Filling cracks here, smoothing edges there, and finally performing one last scan to ensure the latticework’s stability: these were all part of Vinyl’s standard sigil inscription procedure. It would be more than a little excessive by most others in the field, but dealing with unstable runes for over the past few years had made her meticulous attention to detail routine. The last thing she needed was to blow something up again.
Despite its chaotic namesake, working with cacophony magic using Cacophony’s principles was all about patience and precision. The musical magister was bent on proving his principle theory on the nature of music: sound and magic were intrinsically linked, and music, without or within, both were an expression of the soul exuded by all harmonious beings. While he’d never proven his ideas unequivocally, his theoretical applications worked well enough in practice. It was successful enough that the ever-humble stallion named the subfield of magic after himself.
Back in his day, Equestria was skirmishing with a rampage of rogue dragons, and his unabridged primer reflected it. The tone of the tome constantly shifted between harmony and entropy. In one chapter, Cacophony would introduce the theory of “Spontaneous Harmonic Surges” to explain the occasional, infectious, unplanned songs ponies broke into from time to time. In the next, he would discuss practical applications of reverberation wards to dampen the effects of dragon roars. Just like his magic, there was always a thread of organized chaos underlying his notes turned into writing.
For two young troublemakers, his proposed sound blaster weapon inspired them to build their “Prototype SchlurrVivyl Bass Cannon Mark I”. They hadn’t gotten very far into testing it before they were caught, but the skill behind their thwarted prank caught the attention of Arpeggio Melody. Seeing the fillies’ potential, he took the two under his tutelage to continue their studies as postgraduate research students. These days, Fleur applied the more harmonious side of Cacophony’s spellwork by trying to magically augment her impressive vocal range, while Vinyl worked on untangling the entropic nature of Cacophony’s more impractical runes.
The cacophony rune’s ability to absorb incredible amounts of magic was what had caught the DJ’s attention in the first place. An odd quirk of his rune was its ability to stack upon itself for a multiplicative effect. Equipment enchanted with several cacophony runes reportedly withstood roars and direct dragonfire by absorbing a terrifying amount of pure magic, but they would overload shortly afterward and unleash their payloads in one devastating magical explosion—a cautionary tale for some, but an amazing opportunity for the DJ. If Vinyl could figure out how to safely store and channel the amazing storage capacity, there was no telling what the limits of such a magical device would be. No more doubling up on equipment or lugging bulky crystals around. Everything could run using a single stabilized cacophony crystal nexus.
Maybe then, she could figure out how to actually perform her idea for the ESPA Performer Showcases without melting her brain.
“That’s it. I’ve got nothing.” Fleur flumped over her desk with a whiny moan. “I’m throwing in the towel. Taking the ‘L’ on this one.”
And apparently her voice actress friend was stuck in the same boat as well.
“Alright, Fleur. I know we agreed to do every showcase together, but if it’s just too much to manage—”
“Don’t go all guilt-trippy on me, Vy.” Fleur leaned back and craned her head to look at Vinyl upside down. At least the eye contact could pass itself off as polite conversation. “How about instead, we both just skip out together?”
“What, and lose my last grant? Unlike you, I have to do this.”
“Fine. Maybe my big showstopper will sound so sick that they’ll drag me off stage before I completely bomb up there,” Fleur spat with enough bitterness to make black coffee blush.
“Oh, please. You’re being dramatic.”
“Of course I’m being dramatic!” Fleur popped up from her seat in exaggerated indignation, mocking a fainting spell with a hoof to her head. “I’ve been slaving away, all day, every day, trying to come up with something! Without my best friend here to help in my time of need! Why, it is all I have left… le drame!”
Though Fleur was playing it off, Vinyl felt the sting of the truth behind her friend’s words. “Alright, I’m sorry, okay? Last week wasn’t exactly great for me either.”
At once, Fleur dropped the overacting and looked at Vinyl in concern. “Sorry, I didn’t mean… Pantsy isn’t running you through the wringer with that collection, is he?”
“Not really,” Vinyl remarked as she thought about the past hoof-full of days. “Actually, not at all. I barely see him outside of dinner.”
“What? You mean that no-good idiot is just ignoring you while you’re struggling under a mountain of records all by yourself? I thought at least Dandy or Dusty would treat my best friend right!”
“N-no! They’ve all been great, really.” Vinyl waved her hooves, trying to deflect the accusation and find her words. She did not want to talk about her breakdown in front of Fluffs, her conversations with Fancy Pants, or other unnecessary details. “If anypony’s been a problem, it’s me. I just got a little too focused on the collection, that’s all.”
“Really? Don’t tell me those records are that enthralling.” Fleur trotted over to her friend and moved Vinyl’s mane out of the way as she inspected her neck. “You haven’t been spending too much time with Steeplechase, have you? He’s nowhere near hot enough to be a vampony, but the jury is still out on bookworms being infectious.”
Vinyl swiped her friend’s hoof and the casual jab at the lanky librarian aside. “I’m fine, but you wouldn’t believe how frustrating it is to figure out somepony’s name.”
“Usually I’d tell you to stop staring from across the room and just ask, but I guess it’s a little more complicated than wallflower syndrome?”
“That’s one way to put it. If you know a spell that can divine a name from a voice recording, I’m all ears. All I’ve got is she's Sauna Summers’ friend named ‘Sunny’ something.”
“Sunny.” Fleur hummed to herself as she considered the name. “No bells ringing up here,” she said while tapping the side of her head. “Did you try asking Pantsy or Dandy?”
