The front doors of the movie theater flew open. I trotted through the double doors back into the dim, evening sunlight as carefree as ever. And why wouldn't I have been? The movie was just as epic as I was anticipating! I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and had completely finished my popcorn about 5 minutes into the movie! Although, some ponies didn't really see it the same way I did...
"Hey, come on you two!" I called back. "I'm leaving you in the dust here!"
Parchy and Infinite trudged forward to the double doors with their eyes bugged out and their jaws dragging on the floor. I couldn't help but giggle as the fading light caught them in the face and they returned to "normal". They both instinctively covered their eyes from the light and regathered themselves.
"Ok, I don't know what I was expecting to be seeing, but... THAT definitely wasn't it..." Parchy remarked.
"Oh come on, Parchy, it wasn't that bad." I said teasingly.
"No, my reaction isn't towards the movie itself. It's more to the fact that you were the one who wanted to see it..."
"Oh, Parchy," Infinite chimed in, walking over to put his front hoof around my shoulder. "I could totally see Gigi enjoying a movie like that."
"Yeah, sure. I definitely got that message from you when you tapped me on the shoulder 20 minutes in, shaking like a foal." Parchy joked.
Infinite's arm went slack, and he backed off a little bit, stammering.
"Uhh... haha... yeah, you have no proof of that."
Parchy raised an eyebrow at him. Infinite started blushing as he desperately looked for a way to change the subject.
"Oh, hey, would you look at that! Is that Starlight and Zeta going to the Karaoke pub? I'm gonna go see if it is real quick. Bye!" he said making a beeline for town. Parchy and I couldn't help but laugh. Nothing quite like making the "smooth" guy get flustered.
"Yeah, but seriously, I know you're "Syx's sister" and everything, but I wasn't expecting you to like a movie like that." he said as we started walking after Infinite.
I couldn't tell if he emphasized the words, "Syx's sister", on purpose or not. Parchy seemed to have more suspicions than he was letting on. I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my muzzle.
"You kidding me? I love those types of movies! They're awesome!" I exclaimed, realizing too late that I had sounded a bit too enthusiastic. Parchy gave me an odd look.
"Uhh, I mean... yeah, they're alright I guess..."
Parchy chuckled, as I looked away, falling behind as we kept walking down the street. Sweet Celestia I was not a good actor.
It started to get dark as we trotted past the Karaoke pub that Infinite had gone into. Parchy glanced over as we walked by, and apparently saw something inside, because he stopped and went back to get a better look.
"Oh yeah, I forgot. It's karaoke night." he remarked.
"What?" I asked.
"It's karaoke night. Once every few weeks or so, everyone on the show staff gets together for-"
"Oh yeah, that's right. Syx mentioned that to me before..."
"Yeah, Draft came up with the idea. It's mostly just to help us learn to tolerate each other, but it's usually pretty entertaining whether you decide to do a song or not." Parchy said.
"Yeah, believe me, I know." I thought, chuckling to myself.
"Yeah, it looks like everyone's already inside. C'mon." Parchy said, trotting towards the door.
Figuring I needed something to take my mind off of everything that had happened as of late, I shrugged and followed Parchy in. Sure enough, like he said, everyone was already at a table. Starlight appeared to have already had a few drinks judging by the 5 or 6 empty shot glasses sitting on the table beside him. Zeta and Snowblitz were sitting off to his right just kinda derping around with some cards or something. To their right Bash was looking over a menu, while Infinite chugged down whatever he had been drinking. Parchy took the seat next to him and I sat down next to Parchy. I needed at least one pony between me and Infinite. There was another pair of empty seats next to me, which I could only guess were supposed to belong to Forest and Slyph, but Forest never really came to karaoke night and Slyph was probably "busy" with other stuff.
I looked around the table again, greeting everypony as a familiar deep voice came over the intercom.
"Alright, we'll be taking a quick 15 minute break. In the meantime, we have plenty of refreshments for you, so just turn on the light in the middle of your tables when you're ready to order. My goldfish and I appreciate you coming out tonight and we hope you have a great time."
"Oh yeah, Larscis works here." I remarked.
"Yeah, he gives us 50% off everything. Why else would we come here?" Starlight replied drunkenly.
"Yeah, and it's always fun to beat Zeta's flank at something every once in a while." Snowblitz added as Zeta rolled his eyes.
