“No.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Cooomee ooonn.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Just this one time? Pleeasee?”
“NO. You cannot, in anyway, shape or form modify my C-EL-1O rifle with your P0N-3 bass.”
“But it's so quiet. Shouldn’t it be, you know, cool?”
“It’s supposed to be quiet!”
“You too.”
“What?!”
“Oh well, I mean, if I happened to be fitting the bass into that sweetness you wouldn’t have to carry it for a while. It’s pretty big for such a quiet setup.”
“I said no. No means no. It’s final, don’t you get that?”
“You wouldn’t have to talk to me either.”
“Take it. Here. Take it, please.”
“Sweet! Thanks.”
“No rush. I mean it. Seriously now. Take all the time you want. And then some more.”
“This is a sexy piece of machine, you know?”
“I really didn’t. What happened to us not talking?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle. Oh, it’s so sleek...Oops.”
“Oops?”
“Chill, chill. Just the panel. I got it. Wait, this baby has a USB port?”
“Yeah, sure. Funny. There’s no-”
“I’m being serious, look.”
“So you’re right. That’s actually peculiar.”
“More like that’s actually kind of awesome. Hold up a second.”
“What now? We’re supposed to get up there sometime today, you know?”
“Yeah yeah just...there we go, got it!”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Heh. What kind of DJ would I be without at least a couple of tunes on me, always, in a easy access flash drive?”
“No, I mean, where did you get that? You’ve not exactly wearing any...pockets.”
“Magic...obviously. You’re weird. You’re the one wearing clothes ‘n’ stuff, and you’re calling me weird? I like that.”
“I never said so in the first place. That’s hardly fair. And I don’t even want to know about that last bit.”
“Alrighty...you like dubstep? Oh nevermind, that’s not really a question at all. I’ll put some on.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m always serious! Except when I’m not, but still. How much you want to bet the gun’s got some cannons on it?”
“Cannons?”
“Ya know, speakers. Sheesh, do you even listen to music?”
“You did see my cutie mark, yes?”
“Like a fancy ‘and’ symbol, yeah. What about it?”
“I...I don’t even. How are you so-”
“Incredible? No need to gush, I know, I know. Just part of being DJ P0N-3. Don’t worry, I don’t let it go to my head."
“Really not that much of a brain to find in there anyway.”
“What was that?”
“Um. Nothing. Whoah! What the?!”
“Pretty awesome beat, huh?”
“This is not music! This is a coordinated assault on my eardrums! Are you a Spectre?!”
“Don’t be like that. I’m pretty sure I listened to your kind of music once. Got stuck in an elevator. It was great. Anyway, no. I’m a DJ, really. You’re the one with ghosts’n’stuff.”
“Well, we’re here now. At last.”
“Woah, already? Doesn’t that mean we’re early?”
“Yes, we are. Probably from me trying to get away from you the whole time!”
“What was that?”
“Er...just remembering how I was going to be a solo operative...”
“I know, you sure got lucky! Unce unce! Yeah!!”
“Lucky. Yes. Now turn it off!”
“Fine. What a killjoy.”
“You do realize that over this ridge there’s a cluster of raving- hey get back here!”
“You said raving!”
“Not your kind of raving! I mean flying spittle and crazy hyper space monster raving!”
“Tell me again how is that not my kind of rave?”
“You’re insane. You’re just utterly, totally insane. Sharp teeth! Big claws! Scariness! They are not nice! What part of this aren’t you getting?!”
“Hey hey hey! Breathe. Breathe. Right, just relax. That’s right. Pre-show jitters.”
“At least tell me you know the plan.”
“Sure thing. We’re going to put the little red dot in the middle of there and drop the bass...er, bomb so hard that...oh...that’s given me an idea...”
“What?”
“...Yeah, this is awesome.”
“Why are you smiling? Why are you smiling like that?”
“Oh, you’ll see... Just you rest up.”
“I might never rest easy again, seeing that smile.”
“Trust me. You’ll like what I’ve got in mind.”
