//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: Through the Eyes of Another // Story: In the Background // by Harold_Genhi //------------------------------// I was surprised at how well I was dealing with this strange emptiness that had filled me. Was it bravery, or was it the freedom from fear? Was there a difference? My body didn’t care as much as I began to enjoy my surroundings. The warm sunlight was a pleasant on my mane and coat. It filled my heart with selfish happiness at my own well-being. I knew my friends must have hated me for my disregard of them. The truth continually struck at my logic, and I accepted it coldly. It set me free, which only made it that much easier to accept as the right thing to do. I had to peer back as my friends climbed the side of the mountain, helping the still shaky Lyra climb over the rock to get into the mountain passes. A pressure behind my eyes told volumes of my regret of what had happened, but just as easily as that pressure arose, it vanished behind my previous life of posh class and dignity. I didn’t need them, and didn’t pursue my regret any further. I looked at the mountain ranges and could see through the peaks to where the destination should be located. It felt closer than it was, and the idea of salvation and home made me smile. Desires and plans of moving out and going back to Canterlot excited me. To finally regain position and rank in the higher-ups satisfied my selfish wishes. A voice in the back of my head asked the question that I had hoped to avoid, but the voice was persistent, so I listened. What about Vinyl? I had to sigh at the thought. Of my friends, she had to hate me the most out of them. I tried to logically follow my conclusions of such as a means of checking, but it was always muddled in the middle. Every time I tried to focus on the logic lost inside my head, it would veer off. I stopped and closed my eyes, determined to get that logic straight. The fog in my head began to clear as I began to connect more dots. If I had opened my eyes I could have seen something that would have explained everything as my gray hair began to regain its color, but the focus warranted keeping my eyes closed. “Why did you stop, Tavi?” Vinyl questioned from behind me, snapping my concentration to the side. My eyes snapped open just as my hair lost its color again and turned to see Vinyl staring at me from behind her glasses. I forgot why I had stopped or why my eyes felt like they were pressed together tighter than they have ever been. “Just thinking.” I guessed as much. “Feeling okay?” The concern in her voice disarmed me completely and set my own worry as to why she had such a tone. “I feel great, better than usual.” I admitted. Seeing the look on Vinyl’s face didn’t help. She had always been cheerful or angry or brave, but this almost looked like fear. The source of this fear eluded me and I looked back at Lyra to try and see if something was up with her, but she seemed perfectly fine, apart of shaking. “What’s up? What’s wrong?” I demanded more than asked. I saw the magic aura lift the glasses from Vinyl’s eyes as she held them closer to my face. I backed away from it, unsure as to what she was trying to accomplish by invading my personal space, but the look in her worried eyes told me what she had been trying to plan. I looked in the lenses of her iconic glasses and saw my purple reflection in them. Nothing seemed wrong with it at first glance. She magically turned the purple into a more reflective surface without the purple. I looked at the gray pony in front of me, staring at me with posh eyes and a high regard for civility. “Why am I gray?” I asked staring closer at the glasses to make sure that she or anything wasn’t fooling me, but it was true. “Discord-“ Vinyl started to explain. “You’ve been corrupted, my dear. Your game of wits worked, but he took something from you as well.” The Doctor explained. “You ponies are crazy. I think he just turned me gray to get to you.” Logic and possibility began to throw all doubt at other ideas. I abandoned the idea of being corrupted. “Tavi, you are acting different. He must have done something to you. Taken something that you held closest to your heart and it’s making you into this… annoying mule.” Her voice bit at me. “Mule? My dear mare… that is an atrocious accusation.” I retorted. She responded immediately. “Really, ‘my dear mare’? You have never acted like that before. I’m worried about you, Tavi.” “You shouldn’t be. I’m fine.” I tossed her to the side like the rest of my emotions, raised my head and trotted away from them. “You can never play the cello again…” Vinyl tossed at my back. I had to turn back at the wild conclusion. “Oh really? And how, might I be as so bold as to inquire, did you formulate that ghastly conclusion?” She winced at my superior intellect. Simpleton. “I want you to hum something. Something new. I want to hear you improvise a song and hum it to me like you did back at the house when you questioned the rhythm and flow.” She demanded. I stuttered a retort, but it was quickly hidden under the blankness of my brain. I couldn’t think of any musical chords or patterns. I cleared my throat as my ears darted inside of my head. The only thing that I could remember was the earliest of my music. A large portion of my inspiration sources, at least a faint memory as to what I look toward for inspiration, were as blurred as the connections to why I assumed Vinyl and my friends hated me. It felt off. It felt peculiar. Something was off and I couldn’t seem to focus on it. Instead, I felt a wall of selfishness force me to turn away from her and say she was below me. I listened carefully, and I obeyed. I let my mind accept the case and closed