//------------------------------// // 2: A Terribly Debauched Soiree // Story: Paper Girl // by leeroy_gIBZ //------------------------------// Eventually, however, the gas dial began to tilted with a menace towards the flashing red light in the shape of an E. And it was not an E for Elegant, which I am. It was an E for Empty, which my heart, alas, is. And I was right about in the middle of nowhere without a gas station in sight. Such is life, I suppose. I pulled over, beside the cliff-face. Below, beneath the tired old wood-plank and red-rust of the suspension bridge I had parked aside, there rushed a rapid white river. Out of the car I exited, with Twilight’s handbag now slung over my shoulder and I lit myself another cigarette. Terribly unladylike, I am aware, but a hip flask is even more so and, besides, waste not – want not. And it is horrifically trashy to drink alone. Smoking, less so. I stared out into the desert and I watched the sunset. To me it resembled one of those old lightbulbs, bright yellow-white and roughly spherical when view from the right angle; it was sinking rather slowly into the sands beyond and it was dying the skyline a bloody red shade as it went. As far as desert sunsets go, I suppose it was rather nice, save for the fact that it played scion to that dreadful chill deserts tend to have. Said chill, for the record, is why I have no plans whatsoever to spend the rest of my life in the Arab Gulf States; in addition to certain restrictive practices, the extreme temperatures render cities like Dubai and Manama entirely unsuitable for a lady such as myself. After all, I simply cannot spend all day inside and being blustered by air-conditioning, not when I have beaches to lounge upon. Drawing a drag from the Menthol, leant against the bonnet of a police Chevrolet, I cannot say that I felt particularly ladylike though. But nobody is perfect. Another chill went down my spine. And it was not from the ice forming in the skateboarder’s blood beside me; I had realized something, something that darling Twilight had informed me of about a month ago. Really, it is funny how one remembers things. If I had remembered that two hours back, I might not have stolen this car. Alas, I did not remember that the Canterlot Precinct recently released a tender for somebody smart, read: deeply unattractive, to design a tracking module for their fleet of pursuit vehicles. Twilight complained on end about how some other brainy fellow from our school had won it and how he had and I quote, “totally plagiarised those schematics from me! I mean, even the little logo is the same! What does he think TS is supposed to stand for when his name is Micro Chips; not TS Elliot, for sure, he’s probably never heard of an actually talented author in his life, that hack.” Personally, I had no doubt that Twilight or Micro Chips or whoever could design a perfectly effective tracking device with which to unintentionally ruin my day more than it already had been ruined. It occurred to me then, after another wisp of eucalyptus-flavoured smoke, that I probably ought to distance myself from this vehicle before well-armed and deeply-unsympathetic policemen showed up, Cadance got involved again, and I was either forced to attend a humiliating courtroom session or seduce about fifteen different greasy swine in exchange for my freedom. And the Uber was still some time away. In hindsight, I really should’ve brought a coat. At this rate, my pearl-white complexion is going to become a frostbitten sapphire-blue. And I cannot properly execute that colour, no matter how many times Rainbow Dash demands that I just wear her dresses instead. Now, I might not be a sadist, but I will mention that the only reason I ever bother making that mannish boor of a girl outfits is because doing so and then pretending to actually expect her to wear them makes her squirm in the most enjoyable ways. That and practicing with a frame as oddly-proportioned as hers is, gangly and muscle-bound yet still flatter than a calm ocean, is quite the entertaining challenge. Eventually, however, the car that appeared – no, the contraption, said device-on-wheels did not deserve to be considered a motorcar. And it was not the kind of vehicle one wishes to be deposited in front of one’s ex-girlfriend’s doorstep by. It was scarcely a vehicle at all, yet I could count the components about seven different and signifigantly more aesthetic cars comprising it. Then again, anything would be more aesthetic than a refuse-brown, vomit-green and bruise-yellow three-wheeled half-Citroen half-Pinto half-Mustang that trundled along on white tires and tinted windows, blaring a dreadful hybrid of post-punk industrial rock and Austrian folk music. Yes, I am aware that that was three halves but trust me, it was. The thing seemed to me to be the epitome of a regrettable automotive choice. For Chanel’s sake, there were the hot pink and pastel and neon yellow silhouettes of naked women on the mudflaps, its hubcaps were spiked, and one of its five exhausts belched forth a combination of tooth-grey