left in all Equestria who would ever hire her again.
Twilight Sparkle looked up from a book of cryptology when she heard the knocking upon her door. After confirming that it was, indeed, very late, she cautiously answered it to find a tear-stained Vinyl Scratch.
“I thought of something,” she began, trying in vain to sound like she had not just been through the worst night of her life.
Twilight looked around. “Um, where’s all your equipment?”
“Probably hocked to pay for breach of contract. Well, those pieces that were not bucked into oblivion by the Prince.”
“Oh dear!”
“I’ve already moved on. Now this idea I had…”
“…yes?”
“The binary data encoded in the compact discs–could it be used for sampling?”
“Sampling? Please, come inside. I don’t think I understand the term as you’re using it.”
“Well, imagine dividing a recording up into a large number of very brief instants, and then dicing each moment up by very narrow ranges of frequency…”
Ponyville’s early morning was greeted by the sound of a timpani pounding from within the public room of Twilight Sparkle’s library. This was followed by dozens of trumpets, playing a fanfare that should belong at the start of the Equestrian Games, or it would have been if anypony in Equestria had ever heard that particular fanfare before in their lives.
Twilight’s friends rushed to the library to find the source of this music, and to their shock they discovered it to be the horn of a beaming Vinyl Scratch. Hovering horizontally above her head like some sort of flattened halo and spinning at a frightful rate was the sports CD.
“Wow, you did it!” said Rainbow Dash as the fanfare ended.
“Congratulations,” said Fluttershy.
“Is it very tiring playing that?”
“Not really,…Spike. It isn’t. But…it’s bad on…the…concen…tration.”
“Well, now I’m not sure I want to ask,” Rainbow Dash grumbled. On the ground beside her was the completed artificial hand she had spent all night working on.
“Track five?” Vinyl asked with a grin. “I think I can handle that.”
“Javelin” begins with a flourish of flutes, dancing about, happy but also a bit confused. Beneath emerge the brass and percussion, driving and a bit threatening. After the two forces struggle for a while, the strings break free, soaring high above the rest of the orchestra like a hatchling bird that has just discovered what it is to fly. That moment took Twilight’s breath away–it was the most hopeful music she had ever heard in her life.
Rainbow Dash was out the door as soon as the buoyant theme first stated itself, and before the song’s nine minutes were up, her javelin had flown triumphantly past the second-story window.
“Did you see? Did you see?” she asked excitedly a few moments later.
“Yes, we saw, Rainbow,” the others assured her.
Unseen by the others, Vinyl Scratch allowed the compact disc to spin down, and then carefully levitated it back into its case. Then she sat down heavily on the floor and finally allowed the monumentally-complex spell to similarly wind its way down in her mind. “Very good sound quality compared with the phonograph,” she noted to nobody in particular, “but I think the Ancients were exaggerating slightly.”
“You know,” Twilight told the group once they had all had their turn congratulating the first pony javelin-thrower of all time, “Vinyl tells me that new compact discs could be manufactured relatively cheaply. And because of the optical nature of the reading mechanism plus the gyroscopic effect of the rapid rotation, a machine built to play CDs could be small and sturdy enough to carry around with you wherever you go.”
“A personal music player?” asked Rarity.
“And unlike a radio, you play exactly what you want to hear, when you want to hear it.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Rarity asked Vinyl, remembering the DJ’s account of the strange visitor three nights earlier.
“An ‘unusual business proposition’? Indeed it is, only I didn’t think I would be the one making it! Twilight and I are going to be rich!”
“Vinyl, I didn’t help you out because I wanted to make any money off of it!”
“Nonsense!” Vinyl replied. “I’ll absorb all the risk, of course, but you still deserve a share of the profits. I’ll split what I make with you, 30 % for me, 70 % for you.”
Twilight did a double-take. “What?”
“Well, you did all the computational work, so it’s only fair.”
“And you did all the creative work! Plus you’re the one who will have to turn the spell into a machine, and I know from experience that is never easy.”
Vinyl grinned mischievously. “So you’re taking me up on my offer?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
Rarity stepped in. “Twilight, we know how guilty you feel about receiving that monthly stipend from Princess Celestia to stay here. Here’s your chance for a real salary.”
Twilight made up her mind. “Well…alright. But if it’s 30/70, you’re getting the 70.”
“You won’t regret this, partner!” DJ Pon-3 exclaimed, hugging her tight. A second later, Vinyl’s more-cautious nature re-asserted itself, and she quickly stepped away. “Um…sorry about that.”
“Ooh, what are you going to name it?” asked Pinkie Pie, jumping between them.
“I think Personal Music Player would be a good name,” Fluttershy suggested. “Or perhaps Cantering Music Player, to advertise the fact that you can take it on the go with you.”
Rarity shook her head. “I’m afraid that neither of those will do. Common names are very hard to defend in copyright court. You need something that people will remember, and will remember came from you.”
“Is that why so many of your dresses are named after you?” Rainbow Dash asked with a grin.
“Well…it’s either that or come up with some kind of memorable nonsense name.”
Pinkie put one hoof to the side of her head and thought intently. “How about, the Cantering Soundarooni? Or the Gallopadoompa? Or the Trottman?”
