The two beings looked around at the faces of the astounded ponies. Vinyl Scratch was still wriggling around on the ground in orgasmic pleasure as the golden-visored one began to speak.
“I think we should introduce ourselves, as the ones who will be freeing you of the tyranny that has fallen over you. I am—”
He was shoved to the side by the chrome-plated one, who announced his own name instead in a tone that demanded power and importance. “—I am THOMAS BANGALTER!”
“Who’s he?” asked a nearby pony, pointing to the gold-visored one.
Tomas looked over at his partner. “Oh. He’s just Guillaume Emmanuel ‘Guy’ de Homem-Christo.”
Jaws popped open at the sound of the gold-visored robot’s name. Vinyl, who had recovered from her fangasm, straightened up and said “Wow, that’s a pretty cool name!”
“Yes, but not as cool as THOMAS BANGALTER!” Thomas bellowed in his voice of mass importance.
Vinyl shrugged. “Actually, your name is sorta lame.” Tomas deflated a bit. “But that’s not what’s important! You guys are Daft Punk!”
“That we are,” Thomas confirmed. “I didn’t know you were aware of us.”
“Of course I am!” Vinyl said with a roll of her eyes. “A few years back, I was messing around with radio transmissions right after I first became a DJ. Then, I got a transmission that contained your amazing music! Since then, I’ve been trying to get as many samplings of your music I possibly can by fiddling around with my roommate’s radio antenna.”
“So, how many samplings have you managed to pick up?”
“One, from that better faster stronger song,” Vinyl said.
“Well, that iss the song that we broadcasted using the Voyager III: Return of the Synth satellite.” Thomas’s visor flashed for a moment, which Vinyl assumed was the equivalent of a blank stare. “Wait, one? If I’m not mistaken, you just said that you spent several years collecting them.”
“Eh, I got bored,” Vinyl admitted. “But I did manage to catch bits of info about you guys while flicking through the radio frequencies late at night when I was whacked on pills. You guys are awesome!”
“Yeah, I guess we kinda are,” said Thomas somewhat smugly. Guy nudged him, and Thomas cleared his throat, which came out as a burst of auto-tuned static. “Right, but that’s not the point. We’ve got to save you guys from this evil Sombrero guy, right?”
Vinyl took a look at a propaganda poster that was plastered to a nearby wall. “Yeah, this ‘Sexy Shadow’ dude. What, is his name Sombrero or something?”
“That’s what it sounded like in our mission briefing,” Guy said, talking for the first time since being shoved aside by Thomas.
“Right. It looks like his minions are those really weird shadow pony things that keep sliding around.” Vinyl pointed tot he shadowlings, which were all still wafting about, plastering the posters to every wall they could find, and passing out pamphlets to anypony who was unfortunate to get too close.
“I think we can take those on,” Thomas said confidently. Turning to Guy, he nodded his head at a pair of the shadow creatures who presently had their backs turned to them. “Let’s start off easy; one for each of us.”
Guy nodded in agreement, and the two left the side of the bonfire, which had now died down with only the burnt remains of some wood and the charred skeletons of the mane six to keep it from dying out completely. Cautiously, the duo approached Sombra’s minions.
“All I’m saying is, do you think I’m too young to be thinking about marriage?” the shadowling on the right asked the one on the left.
“Well, we were only manifested just yesterday, but I like to think that it’s never too early to start planning, you know what I’m saying?” the one on the left told his companion.
Thomas stepped in the middle of them. “Hate to break up the chat you guys, but it’s time for us to beat you up! Guy, grab the one on the left, I’ll take the other one!” The robot took a sweeping grab for one of the shadowlings, but he fell right through him as though it were made of shadows. Which it was.
The two shadowlings looked at each other in somewhat amused confusion. Thomas’s LED eyes narrowed. “Alright. Time to hit them with our full power!”
The fight lasted all of ten seconds. Soon, Guy was smashed against the wall, where he fell on top of Thomas, who had been smashed against the same wall two seconds earlier. The two shadowlings wafted away, off to do shadowy things, which presumably had something to do with receding and growing depending on the hight of the sun in the sky.
Vinyl trotted up next to the supposed heroes. “Wow, you guys got your asses beat.”
Thomas rubbed his helmet. “Hey, we’re musicians, not fighters!”
“But you’re galactic heroes!” the DJ pony pointed out.
Guy snorted, and Thomas chuckled nervously. “Well... RAM was our most recent album, and this is kind of our first mission as galactic heroes. They said they wanted to break us in with something easy.”
Vinyl sighed. “Well, come on. Since you guys aren’t gonna get any better fighting just by laying there, I might as well take you to my roommate Octavia’s place.”
“Can we learn to fight shadow monsters there?” Thomas asked hopefully.
“No, but she’s got food, so that’s a plus,” Vinyl stated, and started to trot away. “Alight, follow me, we’re gonna see if we can catch a ride to Canterlot before that stupid shadow guy decides to shut down the trains too.”
The two “heroes” shrugged, and followed the white unicorn as she ran down the alleyway to find the easiest rout to the train station. Unfortunately, Vinyl knew this town only slightly better than the two aliens she was leading around, and soon the three were hopelessly lost.
“Should we ask directions or—?” Guy wondered out loud.
