Three words. That’s the magic number, right? Three words that some folks spend their whole lives waiting to hear, three little words that change everything when you say them out loud. You know the ones I mean: “I love you.” Total classics, three syllables long but carry the world on their backs. Right?
The thing you don’t get told is, there are other sets of three words that can change your world just as easily. Words that maybe, you’d never have expected to hear when you did. This is a story about three words that somepony said to me once, and how totally messed up my life got afterwards. These words were a little longer than the classic ones, but not by much. They were… well, maybe first I should tell you about my life before I heard them, if I’m going to explain how they changed things. And I guess I should introduce myself too.
My name’s Vinyl Scratch. You may have heard of me as DJ Pon-3 – the spelling can vary a bit, but the beat stays the same. I spin discs all over Canterlot, and sometimes elsewhere in Equestria too if the gig sounds good enough. One time I even got to DJ in the Crystal Kingdom… one time. Did you know crystal shatters if you’re playing loud enough at the right frequency? Yeah. It’s those little details that get you every time. Also, did you know a big enough record makes a really great sled when you need to get down some snow-covered mountains in a hurry? Since then I’ve mostly just played in Canterlot, which is fine, since everypony pays well here and there’s a constant flood of tourists as well. I’ve got something of a monopoly on the DJ thing here: most of the other musicians go in for different sorts of music, and to some extent they get a different clientele to match. That’s Equestria for you, I guess! Everyone and everything working together in harmony.
You can only mix other ponies’ tracks for so long before you start itching to make your own, though, so lately I’ve been playing in a band. I’m the singer and lead guitarist, naturally, and I also handle all the recording and stuff. Technical genius, that’s me. A unicorn named Lemon Hearts plays drums; she’s a sweet thing, still a little shy but great rhythm and getting better with her energy. Lemon used to study love magic up at the School for Gifted Unicorns, ended up over-exerting herself somehow, and now she’s taken up music as a hobby to get her life back in order. Suits me fine as long as she doesn’t mind a little late night adventure from time to time, and so far she’s been a real trooper. Rounding out our little trio is this earth pony Pepperdance, on the keyboard. Well, keyboard and dance, really, but that’s just for our live shows. Pepper… Pepper’s not from around here, and I have no idea where she is from. She’s a bit on the quiet side too, but not like Lemon; Lemon’s just uncertain, but Pepper’s thoughtful. You can tell everything she says is important. Either that or she’s just been pulling our chains for months and having a lot of fun at our expense. Motives be damned, she’s one of the best dang keyboardists I’ve ever heard, let alone worked with, and I’ve long since given up trying to get her to spill the beans on where she comes from.
What’s our band called? “Scratch and Pepper’s Lemon Hearts Club Band.” ‘Cause, see, I’m Vinyl Scratch, and we play in clubs, and… ah, skip it. You either get it or you don’t.
One night we had just finished off a set at the Seal Club in East Canterlot. We performed one encore, a passionate rendition of “Down In The Boondocks” with Pepperdance working the moshpit like a jukebox of gyrations, and fled out the club’s back door. There was a nice private alley behind the club for us to cool down in, so long as we didn’t mind the smell of rotting fish. You’d think this far from the coast, ponies would take care not to let fish go to waste, but no.
“That was awesome, ladies!” I said. “I think we had them eating out of our hooves there. Pepper, what do you think?” I waited, but she didn’t say anything. “Okay then, Lemon, how about you?”
“It was great!” she said. “I just… wow! I was playing the drums, and they were cheering, and everypony was happy, and… wow!”
I smiled at her, and she smiled back. That’s the thing about Lemon; she really loves seeing other ponies happy. Add in her being the one making them happy, and she’s on cloud nine. “So what do you two want to do next?” I asked, looking mostly at Lemon after Pepper’s earlier silence.
Lemon looked uneasily up at the night sky. Luna’d been doing a better job than usual on it for whatever reason. “Umm… go home and sleep, I guess?” she asked.
“Oh no no no no no,” I said, and wrapped a hoof around her. “You don’t sleep after a show like that. You party! Pepper, back me up here.”
“In my country,” said Pepperdance, “when you ‘back somepony up,’ it is in battle. You are their second in the event that they die.”
“So that’s a yes, right?”
“Of course, friend Vinyl.”
“Awesome! So basically I’m thinking we should get wasted. You’ve had salt before, right, Lemon?”
She gave me that look she does whenever I’m not taking her seriously enough. “Sure! In school, Dewdrop Dazzle sometimes shared some of her special dewdrops with me.” She blushed a little. “They were, uh, dazzling.”
“Okay, so we’re going to get you worse than that. I’m talking serious, head unconscious on the bar levels of wasted here.”
