“Oh hey! You’d be Bonbon, right?”
She nods to the unicorn. “Yep, that’s me.”
Her unwitting source nods cheerfully. “Awesome! Please, do come in. Sitting room, maybe?”
“Ahh, sure, if it’s no bother to you.” She’d expected to have the conversation on the DJ’s front porch.
“Eh, it’s no biggie. Plus, if we’re gonna be talking music, it’ll probably help to have the instruments at hand, won’t it? You bring any?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t play.”
“Yet.”
She tilts her head.
Sigh. “You’re living with a musician. At some point, either she’ll stop playing or you’ll start.” She turns to lead her into the house; she follows willingly, closing the door behind her. “Then of course, I pray for both of your sakes that you start; Heartstrings is probably the best musician in Ponyville, even counting my beloved Octavia. If she stopped…
“Well, let’s just say I’ve seen funerals with a more cheerful tone than a Ponyville without her.”
She blinks, pausing in the sitting room door. “Wait. Don’t you do the music for all Pinkie’s parties?”
“And me all the weddings?” the earth pony already in the sitting room asks, smiling. “Yes, we do. But most ponies don’t realize Lyra wrote some of the songs I play- and a firm majority of the songs my town DJ mixes with are also hers.”
Vinyl nods. “About eight out of every ten, as a matter of fact. If we weight that on how often I actually use each record, it’s closer to ninety-eight out of a hundred.”
“Huh? But doesn’t she play-!”
“The lyre?” Both musicians state together.
“Of course, that’s her cutie mark,” Octavia states. “But she’s good with a lot more than just a lyre. Strings, brass, percussion, she’s got it all- even the big one.” She looks at the DJ.
“Magic,” the unicorn dutifully states. “Did you know she has security fields around her house?”
She nods, slowly. “Yes, actually, I did.”
“Really? Who got caught?”
Blink. “Uhh, donno. Poor bloke never saw it coming.”
“I’ll be in the studio,” Octavia states suddenly, hopping up and leaving the room.
She blinks again. “Wait. How’d you know somepony got caught?”
The unicorn chuckles as the door lands closed. “Because I’ve looked for them. But that’s another story. Anyways- oh?”
She’d leaned forwards in her seat. “Do tell,” she asks.
A raised eyebrow. “Oh? You into magic or something?”
Her eyes widen. “What? No! I’m an earth pony!” She shakes her head vigorously. “It’s just that now I’m living under that roof, and she’s… Not exactly open with the details.”
Nod. “Makes sense. You’re probably aware of how many thieves us musicians tend to attract, right?”
She tilts her head slightly. “A little bit, yes. Something about the value of the instruments, if I remember correctly?”
Nod. “Absolutely! My tables aren’t usually targeted, since ponies don’t realize they’re a high-end instrument worth almost eight thousand bits, but Octy’s fairly typical violins are in the fifteen thousand range. So we get thieves- and the obvious solution is to use a security field. Just about any unicorn that enters this house will notice ours.
“But Heartstrings is a little different. I’m pretty sure her lyre is way up there- it is, after all, a custom job by Alicor Notes himself, complete with autograph- so she gets even more thieves. About a year ago, shortly after Twilight’s ascension, the Royal Guard went to her with the report- apparently, she was catching as many as three would-be thieves a day.”
She scowls. “How did you get involved, then?”
The musician then smiles at her. “I’m getting to that part, actually. Twilight suspected what they did, that something sinister was going on- but unlike them, she knew where to go.” Her grin becomes more pronounced. “Most ponies don’t know, but when you’re looking for a good security field, you don’t go to the Royal Guard or even a ‘security expert’, quote unquote- no, you find yourself a musician. Any successful musician will have to have a way of protecting their assets, after all.
“That’s where I came in. Twilight came to me, and asked me to help verify the legitimacy of Lyra’s reports.
“So we went. We both spent several hours that day at her house, trying to find her security fields- but as near as either of us could tell, there simply wasn’t anything to be found. But Twilight didn’t think that was enough, so we decided to play spy and hid in the bushes across the street.
