Masquerade
Part Four: Second Edition
Are you sure you really want to know what happened to Vinyl? Because you are going to regret it.
You really, really, really sure?
Really?
OK. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’ll, um, I’ll try to keep my comments out of this.
~ ~ ~
I'll stop the world and melt with you.
You've seen the difference and
It's getting better all the time.
There's nothing you and I won't do.
I'll stop the world and melt with you.
The song was sung by a confident mare, backed by a New Wave band. No, wait, not a mare, thought Vinyl Scratch. One of the tricks she had picked up to help cover up for her blindness was an ability to identify species and even breed by the timbre of somepony’s voice. This wasn’t a pony singing. It wasn’t a griffon, a dragon (with their uniquely resonating singing voices), a cow, or a Nightmare. She had heard this type of voice in only one setting in her life: coming out of the speakers when a pony played an Ancient CD.
She hoped to Celestia that this was just a pony playing an Ancient CD.
As Vinyl Scratch regained consciousness, it felt like her whole body had been forced through a pasta machine. She was sore all over, but especially on the back of her head. Her muzzle felt numb, while her hooves felt like they were on fire, or something that provided just as much insane sensory feedback as fire, but without the pain.
“Are you alright?” asked the voice of a young filly to her left.
It was the voice of an Ancient.
Horseapples, thought Vinyl.
She decided to keep her eyes closed while she decided what to do.
Do I still have the Princess’ memories? she asked herself.
The answer to that question was “yes”. They revealed that the Ancients were in control of the whole of Equestria without having a clue that this control was anything other than a game.
What else did you expect?
She risked opening one eye.
She was in a rectangular room. The ceiling was covered with plaster. The walls, too, but the ceiling was her primary focus, as it appeared that she was on her back.
Gingerly, she raised a hoof to her face. Only it wasn’t a hoof, it was a hand. The hand of an Ancient.
Of course, she told herself. I’m a DJ, impersonating a princess, impersonating an Ancient. Sure, I can keep track of that.
She was surrounded by Ancients that towered over her and gazed upon her. Their faces were so alien to her that she could not tell what emotions they were expressing (plus there was the whole “I’ve only been able to see for less than a day now” business). But if she didn’t act fast, any goodwill they might have for the Ancient she was pretending to be could swiftly turn to vengeance at the spy in their midst.
She found a certain script in Celestia’s well-filed memories, a way of establishing that obviously she wasn’t a pony sneaking around in an Ancient’s body.
“Ow,” ran the first line of this script, so Vinyl said it.
I am totally not making this up.
This was followed by a stage direction: [Sit upright, rubbing whatever part of your anatomy you landed on.] In Vinyl’s case, this appeared to be the back of her head. So she did so. She had to restrain herself from crying out at the discovery of how very different it felt to put a hand through a mane compared to a hoof.
It turned out that Ancients, unlike ponies not named Lyra, had an automatic setting for sitting upright. Once she reached that position, she didn’t even have to think about it anymore.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” said Vinyl, reciting the next line in the script. This caused the figures around her to back away slightly.
Now the final part, which was apparently the most important, was a pair of spoken lines, neither of which really made much sense.
“Let’s take a break,” said Vinyl. “Oh, and could some...body get me a Dr Pepper?”
The script had put a big red circle around that crucial word “somebody”, with the note, “Don’t say ‘pony’. EVER!”
A few seconds passed, seeming eternities when Vinyl was certain that she would crack under the pressure and reveal all. This was accompanied by a vision of spending the rest of her life stuck in the body of an Ancient in an insane asylum, trying in vain to convince anybody that would listen that she was a pony. There were dozens of other inmates in this fantasy asylum, and each of them thought they were a different pony. They would have knife fights on Sunday evenings to determine who got to be “best pony” for the following week. Fluttershy always won. She fought dirty.
“Yeah, alright Elle,” one of the Ancients said, in a voice suspiciously similar to Applejack’s Manehattan accent. “Don’t get up too fast.”
Now that the Ancients’ stares of doom were no longer boring into her head, Vinyl could finally take in her surroundings. She was sitting in an overturned chair. In front of the chair was a table, and on that table was a cardboard stand of some sort and some books.
Vinyl crawled off of the chair and rose to her knees. She stared at the toppled chair, trying to right it with her magic, but of course she had no magic as an Ancient. She then fell back on using her hands to pick up the chair, and was surprised at how easy this was to her.
Vinyl’s head was still reeling, so she took a moment to listen as a new song began playing from whatever mysterious source the other one had come from:
Been running so long
I've nearly lost all track of time.
In every direction,
I couldn't see the warning signs.
I must be losin' it,
'Cause my mind plays tricks on me.