“If you die of salt poisoning,” added Pepperdance, “I will finish your plate in your stead.”
Lemon’s eyes widened for just an instant, but she caught herself. Like I said, Pepper may just be pulling our chains. “Okay,” she said, and giggled. “I’m in! Let’s go find some night life!”
We didn’t have to go far to find a good place to drink. This was East Canterlot, after all. Half my gigs and most of the rest of my free time are spent there for a reason. The city’s basically divided into four parts – unofficially, of course, Celestia would never allow such a thing on paper. In the north you get your unicorns, focused around the Castle itself, with lots of golden towers and telescopes and all that jazz. The west has the pegasi, and it’s a bit more militaristic. I think originally it was just the Cloudsdale Embassy from the days when pegasi were their own separate nation, and as time went on, more and more buildings started getting built around it. Their buildings are actually pretty flat, but with lots of pillars and windows and skylights to keep them close to the air if not the sky. The south is earth pony territory, and they’re all into mansions and canals and other fancy stuff like that. Between us, I think there’s a bit of compensating going on there, proving they’re just as capable of being elegant nobility as the unicorns. That leaves the east; it’s a lot less segregated, it’s a lot less residential, and it’s a whole lot less refined. You want a good time in Canterlot, you go east.
We settled for a dirty hole in the wall called Crazy Diamond, run by a nice mulberry unicorn named Berryshine. Berryshine serves all kinds: skinflints, spendthrifts, and gamblers all alike. Her lights don’t work very well, by design, and she’s got a pretty liberal music policy: give her something, she’ll probably play it. When we entered, she was playing an old Sapphire Shores track about the inscrutability of youth or something like that. Kinda lame, but not enough to turn us away.
We found a table and ordered – or, I ordered for all of us – a round of diamond-infused salt plates. You wouldn’t think diamond would taste so good, but Canterlot was a mining town once, and it still shines through here and there. Mine was blue diamond, by the taste, which I guess matched my awesome mane.
Not everypony understands how I can see in a darkened room with sunglasses on, but I’ve developed a tolerance for darkness over the years. I checked out my drinking companions to prove it. Lemon’s the sort who wouldn’t raise an eyebrow anywhere in the unicorn district, but who stands out a bit in a dark place like this. For some reason, the brighter-colored ponies tend to be a touch higher-class, and Lemon practically glows in the dark with that yellow coat of hers. She’s got a curly blue mane, too, and she plays with it when she thinks nopony’s looking. Pretty bright colors for a bar, is all I’m saying. At least her magenta eyes don’t stand out much, commonest eye color in all Equestria. Pepper is… pepper-colored. Reddish pink coat, red mane, red tail, red pepper cutie mark. I’m pretty sure she dyes, though, since from time to time she turns up with bright green roots in her mane. The rest of the time her dull green eyes are the only color contrast, endlessly twitching back and forth as she takes in everything around her. Come to think of it, maybe Pepper’s a spy for a foreign country? I wouldn’t put it past her.
“To the band!” I said, raising my plate up high. They echoed me, our plates clinked together, and I took a nice long lick. Berryshine sure knows her stuff. “So,” I continued after I’d swallowed, “you two know what salt’s for, right?”
Pepperdance considered. “Killing slug monsters?”
“Yes! Wait. Well, probably that too. But I was thinking bonding. We just had a great show, we’re young and reckless and on top of the world, what better time to open up our favorite Lemon Hearts and find out what makes her tick?”
Lemon took another hasty lick of her diamond salt. “Oh, I don’t tick! Don’t worry about me, Vinyl.”
“Oh, but I do worry about you!” She looked instantly concerned, and I laughed. “Kidding. But I do wonder. Like, are you ever going to tell us what the hay happened with you up in the Castle? You’ve got that cutie mark” – I pointed at the three blue and green hearts on her side – “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do anything besides levitation, let alone a love spell.”
“Oh, um,” she said, and sighed. “I’d rather not.”
“Not even for your two phattest buds in all of Canterlot?”
“I… my what?” She gave me a quick glare, though slight enough that it was mixed with a smile. “Really, Vinyl, I’m with you two so I can take a break from that, okay? I was sick for a long time, and I don’t think dwelling on it’s going to make me get better any faster.”
“Sick, like… physically? Or…”
“Whichever you like.”
“In my country,” interjected Pepperdance, “we do not dwell on the past. The present is battle enough.”
Pepper’s country wasn’t something I felt like speculating about at that moment, so I let it slide. I wasn’t trying to pick on Lemon or anything, I mean, I just get curious sometimes. No word for months on where or what she’d come from, you know? First time I met her was after one of my DJ gigs; I was packing up my things – not hard when you’ve got a horn – and she came rushing up from the crowd, eyes full of wonder. Every third word she said was “wow,” and she couldn’t stop telling me how amazing I was and I saw no reason to stop her. It came out that she’d spent most of her life in and around the Castle and had never been to a club before in her life. She looked pretty emaciated, too, so that life can’t have been too great for her.