“Almost the whole day passed before we saw someone suspicious. Cloak and everything. I wanted to go out and stop him, as a musician-to-musician kindness, but Twilight wanted to see if he’d trigger any security fields first.
“And trigger them he did. No sooner had he started his swing to break her window than he found himself petrified by the standing security fields neither of us could detect before they went off. Pretty sure they even drew on his own power to petrify him, as well!
“Then Lyra appeared and picked him up in her magic for delivery to the Guard. We showed ourselves- she did not look surprised- and talked about it. Nowadays, I understand, her security fields will automagically call the guards and levitate the offending pony to the edge of the property, all whether she’s there or not.”
She blinks. “Wow. I’m… not surprised, actually. That kind of behavior would be easy after the earth pony interface.” Then her eyes widen very slightly as she mentally kicks herself. Vinyl probably didn’t know about the whole earth-pony-use-security-fields thing- and with as impossible as that normally is, she can only hope the unicorn missed it.
… The unicorn with the earth pony companion. She really hopes she missed her slip.
“Oh yes! Then there’s some of the more spectacular catches she does. Frankly, I still haven’t a clue how she does all that. Octy tells me she knew her as a filly- and that she was virtually useless with her magic. Yet here she is, with perhaps the most effective security spellwork that Equestria has ever seen.”
She blinks. As much as this feels like an information grab by the DJ, it seems an opportunity just opened for her to make her own information grab. She scowls. “Huh… I wonder where she learned that?”
“Where? Oh, that’s a good question! Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns doesn’t even touch on the topic for some reason, yet… Wait a sec. Didn’t she travel a lot some years ago?”
Eyebrow raised. “She did? Where to?”
Headshake. “No clue. But you’re living with her- maybe you could ask? I’d love to find out how to make a security field my Octy could use!”
Drat. She’d caught it. Oh well. “Mm, yeah, probably.” She snickers. “Might help she seems to have a crush on me.”
The snicker is mirrored. “Oh yes, certainly! Maybe you can find out why her fridge has neither a block of ice nor a spell on it? Seemed a little strange to me when I visited, but she wouldn’t say anything. I know I’d love to have a fridge like that.”
She installs yet another patch cord across yet another gap created by yet another hole in the metal, delivering the power from her base’ geothermal generator to yet another short stretch of hallway.
Then she casts yet another restoration spell at yet another overhead light, causing it to flicker briefly before it comes on with that steady white glow the others have all produced. Of course, the others had also all produced that flicker first; she’s pretty sure the flicker comes because her restoration spell isn’t instant.
All before she sticks yet another piece of brightly-colored fluorescent tape on the left wall.
And turns to force open the lower half of the door on the right wall. The upper half is missing; looks to have been melted away by something of immense heat. Just like the rest of the metal around the gaping hole in her new discovery’s side.
She lets out a sigh. She hopes at least some part of it still works; she’d hate to have teleported this thing all this distance only to find it had been little more than a great big hunk of rather useless metal.
She scans the cavern. There’s bits of metal in here, and… Ahh, a cable! Looks like a power line, also severed by the great big hole in the wall. Another patch cord goes into place, bringing power to this cable. She follows it up…
Yes! Something familiar! … Yet unfamiliar. It looks somewhat like the bits of plastic depicted in her book as keeping time. Though…
She tilts her head. On second thought, it looks more like an upscaled version of the bits of plastic depicted in her book as being smart.
If she recalls correctly, it needs a lot more bits of plastic to work properly and requires some kind of plastic-and-glass panel and a whole lot of buttons in order to actually do anything.
Either that, or another great big bunch of bits of plastic to talk to… but they can’t actually do anything for her without the glass-and-plastic thing and the buttons.
She scowls at it, looking around. Ahh- whatever cut this great big hole in the wall also damaged the ceiling, even of this high room. Through this hole in the ceiling, she catches a glimpse of what looks like some broken glass-and-plastic things. Perhaps she can start there?
