//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Millie // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// I finished up the painting and took a step back to observe my work. The sun was not yet down and there was still plenty of light. I wondered if Princess Celestia altered the daylight according to season. Speaking of her, I also wondered if she was somehow involved with my problem. After all, I had been in contact with her magic school. At the very least, I figured that she might know about me. Somepony probably would have told her, "Oh, by the way, we have an alien running loose around Equestria." That still didn't explain the Lunar Guard I had encountered. I thought those ponies were supposed to be under the command of Celestia's sister, Luna. I didn't know much about the Night Princess. There was very little reading material in the library that mentioned her. She'd come back from the moon only recently. At least that's what I had heard. If it was Luna who had sent her Guards after me, then why? Serial killers were no joke, but wasn't that what the police were for? And I still didn't have irrefutable proof that I was on the right track. At least there was something I could do correctly. The outside of the building looked pretty good if I did say so myself. I collected my painting supplies and took them back inside. The early evening crowd was starting to accumulate. I spotted the griffon named Gilda. She came in out of the cold, removing a pair of gloves from her clawed forefeet, and sat down at a table. Finding Octavia, she helped me put away the stuff I had used to paint the building. Afterwards, we had a seat together. I was still chilly from being outside most of the day and Octavia gave me a mug of warm cider. “Thanks,” I murmured in gratitude, dipping my muzzle into the cup. Once it was drained far enough that I was less likely to spill, I raised it to my mouth with magic. “I have a little while before it’s time for me to play,” Octavia said. “It’s nice to just sit here with a friend.” I nodded. “I know the feeling. No offense to Vinyl, but she never relaxes.” Octavia’s mouth quirked a little, but she said nothing. I searched for something to talk about. “Who writes the music in Equestria? Do you create your own songs, or are there ponies with a specific talent for writing instead of playing?” “It’s roughly an even split.” Octavia thought for a moment. “Why, did you have an idea?” Well, I had already contributed to Vinyl’s repertoire of songs. It didn’t seem like a good idea to mention that to Octavia at the moment, so I simply nodded to answer her question. “I’m sure I can think of something that would sound good on cello.” “Let’s do it.” Octavia got up and fetched her instrument before leading me to a back room. She got a piece of paper and a quill. We both got settled and Octavia readied her bow. “Start humming.” I went with the first thing that I thought could be reasonably adapted. Based on my hums and input to Octavia’s musical duplication, she started writing down the notes. I warned her that some backing instruments would be better, probably at least drums and guitar. Still, when she got the first few verses down, I could definitely hear the melody come out. Octavia finished revising the music with her quill. She paused. “What’s the title?” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Kind of the way I felt, actually. Being pulled back to Equestria was about as far from what I wanted as anything. I did feel slightly bad about infringing on Rolling Stones copyrights, but getting to hear some familiar music made up for it. Octavia practiced it a few times, getting to the point where she could play it perfectly from memory in just minutes. That kind of talent was incredible. Cutie marks must be even more powerful than I gave them credit for. Octavia opened her eyes and lowered her bow. “It sounds lovely. I think I’ll debut it tonight.” I smiled. “I think it will be a hit. I should probably be going back to the hotel, though.” We walked back out to the main room. Octavia gave me a hug before heading for the stage. “See you at lunch tomorrow.” I paused, trying to linger but knowing that I should go. I had stopped near Gilda’s table. She glanced between me and Octavia. “You two are pretty good friends.” “That’s right.” “I didn’t want to assume anything,” said Gilda. “If she’d been so close with a stallion I would think there was something going on.” I could have said a lot of things about why Octavia and I weren’t a couple. I could have mentioned that I didn’t feel any romantic attraction to her or that I was married. Ultimately, looking like a mare was the easiest answer and didn’t require more explanation. I merely nodded to Gilda and let it slide. This seemed to be one time that I got off easy by being a girl. Gilda sticking her beak into my relations with Octavia seemed a little bold of her, although I didn’t detect anything malicious in her tone. Maybe, like Octavia had said, she was just being protective. Protective of me? Well, I suppose it didn’t hurt to have someone with talons on my side. The thought that she might be going easier on me because I was a mare