“I asked Dapper Dandy, but he didn’t know who I was talking about. No surprise there since Sunny appeared so early in Summers’ career. She hadn’t even met Suede yet.”
“I guess? But if they were friends, you’d think she’d have visited Auntie after marrying Daddy at least once,” Fleur pondered aloud. “What about Pantsy?”
“What about him? It was before he was born. Why would he know anything?”
“Oh, puh-lease! Pantsy is Auntie’s biggest fan. He can be a bit of a scatterbrain when it comes to remembering things, but if anypony else would know an obscure detail like that, it’d be him.”
“Maybe.” Vinyl shrugged as she refocused on her final touches with the newly inscribed cacophony crystal.
“Probably.” Fleur shrugged back, eying her friend curiously.
A long silence loomed over the room as Vinyl poured all of her attention decidedly away from her friend. Unsatisfied with the conversation, Fleur leaned in closely, hanging off of Vinyl’s neck with her foreleg. Vinyl nudged her away, only causing Fleur to fall gently onto the desk. The larger mare’s flowing mane splayed out over the DJ’s workspace as she stared sidelong at her irritated friend with a sweet smile.
“What?” Vinyl huffed in annoyance and tried to find her tools from under the copious amounts of hair.
“Nothing. Just you.”
“Just me?”
“Why, yes!” Fleur exclaimed as she righted herself and leaned on the table, fluttering her eyelashes at her friend. “You’re being so adorable right now!”
“Adorable?”
“It’s just so precious that you’re trying so hard to lie to me, Vy.” Fleur booped Vinyl on the nose and giggled.
Vinyl blinked with a grimace from the sudden contact. “Lie? What did I lie about?”
“Vinyl, Vinyl, Vinyl. I’m an actress; the closest thing to a professional liar you can be outside of politics,” the showmare bragged while running a hoof through her luxurious mane. With a flourish of her foreleg, she flipped up an imaginary hat and leaned down on the desk with the confidence of a saloon pony. “Y’all should know better than try’n pull a fast one on ol’ Fleur.”
“Oh, c’mon. Every single thing I said was true.”
“Sure, you ain’t told me a single falsity,” Fleur clarified through the country-fried drawl of Corn Acopia, “but I know when somepony is trying to mosey on, galloping like the wind while breezing through the details. Only problem is, you’re about three corners short of a square dance, partner. A lie’s a lie, Vy, even if it’s one of omission.”
Vinyl bit the inside of her cheek, trying to keep her face as flat as possible. She forced a sigh and adjusted her loupe to ignore Fleur’s accusation. “You’re just being suspicious.”
“Of course I’m ridiculous.” Fleur spat the accent out into an imaginary spitoon to swap back to her standard Fleur-ness. “It’s your fault for getting all quiet when I mentioned Pantsy.”
Vinyl slammed the table in frustration, ripping her jeweler’s loupe off her face with her magic. “Seriously, Sunny is a pony from Sauna’s early career that nopony, and I mean nopony, seems to know. Not even the historians at the ESPA! I just didn’t think to ask him, that’s all.”
“And there’s the lie!” she sing-songingly teased with a flick of Vinyl’s nose.
“What now?” Vinyl asked, rolling her eyes away from Fleur while trying to hide her nerves.
“That you didn’t think to ask him. It’d take all of five seconds.” Fleur cleared her throat to find another voice. A not-too-dissimilar scratch to Vinyl’s own arose from her friend. “‘Hey Pantsy! Finish this sentence: Summer’s had a friend named Sunny blank.’” Fleur coughed her impression away with a small amount of disgust. “That was rough on the vocal cords. Remind me to work on that one.”
“Okay, maybe I did think about asking him. So what?”
“You’re not one to leave stones unturned when thinking through a problem, especially when the rock is easy enough to look under. So, why is it that I’m getting the feeling you’re purposely dodging my question?”
“Maybe because you’re reading too much into nothing again? I told you, I’m not lying about anything.”
“Yeah, I know,” Fleur replied flatly. “We agree on that one. What I’m saying is that you’re hiding something, which is completely different and only gets worse when you keep trying to sidestep the question.”
“I’m not sidestepping anything! I just didn’t want to ask him.”
“Why not?”
“Cause like I said, he probably wouldn’t know! Why bother him with it at all?”
“Because he might know? You might as well ask anypony that knew Auntie when she was around.” Fleur huffed as she shook her head at Vinyl’s failed obfuscation. “Seriously, Vy, it wouldn’t bother him at all. Unless you forgot, you’re archiving his collection for him. Pantsy will probably get all sappy on you with his answer, but whatever. The worst that’ll happen is dealing with a momma’s colt for a bit after finding out if he knows something that you don’t.”
Vinyl pulled at her face, just wishing Fleur would shut up. She was starting to get a headache. “Fine, I’ll ask him and see if he knows Sunny. Happy?”
“No! You keep dodging my question!”
“What question?”
“Why didn’t you ask him?”
Vinyl felt a pressure build in the back of her mind as she tried to back out of the conversation. She could feel her fortitude wavering from Fleur’s constant questioning. “Please, Fleur. I-I already told you. I didn’t want to bother him.”
“Vy, look at me.” The larger mare pulled Vinyl’s face towards hers by hoof and stared directly into her friend’s eyes. A hint of worry burned in the back of Fleur’s gaze. “Why didn’t you want to ask my brother a simple question?”
Any strength Vinyl had left to deflect evaporated under her friend’s rising concern. What was she supposed to say? Anything now would expose her initial lie and reveal the real reason behind her “ESPA archiving accreditation” at the estate. She’d have to tell her about losing the apartment, and worse, her unwillingness to ask Fleur and Éclair for help.
