A bow on one hoof and a cello on the other, Octavia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A bright globe shone overhead and bathed her in a shaft of light, the smell of brightness engulfing her eyes through her eyelids even. Four strings tickled her left fetlock, eager to be pinched and squeezed and played. A balanced ebony beam weighted her right hoof, eager to dance with its long-lost forbidden love.
The bow's hair gently kissed the strings with a burning passion, shuddering it up and down and making it moan a gentle tune. The strings shuddered faster as their heads got squeezed between grey keratin and black chitin, further enticing the bow to slid deeper into their embrace and leaning in, ready to fall into an endless pit of love and desire.
But the bow was eager, and so the dance was spun! The bow and strings slid into each other and shook and screamed as their rhythm ran faster and faster and the pinch ran up and down and squeezed and let them moan even higher and louder. Lust embolden the bow and took control, jumping between musical notes and pulled the strings even further and harder and more, more, more.
It was a fine love they'd made, they thought, and finally paced their dance into a slow waltz. The strings sang a melodious whisper with each of the bow's cue, trickling down their lechery into a pool of romantic beauty. The squeezes now slow and steady, sliding along the strings and gliding the notes from one another with delicate care.
The dancing stopped; the bow kissed the strings a last goodbye as their affair was done.
Octavia opened her eyelids as stomps and claps of appreciation ran through the impromptu audience in front of Sunset Coffee & Roastery. Behind her, through the glass pane, two humans and a pony with similar bacon-colored hair clapped and stomped and cheered. Octavia flourished her bow and turned the solid ebony into a gesture of gratitude. As she rose her head, the congregation of a multitude of creatures dispersed, some putting down a large sum of money into the open cello case, some throwing a coin or two. She smiled nonetheless, appreciating their willingness to depart with a portion of their riches for a humble musician.
One audience stayed behind, a smile splitting her face and infectious, her green cap bobbing along with her sweet, lovely giggles.
Octavia giggled along with the filly, putting her cello back into its case and bagging the money from within.
"So, what do you think?"
The black cello case closed with a heavy click and jumped into Octavia's back with a muffled thud. Octavia kept on giggling as she trotted down the street with the filly, back to Sweetie's workplace that doubled as their ticket home.
Even her giggles are melodious, Sweetie thought, and she wondered if it was normal for a teenager her age to fall in love with one so mature. Give it half a decade and their age wouldn't matter anymore, the thought crossed her mind, and yet give it half a decade and mayhap she found that it was mere admiration for a musical prowess so perfect. Nevertheless, the time was now, and now was the time for silly romance. No work nor think for the time of rest, she should let her mind settle a bit after turmoil after turmoil.
The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sweetie Belle and one Octavia Melody into the Everycraftery.
"Lucy, we're back!" called Sweetie.
"Lucy left just a while ago," another sound came, which sounded exactly like Lucy's. "She told you to stay here until she got back."
Sweetie frowned. "What is it for?"
Twilight, showing herself from one of the store's aisles, shrugged. "Who knows?" She smiled at the pair. "Anyway, how did the show go?"
Octavia giggled. "It was more than I could ask for."
"Well, of course!" Sweetie exclaimed. "You're the best musician in this part of the multiverse!"
Octavia blushed. "Oh, you exaggerated too much. There are a lot of other Octavias out there, I'm sure some of them are better than me."
"You're very good, nonetheless," Twilight said. "Don't sell yourself short."
Octavia put her cello down behind the counter and stared at the ceiling, eyes glimmering poetically. "And how much of a length should I sell myself? A lengthy contract or a bulging sack of worthless riches? Neigh, dear, for happiness comes from gold and silver naught. 'Tis from the heart's content that an honest smile blooms."
Sweetie ran her hoof from left to right in a slow gesture, saying, "Follow your passion."
Octavia huffed. "It's the worst advice I've ever heard. You don't get food served to you by—" she made quotes with her hooves "—'following your dreams' and such. You find a job that can accommodate your life."
"Says you."
"Have I ever mentioned how much I hated the cello?"
Sweetie gaped.
