Battle Station Bass Canon

by book_burner

"This is Bucking Awesome"

Place: Canterlot
Time: Contemporaneous

Vinyl Scratch, stage name DJ PON-3, had known this was going to be a miserable bucking gig when she got off the train in Canterlot and found herself caught in an unscheduled rainstorm.  Her evening had only gotten worse since then, as she dodged puddles and trotted up-and-down half the BUYSOMEAPPLES alleyways in the city looking for the actual BUYSOMEAPPLES club.

"Everything had looked absolutely fine from Ponyville!" she groaned as the cold, pissing rain drenched her blue-and-white streaked mane against her neck.  The wet leather of her saddlebag was nicking and cutting into her withers, too.

Despite Canterlot being a geographically small city, focused on culture and administration in the traditional mode of a capital, it had one thing you could get lost in that no other city did: the third dimension.  Canterlot didn't just have boulevards, avenues, streets, and alleys in the mode of a normal city.  No no, excuse me, Princess Celestia, Canterlot was special.  It had spires, spirals, caves, and switchbacks to deal with, too.

As a result of which, Vinyl now found herself almost, but not quite, late for a show.  She had actually never been late for a show before.  Everypony thought DJ's had no sense of professionalism, but as a matter of fact, Vinyl Scratch prided herself on damn well getting the party started on time.  She stood in a tiny alley built into Mt. Solstice's side, at the corner where it led down into an even tinier alley in what seemed to be total Lower City cave territory.  In Manehattan you'd wonder if there were changeling gangs around in a place like that, and Vinyl knew a musician was always a valuable catch for them: art had such a power to create love.

However, tonight's clients were not ponies she could stand to fail!  She'd been called to play in Canterlot by a tiny underground cell calling themselves Dudist Beach, the only dubstep lovers in the entirety of Canterlot, hounded so by the citizens that they had to meet in...  A cave in a tiny alley in the under-the-rock levels of the city.

The One Nation Under Rock Club.

Vinyl Scratch brushed a lick of her soaking mane out of her eyes and dove under the stone roof of the cave neighborhood, galloping as quick as she could to her gig.

Place: Canterlot Cave Alleyways
Time: Almost late

Vinyl had expected that she might have to apologize for not getting to the One Nation Under Rock in time to help hook up the stereos and check the bass levels herself.  She had expected to find a bunch of very impatient ponies.  She had expected to perhaps even have to explain to the bouncer who the hay she was.

She had not expected to find herself confronting a butler who was quite expertly, if way too politely, blocking her own entrance to her own gig.

"BUT I'M THE DJ!  I AM THE BUCKING DISK JOCKEY TONIGHT!" she yelled, whinnying.  He was just some square-faced stallion jumped up in a suit and made to think he was fancy for guarding a door, that was what he was!

"And I am afraid to tell you, madam - " said the Earth Pony stallion, his black-and-white coat blending neatly into his suit, " - that the Royal Canterlot Night Orchestra has required this space for the evening, in order to unveil the premier performance of their latest instrumentalists.  Lady Heartstrings explicitly instructed that entry only be allowed for ponies in formal or professional dress."

"FORMAL OR PROFESSIONAL DRESS!?" she fumed.  "SO I'M A DJ WHO CAN'T BE LET IN TO HER OWN GIG BECAUSE SHE AIN'T DRESSED AS NO DJ!?"

The butler-bouncer huffed, stuck out his chest, and tossed his platinum-blond mane.  "MADAM!" he shouted, "Your insolence towards Lady Heartstrings WILL! NOT! BE! TOLERATED!  I, Prince Platinum Blueblood the Junior, will countenance not the slightest use of such offensive language!  Not only have you failed to arrive in the uniform of your profession, you have failed to bring any kind of instrument with you!  To an ORCHESTRA RECITAL, THAT IS NOT YOUR PERFORMANCE!"

"Offensive language?" Vinyl asked, deflating.

"You AIN'T getting in this way," replied Prince Platinum Blueblood the Junior, straight-faced.  Vinyl Scratch stared into his eyes, but he didn't budge an inch.

And so, after a fair amount of uphill walking, Vinyl Scratch found herself once again at the alleyway entrance in an alley, with her mane soaked.  This time she was late, too, though she could scarcely see how it mattered since some BUYSOMEPEACHES pony called Heartstrings had crashed her club and replaced her performance.  With classical music.