smoke and gum-pink flame. I prayed to whatever gods happened listening that the contraption rejected from Tartarus itself passed me by. The Worst Possible Thing proceeded to occur. Said thing being that the vehicular personification of rolling probable cause halted itself with a rusty squawk right in front of where I stood. My cigarette escaped my grasp and tumbled down to the roadside sands. As did one of its bumpers. The head of a deeply ugly man proceeded to emerge and he leered at me the same way a goat leers at a freshly-ripened pile of garbage. And I do not like my name to be uttered in the same sentence as trash, let alone to be compared to it. “Miss Rarity Belle, your chariot awaits. Charming prince, or princess because it’s the current year and I don’t judge, notwithstanding,” he said. Begrudgingly, only because I had no intention of freezing to death on the side of the road, I nodded and put on my best – my most strained – of smiles. “Excellent,” I managed to say through gritted teeth. “Nice! I’ve come to the right place this time!” He nodded, unrolling the window until it actually seemed physically possible for him to squeeze his head through it. He extended a hand; its glove was a lurid yellow and, in hindsight, it may have actually just been a collection of banana skins sewn together with used dental floss. It certainly felt as such when I gingerly shook it for the minimally-expected amount of time.The door, which a fridge had been sacrificed to contribute, clunked open. I stepped in, laying Twilight’s scarf over my seat, which seemed to be made from Taffeta, of all things. Polka dot Taffeta. With suspicious brown stains on it. Oh my. “Now, I have many names,” the man said, pointing at his nametag, where there were indeed many names, “So call me whatever you please. In my time upon this plane, and upon a few others, let’s see…” and he began to count upon his fingers, “I’ve been Cegorach the Laughing god, Deadpool, Smoking Mirror, Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, Set the Red, Karl Marx, Mr Nancy, The IT; by the way that’s the one from the book not by Steven King that is, Marvel Studios’ Loki, Simkin, Mephistopheles, the Hacker Formerly Known as 4chan, John de Lancie, Brer Rabbit and oh! and Dorian Ignatius Schopenhauer de Klerk IV, yes, can’t forget that. But that last one’s a bit long, don’t you think? So, you can just call me Discord. That’s D-I-S-K-ord, anyhow. You don’t look like a girl accustomed to large mouthfuls of long things. Just yet, anyway. Give it a few years.” I blinked. He didn’t. He probably should, considering how red his eyes were. “Where, might I ask, does the ‘ord’ come from. I understand the first half is your initials but…” He grinned. None of his teeth looked to appear as if they belonged in his mouth and, come to think of it, none of them were shaped in such a way to appear to belong to the mouth of any human at all. Discord pointed with his other hand, a monstrously hairy specimen, to his nametag. There, below his name, in minutely small tangerine Comic Sans lettering, were the words “Ordinance Manager.” “Ah, a man in uniform,” I said, trying to make conversation while refusing to lay a single eye on whatever dreadful apparel he was garbed with, “on leave, I suppose.” “You could say that, Rarity. I prefer the term, ‘dishonourably discharged’, but, then again, so did the boys over at Area 51.” “Good grief! Why ever so?” Again, Discord smiled. With his gloved hand, he pointed behind himself and out the rolled-down window. In the distance, a faint and muffled boom erupted from behind a barbed-wire fence. A cloud of rust-brown dust proceeded to arise in its general vicinity of creation. Good grief indeed. I hadn’t noticed the door clunking shut. “Where to? The Moon?” he chuckled. “Good grief, no! 319 Tambelon Drive, Canterlot City, if you please. You ought to know that already too.” Discord chuckled, “Just trying to make a little chaos, my dear. Shall I step on it then?” “Yes, kindly do. I’d like to be there before midnight, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m, going to a party and don’t plan on being so fashionably late that it’s over by the time I arrive,” I said, adjusting the bag on my lap so that the taser within was very obviously visible. If he saw it, he made no notice of it. Instead, he stamped down his foot on a rubber chicken before throwing the thing out the window. Then he flicked back on the dreadful music and stamped his foot down on the accelerator and started down the road. “Excuse me, Discord?” I asked, about half a minute later. He ignored me. “Discord?” I repeated, somewhat louder. Again, his eyes remained pointed at the road – or at his cellphone, or at his shaving razor, or at the yellow-and-pink pony doll superglued to the dashboard, or at a girly magazine, or at a dog-eared copy of an outdated phonebook, or at the road behind him. “Discord!” I yelled. “Yeah? Is the music too loud?” “Yes!” I yelled, namely because a lady does not holler, “Also you are going the wrong way!” The motorized contraption screeched to a