it off from any outside influences. - I could only stare at my closest friend as she walked way with her nose help up high. I couldn’t even begin to tell anypony the amount of distaste and contempt I had for her at this moment. I knew something was up with her rhythm especially her beat. Octavia… how could you change so much and just become such a posh jerk? She was acting just as she had acted when she had first moved into our duplex. First impressions were hard to shake with her, and this only reminded her of the Old Octavia, lost in her self and putting others below her to fill the void. I put my shades back onto my eyes and tried to recollect my beat as well. I knew I couldn’t let anything else terrible happen to her, even if she can’t even acknowledge my presence. My dear mare… the words still irritated me, but calmed my other dislikes of her new self. She wasn’t herself and I would have to accept that and make her relax. I wished I had my music. I would just play some trance for her and hopefully that would jog her memory and snap her out of the corruption. “Are you going to keep slowing me down, or are you ponies going to get your flanks into gear and join me?” Octavia spoke down to us. “Or I would put on some terrorcore and paralyze the hay out of you, and just drag you the entire way…” I gritted through my teeth. My anger quickly waned as I remembered that she wasn’t herself. Instead, my rage began to turn toward the one that was truly responsible for taking Tavi away from me. Given the chance to, I would kick his teeth. I started to trot slowly toward Tavi as the rest of the party trotted past me to close the gap between Octavia and us. I didn’t blame them. I understood the pony speaking more than they could imagine though I would think Lyra’s preconceived notion as to what Tavi was truly like would be the most accurate guess. I had seen her change more than any other pony in the group. Her reactions, her uptightness, almost none existent inside of the house though should on occasion complain about the music being too loud or ‘just noise’. I had understood her objections given her background is soft melodies and melancholy tones, but I hoped to inject a bit of bumping bass to loosen her classiness out of her. It worked quite well as she evolved into a mare that knew delicate music of sadness and fears and more robust themes of happiness and love. Love would be an understatement as to how my feelings began to change. I saw her as a sister, saying the sweetest insults to me. I never could rightfully explain why I felt so strongly toward this posh pony, but the more she opened up, the more my music flourished. It wasn’t just me getting better, I had always been the best DJ there was around, but she gave me something that my music lacked. It gave me a larger purpose than just making music. I knew beats and patterns, the right moment to drop the bass, and the correct amount of time to generate the best tension after a big build up. She gave my music a tone as I gave her music a beat with the most radical time changes ever. At night I would simply lay on my back in bed, headphones around my neck and listen inside of her room at the sad melodies in her room grow happier. My night spying eventually caved in to me entering her room to simply listen to her play. The smile on her face when she saw me entered made me smile instinctually as my heart warmed and melted. I don’t think anyone could see the beauty behind the class that she always tried to maintain in her lifestyle. My love for her was hidden as a joke. I enjoyed seeing her take the joke and roll with it, even in public. It was fun to see people’s reactions to it, and their reaction when Tavi and me revealed the truth. I would say more like a half-truth. I meant every word that I’ve ever told her. I still tested the waters, but that pony was nigh impossible to read. I didn’t mind too much, sometimes caught myself staring too long at as she exited the tub. Sometimes when she would put her mud mask and cucumbers on I would quietly sit in the room and watch her, question how the mud felt, or for that matter why waste good cucumbers on sitting them on therapeutic mumbo jumbo. My curiosity remained. Instead of pursing it, I had walked up to my room, jumped unto my sofa, crossed my back legs, and slipped on my headphones, enjoying the pulsing heartbeat of drum and bass. Slowly, but surely, I began to see that tan pony walking into my room, listening to my music, watching me dance, complimenting my mad skills. I would think that she was jealous of them, but I lacked the care to flaunt it. I knew I was good, but with Tavi around, I only felt like half of the equation. I had caught myself on occasion, listening to her play her cello and I would try to mimic the sound with a bit more bump. It never felt right or didn’t hold the emotion that she Tavi could always manage. At one point, I listened through the wall and turned on my music quietly. She continued to play as I changed the beat patterns and bass until suddenly a harmony of the two hit me almost causing my glasses to slide off of my face. I wanted to hug her, kiss her, and do something romantic to her. The trance that she created was more awe-inspiring and catchy than I could imagine. I could only smile as I turned the volume up so that the noises through the walls matched. “Aww, yeah!” I yelled over my tunes. Tavi too had increased how loud she was playing to match what I was playing. I stared at the wall with dreamy eyes trying to imagine that classy mare with a smirk plastered on her face, filling in the gaps of my music. I had barely noticed my horn was glowing and moving various items around my room. I didn’t realize that I was subconsciously