Only the gods knew what the Royal Canterlot Night Orchestra must have done with Dudist Beach.  She had to get inside that performance and find out what was up, and that meant she had to get some proper DJ'ing duds and an instrument to play.

Slight problem: she only had 20 bits in her saddlebag.  No, wait, hold on.  She knew a song about this.

Place: Still Canterlot
Time: To get dressed

A few minutes later, the door to the thrift shop jerked open to shed the flickering torchlight of Canterlot's middle-class ground-level streets on the racks of clothing and assorted household wares within.  The light from outside wreathed the confident DJ PON-3 who had just kicked the door open lightly and now trotted into the shop humming to herself.

I'm gonna pop some tags, only got twenty more bits in my pocket!

Even at thrift-shop prices she wouldn't be able to afford Canterlot fashions, and they wouldn't wear back in Ponyville anyway.  What could she even hope to find here?  She pushed through racks of suits, dresses, fur coats, woollen sweater-vests...

I'm, I'm, I'm huntin', lookin' for a come-up.

The flannel shirt she tried on would have looked great on a stallion, and totes said DJ, but she just didn't have the chest and shoulders to pull it off.  Truth be told, it was probably kinda hipster.

Then she saw it.  It was simple, it was beautiful, it said DJ, it was a scarf of chemically refined awesomeness.  Well, ok, actually it was a Saddle Arabian keffiyah in her colors.  She pulled it off the pile of assorted winter garments with her unicorn magic and held it before her, eyes going wide.  The blue-and-white checked pattern matched her mane exactly, as if the simple square kerchief of cloth had been made for her by the great glorious deities of music and fashion themselves, and, just to give that one last little touch of punk, it had black spiketies on its edges instead of tassles. Spiketies!

Anypony who had peeked in the fitting room at that moment would have noticed the distinct squee sound as Vinyl Scratch dashingly tied her new scarf around her crest and tucked it down to keep it away from her throat.  It would also have been the last thing they ever noticed, as Vinyl furtively peeked around making sure she wouldn’t have to murder anypony for hearing her squee.

This is bucking awesome.

Then she saw a pair of blue shades to match, sitting just over with the foals' toys.  The combination could only possibly be described by that greatest of words in the entire fashion vocabulary, the one to which Rarity Belle wished she could aspire: SWAG.  No, hold on, pointing the glasses' narrow ends down didn't work.  That just made her look sad.  Pointing them up, on the other hand, that looked swag.

Now all she needed was an actual instrument, and she'd be ready.  The problem was that she couldn't take just anything into what was shaping up to be an all-out cool contest.  She needed some serious gear for this job.  She needed something with Bass Power.

They had a broken keyboard, I bought a broken keyboard,
I bought a ski blanket, then I bought a kneeboard.

    Naw, a broken keyboard wasn't gonna do it.  Vinyl needed something for a DJ, not just some ordinary rocker.  What she needed was...

And there it was, sitting in the middle of a thrift shop, on sale for a few bits.  Somepony had thrown it in the bargain bin with old plastic toys and a kitchen mixer for making cakes.  It was as though they had absolutely no idea what they'd taken their hooves off.  It was a tiny red-and-black plastic-with-wood-finish box, just large enough to hold in one hoof, with a little half-circle handle at the top where you could tie it into your mane and a crystal wheel on the front for control by hoof or by unicorn telekinesis.

It was one of the most trusty weapons a pony could have in the eternal war against lameness, party-slowing, sobriety, and the other Forces of Evil that confronted a DJ on a bad night.  Many ponies swore that friendship was magic.  Vinyl Scratch knew that when you had a genuine original-model Get Rec'd digital music tuner, switcher, player, mixer, and recorder... music damn well was magic.

Could it even possibly still work?  If it did, why had anypony ever thrown it away?  Vinyl reached into her saddlebag with her magic and and slowly settled her trusty red-and-black headphones into place.  She reverently plugged them into the Get Rec'd and sparked it into life with magic.  The answering hum of the built-in Awedacity operating system told her that the best find she'd ever gotten in a thrift shop was indeed still functioning.

The DJ walked over to the cash registers and paid out a lucky 18 of her last 20 bits, then reverently walked out of the thrift shop.  As she passed through the shop's mystic portal, she softly high-fived the doorpost, and then knelt down outside, her horn directed to the object of her blessing.

"Thank you, bass god," she said in reverence to the Great and Powerful Trigger, who watched over awesomeness.