halt with the dreadful sound of a thousand bats simultaneously attempting to sing a carol – spend enough time with Fluttershy and you will, alas, learn the sounds of some very peculiar animals in some very peculiar situations. Once she taught a pig to sing and managed not to waste her time doing so. But that’s beside the point. Lurching and wheezing smoke out from the bonnet, Discord’s automobile swerved around, into oncoming traffic! for a couple of seconds, anyhow, before he drove into the right lane. “Sorry! Not sorry!” he hollered over the booming sound of the reggae-rap-rock, “Non-Euclidian geometry and all. Takes a while to get used to, you know!” Thanks to Twilight I actually knew what he was talking about. The implications did not excite me. Neither did the crunching sounds emanating from his car’s gearbox. “Excuse me, but you’re still in first gear!” “What? I’m playing King Lear? Lovely, I always wanted to star in a play. Though I’d prefer to be Puck again! He was fun. What terrible fun he was! Bottom has the head of an ass, you know! I only got that pun last week! Ha! Say, do you know that noise is?” Yes, it’s the sound of a malformed, odious, toffee-nosed git who’s forgotten that his poor vehicle is still in first gear. “It’s the sound of a magnificent car who’s brilliant and sexy owner unfortunately forgot to shift it out of first gear!” hollered Discord, one hand on his Playboy magazine, the other on his razor, one foot tapping up and down the wrench wrapped in a tea cosy that acted as a steering-wheel, the other sporadically jerking the vehicle forward with violent kicks to the accelerator. If I were the gambling sort – which I would be, given the opportunity to ever come by Macau or Las Pegasus or Monaco, anywhere with a Banana Republic and a good casino really – I would bet good money that he read’s his magazine for the articles – all the actual pictures, as lecherous as they are, are either cut out or taped over with images of manatees and neon-pink beavers – pardon my French, but I do not mean the sexy sort of beaver either. Again, the automobile lurched forth. Good grief, I’d almost prefer being interrogated by Cadance to this. At least she was pleasant to look at, if not pleasant to talk to. Eventually, however; finally and at long last and at a standing testament to why I really should persuade somebody to purchase mme my own car; the vehicle trundled to a halt. Half a mile from its intended destination – the Flare Manor being both visible, lights flashed and balloons dangled from the four-storey testament to the wonders, or lack thereof, of Anglo-Japanese architecture, and audible, for pop music thumped from within it, up the hill, an aggravatingly long walk away. The silhouettes of inebriated teenagers could be spotted stumbling about its gardens. “Well?” I asked. Discord shrugged. “Well.” I repeated. He began to pick his snout of a nose and, to my dismay, every-so-often he would deposit what I can only assume to be a particularly choice specimen of a bogey into his goatee. Disgusting. “Well! I never!” I insisted, “Aren’t you going to drive me the rest of the way, you incompetent, ill-dressed, classless misfit?” A primeval growl emerged from his lips. Suddenly, I felt as if I had made a mistake on par with beating one’s girlfriend over a spilled cup of coffee and a ruined skirt. I reached for my taser. “Not a good idea!” he snapped; my hand went still. “Do pardon me, but why ever is that?” “You’re trying something, aren’t you? Nobody goes to a party at that place unless it’s to get laid or to get high. And, as Guardian of the Fourth Wall, it is my duty, no my pleasure, to tell you that that’s a bad idea. No sexual content of underage humans, after all and all that and I can’t imagine the mods would shine about a line of crack either.” “Yes, I am well aware of that all but a lady does not kiss and tell and I’ll be eighteen in a week or so. Anyhow, it’s dark and I’m in heels, not to mention the fact that it's positively Antarctic outside. I am not hiking up a hill and through a garden and you know very well that you’re not getting paid until you complete your journey.” I crossed my arms and put on my best pout – a pout, let me remind you, that has driven men, and women, to deplete their bank balances trying to placate it. “Well, if you insist,” Discord groaned, “but that’s not the kind of chaos I like to cause. Meddling in relationships is mayhem and I don’t like mayhem. Too messy. And, Rarity, let me remind you that I pour chocolate milk on live ponies for a living!” I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I don’t get paid for it,” he waved his mismatched hands, “but it isn’t really work either. Not if you enjoy it.” Then he let loose a chuckle, which quickly deteriorated into a guttural smoker’s cough. My hand tapped its nails against the cleanest part of my seat. “Besides, if you’re trying to get piped or get a pipe, for crack that is, turning up in this machine isn’t exactly going to improve your chances, if you know what I mean.” He was, alas, right. Sighing, I collected