“No, it’s hopeless,” Vinyl said, incinerating a propaganda poster in rage. “We’ll never get there! This town is like a maze!”
The trio rounded a corner, and saw the train station before them. Vinyl grinned sheepishly, and the three rushed to train. Peaking inside one of the windows, Vinyl got a good look at the backside of King Sombra, who had been bending over to pick up a penny.
“Pfft. Sexy shadow? Yeah right...” Vinyl smirked at the flabby flanks.
“Quick, hide!” Guy said, pointing towards a large group of shadowlings that was advancing towards the train. The three of them scurried to the caboose patio at the very back, where they waited in silence.
After a few moments, the train started to move, and they began their journey. The entire time, they were silent, for fear of the train occupants finding them out. When the train finally stopped, they waited for Sombra to make his move.
The three of them watched from the back of the train as Sombra disembarked, flanked by his shadowling guard.
“Eh, he doesn’t look so tough,” Thomas said with a scoff. “I bet we could take him.”
“Are you forgetting when we tried to take on his henchmen?” Guy asked his partner.
“Yeah, getting smashed into that wall did knock me around a bit,” Thomas admitted.
“Alright, let’s head on over to my place,” Vinyl said, once shadow and his troupe of shadow goons were gone on a march to Canterlot Palace. “We can brainstorm there, or just eat some food. I guess they’re both good options.
Upon entering the house, Thomas and Guy took a quick look around while Vinyl trotted off to the bedroom to get a fresh pair of glasses to replace her broken-lensed ones.
“Vinyl, you back already? I need to–” a grey earth pony began to say as she entered the room, but stopped dead, mouth agape, when she saw the two robots.
“What? Yeah, I’m back with a few friends.” Vinyl said, lazily gesturing to the robots.
“I am THOMAS BANGALTER!” Thomas announced.
“And I’m Guillaume Emmanuel ‘Guy’ de Homem-Christo,” Guy said.
“Wow,” Octavia told Guy. “Long name.” Thomas made a noise that soudned like a raccoon being molested by a robot.
“You got anything to drink?” Guy asked. Octavia nodded, dumbfonded and left to the kitchen for a moment. When she returned, she was balancing a soda on her head. Guy took it, popped the tab, and poured the drink on his visor. Cola dripped from his helmet as he sighed through the vocal transmitter. “Ah, good stuff.”
“That’s how you drink things?” asked Vinyl curiously. Octavia just narrowed her eyes at the waste of soda.
“Well, not really, but since we can’t take off our helmets...” Guy shrugged.
“Why, because you can’t breath in the atmosphere in Equestria?”
“No,” Guy said, “We’re just really, really shy. We don’t like to show our faces.”
“It’s also a stage gimmick,” Thomas explained. “Robots don't make people feel like there's an idol on stage. It's more like a rave party where the DJ isn't important. We are two robots in this pyramid with this light show, but everything is meant for you to have fun and enjoy yourself.”
“Plus, robots look cool!” Guy put in. “So the helmets stay on.”
“Aw, it won’t hurt you,” Vinyl said, and before Guy could even react, Vinyl slapped the side of his helmet, causing the visor to descend rather quickly.
“Crap!” Guy covered his face quickly with his hands, keeping his head low. He dodged sideways into the couch, and resurfaced with a pillow shoved in his visor space.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, shaking his finger accusingly at the lamp. Accidentally walking into the wall a few times, he groped his way to the bathroom and emerged with the pillow in his hands and his visor returned to normal.
“You’re taking this rather well, Octavia,” Vinyl said to her roommate.
“Well, with the whole lockdown thing going on...” Octavia said with a shrug. “I don’t really care. The city is under attack, and now there’s weird robots, so you know. Fuck everything I guess.”
“That’s the spirit!” Vinyl said. “Wait, the city’s on lockdown already?”
“Yeah, a bunch of weird shadows showed up, and then the princesses all ordered us civilians inside,” Octavia explained.
“Oh. Well, King Sombrero, their leader, is here too. We were on the same train he was. I think he’s gonna try taking over Equestria!” Vinyl sat down, brooding. “We;’ve got to think of a way to fight those shadow monsters...”
And so, the group waster a good half-an-hour not talking to each other, mulling over ideas.
“Wait, I’ve got it!” Vinyl said suddenly. “What if we were to engineer one of my turntables so that the music that was produced was able to mess up the frequency at which the shadow things vibrate at? We could destroy them with the power of music!”
“Wouldn’t it be more effective and easier to just shine a light on them?” Guy pointed out. “They are shadows after all.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going to miss an opportunity to play music with Daft Punk!” Vinyl said with a squee.
“She’s got a point,” Thomas said to Guy.
“Octavia, you’ve studied music; that would a plausible thing to do, right?”
“No,” Octavia deadpanned.
Ignoring here, Vinyl went to her closet to get her turntables, only to return a moment later, looking crestfallen. “I just remembered, my turntables are broken in some alleyway back in Ponyville.”
“Isn’t there another place you could get turntables?” Guy asked. “I mean, you must have gotten yours from somewhere.”
“Yeah, but with this lockdown, we can’t buy anything,” Octavia interjected. “So unless you’re going to steal the turntables, I don’t—” her eyes widened. “Oh no. Oh no, please forget I said that, please for the love of—”
The three had already shot out the front door before Octavia had even finished her sentence.