She didn’t want to owe anypony in Canterlot anything, and that included them.
“I knew this whole ESPA business stank something fierce! Just what are you not telling me?” Fleur shouted in accusation. She put her forehooves on Vinyl’s shoulders and lightly shook trying to get an answer out of the DJ with the grace of rattling a Magic Cue-Ball.
No. Vinyl had to find a way out. There was no way she could answer honestly. That would require talking about how Fancy practically owned her now. She couldn’t do that to Fleur. It was obvious how deeply the mare cared about her family. The way she always hugged her “Maman” anytime they were in the same room, how she had practically begged for anything special the DJ found about her “Daddy” in the collection, how she lovingly referred to Summers as “Auntie” even though they never met, and how hurt she looked at the Moondance…
“Vy, say something! Please, you’re scaring me…”
And now she was scaring her friend because she couldn’t protect her from the truth? Darkness crept along the edges of Vinyl’s vision, swallowing the periphery, and leaving the two unicorns alone in blackness. The DJ’s legs wobbled like jelly as she tried to think of a way out. Each pulse of her heartbeat tightened a noose of unspoken words wrapping around her neck, choking the life out of her.
Vinyl’s eyes watered. Her breathing failed. Her head sank low in shame.
She felt helpless…
Hopeless…
Worthless…
“Vinyl!” a voice echoed from afar.
The call wiped the darkness away from her vision. Vinyl blinked her blurriness away and wiped the tears from her face. She couldn’t remember when she started crying or when Fleur had gotten so close. “Wha—What happened?”
“Oh, thank Celestia you’re back!” Fleur pulled Vinyl into a quick hug before pushing her back and sparking her horn to life. “Are you okay? How many lights do you see?”
“There are four lights, Fleur!” Vinyl answered, shooing the blinding illuminated motes of magic out from her field of view. “Seriously, why does everypony think I’m some fragile little—” she was interrupted by the sight of her friend.
Never in all of her years had Vinyl seen Fleur looking so… defeated. The usually larger-than-life mare shrank away from the DJ, searching for something to say. Vinyl didn't know what had happened, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible as Fleur’s face sank lower and lower. After a few more awkward moments of silence, the larger mare took in a sharp breath.
“Vinyl?” Fleur asked with a small tremble that Vinyl hated with all of her heart. “I know you’ve been through a lot recently, and I know it’s—it’s because of me. It doesn’t take a genius to know that everypony blames you for my mistake because they like me. Well, they like Lady Faire at least. Honestly, I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it, to pretend like nothing’s wrong, and I was so happy when things felt normal after the New Year. We were working again like nothing had ever happened, but that wasn’t real, was it? You’re still upset.”
Vinyl shook her head. She hadn’t even said anything, and she was still messing up one of the few good things in her life. “No! That’s not—” She stopped herself. There was no time for half-truths now. “I mean, it’s been hard, but I’m not angry at you.”
Vinyl’s claim had the opposite effect as Fleur’s face crumpled with tears pooling in her eyes. “Then explain that!”
It was then that Vinyl noticed they had moved to a far side of the room. Following her friend’s hoof, she gasped at the awful sight. No wonder she had a headache again. It didn’t take long to deduce what had happened upon seeing the remnants of the evaporating jeweler’s loupe. She had been holding the blasted thing in her magic when highly emotional, causing the runes to respond in kind. The crystal had latched onto Vinyl’s unstable magic signature through her levitation spell to absorb her flaring emotions in an attempt to prove Cacophony’s theories correct once more.
The unfortunate crystal she had been working on had warped from a brilliant sapphire blue into a sickly, jagged obsidian black.
After a few more seconds, the crystal began cracking under the destabilizing pressure left from absorbing so much discordant magical energy. With brittle, jittery folds, the crystal collapsed in on itself. It might’ve been more fascinating to watch if the slow-motion spectacle wasn’t so horrific. When the pressure became too much, the crystal crunched into a single point before the imploding force violently burst outward, releasing discordant tones that shook Vinyl to her core with a deep, stomach-churning wrongness. Harmony itself seemed to shatter in the wake of the cascade.
As the bitter sound warbled into nothingness, the DJ looked back to her friend. There were no words that could explain that away, and they both knew it. She just wanted to protect other ponies from her burdens. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
“Vinyl?” Fleur began instinctively reaching a hoof out, but forced it down and backed away. “I know I made things hard for you, but please, just tell me what’s going on. I feel like I never see you anymore. Like, you're here but not here at the same time, and one day, you’re going to just up and disappear entirely, and it will be all my fault! I’m so sorry Vinyl, but I’m begging you, even if you… h-hate me now, I want to work things out. Yell at me, beat me up, do whatever will make you feel better, just please,” Fleur pleaded with tears streaming down her face, “say something! Anything!”
“No! No, please don't cry. I didn’t mean to…” Vinyl trailed as she looked for anything to calm her sobbing friend down. “How could I hate you?”
“Didn’t you see it? That crystal? Jagged, black, broken, and all my fault! I ruined your job! I ruined your scholarship! I ruined everything!”
“But it’s not like that, really. I’m okay.”
Fleur shook her head while biting her lip. “No, you’re not! I haven’t seen you smile in weeks! Not really. You’re my best friend, Vy. You’re like a sister to me. You can tell me anything, you know that, right? Please! I… I don’t want to lose you too!” she wailed, coughing and hiccuping from two months of pent up fear and frustration.