Octavia leaned her hoof to the counter and put her chin on it. "What kind of filly wants to play an instrument twice her size? Nopony, that's who. I was forced by my parents to learn to play it, and so I did. And I got good at it enough to make money out of it." She glared at her cello. "I still hated any kind of stringed instruments to this day, thus why I never bothered to practice until the day before my performance." She smiled. "But I like the attention that it brings, and so I kept on playing. My true passion is in action." She jumped on the counter and made a fighting stance with her bow. "I always wanted to be part of a crime syndicate. And I did, until their demise upon the hooves of Laundered Bits." She put the tip of her bow to the counter and leaned on it. "They only hired me as a musical distraction, anyway. Not much to lose after that." She sneered at the makeshift walking stick. "Didn't stop me from making it as an excuse for revenge, though."
"But you enjoyed it now, didn't you?" Sweetie asked. "I saw how happy you were when you played it!"
Octavia laughed. "Oh, Sweetie, yes I did! Now that I don't need to worry about how much money I'm making and/or how I'm going to pay my rent, I found that I can have fun at almost any sort of activity." She let out a contented sigh. "I'm rich enough that my goals and worries are arbitrary." She stared down at Sweetie with a coy smile. "Inspired?"
Sweetie rubbed her forehead. "Can we not talk about that? Thank you."
"You'll need to eventually, Sweetie."
Sweetie threw her hooves up. "Why does everyone keep on saying that? It's like you're all conspiring against me for this!"
"The multiverse does. They always do." She chuckled. "Right, Princess?" She looked right and left. "Twilight?"
Sweetie whipped around and left and right and found that, no, Twilight wasn't around anymore. "Did you see her go?"
Octavia dropped down on all fours and stroke a pose. "I guess I'm too enticing, am I not?"
Sweetie stared half-lidded. "Seriously? That's—"
The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Princess Twilight Sparkle into the Everycraftery.
"Oh, there she—"
"It's Lucy!" Twilight screamed. "I totally didn't notice she brought out the Lexinomicon!"
Sweetie paled. "Oh, no..."
Octavia raised an eyebrow. "And what does that mean, exactly?"
An explosion in the distance answered her.
"She's gone genocidal!" Sweetie took the broom from the janitor's closet. "And here! In a multiversal port! Who knows how many she'd kill!?"
The trio got out of the Everycraftery, Sweetie with her broom, Octavia with her bow, and Twilight with her wit. Octavia nodded in determination. "Alright, let's stop her." She gave her bow a stern look, and it merged with the stern and made a full ship. "All aboard!"
And so the HMS Everycraftery flew through the city, shooting like an arrow toward the source of the explosion. All around them police cars and helicopters sped by, but invisible strings of whitespace shot from the epicenter of the crater, hitting them and turning them into lice made of polonium. One such whitespace hit their ship head-on, but it only turned it into a spaceship.
Octavia cursed and spun the wheel around, now suddenly made of metal and surrounded by digital interfaces. "Ready yourselves, this is going to be a rough landing."
The ship smashed into a parking lot and broke down the middle, and the stern dispersed into a nearby onlooker and made his look stern while the bow materialized back into Octavia's hoof.
Sweetie jumped and took the broom on her hoof. She swept the air and swept Octavia before she fell too far. Landing, she flourished her broom and swept the remaining smoke, revealing Lucy atop a pile of broken robotic parts, a big tome by her side with its title 'The Lexinomicon'.
Twilight landed next to them and shouted, "Lucy! Stop this!"
Lucy flipped the pages of the Lexinomicon and took the t and p and made, "Yeah, I've spotted you!"
Twilight shook her head—
Lucy took the s and threw it to the air, hooking Twilight's head to the clouds and jerking her upward and away. She then took a stone and turned it into notes, propagating it through the air (like a sound should) at ~340m/s. She rearranged it just before Octavia's face back into stone, flying at ~340m/s.
Sweetie, noticing what was happening, took Octavia's bow and gave it to one of her eyelashes, making it a pile of ash and made the bow a blow and made the eye ash took the blow. The stone sped by her face and through a car's window.
Octavia took her bow back and made it a longbow. She jerked a wiper from a nearby car and shot it like an arrow toward Lucy.
Lucy spun the p into a d, and the wiper latched into the road and made it wider. She grinned and took a lead pipe previously wielded by a now-dead android.
Octavia thought of music, and the bow obliged. She stood on two legs and held the bow like a rapier, then charged.
Lucy took a similar stance with the pipe and parried Octavia's thrust. She spun and swung it overhead, and Octavia ducked and swiped her off her feet, stopping Lucy's attempt at turning her into a duck.
Lucy staggered and jumped before she fell. She managed to block another swing from Octavia and, with her wings, jerked away from the bind.
