The lit end of her manager's cigar darted about in the haze of smoke, its red tip flitting back and forth like a dragon's eye in sleep. Fat Stacks shut off the recording and looked down his nose at Sweetie.
"Kid," he began in his gravelly voice, "lemme tell you something about the music business."
Sweetie Belle's shoulders sagged. "You didn't like the demo." she said, thinking of all the things that she could have done differently to get Stacks more favorably disposed to the original material she'd been working on. Maybe she should have brought her own tape player. Maybe she should have put Blown Glass Bird first instead of Right Upon the Microscope Stage. Maybe she should have picked a different time to bring up the subject of her own songs other than a Friday afternoon just as Stacks was leaving his office.
"It's not about what I like." He gestured patiently with his hooves. "It's about what's gonna sell. Every filly out there is thinkin' what's in these songs -- I'm confused, the world is big and scary, how do I find my place in it -- that sorta thing. Right?"
"Right..."
"But that's not what they wanna listen to." He slung a thick foreleg around her shoulder and pointed into the distance out the office window. "They don't wanna hear that coming back at them, they wanna hear 'I can be a confident young mare who's not afraid to party and have fun!' Like Filly Explosion!'s been doing."
"I just thought--" Sweetie began, but Stacks cut her off with a wave of his cigar. He sauntered back behind his desk as he spoke, his wide barrel swaying with the motion.
"Kid, I been in this business since before you were even thinkin' about what your cutie mark would be. I know what makes a success. And you're a success, ain't'cha?"
Sweetie hadn't even noticed he had taken her demo tape out of the player, but now he was giving it back to her. It meant this discussion was done.
The setting sun turned the streets of Canterlot an orange jungle of long shadows. The warm colors should have signaled freedom, a day ending, a night beginning, but to Sweetie the shadows felt like they were snaking into the future and drawing her next performance closer. She'd been preparing for her songs to be denied a place in the setlist, but to actually know they wouldn't be included, at all, felt like she had failed for not having tried hard enough. She didn't turn her head as she heard hoofsteps approaching.
"He didn't go for it, huh?"
"No." Sweetie didn't even look up at Lyra as she left the building, choosing instead to keep focused on the paved road as she walked. If she had lifted her head, she may have seen one of the numerous posters advertising the big Filly Explosion! concert in a week. She heard the older mare fall in beside her.
"Okay, okay. But like, big deal, so what, right? You knew he probably wasn't gonna say yes anyway."
"It feels like a big deal," Sweetie groused. She had liked Lyra being around -- partly as a kind of mentor, partly as a little reminder of home -- but right now she felt like a big noisy reminder of how she didn't belong in Canterlot on her own at all.
"Hey. Hey." Lyra stepped in front of Sweetie and stopped, forcing her to also halt. "Listen. We still have the demo, right?"
"Right, but what good does it do if Stacks isn't even going to listen to it?"
"Pfft, he's not the only pony who has anything to do with music in this town, short stuff."
"What do you mean?"
"I might have passed your tape around a little, saw if anypony was interested."
"Why would you do that?!" Sweetie turned away from Lyra and screwed her eyes shut. A cold sweat rushed over her. She had poured her soul into those songs, and the idea of somepony hearing them without her around to explain why they were the way they were, not to mention the possibility of them not liking any of them and thinking she was a terrible writer who should never compose again, made her want to huddle in a ball right there on the street. It had taken a whole day of self-convincing to present the tape to Fat Stacks. It had taken all her courage to ask Lyra to play the instrumental backing.
She heard Lyra's voice, unusually calm and sincere. "Because I think you're good, I don't know. Because this is what you want to be doing instead of being wasted on that dumb girl band."
Sweetie opened her eyes. She was facing a brick wall covered in Filly Explosion! posters, her own unrecognizable face beaming back at her.
"...It is kinda dumb, isn't it?" she said at last.
"They liked it, by the way."
Sweetie turned to face Lyra again. "Liked what?"
"Your demo, you dope."
"Who?" she asked with some degree of curiosity.
"Ehh, it's better as a surprise." Lyra began walking away from the sinking sun. "Speaking of which, we have a place we need to be tonight that is in no way connected with anything I just said but for completely legitimate reasons I also can't give you full details on."
"You're terrible at surprises."
"You know, they were totally interested in my lyre skills, too. Maybe they want me for their project."
"You're terrible at changing the subject, too."
"Would you at least try to act surprised when we get there, short stuff?"
