//------------------------------//
// Hopping Things 
// Story: The Things Tavi Says 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//

	"Let's give it out for Vinyl Scratch!!!  DJ-P0N3 IN THE HOUSSSSSSSSE!!!"

Cheers.  Doubling and quadrupling on top of one another.

My eyes snap back to the beating, throbbing moment, and it is full of sparkles.  Colors swirl and shimmer around me, and I am in control of them... in control of the sound.

And then there's another sound, full of gold and saliva and joy.

I tilt my head up from the turntable, gazing at a dancing, bucking crowd of rowdy, raving ponies.  All of Baltimare's youth have poured into the concert arena to worship music... my music, and I am worshipping it alongside them.

It's when I zone in and out of a killer session like this that I know... I know... that things are going righteously.

I smile.  I kiss a pale hoof and fling it to the air.  Cheers abound, and when my limb comes down, the bass drops with it, and an explosion of sonic orgasmia quivers underneath me, underneath all of us, bouncing us, throwing us skyward to the stars, stars, stars.  My horn ignites a complex array of chrimastic strobe lights towering over my booth.  Pixels dance like a computer's ghost, vomiting every shade of the rainbow through chirps, giggles, and glitch gurgles.  And as the waves of light and color froth outward, the living surf of ponydom send it roaring back on a manic rip tide.  It engulfs me, ignites deep in side of me.  I spin around and scratch a record back and forth: my honeymoon yodeling with honey on top, glistening, oozing, spreading.

And then the next track hits like a sledgehammer, including the frozen gasp before the penultimate downswing.  There's a sundered gap in every golden breath as all of Baltimare lingers on the dagger's tip.  The green hum of the world bleeds in for a microsecond and then rockets back to the heavens at the speed of screams, for I've chased it away with bombs of deep bass badassedry, annihilating every fragile pulse obstinate enough to stand within the blast radius.  The equine heart is stubborn.  I can be stubborn too, only I have a catalogue of over two thousand dance tunes at my disposal, and only I and I alone am leading the charge uphill tonight.  Everypony else is merely galloping up behind me, screaming into the flames and shell fragments.

If only Tavi could see me now.  But that's okay.  I've brought the next best thing.

"You're killing them, Vinyl!" my wing stallion shouts.  He bounces constantly in place on the stage, holding a mic and a pair of saucer-wide eyes, both aimed at me.  "You're murdering them!"  Twitch.  Twitch.  Grin.  "Now for the mercy blow!"

I nod and give him the signal.

At my command, he turns towards the crowd and hollers hot and loud, "Yo you—this is Roadie Beau Fo'Sho, and I've got an announcement to make!  DJ P to the Zero to the N-E-THREE has a brand new mix to share with thee!  So who here wants to melt in their mother buckin' horseshoes tonight?!?!"

The crowd explodes with platinum sparks.  I swing back on a wave of red and brown, my mane tossing, and I prepare the next beat with a slap-tapping hoof.  I whistle aside to Beau, my body strong enough to withstand the flood of blood over my shades in the wake of it.  When everything fades, there he is—adrift in the shimmer—hollering once more like a banshee into the mic:

"Well, Baltimare, let it out and leak it loud for the brand new cool 'Strings in Fuzz Minorrrr!'" He points at me.

I point at eternity.  A record just happens to spin in the ether between us, a brand new record, a cosmic infant unchained.  And within seconds—waves of undulating purple velvet rolls over the crowd like a hypnotic tsunami.  I know this, for I see a flood of eyes shutting already in delicious inebriation.  Ponies drinking.  Unicorns devouring.  Pegasi and every other oats-munching thing in between drifting and swaying with the tantric trance swirls, until a certain musician's harpstrings build up from nothing, and everything coalesces into a rich violet refrain, exploding and sputtering outward in unintelligible audio ambrosia.

I already know five seconds in that the vocal samples have won them over.  They don't understand a single utterance—for all is broken and indistinct—but they feel it.  They live it.  And I can only hope... I can only dream... that they relish it in even a fraction of the way that I do.

It matters much, and yet it matters little.  I have them in the crook of my fetlock.  And—like a good guardian angel—I protect them.  I cherish them.  I swing them to ecstasy with a rock of the beat, and by the time the suite has ended, so have their breaths...

For half of Baltimare, it's all down hill from here.

And, as always, you're welcome.