was uncomfortable, but I tried not to think about it. As I went out the door, I heard Octavia announcing to the crowd that the club would be having a fashion show the next day instead of jazz. The regulars seemed somewhat displeased. I headed down the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel. There was some sort of street market closing for the night. Seemed rather cold for something like that, but I didn’t have money to buy something anyway. Skirting around the departing vendors, I passed their empty stalls. A stallion was cleaning up his area. He glanced at me. “Hey lady!” I turned my head, taking half a second to realize I was being spoken to. I stopped walking. The pony pulled a solitary orange from a box. “This is the last one I have. I couldn’t sell it, so do you want it?” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, go ahead. It’s the least I could do for a pretty girl like you.” My face flushed, but probably for a different reason than the stallion might have thought. I took the orange with a mutter of thanks and turned away. The fruit was cold, but not frozen. I had no idea where it could have been grown in the middle of winter. I didn’t think Equestria had the kind of transportation infrastructure to handle global produce markets, but hey, I had been surprised before. Speaking of surprise, that made twice in only a few minutes that I’d gotten preferential treatment for appearing female. I was really starting to get the hang of basic telekinesis and had no problem walking and eating the orange. After peeling it with my teeth, I found that the inside was delicious. I wondered if more advanced magic could have auto-peeled it. I dropped the empty peel in the garbage can outside the hotel and went up to the room. I found Vinyl there with a load of electronics gear. “What’s all this?” I asked, trying to find a place to stand that wasn’t full of equipment. “Well, the train company got confused when I didn’t pick up my stuff at Canterlot, and so they sent it back for some reason.” Vinyl shrugged from her position on the bed, possibly the only uncluttered part of the room. I plopped down next to her, folding my legs to get comfortable. From this position, my tail covered my rump and all associated parts. While all ponies walked around naked, I did feel a little better about myself this way. “So are we going to wait for the letter to Canterlot to go through, or do something else?” Vinyl asked after a moment. I sighed. “I honestly want to help with the serial killer thing, but I don’t think we can make much progress in the day or two it will take to deliver the letter.” Vinyl made a noise that sounded a little like agreement. “That’s the thing I’ve always liked about you. Good hearted, but practical.” “I’m not sure what to say.” Vinyl took off her sunglasses and scooted a little closer. “I might regret saying this, but I used to have a thing for you.” “Well, I sure regret you saying that.” I thought of Vinyl as a friend, nothing more. Regardless of how she felt, I really didn’t want things to be tense between us. I was trying to figure out if it was callous of me to disregard how she felt, and the moral implications of how that might be related to my marriage, when Vinyl let me off the hook by clarifying her previous statement. “Let me explain, dude. See, back when you were just the stallion next door I wouldn’t have minded hooking up. I’m not going to lie, you were cute. Then I found out about all your problems and the fact that you already had a special somepony, and I knew that we couldn’t be together. I accepted that. And now that you’re a girl, that shuts it down completely. I may be a lot of things, but I don’t swing that way.” “Ah... great, I suppose.” Vinyl grinned. “With a different body, you’re still pretty cute so I’ll do my best to keep the stallions off you. You can count on me.” “Well, I’m glad. That will make things a little less awkward.” I rolled my eyes. She chuckled. “A little. Still, you’re the queen of awkward, Millie.” “That’s king,” I growled. In the morning, I had to force myself to stay asleep. Part of me wanted to be up and about looking for clues and playing detective. I managed to suppress those feelings and slept in as long as my bedmate. When Vinyl finally awakened, she spent the morning messing with her music equipment a little. She took a few minutes to cast a spell that would temporarily quiet our room from the outside, reducing the sound heard by other guests. I was careful to study her methods. Spellcasting seemed to be about building up the right amount of magic and then using it in the correct manner. Even if Vinyl was talented with sound, she was showing visible strain by the time the spell was finished. “Did that take a lot of effort? Can a unicorn be magically tired?” I asked. “Sure. It feels sort of like regular exhaustion except I haven’t been exercising or deprived of sleep.” Since pegasus magic was directed through the wings and earth pony magic was through the hooves - both body parts that were usually associated with movement - I wondered if those kinds of ponies could mistake magical exhaustion for regular fatigue, especially if