The bright yellow neon sign over the door of The Cagey Bee flickered and buzzed, much like an angry bee itself. The curtains in the thin windows were thick, giving away noting about what kind of establishment this was. From elsewhere in this area of Canterlot came the throbbing sound of deep bass and occasional high notes of laughter and shouts from ponies in the streets, but this back alley was occupied only by dark storefronts, a single streetlamp, and The Cagey Bee.
"Are you sure this is the place?" Sweetie asked.
"Totally." Lyra, noting Sweetie eying the blinking sign, added: "Don't worry, it's meant to do that."
"Seriously?"
"I guess so, it's been like that every time I've come here. Come on, let's go down."
"Down?" But Lyra was already through the door.
When Lyra had told her 'real underground location', Sweetie hadn't thought she meant it literally. Right inside the doorway was a set of stairs that descended and banked around to lead to a level beneath the street. Hidden down there was a small nightclub, intimate and quiet, with barely enough room for its patrons to stand let alone dance. It felt suited to soft jazz or spoken poetry. It was the opposite of every Filly Explosion! show.
Sweetie loved it instantly.
She was too busy taking in the club to notice a pony approaching on her side. She turned at a tap on her shoulder, and found herself looking up at a pony she recognized. This pony had long since traded her heavy signature goggles for a pair of tinted spectacles that served much the same purpose of obscuring her eyes, but Sweetie couldn't help calling her by her stage name.
"DJ PON-3!" she gasped.
"And you must be the little pony Lyra was talking to me about."
Sweetie's jaw fell open. "You know Vinyl Scratch?" she asked Lyra. "Why didn't you tell me that?"
"'Cause I wanted it to be a surprise. Surprise. Vinyl dug your stuff too. Didn't'cha, Vinyl?"
"Sure did," Vinyl said, pushing up her glasses. "It's real authentic, and pretty darn clever, too. Sweet -- but real, not like that filler Stacks has you doing. I want to help you get your stuff out there; what would you say to laying down a collaboration, you do the singing, I fill in the beats, maybe Lyra sits in?"
Sweetie didn't even need time to consider it. "Yes! Totally! I mean... yes, that would be amazing. Where, when?"
Vinyl smiled, her eyes unreadable. "How 'bout right here, right now?"
"Really?" Sweetie said, suddenly not as sure as she had been seconds ago. "In... in front of all these ponies?" There must have been at most thirty ponies in the tiny club, including Sweetie, Lyra, and Vinyl, but somehow that seemed infinitely more daunting than a Filly Explosion! gig with a crowd of thousands. She hadn't written any of those songs, after all.
"I vouch for their taste," Vinyl said, holding up a hoof to swear solemnly. "They'll like you."
"This is the opportunity of a lifetime," Lyra chimed in. "Well... I dunno, you're pretty young, you've probably got a bunch of opportunities just as big as this lined up ahead of you, but still. Seize the day! Right?"
Sweetie nodded after a moment and gave a small but sure, "Okay."
-/-
The next fifteen minutes of setting up the stage went past in a blur. Sweetie found herself standing in front of the microphone, looking out into the expectant crowd. She turned back to Vinyl, thinking maybe it somehow wasn't her place to start the show even though she was the one out in front.
"It's all you, little bird," Vinyl said from behind her array of mixers and sample decks.
Sweetie swallowed and turned back to the microphone. "Okay, this one's called Introduction to All New Things," she said before she could lose her nerve, and counted the song in.
Vinyl's music came in two bars after she started singing, a long slow pulsing and a high accompanying melody that sounded like falling rain. Lyra joined on the chorus, expanding on the simple backing she had played on the demo. On the tape, the song had remained mostly at the same level, but with Vinyl filling up the empty spaces in the song it swelled like a crashing wave. Sweetie felt her voice growing stronger for the second verse, and even improvised a reprise of the chorus in a different key to close the number out. She flashed Lyra a grin. Performing with Filly Explosion! was like a brief jolt, a momentary burst of light; this was like being caught up in a thunderstorm.
The applause from the crowd was somehow both polite and enthusiastic. There was a special energy in the tiny club, something that could only come from being able to see the face of each pony in the crowd. Sweetie felt her face stretching with a grin as she thanked the audience and introduced the next song-- "This is a song about finding your place. It's called Your Greatest Foe, You." --and felt the beat for a few bars before beginning to sing.
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.
Sweetie galloped onto center stage, bathed in blue light. The strobes fed her sights in half-second glimpses, catching a flash of Moxie waving to the crowd, Stardust whipping back her mane, the roaring stadium stamping and shouting. The into to Gonna Party in Canterlot began to play, and the crowd erupted in cheers.
In her mind, Sweetie was far away as she sang. The entire concert passed by in what seemed like a few blinks of one of the giant lights.