It looked so easy,
But you know, looks sometimes deceive.Been running so fast,
Right from the starting line.
No more connections,
I don't need any more advice.
One hoof's just reaching out
And one's just hangin' on.
It seems my weaknesses
Just keep going strong.
She may not have heard all the words the quartet of male voices were singing correctly.
Looking around, Vinyl could see an Ancient rummaging around in a refrigerator, confirming that she was in a dining room adjacent to a kitchen. Partially separating the two rooms from each other was a waist-high cabinet, with a trio of barstools on the dining room side. Sitting in one of them was an Ancient foal colt, dark-skinned and with a dark mane. He was wearing an orange shirt and blue jeans.
“Aw, this game is lame!” he exclaimed. “The PH’s been doing nothing but playing NPC’s all day! When do you gals even get to do anything?”
“Chill out, squirt,” said a cutie-age filly with a short jet black mane and copper skin. She was wearing a pale blue t-shirt, and in a corner of the shirt was a dark blue emblem with the words “Blue Angels” written upon it in the Ancient alphabet.
“Don’t call me squirt!” the colt protested. “And this game is lame! You ought to be playing Call of Cthulhu. That game’s awesome!”
Head over hooves,
Where should I go?
Can't stop myself,
Out of control.
Head over hooves,
No time to think.
It's like the whole world's
Out of sync.
~ ~ ~
The Ancients were bipeds. If Vinyl Scratch could sit like them, she ought to be able to stand like them. Bracing herself on the upright chair, she slowly raised herself up, and immediately felt herself start to fall. She quickly repositioned herself and fell into the chair in a sitting posture.
She carefully searched her mind. Unlike with Celestia, she was unable to discover any memories of the Ancient whose body she now inhabited. All she had was the name she had been called: Elle. Vinyl brushed a strand of red mane out of her eyes in frustration, and then noticed how natural this motion came to her. She suspected that she at least had some sort of muscle memory of how to operate this body, much like how she automatically knew how to see when in a seeing pony’s dream.
Been running so long,
When what I need is to unwind.
The voice of reason
Is one I left so far behind.
I waited so long,
So long to play this part.
And just remembered
That I'd forgotten about my heart.Head over hooves,
Where should I go? ...
~ ~ ~
“Eh, Call of Cthulhu is overrated,” said a voice from the other side of the cardboard screen. Vinyl raised her head to see another cutie-aged filly, sitting in a chair on one side of the dining room. Her skin was nearly white, and her mane was a wavy strawberry blonde, with a streak dyed a brilliant pink used to try to cover up the tourniquet that was secured around her head. She was intently studying a large hardcover book and marking it up with a yellow highlighter marker. On her white t-shirt was a hand-painted reproduction of the packaging for a mass-produced pastry product known as a “Pop Tart”.
“‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,’” quoted the colt, “‘and with strange aeons even death may die.’ Doesn’t that just give you the shivers?”
The sitting filly put down the book, revealing its name to be Rulebook for Toon: The Cartoon Roleplaying Game. “Howie was a bright gal,” she said with a frown, “but she really never got the fact that gods don’t sleep that way.”
“‘Howie’,” said the incredulous filly who had been using the refrigerator a moment earlier. She placed a clear glass filled with a black bubbling concoction on the table right in front of Vinyl, but her eyes were on the blonde. “Diana, are you saying that you knew H. P. Lovecraft?”
“Well, I, err...that would make me how old?” fumbled the filly named Diana, before making up her mind. “No, of course not, Sarah! That would be silly. It’s just a general impression, you know?”
Sarah sat down wearily. “Oh, I know, Diana. I know far too well.” Sarah rather strongly resembled an older female version of “the squirt.” She wore a pale lavender blouse. Sarah picked up a newspaper and started idly flipping through it. Vinyl managed to catch the headline: President Davis and First Man Ronald Leave for International Summit.
Vinyl looked down warily at the odd substance this Sarah Ancient had presented to her—apparently the mysterious “Dr Pepper”. Maybe it was a cure for headaches. On the other hand, maybe it was hotter than Pinkie’s hot sauce. For a moment, she didn’t even know how to drink it—it was in a glass too narrow to pick up with her lips, and it lacked a straw. She gave a worried look at her new hands, deducing that they were probably required for this operation. Carefully, she brought the two appendages up to either side of the glass, squeezed them together, and lifted. The glass wobbled up towards her mouth and she was finally able to get a sip before she got it back down, miraculously without spilling a drop. It didn’t taste too bad, as a matter of fact.