“What you should do,” I told her, “is find some live performance, like a concert. That’ll really set your mane on fire.”
“It gets better?!” she asked me.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that… they’re different strokes, y’know? But that’s where the music really comes from, is bands.”
“Are you in a band?”
“Nah. Just a DJ.”
“But you should be!” I wish I could show you just how excited she was that night. Later on I figured out that she was probably high off of how happy everypony else was, but it was still a sight to behold. “You know everything about music!”
“That’s what I always say,” I answered, “but some places still don’t hire me.”
She gasped. “We should start a band together!”
So, picture this. You got a disc jockey who sings in the shower and rarely comes closer to pure music than three sound filters away. She meets a gal who doesn’t know one damn thing about music but suddenly wants more than anything to learn. Can you possibly imagine a better beginning for a band? I was sure we were going to be so terrible that garages would kick us out. I loved the idea from the instant she first said it.
“So,” I told her once we’d agreed to things and moved someplace a bit more private, “we’ll need a style. I bet you don’t know anything about music styles at all, do you?”
She looked at her somewhat bony flank and the three hearts on it. “Is there a kind of music that’s about love?”
“Lemon,” I told her – I’d taken the time to learn her name by then, smart move on my part – “all music’s about love.”
She smiled and said “wow!” a lot, and I took that as an agreement. “Next we need to figure out what you’re going to play. You don’t play any instruments, do you? Of course not. How are you at hitting things?”
She looked at me so intensely you could have set a fire with her eyes. “I would love to hit some things.” And that’s how she became our drummer.
A pony like Pepper, on the other hoof, deserves a story of great epic mystery and spectacle for her introduction into her lives. I’d love to tell you that Lemon and I were practicing one night in the middle of a storm, and Pepper came inside from the downpour just as an immense bolt of lightning illuminated her from behind. She’d look at us as we sat there in awe of this strange creature approaching us; she’d think for a few seconds; and then she’d tell us that she was going to be our keyboardist. We’d never know where she’d come from or when she’d learned to play the keyboard or how she knew we needed a player. And fortunately for my storytelling chops – I swear to Celestia above – that’s exactly how it happened. Pepperdance, fillies and gentlecolts! Any questions? Heh. Too bad.
“Vinyl?”
“Huh?” I snapped my head up to see Lemon’s concerned face in front of me. She’s cute, I forget that sometimes. “What’s up?”
“You were spacing out there.”
“Oh, heh, sorry. What were we talking about?”
“Bonding!” She looked positively gleeful now that the pressure wasn’t on her. What did I do to deserve such dedicated enigmas in my life? “Tell me about your relationships!”
I quickly ordered another diamond-infused from Berryshine – pink that time, I’d guess – and took a hearty lick before answering. “Umm. My family’s all the usual Canterlot types, I guess. Father’s a lord of something or other. Mother likes art shows. Nothing to write home about.”
“Aaaaaaaaand?”
I looked at her funny. “And what?”
“Anything else? Don’t you have any… romantic feelings for anypony?” I swear she batted her eyelashes at me. Berryshine’s stuff must have been better than I’d thought.
“Eh, not at the moment. Nopony’s really caught my eye lately, I guess.”
Pepper spoke up from her side of the table. “But Vinyl, this is a bar.”
“…yeah?”
“Bars are where romance is found. It is traditional. Reach out and touch somepony.”
I spared a glance around the Crazy Diamond. Sure, there were plenty of ponies there who looked like they were probably single, but I wasn’t really in the mood for a one-night stand or anything like that, especially not when hanging out with my bandmates. I shrugged. “I dunno. It’s not quite as simple as that.”
“Of course it is,” said Pepper, and rose to all fours. “Watch me.”
Before we could stop her, Pepper left our table and walked off to the bar, where she started talking to an all-purple unicorn mare with her mane tied up in back. The unicorn began to blush, and about a minute later Pepper was nibbling on her ear. Two minutes in they both left the building, not even bothering to look back at us. Lemon and I stared after them in shock.
“Okay,” I said at last, “I have no idea what to say to that.”
“Oh good!” said Lemon. “I… good! Because, I was really worried there for a moment that I’d missed something extremely basic in my studies. Wow!”
“Yeah. Wow is right.”
We returned to our salt for a few minutes. It occurred to me I was going to have to pay for Pepper’s now, but then it was my band in a sense, so maybe treating them both after a successful show was part of the job. There are probably rules for that sort of thing, but we’d been doing fine without rules so far.