Vinyl didn’t either, but seeing her inconsolable friend, it felt inevitable. There were no options left, no other places left to hide. She had done this. She had broken her friend by failing to hide the truth from Fleur, and it was going to cost their friendship. This was why she should be alone. It couldn’t have been any clearer for her. Vinyl couldn’t handle being with other ponies, even the ones she wanted to be around. She couldn’t be trusted.
She messed up. Vinyl Scratch always messed up.
“I’m right here, Vinyl. You don’t have to trust me, just try your best,” Fluffer Duster, or rather her new, maybe-friend Fluffs assured.
“You should never feel trapped, Vinyl. You always have a choice,” Fancy promised the DJ.
“Anything?” Vinyl quickly asked, terrified of her own voice. Fleur bit her lip and nodded frantically, begging with her silence. “Promise you won’t be mad?”
“Of course not, Vy. You’re the one who deserves to be mad, not me.”
“And you won’t tell anypony?”
“No?” Fleur answered, confused by the question.
“Please! Not even Éclair!” Fleur shrank back at the sudden inclusion of her mother. “You have to promise me, nopony else, please!”
For a second Fleur frowned, unsure of what to make of it, but quickly shook it away with a pleading nod, swearing not to tell a soul.
“Okay.” Vinyl took a deep breath and smiled. She had a chance. She had a choice. She was going to try to make it work. “Can we sit down on the couches in the control room? I could use something to drink. This might be a while.”
Fleur forced a smile of her own and used her magic to open the door for the both of them. “Sure. I could go for some coffee anyway. Want some?”
“Yeah. That’d be nice.” Vinyl cleared her throat as they trotted out of the audio lab towards the control room with its comfy lounge couches and warm drinks. “So, do you remember the night Luna teleported me to Fancy’s place?”
As Vinyl retold the events of the last month, Fleur waited patiently on the couch across from her friend. There were no questions and no interjections, just a growing sorrow as Fleur forced herself to silently listen to everything Vinyl had to say for over half an hour. Against her better judgment, the DJ recounted every trying moment to her friend: the loss of her lease, the archiving job, the awkward conversations with Fancy, hurting Fluffs with her magic. No detail was spared and neither needed words to know that they both hated every second of it.
“And well, here we are. I thought I was strong and confident, but I was wrong. I can’t do anything right. If it wasn’t for Fancy, I wouldn’t even be here telling you this right now. All I could do was take his offer and hope it was genuine. Part of me is glad I did, but….” Vinyl’s words drifted away. She still couldn’t figure out how to express her mixed thoughts of the stallion without hurting Fleur more than she already had.
“I’m sorry Vinyl. I’m so, so sorry. I know I promised I wouldn’t, but I'm really mad, and I really, really hate myself right now,” Fleur apologized as she sank into her couch.
“I knew it.” Vinyl took a shuddering breath and tried to stay calm. “I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“No!” Fleur screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking from the effort as she forced herself to speak clearly through her cries. “Don’t you dare, Vinyl! If you think I’m going to just sit here and listen to you say one more word about how this is somehow your fault, you’re wrong! You’re wrong!”
“But—”
“No! No more ‘buts!’ No more anything! You should’ve told me sooner!” Fleur shouted with embittered sadness. “Why couldn’t you tell me? Why?”
“I’m sorry that—”
“Stop apologizing! Stop it! You’re. The. Victim. Vinyl!” Fleur yelled as she loudly slammed a foreleg into the couch cushions, punctuating each pause. “All because I wanted to make a stupid cake joke, you…” Fleur’s rage crumbled into dust as fresh tears filled her eyes, “you almost lost everything. And you were too scared to tell me? It’s not fair! I hate Canterlot! I hate everything!”
“No!” Vinyl shouted over her friend. She felt so inadequate, having broken her friend’s heart with the truth she failed to hide. “Please, this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell anypony about this. It’s my problem, and I’m so messed up already that—”
“Shut up!” Fleur leapt up from her couch, into Vinyl, and pulled her into a tight hug. She wept into Vinyl’s fur, barely able to say a word as she cried openly. “Please. Just… just shut up already. You’re so stupid, Vinyl.”
Fleur squeezed the DJ like a plushie and nuzzled her friend as she tried to calm herself down. “Thank the stars Fancy figured you out before it was too late,” Fleur finally mumbled through Vinyl’s soaked fur. “I knew something was wrong with this thing with Fancy. I just knew it. But—but I was too scared to ask. I didn’t want to find out you hated me. I couldn’t bear that.”
“I could never hate you Fleur. You and Éclair are the closest thing to a family that I feel like I have.”
“If you really mean that, then why didn’t you just ask for help? Maman said you’re always welcome, and she meant it. We wouldn’t have minded at all.”
“Because I need to do this on my own, Fleur. I can’t take hoof-outs.”
“Sure you can!” Fleur countered looking her friend in the eyes. “We’re SchlurrVivyl! We stick together through thick and thin. Anything I give you will always come back to me anyway. That’s just what best friends are supposed to do.”
Vinyl looked down at her hooves. “I know.”
Fleur frowned at her friend’s hesitancy. “Then why do you sound like you don’t? Vinyl, I’d rush straight into the depths of Tartarus to help you. Wouldn’t you want to do the same for me?”
“Of course I would!”
“So, why wouldn’t you let me?” Fleur begged to know, only managing to eke out a whisper of a question from the pain of asking. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”
“I just couldn’t, Fleur. Not in this. I can’t take hoof-outs.”
“But why not?”