Lightning slashed through the mountain night as Vinyl Scratch put her headphones on and set the mixer's tune to Universe.  It crackled through her mane, across her horn, and blazed forth from her eyes, lighting the ill-boding darkness in a totally ill way.

She had spiketies.  She had swag.  She was armed.  It was time to perform.

"All right, everypony, take a seat, because I, DJ PON-3, have totally got this!"

Place: Canterlot Cave Alleyways (again)
Time: To get busy

An orderly queue of ponies stood outside the Royal Orchestra's performance in the One Nation Under Rock, waiting to present their tickets and get into the recital.  Each time Prince Blueblood Jr. checked another ticket, he would inspect the newcomers for appearance and silently allow them to pass, with only a look conveying his quiet judgements.

There was a soft but deep rumbling from somewhere up the street, and the sound of a pony galloping.

The whole thing was ticking over nicely, the Prince considered, and Lady Heartstrings was going to be pleased with the whole night, if he was any judge.  Everything had gone just fine ever since that strange white mare had buggered off, the conquest of all musical outlets in Canterlot would be decidedly complete tonight, and advances into the rest of Equestria would begin soon.  The Classical Music Reinaissance Plan would prevail.

The line was somewhat disrupted when the soft rumbling sound turned out to a wave of vibration running through the ground, which parted the crowd perfectly into two heaps of aching ponies.  Aaaaahhhhh...

"Well, well, DJ Ain't!" laughed the Prince, cocking an eyebrow at the new-old-comer, "I see you weren't lying about your profession after all!"

"The stage name is DJ PON-3, and I'm here to see if your Royal Orchestra can floor ponies the way my Bass Waves can!"

"WELL ENOUGH THEN!" bellowed Platinum Jr with a smirk.  "RIGHT THIS WAY, MADEMOISELLE!"

Vinyl trotted through the arching stone entrance-way with a smile, her nose in the air like a proper fancy lady... and then found herself standing at the head of an astoundingly large stairway for a mere nightclub.  Actually, she could scarcely even call it a nightclub: it was a stadium!  The stairs led down through tiers of ringed dance floors and bars around a single central mosh pit, with three elevated pillars directly opposite the entrance for the band and their speaker system.  Everything was made of stone, no, of rock, except the safety railings made of metal.  All of it worked to reemphasize the singular purpose behind the entire construction and architecture of this nightclub: to rock the buck out.

Vinyl Scratch took her sunglasses off.

The lighting helped an awful lot, too, since there was so little of it.  Upper-class ponies milled about awkwardly in their fancy suits, speckled with dots and flecks of light where the black-lights in the ceiling, modelled as the stars in Luna's night sky, had lit up their white shirts or any bits of dust resting on their clothes and bodies.  A disco ball orbited through the air across the ceiling, kept aloft by a magic spell, cycling through the phases of the moon to provide an ever-changing stream of silvery moonlight.

Before the majesty of the One Nation Under Rock club, before the effort and love Dudist Beach had clearly poured into it, and before the horrific, evil crime of its being taken over by the Royal Night Orchestra, Vinyl Scratch stared in awe and could form only one coherent thought.  That thought was, "I need a drink."

Other ponies started to jostle her, since she was still standing just past the entrance archway, and she figured she might as well go get that drink.  Carefully, she ambled down the stadium steps a couple of flights to the first level with a bar, and stepped into the ring of dance floor to go get some booze.  Was that...?

"Berry Punch, my friend!" Vinyl cried as she sauntered up to the bar where Berry was working, "How is it going?  I had no idea you were tending bar in this place!  What brought you all the way from Ponyville?!"

"Viiinyl!" Berry Punch answered blearily, slowly focusing her eyes onto her friend from back home.  "It's bucking terrible out here, maaaare!  They told us we can't serve anything but tea!"

"Tea?  I have to swag my way past that doorstallion and all I can get is tea!?"  Vinyl's eyes were almost popping out.  "But then how are you still drunk?"  It was just a stroke of luck none of the Orchestra staff were checking up on the bars, thought Vinyl Scratch as she looked around.  Most of the bartenders looked to be from One Nation Under Rock itself, judging by how sauced they'd gotten at the prospect of serving nothing but tea to a bunch of rich bucks all night.