“Somehow I doubt that. You’re not going to give back my C-EL-1O until you’ve gone through with sharing your madness, are you?
“Nope.”
“I’m sure I’m already catching it...”
“Shush, just let the S.C. err, M.C. handle this. P0N-3 always puts on an awesome show...”
Five minutes later the electric blue mane of Vinyl Scratch whipped away from the inner workings of the C-EL-1O’s more clandestine components.
Operative Octavia took a steadying breath. “I must admit to a certain...breathlessness. I’m not usually one to let another take charge, yet...”
“Yeah, I tend to have that effect. I call it Wub. After this I’ll explain it to you over a drink somewhere. Even I’ll want a bit of peace and quiet after this show!” she said with a wicked grin.
Octavia in her skin-tight bodysuit, glowing with pulsing lines of technology looked dreamy as she smiled. For a moment the air wasn’t so raspy, the suns quite so hot... “mmmm...Peace...Quiet...”
Vinyl pointed the heavy rifle at a speck far into the valley ahead, a thick dark blotch of seething life on a barren world. A tiny red dot flashed into being at its heart, smaller than the iris of an eye but, to the computers looking for it bright as a supernova.
Nuclear launch detec-detec-detec-de-de-de-de-de-detected, Wooah!! It’s gonna be a haaayyyyy-daaaaayyyyyy!! FROGS, DRIED OUT FROGS. FROGS. FROGS. Error error, coffee incident! Error, error, Coffee incident!! Purple. Purple. Purple. RED! WHAT A PRETTY RED RIBBON!! ERROR ERROR rawr raw rawrrrr zeeeeeeeeek!
Vinyl’s expression need not be described. Octavia face-hoofed.
“The adjutant is a little under the weather,” she said diplomatically.
“Yeah, every last psi storm there is. Though you know...she had a kind of beat going there. I could mix that.” Vinyl shook her head. “Later though. Listen to this.”
Ocatvia looked into the yawning abyss of the sky. Only then did the words filter through her oppressed sensibility. All the same there it was, somehow brighter than the light and stronger than the flame, that sound.
“You did not upload your accursed ‘music’ to a nuclear warhead.”
Vinyl’s grin was fission with bait.
“You did not upload music to a nuclear warhead!” She could already make out the words.
“No, I’m sending the creep down there a sonic recreation of the end of the world. Pretty sneaky, huh?”
The sky lit with a flash of incandescent fury as the missile pounded into the lower atmosphere, and by timing or chance the beat dropped with it. Vinyl started to convulse in that manner Octavia had the distinct displeasure of knowing of as ‘head banging.’
Music shook the mountain ranges, focused and reflected by the curvature of the basin. All these miles away Octavia could feel it shaking the grit beneath her, even shaking into her.
The two dove into cover and time slowed to a standstill mire. Octavia’s wandering eye caught the lazy spin of a dust particle on the dry air, one among slowly twirling millions. Her own hair came around with tectonic slowness. The life and death of a universe seemed terribly hasty against the molasses of that moment.
As her eye fell upon the unicorn the operative realized she didn’t know if she wanted to kiss Vinyl or kill her. It all seemed impossibly ridiculous. Considering these feelings during a nuclear detonation hardly seemed as ludicrous as feeling this at all. With the slowness of a quiet tide the radiance of white light caught up with the two and blinded the world to their existence.
It took entirely too long to abate. The earth heaved and sky shattered as the two little ponies huddled together.
Later on Octavia liked to tell herself it was intellect that decided her; you could certainly kiss a mare many more times than you could kill her, discounting a certain finesse with a defibrillator... Not at all was it the fact that even as the world exploded and seethed around them, held tight to one another the earth pony felt...safe.
Though she never said it aloud, Vinyl felt the same way. They nuked happily ever after, which for the extreme majority of things they met turned out to be a very short ever after indeed. Octavia was even caught...ahem...head banging, once.
She is still very much denying that she ever did such a thing.