Vinyl knew the answer, but she shook her head, silently begging for Fleur to stop. No matter how many times she asked, no matter how much it hurt, Vinyl couldn’t risk answering that question. She still hadn’t proven herself yet.
After an eternity of silence, Fleur closed her eyes and took in a slow, shaky breath. “I’m sorry I failed you as a friend, Vinyl. I could’ve done more, and I’m so mad at myself for thinking you hated me. I should’ve known better than to leave a loner alone for too long. I’m supposed to be your best friend, for peat’s sake!”
“But, I’m the one—”
A hoof sealed Vinyl’s lips shut. “No. I already told you that you can’t say that word. Now, just stay quiet while I cuddle you.”
True to her word, Fleur climbed onto the couch and pulled the smaller unicorn into a warm embrace. Fleur stroked the DJ’s electric blue mane, kissed her forehead, and held on for dear life. The DJ had seen Éclair shower her daughter with such kisses and hugs before when she was sad. While the intimacy made Vinyl uncomfortable, she took solace in knowing the familial contact was helping Fleur.
She had never seen the snarky mare completely break down like this before. The voice actress always brimmed with sunshine and sarcasm, and Vinyl had no idea how to help the mare when she was the one in need. So, if she needed to play the part of a plushie pony, she’d subject herself to snuggles for as long as Fleur needed them. She wished she could do more, but anything she thought Fleur would want felt beyond her capabilities.
“I’m sorry, Fleur. I didn’t mean to—” A hoof to her nose interrupted Vinyl as Fleur adjusted herself to meet her eyes.
“I already told you; don’t apologize.” Fleur leaned in and kissed Vinyl lightly on the forehead again. “I know I’m nosy and overbearing all the time, but everypony is allowed to have secrets. I just wish you could tell me the ones that are clearly hurting you.” Fleur squeezed with her foreleg again, and laid her head on Vinyl’s. “You’re never alone, okay? You’ve got me, maman, the professor, Octavia, Steeplechase, Pantsy, Dandy, and Dust—err, Fluffs. We all have your back, no matter what. You just need to tell us when you need backup, dummy.
“I won’t give you a hoof-out, but you better let me lend you a hoof to get up. Got it?” the larger mare asked with a threatening edge. Vinyl quickly nodded her head. Fleur straightened up from her hugs and regarded the DJ with aloof grandeur. “Henceforth, we hereby banish thy bouts of lonely misery, forevermore! Thou shalt never secret away your suffering from us again!”
“Yes, your highness,” Vinyl accepted with a little bow of her head in respect towards the false Princess Luna.
After a moment of showering her friend with her regal presence, Fleur broke character with a choked giggle before leaning back down next to her friend. “Seriously, Vinyl, if it gets to be too much, tell me. Interrupt a visit to the little filly’s room, wake me up in the middle of the night, I don’t care. I would never leave my best friend hanging on purpose, so please don’t let me do it on accident.”
“I’ll… try,” Vinyl answered, earning another forceful hug from her friend. “What about the others?”
Fleur opened her mouth, but then closed it to give the question more serious thought. “Do you think you can trust them?”
“Well, they’re all trustworthy ponies.”
“Again, not what I asked. I think Fluffs is a good egg, though she might be a bit too close to Pantsy since she’s his maid.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, as much as I want you to like my dimwitted brother, you didn’t outright say it, but you sound like you’re on the fence about him, to put it mildly.”
Vinyl tried to say “no” for Fleur’s sake, but she couldn’t force the lie. The more she thought about it, the more she hated herself for fearing him. Fancy Pants had been nothing but kind to her since they met. Even thinking back to the Festival of Flakes, she hadn’t even given the stallion a chance. In Vinyl’s world, the only rich ponies showing an interest in her beyond her musical services were ones that felt entitled to other, unlisted services purely granted by their social status. However, Fancy wasn’t like any elite she’d ever met.
She assumed the Kingmaker of Canterlot’s ill-intentions from the moment he’d taken a step on her stage with those wine glasses. Like any unicorn mare worth her party salt, she’d memorized detection spells to scan suspicious drinks and had gone so far as to take Fancy’s glass rather than the one he had offered her. She would never apologize for being safe at parties, but a part of her regretted her initial hostility towards him. Despite her bad attitude, he’d always been a model gentlecolt. At every opportunity—the night at the bar, her job offer at the apartment, hiring her for the archiving job—he never once took advantage of her.
“I don’t want to be scared of him, but—”
Fleur shushed Vinyl and pulled her into another, gentle hug. “Vy, it’s okay. I know you take a while to warm up to other ponies. I mean, it felt like it took forever to become friends in middle magical studies, and I think I understand why now more than ever. Just means I need to do what I did then.”
“And that was what, exactly?”
“Not give you a moment’s peace until you accepted my friendship,” Fleur answered with a confident smirk. “This time, I’m gonna make sure you’re practically drowning in friends.”
“You’re not exactly sailing on a ship of friends either, Fleur.”
“That’s because you don’t hang around the school enough. I’m practically friends with every magic kindergartener!”
“I’m glad you’re making friends who are more mature than you,” Vinyl commended the foalish mare, earning a bonk on the horn. Vinyl snickered and slapped on a quick wry smile. “So, if you’re gonna be around more often, does that mean you’ll help me with the collection?”
“Oh, heavens no! I’ll be too busy getting to know Fluffs. I thought she was just another Canterlot maid when I met her, but I should’ve known Fancy would never hire your average housekeeper. Not everypony would take a surge to the face like that and fret over the one that blasted them in the first place.”