Octavia rushed in just as Lucy landed, swinging the bow down then up, catching Lucy's lead pipe and jerking it upward. As she did, she turned the lead pipe into a deep pail, which is unwieldy, and so it slipped her grip and thrown up.
Lucy scowled and took the Lexinomicon on her hoof, swinging it wide and forcing Octavia to jump back.
Octavia, mid-air, thought of Apple Bloom. The bow obliged and was now Apple Bloom's bow, and she unfurled it and whipped it, catching Lucy's foreleg. She pulled it back and turned her trajectory from jumping back to rushing forward, Lucy stumbling the other direction. She swung her back hooves and hit her square on the chest.
Lucy coughed and staggered. Another blow hit her in the face, and she fell, Lexinomicon still on her grip.
Octavia dropped and pinned Lucy down. She pressed the tip of her bow to Lucy's neck. "Stop this."
Lucy smirked.
Octavia raised an eyebrow. Just as she opened her mouth, a deep pail dropped into her head, and she stumbled back.
Lucy took the moment to grab her bow and open the Lexinomicon, which was full of letters. She took an l from one of the pages and put it to the bow.
Octavia was blown away. Her mind was blown away by the move and her body was blown away by the sudden wind. She flew across the parking lot and smashed into a window of a fast-food restaurant. Blood flowing from her temple to her scowling lip, she slowly picked herself up and glared at Lucy.
Lucy shot a bolt of magic just as Octavia got up, hitting her dead-center on the head and knocking her out.
Lucy took deep breaths and calmed her nerves. She looked left and right, scanning the parking lot for the other intervention. "Come on out, Sweetie, I won't hurt you!"
And yet the parking lot was dead silent. The police had all but died from the radiation they emitted from their own insectoid bodies, the citizens had all ran away from the artificial life-massacre.
Lucy took slow, deliberate steps down the widened parking lot, glancing right and left. "Where are you, Sweetie?"
A car blinked out of existence, and Lucy swung her Lexinomicon in that direction. A white blob spun underneath her swing and swept her off her footing with a broom.
Lucy fell but quickly rolled away. As she regained her footing, so did Sweetie. She grinned. "Come on, Sweetie, show me what you got."
"Please, we don't need to fight!" Sweetie looked her in the eyes. "You're being overprotective!"
"I'm necessarily eliminating all risks of losing you." She gestured to the pile of once-alive metals and wires. "I'm almost finished. It's all calculated, Sweetie, trust me."
"By killing every single metal-based lifeform!?"
"Why not?"
Sweetie ground her teeth. "Fine, you ask for it."
Lucy grinned. "Yes, Sweetie, I ask for it." She took a step forward. "Now give me what you've got!"
Sweetie took a deep breath and glared at Lucy.
Lucy took another step forward, then stopped and screamed. She teleported to the other side of the parking lot, stumbling and dropping on her knees. She raised her right wing, bloodied and cut through the middle. Forcing open an eye, she saw, behind where she had stood, glints from a pair of glasses and an eternally sharp blade.
"Give up," said Sunny. "Stop this."
Lucy took a flier from a car's window and put it in her back. With the sound of whirling gizmos, a carbon-black metal encased her broken wing. She stood up, still shaking, and grinned. "You too, Sunny?"
Sunny took a stance. Then, with a flick of her thumb, removed the inhibitor from the sword. "I always do."
Lucy jumped and laughed, spreading her wings wide and flew across the parking lot. She grabbed a car on her telekinetic grip and threw it to Sunny.
Sunny lazily swung her sword, obliterating the car in an instant. Lucy's form rushed through the remaining dust and straight to her face.
Sunny's backhand greeted her before Lucy could see through the dust, turning her trajectory nearly a perfect 90-degree angle and straight into a truck. The windowpane shattered as her body met it, stinging her sides and left wing and face.
Sunny rose her sword high, and the ground beneath the truck lurched upward. She brought it to her side and the pillar of ground split by the middle.
Lucy scrambled to the side, just in time as lava shot up from the crack, cutting the truck in half. She took the r from the truck and give it to the lava, tucking the larva back into the crack on the ground. She flew down and glared at Sunny, Lexinomicon by her side, open and ready.
Sunny willed the sky to brew, and so a storm coalescend and blocked the sun. She brought her sword down, and lighting stroke Lucy, stopping her mid-air and breaking her prosthetic wing's circuitry. She fell hard, face still scowling and directed at Sunny.
