"Good mooorniiiiiing Best Friends~!!" a cutesy voice called out, sending the crowd into roars and squeals. Squeezed in between Sunny and Hitch, Izzy stopped pouting around at the complete lack of hock room, looked up, and immediately scowled.
Upon the stage was the eggplant mare Izzy had seen on the sign, with her obnoxiously square-cut hair and her massive eyes and her weird clothes, waving wildly, like she was trying to squash a scary spider with a newspaper. Her body slightly flickered as though she were some kind of illusion, but only her bare fur - her clothes appeared normal, except where they met her body. Izzy felt a bit dizzy looking too closely at this and decided to ignore it.
The unicorn stopped waving and put a hoof to her mouth, giving big dumb brainless doe eyes to the crowd. "Hmmm, are there new friends joining us today? It wouldn't be proper to continue without introducing myself... Haaaaaa..." She looked at the ceiling and thought about it for a few seconds before abruptly jumping up as though startled. "Oh!! My name is Merciful☆Harmonoid!" She put the emphasis on the Merciful and did not pronounce the star. "Hello everyone! Buenos dias! Ohayou gozaimaaasuuuuuu~! Dàjiā hǎo! Annyeong haseyoooo~! Jolan tru!!" She hopped up and down before furrowing her brows and mumbling loudly. "Mmmmm... Did you know that every year... one hundred ponies choke to death... on ballpoint pens..." She closed her eyes with a pout, as though this thought had been bothering her for some time.
Izzy winced as every single pony in the auditorium except her began laughing. Even Sunny and Hitch seemed to find this hilarious. "B-ballpoint pens?" Hitch repeated, choking on his laugh.
Izzy's mouth fell open in scandal and her heart stung. 100 poor ponies dying horribly in a totally preventable way? For all they knew, those ponies were foals or the mentally infirm. That wasn't funny at all. It was tasteless and uncaring. Surely the Hero of Mercy never treated suffering like a joke? She was said to have had trouble reading a room, but she couldn't have been that utterly... stupid?
"Ooooaaa-ha-ha!" came a sharp, ladylike laugh. "Merciful☆, darling, you are always saying strange things no one cares about..." Merciful☆ was joined from behind the curtain by a white unicorn with a very stiff stride and curly purple hair, whom Izzy had already decided she hated. Izzy cared. Izzy cared about everyone. That was the right thing to do. The real Hero of Charity - at least Izzy thought that was who this was supposed to be - would've agreed, even if she was known to be a bit self-centered at times.
"I care," someone said from behind the curtain in a very gentle voice. For some reason, this led to the crowd cheering. "I'm sorry for interjecting."
The new mare flickered just like her dumb friend over there, but her outfit was far more ornate. The chief piece was a purple dress gown, shoulderless, with a deep neckline and puffy sleeves hanging off her forelegs, much like the drawings of unicorns Izzy had seen in Sunny's old fairytale books. However, she had choked the thing in tons of unnecessary accessories from sashes to belts to clips. She also had giant earrings, which always made Izzy cringe to see.
"Merciful☆, this is a cruel thing, but... you are a dork," the madam condemned.
"... No I'm not!" Merciful☆ denied after a moment, producing another wave of inexplicable laughter. "That is absolutely not true, Generous☆!"
"It is true. You mathematically measure your hair," Generous☆ attested. "That is indubitably dorky."
"... 'Indubitably'?!" Merciful☆ repeated in outrage.
"Absolutely, cheer!" an annoying, chipper voice sounded from the curtain, leading to a few cheers and cries of "bring 'em out" from a few corners of the room and forcing her to wait for the din to die down. "Positively, cheer! Definitely, cheer." She paused again while Izzy cringed at the bizarre, drooly sounds Merciful☆ made, which no pony she'd ever met would ever make in any realistic scenario. The dumb dork swayed on the spot like a lovesick zombie. "Wow, cheer," the peppy voice exclaimed, "Merciful☆ really likes words with many letters, cheer." Izzy had figured that out from the disgusting sounds she had made, yes. Also, why was she saying "cheer" after every sentence.
"Uuwwwaaaaahh, stop it, both of you!" Generous☆ commanded. "You're acting weird. We need to start the show. Come out here, Cheerful☆! You come out too, Kind☆!" There was an immediate applause.
"Oooii oi oi!" Cheerful☆ objected. "I'll come out when everyone else is there, cheer! It can hardly be a party without everyone there, cheer."
"I... I... I'm still working on my crippling stage fright," Kind☆ excused herself.
"You girls are always so particular. Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh," Generous☆ called out with a gargantuan fake sigh. "Very well. Let us start with just the two of us, Merciful☆. We will lure the others out by starting without them."
"This is a mean thing, but they are very lazy," Merciful☆ critiqued, and the crowd began laughing again.
"They would rather sit around and eat Hayburgers," Generous☆ scoffed with a wave of a hoof.
"Zero pesticides! Good for the environment!" Merciful☆ chirped as Generous☆ stiffly rolled her eyes.
Huge crop fields are actually pretty bad for the environment, Izzy thought to herself, pouting.
"Our first song today," Generous☆ sighed again and shook her head, prompting a few giggles, "Will be Linking Lonely Hearts." She paused and waited for the cheering to die down. "That was the..." She paused for much too long. "Erm... was it the sixth song on our album..?" she mumbled in a far more natural tone than before.
"Roll with it, just pick a number!" Cheerful☆ whispered, also much more naturally than before. "... cheer!" she quickly added on just in case.