The title of Diana’s book got Vinyl interested in the pile of books next to her. The title of the top book was Ponies & Dragons 2nd Edition: Pony Handler’s Guide, by Mary Jo Powell. The cover illustration was very familiar: it depicted Nightmare Moon at the Ponyville Town Hall, cackling about how the night would last forever.
Vinyl Scratch nervously pushed that book aside, taking another sip of the Dr Pepper without thinking about it. The next book down was identical to one that was available to the Ancients on the other side of the screen: Ponies & Dragons 2nd Edition: Player’s Handbook, by Mary Jo and Gary G. Powell. The cover of this book showed a unicorn royal guard and a pegasus royal guard working together to fight off an ambush by a pack of Diamond Dogs.
The third and fourth books were both The Equestrian Handbook, also by Mary Jo Powell. One of them was 1st Edition, and the other was 2nd Edition. The 1st Edition book was illustrated with a somewhat pink Princess Celestia staring down an adolescent dragon as a band of pony warriors from the Dark Ages looked on in awe. The second edition showed a more familiar Princess Celestia performing the Raising of the Sun ceremony in Canterlot before a crowd of astonished ponies.
Vinyl turned both books over to compare their advertising blurbs. Here was the text of the 1st Edition:
An era of peace and harmony comes to an end as the Princess of the Night is corrupted by the forces of Nightmare! The Realm of Equestria is rent by civil war, as Nightmare Moon recruits her army of conquest! The war is long and hard-fought, but eventually the forces of Good prevail, and the Nightmare is banished forevermore...
...leaving Equestria in tatters. The Princess of the Day, overcome with grief over what her sister has become, has abandoned the ponies to their fate. Crime and lawlessness cover the land. Monsters have risen up to terrorize the population. It is a time of fear. It is a time of desperation. It is a time...for Heroes.
~ ~ ~
The memories of Celestia had quite a few corrections to that description of the Dark Ages, especially the accusation of abandonment. But in far too many respects, it was essentially correct. In fact it was rather the ponies who turned away from Celestia rather than the reverse. They refused her help, refused anything from her other than the regular cycle of day and night, summer and winter, and set out to rule themselves, with disastrous results for the first few decades. Eventually, the ponies returned to Celestia, and she came once again to be their princess. But before that time, it was indeed an age of heroines.
Vinyl turned to the 2nd Edition blurb, set a thousand years later:
Forgotten for a millennium, Nightmare Moon has returned to a peaceful Equestria, hungry for vengeance!
~ ~ ~
The copywriter’s appetite for hyperbole was apparently still intact. The text that followed quickly got past the defeat of Nightmare Moon, and essentially described the setting of Equestria as it was before the Second Great War.
The date of the 1st Edition book was 1974, in whatever dating system the Ancients used, while the 2nd Edition was dated 1984. Ten years, thought Vinyl, to cover a thousand years of Equestrian history. What will my world be like in the Year 2000?
Vinyl idly paged through tables of combat probabilities and professions, and past cold descriptions of life-or-death scenarios, a shopping list for sadism on a global scale. So this is it, then? Vinyl thought to herself. I guess those nuts in the asylum were right: somepony is jerking us around like puppets on a string.
She took a quick mental survey of the Ancients sitting around the table. The identifications were made even more obvious by the hand-painted pony figurines placed in front of each of them:
Twilight Sparkle’s puppeteer, Sarah, was playing with a small electronic device. Vinyl thought it was some kind of game, considering how much enjoyment she got out of it, but I know better: it was a TI-30 scientific calculator. Sarah also controlled Spike (the expected figurine replaced by a dragon drawn on a cardboard square held up by a stand, because dragons were not supposed to be an acceptable character race), which did a lot to explain why the poor dragon always had such a rough time of it.
The filly in the blue shirt (controlling Rainbow Dash) and the filly who had called her “Elle” (controlling Applejack and wearing a checkered orange shirt) were engaged in an argument in hushed voices, with much use of poking each other in the shoulder with their fingers. Possibly a slightly-less rude gesture than the equivalent move with hooves, considering how tiny fingertips were, thought Vinyl. In a little cardboard box next to the second filly was a box containing the rest of the Apple clan, all jumbled together.
Fluttershy’s puppeteer shared two traits with Fluttershy herself: freakishly large eyes, and the ability to turn invisible when you’re not staring right at her. As a result, it was nearly impossible to discern any other descriptive traits from her.
Rarity’s pale-skinned handler, her blouse all frilly and her dark hair perfectly arranged, was busy studying a magazine. Not, as Vinyl expected, a fashion magazine, but Billboard, a periodical devoted to the business of music.
That’s when Vinyl Scratch saw it. Like Sarah, Rarity’s puppeteer played an additional character, and I’m not talking about Sweetie Belle. Standing side-by-side next to the Rarity figurine was a little pewter representation...of Vinyl Scratch.