Lucy hugged the Lexinomicon tight between her hooves and lit her horn. There would be no way to defeat Sunny, not in a calculated way. And so she forced her hoof into her mouth and lurched the insides of her stomach until she could taste bile. She then took a b from the Lexinomicon and turned the bile to a Bible. She flipped to the Gospel of Matthew and opened the far end of the 26th chapter.
Sunny, down below, jumped up and readied her sword, ignoring the pitter-patter of rain. There won't be killing another soul, no, but she could neutralize it. She met Lucy in the air and swung, and Lucy blocked her swing with the Bible. Her eyes bulged for a split second as she noticed the passage opened, but it was too late.
"...for all they that take the sword..."
Her sword bounced back.
"...shall perish with the sword."
Sweetie watched as two forms fell from the sky, both limp and flightless, yet only one with remaining life.
Thump.
Clink.
There were no grandiose as the former Empress fell, no reverberating metallic Clang! that marked the end of her regime, no parade, no mourning. All that was left was a mortal cask lying limp beside her vanquisher's weak equine body.
"Sunny?"
Lucy slowly picked herself up. She opened the Bible again, fanning the pages and breathing in the smell of pages written full of love for a deity, and for love heals, her wounds began closing.
Sweetie finally reached the sword, protruding from a limp sack of meat that would no longer be there by her side to worry about her well-being.
Fully healed, Lucy turned around. She found there Sunny, unmoving and unbreathing, a sword protruding her body and Sweetie Belle holding its handle tight with one hoof. She took a step back. "Sweetie?"
Sweetie slowly raised her head, hollow eyes meeting Lucy's cold and unempathetic pair. Her mouth opened, and a whisper came out, "You don't need to do that."
Lucy sighed. "I couldn't think of any other choice."
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and with them, a spark of fire lit up beneath the green irises. It glowed with determination under the dark sky, emphasized by the scowl and frown.
Lucy took another step back. "Sweetie, I'm so sorry..."
"You're not."
"I am, I—"
"You're never sorry." She let out a dry laugh. "Stop pretending."
Lucy took a sharp breath.
"That's right." Sweetie stood on two legs and held the handle of the sword with both hooves. "You'll get what you want." She slid the sword from Sunny, embracing the power surging from within and stood tall, eyes on her beloved mentor and storm blowing against her figure.
Lucy scrambled back and brought up the Bible.
Sweetie swung the sword and obliterated the Bible, for the passage was meant for those who lived by violence. Sweetie was never for violence, not for a second of her life.
The sword cut through the holy tome like it was not there. She doubled the swing and spun, and she threw the blade straight into Lucy. The blade connected to her horn, and it was obliterated. Sweetie ignored the scream of agony and swung the sword again, cutting the prosthetic wing and the feathery wing beneath. She threw the sword into the sky and let the storm embrace it, let mother nature take back the Unlimited Power oh so terribly desired by people, for she need not of such power. She dropped her forelegs down and spun, and she bucked Lucy right on the chin hard.
Lucy fell to the ground, and she scrambled to take hold of the Lexinomicon by her side.
A white hoof held the tome in place, picked it up. She stared at the tome for a second, then darted her eyes to meet Lucy's.
"No single being should have this kind of power."
Lucy sneered. "And why, Sweetie? Try having it, then argue."
"Take the throne to act," she whispered, biting into the tome, "and the throne acts upon you."
The Lexinomicon, having nom'd, slithered back into Lucy's brain and into her lexicon.
Sweetie took a wiper, one that Octavia had shot, and put it on Lucy's neck. Blood dripped from where her epidermis was wiped out from existence.
Twilight dropped from the sky like a falling star, landing hard on a car near them. "Sweetie, wait! Don't—"
Lucy raised a hoof. "Don't intervene, Twilight." She smiled. "We've agreed."
Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it back. "So," she said as she jumped down from the wreck, "you've chosen?"
Lucy chuckled. "She had chosen."
Sweetie, eyes fixed upon Lucy, gave a curt nod.
"So, Sweetie, what are you?"
"Who am I?"
Twilight stood next to Sweetie, putting an encouraging hoof around her. "Are you your rational mind?"
Twilight pressed her neck deeper into the wiper, blood now trickling in a steady stream. "Or are you your compassionate heart?"