my things and climbed out of the contraption. The cold walloped me like a baseball bat with nails hammered into it. Trying not to shiver, I wrapped the scarf around my neck, regretting disposing of my gloves, and started up the road towards the mansion’s gate which was, thankfully, left ajar. Needless to say, I was quite out of breath by the time I arrived at Sunny Flare’s front door. I also may have stepped in something that had the colour and consistency of industrial lubricant and the horrid scent of spiced rum and enchiladas. However, I do recall myself sharing a shoe size with the host and, better yet, I do recall said girl owning quite the closet of them. What little breath I still had within my lungs soundly left it when Sugarcoat opened the door. Music, bad music, and the sounds of jovial debauchery boomed from within the house. Certain people’s company I genuinely enjoy. Certain people’s companionship I legitimately desire. Certain people’s corporate spending accounts I wish I had access too. Sugarcoat, being the dreary daughter of a destitute dentist and a decrepit cabaret dancer, fulfils none of those boxes I so desperately were ticked right about now. Leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and a red plastic cup of fruit juice in her right hand – the left holding a somewhat deflated pink helium balloon – she frowned at me. “You’re a mess, Rarity. You look like you killed somebody. Do you want me to call the police or should I call the morgue instead because you look like you’re about to drop dead on my best friend’s doorstep from the exhaustion of having to actually walk half a mile instead of being carried via divan by a fleet of ignorant boytoys you’ll discard within the week?” Pardon my French, but – actually, no, this is about par for the course considering the way today has been progressing. “And it’s a pleasure to see you too, Sugarcoat,” I replied. “Really, you should work out more. You must have the muscular consistency of a marshmallow to be tired from walking half a mile. I could suggest you a training routine, but we both know that you’d skive it after one second of actual effort and sleep with somebody else’s personal trainer so that you could steal his watch.” “Darling, I’m wearing heels,” I said because I felt that that would, in fact, clear this whole scenario up – if Sugarcoat were anybody else which she was, alas, not. Sugarcoat adjusted her glasses – they, curiously enough, were a shade of burgundy, complementary if not somewhat gaudy – and she stared down at my feet. “One-inch heels,” she muttered. “Yes, Audrey Hepburn popularised them back in the seventies.” “Well, the seventies called. They want them back. You shouldn’t dress like that, you know. You look like a cheap whore in that dress.” “Well, your mother did pick it out for me, Darling.” “…Touché.” I sighed one of my sighs. “Yes, touché. Congratulations on speaking rudimentary French. Perhaps there’s hope for you and romance yet? Anyhow, Sugarcoat, I’ve had an extremely long and extremely unpleasant day and I fear that I’ve forgotten my telephone in that dreadful man’s car. Are you going to let me in or not? Even if it’s just to call my mother to collect me.” “I don’t know,” she shrugged, “am I?” “Yes, you are,” I said, my patience rapidly depleting and my mind ablaze with considerations of how best to taser this dreadfully drab and sour-faced monument to unwanted verbosity. Really, if this were a story, some or other editor honestly ought trim that down a bit. “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are and this is not a pantomime game of ‘yes I will – no you won’t’ and you know Sunny will be utterly furious with you if you deny me entry into a home which, let me kindly remind you, is far, far, nicer than the one you actually inhabit on a daily basis!” Sugarcoat narrowed her eyes. “We can’t all have a mother who’s CEO over Ray-Ban, Rarity.” “I am perfectly knowledgeable of the fact that there is only one Lens Flare, Sugarcoat. I myself wear her designs.” “So, you’re not just a pretty face. Wait, I take that back, you’re not actually pretty at all. Your makeup is running and you’ve got blood on your skirt for some reason and your hair looks like you combed it in a hurricane.” “Ah, so you say. Well, I do suppose then that I look almost as undateable as you do, Darling. Now stand aside because you yourself invited me here.” “Or what?” I reached for my taser. Nobody would know. Well, she’d know – but Rarity Belle, Gentlewoman Couturier, would never do such a thing. Besides, her ensuing soiled underclothes and sledgehammer of a headache could simply be regarded as a hangover by anyone who pretended to be concerned about her. “Or so help me,” I threatened. “Eh, good enough for me. I was getting bored of bickering with you anyway. You’re good, sure, but you’re not that good. I can kvetch at the bus station anyway, I don’t need to waste my time here,” Sugarcoat said and, to my disappointment, she turned away. “Thank you kindly, Darling,” I said, starting past her, before muttering under my breath, “Of