"I am not drunk!" Berry Punch yelled, dragging Vinyl eye-to-eye with her.  "Noooow, what ahm allowed to serve is we got black tea, green tea, iced tea, sweet tea, herbal tea, anythin' above made from herbal tea, milk tea with lotsa flavors, milk tea with authentic tapioca pearls made by the Grand Caterer herself, and Yuanma Iced Tea... which is kinda like milk tea but different spices and coconut milk in.  Oh, and Manehattan Iced Tea, which is muh personal favorite."

"Manehattan Iced Tea?" breathed Vinyl Scratch.  "Ain't that a bit... you know...  How are they letting you make that?"

"Oh, they gots ta let me make Manehaaattan Iced Tea," slurred Berry Punch.  "It's unofficial, so they gotta let me make it."

Vinyl Scratch raised an eyebrow at her friend, whose logic did usually actually make sense, if viewed from the bottom of a glass.

“Ok, so it's unofficial.  Can I get an unofficial Manehattan Iced Tea, then?"

“Sure thing!" Berry Punch smiled, and quickly set to work constructing one of the most dangerous drinks known to ponykind.  Berry Punch slid a high, round glass across the bar, almost tipping it over until Vinyl caught it in her magic, and then haphazardly stabbed a straw into it.  The musical unicorn took a sip and felt the cool, refreshing sweet tea and gin go down smooth, with that dash of raspberry flavor Punch liked to add to everything even remotely fruity.  Sure, it was one of the hardest, get-her-drunkiest filly drinks there was, but Vinyl was gonna need it for snooping around this place tonight.

"Mmmmm... Berry Punch, you are a lifesaver!" Vinyl said.

"No am not," objected Berry, "I'm not a donut-shaped minty sweet at all.  Though I can drop one in yer drink if ya like."

"It's cool, Berry.  You're cool."  Vinyl told her friend.  She sucked down another gulp of wonderful, divine alcohol through her straw and hummed to herself.  "I gotta find out who killed my giiiig."  A tiny little smile graced her face at last.

Then she heard it.  The cello.  Someone was starting to play up on the main stage, just one pony, on a cello.  A magic cello.  She could tell it was magic, because when she looked down at the upper stage, there was only one pony playing a cello, but from that cello came the sound of an entire group of instruments, all conducted according to a single unified song.

VUM-vum-vum-vum-vum, VUM-vum-vum-vum-vum, VUM-vum-vum-vum-vum-vum-vum-vum-vum-vum
Verm-verm-verm-verm-verm

The cello had cut into violin all on its own!  And snare drums to provide a percussion background!

And what a pony!  What a mare!  Dat coat, a pale golden grey like the last rays of winter before spring.  Dat mane, jet-black like the smoke of a thousand romantic campfires.  Dat suit, white shining blue in the ultraviolet, capped off with dat turquoise bow-tie and dem epaulettes on her shoulders!  Dat treble-clef cutie mark!  Dem half-lidded eyes!  Dat elegance with which she effortlessly coaxed a complicated piece from a single instrument, even a magic one!

VERM verm verm-verm verm verm VERM VERRRRM
Verm verm VERM verm verm-verm verm verm-verm, veeeerm verm

Vinyl Scratch's eyes went straight from normal-eye-sized to the size of dinner plates.  She was as smitten as she'd ever been with anypony in her life.  On a scale of one to "ALL PRAISE PRINCESS CADANCE" it wasn't quite up to eleven yet, but it certainly measured at least the "LET ME TAKE YOU HOME AND SMOTHER YOU IN THE WUBS OF WUV" level of smitten.  All in all, daaayuuuuum.

"Who. Is. That. Mare?" stuttered Vinyl Scratch in sheer awe.

"Oh," said Berry Punch as she unevenly cleaned a glass.  "That's Octavia.  She's a cellist."

"Just a cellist?  Not the most super-elegant wonder-cellist ever to happen?  You're absolutely sure about this, Berry Punch?"  Vinyl's had raised her eyebrow so far it looked like it might float away from her head.

"I'm pretty BUYSOMEAPPLES sure she's just a cellist, Vinyl," slurred Berry Punch.  "And I dinnot know you swing that way."

Vinyl Scratch didn't reply because she had dumped her straw on the ground and was chugging down her Manehattan Iced 'Tea' like it was nothing.  She slammed the glass back down on the bar and sighed happily.

