The green strand in her wig refused to lay on the right side. Sweetie took the whole thing off, fluffed it with her magic, and stared at it in the mirror. The dumb thing seemed less cooperative with every performance. She tried positioning it over her bunched-up mane for what felt like the hundredth time tonight. It was kind of difficult to concentrate with...
"Would you knock that off?!" Moxie shouted at Cacophony, who was busily rapping her drumsticks on every available surface at her own dresser.
Cacophony halted instantaneously. "Okay," she said in her monotone.
Sweetie exhaled and looked at herself in the mirror. The silence that took the place of Cacophony's faux-drumming seemed even louder, somehow. She glanced over at the drummer, who was now hitting her sticks on invisible drums in the air. Her character in Filly Explosion! was the Party Animal, an out-of-control partyholic who only cared about having a good time; the real Cacophony was quiet and reserved and cared only about her drumming, and made no secret that she was frustrated by the lack of ambition or complexity in the music she was playing. So, to compensate, she'd practice whenever there was a free moment on anything that stayed still for longer than five seconds.
This was a habit that drove Moxie mad. Moxie was the Rebel, with a wild mane (all her own, not a wig) and electric guitar, the bad girl of the group who wouldn't listen to any authority. Moxie seemed nice enough once you could see around her aggressive way of putting things, but she did have a temper that would burst from nowhere and disappear just as quickly. She was content to play the guitar -- her style of 'fast and loose' fit her rocker image for Filly Explosion! -- but she had made more than a few muttered comments at being denied even doing backing vocals because of her deep voice; her preferred method of finishing inter-band arguments fell along the lines of insinuating that she'd leave and front her own band.
There was a fourth member of the band, though she barely called attention to herself unless absolutely necessary. Who Stardust was meant to be up on stage, the Diva, reminded Sweetie a lot of her sister at her worst: cold, aloof, and untouchable, and for the first few weeks the other three ponies of Filly Explosion! had thought that's who she was offstage as well for how little she interacted with them. Stardust's real personality was more akin to an extreme version of Fluttershy, meek and introverted and so afraid of making a faux pas that she spent most of her time with her keyboard and a pair of headphones off in a corner, hiding behind the wall of mane that hung over one eye.
And then last was the Sweetheart, the pony that looked back at Sweetie Belle from within the mirror, the archetypical filly-next-door who was everypony's best friend and somehow both innocent and experienced around colts. She was a complete stranger to Sweetie, who was constantly reminded of her actual three best friends by the lack of any real connection she felt to her bandmates and who couldn't relate at all to the words she sang in Why Can't My Heart Forget? or Please Please Choose Me or Don't Say We're in Love. The Sweetheart was confident and completely sure of herself: it was a role Sweetie Belle felt unsuited to play.
She flinched a little when Moxie dropped a hoof down on her dresser, both suddenly alerting Sweetie to her presence and snapping her out of her introspection.
"So I guess I'll bring it up," she stated, "since it doesn't look like you will. What's the deal with that thing of yours?"
"What thing of mine?" Sweetie asked.
"That thing with you and DJ PON-3. When did you do that, anyway?"
"Oh. That was last week some time. Wait, how did you hear that?"
Cacophony paused her air-drumming to join the conversation. "It's all over the radio," she said in what passed for incredulity for her.
Sweetie felt her skin go cold. She realized two things in rapid succession: one, the reason Lyra had lied badly about dropping their radio into the sink was probably her attempt to set up another surprise, and two, that thousands, possibly tens of thousands of ponies all over Equestria had heard her songs.
"The radio?" she said with a squeak.
"Everyone's heard it," Cacophony confirmed.
"I bet even Shh in the corner there has heard it," Moxie added. She stamped her hoof and waved in Stardust's direction.
Stardust took off her headphones. "What?"
"You've heard Sweetie's side project thing, right?"
"Oh, are we talking about that?" Stardust's face momentarily brightened. "I thought it was really good, Sweetie. You should talk to Stacks about trying to work some of the songs into our setlist. I think we could try Opine with our sound, it might turn out pretty nice." She smiled and slipped her headphones back over one ear, having said her piece.
"You're a good writer," Cacophony said, resuming her drumming at a slower pace. "You write something like Giving Back Breath and you're being made to sing stuff like Gonna Party in Canterlot. Tch."
"Yeah, and since that I know we're doing side projects now, I can work on my solo stuff," Moxie said with a grin. "Kidding. Not kidding." Her face sobered. "No, but really, I dug that one really angry one. Virtuosette, right? I didn't know you had that in you, Sweetheart." She tapped Sweetie on the shoulder.
"So," Sweetie said hesitantly, "you really liked it? And you're not just being nice?"
"You're a proper artist, Sweetie," Cacophony said as she worked her sticks from one side to the other of her invisible drums.
"Yeah, can't take compliments," Moxie scoffed, but the grin was back on her face.
A stagehand popped his head through the door after a brief barrage of knocks. "Five minutes, girls."
"Showtime," Moxie said, slinging her guitar across her side. Cacophony's sticks disappeared, and Stardust started packing up her keyboard.
Sweetie looked at herself in the mirror, a small smile on her face.