“I’m just worried about you!” said Lemon some time later. “You’re so understanding, and witty, and you have, uh, ‘rock star looks,’ but I never see you with anypony.”
“Are we still on this?” I asked. “What’s it with you and love anyway? …okay, I guess that was a dumb question. I’m busy, okay? My life’s full enough with just music in it.”
“But music’s about love!” she said. Hey, I can’t say I didn’t deserve that one. “Are you… Vinyl, are you scared?”
“Scared, me? With my rock star looks that totally don’t deserve those scare quotes you gave them?”
“No,” she said, leaning forward across the table a bit, “I think you are!” I eyed her empty plate and resolved not to buy her another one. “You don’t think you could do… do… whatever it was Pepperdance just did over there.”
“Well, not as fast, maybe,” I said. “That girl’s got game. But I could get with anypony in all of Canterlot if I wanted to! I’m just not in the mood.”
She crossed her hooves. “I bet you can’t.”
I rose up in indignation and stalked over to the bar. “Berryshine! This girl’s betting me I couldn’t seduce any single pony in this city if I put my mind to it. Can you believe it?”
Berryshine paused for only a second in examining her rows of salt shakers. “So? Take her bet, prove her wrong.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. You could use some fresh tail. Make whoever loses be my new dishwasher for a week, I’m a bit low on help.”
You really can’t turn your favorite barkeep down when she wants a favor. It’s totally impolite, and if you really piss her off then she might start spiking your salt or something. Spiking it with… other salt? I’m not sure how that works, but the point is, between Lemon and Berryshine I’d had enough. “All right!” I said, loud enough for all the Crazy Diamond to hear. “I, Vinyl Scratch, daughter of Surface Scratch, daughter of Record Scratch, daughter of Record Scratch, daughter of Record Scratch, accept the challenge of Lemon Hearts, daughter of… hey, Lemon, what’s your mom’s name?”
“Lonsdaleite,” Lemon said quietly from our table.
“Daughter of Lawnsdelete, daughter of I don’t really care. Either I shall seduce anypony in this city that she wants, or I shall wash Berryshine’s dishes for a whole week!”
“And when you win, the yellow girl washes my dishes instead.”
“Right!”
Satisfied, I retreated to our table to finish the last of my second salt plate. Lemon was looking pretty excited, though more in her usual way, not in a way-too-much-salt way. Despite my promise to get her snoring on the bar, it was probably prudent not to let her get any farther, just so I didn’t get into any even more ridiculous agreements. “How you doing?” I asked her as I sat down.
“Great!” she said. “I really get to choose whom you’ll be, um, seducing?”
“Sure. Make it a toughie… when I see my face in those dishes after you’re done with them, I want to have earned it.”
“Okay!” She got a faraway look, like maybe in her head she was going through everypony in Canterlot and sorting them by how hard it’d be for me to get them in the sack. Hay, maybe that’s exactly what she was doing. “Do you want a mare or a stallion?”
“Eh, I don’t care,” I said, and really I didn’t. My rakish charm should work on most anypony, and it’s not like one sex’s guaranteed better in bed than the other. “Somepony who’s into chicks, I guess, I don’t want to get involved in any experimental sex-change spells. And they should be single, I’m not a homewrecker.”
“Definitely,” said Lemon. “Wow! This is going to be great. Vinyl, I should go sleep so I’ll have time to plan this out in the morning. Can you meet me in front of the Royal Riff at noon tomorrow?”
I looked at her skeptically. “Lemon, you know my sleeping habits. I can do two, maybe.”
“Two should work! Oh, I hope I can sleep tonight! We had that great show, and you’re letting me set you up with somepony, and I just… wow! Good night, Vinyl!”
“No, wait--!” I called out to her as she left, but it was too late. Looked like I really was going to be paying Berryshine for everypony’s salt. Oh well. Sometimes I just really didn’t get Lemon – in her position, I’d have been laughing all the way home at how I was going to find her somepony completely incompatible and how much trouble she’d have to go through and how fun it would be to watch, but Lemon’s enthusiasm didn’t feel malicious at all. It was like she was just happy I’d be seducing somepony. Though that probably wouldn’t stop her from making it as hard as possible, just because I’d told her to. Women!
I looked thoughtfully over at the saltshakers at the bar, but I had an appointment to keep the next day. No sense sticking around, especially with both Lemon and Pepper gone their separate ways. I paid Berryshine, ran a hoof through my mane to make sure it was still properly wild, and headed off home.
