Vinyl glanced about her anxiously. Everypony was deeply involved in their tasks. Good. This would take the utmost concentration, and the slightest distraction could bring the entire plan tumbling down.
Angle... adjusted. Trajectory... set. Necessary force... calculated.
She licked her lips. It was now or never. Everything, all her efforts, had come down to this moment.
She took a deep breath, narrowed her eyes, and fired.
The spitball hit the grey earth pony filly three desks ahead precisely in the spot where her shoulders met her neck. The filly jumped and squeaked in surprise, and Vinyl threw her hooves in the air, crying out in triumph.
“Yes! Mission accom-”
She froze as the entire class stared at her, her eyes reluctantly drawn from her target to the flat stare of the teacher bearing down on her. Her surprisingly deep voice sent the faintest echo bouncing through the silence.
“Vinyl Scratch, I’m sure you know what I’m going to say.”
Vinyl’s eyes darted left and right. No escape. Everypony was looking, and the teacher was getting closer. Detention loomed, and there was only one recourse. She pointed a hoof accusingly and trembled her lip.
“I was getting revenge ‘cause Tavi took my lunch money!”
The teacher gasped and turned to face the grey filly, whose mouth had dropped open in stunned indignation.
“Octavia! Is this true?”
Octavia shook her her head firmly. Her voice hovered somewhere between tutored refinement and the roughness of youth, cracking at the high notes.
“Nuh-uh! I did no such thing!”
The teacher sternly trotted over and opened the drawer in Octavia’s desk. It was at that precise moment that the filly realised that Vinyl had insisted on lending her a few bits earlier that day.
Vinyl sighed in relief as the teacher launched into a fuming impromptu lecture on bullying. She’d almost had to stay behind by herself.
~
“Whoa!” Vinyl shook her head violently, trying to clear the images from her head. “What the heck was that?”
There was a flash of light that sent her reeling. Tripping over her hooves, she ended up sprawled on the non-floor of the darkness she found herself in. As the spots disappeared from her vision, she was greeted by an even more worrying sight.
“Ah! Draconequus!”
Her train of thought moved on even as she scrabbled away from the smiling beast.
“Ah! Discord!”
She managed to pull herself up, setting herself in the best approximation of a combat stance she could manage. Though she and Octavia had been training with their newfound powers, she was still relying mainly on instinct.
Discord himself was chuckling at her discomfort.
“It’s scary, being alone, isn’t it?” Seeing Vinyl’s eyes widen, he pressed the attack. “But you wouldn’t really know about that, would you?”
Vinyl blew an errant strand of mane from her eyes irritably, fear prickling at the edge of every thought.
“What? I’ve been alone. What are you talking about?”
Discord pulled a book from the air and began thumbing through. He tapped a page and dragged the ink from it, a winding line of liquid colour flowing into space to form a picture that hung in the void like a hologram. The picture showed Vinyl and Octavia as fillies in the playground, Vinyl laughing riotously at Octavia’s attempts at a sandcastle.
“Hey! Get out of my memories!”
Discord grinned and flicked another image into the air. Years later, Vinyl and Octavia, young adults now, were standing alone on the stage of the Metropony Opera house, their mouths agape at the grandeur of their surroundings. Octavia’s acceptance letter had fallen to the ground, forgotten but every bit as important.
Vinyl galloped toward the creature rifling through her past like a magazine, embarrassment burning her from within. But before she could complete her charge, Discord had casually teleported behind her. She stumbled, skidding to face to him.
“Stop it! This is seriously uncool!”
Flick. Octavia typing at her terminals in Head Office, teeth gritted, as Vinyl and Lyra danced behind her to the beat of the enormous jury-rigged speaker that took up half the room.
“What is this?!”
Flick. A day at the beach. Octavia huddled beneath a parasol as if the sun’s rays were deadly to the touch, Vinyl pulling at her tail in effort to get her out of the shade.
“Okay, so me and Tavi have always been together. Why do you care?!”
Flick. A pair of foals, one grey and one off-white, splashing in the bath.
“... Our parents knew each other, okay?”
With slow deliberation, even as he floated out of reach, Discord looked up from the book, gazed into her eyes, and flicked a final picture into the air.
Flick. Vinyl and Octavia, wearing for the first and last time their M.A.R.E. dress uniforms and saluting, badges worn proudly on the chests.
Vinyl fell to her haunches, exhausted from her fruitless pursuit.
“Okay. Fine. Lay it on me. You want to say something. Say it.”
Discord snapped the book shut and it vanished in the white flash that characterised his magic.
“I just thought it was important that you realise how little... effort you’ve put into life.”
Vinyl’s raised her head and frowned.
“What? I work plenty hard! Me and Tavi-”
“Ah, but that’s it, isn’t it? You and Tavi, Tavi and you. BFFs since birth!”
Vinyl shrugged uncomfortably. She felt uncertain, and the worst thing was she had no idea what she felt uncertain about.
“So? Don’t see what that has to do with anything...”
Discord rolled his eyes.
“It’s always been the same, hasn’t it? You have the fun, Octavia does the work. Octavia succeeds, you follow her lead.”
Vinyl’s mind raced. What was he getting it? Sure, she’d always taken things one step at a time while Octavia made the plans, but it had worked out all right in the end, right?
Right?
“You just waltz through life, doing what you want while Octavia picks up the slack. At school, in your careers, at M.A.R.E.”
Vinyl opened her mouth to respond, but Discord’s voice was hypnotic, forcing its way into her mind like an iron bar.
“You’ve never achieved anything for yourself, and you’ve never taken responsibility. You’re a child, Vinyl Scratch. A foal who never grew out of her surrogate sister’s shadow.”
Vinyl’s eyes darted left and right. No escape. Only the void. Discord swam through the air toward her, and his voice seemed layered with that of every teacher, every agent, every disappointed parent.
“I’m sure you know what I’m going to say.”