Battle Station Bass Canon

by book_burner

"Blumenkranz" / "Black Sheep"

Battle Station Bass Cannon

oh no I told you that book_burner won’t stop

Based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the collected works of Imaishi Hiroyuki-sama, and one other thing I hope you’ll figure out soon

---

Place: Canterlot Castle
Time: Almost Dawn

The Lady Lyra Heartstrings trotted across the drawbridge and into Canterlot Castle, glancing and gazing around her to see if anypony else was around at this hour. The enchanted flower clock painted above the bridge at the entrance to the castle had its daisy open, with the roses and violets closed, telling Lyra the hour had long gone past midnight and the Changeling’s Hour after it, and was reaching towards dawn.. Soon, soon Princess Luna would lower the moon, and Princess Celestia would raise the sun.

But first came Lyra’s time, to rejoice in everything she and the Kamui had done, and in everything they were yet to do. She could hear her dress whispering to her, always whispering in her ears now, whenever she wore it. The poor thing, all it ever wanted in life was her, and yet she kept it dormant almost all of the time. The whispering filled her mind again...

You ask me if I'll go with you,

You whisper to me in my ear,

You ask me if I take your hoof,

I have no reason to reject you...

Lyra broke into a canter as she made her way across the entrance courtyard, throwing a look at the leafless, lifeless olive tree in the Maredeterranean garden on the left. Once she would have stopped to play her harp a bit for the birds in that tree, but tonight, she wanted nothing to see her. Tonight was for her and It alone.

You ask me if I'll go with you,

You whisper to me in my ear,

You ask me if I take your hoof,

You whisper to me.

Fire tickled her veins and electricity ran across her skin. She felt power caressing her through the folds of her dress, and unleashed the tiniest bit of it to leap two flights of stairs. She kept running through the Artists’ Wing as fast as she could, letting the power ground itself through her.

“Soon, my love!” she whispered, panting. How had she once been one of the stupid and simple ponies who trampled blindly through their lives, stepping wherever a song told them to step? Who had worn whatever looked pretty? Clothing was power, though lesser among ponies than it had once been among humans, but ponies had their compensations: music was a great and powerful magic indeed with which to mold the lives of ponies. Now Lyra was a conductress, a wearer of divine garments, and enhanced her musicians’ instruments with Life Fibers as well.

How had she once lived in Ponyville and not even noticed the sheer negligence of the Princesses in letting chaos roll through the land in constant waves? How had nopony else ever seen the ruin to which Equestria would come without strength at the helm and discipline in the ranks?

Down another spiral of stairs and she arrived to the Observation Chamber, where she held her office as the head of the Royal Night Orchestra.

The floor was of marble tiles in a white-and-lilly pattern, and there were no true walls. Instead, ponies could look out into the deep ravines surrounding Canterlot Castle, peering through the stone columns into the pools of darkness that would soon fill with light as the sun came up. There, facing the east where the moon and sun rose, was the Tapestry, waiting for Lyra as always.

To most ponies’ eyes it showed nothing more than the cycle of day and night brought about by the Princesses, and it was completely ordinary that the Lady Heartstrings had installed it when she took office as Conductress of the Royal Night Orchestra. Only to Lyra’s own eyes did it reveal its true colors and its ancient secrets.

To Lyra’s eyes, it showed the ancient history of the world, before ponies, before minotaurs, before magic of any kind. The ancient race it depicted had stood on two legs, with fleshy “hands” and “feet” that resembled a dragon’s claws; they had stood many whole lengths high. Ages before ponies or magic, the Tapestry had taught Lyra in secret, the human race had bestrode Equis.

This world is cruel,

It is sad but true,

This world is strange,

It is questionable but true.

And even those titans had been made! There had been a time when Equis was inhabited only by brute animals and thought had not yet walked in the world. There had been a time without tunes or melodies or rhythms, without beauty or harmony. Then the Life Fibers had arrived to make apes into humans, and eventually, yes, horses into ponies.

Since her foalhood she had known they must have existed, she had known another world had come before her own, and now, she would be the agent of its rebirth! The Tapestry had chosen her and given her a dress of purest Life Fiber to restore her own race’s progenitors and humanity’s as well, alongside the humans.

