Javelin
Chapter 2
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.