… Though of course, the problem of getting up there makes itself known. She scans up and down the hallway… Wait one, is that a staircase? She trots over to check, nods, and returns to make sure she’s laying the tape along her passage. Much like the stone she’s removed from the entranceway, this tape will be her guide when it comes time to head back out.
As it turns out, the staircase does go upstairs. She steps carefully around the gaping hole in the floor and aims a restorative spell at the broken panels on the wall.
It takes her almost a full minute to restore them all. And connect them to power.
Finally, she stops to look them over, see if there’s anything on them. She finds nothing- except for one little white symbol, not unlike an arrow pointing to the right, standing at the top of one of the panels. It’s worth note that a horizontal line is blinking next to it, positioned just in front of and below it. She tilts her head at it.
It looks important, somehow. Unfortunately, she can’t seem to figure out exactly how.
So she starts hunting for something she might be missing… There!
Some restoration later, involving the button-board on the front of the strange chair and the wire going down through the chair into the room below, and she’s ready to find out if it works. That wire goes into the great big damaged thing next to the little bits she thinks are actually working- but so do the wires from the plastic-glass panels on the wall in front of her. Hopefully, her guess is correct.
She reaches a hoof over the wall of buttons and presses the big, unlabeled one, her eyes on the panel.
The blinking line moves. To the right, a distance approximately equal to its width.
She hovers her hoof over the buttons, and pushes another one. The one with the cornered arrow and the word she doesn’t understand on it. Again, watching the panel. She almost yelps as it makes a rather more substantial change.
>
Command Not Recognized:
>
The blinking horizontal line is now waiting after the second little arrow, and back right up to it. Unfortunately, she doesn’t understand the words it used; it’s using the same strange language as the book she’d gotten her fridge out of. The red doesn’t look too friendly, though. She reaches up to carefully depress one of the buttons with a single character on it.
She releases it as soon as the matching character appears in front of the arrow, replacing the blinking line- which simply moves over to blink next to it. She waits, but nothing happens- so she touches another character.
The same thing happens. Another wait produces nothing, so she tries the cornered arrow button again, watching the screen as she does so.
This time, she actually does yelp as it responds- and starts filling the strange panel with text.
>dc
Activating Damage Control… Done.
-- DAMAGE CONTROL: SURVIVAL II --
Checking Controllers… Done, 0.37% Operable.
WARNING: Damage Control: Survival II below acceptable integrity!
Connecting to Damage Control Network… FAILED: Network Not Found!
Connecting to Tech Spider Manipulators… FAILED: No Response!
Connecting to Nanites… Done, 0.00% Responding.
WARNING: Nanite Count below acceptable levels!
Establishing Damage Control Network… Done.
Connecting to Supply: Survival II… FAILED: No Response!
Connecting to Supply Network… FAILED: Network Not Found!
WARNING: Supply Grid Offline!
Assessing Supply: Survival II… FAILED: Hardware Not Found!
Switching to Disaster Recovery Mode… Done.
Connecting to Manufacturing: Survival II… FAILED: No Response!
Connecting to Manufacturing Network… FAILED: Network Not Found!
Checking Blueprints… Done, All Data Intact.
Checking Disaster Supply… Done.
WARNING: Disaster Supply Reserves Depleted!
Switching to Emergency Recovery Mode… Done.
Assessing Survival II… Done, 0.02% Operable
WARNING: Survival II Incapacitated!
Connecting to Survival I… FAILED: No Response!
Connecting to Survival III… FAILED: No Response!
Connecting to Survival IV… FAILED: No Response!
WARNING: Personality Offline!
Assessing Databanks: Survival II… Done, Irrepairable; 9.37% Hardware Integrity
WARNING: Personality Not Found!
Switching to Final Emergency Recovery Mode… Done.
Assessing Power Supply…
She stares at it. It had paused momentarily at a few points, and now it’s stopped. The blinking line is gone.
She didn’t break it, did she?