So: the Royal Riff Music Hall. Royal’s an earth pony, off-gray fellow with orange eyes, who thought the state of music in Canterlot was undersophisticated. In fairness, he wasn’t wrong. So he and Lyrica Heartstrings, the famous opera singer, got together to build his music hall in the center of town. It offers various operas, solo performances, ensemble concerts, and so on, throughout the year, all at a much higher class than me and the girls would ever play at. There are rumors the place is haunted, even though it’s only a few years old, but really there are rumors that any half-decent music place is haunted. It’s kind of a test of quality. I’ve never met Royal or Lyrica myself, nor even listened to any of their performances, but I know the hall by reputation. Hard not to, in my line of work.
When I got there at a little after three, head still a little foggy from the salt the night before, I found both Lemon and Pepper waiting for me outside with a mysterious-looking bag lying on the ground. Lemon looked disappointed, and Pepper… well, it wasn’t one of her more emotional moments. No sign of her purple unicorn conquest, not like that was a big surprise. She’d looked like a thrill-seeker, more in it for a new experience than for any sort of commitment. Or at least, that’s the best I could do to figure out how the hay Pepper had won her over so dang quickly.
“You’re late!” said Lemon, the moment I got within earshot.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
“No, you’re really late! You missed everything!”
I blinked at her from behind my sunglasses. “Hey, settle down. What’s this everything that I missed, exactly?”
Lemon huffed angrily, turned to Pepper for support, gave up, and turned back. “I was going to show you her! I mean, it’s okay, it’s not the end of the world, you can still meet her afterward, but I thought your first impression could be here and it was going to be so romantic!”
I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t follow any of that. “So… it’s a her, huh? Guess you got inspired by Pepper’s little show last night? But I should warn you, cute as you are, after this gig is over we’re not becoming one of those bands who spend every night screwing each other. I’ve heard that never works out.”
Lemon stared at me in horror. “I… what? With, with you and Pepperdance? Eww, no! Uh, that is...” – she turned to Pepper, her horror mounting as she realized what she’d just said – “I mean, wait, I, look…”
“Do not worry yourself,” said Pepperdance. “You are not the type I invite beneath my bedsheets. I prefer those who have tasted deeper of the fruits of love.”
“Love’s my special talent, you…!” Lemon broke off and forced her more usual smile back onto her face. “Wow, er, okay! That sure got weird quickly, but there’s no sense in getting mad about it. Not when we need to tell Vinyl all about her brand new marefriend!”
“Lover,” I corrected.
“Well, one or the other!”
“Artfully seduced lover.”
She gave up. “Vinyl, behold!”
I beheld. Or, well, I tried my best, but it wasn’t too clear what she wanted me beholding. The bag they had with them was unlabeled and I couldn’t tell what was in it by the shape. The front of the music hall was about the same as ever, as far as I could tell: huge marble pegasus-style pillars, creeping vines that looked natural until you noticed they were grown into the shapes of music notes, sandy brick walls. A poster by the front door advertising that day’s main attraction. Some glitter on the street below, probably left over from some big musical performance. “I don’t get it,” I said at last.
Pepperdance cleared her throat. “Look at the poster, Vinyl,” she said. So I did.
This is where I’m supposed to tell you that the girl on that poster was the most beautiful mare I’d ever seen. Use lots of vocabulary that nopony ever uses unless they’re trying to be romantic, words like ‘flowing’ and ‘dazzling’ and ‘heartbreakingly.’ Write an epic poem to the depth and beauty in her purple eyes or something. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really feeling it. She wasn’t ugly or anything, but she was hardly glamorous. Dull gray coat, dark gray mane that was done up on her head with just the minimum of effort. A little bit of shine to it, I suppose, though nothing like mine. Eyelashes all fancied up like you see on ponies just in from across the oceans. Eyes staring directly at the viewer, full of… well, I guess disdain would be the best word for it. Like she knew automatically that whoever was out there couldn’t measure up to her and that giant string instrument standing beside her. I thought I’d done looking at her, but then my gaze drifted a few inches downwards and I noticed her smile.
Nah, smile wasn’t quite right either. What she had was a smirk. A delighted smirk. Forget that dull coat and mane and stuff: this mare’s best feature was her face. I still wasn’t about to call her beautiful, but those eyes over those lips… huh. Striking, was the word. Really striking.
I guess I looked into her face a bit longer than I’d meant to, because when I looked away, Lemon was practically beside herself with self-congratulation. I put on my best evasive voice. “So, she looks all right, I guess. Who is she?”
“Who…?” Lemon’s energy vanished in an instant and her head slumped tiredly onto Pepper’s side. Pepper showed no signs of having noticed. “She doesn’t know who Octavia is, Pepper,” she said to our friend’s red coat. “What did I do to deserve this? How does she not know who Octavia is?”
Pepper, incredibly, nuzzled her in what I could only assume was sympathy. “Vinyl is very familiar with a wide variety of topics,” she answered, “yet she is fiercely proud of the things she does not know. It is a part of what makes her company so intriguing.”
