As the records started spinning, another rush of energy went down Vinyl’s veins, shaking her with anticipation for the inevitably epic beats she was about to lay down. With a few tweaks of knobs and sliders, a simple melody was underway. Catchy and hummable, it set the tone for the rest of the track.
Her hooves turned on a few more loops, giving the score a slow, heavy beat and an unassuming yet fulfilling bassline. It made the performance better without stealing the show from the amazing melody. It was doing its job wonderfully.
Time for the true music to come out and play. The melody slowly grew in intensity, as the bassline and drums followed behind. With each scratch and tweak, the track grew faster and harder before coming to a two-beat lull.
And then… the drop. That beautiful, beautiful drop.
A more upper-class pony might assume someone detonated a bomb in an aquarium. While these complicated twangs, vibes and beats weren’t made with any old run-of-the-mill instrument, they still came together in an intensely satisfying way. It was barely melodical, but it was definitely musical. Vinyl was swamped in synths and basslines, waves of sound bounding off the walls. Every fibre of her being was absorbed in the sounds of dubstep.
Except for the part of her that was busy loving her life.
The DJ was about to commence her favourite part of the electronic experience: the crescendo. She moved the records faster, turned up the volume and sped up the drumbeat. Her body shook in time with the beat, lost in the LFO. The build-up was almost complete: the drums were crushed together into a single whirring and the complex main tune repeated itself with great speed. Finally, everything was released in one gigantic crash of noise.
There were no more drums, no more complicated sound effects, not even a bass line; just a soft, relaxing melody, slowly fading away to signify the end of another successful mix. That might just be good enough for tomorrow night’s setlist, Vinyl thought, huffing with exhilaration. She powered down her equipment and brushed a few drops of sweat out of her ivory white coat.
Her eyes squinted as they searched for the exit out of her basement. It was great for practising in: plenty of space, club-like reverb, very few distractions. But it was still a dark basement, and as such wasn’t a great place to just hang about in. Vinyl’s stomach rumbled. Time to raid the fridge. With a lick of her watering lips, she trotted upstairs and out of her little cave. I’m gonna have me a juicy… Her thoughts of dinner ceased when she entered the kitchen and saw a familiar face at the table; a familiar face that was supposed to be on a tour with her band.
Octavia was drinking a mug of coffee, sighing in despair with every sip. Her eyelids sagged and her ebony black mane and tail were frizzier than normal. The foreleg that was holding the mug was the only part of her that moved. Worst of all, she wasn’t happy about coming home.
“Octy? You’re home early,” the DJ said, opening the fridge door and blasting herself with artificial chills. “Like, really early. What happened to the tour?”
“We called it off,” sighed Octavia, putting down her mug so her forehooves could support her drooping head. “Our practice session didn’t go so well. We couldn’t get a single note right.”
“Yeah, right, it didn’t go so well,” Vinyl scoffed, sitting opposite her roommate with an apple in her hoof. “A bad sello player wouldn’t have played at the Grand Galloping Gala! I mean… you’ll never compare to my music, but… you’re not terrible.”
“It’s pronounced ‘chello,’ Vinyl. And you’re… right,” Octavia said, rolling her eyes at Vinyl’s horrible excuse for a compliment. “But every time I tried to play a simple note… let me show you.”
As her friend withdrew her cello from its case, Vinyl gazed in anticipation. She isn’t going to sound that bad, she thought to
herself. She’s probably set some impossibly high standard for herself. She’s going to play some average-sounding tune, and I’ll tell her it isn’t as bad as she thinks it is. She’ll realise she’s just nervous, go back on her tour, and leave me alone in the house—
SCREEEECH!
An unbearable sound assaulted Vinyl’s ears, like dragon claws scraping a chalkboard. It hit her so hard she lost her balance on the chair and fell to the floor with a relatively nicer-sounding thump. Tapping her dizzy eyes back into sync, she looked up towards the cellist who was on her hind legs and supporting her weight with her upright instrument. “What…” the DJ wheezed, “what was that?!”
“That,” Octavia said, “was supposed to be a G sharp. And… it wasn’t.”