“Yeah…” Vinyl sighed with remorse until the first part of Fleur’s reasoning reentered her head with the subtlety of a Bridleway marquee. “Wait, why are you gonna hang out with Fluffs?”
“Because Fluffer Duster wants to be your friend, silly filly. We’re a packaged deal, you and me, which makes her my friend too. If she’s gonna be hanging out with us, she’ll need all the help she can get.” The larger mare hummed to herself in deep thought, which in Vinyl’s experience, was never a good sign for anypony not named Fleur de Lis. “I got it! We should invite her out sometime for a pizza lunch break! Chowing down with us has gotta beat cleaning the mansion constantly.”
“I don’t know. Fluffs really seems to like what she does. Maybe a pizza dinner would be better?”
Fleur groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re agreeing with Pantsy on this one. I thought he was just trying to get me off her back.”
Vinyl shrugged her shoulders. “Hey, if you think you can ask that mare to stop cleaning without making her feel like you just canceled her birthday, you’re welcome to try.”
“That bad, huh? Wow. Cleaning cutie marks are intense. What if we say we’re painting the town red, but she can wash it off when we’re done?”
“I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean with pizza involved, but that might be stupid enough to work.”
“Magnifique! Voilà finalement notre fille aimée,” Fleur exclaimed, while pulling Vinyl into a crushing hug. “Now that we’ve got a friendship plan, we can finally move on from the heavy waterworks and back to solving our original problem before Arpeggio lectures us about punctuality again. Just what the hay are we doing for our part in the Showcases?”
“I thought you said you were giving up?”
“If you can’t take freebies from anypony, then we’re gonna have to earn you some of Pantsy’s donor money somehow, right? That means we gotta do it.”
“Well I have to.”
“Nuh-uh-uh,” Fleur tisked with a back-and-forth waggle of her hoof. “Packaged deal. SchlurrVivyl is a sloppy, unbeatable duo. I just needed a little reminder, that’s all.” Fleur squeezed Vinyl once more for good measure. “On that note, any ideas spinning in that head of yours, Vy?”
“Kinda? I actually brought some of the stuff I’ve been experimenting with. Want to hear it?”
“Do you even have to ask? Of course I do! Anything to shake off these bad-sad vibes. Maybe you’ll even spread some of that Pon-3 magic around.”
Vinyl rolled her eyes at the compliment, but took it regardless. Getting up from the couches—and finally enjoying a little personal space—Vinyl grabbed her saddlebag and headphones off the hanger and headed back for the audio lab. She riffled through her belongings, fishing several small crystals out of them with Fleur watching from over her shoulder. They stopped in front of a synthesizer in the lab and Vinyl popped open the back panel, revealing the crystalarium case.
“You’re using low-quality synth instruments?”
“I made some compromises to make it all portable. I’m not gonna lug around those premium monsters unless I really want to start competing with Octavia in a deadlifting competition. The lighter, synthetic feel works just fine for me.”
One by one, she plopped the small crystals into the four suspension fields, allowing the instrument to actively channel its sound. “Low quality synth double-bass, synth trumpet, synth trombone, and synth saxophone.”
“No percussion?”
“I ran out of synthesizer space, so I had to rig up the percussion separately.” Vinyl held up a slightly larger crystal and wheeled over a sampler with her magic. She opened a tray and slotted the small crystal into the slot and flicked it on to test it. “I have the sampler loaded with a few premixed patterns. It means I can’t improvise much, but since it’s more the backbone and not the focus of the music, it should be fine.”
“Wow. And here I thought you were all about the beat and bass.” Fleur noticed the last crystal yet to be placed into anything. With the addition of the second synthesizer, she was starting to piece it together. “Okay, so what’s this fifth instrument you got here?”
“That’s the synth piano,” Vinyl answered with hesitation as she pulled over a second synthesizer and placed the last crystal in the back.
“Piano? Like, tickling the keys, straight-up piano, piano? That piano?” Fleur cringed seeing Vinyl nod. “Vinyl, I know it’s a little late to be asking this given the last hour or so, but are you feeling alright? You’ve been telling me for years that you absolutely hate playing the piano.”
“It’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m playing a concert solo. Besides, I use a synthesizer all the time. They’re pretty much the same thing.”
“All I’m saying is there's a reason why I bothered remembering that this thing is called a ‘synthesizer’ and not an ‘electric piano.’”
“The music calls for a jazzy walking bass line. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing, I guess? I mean, it’s fine but…” Fleur trailed off, at a rare loss for words at Vinyl’s admission. “Okay. Just tell me you’re doing this because you want to. This isn’t like some sort of weird form of torture you’ve justified to yourself, right?”
“Torture? Really? That’s a bit strong, even by your exaggerated standards.”
“No. No, it’s not,” Fleur muttered with a tinge of fear as she shook her head slowly. “I really wish it was. The only time I’ve seen you enjoy playing a piano is when you were basically weaponizing back at the Festival of Flakes. That was upsetting for a different reason. Other than that, I’ve only seen you play piano one other time when you filled in for Horseshoepin at the last minute to help Octavia.”
“Okay? What’s the big deal about that?”
“Are you serious?” Fleur balked at her friend. She shook her head as if she was trying to eject the uncomfortable thoughts. “Sure, you played perfectly, but—it’s hard to describe. It’s like you weren’t there at all. Just went completely blank playing the piano. I never want to see you like that again. Nopony does.”
“Please, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“The fact you're talking about it like you weren’t there is already red flaggy enough. Why do you think Octavia’s never asked you to fill in again?”
Vinyl’s mouth strained into a weak smile. “Look. I have some bad memories with the piano. I just, you know, mentally checked out. That’s all.”