course a prole like you uses public transport.” “What was that!” Sugarcoat yelled after me. I mimed being unable to hear her over the thumping bass that was currently dislodging ceiling plaster and rattling crockery like a miniature sonic earthquake. Honestly, I really must have a word, a particularly loud and particularly firm one, with whoever chose that dreadful noise. One simply cannot have sex to dubstep. Entering the hall, I saw that it had become victim to the typical Crystal Prep mayhem; chairs, broken, were strewn about the passageway and the carpet had a collection of stains on it that I would’ve sworn were blood if not for the fact that, when my eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the battered chandelier, I found that they were a muddy green colour. The trail of footsteps across the parquet birchwood floors directed me to the culprit – a sodden and seaweed-encrusted boy who lay naked save for his pastel shorts against a wall and snored and drooled against the paisley wallpaper. His companion had busied himself with the task of tugging a particularly fetching portrait, likely of some Flare relative, from the wall. He turned to me as I passed him and he winked lecherously before producing a switchblade. I produced my lucky scissors and glared at him. His grin turned from horny to sheepish and his shoulders fell about a foot. “Hey, pretty lady, didn’t know Sunny knew such pretty ladies,” he managed to slur, one arm holding him vaguely upright by its balance against the picture frame. “Thank you,” I said, avoiding eye contact. “Saaay… pretty lady, could I scissor from you?” “Even if you possessed the appropriate equipment required to do so, I would still respectfully decline.” “What?” he mumbled, tapping some pond water out of an eye. Behind him, his friend gurgled. “I said no!” I yelled, turning and starting away. “Shit,” he swore, “Now I gotta carve a hole in this painting with a blunt boxcutter. Man fuck me.” Wouldn’t do that if you were the last illegible human on this earth, you alcoholic pervert. As I exited the room, I heard the sound of a belt unbuckling. I exited somewhat faster after that, and I found myself in a dining room. Now, Lens Flare, Sunny Flare’s mother, might be many things – relevantly, she is an astonishingly talented designer. However, for the life of her and that of her daughter, she cannot design a navigable abode. I know she did, by “did” I mean failed to do so in spectacular fashion, as I was present at the housewarming soiree; I was Sunny Flare’s plus one. Really, why did I break her heart? The dining room was much in the same state as the hall, save for the fact that it was habited; by partygoers, that is; the room was stripped bare of any furniture save for a solitary pool table, behind which sat a yellow girl furiously shaking drinks. As it seemed to be the only safe haven in the area; the rest of the room was filled with a pillow-fight which a warpainted Indigo Zap appeared to be winning, likely due to the fact that her pillowcase appeared to be filled with soccer boots and beer bottles; I headed straight for it – the bar, that is, not the hooligan. Sour Sweet smiled at me as I approached – it wouldn’t last. “OMG,” she gasped, “is that Rarity Belle? Sugarcoat told me you were coming!” “Indeed. A pleasure to see you-” “You’re three hours late! Where were you, you clown-faced narcissist?” As a matter of fact, I am not overly fond of Sour either. However, I was dreadfully parched and not just from my walk; I had, after all, spent an hour or two in the local desert disposing of a stolen car and a former pickup artist. I donned my best “give me what I want and I leave you in peace” smile. “Good to see you too, Sour. Now, may I please have two martinis?” She glared at me, setting her current cocktail down beside a stack of donated, or possibly stolen, liquor bottles. Most were nearing empty and a couple were cracked in such a way that they were emptying themselves sans any teenage help. “A martini?” she beamed, “Lemme see, okay?” The makeshift bar was scanned. A bottle of Smirnoff was extricated from it and given a sniff. Judging that it was sufficiently alcoholic as it was still capable of searing off her nosehairs – Celestia knows the poor girl needs it, a wax that is, not another drink – she slammed it into a hole in the table that the table likely hadn’t come with and began to rummage about for a bottle of vermouth. Spotting it first, I handed it to her. Sour inspected it. “This won’t do!” she screeched, “This is Rosso, you idiot!” then she smiled again and her voice shifted to the tone one uses to explain something for the fifteenth time to a mentally-incapable toddler, “and everyone knows you can’t make a martini with red vermouth.” My knuckles went white – whiter than they already were – about the edge of the pool table. “Sour, that’s call a dirty martini. If you were a genuine mixologist and not a hopelessly inebriated teenage psychopath playing bartender because nobody in their right mind would sleep with or otherwise bother to entertain