“Darn straight it wasn’t,” groaned Vinyl, ruffling her mane back into the right kind of unkempt and straightening her sunglasses. “You can’t do anything with SFX like that!”
“I think our instruments might have been hexed. I didn’t want to think anyone would go so far as to sabotage us, but the n… the sound doesn’t lie.”
“Get new instruments, then,” Vinyl Scratch said.
“Vinyl, just because our instruments don’t have a big tray of switches and knobs doesn’t mean they’re not expensive.” Octavia carefully stored her cello away. “It would be much cheaper to pay Twilight Sparkle to remove the hex.”
“Twilight… who?” Vinyl shrugged.
The cellist rolled her eyes once more. “Don’t you keep up with current affairs, Vinyl? Twilight Sparkle is the Element of Magic, one of a team of six who saved Equestria from certain doom. Thrice! If anyone can de-hex my cello, it’s her.”
“I’m afraid I can’t de-hex your cello, Octavia.”
The cellist flinched slightly, staring wide-eyed at the Element of Magic. Standing in front of her was the Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s personal student, master of more individual spells than any living unicorn … and even she couldn’t remove this curse. Octavia looked down at her precious instrument, lying useless on the library floor.
“Welp. I guess that’s that.” Vinyl Scratch smiled.
“It seems to be that way, Vinyl.” Octavia trotted slowly to the door, head hung low. “Thank you for your time anyway, Twilight,” she sighed.
“Wait, Octavia!” Twilight said.
“Yes?” The cellist turned around.
“I can’t fix your cello… but I know what’s wrong with it.” The purple mare gestured toward the basement door. “Follow me.”
The musicians looked at each other, then back to Twilight as she passed through the doorway into the dark room below. They continued to wonder just what was going to happen down there as they went down the stairway, wood creaking below their hooves. When they finally reached the bottom, they weren’t sure what they just stepped inside. The benches were covered in glass beakers and tubes, the ground was damp and the smell of sulphur and strawberries mingled in the air. It was like they had stepped into a laboratory.
A laboratory with a set of turntables by one of the walls.
“Hey, now!” Vinyl chuckles, dashing over to the decks. “I didn’t know you were a DJ, Twilie!”
You didn’t even know she existed until today, Vinyl, Octavia thought, rolling her eyes as she stood by the stairs. Somehow.
“Well, I only got them a couple of days ago. I figured I should learn how to use them.”
“But you don’t strike me as the DJ type, Twilight,” said Octavia, looking at the two mares standing by the hyper-advanced record player. They barely had a thing in common. “Why do you want to be one?”
“Well… remember how I said I know what’s wrong with your cello?” Twilight said. “It’s a very powerful hex. I’ve had to deal with at least seven cases so far today, and the counterspell just wouldn’t work.”
“So… why did you buy this?” Vinyl asked, tapping the turntable.
“I received a letter from the Princess earlier today. Reports of this hex have flooded in from all over the continent. Drums, guitars, pianos, glockenspiels… all the instruments in the world have been reduced to makers of unbearable screeching. Even singing voices are affected.”
“Hang on,” Octavia said. “If this hex affects every instrument in the world, how come I haven’t heard any complaining from Vinyl about her ‘decks’ being broken?”
Twilight solemnly stares at the ground. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “Turntables don’t seem to be affected by the hex, and nobody knows why. And as for why I bought these decks… Most of the music in the world was classical, rock and mainstream pop. Now that they’re gone, we’ll need more dance artists to fill the gaps… and I’d like to be one of those artists.”
“And you want me to teach you,” interrupted Vinyl Scratch. “Say no more. Lessons start at noon tomorrow. Or maybe two in the afternoon, depending on how long I sleep in.”
Octavia facehoofed.
“Uhm… not really,” Twilight chuckled nervously. “I just brought you down here in case anyone was outside spying on us. Nobody’s aware this is a worldwide thing yet, and I’d like it to stay that way for as long as possible.”
“You SURE you don’t want coaching from the greatest DJ in Ponyville? My rates are mildly inexpensive.” The ‘professional’ DJ grinned at Twilight earnestly, leaning on the turntable.
