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// Chapter 1:The Depressing End and the Vibrant Beginning  
// Story: Gleaming Lights 
// by Fuzzy Snuz 
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	‘COME SEE MC W1SH ON JUNE 15-17 ONLY AT CANTERLOT CONCERT HALL!’ 
Of course this poster was 2 months old. MC W1SH hadn’t performed since those few nights. He wasn’t even MC W1SH anymore; he was just Neon Lights, an MC and DJ unicorn who had it all. That was until somepony had backstabbed him, somepony known as Record Scratch or DJ-HORS3 or something. Neon didn’t really care to remember her name. All he did remember is that she was his fillyfriend once and he had given her the world. All the money she wanted, her own studio, her own bucking record label. All those things given to her couldn’t have changed her original plan. What she really wanted was the fame, and she didn’t care how she got there. She’d mooched off of Neon’s fame and climbed to the top of the charts by taking some of his songs and remixing them. Neon was playing too many shows to notice her simply stealing his songs and moving a note or two around. If only he’d paid attention to what she was doing at the time.
This whole process continued for a few months until she had finally made a platinum album. This was her ticket out of this fake relationship she’d worked herself into. Once news about this platinum album got out tons of record companies urged her to sign with them. She ended up going with Celestial Horse Records, a company started by Celestia but was handed over to one of her close friends, Fleur Dis Lee. Fleur had no idea what to do with it so she ended up letting her husband sell it to whoever wanted it. 
Neon didn’t remember where it went after that, but what he did know was that backstabbing filly went there and made millions working with them. Ponies may not have noticed, but she was still just remixing his songs. It seemed to go over everyponies head that she never made an original song. When more of his audience started going to her, Neon’s cash flow slowly started to thin out. Before he knew it he was only making barely 50 bits a day. He hadn’t a clue how to rise up and just gave up his fame.
Neon had blown the rest of his bits on one thing, booze. Every day it was the same process. Wake up, finish off yesterday’s liquor, and then go buy some more for today. He was a drunk, nopony looked at him as MC W1SH anymore. Now they all just looked at him like he was a bum. Neon could care less about what they thought, for Vinyl had already told everypony that he was addicted to almost every drug known in Equestria. Now, Neon knew this wasn’t true, but everypony else thought it was. For all anypony knew, Neon was just another musician fallen to drug addiction.
Neon thought about doing drugs a few times, but always believed it’d ruin his career. Now he had nothing to lose if he did drugs. He constantly thought over and over of what would happen if he got addicted. He wasn’t making anymore bits and didn’t have so much left from buying alcohol every day. He’s sold every last one of his possessions to fund his addiction to alcohol. He’d even sold his mansion just to get another bottle of hard cider in the morning. 
Sitting there thinking about how bad his life’s gotten since his fillyfriend left him. His last show barely sold 1,000 seats, nopony bought his records anymore, and he’d become an alcoholic Neon sat in a cold alleyway thinking about his next move. He looked up to read the poster about his last show once more. He stared at how happy he looked in the picture and realized that it might be the last time ponies see him smile. With that he tore down the poster and started to cry.
He was out of bits, out of booze, and had nowhere to go. Neon had taken one last look on his life and though of his next move; either begging somepony to help him or to simply kill himself. He sat and thought for a while reading over his liquor’s label until he made his decision. Neon Lights was going to end it all. 



Sugar Beats was just like any unicorn in Equestria, but he acted like almost everypony from Dodge Junction. In an earth pony dominated town Beats was made fun of at times for being a unicorn, but the yellow coated, burgundy maned stallion didn’t seem to mind. He did have one major problem with Dodge Junction however. His parents had forced him to work on the farm and expected him to take it over one day, once he met a filly and had a few foals of course. 
Beats didn’t really want to work hard every day, and he certainly didn’t want to take a huge responsibility like that into his hooves. He’s told his parents this multiple times, but they don’t seem to listen to him. But seeing past that, Beats had one major problem with his parents, they kept trying to set him up with the town fillies. Beats was not okay with this on any level. They’d constantly set him up on blind dates with desperate fillies who wanted to marry after the first date to make their parents proud. 
Beats wanted learn to love a pony before jumping into marriage just to make his family happy. He didn’t care that he’d have to wait for his family to be happy because if marring some filly makes them happy then they’re going to be unhappy for a long time. Beats didn’t want to marry some filly that his parents set him up with; in fact he didn’t want to marry some filly at all. Beats wanted none other than a stallion to be his companion. Of course Dodge Junction was like any other earth pony town, homophobic. Being a unicorn, Beats was already made fun of for not being an earth pony, but not being straight was a whole new level of wrong in Dodge Junction. 
The last coltcuddler to come through Dodge Junction wasn’t just made fun of, but also assaulted. At least ten ponies circled around him and constantly beat him with anything they could get there hooves on. After 15 minutes they left him bleeding and broken in the middle of the street. Beats helped him to the train station and bought him a ticket to the next town over so somepony would help him. 
Knowing what happened to the last coltcuddler, Beats kept his sexuality a secret that he would share with no one. He knew that if anypony in Dodge Junction found, he could never come back to visit his parents again. That is if his parents would even want to see him. His parents would have probably kicked him out. They were very conservative when it came to what a pony’s life should be like.
After Beats graduated school he finally wanted to leave Dodge Junction and pursue his dream at becoming a DJ. The whole dream started when he got his cutie mark fairly late for a colt his age. It was simply a pair of white headphones with small black notes coming out of them. Beats thought he was simply banging his hooves on a bucket and levitating a bag of sand and shaking it occasionally. A few ponies had gathered and thought he was making some interesting beats. The next thing he knew he had a cutie mark.
Ever since then Beats had been making music anyway he could by using any object. Although his father was a bit upset that his cutie mark didn’t have something to do with the farm, he did have to admit, Beats made some pretty good music with what he was given. Beats took trains to go into Ponyville where he’d buy some records and come back and try to replicate them. 
Some people called him a musician and others called him another annoying teenager, whatever they said Beats was confident he made some stellar beats. He always wanted to record what he did or better yet perform what he did, but he never got the chance. Once he graduated school though he finally got the opportunity. 
He’d saved up for years waiting until he graduated so that he could hop on a train to Canterlot and start recording there. Once he got an extremely reluctant agreement from his dad he was off on the train. As he gathered his luggage together he hugged his family goodbye and boarded the train. As he sat with a huge smile on his face he realized he was finally out of that bucking town. Finally he could record his tracks, make money, be himself, and possibly find somepony to call his companion.