There was a time when Lyra hadn’t noticed the problem. She had lived in Ponyville and played her lyre (for which she might as well have been named) like any other musician. She hung out with Bon-Bon, who made sweets. She wasn’t very ambitious, but a Ponyville mare didn’t need to be. The problem was… well, the problem was that Ponyville was stark, raving mad, and once she’d noticed it, she could never un-notice it.

Nightmare Moon. Trixie Lulamoon. Discord. Discord again. And, of course, finally, Tirek. When it came right down to it, ponies in general but Ponyville most specifically spent most of their time blithely ignoring threats that could easily drive them all extinct, and when the threats could no longer be ignored, ponies waited for the power of Harmony to save them all on its very own. Did it come through? Of course: after major damage was already done but before it reached genocidal proportions.

And for being in the right place at the right time with the right friends for Harmony to manifest itself, Twilight Sparkle got crowned a princess. Not for her cleverness, her original findings in magic, her hard work on behalf of other ponies, or her skill in organizing other ponies. In fact, whether she saw it or not, her original attempt to proactively handle the whole “Nightmare Moon problem” was exactly what had gotten her exiled from Canterlot.

Princess Celestia let nopony raise an active hoof against Destiny, no matter the damage or cruelty wrought by Destiny. After all, had it not been Destiny that had unleashed Discord and Tirek upon the land? Certainly it was: nothing else could have.

Human-kind had never behaved with such passivity, and Lyra had resolved that neither would she. Because when one started noticing the hoof of Destiny at work in Equestrian history, one noticed another thing: there were the ponies chosen by Destiny, who could actually do something with their lives, and there were background ponies, who were furniture.

Lyra would not be a background pony, and if that meant she had to destroy Destiny itself, so be it. Her first weapon to turn back the tide of decadence and change the destiny of equinity was music. Given the right song, ponies would march through the streets singing and dancing in tightly coordinated choreography. Nopony knew precisely why they did this; it was hypothesized to be an ancient herding instinct coming to the fore. Everypony just put it down to music being a kind of magic. Which, of course, made music a form of power, power over ponies.

Her dress’s song wound its way into her ears, giving her its power.

This world is cruel,

It is sad but true,

This world is strange,

It is questionable but true,

Is the flower garden real or fake?

This was the essence of her Classical Music Reinaissance Plan: her orchestra was but her vanguard corps, and empowered by the Life Fibers in their instruments, they would play a grand symphony to make all Equestria their army. Oh, they would start with those exiled to the Griffon Empire, of course, those who had fled Equestria’s decadence to a kingdom which allowed them their ambitions. They made such excellent recruits and had such high Life Fiber tolerances, after all.

Then, by the strength of the pony races under the sway of her music, Lyra would relegate the Princesses to their long-since well-earned obsolescence. She would restore the humans and the Life Fibers to life. She would build a newer, greater harmony of Equestria under the active orchestration of the master races.

Her dress whispered still, asking her to give herself to its orchestrations.

I want to get stronger,

because our world is very cruel,

It's advisable to remove withered flowers.

Lyra could stand no more anticipation. She used her magic to twist the conductress’ baton out of her hair and across her skin, scratching out blood. The blood soaked in and her beloved, her dream, her dress sprang to life.

And it sang to her.

Yes, I'm far stronger than I've ever thought,

Soar higher!

Run much faster!

Don't forget the truth!

Yes, I'm far stronger than I've ever thought,

I remove withered flowers,

Why do you look so sad?

The final moonlight streaked Lyra’s chamber in pale silver as the creamy greens and whites of her Kamui’s true form settled into being upon her, her beloved’s piercing green eyes opening where they covered her cutie mark on both sides.

Lyra tried not to scream.

“Life Fiber Override!” she whispered in rapture. “Kamui: Ts’an Nu!”

---

Place: Unknown
Time: To wake up and smell the coffee

Vinyl Scratch smelled the coffee and woke up, finding herself on a camping mattress with somepony holding out to her, yes, a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, it didn’t smell like very good coffee. It smelled like someone had dropped several spoonfuls of godsawfully acidic instant coffee powder in a cup of boiling water and then attempted to cover their evil deed with cream, sugar, and hazelnut extract. There probably wasn’t even any vodka or liqueur in it.