“Yes, she’s sure,” Octavia groans, rubbing hoof on forehead wrinkled with annoyance.
“I’ve got all the bases covered, Vinyl,” Twilight says. “I’m reading a manual on DJ techniques, and I’ve prepared a spell that will help me on the creative side.”
“A spell? For making music?” Vinyl raised an eyebrow.
“Yes.” Twilight nods. “I call it the Inspire Me spell. It sends me into a state of hypnosis where my creativity and memory are boosted, allowing me to think of original melodies with much greater ease. I’ve never tested it out, but the theory’s all there. Unless this hex messes with the space-time fabric, my spell won’t make anything explode.”
“Really?” Octavia asked, doubtful and slightly concerned of these claims of effortless music production. “Why don’t you show it to us, then?”
“Well, I was hoping I could demonstrate it to my friends first… but I suppose a practice run couldn’t hurt.” Twilight turned to the other unicorn in the room. “Vinyl, can you give me some distance?”
The white unicorn trotted to the other side of the room, and turned around just in time to see Twilight’s horn glow with blinding light as her eyes close…
When Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the dark laboratory below her library. Instead, she was standing atop a cloud high in the sky. The shift in brightness hurt at first; she had to squint for a while. It was a familiar sensation thanks to her visit to the Cloudsdale Best Young Flier competition: pillowy and damp. Thank goodness her Walk On Clouds spell was still working after all this time.
The cloud she was standing on was long, straight and thin, like a white wispy walkway. At the end: a purple speck and an entrancing melody. The sound… what did the DJ manual call it again? Synth? Yes, that’s about right. The synth melody begged her to approach, a command her hooves were more than willing to obey.
Her body wasn’t listening to her commands to stop. Twilight simply had to walk forward, towards that purple thing in the distance. A bass drum pounded once, and the melody changed. She could see what that speck was now: a pony, curled up in sleep. Somehow, she knew that pony was important. Her walk broke out into a full-blown gallop as the melody began to intensify.
When she arrived to the sleeping pony, a few things became apparent. The pony was a colt, its mane was white and well-combed and its cutie mark was a sine wave. Her adrenaline was pumping; the music was reaching its most intense point! And then, in an instant, the pony was awake and staring Twilight in the muzzle.
“Awesome,” he said flatly. “Awesome to the max.”
And then she fell.
The music was now more intense than ever. The synth was dirtier, the percussion hit hard, and the air rushing through Twilight’s mane cooled away her sweat before it had the chance to form. She should have been utterly terrified at that point, falling to her doom, yet there was something about that music. It was as exhilarating as the air running across her coat, but while it rang through her ears, she welcomed the sensation.
She didn’t care about the ground she was rushing towards at nine point eight metres per second. She cared about the thrill, the blood pumping through her veins. This music… she couldn’t pinpoint what it was about it, but it truly was, as the other purple pony had said, “Awesome to the max.” She smiled and let the music take over her. It had gone into the second chorus; dirtier, more entrancing, more thrilling, more awesome! The music seemed to shake, and she felt herself shivering alongside it.
A crash of cymbals and the world flashed white. The music had gone softer and was slowly fading away.
The white slowly dissipated to make way for the laboratory she had apparently never left… or rather, two of them, swaying about here and there. Her horn throbbed and her head hurt; her legs struggling to hold her weight. Her vision was blurry and she wasn’t sure what was what. She hadn’t had a spell take this much out of her since the Fluttery Wings spell she cast on Rarity.
Octavia and Vinyl Scratch were shouting about… something. Twilight Sparkle couldn’t make out what they were saying, but in between her and them was a small pile of… pillows? Yeah, they were probably pillows. The magician didn’t remember having pillows there, but she was tired and wanted to lie down. She stumbled towards the pillows, or whatever they were, and flopped right on top of them.
The pillows were warm, fuzzy… Twilight took in a big sniff. They also had a nice smell to them. She couldn’t figure out what the smell was exactly, but it was nice, so who cared? Certainly not her. She closed her eyes and drifted off into naptime, where her throbbing pains finally ceased.
Sometime later, she was rudely awoken by screams of terror. Male screams.