The Jazzy Fillyfooling Group Collab

by The Princess Rarity

Candy - AcreuBall

Octavia locked the door and switched off her front light. She then proceeded to switch off all the other lights in her house for good measure, and also drew the blinds. It was that day of the year again.

Tavi disliked holidays in general. Really, any day that was--for some reason or another--widely regarded as having some sort of significance was just as bad. Tavi’s life ran on very strict routines. It had order and structure, and she took great amount of solace in that. And kind of ‘special’ day threw off that structure. Like this day for instance: she had a concert in two days, and her usual day-before-the-day-before-a-concert ritual was being thoroughly mussed.

Occasions such as Thanksgiving , or something like that, were excusable, and rather easily avoided by those who chose not to partake--at the very worst, these holidays merely threw off her mundane-errands schedule, as ponies that owned stores seemed to jump at any chance to close them early, or even not open them at all for the entire day, to Octavia’s great inconvenience. Nightmare Night, however, was far more pervasive in its realm of influence.

First and foremost, Octavia despised candy. Sweet gummy candies hurt her sensitive teeth, hard candies seemed to require an annoying amount of time to complete (and attempting to crunch them served only to similarly hurt her teeth), gum was uncouth and made one look like cattle, sour candies had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and chocolate gave her migraines. Even if she did want to buy candy to give out to foals (which she didn’t--encouraging wild, filthy, loud foals to come right up to her doorstep was not her idea of a holiday), there would inevitably be candy left over that would hang around her house, to be eaten, most likely, by a certain white unicorn. Though the foals hanging off her doorbell looking for free candy could be subverted easily enough by going into a stage-two lockdown, that white unicorn wouldn’t be so easily deterred.

Octavia had meant to spend the majority of the week in her favourite practice room in the recording studio, but she had instead spent most of it creeping around trying not to make eye contact with any of her peers that would inevitably try and force on her an invitation to one of those infamous ‘Nightmare Night parties,’ of which she had less than no interest in attending. There was one small glint of silver on the edge of this stormhead named Nightmare Night, and that was the fact that, though the days preceding it were indicative of the holiday’s namesake, on the night itself, the studio was guaranteed to be mercifully empty. It was the one small upside to one of the ‘special occasion’ days that the year was peppered with--they happened to be some of the few nights she could be certain the studio would be free of all the mouth-breathers and neck-beards that were sometimes called (possibly in error) musicians that were signed to the same label as her. Especially that unicorn. Friday and Saturday nights, as well as Sunday mornings, were fairly safe bets on an ordinary week, but never had quite the same guarantee of solitude as a holiday--inebriated musicians had an inexplicable tendency to want to go practice their craft at the oddest times, such as after a Friday or Saturday night spent partying.

Ensuring her house was locked and sealed, Octavia snuck to the back door with her cello strapped to her back. All that was left to do was successfully make it to the studio, and she’d be in the clear. She took a moment to centre herself. She was a cello-playing ninja of the night. She was pianissimo; she was con sordino; she was an ethereal lilting cantabile drifting overtop of the central melody--she could do it.

There was a knock at her front door.

Tavi froze--perhaps it was just a daring, blind, or particularly obtuse foal who didn’t notice that lights off meant no candy. There was a second knock. Then a series of knocks began, starting quietly, then building in volume, but keeping a steady rhythm. Then an additional knock jumped into the rhythm on the backbeat. It then started alternating between triple and duple time, with accents on the first and third beats of the triplets. As the pattern doubled itself, with sextuplets offset with sets of four sixteenth notes with rather natural sounding but very complex accented beats, Octavia gave a harrowing sigh and set down her cello.

“What do want, Vinyl Scratch?” Octavia said, her eyebrows sitting flat along her brow as she yanked open the door.

“Trick or friggin’ treat, baby!” Vinyl said, wearing what appeared to be a box with two racing stripes down the middle and a number one drawn on it, and burst passed Tavi into the room. “Ha, trick question--I know you hate candy and also I’m inside you house, which was, like, a super trick by itself.” She winked. “Be honest, it was the sextuplets that did it, wasn’t it? Works every time!”

Octavia smooshed her hoof in her own face. “I’m not playing you little games tonight, Vinyl, I’m going into the studio to practice for my performance--like I already told you every time I saw you this week and you asked me if--”

“So you coming to my party tonight, or what?”

“Vinyl! I’m serious I’m--”

“Kay, you’re saying lots of things, but they aren’t making that much sense because none of them seem to be saying ‘Yes Vinyl! Let’s go to your party!’ ...so how bout you try answering that one more time? Like, in a way that I can understand.” She paused for a moment. “And by that I mean you say ‘Yes Vinyl! Let’s go to your party!’ ” She adjusted the box she was wearing. “Uh, in case that wasn’t clear--you should come to my party. I’m actually here to pick you up. Because I knew you wouldn’t come if I didn’t.”