Vinyl grabbed it, grunting her thanks, guzzled every last abominable drop, and dropped back to her knees as she waited for the gods-blessed caffeine to order the sawtoothed buzzing in her brain. In place of thinking, she stared at the pony in front of her and tried to place him/her/whargarrbl.

He was a turqoise earth-pony stallion, and in a very definite way. That is, he was very definitely both a stallion and an earth pony: he stood pretty well above average at almost 17 hands high, and instead of being built for manual labor like most earth ponies, he had the kind of lithe, sleek, thin body that got one job offers to be a coverpony on the Athletics Photographed Seapony Edition. His cutie mark was a yellow, four-pointed star (even Celestia probably didn’t know what that meant), and his aqua-blue mane was parted to fall mostly on the right, reaching down over the lens of his huge aviator shades so he probably had to blow it away occasionally. He was wearing a smirk that Vinyl hated seeing on anypony else’s face.

The buzzing in Vinyl’s head started to resolve into the normal kind of thought, though she had the awful feeling a headache was coming with it.

“In case you’re wondering,” said the stallion standing over Vinyl Scratch, “No, we didn’t.” He was kneeling down towards her in a way that, Vinyl could not help but notice, really made the muscles in his chest and barrel stand out. “You’re wearing some BUYSOMEORANGES fine shades, but at least for now, you’re also kinda a mare.”

Well, that was a load off her. Vinyl was an open partysexual, but waking up in a strange place with a strange pony in front of her always gave her that “Walk of Shame” feeling. Trying to remember the name was always really awkward.

“Right then,” Vinyl replied. She slammed the empty coffee cup down on the floor next to the ratty, striped camping mattress she figured she must have slept on, even if she had no memory of how she arrived. The fibers in the damn thing were really scratching at her flank. Speaking of fibers… where was her scarf? She raised a hoof and found it around her neck where she had it before. Ok, where was her Get Rec’d? Not around her neck where she had left it before. BUYSOMEORANGES.

“Who are you, where are we, and what have you done with my mixer?” Vinyl grumbled.

Vinyl looked out the window to try and figure out where they’d taken her. They were in an apartment - no, correction, a really nice-sized apartment - whose primary face was taken up with a single large set of windows onto a somewhat dull-looking park. They were pretty high up, and in an urban environment. It was cloudy.

Oh, and they were in the living room, which actually had similar camping mattresses strewn everywhere, and numerous strange mutant adornments hung on the walls, half rugs and half towels, depicting flowery patterns and seaside scenes. It had probably all once been some real finery, but now it mostly just looked lived-in. A lot of ponies had been through here.

Place: Canterbrigia (Outer Borough of Manehattan) (Probably)

Vinyl now had some reasonable idea of where she was, which tackled one of her three vital questions. That stallion was striking a pose in front of her, so he was maybe about to answer the second.

“You can think of me as… a wells-wisher,” he said.

Vinyl unceremoniously shoved her glasses off with magic, shoved her hair out of her eyes, and narrowed them at him.

“No I can’t,” she deadpanned, “Besides, the term is ‘well-wisher’, only one ‘well’.” He wasn’t even trying to give a straight answer, let alone to give her back her mixer.

The stallion slid onto his sides, posing with his entire ground-side midsection exposed to Vinyl. This was not a party and she was not feeling up for it. No, just no.

“I meant,” he said silkily, “That my name is Wells Wisher. Though I must admit, I had planned to put you through a series of tests at the War of the Wubs before revealing that to you. As to how you got here, Miss Scratch, you were invited to come see us, as I recall it. There was but a slight delay in our meeting due to the Lady Heartstrings having stolen our venue.”

Vinyl’s memory tried to jog and found itself just about able to walk...

---

At last, Heartstrings broke eye-contact and damped her magic, turning to leave with a silken flick of her dress.

“We’ll see you at the contest, then.”

“Dear freaking Celestia on a stick, you are on!” Vinyl Scratch stomped a hoof and sent a wave through the stone beneath her. “Octavia, wherever you’ve gone, make no mistake! I’m gonna out-music your scary boss and we’re getting that drink together!”

