A resounding clang echoed through ExTech Head Office as Vinyl banged her head on the underside of her desk.
“Ow.”
Octavia didn’t look up from her terminal array, typing away at a relaxed pace.
“Mind your head.”
Muttering under her breath about what certain earth ponies could do with their trite warnings, Vinyl clambered out from under her desk, and prodded a few buttons on her computer. The screen flickered into life almost reluctantly, as if bitter that Vinyl’s half-hearted attempts to fix it had been successful. A few moments later, it had its revenge as a “A REBOOT IS NECESSARY TO COMPLETE THE INSTALLATION” message flashed gleefully across it.
Vinyl stared at the thing flatly.
“I built a robot half the size of Celestia Tower. I made a half-finished rocket space-worthy in a week. I designed the most powerful suit of armour the world has ever seen, so powerful that it took out half of HQ by itself.”
She suddenly started hammering the keyboard frantically.
“So why can’t I make this blasted computer work?!”
Octavia calmly responded over the smashing of hoof on plastic.
“Well, you did insist on using a commercial OS instead of mine. You’re running the most sophisticated diagnostic software the world has ever known in an environment designed for teaching foals to count.”
Vinyl’s hooves slumped to her sides as Octavia, as usual, pointed out the obvious and frustratingly correct. Following suit, her head thumped onto the desk in an extravagant gesture of defeat. Right on the spot where she had hit it before.
“Ow! I... You... Aaargh!”
She threw herself back in her chair. The room lapsed into silence as Vinyl’s curses subsided, broken only by Octavia’s tapping hooves. Vinyl took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting the sound fill her ears. There was something comforting about listening to Octavia work. There was a pattern to her typing that Vinyl could always pick out. A rhythm. Her ear twitched to the beat as she vocalised in her mind, drawing the white line of a melody to join the grey notes that dotted her thoughts like dark stars. Her hoof, unbidden, traced a wavelength in the air.
Her ears stopped twitching suddenly and stood to attention as she realised something else was following the trail of her hoof, grasping her lightly around the fetlock. She looked down quickly, but could see nothing to explain the strange pressure. Before she could say anything, the music in her mind was replaced with a voice.
“That’s all you ever do, isn’t it? Ride the wave. What happens when the wave hits the shore?”