//------------------------------// // Neon Night Lifer // Story: The Dreaded Love Bird // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Nighttime was always a great time for fun and games and none thought things were more fun than Vinyl Scratch a popular DJ of a club for the less noble aspects of Canterlot. She had two shades of electric blue for her mane and tail, purple specs hiding bright red eyes and a soft bright white coating. Her current destination was towards the nightclub where she worked. When she took one of her back alleyway shortcuts she came upon a bit of trouble in the form of three scruffy earth ponies and two unicorns. “Now looks guys I don’t want any trouble, now if you’d step out of my way.” Vinyl was quite the scrapper and the musical note on her flank wouldn’t tell you how good she was in beating off deadbeats. “Yeah, well…” The dark brown unicorn said moving for her before he was cut off by what sounded like a violin slowly playing a single long note that rose and fell, then a bunch of rapid notes. Slowly the note played again slightly faster as the unicorn tried to talk again and it too was followed by a back forth rapid note sound. Then the notes started coming faster the five male ponies were looking around themselves wondering where that violin music was coming from, when a inconspicuous cardboard box exploded outward violently in their midst revealing a red pegasus with yellow tips smiling devilishly. Kazooie loved to beat up gangs ever since visiting River City, she was surprised a candy coated world like this one even had gangs to begin with since it all seemed so perfect and happy go lucky. She was plenty happy to be proven wrong, but even then the gangs here were probably as strong as a stick of butter. The day had gone so well with her dropping an entire blob of white pudding out of her backpack over the castle, the reaction princess Sunny Delight had was nothing short of hilarious. Kazooie had finished sending her sidekick on her way on a date with a flustered owl when she came upon this classic gang line about to be spouted and decided to drop in early before some other hero did it. “Hey there, we’re not doing that stupid hero cliché! I refuse to allow that to happen, of course if you were expecting a shark I know of one I can happily introduce you to.” Kazooie standing on her hind hooves stuffed the violin into her backpack and just smiled. “My name is Kazooie and four of you are lowlifes, one of you is a thug. If any of you continue your course of action I will have to impress you into leaving the mare alone.” “Wait a minute, which one of us is a thug?” The brown unicorn looked around at his four cohorts as he didn’t know one of them was a thug and one of them sheepishly raised a hoof. “Damn it Jerry, why didn’t you tell us? Look it doesn’t matter if he’s a thug we’re still going to do this and there’s nothing you or that unicorn can do to stop us.” The unicorn said bravely standing up to a disinterested Kazooie who took position in front of Vinyl walking on her hind hooves casually into position. “What if I told you I breathe fire and crapped lightning?” Kazooie was really bored as this wasn’t as aggressive as she was expecting from a gang of lowlifes and a thug. Even in the candy coated world of Equestria there were wimpy idiots who didn’t know any better. “Well I don’t see any clouds in the sky and unless your part dragon I doubt you could stop all of us!” The unicorn leader of the smalltime gang watched as Kazooie slowly inhaled and spat out a ball of fire that lit the street aflame causing him and his gang to backpedal away in fright. Following up her simple light show by turning butt towards them Kazooie quirked an eye as she wiggled it at them. “Do you actually want to test if I can fart lightning? I would do thunder, but anybody who’s had enough beans can do that.” Kazooie noted that they were shocked scared staring at the smoldering black scorch mark on the ground; she sighed and decided to get things over with. Exploding a battery egg in her butt hurt slightly but it was worth the effort to fire lightning out her rear end. Kazooie’s face scrunched up and with a gasp and a jerk a blast of white lightning shot out of her butt and blew four lowlifes into the brick wall of the alleyway. Jerry just stood there as wide eyed as Vinyl was at the moment, he blinked once he finally realized he hadn’t been struck down and saw Kazooie walking over to him writing something on a yellow square. Kazooie calmly slapped a sticky note on Jerry’s forehead and he promptly fainted on the spot. Hopefully he would accept the advice written on the sticky note. “That was… kind of awesome really, how did you even do that?” Vinyl wasn’t looking a gift pony in the mouth as she didn’t have to hurt herself fighting a bunch of idiots and possible need medical attention. Not to mention if she got hurt it would put off her performance and she couldn’t let that