"Wish me luck," she said, before turning and running from the bar.  She moved as swiftly as she could through her current floor of the club, which admittedly was not very swiftly.  For a fancy-schmancy Royal Orchestra show they'd sure dragged out a lot of ponies!  Vinyl had to weave through crowds of mundane dancers (surprisingly unexotic, for the nobility) and dodge through the circles of polite conversation that, somehow or other, had nothing to do with the wonders of the currently-performing cellist.

The stairways, luckily, were not nearly as crowded, and Vinyl was able to walk down as fast as...  Woah.  Actually, she needed to slow down a couple of steps.  That "tea" was starting to hit her.  Thankfully, the song Octavia was playing had cut back into its leitmotif, this time with an electric bucking guitar behind it, so Vinyl chose to interpret her slowing down as the dramatic, ominous descent of one awesome mare towards her destined counterpart rather than as just being a lightweight.

This interpretation worked surprisingly well, as Vinyl reached the bottom of the smooth, grey stone stairs just as the song whisked through its finishing flourishes, pulled a few more riffs from the guitar component, and swung to a close.  Now she would have been able to move quickly, if it weren't for the crowd of simperingly applauding, utterly overdressed Canterlot socialites who'd taken over the arena level and mosh pit as a place to make nice picnics and discuss BUYSOMEAPPLES fashion.  As it was, she had to slowly duck and weave past ponies to reach the stairs at the side of the stage, and she just made it in time to see her new favorite cellist (in fact, her only favorite cellist ever) start to descend.

Here she came!  She'd left her cello and its bow on-stage, but here she actually came!  Three... two... one... Eye contact!

Vinyl Scratch looked deep into the eyes of her crush and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  "That was so utterly awesome it almost made it worth having my club stolen out from under me for the night!"

Octavia just nodded slightly, apparently not one to let her composure as a trained performer be perturbed even slightly by a drunk, fashionable stalker.

"Ummm... thanks, I guess."

Vinyl broke eye-contact to let her gaze roam to other places on Octavia's body than the face, and decided she should persist.  "You should get a drink with me.  Now."

"Well, I sometimes do enjoy a glass of Riesling to calm the nerves after performing, but it rather looks to me like you've had one already."

"Yeah, I have.  That's step one of the plan, because I'm a musician too, so I know how tough it is being up there in front of everypony.  Step two is for you to have one, too."

"Well," Octavia warmed slightly and stepped down to stop holding herself above the other pony, "I really could do with some relaxation after a performance like that...  Those magically enhanced instruments really do take it out of a pony.  What did you say your name was?"

"Meh name's Vinyl Scratch."  Vinyl knew her smile right now was pretty dorky because she'd been told before how she looked when she had a crush, but if she was surviving the other mare's trained confidence, she knew she was doing fine.  Never mind that her cheeks were probably beet-red and that made an awful contrast with the blue-and-white scarf.

Except Octavia was smiling back at her!  If somewhat shyly...  And she was loosening her bow-tie!  If just to get a breath...

"I, of course, am Octavia Melody, and I must say I've never met a stalker with such a cute blush before.  Tell me, Vinyl Scratch, does your plan have some kind of step three?"

"Oh," shrugged Vinyl, "Well step three is to make sweet love in the darkness before dawn when nopony else is around."

"Oh my."  Now it was Octavia who was blushing.  "That is... well... rather evocative imagery."  Suddenly she jerked her head to her left, staring wide-eyed past Vinyl Scratch.  "BUYSOMEORANGES, here comes Lady Heartstrings!  She's my boss, behave yourself!"

"What happened to your fine manners!?" Vinyl exclaimed and spun around to see...

If Octavia was grey like the last pale rays of winter, the newcomer Lady Heartstrings was more the fresh minty green of buds in spring.  She was wearing jewels around her neck, and an elaborate gown of jade and white that was almost immodest in its sheer modesty, covering not only her rear legs but cloaking her forelegs as well.  The same white as her gown tore through her neat, short-cut cyan mane in a vivid streak, though it looked as though she'd still managed to tie it around a conductor's baton at the back.

It was the eyes, though, that capped off Vinyl's impression of vast power: one shade of yellow away from sunflowers, with an edge to them that looked like it simply did not belong.  Here was a mare who was used to getting things done.

"And what has my expert cellist brought us, this night?  Who might this be, Octavia?"  She was meandering around Vinyl, checking her over, examining her every inch, as if looking for some place to stick a knife.  Vinyl shivered.