you, you’d know that. Now please, make me two of the beverages with all haste and, if you would be a dear, do tell me where Sunny Flare currently is.” Sour growled. I raised an eyebrow. “You and Sugarcoat would make awesome friends, you know? You’ve got so much in common,” she spat. “I cannot imag-” “Like you two think you know everything and just can’t wait to tell the rest of us poor, unfashionable, unintelligent idiots what to do!” she said, starting on my drinks. Halfway through the admittedly-brief process, she pointed out the window with the drinks shaker out to the porch, accessible I recall from a good few rooms away, “Sunny’s chilling by the pool, by the way. Probably trying to kill herself again.” “Ah, thank you.” You have to hand it to Sour Sweet; for a “poor, unfashionable, unintelligent idiot”, she does get the job done. “Yeah. You’ll have to go all the way around the house, Rarity.” Curse this wretched abode. Then Indigo clonked her next victim and the unfortunate boy screamed soprano – likely due to the location of where his attacker’s pillow had connected with his person – and he clutched his unmentionables and crumpled to the floor like a half-spent cigarette. Which reminds me. I haven’t had a smoke in hours. Nobody would know. Everyone is, quite simply, too drunk to remember anything, let alone the totally-forgivable act of a lady enjoying a cigarillo. I’m sure Lens Flare likely has a case of those somewhere; she seems the sort to enjoy a good Cuban after a busy day sketching up sunglasses. Sour Sweet proceeded to scream too. Fearing Indigo had singled me out next for a beating – and I bruise like a banana – I ducked beneath the table and immediately regretted my decision when my knees squelched into the carpet. Knees are not intended to squelch at all and, as a matter of fact, neither are Persian rugs. However, Indigo was busy being indecent and being a disgrace to her sex by trying to show off her new tattoos. If it's like the rest of the smattering of tasteless ink decals better suited to the covers of grindcore albums and the bottoms of skateboards, not looking is the right choice. One, for instance, is of her own name, and it's spelled wrong too. Sour gasped. More importantly, she drew her hands to her face and dropped the shaker. I dove to catch it and, only after I had caught the pair of metal glasses and felt martini running down my arm, did I recall that the carpet was filthy. Luckily Fleur is about my size. If she’s as intimate with Sunny as I was, she should likely have a spare piece of wearable apparel around this mansion. Of course, this dreadful house being what it is – namely horribly designed and currently less intact that a rubbish tip after a firebomb – finding one of her dresses and stealing it could take weeks. Seriously, who puts a sink in their dining room, a utilitarian bathroom sink at that! and who then proceeds to try and drown some poor castrated soul in it? Lens Flare and Indigo Zap respectively, in case you – still me – were wondering. “Is that Countess Coloratura?” Sour gasped. “No, Darling, that’s Coco Pommel dancing around in stilettos. You met her at the Friendship Games, remember?” Emerging from the table and grabbing a nearby and relatively clean washcloth, I wiped the worst of the spilled drinks and the remaining blood off of my outfit. Then I started off into the next room before Indigo had the idea to show me her latest tattoo and make me complement it under threat of a clonk to the skull. Did I mention that I am horribly partial to keeping my skull intact? It is, after all, where my hair grows out of. The next room, to my relief, was a conservatory. Unsurprisingly, the plate glass windows had long since been shattered. People slowly streamed into the building and most came to cluster around an in-progress game of what was either pool, snooker, or some interesting variation on the genteel game known as cricket. Judging by the dismal state, and amount, of the contestants apparel, it was strip snooker.  Really, how tasteless. Playing snooker without the proper uniform is tantamount to treason in some circles. I continued by them, shaker of martini safely kept in my handbag and my hands safely plugged over my ears. This was the room with the sound system inside of it and that hideous contraption emanated noise the same way a dead dog attracts stench. Halfway there, somebody tried to trip me. I hopped the way out of the offending limb just in time and managed to avoid spilling my drink - and all over my phone at that - but landed poorly. A bolt of pain shot through my ankle. Unsurprising, considering I’d tried to jump in heels. Something stopped me from calling out the bothersome hooligan. Namely as her other three limbs seemed to all be wrapped about the neck of a man she was currently kissing. Passionately. Any embrace so complicated it could be mistaken for a spiderweb can only result in and result from an overabundance of the stuff. Might as well spend a night like this getting rid of it. I may have to try that move actually, sometime. But I don’t recognize