they had been using their magic while walking or flying. That would certainly go a long way towards explaining why some ponies didn’t believe in magic for the other races. With her spell cast, Vinyl was able to play some music. She kept it quieter, since it was only the two of us in the room. We made some small talk. I thought about my wife. The last time I had vanished to Equestria, it had been a giant problem back home. I told Jenna what happened. Yeah, I know it sounded like a crazy story to her and everyone else back home. The various tests and doctors I had gone through - insisted on going through - had declared me perfectly normal. With our wedding coming up, Jenna and I had reached an uneasy agreement to simply not talk about my disappearance. Putting her through that again was the last thing I wanted to do. And you can’t always get what you want. To keep my emotions under control by distracting myself, I said, “Hey Vinyl, want to learn a new song?” Having heard the music performed by cello the previous day, it was interesting to hear it from an electronic perspective. Through various mixes and synthesizer work,Vinyl was able to get pretty close, drums included. Of course, it did lack a certain sense of class that Octavia had maintained, but that wasn’t a deal breaker. “So what brought this on?” asked Vinyl, starting to record the playthrough. “Ah, no reason. Hey, do you want to get some lunch? There’s a café down the street that looked good.” She shrugged. “Yeah, I could eat.” We left the room and went down to the street. I had made sure that we would be on time. Octavia being Octavia, she was early and had already gotten a table. Vinyl didn’t spot her until we were already inside the café, and by that time I had closed the door behind her. It would be less awkward to just proceed with the forced meeting than it would be to try and escape now. Despite my deception, I was counting on both of them to be adults about this. That was why I picked a public location. Octavia gave me an unhappy look as I nudged Vinyl towards the table. To make sure they were both on even ground, I said, “I got you both here today so the two of you can talk about whatever your problem is.” Vinyl gave me the same displeased look but sat down at the table across from Octavia. I took a third chair between them. The waitress stopped by briefly to take our orders. “All right,” I started, looking at Vinyl and Octavia. “I know the two of you weren’t exactly BFF’s when I left, but I thought you at least tolerated each other.” I thought about comparing the situation to the Cold War, neither side openly hostile, but neither showing any sign of friendship. “Was I the only thing that helped the two of you to get along?” “There was... a situation after you departed,” said Octavia. Vinyl made a noise that sounded like that was putting it mildly. “Let’s start from the beginning.” I rested my forehooves on the table. “What happened?” “I think it started about the time Octavia left for Manehattan.” Vinyl’s expression was unreadable behind her sunglasses. Octavia shook her head. “No, it was earlier. So many things happened in relation to the drug arrests that you brought about, Millie. Also, my ex-coltfriend Alto got out of prison. I just didn’t think Canterlot was right for me anymore.” “You could have told me.” Vinyl fidgeted a little, but kept her gaze straight across the table at Octavia. “You could have given me some warning that you were about to leave.” “The Metronome came up on the market, and I coincidentally had somepony make an offer on the apartment building. The deal came together very quickly.” Octavia bowed her head briefly, but thought of something else to add. “I informed Mr. Greenback about what you were going through, and he said he would take care of you.” “Some landlord Mr. Greenback was,” remarked Vinyl. Her voice had gone low and flat. “He told me to buzz off when I tried to talk to him. He also raised the rent.” “It’s not my fault that he didn’t keep his word.” Octavia sounded sympathetic, but unapologetic. “And if you had a problem with that, you could have contacted me. Perhaps I could have done something to help.” “Help?” Vinyl’s voice went up an octave. “You walked away when I needed you most!” “And despite that, you turned out all right, didn’t you?” Octavia clearly resented being yelled at. Vinyl’s jaw was set, her lips curling into a snarl. “Actually, no. I slipped once. After a show I played, a fan offered me a little snort of something.” “Is it my fault you’re an addict?” demanded Octavia. Vinyl stood, forehooves on the table. “I need help! I asked for it, but you apparently had better things to do!” “I am not the pony in charge of your life!” Octavia shot back. “I believe that’s supposed to be you!” Octavia spun around and went out the door. Vinyl smacked the table top angrily and stalked away towards the exit. I sat there feeling stunned. The conversation had escalated into a full-scale argument more quickly than I could have imagined. I felt like I had to do something, but didn't know which one of them I should go after first. The waitress coughed to get my attention. “So...who’s paying for this food?”