Of course, there wasn’t the slightest hope of enjoying the show after that, not with everypony from the Canterlot upper class staring at her. What to do, what to do…

“Oh yes, one more thing!” boomed the Lady Heartstrings, her head turned back as she stood halfway up the stairs to wherever the buck she’d come from. “Guards! Destroy the DJ and bring her remnants to me!”

Vinyl Scratch couldn’t help but notice that the usual burly and inconspicuous guard-stallions found in nightclubs were drawing closer to her (in their very best Stallion in Black suits for Lady Heartstrings, of bucking course)... and that tonight they were not on her side. Escape routes, escape routes… any decent nightclub had a bunch of the things built-in, just in case an ordinary brawl erupted into a full-blown stampede.

Where were they? Why was her vision all blurry? Oh BUYSOMEAPPLES, the booze was really hitting her.

Ouch. Vinyl somersaulted head over hooves on the cold, smooth stone, feeling her horn scrape in just the way that was gonna ache for days. BUYSOMEORANGES, how hadn’t she noticed that guy behind her? She needed a trick to get out of here, and fast. What worked on upper-class ponies?

She kept her head down and used a spell to take control of the disco ball that was still rotating the image of the moon across the ceiling. She couldn’t afford to let anypony else notice she was the one doing it, so she tried to use little enough strength that her horn wouldn’t glow. She held her head down in any case, trying to hide the aura. Then she stood.

The big scary security ponies were still standing there.

“Meep.”

Vinyl turned, screamed, and ran for her bucking life as she felt the characteristic “catch” in her horn telling her that her spell had worked. The disco ball now cast an eldritch pall of Nightmare throughout.

For her, the preexisting levels of Freak Out wouldn’t have been enough, but these snooty-flank ponies had never spent a single day or night in their whole lives partying. If you had told them the roof was on fiyah, they would in fact have believed the roof was totally really on fire. So for them, it only took a tiny… little… push…

“NIGHTMARE MOON IS BACK! EVERYPONY RUUUUUN!”

Most of the ponies were too busy stampeding to notice a bescarfed, beglassed DJ running through the aisles with them. Or at least, Vinyl had thought so until she felt something sharp plunge itself into her withers.

---

While Vinyl had been letting her memory jog, a bunch of other ponies had trotted into the living room and lined up behind her now-even-more irritatingly mysterious “benefactor” Wells Wisher. They all appeared to be variously mares and stallions of uniformly white coats and black manes. Everypony’s cutie mark was an electric guitar. Vinyl tried not to show how hard she was now breathing: somepony had the connections to buy a mass glamour from changelings.

“So,” Vinyl cocked an eyebrow, “You drugged me and kidnapped me after I tried to escape from Heartstring’s securiponies. And you took my Get Rec’d from me.”

Wells Wisher uncocked his eyebrows and glared back at her.

“I saved you after you nearly got beaten up by security guards after you bucked up what had unexpectedly turned into an extremely clandestine operation against the Royal Night Orchestra in our own club. To which you, Vinyl Scratch, were late.”

The various mares and stallions lurking around listlessly behind Wells Wisher finally fell into position and began singing… an acapella background. One of them busied himself tidying up the camping mattresses, exposing the polished tan wood of the floor.

Black sheep, come home,

Black sheep, come home,

Black sheep, come home.

Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when,

Our common goal was waiting for the world to end.

The acapella ponies started miming passing a ball from one pony to the next until it exploded in their faces. And for Vinyl Scratch, that… was… it.

She had taken just about enough of this guy’s horseapples. She whinnied up and threw her forehooves in the air in exasperation. She would have liked to say that she threw them in the air like she just didn’t care, but in fact, she did care. Because DJ-PON3 had one thing she just did not do, and that was arriving late to her gigs. Vinyl whinnied up and threw her forehooves in the air. She would have liked to say that she just didn’t care, but alas, she did.

“They wouldn’t let me in without being dressed as a ‘proper’ DJ! I had to go hunt down a thrift shop open in the evenings in downtown bucking Canterlot and buy an extra scarf just to get in there! If not for that, I would NOT have been LATE!”