-/-
"Good show, right?" Stardust said as the band waited in the wings.
"It was a show," Cacophony remarked. Stardust gave her a look.
"We still have an encore to do, ladies," Moxie said, glancing out to the stage.
Sweetie was listening to the sounds of the crowd. After a few minutes of going off-stage the cheers and applause would howl like a cyclone, but would coalesce into a group chant: Encore! Encore! or Explosion! Explosion! were typical, but some shows they had been brought back by the crowd to cries of Want Want U!, their standard encore number.
But what the crowd began to shout this night was none of those things.
"Guys," Sweetie said, "listen."
It sounded like the entire stadium was calling with one voice, over and over: "Blown Glass Bird! Blown Glass Bird!"
"Sweetie," Stardust said with an excited smile, "that's one of your songs."
"I know," Sweetie said in a small voice.
"They want us to do one of your songs," Cacophony said.
"I know. ...Can we do that?" Sweetie looked at each of her bandmates. "Do you want to do that?"
"It's no Want Want U," Cacophony said with a wan smile, "but I could probably keep the beat." She had made a rare joke.
"Sure, I'm in," Stardust said, flicking her mane away from her eye.
"Girl," Moxie said, "you give me the go-ahead to play a wicked solo and I'll be right there with you."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Sweetie asked, and stepped back on to the stage to a thunderous uproar.
Coming back for the encore felt like waking up after a long sleep. There was just one thing missing. Sweetie lifted her wig off her head, tossed it to the side, and shook out her mane, sending the stadium into a frenzy. This wasn't a song that the Sweetheart needed to perform.
Cacophony counted the song in, a shade slower than the version with Vinyl and Lyra had been. Her drumming was uncharacteristically soft, but more complex than anything required for a Filly Explosion! song. Stardust's keyboard played counterpoint to Moxie's guitar, the blend better suited to a filled stadium. Sweetie was a little surprised when Moxie leaned in to the microphone to join her for the chorus, but the sound worked with the mix of her low voice and Sweetie's high tones. After the bridge, Sweetie pointed to Moxie, who took center stage for her solo while she backed her with wordless vocals. When the song was over, the four of them turned to each other, ecstatic grins on their faces, the noise from the crowd making it impossible to hear anything else. They had finally sound their sound.
Sweetie turned back to the microphone. "Do you want to hear another one?" she asked out into the throng.
The response was overwhelming.
Filly Explosion! ended up playing every one of Sweetie Belle's songs that night.
Sweetie looked up at the sky, the twinkling stars and deep indigo ripples. Spotlights from the stadium still moved across the clouds. She felt incredible. Giddy. She had thought she understood what Lyra had talked about, about the rush that came after a killer gig, but she now knew she hadn't. This was it. This was absolutely it.
Fat Stacks came rushing up to her, fast as his girth would allow. "Kid!" he rasped. "Kid, was I wrong about you! That authenticity stuff, they ate it up! I was thinking we'd reposition your image in Filly Explosion!, make you the Poet. You're troubled and sensitive, but deep and--"
"No," Sweetie said, cutting him off.
"No?"
"No," she repeated. "I was talking it over with the girls after the show, and we all agreed that I'd be better off going in a different direction."
"Different...?" His cigar hung slack in his mouth.
"Yeah, I'd like to pursue more a singer/songwriter kind of thing, and they're wanting to push more into girl rock. You can see how we'd all be eager to leave Filly Explosion! behind. It was a good experience while it lasted, but I think we're all ready to move on."
Sweetie walked past Fat Stacks, his stunned gulping reaction saying all that was needed. It was the last time she ever spoke with him.
Vinyl pushed her glasses back up her muzzle, the violet lenses hiding her eyes, and waved the magazine she had been reading at Sweetie as she entered the studio.
"Every journalist that strings together words about music is talking up your performance last night. That's the other definition of a rave."
"I couldn't have done it without you," Sweetie said, suddenly realizing she had no proper way to thank Vinyl.
"You did do it without me," Vinyl said with a grin. "Everything's all about that encore, nothing about the SB/PON-3 record." On noting Sweetie's fallen face, she quickly added: "Hey, I don't need the recognition. I've been on more underground bootlegs than I can count."
"Still. I want to thank you for putting that out."
"Hey, Lyra was the one who pushed for it. You thank her."
Sweetie had, and likely would again. Living with Lyra Heartstrings was occasionally frustrating, but she meant well and was incredibly endearing while doing so. Most of the time.
"So Sweetie," Vinyl said from behind the mixing board, "are you ready to lay the first track down?"
Sweetie positioned herself behind the microphone in the recording booth. "Sure am."