“You’re a spy,” I told her flatly. “You’re a spying spy from Celestia probably doesn’t know where, and you sit around all day and spy on us. That’s what you do.”
“You speak hurtfully, friend Vinyl.”
I ignored her, already tired of pretending anything I said would get an explanation out of her. If Pepper wanted to try to analyze me, that was none of my business. Well, okay, it was all kinds of my business, but I could pretend it wasn’t for the time being. “Look, Lemon,” I said instead, “I’m sorry for not living up to your expectations. But hey, obviously you know who this chick is, right? So why don’t you tell me about her, and that way you can feel good about yourself ‘cause you taught me something you think’s important! Okay?”
That seemed to work. Sometimes old Vinyl Scratch knows just the right buttons to push, what can I say? Comes with the DJ job. Lemon rebalanced herself and coughed a few times – to sound more impressive, I hope – before she began talking. “Okay,” she said. “So, um, that’s Octavia von Cut, musical prodigy. She’s a really good cellist, like, really really good. She’s performed at the Grand Galloping Gala and the Canterlot Garden Party, and she’s only about our age. Her bandmates vary, since she basically gets to decide whom she wants to play with, only now she’s trying out a solo career.” She pointed a hoof towards the music hall. “This was her first solo performance. I’m really sorry you missed it.”
I wasn’t. That all sounded suspiciously like classical music, and there’s little less exciting in the world of music than sitting quietly for three hours and applauding politely at irregular intervals scheduled by dead composers hundreds of years ago. Besides, I’ve played for a princess’s wedding – surely that beats the Garden Party? There was one other thing that was bugging me, though. “A few months ago,” I told Lemon, “I was basically teaching you that music was a thing that existed. How come you know all about this Octarchy lady and I don’t?”
“Octavia. And, uh.” She blushed, in a proud-looking sort of way. “I’ve been reading about the music scene a lot. Scenes, really. Enough to have heard of her and think you might work out with her. Then I ended up doing a lot of research last night to make sure.”
School for Gifted Unicorns graduates, what can’t you do? And where the hay do you do research in the middle of the night, anyhow? Still, given I was still trying to make myself look committed after I’d screwed up by getting there late and not knowing who Octavia was, I figured I’d be better off sticking to the topic at hoof. "Okay, so she just did a one-mare show here? Did you two see it? How’d it go?”
Pepperdance smiled. “In my country, a mare so deft with her hooves would receive many suitors. Friend Lemon Hearts would likely describe her performance as ‘wow.’ “
“Hey! I… well, okay, yeah. But several wows! Four, maybe!”
I let out a low whistle; four sounded like a lot. “And you’re sure she’s into mares?”
“Well,” said Lemon, and shifted back and forth on her hooves, “nopony really knows. She’s never been involved romantically with anypony, at least not publicly, and she’s well-known enough it would be a miracle if she’d managed to conceal something like that. So she’s probably some sort of ice queen or something, and it’ll be up to you and your dashing personality to defrost her heart! She’s a sophisticated cellist, and you’re a disrespectable disc jockey who plays in a club band! She wears a bow-tie and lives with her father; you wear sunglasses and never talk about your parents! It’s the perfect love story.”
She was probably right, at that. “Hang on… she lives with her dad?”
“Well, yeah. He’s very protective of her, even though she’s a big-shot cellist and everything. You’ve probably heard of him… Baron von Cut?”
“What?!” I stared at my traitorous bandmates in horror. “You’re trying to set me up with a snobbish classical musician whose father is the most famous barber in Equestria? Have you seen the state I keep my mane in, Lemon? Were you trying to find my worst enemy?!”
Lemon’s eyes shone with delight. “Oh wow, I knew you two would be perfect together!”
For a moment I seriously considered washing Berryshine’s dishes, but then I remembered the whole bet on my family’s honor thing. I couldn’t give up just yet. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. I guess I’ve dug my grave and now you’re burying me in it. Thanks for the info, Lemon; I guess I’ll hang around some classical music types till I see her, give her a red rose or something, and…”
“Oh no,” said Lemon, “you don’t need to worry about any of that! This is about you winning her heart, not about making you find a way to meet her. I’ve got it all worked out. There’s a party at the von Cut mansion in South Canterlot right now, celebrating the successful beginning of Octavia’s solo career. It’s invitation only, so we’ll need to sneak in, but once we’ve done that you’ll have clear unfettered access to the girl of your dreams!”
“As a friend of mine once said… wow.” I gave her a smile. “I think I underestimated you, Lemon. Didn’t take you for a big planner.”
“I think you underestimated just how little sleep I got last night. I know everything there is to know about Octavia von Cut.”