Wells Wisher scratched at the stubble on his chin for a moment, contemplating.

“I suppose so, yes. The Royal Night Orchestra does have a rather irritating tendency to require that one be properly dressed in order to enter. I’ve kept wondering if this is some kind of fetish by Heartstrings.”

Now that the truth is just a rule that you can bend,

You crack the whip,

Shape-shift and trick,

The past again.

The acapella ponies mimed getting dressed, or rather, mimed some of them forcing the others to get dressed. It really didn’t help that in perfect synchrony, Wells Wisher was miming stripping off.

“Wait, you mean that aside from stealing our shows out from under us, they go around forcing ponies to wear clothes? I mean, I’m usually happy to throw something on for a special night out, but clothes all the time? And then, to think she’s getting off on it, too. That’s just…”

I'll send you my love on a wire,

Light you up every time,

Everyone, ooh,

Pulls away, ooh,

From you.

The chorus ponies were pinning themselves to the available walls and showing exactly what they thought of ponies who got “lit up” by wearing clothes. Vinyl didn’t think it was very pretty, since it seemed to involve writing as if struck by electricity while also trying to vomit.

“Kinda freaky, yeah,” Wells Wisher nodded. “And I do suppose that your arrival would not really have prevented our club’s takeover by the Orchestra, since that happened many hours earlier.”

“How did they steal our show out from under us?”

“We are not quite sure, but we do know that the royally-authorized contract was delivered in the early hours of the morning, just after the sun was raised. There may have been quite heavy cajolery involved.”

Vinyl Scratch gaped at him, jaw hanging limp. Some things were just not supposed to ever be real, and this was one of them.

“Musicians can’t get up early in the morning,” she recited dully.

Got balls of steel,

Got an automobile for a minimum wage,

Got real estate, I'm buying it all up in outer space.

“Exactly!” thundered Wells Wisher, stabbing a hoof at Vinyl. The entire chorus stabbed with him; a mob of hooves united in accusation of lameness. “Alarm clocks! Bureaucracy! Tidiness!” Together Wells Wisher and the mob struck one of the most verifiably expert air-guitar poses Vinyl had ever seen. “A true rocker needs not such things! Thus, the pony who stole our gig was not a true rocker, but an abomination most eldritch unto - !”

“Hey!” Vinyl chirped for participation’s sake, “Abomination Most Eldritch sounds like a great name for a metal band!” She shifted from hoof to hoof, still wondering what was going to happen.

“ - all music! An abomination who left behind naught but a signed contract and a shell-shocked staff!”

“A pony would have to have a lot of pull to tell a private Canterlot establishment what to do on her own. Just how political has this whole thing gotten, so far?”

“The Royal Night Orchestra’s importance as a game-piece on the nobles’ political chessboard has grown and grown ever since the Lady Heartstrings assumed their helm. We of Dudist Beach believe the Orchestra has a sinister agenda lurking behind their Classical Music Reinassance Plan.”

Now that the truth is just a rule that you can bend,

You crack the whip,

Shape-shift and trick,

The past again.

Vinyl had expected that a few of the chorus ponies would start whipping each-other around this point in the song, but actually, they were just splitting into “nobles” and “commoners”, with the latter mime-cutting the heads off the former. That was actually pretty impressively radical, though the resonances with old anti-unicorn canards were pretty worrying.

“Implying that eliminating all cool music is not a sinister enough agenda…” grumbled Vinyl halfheartedly. That finally got Wells Wisher to drop the bucking Suave Stallion act and cut to the point.

“Even sinisterer than that! Did you not listen to the song? ‘Our common goal is waiting for the world to end!’”

“Sooo…” Vinyl Scratch interjected, “The end of the world is nigh.”

I'll send you my love on a wire

Lift you up every time

Everyone, ooh

Pulls away, ooh

“Well, not necessarily,” Wells Wisher shook his head, “We have been trying to investigate what exactly they’re up to, but since they know we’re spying on them we’ve only ever gotten knowledge they don’t mind us having.” The chorus ponies also “backpedaled”, opening floor space in the crabbed and cramped living room.