Picking up the sign to drop the topic, Fleur sighed in defeat. She looked at the synthesizer and then back at Vinyl. “You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“Trust me, this is nothing like playing classical music. Now, can I get to showing this off to you or not?”
“Just as long as you’re still here when we’re done. I don’t think we have enough coffee to handle a second emotional session today.”
“It’ll be fine, I swear.” Vinyl finished her preparations, doing a final check of all of the loaded sounds and moving all of the equipment into position. “Okay, so first, the percussion sequences. I had to record them first and let the sampler automate some simple, repeating patterns since I’m not gonna try getting a third keyboard involved. Speaking of which, the bottom keyboard is full synth piano and the top one is split between the rest of the synth instruments.”
Fleur watched curiously as Vinyl activated four buttons, and turned several dials on the upper keyboard. The musician tapped the same notes several times, until the instrument changed and then moved down the line. “What are you doing now?”
“Sectioning off the keyboard. I don’t need the full range of these ones up top, so I’m limiting them to what notes I need to play. My hooves will be down here on the piano while I use simple magic patterns to set up and play whatever is going on above. I’ll have to be careful not to break my concentration since I’ll have to actively cast some of it.”
“Sounds like this is another one of your methods still trapped in ‘unicorn only’ mode.”
“A pegasus might be able to pull it off if they wanted to try a little live mixing. They’d just need to sacrifice a bit more to automation and have enough fine wing dexterity to play two keyboards at once, though.”
“Uh-huh,” Fleur said with a healthy dollop of skepticism. “Look, you can say that all you want after you introduce me to this amazing, hypothetical pegasus with ungodly levels of wing control.”
Unfortunately, one pony did come to mind that might be able to pull it off with practice, but Vinyl shuddered just thinking about seeing that snob, Lofty Heights, again. Forcing the bile down from the memory of the mare, she slid a hoof over the top row, playing all the notes of the different instruments before nodding in approval.
“Like I was saying, you’re overtaxing the keyboard’s sequencer as it is with how many imprinted patterns you’d need to store and recall on the fly, but it’s technically possible. For earth ponies, not so much. You’d need at least two more hooves, but you might as well get real musicians to help if you can’t do it alone.” Vinyl looked back to her friend with a wide grin. “All the more reason to get Cacophony’s principles working in a standard environment, right?”
“Sounds stupidly complex as usual,” Fleur noted, earning a flat stare from her friend. “Technical junk aside, why not record more of this stuff to vinyl and mix it in like you do with some of your live sets?”
“Because the record players are already spoken for. I just didn’t bring the albums with me.”
“Ooo!” Fleur exclaimed with a short canter of excitement. “Are you finally gonna live up to your name and scratch some records?”
“In a way, but I’m not going for the scratching sound. I haven’t found a better solution for dealing with the limited manaflow, and I am not going to risk desyncing the metronome with an overloaded buffer. If there’s a hiccup, then, we’d have an actual cacophony on our hooves. I’ll admit that it’s not an elegant solution, but I have two copies of the song playing, one original and one with remixed bits that I can crossfade between.”
Fleur blinked as she processed everything Vinyl had been saying, adding a hoof movement to count up all the equipment under her breath. “So, let me get this straight. You’re gonna be playing five instruments using two keyboards, percussion on a sampler, all while live mixing two records of the same song at the same time?”
Vinyl blinked as she thought it through. “Well, the key to the whole process is abusing the memory on the synthesizers as much as possible, but yeah, I guess I am.”
Fleur narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Seriously? What kind of pegasus could—” She stopped just short of swearing with a shrill cry. “Just frickin record it all to one disk and play along! You’re doing way too many things at once again!”
“But it doesn’t sound as good if I leave too much to the recordings. I’d restrict my ability to improvise. I already tried to find more ways to automate, but there isn’t enough manaflow to have both the sampler and synthesizers constantly autocasting. I’d either have to reduce the complexity of the percussion so the sampler could handle it, which—”
“—Which is totally unacceptable by your impossible standards.” Fleur nearly rolled her eyes out of her skull with the sarcasm she was layering.
“Now you’re getting it!” Vinyl brushed away Fleur’s snark and pressed onward, making her friend bring a hoof to her face. “So it’s that, or do what I’m doing, and manually skip around using the two records. I marked positions on each disk, so I can quickly skip to where I need to be and crossfade between the two records on the fly. Sometimes you want to play along with the original, other times, you’ve got a remixed pattern you wanna really drill into.”
“It sounds like a nightmare to perform.”
“It’ll take some doing, but I think it’ll sound great when I can pull it all off. Lemme show you.” Vinyl reached over to her metronome and flicked it on. “So, first we record the intro’s walking baseline like so.” Vinyl played a few measures of the song before pressing a button to store the pattern and loop it. “Now, we’ll let that go for a while as I bring more sounds in. Add in the kick drum, a little bit of double bass like so.”
Vinyl began bobbing her head to the quickly evolving song. One by one, she added more and more instruments to the mix. Even without the underlying album to play, she could still feel that swinging beat with the horns playing off each other on top of the piano’s foundation. While it sounded great, it was incredibly taxing to perform with her magic which sparked constantly to keep up with her hooves. She wished she could record multiple variations of sequences to draw from at different parts, but the synthesizer could only hold one per instrument at a time. Stupid crystal limitations!
As the horns and saxophones started bouncing between each other, Fleur started to hum along with it. “This sounds so familiar.”