“Yeah?” I asked, and grinned. “What’s her sign?”
“Virgo,” Lemon said immediately.
“I was joking.”
She looked at me flatly. “I wasn’t.”
“Fair enough. All right, so I’ll need a way to sneak into Baron von Cut’s place. Unless you’ve got that part planned for me already too?”
“Pepperdance?” asked Lemon, a little smugly, and Pepper opened the mysterious bag that’d been lying there the whole time. I trotted over and took a look inside.
“Oh, you’re kidding me…”
The von Cut mansion… well, I mentioned South Canterlot’s full of canals, right? Baron von Cut took that canal system and turned it into a full-grown moat around his place. Supposedly it’s full of scissor fish, though I couldn’t confirm that one way or the other. Can’t tell one fish from the next. The mansion’s only two floors high, but the ground floor’s super tall, and it’s all over with bricks and arched windows and the whole shebang. There’s an extensive garden area too, blocked off from the view from the street by some huge hedges just at the edge of the moat. You wouldn’t think being a barber would bring in as much dough as all that, but then this is Canterlot, and there’s hardly a respectable pony around without a ridiculously elaborate manecut. Heh, or wig, if the rumors about Lyrica Heartstrings are true…
Anyway, the end result of the moat and hedges and giant metal gates and stuff is that there’s really only one way into the mansion, and that’s across the bridge. Luckily for us, the front door to the mansion was open. Less luckily, there was a guard in the middle of the bridge to make sure nopony came in who wasn’t supposed to be there. Even less luckily, that guard was a mountain of a pegasus, pure white with red eyes and the smallest wings I’d ever seen. The wings didn’t matter, though, because I think this guy’s muscles could have swallowed us whole if we ticked him off. So we were going to need to play it cool, try our level best not to tick him off, and hope to hay that Lemon’s disguises would work out.
“All right, girls,” I said, “I’m pretty sure I’m the best actor here, so just follow my lead and let me do the talking. Lemon, try to look professional. Pepper, do whatever comes naturally.”
“I didn’t know you were an actor!” said Lemon.
“Hey, I’m a mare of many hats.”
Pepper gazed at me suspiciously. “Friend Vinyl, I have never before today seen you in a hat.”
I pulled the striped boater hat I was wearing downwards a few inches in embarrassment, and noticed my fellows doing the same, probably thinking it was traditional or something. A mare from the ivory tower – probably literally, come to think of it, given Princess Celestia’s tastes – and a mare from a foreign country, trying to act out a time-honored music tradition. Oh, but we were doomed. I could only hope they’d learned the song well enough.
“Aha, beautiful guardsman!” I called to the huge white pegasus as we approached. “You are a credit to your post; now stand aside, for behind you is our party and we must make merry within! The day outside, she is beautiful, yes! And yet for us, the party calls.”
“Yeah?” asked the pegasus in an ominous rumble. “Where’s your invitations?”
“Invitations?” I asked. “Ah, sir, you wound me! We do not require invitations, for we are expected.”
“Yeah?”
“But of course, for we are the entertainment of the evening! Where we step, stallions laugh, mares hyperventilate, and foals gain cutie marks!”
“Yeah?” He looked markedly unimpressed. “So what is it you do?”
“Well, sir, this is the house of the most magnificent barber in all of Equestria.” I doffed my hat and pointed it towards my matching striped vest. “Naturally we are a barbershop quartet!”
The pegasus stood there for several seconds, apparently weighing the plausibility of our words. “Now see here,” he said at last. “Quartet means four, and there’s only three of you.”
Tartarus, he was slightly smarter than he looked. Well, there was no turning back now. “Alas, sir!” I cried, flinging my hooves around his cannon of a neck. “You wound me, you are so correct! Our fourth, he has left us for a zebra woman, and we are left, um, too small. The shame to our families, if they only knew we dared remain a barbershop quartet with only three singers! But wait…” – I pulled back, in mock surprise and discovery – “…yes, of course! You shall be our fourth, sir! You are just the low note we need in our careers!”
As I’d hoped, the mammoth looked flattered by the idea. “Me? Well, gosh, I… you could use somepony to yell yeah in the background?”
My commitment to musical integrity and my need to get inside that mansion battled together briefly. “Sir, that’s what barbershop’s all about,” I told him.
“Yeah?” He wavered. “Wait… but you’re all mares!”
My face fell. “Excuse us for a moment, sir,” I said, and turned back to my bandmates. We huddled closely together. “Any ideas?” I asked.
Lemon looked hesitant. “Well, there was Spell #25 from school…”
“And that’ll help?” I asked.
“It should, if I remember how to—“
“Good enough! Cast whatever it is before this guy gets too suspicious.”