her tonight and have no intentions of making a new friend for that sole purpose. However, Lyra is double-jointed, right? And I do recall her chattering some months back about how her mother had been promoted to the head of Everton University’s Anthropology department; a position that, if Twilight’s father’s finances are anything to go by, pays quite, quite well. There is, however, the matter of her girlfriend: Bon-Bon. Surly prat, if you’ll pardon my French. She and Sugarcoat would be a match made in heaven, come to think of it. Ah! And there she is! Bon-Bon, I mean. Tearing my eyes away from the brewing fornication, I started over to her. She was currently fuming at her phone, occasionally tapping out a string of curses, before deleting it away with a series of mutters, in between sips of wine. “No, no, no,” she mumbled, “that won’t do at all. Oh, hey Rarity.” I nodded, and curtseyed. Best for her to let her guard down – best to do this before I forget. Flashes of inspiration, after all, make art truly great. And romance, mine specifically, is the greatest art of all! “Pleasure to see you, Darling. How are you finding the party? Sunny does throw them awfully well, don’t you think?” She frowned, rolling her eyes. “Gah. Terrible. Our DJs are fucking useless and also fucking right over there.” With that, she pointed over to a Frankenstein stack of turntables, speakers, jukeboxes, subwoofers, IPods, laptops, guitar amplifiers, internet fibre cables, and CDs. On top, like a crown sat upon the electronic head of some malformed cybernetic garbage-monster, sat a gramophone, its record scratching futilely against the combination boom of pop country and dubstep. “Ah. I see,” I said, Say, mind if I ask, but whoever are you texting over there, Bon? You look ever so worried.” “Two people. One’s Sunny and she’s being a bitch and hiding somewhere because she’s too cheap to pay me after I recorded samples for her vocaloid project and the other’s Lyra who’s Still. Not. Here.” I frowned. “Oh, oh dear. She mustn’t have told you yet. You poor thing. How could she be so underhanded?” Bon-Bon blinked. “Sorry, what?” “It’s just, I thought you knew. Really, that is heartless of her. Honestly. A lady should make such things public, at least to her lover anyhow. Well, her former lover.” Another “what?” “Now do forgive me for gossiping, I know it’s rather tacky but this really is important. Fluttershy told me, while we were at the spa, that Lyra told her, while they were at the animal shelter taking care of that poor three-legged pony, that she was planning to break up with you. I’m so sorry you had to find out this way, I really am.” “What? Fluttershy, you say? She told you this?” “Yes,” I nodded, aware that Fluttershy would admit to anything under the mere threat of duress. “What a bitch! That was supposed to be a secret!” Bon-Bon screamed, dropping her red cup of wine. She had been drinking more than just that vessel, let me tell you. Judging by the sorry state of Sour Sweet’s “bar”, everyone had been. Save for Sugarcoat, of course, but somebody had to be a designated driver. Normally, her breath, Bon-Bon’s that is as well as the rest of her actually, smelled like roses. Now it stank of rose – rose wine. How tasteless. “I know, right? I said, rolling my eyes. “Gah, that prick! She has the gall to break up with me, a week before our five-year anniversary? And then, no, she doesn’t try and keep it quiet or anything at all, no way. She just has to inform the entire student body that we’re no longer an item because she realized that her grades aren’t currently high enough to get into veterinary school. Selfish dick.” I blinked. “What?” I asked. Either I’m a more convincing liar than I thought or I’ve stuck my pretty little head where it most certainly does not belong.  “And I bought her that harp she’d always wanted too! It cost me seven months wages! Now what am I going to do with it? Not give it to her, that’s for certain. If she wanted it that badly, she could've just asked for a break or for us to slow down or something else!” Bon-Bon stopped ranting then and starting panting. “Oh. Oh dearie me. That’s quite the… unfortunate occurrence.” “Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for telling me what I already knew, Rarity. You’re a great help. As always,” she muttered, before stamping off. Drat. I was just about to head outside and sort out whatever miserable condition Sunny had found herself in when I spotted somebody in the crowd: Octavia. Now, we used to date. It was brief. We were just children, honestly. All middle schoolers are. That relationship, alas, came to an end when I came to school with my hand in a cast one day and was unable to conjure up a proper explanation of how I’d gotten it that way without using the words “shoplifting” or “evading arrest.” In hindsight, I probably could’ve simply passed it off as a mere misunderstanding and walked away scot free with a ban from the local stationary store being my only long-lasting punishment, and a proverbial slap on the wrist at that. Not that I particularly