“It should. This is based off of your dad’s cover of it. Hold on.” Without the album to play alongside, the song was missing its soul. The disks were back home—back at the estate, so Vinyl decided to improvise and focus on playing the melody as best she could recall it. Fleur smiled as she picked up the lyrics midway through with the dramatic panache of a mustache-twirling villain.
You’ve got a noble in your pocket, now,
Canterlot is flailin’ in the dark.
Any risks there are, we can always disavow,
So now, let’s go ahead and leave our mark!
It’s ea-zay!
“This is the villain song from the Aristocrats!” Fleur exclaimed in recognition as Vinyl switched to playing a few improvised piano flourishes. “‘Friends Like These’ is one of my favorites.”
“I heard a song from the musical on the Sway album, and inspiration struck. Found Suede’s Best of Bridleway shortly after that and gave it a listen. I’m still trying to decide what swing I want to remix, so I’ve been trying a bunch of them out.”
“This is incredible, Vy! You’re one-upping the one-mare band with big band swing!”
“That’s the idea,” Vinyl said as she started shutting down all the equipment. “I committed a couple of remixes-in-progress to crystal and listened to them on the way here. It might give you a better idea of what I’m going for in the end.”
After ejecting her last synth instrument from the lab’s synthesizers, she levitated her headphones off her neck and passed it to her friend. Fleur flicked it on and, once the music started, she bobbed her head to the rhythm, trying to get a feel for it.
“Wow, I’ve never heard anything quite like this.” Finding the groove, Fleur started to sway back and forth with a wide grin slowly growing on her face. “Can you even do this weird echoing effect live?”
“Yeah, no. That’s what the second record is for. I played around with the original record by running it through a few EDM sound filters before putting the remixed bits on another disk.”
Fleur’s horn lit up with magic as she cleared some space around the audio lab. After securing the headphones to her head with a spell, she started dancing along to the beat booming in her ears. She cantered wildly in place to the song, spinning and swinging her legs out to the rhythm as she counterbalanced her movements with her other sways from one side to the other.
“Is that how they danced in the musical?” Vinyl shouted over the headphones
“Nope!” Fleur answered quickly between movements. “Just an improvised Countertrot. Pretty popular back before Daddy was born.” She wheeled around in a jittery full spin and caught herself on a front leg solidly before continuing her flowing movements. “Perfect for solo swing dancing, though the electronic beat in this makes me want to stomp my hooves louder than usual. It’s throwing me off my gait a little. What do you call this anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“The music style. What are you calling it? It isn’t swing. It’s got too much electronica infused in it.”
“I thought about it before, but I’m just remixing songs at the end of the day. I don’t think it’s enough to be its own thing.”
“It could be though!” Fleur insisted as she took a break from the music to focus on her friend. “Stick with the vintage feel, add some more of that modern electro-flair, maybe even get some of the other ESPA musicians to help perform it live, and you could make a completely new genre of hybrid swing songs if you wanted. I know I’d tear up the floor at Cantrips dancing to something like this!”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt. What about something simple like ‘electronic swing music?’”
Fleur thought about it for a second before putting a hoof to her mouth to stifle a sharp snicker. “You really don’t want to put the letters ‘S’ and ‘M’ together unless that’s your thing,” Fleur suggested while gazing at Vinyl with half-lidded, bedroom eyes.
Vinyl frowned and smacked a hoof to her face, hoping the action would stop her from blushing. “Okay. Just ‘electronic swing’ then.”
“You can still add music to the end though if you’re feeling saucy. Plus, it doesn’t jump out at me. This deserves all the pop and pizzazz it can get.”
“Well, you said electro-something earlier. How about electro swing?”
“Fine. We’ll workshop it more if we need to, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi to it, despite having the same potential lettering problem.” Fleur tapped the headphones, skipping to the next song on the crystal. She began searching for the beat again, only to brighten as she recognized the music. “Oh? You remixed ‘Sisters,’ too?”
“I think ‘tried to remix’ is more fitting for that one. Speeding it up to match the feel of the others really didn’t turn out like I wanted. I did a couple more mixes over the weekend if you want to skip to something better.”
“Yeah, you’re right. The sound’s just a little off sped up, but it’s not terrible.” Fleur tried to dance to it, but she couldn’t quite hit her stride. After a moment of thinking, her eyes sparked to life as a wide smile split her face. “Vinyl Scratch, you brilliant, beautiful mare, you! Mon sauveur!” Fleur sprang to Vinyl’s side and laid a faire la bise on both of her cheeks.
“What? What did I do?”
“This is just what I needed for the Showcase!” Fleur exclaimed as she tore the headphones off and galloped for the door. “I gotta find the professor!”
In a flash, Fleur was gone, leaving the dumbfounded genius alone in the audio lab. While Vinyl didn’t quite understand what had just happened, she was glad to have helped her friend after so long. Whatever it was, she had managed to do something good for a change. Vinyl felt a surge of relief spike through her heart. After all the turmoil the day had brought, she still had her best friend. Thinking back to their heart-to-heart, it felt really good to get her worries off her chest. She’d never confided in another pony like that and have it go so well.
“Please, dear, you’re being ridiculous. Mommy loves that you’re so… passionate about this phase of yours, but really? I just don’t understand why you're so upset. You were doing just fine before. You didn’t need to go so far—”
Vinyl shook the unwelcome memories from her head. Today was a good day. No stupid mare berating her from the past was going to ruin her mood. She still had Fleur. That’s all that mattered. Along with her friend’s enthusiastic approval of her performance, the musician was more determined than ever to get the sound right.
Also, she had to admit, “electro swing” did have a nice ring to it.