“Isn't it curious that ponies of such difference can find interest in each other?” the princess of night said, smiling with excitement at her elder sibling. Celestia smiled back, knowing exactly what Luna meant by that. But she knew more than her, thus not very impressed with the fact. Instead she glanced playfully between her and the scroll, almost giggling.
“Well, you know what they say, Luna: until death do us part, we'll rot hoof in hoof”.
Luna stared with dumbfound confusion at her elder sister. “I was more going to say... it's getting faster... harder....scooting...”.
DEATHBEAT
Part 1: Meet the musician
“Ponies of mother-bucking Manehattan!!!” echoed out from the stage to the large crowd of cheering ponies, roaring out their mutual craze over seeing the very equines they had been looking forward to since even before they ordered their tickets. A horde of thousands stood upon their hindlegs and held their forelegs in the air while adding their voices to the loud screams aimed at the stallion standing on the scene before this raging audience dressed in leather, chains, bracers and socially unaccepted mane-styles aside from their provoking tattoos.
“I said: PONIES OF MOTHER-BUCKING MANE... HATTA~AN!!!” the stallion repeated with a bestial growl and struck the air with his fore hoof to warm up the crowd further. The roar grew wilder and more excited, just the way this pony wanted it.
“That's bucking better... now what the buck are you all doing here?!!” he screamed through the microphone in his hoof, encouraging his fans and admirers to return his loud voice with their united strength.
“Mane Death!!!” he heard weakly at first, causing him to arch his eyebrows in anger and shake his head.
“Hay, what the actual bucking Nightmare Moon was that? You guys paid for this just because you were looking a little halfhearted forward to it? WHAT THE BUCK ARE YOU HERE FOR?!!” he repeated while the band behind him gripped their instruments. The two unicorns focused on their plugged-in guitars as the first pegasus picked up his bass guitar so the second one could sit down behind his drums.
Finally, the dark gray earth pony vocalist ran a fore hoof through his long, pitch-black mane, combing it back while the audience used all their might to tear apart their voices and scream.
“MANE DEATH!!!” filled the air as some of the more untrained ponies in the crowd fainted from lack of oxygen.
In that moment, the stallion grinned at the exact same time the pegasus drummer hit his sticks in the recognizable rhythm. The vocalist tensed his throat and erupted the deepest growl known to ponykind. The dark and vibrating voice scrambled his vocal cords and exerted every piece of his lungs to extract the demonic and not to mention incoherent noise known as lyrics. The guitars and bass burst out the raging sounds to ravage the air with masses of mauling strains squeezing out the violent cords.
The dawn breaks into pieces, releasing the monsters
Finishing of any traces of the night, it's time for the hunt
Seeking for the fragile flesh we all live to kill for
On the beacon we send you the words of hunger
Follow the stench of fear and disruption in the air
Don't know why we do this, but we know for sure...
The growling stallion paused and threw his head back, waiting for the audience to scream the next sentence. That pose was their cue.
It's for the instincts!!!
The stallions smiled and put the mic back to his warm mouth to continue his demonic screaming and growling, the guitars following his change of voice while the drummer used the double pedal for the chorus.
The blood rains for an eternity upon us all
It's for the instincts
Feed the cannibal that drives you insane
It's for the instincts
Only way to silence it
It's for the instincts
All the death we go through...
- - - -
After three hours of constant growling and screaming accompanied by loud screeches from guitars and violent abusing on the drums, the door into a dressing room behind the scene flew up from a hard thud to it. The entire band of stallions went inside one after another, warm and sweaty after their performance on the even warmer scene.
“Dude, those spotlights are getting stronger for each day, I'm telling you!” the drummer said as he sat down in one of the large bean-bags, sinking comfortably down while throwing away his drumsticks. The other stallions mumbled their agreeing to it, all of them heading to a different part of the large room they had been given after the concert.
“Yeah, it was unusually hot up there...” the first dark green unicorn said as he opened the refrigerator to grab a beer for each one in the band.
“Not as hot as you, Cord Screech” the other light blue unicorn said which caused the others to laugh out heartily. “Shut the buck up, Stricken!” Cord exclaimed and threw a can straight into his face, knocking him down with a hard thud. The others laughed even harder.
