//------------------------------//
// 4) The Entertainer 
// Story: Music Makes The Heart 
// by TheVulpineHero1 
//------------------------------//


The Entertainer
(KT Tunstall)




A four-on-the-floor bass crash rippled through the scuffed wood of the dance floor and up into the legs of every pony stupid enough to get in its way. Four hundred horseshoes vibrated in sympathy before the next beat ripped from the speakers. It was all a pony could do to remain standing under the assault, and with each song it got louder, harder, faster. A blackness thicker than death reigned, lit only by a flotilla of glow sticks that danced and swayed like will o' the wisps. The atmosphere was slick with sweat and energy. The ponies danced as one, closer in the blackness than any of them would dare admit.

Somewhere in the blackness, Octavia reeled. She'd never known anything like it, this pit of darkness and sound and motion. Far away were the concertos and the allegros of her everyday life, drowned in the relentless, pounding beat. The music engulfed her. There was no escaping it. It was too loud to think, too dark to see; all she could do was hear it in the air, and feel it in her hooves. It was an immersion more total than she had ever experienced before, and it left her halfway between fear and euphoria. She looked around wildly for her quarry, before she was swept away.

At her decks, raised above the dancers on a platform illuminated by a flickering strobe pulse, legs sore and hooves scratched, DJ P0N-3 worked her turntable with a fury unknown by ponykind. This was the culmination of her career, the moment when she straddled that fine line between art, science and madness. Every note was pefect, every distortion burnt the mind. What could she do but ride the wave of creation, a mad scientist cackling at her workbench? This was living. This was truth. She allowed the beat to drop, and then the song began again. It all repeated, in the end.



Octavia found her after the show. Midnight had passed; the moon winked down from on high.
"I told you," P0N-3 said, voice as calm and smoky as always. "I'm better."
Octavia said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"Come with me. You can't walk home by yourself at night," the DJ said, removing her glasses. Octavia nodded dumbly. She had forgotten her grace.
"So," Vinyl Scratch asked, a smoky laugh on the edge of her tongue, "did you enjoy it?