wanted another slap on the wrist back then, not when the last one was delivered via baton after I’d jabbed a pair of scissors into the thigh of the officer who’d just so happened to have been in the store come the time the cashier spotted me secreting away a Mont Blanc pen under my cardigan. Anyhow, I’m rambling. To shorten the long story, I wrangled out of the officer’s grasp shortly afterward and told my oblivious, at the time, parents that I’d simply acquired the wound when Sweetie Belle accidentally slammed my hand in a door. Octavia, however, has never been gullible and she pressed me for the truth. However, she has always been quite fetching and tonight she was wearing a beautiful white Bandeau dress whose sequins sparkled in the conservatory lamplight. Just as I was about to approach her, the grudge healed but our affair never could, Bon-Bon caught her attention and began pestering her about something irrelevant. I could barely hear her over the thumping music. You can’t return a harp… can you?” Bon-Bon asked the grey girl, “I mean, I’ve had it for a few months at least. I bought it after Dad scored in the lottery. No, nothing big. Just enough for, like, early Christmas presents. What? Yeah! It’s been used. I took it out its wrapper and strummed it a bit. What? No? Only second hand? Shit.” Actually... “You know,” I said, starting back over to Bon-Bon, “I’d be happy to take that harp of your hands for you. Full market value.” “Seriously?” Bon-Bon balked. “Well, I don’t see why not. Besides, I feel like I just have to make it up to you after my little faux pas earlier. Also, what you should do now,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder, “is go home. You’re drunk and in no place to make proper decisions. Apart from that. Once you’re feeling okay again, maybe you should go talk to Fluttershy, just to make sure I heard her right. But don’t tell her I sent you. Being known as a gossip is terrible for a lady’s reputation. Maybe all of this is a big misunderstanding, you know how she likes to talk.” She doesn’t, but Bon-Bon, as far as I know, has never actually spoken to her. Different worlds and whatnot. Bon-Bon thought about this – I could tell because her tongue stuck out and her nose crinkled and wisps of steam began to emerge from her ears. Then, to my relief, she nodded. “Yeah, that actually sounds pretty good. A warm bath and a good sleep, yeah. Then I’ll go talk to uhh… who again?” “Fluttershy, Darling. Tall, yellow, is not Sour Sweet.” “Her?” “Her.” “Her!” For a second, I could swear a lightbulb dinged about Bon-Bon’s head; it’s always useful when they think my ideas are their ideas. It saves me getting the blame for when what I want to happen actually happens and blows up, proverbially usually, in their face. But Bon-Bon had a frumpy face. Pardon my French, but it’s true and, to her extreme misfortune, she wasn’t overly intelligent or wealthy. She could, however, bake a mean petit-four, which is something I should probably inform Pinkie of at some point. “Thanks for the advice, Rarity. I’ll go talk to Shutterfly then. Thanks, yeah. Oh, by the way, you can keep the harp.” I haven’t the faintest what I’ll do with it but, “Thank you ever so much, Bon-Bon, it was a treat seeing you again. Terribly ashamed to have to be the bearer of bad news like that.” She nodded, slipped her phone back into her pocket, and headed off back into the dining room. A few seconds later, I managed to pick out the characteristic squawk produced when a sack of cleats collides with somebody’s more… tender regions. Now what am I going to do with a harp? Oh! Perhaps Sweetie Belle would like a harp? Her birthday is coming up and she did mention, over breakfast and in between Marvel quotes, that she always wanted to try an instrument. Yes, I’ll give Lyra’s anniversary harp to my sister. She’ll love it, hopefully. Anyhow, now to sort out this music. I started over to the mess of music playing appliances. A guitar breakdown nearly knocked the fillings out of my teeth, my necklace off my body, and me off my feet. Senseless device. Kneeling down, I picked up the discarded, half-full, vessel of wine and I threw that at the largest clump of wires. Good riddance. The predictable occurred. The rose connected with the appliances and gave all who were watching – namely myself, as everyone else was still transfixed by the sight of Neon Lights in a particularly tight pair of boxers try to pot an 8-ball with one hand tied behind his back. Beside him, Vinyl Scratch and Lemon Zest looked in a combination of numb adoration and total intoxication. Lemon slipped off oh his shoulder and caused him to miss the shot. Just as the lights blinked out. Her face clunked against the rim of the pool table. Ouch. Just as the confused screams and worried moans and soccer-boot crunching began, I made myself scarce. Through the doorway, of course; ladies never climb through windows. Don’t worry – I know you won’t anyhow but the generator did lurch on a few seconds later. The music contraption, however, was destroyed. And nothing of value was lost.