“What the buck are you guys doing?” a new voice asked, causing everypony including the beaten one to look at the door into the room. The steel gray stallion the crowd had been screaming with and at came in and closed the door, sighing at what he just saw.
“Throw me one” he said and instantly received a cold can. “So what was this about?” he then asked.
The ponies fell into silence, not moving a muscle until Cord decided to speak.
“Stricken was up with his damn coltcuddler jokes again, saying I was hot”.
The steel gray pony cocked an eyebrow and opened his beer, gulping once before rubbing his chin with the hard can.
“Well... are we invited to the wedding?”.
The silence died as laughter exploded in the entire room again, causing the drummer to fall off his bean-bag and the other guitarists to choke. As the vocalist stallion chuckled too, he soon fell to the floor with a thud when another can of beer flew into his forehead.
“Ahahahaha!! I can't... I can't breathe!! Hahahaahaha!” the drummer known as Wide Beat laughed...
- - - -
In another location, the other side of Manehattan to be more precise, a very different kind of audience danced in the rhythm to the extremely loud music shaking the floor. Large sub-woofers stood right next to a mare everypony had been looking forward to meet. The ponies jumped, slid and shuffled their way around the floor as they put their hooves in the air for the one and only DJ controlling this wild beat and the lights showering the crowd like harmless lasers.
“EVERYPONY!!!” she yelled through the microphone connected to her headphones, clopping her fore hooves so the audience would catch the hint. Soon they all got up on their hindlegs and followed her, cheering all the while.
“What are your orders?!!”.
The sound from the audience was puny in comparison to the ear-cracking beats flowing from the loudspeakers. But she knew, and it was alright. That was just her way of showing it was going to get worse. The sound rapidly increased in pace until almost none of the contractions remained.
“D-D-D-DROP THE BASS!!!” the mare commanded and adjusted her mixer tablet, restarting the current wave with a twice as strong beat aside from the different styles of techno, dubbstep and hardstyle which she had combined into a pure flood of raging massacre, sending the audience into a total craze of shuffling. The female equine nodded her head to the rhythm, enjoying seeing the hundreds of ponies in this huge building being here just for her sake.
These killing waves of music was her reward to them all, her way of showing gratitude to them all. Her list was long, her variation of stage effects even longer, but her passion was endless. Nothing could stop this unicorn from executing her performance...
That was until the lights suddenly died together with the music, silencing everything in a second. The crowd stopped moving together with the DJ as she looked everywhere for what happened. Suddenly she understood.
“Manehattan guards! Everypony freeze!” the sergeant of the raiding guards yelled out from the darkness, cuing the raving ponies to scream in fear and run for the closest exit.
“Oh sh-*censor bleep*-t!” the DJ said and quickly disconnected her portable mixing table before rushing for the emergency exit right behind her, leaving the large warehouse which she had been borrowing without asking the owner...
- - - -
Back at the other part of Manehattan, the steel gray stallion sat outside his band's dressing room, philosophizing about the mysteries of life until somepony broke it, causing him to turn his head to that dark brown mare coming towards him from the long hallway. She was blonde with hundreds of curls impossible to count.
“Why hello there... why is the great rock star outside his room after another successful concert?” the mare known as Golden Brochure asked, showing her concern since she was this band's manager.
The stallion looked in the upper corner of his eyes, hinting for his manager to listen at the sounds coming from the very room he had left. Golden leaned towards the door to hear the following muffled sounds:
“Guys, for the frigging love of Celestia! Sto-”.
“Come on, Cord, take the face-hump like a stallion! Oh yeah, that's the spirit!!”.
“Hahaha! Face-hump, face-hump, Cord's getting a face-hump!”.
“Ahahahaha!! I can't... I just ca-.... I can't... hahaha... frigging... ahaahahahah! Breathe!”.
“Aaaaargh!!.
The manager moved away from the door. “Oh... I see”. The stallion nodded, hoping she was here for something he could put his mind on in difference from this, which she certainly had.
“However, aside from your band's overactive sexuality...” she said which cocked an eyebrow on the sitting stallion. “The location for your next concert has been decided”.
“Decided? Already? Hey, we're not on a tour right now, we're mixing our new album! Wasn't this just for charity?” the male complained and got up on his hooves to face the mare keeping her relaxed face.