Seconds later, I turned back to him triumphantly. “You’re wrong, sir!” I said. “See? All stallions here.” As one, we reached up our hooves and pulled on our magnificent black mustaches. “We are men and we like to sing!”
The equine planetoid’s face lit up; apparently that had been his last objection. Pepperdance walked over and produced, to my undying amazement, a fourth costume perfectly sized for him; and so we were ready for action.
I’ll save you any long and detailed explanation of the inside of the von Cut mansion or the party inside. It was full of Canterlot high society, standing around stiffly and competing to see which of them could pretend to be the least bored. Some I recognized, others not. I didn’t see Octavia herself anywhere, though, which meant we were going to stall as long as possible at least until she showed up, at which point I’d be on my own. Given our outfits and the fact we had brought the guardspony in with us, the only real way for us to hide was in plain sight.
There was no stage inside the mansion’s main hall, but we found a relatively unoccupied side of the room and got into formation. The guests were already beginning to stare at us – not the Baron yet, though, thank Celestia – and their attention only increased as I cast quick voice-amplifying and voice-tuning spells on us. Normally tuning spells are tacky, but with big white on our side, I felt we were going to need every spark of help we could get. We began, voices belting out over the heads of the assembled socialites until in no time every eye in the place was on us.
“Oh…”
“Ohh…”
“Ohhh…”
“YEAH!!!!!!!!”
Goodbye my Pony Island baby,
Farewell my one true love (true love) (YEAH!!!!)
I'm gonna go away and leave you
Never to see you any (never gonna see you YEAH!!!!)
I'm gonna shoo-be-doo across the sea,
Never to return again (return YEAH!!!!!)
So goodbye, YEAH!!!!, so long forever,
Goodbye my Pony Island, Goodbye my Pony Island, Goodbye my Pony Island…
We all fall for:
Some mare with real great grooves
Some mare that's got big hooves—
And that was as far as we got before Baron von Cut himself walked over to us and glared at me right in my big purple sunglasses. His blue and red striped bowtie was almost askew, he was so displeased. “Gatecrashers,” he said, “are not welcome at this party.”
“Gatecrashers!?” I repeated in mock indignation. “Ah, but sir, we are but humble entertainers, and…”
“I wrote the guest list,” he said. “You, DJ Pon-3, are not on it. Get out.”
Of all the ponies in Equestria to be recognized by! I glanced around desperately, but Octavia was still nowhere to be seen. I turned to Lemon, who looked hopeless, and Pepper, who looked completely impassive. “Well,” I said to the Baron, “I guess there’s only three things we can say to that.”
He raised an eyebrow, brilliant blue eyes piercing into my conscience. “And those are?”
I gave my bandmates a quick nod, and we all three fled in different directions. “Goodbye!” “Farewell!” “So long forever!”
The next few minutes were something of a blur: I had no idea of the mansion’s layout, and knew only that I wasn’t leaving, given how there was only one door and all that. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t being followed – I guess maybe mister muscles was the only guard, and he was probably getting chewed out something fierce? – and leant against a wall to steady myself and relax my breathing.
I took a look around, and discovered I’d wound up in a fancy-looking hallway. Ornate candles lined the walls above me, the ceiling was high and arched, and there was a distinct smell of pineapple in the air. Most importantly, though, the doors were labeled, and the one I was standing directly next to said “Baron” on it. Scarcely daring to breathe lest I disturb my luck, I scouted out the other nearby doors until I found it: Octavia. Nothing left to lose, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Who’s there?” asked a proper, feminine, elegant voice from around a corner of the chamber. “Is that you, father? Do you know what has plunged the place into such turmoil?”
I’m not sure if I’d had anything planned for this moment, but if so, the confusion following my confrontation with Baron von Cut had totally knocked it out of me. “I’m not your father,” I said, and winced. I hurriedly removed my voice-amplifying spell from before. “Uh, sorry. Actually, I’m afraid I caused the turmoil.”
There was a sound of hoofsteps, and Octavia von Cut stepped into my view for the first time. She drew back briefly in shock, but then leant forward and scrutinized me carefully. “Let’s see… a rakish-looking pony, wearing an outrageous disguise, sneaking into my private chamber in the middle of a great confusion.” She gasped. “Did you break in here to seduce me?!”
“Well…” Half a dozen potential alibis flashed quickly through my head, but none of them seemed remotely adequate to explain all the circumstances, especially since this girl actually seemed pretty intelligent. So I gave up. “…yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”
So. You all remember how at the start of my story, I said how I was going to tell you about three words? We’ve finally gotten to that point. This is when Octavia said three words I wasn’t remotely expecting her to say; the three words that were going to turn my life upside-down.
“Oh, how splendid!”