happen, especially not tonight. “It wasn’t easy as that kind of stings going out, but I’ve had lots of practice firing from my backside like you wouldn’t believe. So do you have anything like your cutie mark but in a variety that hovers while revolving and comes in a golden color that makes a sound when you touch it?” From spotting her Kazooie had taken a slight interest in the mares cutie mark and had wondered if any of her world’s collectables actually crossed over into this one. It wasn’t likely since she hasn’t caused a dimensional disaster quite as bad as that one in a long while. “No don’t have anything like that. Anyway thanks for the assist, my names Vinyl Scratch and I’m a DJ of a local nightclub around here. Sorry I can’t stay to chat, but I really need to get going.” Vinyl started to trot off but she heard odd hoof steps following and she looked back to see Kazooie following her on her hind legs. “You know walking like that is kind of creepy and why are you following me?” “To find out where that nightclub is. I’m really bored and I could give someone the ingredients for Sweet Sunflower Seed Sarsaparilla to see if they can actually make it correctly. Any side quests along the way will probably cause me to detour; besides I’m interested to hear what kind of music you put on as I’ve never heard of you before. I wonder what your handle will be, maybe DJ Scratch and Sniff?” Kazooie motioned for Vinyl to continue about her way and to ignore her completely; she dropped down to four hooves and followed Vinyl slightly without being too intrusive. She stopped when she heard something off to the side, sounded a lot like crying. Ah well, she’d find Vinyl’s nightclub later as she turned into a different alleyway. Vinyl was happy to have the strange pony stop following her, but at the same time she was just as curious to see what the pony was going to do now. The fact that the mare hadn’t heard her play before was really itching at her, who hasn’t heard of DJ-PON3? Vinyl hoped her octopus wouldn’t mind her being a little late, even after she said she’d be at the club to actually listen to one of Vinyl’s performances even if she was going to be derogatory about it. Vinyl turned around and headed back for Kazooie to find her staring at something in a dark corner of an alleyway. While Kazooie went to investigate the crying noise she had a few puzzle blocks piecing together the things she found out about the mare by looking at her and conversing with her. She already had a life partner but it seems like the relationship had a lot of good infighting or else she wouldn’t looked so prepared to fight those lowlifes and that thug, best not to worry about it and maybe make more friends as she had already made plenty of enemies. Right now she was just staring at a pony that was almost an adult mare, the odd thing about her was that she was wearing a beanie cap and had spiraling pupils. Kazooie had seen weirder like giant balloon monsters that spit explosive beach balls. The filly in question had a pink coat, curly purple mane and tail with white highlights and her flank mark was what was so interesting about her. She looked to starved and looked to have been bleeding at some point from unknown injuries; this pony didn’t look like much of a survivor. Kazooie tried to approach her and she tried to move away, but given time and malnourishment she wasn’t going to get very far at all. Kazooie always had a soft spot for helping others in need unless they were really annoying. It was sort of hardcoded into her after being with her brother Banjo for so long, that bear can really make a girl soft on anyone except the ludicrous situations, bosses and moles they’ve met. Without Banjo around she was free birding and had no obligations to save the world from any evil unless it personally involved itself in her life, right now she was actively the most evil thing in this world barring naturally occurring monsters. “Hey, easy there, I’m not going to hurt you. You obviously need some food, water and a whole lot of TLC.” Kazooie was really wondering if she should have taken up that seminar offer to learn negotiation from Paragon Shepherd, the Mass Effect universe was kind of overrated to her but if the players enjoyed it so much who was she too argue. Moving slightly closer Kazooie stopped to mentally check her heads up display; she had enough magic power for it and was among the many reasons why she needed potions from Zecora in the first place. While Kazooie had phenomenal nearly cosmic powers in her personal video game world abilities and worlds closely related to it, she wasn’t nearly as proficient outside of the worlds closely relating to her own and Final Fantasy was actually loosely enough related for her to use it’s magic. Only she couldn’t use anything like summoning, blue magic, red magic and alternative magic schools other then black and white. A fun note was that everything worked in the Kingdom Hearts universe