“That… being…?” asked Vinyl. She held up a hoof. “Wait a minute… What would I leak if I was a psychotic evil maniac? Huuuhhhhh…”

“All we’ve been able to get is that her musicians play magic instruments. There’s some emphasis on the finery of the stringed instruments. But that’s it.”

“She’s bragging,” Vinyl blurted out. She was really wishing she had a headphone wire to twist around with her magic: it almost helped her concentrate as much as bobbing her head to a beat. “She knows she’s being watched so she’s just showing off.”

“Of course, we have only been able to find out so much without confronting her directly. Which is where you come in, Vinyl Scratch. You barged into our infiltration mission, asked out one of the Royal Night Orchestra’s musicians, and provoked the Lady Heartstrings into challenging you directly. You will soon be facing her underlings and her competitors in the War of the Wubs.” With each you Wells Wisher took a step closer to Vinyl Scratch, making her uncomfortable again. “And that is why you are going to find out what she’s up to for us.”

“So... hero stuff. And I’m gonna find all this out… how?”

“With your trusty Get Rec’d, of course,” said Wells Wisher, motioning for the chorus mare who had just come in from another room to bring the mixer over to Vinyl Scratch. Vinyl just hopped up and past Wells Wisher entirely, not even bothering to wait. Gods above, she had needed this thing back!

Her new trusty mixer and headphones, travel DJ gear for any occasion! Vinyl spun them around and around and around her neck until the headphones settled into place, then tossed the mixer straight into the air and clicked the audio cord right in with her magic, before catching and clipping the thing into her mane.

“Finally! Now we can talk. Hero stuff, sounds awesome enough. What’s your rank structure like for new ponies just joining the group?”

“Well then!” pronounced Wells Wisher, clasping his hoof around Vinyl’s neck. “Nopony pulls rank among us, and each is identified solely by tribe! The only commanders are on the buddy system! We are… an egalitarian organization! We are… the sole guerilla force dedicated to fight for all that is awesome! We are… the most up-to-date and underground musicians in all Equestria! We are… Dudist Beach, and we now present you to our membership! Extend your right forehoof and state your name, title, and tribe!”

It's a mechanical bull at number one,

You'll take a ride from anyone,

Everyone wants a ride,

Pulls away, ooh,

From you.

The chorus ponies lined up facing Wells Wisher and Vinyl again and kneeled, extending a single hoof each. Vinyl did as she had been told and extended her own right forehoof back to them all, the symbolic brohoof of total brohood, though admittedly in a bit more of a total bro-den than usual.

“To Dudist Beach I present myself: the Hip Indie Unicorn, DJ-PON3, Vinyl Scratch!”

Wells Wisher pulled Vinyl through a pirouette, high-fiving everypony as they spun.

Now if only they could get her back her saddlebag, too.

Author's Note:

There are no excuses for taking three months to write one measely chapter.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

How had she once been one of the stupid and simple ponies who trampled blindly through their lives, stepping wherever a song told them to step?

That brings Fugue State to mind...

As for the rest, Lyra's thoughts are flawed, but entirely understandable. I have to wonder how she's garnered so much influence, though it's unclear how many years it's been since Tirek's return. In any case, excellent work modelling her motivation. I just hope she doesn't have a daughter...

And it makes sense that NDudist Beach wouldn't skeeve out new recruits as much in a clothing-optional society. The deviation from the norm is very intriguing, though. I eagerly look forward to where you go with this.

[book_burner]

4677737
As it turns out, Fugue State was subconsciously on my mind when writing Lyra's mentality there, but seen through the lens of the "fashion = fascism" metaphor. I was distinctly thinking of some kind of fanon where ponies just do whatever a song calls for, by some herding instinct or something.

And it makes sense that NDudist Beach wouldn't skeeve out new recruits as much in a clothing-optional society. The deviation from the norm is very intriguing, though. I eagerly look forward to where you go with this.

Deviation from the norm?

[FanOfMostEverything]

4679429
Never mind. I suspect I'm thinking about this the wrong way, seeing the story as a straight crossover rather than a more elaborate fusion story. I'll just sit back and watch the fireworks.