//------------------------------// // 9: Crystal Harmony by VelvetHeart // Story: Xenophilia: Shotglass Oneshots // by TheQuietMan //------------------------------// Crystal Harmony by VelvetHeart ********************* "Who would've thought that inviting the dragon ambassador and her party for a buffet in a town that is entirely dragon-edible would cause such confusion amongst the esteemed guests!" Rarity sat down, gaze wandering the glittering structures of the Crystal Empire. "It looks like we managed to save everything from becoming a snack, however." "Not everything," Pinkie Pie interrupted with a mournful note, pointing at a building with a rather impressive bite taken out of it. "The Flugel-horn repository will never be the same again." Rarity winced. "Ah, yes, dear. I'm sorry, I was, ehm, mysteriously-delayed trying to save that structure and it's terr- ehr, magnificent instrument contents. It was a good excuse to use the crystal heart again, though." The fashionista let out a little squeal of barely-restrained joy as she bounced for a moment, glittering brightly in her crystalline form. None had been spared the sparkly fate, except for one: Lero, his eyes warded by the slightly-unfashionable sunglasses he'd picked up at the trainstation, stood besides his now-crystalline herdmates. He'd been staring down at Rainbow Dash for a while now, strange expressions on his face. "Rainbow Dash. Are you anything like a wineglass?" The pegasus looked up at her stallion, rather confused for a moment. "...huh? A wineglass?" "Hold still for a moment," Lero replied, and wet his finger before kneeling down. Slo-o-o-owly, he ran his finger along the edge of Rainbow's ear. A soft, rolling chime sang through the room, and Rainbow's eyes went wide. Her ear was ringing, literally! "Wait, how did you do that?!" she exclaimed, quickly clamping a hoof over the singing ear. The sound had already caught the attention of the other ponies in the room, but their confusion didn't keep Lero's smile from growing into a knowing smirk. With one hand, he grasped Rainbow's right wing, extended it slightly, and snapped his finger across one of the longer primaries with a chiming 'Ping!', sending strangely-exciting vibrations running down the feather and into her wing. "Alright ponies, we've had a busy day, so Rainbow Dash and I, and maybe Twilight if she'd care to come, are going back to our rooms for some rest," Lero announced out loud, grinning ear to ear as he leaned in closer and whispered something into the prismatic pegasus' other ear: "Tonight, I'm going to play you like an instrument." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There was a knock on the wooden door of Ponyville's library, quickly followed by an urgent second and third knock as Lero hurriedly clambered into his pants to meet the unexpected guests, only to find they'd already opened the portal before he'd managed to reach it. "Hey, hello there, Lero!" a surprisingly-sparkly Vinyl Scratch announced, snickering. "Ok, sorry to drop in on you like this, but my friend here really wanted a favor really bad, and we traveled all the way to the crystal empire and back to get ready, so please hear me out before you slam the door shut on us, ok? We kinda, ehm... we heard you have the special ability to play crystal ponies like musical instruments, somehow. Uh, I don't know how, really, but, ehm... ...you see, my friend Octavia here -" Vinyl gestured to an equally-sparkly, if slightly-more subdued earthpony mare behind her, "she has had this really big dream of becoming one with music, like, real deep, and she wants you to play her. Like, just once. She wants to be your uptight bass." "Upright bass, Vinyl." Octavia shot a glare at her friend. "As I said, uptight bass. We got the best bow we could afford and hopefully you can really make her sin-" That's when Vinyl's plea got interrupted by a faceful of Rainbow Dash.