"Alright, well if you guys wanna eat, you better order sometime tonight." Bash teased. "We've got some time before the break is over and we start sacrificing you guys to the mic stand."
Collectively groaning and mumbling, everyone picked up the menus laid out in front of them and started looking them over. Finally, when everyone was ready to order, Bash reached out and turned on the light in the center of the table. As if he had been standing there waiting the whole time, Larscis appeared behind me just as the light flicked on.
"Poni?" he asked.
Out of complete startlement, I literally jumped out of my seat and into the seat next to me. Thankfully that seat was unoccupied.
"Ahh, I see we're getting an early start at musical chairs. You may want to wait for the music to start though" Larscis teased... I think... I don't know, sometimes I can't tell if Larscis is being serious or if he's joking.
"Anyway, I'm guessing you guys are ready to order?" he said.
So, we all told Larscis what we wanted, and he went to the back where I could assume the kitchen was, and after about 15 minutes, he came back out with our food. I had to say, for a place that's main attraction wasn't it's food, it was still pretty good. The Oatburger and Hay Fries that I ordered were among the best that I've ever had, and the drink was okay.
After Larscis gave us our food, he made his way back up to the stand and put his headphones back on.
"Alright everypony, thanks for being patient. We are back and ready for more music!" Larscis shouted, pausing momentarily as the crowd cheered. "We are now taking volunteers for the next performers, so if you're interested come up to the stand and sign up!"
Collectively, half of the ponies at my table got up at once and headed over to the stand (or in Starlight's case, stumbled over to the stand). After putting their names on the list, Zeta, Snowblitz and Starlight came back to sit down.
"Alright now, has everypony signed up that wanted to sign up?" Larscis asked, holding up the list. Nopony else decided to head up to the stand. "Alright then, let's get started. First up is the Sound Box Stallion himself... SNOOOOOOOOOOOOWBLIIIIIIIIITZ!!!"
Snow got up and started waving his front legs trying to pump up the crowd as he made his way to the mic stand.
"Now, what will you be performing tonight?" Larscis asked.
Snowblitz leaned into the mic, looking over at Larscis with this look of "It's about to get real."
"Equestrian Idiot." Snow said into the mic, as a mixture of cheers and hushed murmurs came from the crowd.
"Alright! Equestrian Idiot! Here we go, starting the track in 3... 2... 1..." Larscis counted down as a very familiar and entertaining guitar riff signaled the start of the song.
I expected Snow to go with a punk rock song, and he actually did pretty well. It was a good song choice for him.
Anyway, after Snow got done with his song, a couple of other ponies went up and did their songs, and then it was Starlight's turn. Still drunk as ever, Starlight got up there and started singing a song called "Fat Bottom Mares". Now, I've heard that song, and I kinda like it, but I had a bit of an issue with his performance. Throughout the whole song, I could swear he was watching me, almost as if he was... singing to me...
"Oh Luna, not him too..." I thought as his song started to wind down to a close and he failed at performing a stage dive. As Bash and Parchy got up, picked him up off the ground and brought him back to the table, the next performer came to the stage. This guy I feel like I should've known. He seemed familiar enough. He was a grey-ish colored unicorn with a green mane and tail and a pair of glasses. Why did that sound familiar?
"Next to perform, we have the DICEMAAAAAN!!!" Larscis announced.
I swear I knew that name.
"So, what song are you going to be performing?"
Dice looked over at Larscis and said, "Tweet It."
Now why did that feel ironic...?
"Ahh, forget it" I muttered to myself.
After Dice got done, it was Zeta's turn.
"I just want to ask, Zeta. I'm curious. Both of the zebras that I know have a name that starts with Z. Now is that on purpose or by coincedence?" Larscis playfully asked him as he walked up to the mic stand. He rolled his eyes and chuckled.
"Just play the track, will ya?" he said, still chuckling.
I didn't really hear Zeta tell Larscis what song to play, but when the instrumental for "Wake Me Up" started playing, I just about lost it. It took everything I had not to bust out laughing right there. It didn't make it much easier considering Zeta's not exactly known for his voice. To his credit though, what he lacked in vocal ability, he made up for in showmanship. I don't think I've seen somepony get so into a song.
Soon, Zeta's song ended and he came back to the table.
"Alright, that's all the names on the sign up list. Now, we've still got time for one more song before our next break, so are there any volunteers for somepony to do one more song?" Larscis called out to the crowd.