“I like the sound of that last one,” said Vinyl, nodding.
“The Trottman it is, then!” Pinkie proclaimed.
“What’s a ‘man’, anyway?” asked Applejack.
“Oh, a ‘man’ is what you lose when you have to start over in a video game. You always start with three mans.”
“Start over in a what?”
Vinyl sighed. “Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I still have to get financial backing.”
“I for one don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding investors,” Applejack said with a grin. “I’m sure my Aunt Orange would be interested.”
Vinyl groaned and sat back down again. “Your Aunt Orange was at the party last night. She’s the last pony I’d want to approach for money!”
“Yes, she told me all about your little run-in with the Prince.”
Vinyl groaned again, louder.
Applejack grinned slyly. “It’s too bad you missed the punch line.”
“Punch line?”
“Yes, in the middle of the Prince’s rampage he tore your acoustical tiles off of the photograph of his pole vault, and in the process removed half of his own image, revealing the original background of the photo beneath.”
“So it was a fraud!” Dash exclaimed.
“Aunt Orange led the crowd in an old-fashioned tar and feathering session, and most of them chased that stuffed shirt all the way back to Canterlot!”
Twilight waited patiently throughout the day, appearing to pay no attention whatsoever to the small box on the table with her address on it; a box with “Equestria Acoustics” as the sender. Finally, after a liberal application of warm milk, Spike went to bed.
When she was sure she was alone (and likely the only pony still awake in Ponyville), she opened the box. There, nestled in a sea of packing peanut shells, lay the Trottman. “Unit Number 2” a label on its side proudly proclaimed. The purple unicorn levitated a slim paper manual out of the box and quickly perused it: as Vinyl had predicted, operation of the device was incredibly simple. There were instructions for using unicorn magic to charge the device, but Twilight saw that Vinyl had thoughtfully done this for her already. Nodding in satisfaction, she dropped the manual into the box, added a rolled-up pile of parchment, a pen and ink, and then floated the lot ahead of her down the stairs and into her laboratory.
This room, little used since the unfortunate affair with Pinkie’s tail, had been extensively reinforced to handle the stray energies that might be expected of both a powerful magician and a budding scientist, and one with perhaps too much curiosity to boot. This had the added side effect of making it completely soundproof. Twilight placed the box she was levitating down next to a comfortable cushion. From a nearby cabinet, she pulled out the pair of headphones which Vinyl had given her as a parting gift, as well as the compact disc and booklet she had found in a cave in the Barrier Peaks that now no longer existed. A second consultation of the manual, and the disc was soon inside the tiny player, spinning itself up to speed. A little more magic was used to plug in the headphones and put them over her ears. Settled on the cushion, the writing supplies carefully arranged, and the individual controls of the device imprinted in her mind, she was ready to begin, and there was absolutely no chance that anybody but her would hear the slightest peep of what she was about to hear. She hoped.
The unicorn took a big breath and she looked unsteadily at the eerie, nearly incomprehensible illustration on the front cover of the CD’s booklet. “Just remember,” she told herself. “This is a work of fiction. A work…of fiction. Nothing you’re about to hear actually happened. This is for translation purposes only. Translation…and a glimpse into the minds of the Ancients. After all, that ‘Javelin’ song was rather nice!”
Having steeled herself, she opened the booklet to the first page of lyrics and gently tapped on the device’s Play button. She was expecting some music, some singing, but instead the male voice that appeared in her ears spoke to her, in a slow, clear voice. It bore an accent she could not place, and a timbre that she had heard only once before. She understood all but three of the words she heard, and although the use of the phrase “no one” was unknown to her, she soon figured out that it was the Ancient equivalent of “no pony”.
And these were the words that she heard:
No one would have believed, in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, that affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
These words were followed by the theme song of the album, a brooding and driving piece for strings, percussion, synthesizer and electric guitar.
There would be no sleep for Twilight Sparkle on that night.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with due respects to Laurel Faust for her brilliant re-imagining of the franchise. Most of the characters in the story are borrowed; Miss Addy Minster and Prince Steadfast are my own creations.
Pinkie Pie’s “serious” narration from Chapter 3 is stolen nearly word-for-word from the 1942 Goofy cartoon “The Olympic Champ”. “If–” was of course written by Rudyard Kipling. There’s also another obscure reference in the story, to an episode of a favorite cartoon series of mine from 1997, but I’ll leave it to the readers to find that.
The musical piece "Javelin" was composed by Michael Torke. The best recording of it I have encountered is on the “Summon the Heroes” CD by John Williams.
And the final piece heard was "Eve of War", from Jeff Wayne's Music Version of War of the Worlds. The illustration is based on the original album art by Mike Trim. The YouTube video selected to accompany it is Chris Oakley's imagined reconstruction of the 1978 promo video for the album. I wish to state for the record that I've seen the actual 1978 promo, and Mr. Oakley's reconstruction is much, much better than the original.
This story was inspired by my happening to hear "Javelin" and "Eve on War" on the same day. "Javelin" never fails to make me happy, and "Eve of War" never fails to make me uneasy, so I wondered: what would a creature that knows nothing else of humanity think of us if she heard those two songs?
affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this 
with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.