For all she'd been formal before, Octavia had now gone completely rigid, steeling every muscle to express absolutely nothing.  "My Lady Heartstrings, this pony is Vinyl Scratch, with whom I had been engaged in a friendly conversation.  She plays the... what is it you play, Miss Scratch?"

All those words!  Vinyl may have been drunk and not that book-smart, but street-smart, that she was.  She could tell pretty damn well when a pony was speaking a lot to say only a little.  She puffed up her chest a bit, again glad she had a scarf swaggy enough to help her stand up to a total BUYSOMEPEACHES like she thought this so-called pony might be.

"As a matter of fact, I'm the disc jockey who was supposed to play here at One Nation Under Rock tonight."

"Really?” said the Lady, “Well, I am the illustrious composer and harpist of the Royal Night Orchestra, the Lady Lyra Heartstrings, and I’m glad you were able to enlighten your soul with the elegance of our classical orchestration rather than the beastly mish-mash your clientele had requested.  Octavia, you were actually engaged in conversation with somepony who goes around pretending to play music when she hasn't even one instrument to her name?"

Vinyl’s jaw dropped straight to the floor, and she actually had to use her magic to close it back to its right size.

“No instrument to my name!?  Beastly mish-mash!?  Pretending to play music!?  What the hay, BUYSOMEPEACHES?”

“Octavia,” stage-whispered Lady Heartstrings, “You really ought to be getting along to your dressage training, should you not?”

“Errr… yes, Lady Heartstrings.  I’ll commence directly.”  Octavia immediately spun and trotted away, looking outright afraid of her own conductor.  But Vinyl saw the other mare look back at her, just for a second.  They’d had something!  There had really been something between them, and this Heartstrings pony had just shut her down.

“Hey, Heartstrings!” Vinyl Scratch raged.  “Where do you get off bullying your own musicians that way, let alone a guest in a club whose booking you outright stole!?”

The Lady Heartstrings just sneered.  “Where do you ‘get off’ calling yourself a musician when you’ve never even achieved a Royal Music Rank, Scratch?” She stepped quickly to Vinyl’s left and hissed at her, eyes narrowed, horn nearly sparking sickly green like Changeling magic.  “You listen to me, Scratch.  I have an orchestra full of ponies who not only play their own music but play whole songs on single instruments, by the power of my magic.  All you have is recordings of other ponies’ music, a few bad editing tools, and that noise you’re named for.”

Vinyl’s eyes were popping out of her head as she fumed, random magic sparking from the end of her horn and grounding itself in the rock around her.  “YOU WANNA GO, HEARTSTRINGS!?”

“Oh I do, dear Scratch.  I always want the very best musical talent in all Equestria, and the Royal Canterlot Annual Music Contest is where I find them.  Were you planning to be in attendance?”

“What Royal Canterlot Annual Music Contest?”

“The one held each year to determine who controls the Musical Talents of the Day and Night, at stake among all ponies and every other race from all across the world.  Indeed, it was only one contest ago that I myself won the right to command the Night Orchestra, and with it began my renaissance of true music, of classical music.  And indeed, it is the contest in which this year we of the Orchestra will win control over all music in Equestria, and bring a permanent end to the impurity of your kind!  Octavia is my faithful racehorse, and I was a victor.  Do you think you can best us?”

“Wait, you mean I can get to Octavia and beat the musical crap out of your smug mug by competing?”  Vinyl flicked her earphones and Get Rec’d from behind her mane and twirled them through the air, spinning them in perfect synchrony with the effortlessness of her special talent until she brought the headphone cable into its slot with a perfect click.  Her ears flicked to the sides and up as the headphones wrapped comfortably into position around her neck.  “You mean the War of the Wubs?  I accept your stakes!”

“Then it’s settled!” crowed Heartstrings.  “In you we will crush rock, hip-hop, and electronica, and show everypony that there can be no resistance to the triumph of classical music over all others!  In your terms, ‘come at us’!”

“And in you I’ll shove a damn large horshoe to save music and win Octavia’s hoof!” Vinyl Scratch boasted through gritted teeth.

At last, Heartstrings broke eye-contact and damped her magic, turning to leave with a silken flick of her dress.

“We’ll see you at the contest, then.”

“Dear freaking Celestia on a stick, you are on!”  Vinyl Scratch stomped a hoof and sent a wave through the stone beneath her.  “Octavia, wherever you’ve gone, make no mistake!  I’m gonna out-music your scary boss and we’re getting that drink together!”