I looked around for a moment. There were no hooves shooting up into the air. I looked around the table and I caught the eyes of Parchy. He was giving me a very mischievous look, like he knew I was going to hate him for what he was about to do. And then to my horror, I heard his voice call out...
"Gigi wants to do a song!!"
My eyes widened, and every muscle in my body tensed up. Like heck I was gonna do a song. I looked around quickly and noticed Snowblitz and Zeta looking at each other, and they seemed to like the idea.
"Yeah, Gigi should do a song!" they both said.
Pretty soon, everypony at my table had agreed that this was a good idea, and I started to panic.
"You're kidding me." kept running through my mind at that moment. Then it got worse. Parchy started up a chant.
"Gi-gi. Gi-gi." he chanted looking around the table for support. Soon enough, everypony at the table was chanting, "Gi-gi! Gi-gi!" As if that wasn't bad enough, I started hearing the chant pick up at other tables. Everypony else was getting into it. It wasn't much time later that the entire club was chanting, "GI-GI! GI-GI!! GI-GI!!!"
In a final attempt to spare my dignity, I latched on to the chair I was sitting in, and clung to the frame for dear life. Noticing the obvious discomfort I was in, like good friends would do, everypony at my table got together and lifted my chair off the ground and carried me towards the stage.
"I see we have a crowd favorite." Larscis said jokingly. Of course... He was among my group of friends. Why should I have expected him to help at that moment.
Eventually, they set my chair down right behind the mic, and all backed away to the foot of the stage, as if trying to prevent me from running. At this point, there was nothing I could do. Whether I liked it or not, I was gonna perform a song.
"So, Gigi" Larscis said, "What song are you going to be performing?"
Fine, if my friends weren't gonna let me leave with my dignity intact, I might as well go all out. I stood up and walked to the mic, looked over at Larscis with the most dead serious look I could have given and said...
"Radioactive."
Once the track started, everypony turned around from the stage and headed back to the table. Once everypony was back in their seats...
"Hey thanks for the help there guys. I needed Gigi occupied for a bit." I said.
They exchanged a few confused looks. "What for, Parchy?" Bash asked.
"I need to talk to you guys about Gigi. I've got some suspicions about her, and I wanted to see if you agreed."
Everypony exchanged a few more confused looks. "Whadaya mean, suspicions...?" Infinite asked.
"Well, for starters, do any of you find it a little weird that Syx was here Tuesday night, but the very next morning, he's gone, and he never mentioned anything about going out of town."
Starlight burped from the other side of the table, and raised a hoof. "Yeah, and Syx didn't get home until late Tuesday night. We were at the Ice Cream parlor together until about 2am." he sputtered.
I gestured my front hoof at Starlight. "Doesn't anypony else find that weird?"
"Ok, so Syx had to leave really early in the morning, and Gigi was probably there already when he got back home. It's no big deal, Parchy." Infinite concluded.
"I'm not done there. Gigi and Syx have a lot of the same interests. They're both into the same types of movies, the same types of music, they both worship Minifridges. Like, literally worship. She had a freaking minifridge shrine in her room."
"Ya know, she did stare at that one card for a while when we were playing Secret Shipfic Folder the other day. The minifridge card." Zeta added.
"Ok, but I still don't think that's a big deal. She can like what she wants." Bash said shakily. Why did he seem nervous about something...?
"Alright, on top of that, tell me this: How many Brother/Sister pairs have you seen that looked exactly alike? I mean, right down to the cutie mark. Seems kinda odd if you think about it, don't you think?" I asked.
"Okay, okay, what are you getting at Parchy?" Infinite asked impatiently.
"Ok, call me crazy, but I think Gigi is Syx." I suggested.
The entire table busted out laughing. Everypony started nudging each other and saying stuff like "What? No..." and "That's rediculous..."
At that moment, the song Gigi was singing got to the second chorus, and she went for it. All at once, everypony at the table turned around to look at Gigi, all with a look on their faces like the pieces were finally coming together. Slowly, they all tilted their heads to the left and kept watching as the chorus finished and went into the bridge. Infinite and Starlight had looks of utter mortification plastered on their faces, as everypony else began looking back and forth as if checking to see if the whole club was seeing the same thing. Snowblitz turned around and looked me in the eye.
"Okay, you may be on to something, Parchy."