and as a result Kazooie marked that universe as her favorite vacation spot for ultimate mayhem without needing to explain her actions. The pegasus selected the Scan spell from a drop down menu in her mind but didn’t activate its start up process, the activation of said process tended to spook some people when you started glowing to cast a spell. “I’m going to do something very strange, if I find out you have some incurable disease don’t blame me for blurting it out in a loud and in a completely insensitive manner as possible.” Kazooie needed something to do in this dimension other than showing raw destructive force, making the local rulers angry, messing with ponies in love and thievery of idiots that probably deserved in the first place. Maybe she could get a day job doing normal work? Nah, that never worked for Kazooie as destruction was what she was mostly good at. With a white glow two concentric three dimensional solid white rings circled around the pony causing her to shiver slightly. After a few moments Kazooie just stared at the pony and then a slow smile started to form on her face and tear slid down her cheek. “Thank you Random Number Generating God! Hold on, I’ll cure your illnesses and I’ll heal you up faster than Pit can climb out of the Underworld. Well life has thrown me a good curveball for once, never thought I’d see this day... in all my infinite lives in the form of golden Banjo statues.” Kazooie would cackle gleefully at the weird discovery she just found, but she’d rather save that for after helping the creature in front of her. “Not Curveball is Screwball name…” The pony said quietly pointing out her flank mark, Kazooie already knew what the pony meant. “Okay Screwball, hold on a sec.” Kazooie took on a white glow before she released an Esuna spell. White magic meant to cure most light illnesses. She followed it up with Cura as she barely had that much magic power to do even that at the moment, but it would do the job to patch most of the pony’s wounds. “Okay following you around might be more interesting than I thought.” Vinyl poked her head into the alleyway after watching the pegasus perform some strange magic that apparently fixed up a just as strange pony. “Hold that thought DJ, come on kid. Crawl into my backpack and think of something you would want to eat, you’ll only receive as much food as you can handle and it’s nice and cozy in there.” It was going to be a strange day tomorrow when Kazooie finally asked the pony about her origins and why the scan suggested her to be a powerful magic user. Also it would lead to an incident with a chaos being and Kazooie hoping for a collect-a-thon. Screwball liked to think she had someone looking out for her and she was right, soon she’d be eating barely even a single percentage of the food stored away in the backpack. Kazooie just slapped the backpack back on her back and looked to Vinyl before motioning out with her hoof. Vinyl realizing how late she was quickly darted off, Kazooie followed at a more brisk pace. Soon they had arrived at a club named after a cactus that blooms only at night and Vinyl stopped to talk to the bouncer who happened to be a griffon. “Just let her in, she helped me out of a jam.” It was the last part of the conversation that Kazooie caught as she came to a stop in front of the griffon that was acting as a bouncer for the club and stared at her. Half lion, half eagle and several types of mean but redeemable in having a somewhat loyal heart. “And just what are you looking at?” The griffon crossed her talons defensively and glared angrily at Kazooie, who she was just told to let in. “I’m apparently looking at a sad lonely creature who’s tried to get the attention of someone rather oblivious to your attraction. This ignorance added to your anger management issues and you being without friends probably became a bouncer as an end result. A bigger reason as to why you’re a bouncer is because you can be as tough as you want and never have to show people your gentle side and can be as endlessly stubborn as need be. I would like to help you, but I doubt I’m about to find someone nearly as stubborn as you are and willing to stay by your side while you fly out of control at the slightest provocation. So have fun crying yourself to sleep tomorrow you weak willed yellow bellied mockery of a proud species that is the pitiful creature I see before me, I’m going to be busy partying my sweet tattooed flank off inside.” The griffons jaw dropped as Kazooie waltzed on past with a light smirk on her face as she passed close to the griffon and gave her an ever so subtle kick to a specific spot that the griffon didn’t even know happened. “Cool...” Was the only thing the griffon could say to that kind of attitude, she just sat there wide eyed and then her wings shot straight out and stiffened. “Gah, what the hell did that pegasus do to my wings?” Inside the nightclub a chuckling Kazooie saw Vinyl was already in