“Yes, charity for starving timber wolfs in Everfree Forest, but you see... our contract had one little line written in italic...” she explained and kept the smiling going.
“Italic? What do you mean?”.
Suddenly it wasn't that easy holding the face anymore, so the mare started avoiding his look, grinning nervously. “Yeah, italic. Hee hee hee.... nothing too serious, however”.
The stallion raised his other eyebrow, demanding by simply grimacing for her to explain very clearly from now on.
“Buuuut... okay, let's say I've done ONE teeny-tiny little mistake in my carrier as your manager, and...”.
“I still haven't forgotten that time you sent us to the wrong interview gig!” the stallion exclaimed to show how wrong she was already in that sentence.
“Hehe... you mean that one at magic kindergar-?”
“Those unicorn kids are CRAZY!!”.
“Yeah, I've heard the rumo-”.
“Deep Bass is still having nightmares! Begging the kids to stop ask him how he plays bass with hooves!!”.
“Now then, let's not...”.
“They made Justin Beaver fans look like sleeping infants!! My bass player will never be the same again!!”.
“Yes, yes, but...”.
“THEIR HEARTS ARE DARKER THAN VOIDS!!!”
“ALRIGHT!” the mare finally exclaimed and held a hoof towards him so he would stop. “Okay, I'll tell you what was written in italic, relax....” she used as a reason which instantly silenced the pouting stallion. She touched a few of her blonde curls and sighed.
“All in all, the contract said you were to play this concert today, and a total of three others in another town in two weeks. However, there's a problem: there's only one place to play it, and somepony else has it booked too for some reason which I don't know how”.
The stallion sighed. “I can understand if there's only one stage, but what do you mean somepony else has it booked? Then why in the bucking name of Discord is it already booked if it's in our contract?”.
The mare shrugged. “Beats me. But no matter what, we have to travel to that town and make sure we get the scene first”.
“So... what? We're gonna fix this mess by stealing the other pony's show?” he asked reluctantly, already disliking the sound of this. Unfortunately for him, the manager nodded. “Yes, we simply have to buy her out, somehow. It's not a really big or famous town, so it shouldn't be so hard”.
“Where's it at?”.
“Ponyville. Not far from Canterlot”.
“And who is it we're competing against?”.
The blonde mane bit her lower lips, knowing this wasn't going to be easy to say.
- - - -
Meanwhile at the part of Manehattan where the mare had outrun the guards, the chilly night crept deep inside this specific mare's skin. But she ignored the cold and kept running back to her place. Or well, it wasn't really HER place, more kind of a friend to a friend's place at the back alleys of this town's less rich parts. After ten minutes of constant galloping through harbors, main streets and finally at the block she looked for, the fine mare could breathe regularly again. She saw the lights from one of the apartments in the block she was in and ran inside through the main door, up the smelly stairs to the third level and knocked on door number sixteen.
After a few seconds, the door opened and presented a stallion in an orange coat smiling at the mare as he stepped aside to let her in.
“Ey, there's the heroine of rave! How did the play go?” he asked as the pony he talked about went inside to drop off her gear in the small hallway.
“Not so good as I hoped. The f-*censor bleep*-ing guards somehow found out I was borrowing that sh-*censor bleep*-ty warehouse...” she said and aimed for the sofa in the living room.
Her host chuckled and closed the door, throwing a quick look at her tool of weapon behind the disk jokey seat. “My guess is they had a hard time NOT hearing your beats. They must have made everypony nearby think it was an earthquake” he then chuckled again while walking towards the pony who just sat down in his sofa.
“Yeah, whatever...” she said right before landing on the comfortable support. “By the way, where the f-*censor bleep*-k is everypony?” she asked and looked around in the neatly furnished apartment, noticing how empty it was aside from her and him.
“They aren't coming, Rain Water was having some house party a couple of blocks downtown, they wanted me to send their regards and say they're sorry they couldn't go to your party. By the way, what's up with those bleeps?”
“I dunno. It's been stalking me the entire b-*censor bleep*-y day.... wait, I can't even say b-*censor bleep*-y? What the sh-*censor bleep*-t?” she held up her fore hooves in confusion.
“Maybe if you stopped swearing so much and started using buck instead of...”.
“Hold on, let me try something! Motherf-*censor bleep* *censor bleep* *censor bleep* *censor bleep* *censor bleeeeeeeeeep*-uckers!”.