"For real?! The fans will know I got it wrong!!" Generous☆ whispered back.
"Weeeeeell," Merciful☆ considered at full volume, doing her hoof-to-face-doe-eye thing again, "We've released two versions of the album as well as a single.... It's sixth on the original album, buuuuuuuut..."
"Yes, sixth, good!" Generous☆ cut her off hastily. "We're very proud that you've all helped spread its message. After all, everyone deserves love, don't they? Be sure to sing clearly, Merciful☆! We must give our Best Friends only our best!" Something about the way she enunciated it struck Izzy as strange.
"Even if you say that..." Merciful☆ retorted, whatever that meant.
Merciful☆ and Generous☆ sashayed into position, raising their heads. As a beat started, they began performing what might resemble a dance to someone who'd never been in one. Izzy winced, a hoof to her mouth, and nudged Sunny, who was swinging her rump to the beat considerably more naturally than the performers on the stage were.
Sunny didn't respond right away, then looked up in alarm when she realized someone was touching her butt. "Huh?! What?" Sunny glanced at her, then blinked with furrowed brows. "You okay? Never been to a big gathering before?"
The Harmoninnies got to the singing parts.
Why can't you hear my heart?
Why can't I hear your heart?
Izzy fidgeted before deciding to voice her displeasure; she didn't like to complain. "These ladies are creepy," Izzy fretted. "They flicker like ghosts and they don't have any sparkle and they make weird jokes and they don't talk like normal ponies. Or move like them. Or look like them."
"Well, they're characters," Sunny excused, raising an eyebrow. "They're not gonna act like real ponies. They're idealized."
Trying to find you, I ended up in a scary place.
Did I click on the wrong link?
"I don't find them very ideal," Izzy squirmed, trying to avoid getting elbowed by the dancing pony behind her. "They already pitched a product."
"Aw, come on," Hitch cut in with a frown. "They're all the rage, of course someone's payin' 'em for ads."
I just want you to be happy
Do you want to be sad?
Or am I doing it wrong?
Why are you mad? Why am I mad?
Izzy was torn. She didn't want to be a downer for her friends, but she was not even remotely into these awful Harmobots or whatever they were called again. She gave it one last shot, looking up hopefully. "Um, so what do you guys like the most about 'em?"
"The music's pretty good," Sunny answered, confirming this with her ever-moving backside.
Izzy wasn't sure. She was surprised at how clearly the words carried over the noise of the crowd, though either nobody else heard or nobody else cared about Generous☆'s slip-up. Still, Merciful☆ seemed to sing an octave higher than she spoke and was, despite her name, quite baleful on the ears. More like Mouse-iful, she grimaced, but she was in such a bad mood she couldn't really find joy in it. She did not look forward to hearing what Cheerful☆'s singing sounded like.
There are no sadder things than lonely hearts
There are no harder things than linking lonely hearts
Generous☆ had a deeper voice than Merciful☆, except for her high, squeaky glissandi. So far as Izzy knew, those weird chirpy squealy notes were a longstanding trend to "show off good singing", but she found them unnatural, overused, and annoying. Pipp was way too fond of glissandi too, come to think of it; she was probably a big fan.
"They're pretty snappy dressers," Hitch added on. "And I like how Generous☆ and especially Honest☆ are focused on duty."
"Their clothes are pretty good," Izzy admitted. Unlike the mares themselves, the clothes looked like real clothes, and were probably made the same way as tailoring for a pony. They were also indubitably - ugh - stylish, even if there wasn't a coherent theme between Generous☆'s overdone ball gown and Merciful☆'s... sailor suit..?
Still, Izzy wasn't having it. Something was bugging her she hadn't quite put her hoof on yet. Something about the way they kept saying "Best Friends". She found herself really just wanting to leave as soon as possible, but she was stuck for possibly hours. She deeply regretted agreeing to come here with Sunny and Hitch, and she deeply regretted that regret because it meant she didn't want to be with her friends, and didn't appreciate their invitation, and Izzy couldn't stand that ungrateful feeling.
She clenched her jaw. Stupid Harmodroids making me into an ungrateful jerk, she redirected internally.
"Hey, uh," Izzy leaned back in to ask Hitch, "Are these things local?"
"Local?" Hitch furrowed his brows in thought. "Oh, you mean who makes 'em? No way, they've gotta be from Zephyr Heights."
"What makes ya say that?" Izzy tilted her head.
"This kinda tech can only be from the pegasians," Hitch assured her. "They're probably robots under there, which Maretime could do, but the holograms on top? The big screens they put the ads on? They've gotta be HQ'd in Zephyr Heights."
"Ooooh," Izzy nodded, and looked back up at them. Of course, that made sense - they had to be projecting holograms, that's why they flickered. "Sorry to talk over the song." She wasn't.
"Eh, I'm not a big fan of this one anyway," Hitch shrugged. "Generous☆ is best when she's with Honest☆."
"I wish I had hair like Kind☆'s," Sunny suddenly added in, sheepishly. "She's probably my favorite."
"But your hair looks great," Izzy faithfully praised, failing to notice that Sunny was staring at Izzy's admittedly rather kind-looking mane.
"Nah, just wait 'til she comes out," Sunny insisted. "She's gorgeous!"
Izzy had doubts.
"And you'd be surprised how confident her singing is," Hitch added. "Compared to her bashful speaking."
Izzy had fears.