“Vinyl--I don’t even...” Octavia fumed, and then her eyes fell to the box Vinyl was wearing. “Uh... what exactly are you dressed up as?”

“I’m a square! Whose number-one in a race!” She paused. “A leading square, if you will.” Vinyl waited in anticipation, but Tavi just stared evenly at her. “I’m a square lead!” she said, throwing her hooves up.

“That... is a terrible pun. A terrible pun that barely makes sense.”

Vinyl frowned defensively. “Hey, just because I’ve had to explain it to every single pony so far, and a few times actually had to go on and explain what a square lead is in the first place, it doesn’t mean it’s not totally obvious and also brilliant!”

“Yes it does. Conclusively so.”

“Whatever! Doesn’t matter. Wait till you see the costume I made for you!” Vinyl opened the box she was wearing and floated up a cardboard sign with a rope on it, and plopped it down around Tavi’s neck before she could react. It had a huge circle stuck on it made from wildly purple faux-fur. “It’s a large fuzzy ‘O’! Large Fuzzy ‘O?’ Get it? An LFO!” She winked. “Because you definitely oscillate my low frequencies.”

Octavia rolled her eyes, and started fighting to get the sign off, but Vinyl put her hoof on it to stop her.

“Wait!” the unicorn said. “Come on! You gotta come! It wouldn’t even hardly be a party without you!”

“Now that’s hard to believe. And really, the last thing I want to do is go to that--”

“Okay, but”--Vinyl floated a paper bag out of her cardboard box--“if you don’t come, you have to eat a hooffull of candy corn!” Vinyl shoved the bag at Octavia, which was filled with triangular orange yellow and white candies.

“What? Ew! I’m not doing that!”

“Then you’re coming to the party!”

“What’s with these random terms?” Octavia tried to brush the bag away with her hoof. “I don’t agree to this!”

“It’s Nightmare Night! This is the trick or treat part!”

“Wait, then where’s the treat? This is just a choice between two things I don’t want to do!”

“Yeah, getting you to come to the party is the treat--duh.”

“But I don’t what to go to that!”

Vinyl glanced to the side. “A treat for me, obviously.”

Octavia raised an eyebrow. Vinyl picked up a few candies out of the bag. “These things really got nothing on you,” she said as she ate them. “I’m willing to be you taste better, too!”

Octavia blinked. A blush crept up on her. “Vinyl... h-have you been flirting with me?” She fiddled with her “costume” that was slung around her neck. “Is that what this is? All the joking and sort of making fun of me and--”

Vinyl rolled her eyes. “Yes. Yes, that definitely is what this is. The last, like, ten times I’ve talked to you, too. Or, like, basically all the time without stopping.” A wry look came to Vinyl’s face and she let out an exasperated huff. “You make it very hard.”

The colour touching her face progressed into a full blush. “Well, I--how was I supposed to--”

“Pretty sure any other pony would’ve picked up on this already.” Vinyl ran her hoof through her mane, looking away from the other pony. “You’re like, five kinds of impossible, you know that?”

Octavia shot out her hoof and grabbed a bunch of candies from the bag floating beside her, and hesitated only a moment before tossing them in her mouth. They really were a lot like Vinyl--they set her teeth on edge and gave her a headache, and the flavour was so strong it was almost too much.

“Aw,” said Vinyl, pouting. “I didn’t think you could actually do it.” Her played-up pout fell away and a hint of an honestly disappointed expression came up on her face. “So... I guess this means you don’t have to come to the party. Like, technically--”

“I’ll go,” said Tavi.

Vinyl lit up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Vinyl grabbed the other pony’s hoof and tugged her out the door. “Well come on then! It started, like, half an hour ago!”

Octavia laughed, despite herself, and followed Vinyl outside. Out of Vinyl’s box came a few more bags of candies to follow alongside the candy corn that accompanied them on their way.

“At least that box serves some sort purpose, even if it’s a terrible costume,” Tavi said.

“I know right?” Vinyl grinned. “It’s great, I’ve been keeping all kinds of stuff in here all day! I should wear it all the time.”

“Please never do that.” Octavia reached over and grabbed a few toffees out of one of the bags and popped them in her mouth.

Vinyl raised her eyebrow. “What’s this, now? What what happened to hating candy?”

Octavia smiled. “Maybe I just never properly gave it a chance.” She brushed up against Vinyl. “I think it could even start to grow on me.”

Comments

[pixiestickz]

This was a fun read!

[SP00KY NINJA-PON3]

3429205 A fitting name for this chapter.