an argument with a rather upper class looking mare with a purple treble clef marking her butt, she moved up to them and cleared her throat. “Excuse her tardiness, but she was being detained by idiots and my side questing. The idiots in question aren’t going to be around to bother anyone else for a while and one of them might even get outside the closet if he’s lucky. I believe the ponies here are waiting for the DJ to take the stage, so if you will stop holding her up.” The raven haired mare with a light grey coat stopped arguing with Vinyl and turned to the red pegasus giving her a glance in disdain for interrupting their rather stimulating conversation. The conversation in question was about how many ponies hit on her in the last hour or so and how much she hated it. Vinyl noticed Kazooie motioning for her to go ahead and she did just that leaving the strange pony with her mare friend. The two promtply moved over to a table to converse while Vinyl went to prepare for her job. “Who are you and what do you have to do with Vinyl being so late?” The tone of voice suggested she was not a happy camper to be in a night club as she sat down. “Kazooie and you must be hard of hearing and that's the reason why you’re so grey granny, but to reiterate she got held up by a gang I recently flattened. I’m a professional Mischief Maker, an Aero Acrobat and master of various musical instruments. If you hold that thought while I check on someone maybe we can add a third party to this conversation.” Kazooie slipped her backpack from her back and then reached into it with a hoof digging around for something, once she got her hoof on it she gave good tug and up popped Screwball with her face covered in nacho cheese. “Guh-huh?” Screwball blinked confusedly as she looked at Kazooie for a few seconds before trying to give her a hug, Kazooie firmly planted her other hoof on her chest stopping her from nuzzling up to her savior. “Wipe you face with a towel first Screwball, how much of my Mexican food did you eat? Ah well, it doesn’t matter in the long run anyway.” Screwball following Kazooie’s orders reached down into the backpack and then wiped her face with a red towel that had ‘hers’ written on it. When she pulled it away there was a yellow smiley face made of cheese stuck to the towel. Screwballs smiling face was sparkling clean and Kazooie didn’t bat an eye at the cheese not sticking to her fur or smearing all over the place. “Cute trick kiddo, but I’ve seen it before. Now crawl on out of there and take a seat, I can clean up the towel later with my er... washing machine, yeah lets go with that.” Screwball gave a great big fierce hug to Kazooie nuzzling happily into her neck and promptly took a seat next to her wagging her fluffy tail happily as her beanie’s propeller spun out of control on her head. While all this was happening the mare that now sat across from Kazooie just stared blankly at her, taking in the size of the backpack and all the stuff that had just come out of it or went back in. “Ahem, excuse me for my rudeness I am Octavia Crescendo Pie and it appears there’s more going on here then I might have thought. I’m a cellist, but I have been known to play a bass every now and then.” Having introduced herself finally Octavia stared at Kazooie with intrigue and the pony acting a like a puppy right next to her. “Look I’m just here for some entertainment and to make some acquaintances, don't worry I'm not interested in Vinyl. I stopped to pick up wild and crazy kid here and then Vinyl finished her trek past the ever so interesting bouncer and here we are with me asking if you know someone with the middle name of Diane last name Pie. I tend to like playing the violin and I really like the dulcet tones of a well tuned banjo, I can litterally get one to do anything if I'm teamed up with it.” Kazooie rested her hooves on the table they took to sitting at and stared at Octavia as she took this all in and her eyes were slightly wide at the mention of the middle name of her cousin. “The only pony I know with a middle name like that is my cousin Pinkie, can’t stand her really and she interrupted the last gala I was at. I like her sisters better as at least they can contain themselves.” Now they were having a conversation and Octavia seemed to completely ignoring all the absurdities of the shape shifter sitting across from her with a pony that had strange eyes. She was mostly unflappable, but what Octavia was really after was what Kazooie meant to Vinyl and relaxed a little more as their conversation quickly turned to music. Eventually Kazooie managed to work up a friendship between the three of them, with Screwball barely talking at all and when she did talk she sometimes fell entirely off the track of whatever she was trying to converse about. Over the next two days a chaos creature would be free'd and subsequently put in his place, causing him to go to the one pony he thought he'd never ask for help from.