creating something for her until I saw a strip of fabric float past my eyes. Just as I was about to question the reason for my magic being on, I heard the crash of the rest of the stuff I had lifted. The sound caused me to jump and knock the needle from the record and ceasing the music from continuing. I fell backward into my unkempt wires and stumbled into them, getting tangled and caught in them until Octavia began to question why I had stopped bringing life to her emotional slides. I had hoped to escape before she saw me wrapped up in those wires and making a fool of myself. “Hey Tavi, I’m just hanging around.” It sounded much funnier in my head. I expected her to just do her usual smirk and let me hang in my own wires, but this time she came in to my aid. “Let me help you with that.” She said, smoothly. It had to be the tone of her voice. Just how she said it made my awesome crimson eyes swell with bass build that would scare any prim, proper pony out of her palace. I didn’t even try to escape from the wire clutches of my mega-amp system. That was when I had gotten my first big whiff of her mane. It was one of the sweetest smelling manes that I had ever smelled. I was almost shocked at the sheer volume and potency of it. It was something that I felt like I could never live without, yet something I wanted to desperately run away from. I knew Tavi’s plans didn’t match up with mine. If I chose to act on those instincts, sacrifices would have had to been made, and at that stage in time, I said, “To hay with that!” In the end, she helped me organize my wires and my basses to get more of a harmony instead of the shockwave that I was trying to go for when I had first set them up. She left with a smirk, and I returned it only to quickly turn back to the closed box and look inside to see what I had been creating. The patterns in it, and the symbolism told me more than I had been consciously aware of. It wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. I toiled over that project in my free time and every chance I had. Sometimes I made excuses like when she had gone to Gala. I never much cared for it either way, but to make sure she would not bother me and possibly make me feel guilty, I hid in my room as if I were mad at her. It worked wonderfully and I had an entire Gala event to work on it. The finished product felt beyond my skills, but it sat before me, a completed art project made with delicacy and love. Magically, I placed it within the box and locked it with a key. The symbolism in it would be enough to tell her… I grunted it off. Now that all this time has passed, I am placed in the position to remember those old and radical moments of our evolution, and to see the current pony I am looking at, my heart hurting for her at the same time that it wants to strangle her with that pink bow. I was never one for pompous and Tavi had turned into the pompous of pompous ponies. I wouldn’t even think such would be possible by removing her ability to play the cello. “You seem to have quite the fury of thoughts on your mind.” Came the familiar voice of Lyra. “Of course I do. Even though Tavi is now walking us there, we still need a plan.” I mumbled. Lyra stared at me quizzically and followed my eyes. I wasn’t even aware that she had noticed me staring at her, I’m glad that the glasses at least manage to hide my emotions though she would only see some sadness toward her while the fire demon within me demanded to get a shot at Discord. “A plan to get her back?” Lyra asked me after a long pause. I had to think about answering it, but I couldn’t go around the question. “Yes.” I preferred to say less than more on the subject. Lyra looked at the ground and thought for only a second before raising her head up to stare at me. “How long?” I stared at her, confused as to the question that she was asking me. It only took eye contact to get the connotation she was trying to imply. “Tavi and me? You don’t think…” I wasn’t going to bluff her. “I’ve seen how you’ve been staring at her since Discord injected his corruption into her head. Friends would be concerned, afraid, and angry with the one responsible. You on the other hand reminded me so much of Bonbon. The look in her face when she first found me in front of the Everfree, cut, bruised, and confused. It was the same expression. You let your heart speak.” She explained. “It’s just that we are roommates. You may have crossed signals or something.” I rejected. She smirked at my response; I knew she was aware that I was lying. She continued to walk beside me, staring at Ditsy standing closer to The Doctor. Both of them accepting the other pony’s presence and holding each other’s weight. “It feels great, you know? It feels wonderful to embrace the one you truly love. It could be in any condition, life, death, wind, rain, or a perfect day. It’s stronger than you can imagine.” She passed me a soft grin and continued by my side. My thoughts quickly clouded with the situation where I would be able to share such a moment with Tavi. I imagined trance gracing the background harmonizing with a live orchestra. It could be after one of her concerts or something. I hadn’t worked out the setting, or how it would have gotten to that point, but it was pleasant enough. Amid our differences, there was still plenty where we were similar. Sometimes is surprised me, but that harmony that was between us was almost unnatural. I could have stayed with the ruse of sharing only sisterly love with her, but I figured that I should stop lying to Tavi. Lying had already put her in this horrid forest. It was lying that had taken her away from me. I figured it would be truth to bring her back. I increased my pace to catch up with Tavi to say a few words.