“Okay, okay, I get it! Just... seriously, start using buck instead and stick to that as your main swear word, okay? It's really annoying to hear those d-*censor bleep*-n... aw sh-*censor bleep*...”.
“Oh Celestia... it's a pandemic! This is raccoon city all over again, man!!” the mare exclaimed in panic. “Ugh, knock it off! Just start using buck!” the stallion repeated and went for the refrigerator in the other room.
“Whatever, I was just pulling your hindleg, Sunny” she stated and fell limp back into the sofa with her forelegs crossed behind her neck. Soon the male came back with two soda cans, threw one to the visitor and sat down in the sofa next to her. As they both opened their drinks, the stallion known as Sunny Days remembered something rather important to tell.
“Oh right, by the way. I fixed your next gig...” he said casually and sipped from the can. The mare widened her eyes and looked at the stallion, seeming shocked and excited.
“Really? The one in Ponyville? Oh my gosh, is it the one in Ponyville?!” she asked repeatedly to ensure if it was true. “Yup! In two weeks it's off in your home town” she received as answer from him.
The mare bit her lower lip and suddenly leaned closer towards her company. “Somepony is getting laid tonight, I heard” she said seductively with bedroom eyes at the suddenly very much appreciated male. That until he opened his mouth again.
“I'd wait with opening the box of condoms until you hear this too. There's a little problem with that play: somepony else has booked it too” he said casually like he didn't care even the slightest about what the mare just said, keeping his eyes straight forward.
“Wait, what?” she leaned back, a little more disappointed now. “Already booked? What do you mean?”.
Sunny sighed. “What I'm trying to say is that I booked it first, paid and everything. But apparently somepony with enough influence managed to get the only scene in Ponyville included in a contract or something at the exact same date, meaning whoever gets there first is the rightful temporary owner.... I suppose”.
A relaxed sigh left the mare's mouth as she turned back to her soda again and sipped it.
“Phew, why didn't you just say so? Then I'll just bang the responsible one. Who is it by the way?” she asked. And it was at that moment Sunny looked away and scratched his neck, knowing this wasn't going to be pretty... not pretty at all.
“I... forgot to mention there were TWO problems... not one. He he, sorry” he excused and smirked. His friend raised an eyebrow, not understanding where he was going with that. “What do you mean?” she thus asked.
“Have you ever heard of the band 'Mane Death'?”.
- - - -
The vocalist stallion leaned away from his manager in disgust, unable to understand why this was happening. Now he suddenly hated all of this even more. It had been enough with getting a double booked scene, but actually having to deal with THAT kind of ponies about whose scene it is? No, this just couldn't be happening.
“You gotta be kidding me, Golden” he said and shook his head in disapproval. But the mentioned mare shook her head too, for once not smiling at least. She knew how much trouble this meant too.
At that moment, two ponies in the city of Manehattan grabbed their head like they had a headache and tensed their eyelids, melting the fact that the ones they despised the most was involved in such a serious business like this. Both ponies slammed their hoof to the floor and yelled. However, the words they used were slightly different.
“Vinyl Scratch the rave DJ?!” the pony in west Manehattan said.
“Coal Silvermane the death metal vocalist?!” the pony in east Manehattan said.
Just at that moment, the door into the vocalist's room opened, letting out the bright yellow drummer of his band crawling on his knees.
“Call... ahahahaha... an... hahaha... a-ambulance... hahahaahahaha!! I can't... bucking... hahahahaha... breathe!!” he laughed with a choke and finally fainted.
To be continued...
Author's Note:
Why hello there, welcome to my new installment. For all of you who know me and my earlier works, allow me to say that this story is my first teen-friendly fiction published on the ponyfiction market. I wanted to label it for “everyone” but it would seem my perverted brain doesn't work that way. If I'm to write something that DOESN'T involve detailed sex, it has to at least contain a little adult joke every know and then. Thus the T-rating.
Anyhow, this is my first try at the genres of pure comedy and nothing dark, so some of you who follows me might be disappointed,but I had to try, mkay?
To cut it short: comment and tell me what you think of this, I'm more than happy to tell you anything you need to know (as long as I don't have to spoil, of course)
Brohoof on ya all!