That was the moment when Vinyl nearly flipped the table. This was taking things too far, way too far. It was just sick how much this explained. Vinyl had always known Rarity like a sister, despite the fact that they hadn’t been introduced until the first day of school. No matter how much Rarity had tried to hide some of her more humiliating secrets, Vinyl had already known. She knew...because that prim and proper Ancient over there sucked at the most-basic rule of role-playing: Keep your Nightmare-cursed characters separate from each other in your mind! Vinyl felt like her brains had liquefied and were draining out of her earholes. Her only possible defense was to pretend she hadn’t seen what she had just seen and force her gaze to move on. She most certainly didn’t notice when Diana produced an Octavia figure and started playing “kissy-face” with the pewter DJ.
And that brings us to Diana, Pinkie Pie’s puppeteer. Unlike the others, her pewter figurine was absolutely accurate, probably because she cast it herself. She was eating from a bag of popcorn, popping each kernel into the air with a flick of a thumb and expertly catching it in her mouth. Wait, Vinyl wondered, when did she get the popcorn?
That was all of them, the entire cast of puppeteers, except for the Ancient she was occupying. But Elle was the greatest puppeteer of all, because as the rulebooks before Vinyl made clear, she was responsible for playing everypony else in Equestria, Even the Princess is one of her puppets, Vinyl Scratch thought in despair. Why bother to do anything with your life if that’s true?
She heard the mental voice of DJ Pon-3 laughing in derision at her.
Getting the joke, she rolled her eyes. It could be as bad as all that, she decided, or...I could come to my senses and realize that this is a Pinkie Pie dream. After all, she and the others knew enough about the Ancients from that mysterious visit of theirs for her to imagine this whole scenario. Now I just need to talk to...
“Gah!” Vinyl exclaimed, on seeing the Ancient named Diana peering at her curiously over the cardboard screen.
Diana said nothing, merely tapping a finger on a piece of paper that was next to Vinyl. At the top of the page, in wild hoofwriting, was the phrase “Plan #8: Kidnap Luna! This has to work!!!”
“Enjoying the trip so far...Vinyl?” Diana asked quietly with a smirk. She produced a large glass ashtray from seemingly nowhere and placed it next to the page.
For the moment, Vinyl failed to notice how she had been addressed and only noticed Diana’s actions. With a quick flick of her left hand, Vinyl caused the pack of magical matches to materialize. She swiftly crumpled up the page, put it in the ashtray, and then lit it with one of the matches. The paper was converted into green smoke, which was then sucked through a pinhole-sized spot in the air into nothingness.
“Why are you helping?” Vinyl said in a near-whisper.
“Are you kidding?!” Diana replied in a wide grin. “I live for stuff like this. Making the Lords of Creation face-hoof at your antics is the best game ever!”
“Diana, you are so random!” exclaimed Blue Shirt.
Vinyl noticed the use of the word “hoof” instead of hand. And that’s when she recalled the name Diana had addressed her as. Diana knew that she was Vinyl Scratch.
That made no sense.
It was possible for Diana to think she was Princess Celestia, if this Elle character had confided in her about her mad scheme to hack her way into the alicorn’s mind, but seeing through that to Vinyl was completely impossible. It would require a level of cheating beyond even Princess Celestia. And Vinyl knew only one pony who cheated more than Princess Celestia...
It was time to begin her sales pitch.
Vinyl stood up. Everypony else was staring at them, so she saw no need to maintain the charade.
She gestured around at the very ordinary room they were in. “Not exactly up to your standards, is it, Pinkie?” she asked nonchalantly.
What’s that supposed to mean? “You’re taking this rather well,” I replied.
“So monochromatic,” Vinyl replied. “Where’s the melting ponies? Where’s the pencil with your head for an eraser? The giant bucket of oatmeal that everypony fails to notice? All of this makes way too much sense.”
What? “I don’t get it,” I said nervously, hoping desperately that she wasn’t implying what I think she was implying.
“You’re dreaming, Pinkie.”
She was implying what I thought she was implying! I slumped down to the ground, utterly defeated. “You’re not supposed to be able to figure it out!” I cried out in protest. “I’m just supposed to be a normal pony! But now you know, and I suppose you want to set me up as your Judge. Never again! I’d sooner leave this uni—” I stopped when I realized that Vinyl had been talking the whole time.
“—help Twilight to get us through the other dreams,” she said, “where...what are you talking about?”
Oh. Oh! Cecil’s spell! Dragon Emperor death trap. That dream.
Sure, I can wake up from that dream. No problem! I just need a big enough clown hammer, and I just happen to know where one is!