The Tunes Are A-Changin'

by ShadeJak

Family Ties

Even when we had talked with my parents, I knew my older sister Sarah was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t blame her. This was a pretty big bomb to drop on her and my family but Tavi and I didn’t have much of a choice.

It didn’t make me feel any less awkward when she asked if she could talk in private away from the girls, though. With Tavi giving me a worried look, I left the bedroom and moved out into the hall, following Sarah quietly. Next thing I knew, the two of us were sitting together on the floor in the upstairs bathroom, my sister staring down at her lap while I watched her, unsure what to do or say.

“Sarah?” I asked, nervous.

“Vic…” she began, raising up her hand as she apparently wanted to speak first. It did nothing to calm me down, if anything I was even more worried, now.

“Sarah… please!” I begged, starting to approach her only for her to stop me.

“Vic, look, there’s a lot to process here!” Sarah replied, looking at me now. “An alternate dimension that a children’s show was apparently based on exists! One of the most powerful villains from that show being real and being able to come here whenever he wants! My own little brother turning out to be a reincarnated alien from another world!” She rubbed her temples and stared at me. “And that’s without the shit with the cops!”

I tried to think of something to say, but nothing was coming.

“Mom and dad love you… I love you, Vic… but I can’t help but wonder… you keep calling yourself Vinyl every now and then. Your girlfriend even calls you that as easily as she used to call you Vic, and you call her Octavia or Tavi with all the same easiness of how you used to call her Olivia or Livvy,” she explained, leaning a little. “How much of my brother and how much of this pony, Vinyl, are you?”

“I’m me!” I protested. “I still feel like me, I still remember everything I’ve done as far back as I can remember! Yeah, you may have missed out on the listing I gave to mom and dad but shouldn’t that prove something?”

“It proves you remember the life you had,” she explained. “And that’s good, because there’s that part of you still there. You see us as your family, too. But do you feel like a human being in a pony body, or… well… how does that all feel, right now? Having four legs, no hands… being a member of the fairer sex?” she asked, looking me over.

I hadn’t thought that much on it, lately. Sure, a few moments of that it’d take some getting used to, but it didn’t feel as wrong on me as it did when it first happened. People were extremely adaptable to changes, they had to be to survive, but the more I sat there thinking about it the more I realized I took to all this quicker then I’d have thought. Was I just proactive about stuff like I usually was, or…

I slumped over, laying down, my hind legs on one side and my tail swishing across the floor as any certainty about myself I may have had earlier became less clear to me.

This body, it shouldn’t have felt right at all! Maybe I should have felt like… I dunno… like someone twisted me up like a balloon animal? …But I didn’t; the body I had now felt like it was mine. My forelegs moved as easily as my arms once did. My hind legs bent differently then they did when I was human but I could walk like any four-legged animal could now without problems. The short, dainty muzzle in place of my nose and mouth didn’t seem nearly as intrusive or obstructive as it once did. In fact… it seemed normal. Hell, my very female voice seemed perfectly normal to speak in!

Octavia… I’d already realized the way I was attracted to her now was me seeing her as another mare, as a mare attracted to mares. I wasn’t a heterosexual male human in a female pony body, I was a female attracted to other females of my species. I just… hadn’t noticed as quickly as she had when that changed for her.

Being a mare… a female… I may not have been thinking about having some alone time to go exploring thanks to all the craziness Tavi and I had run into, but now with my own sister giving me identity issues that were making her worried as well it just sort of hit me all over again.

“Do you see what I’m getting at?” she asked. “I don’t want to lose you…”

“Babe, you’re not!” I insisted, gritting my teeth and looking down at my hooves for a second. “I had plenty of doses of identity problems in the past couple days, one of which put me through a hell of a breakdown!” I explained. “You think that hasn’t gotten me freaked out? You have any idea how badly I wanna go back to being the fun-loving me I remembered being up till this shit started?! I’d love nothing more then to do that at least, even if I end up being this the rest of my life, I want to be the kind of person I was, then!”

“Vic… god, I’m so sorry…!” Sarah replied, it clearly getting to her now she may have hurt me with her reaction.

“…But still… I’m trying… even if I’m gonna wake up every morning and see this look back at me, every day!” I said. “I don’t know if it’s the right way to look at it or not, but the last twenty-five years gotta mean something if I still feel like it’s my goddamn life, right? Maybe Vic Spencer and Vinyl Scratch are two halves of one person… or pony… or whatever! I still see you as just as much my sister as I did before all this! Why should I be any different to you?” I could already feel tears coming. I grit my teeth again, trying to hold them back as I sat myself back up. “Even if that damn chaos god wants me to believe I’m not who I thought I was, I still feel like who I was for all these years! Hell, I still wanna castrate that fuck-rag Ken for abandoning you once he found out you were pregnant with the girls!”

“…And I asked if you could just hold him down while I did it,” she answered softly. “God, it really is you in there…” she looked down at the floor again, I could see the guilt on her face she was trying to hide. “I’m sorry… it’s just weird seeing what I thought was a character from a show… a background character, talking to me and sounding just like my little brother, and all this crazy stuff just dumped on us,” she explained. I couldn’t blame her, really I couldn’t. It frustrated me to have her so freaked but in her position I could have ended up the same way. Hell, imagine if just me or Olivia went pony while the other one of us stayed human. As frustrating as all of this was I didn’t think I had any right to be mad at her for having a harder time taking all this in.

“Hey, it’s cool… I kinda got a lot dumped on me, too, like finding out that this…” I sat up, waving my forehoof in front of myself. “…was all a past life I had that came back with a serious fucking vengeance!”

Sarah managed a smile as she looked back up at me. “You know, a pony as adorable as you shouldn’t swear so much. Not very ladylike.”

“Hey, I think I’ve already gotten a lot more ladylike then I’m comfortable becoming,” I replied.

“Well, this definitely wasn’t what I had in mind all those years ago when I said I wished I could have had a sister instead,” she said, prompting a snort out of me.

“Please. You needed an awesome brother before I was even born,” I answered. “But… well, I guess now you got an awesome sister, if you’re cool with that, since it’s not like there’s too many options anymore,” I explained as I looked down at myself, brushing back my mane.

“So long as I know you’re still the same person I grew up with on the inside… I think I can live with that,” she answered, pulling me into a hug, which I gladly returned.

“If the people who matter most can love me this way, maybe I can get around to feeling that way, too,” I replied. “…Eventually, anyway.”

“Well, the girls definitely have,” Sarah replied, and as if on cue there was a crisp and frantic knock at the door.

“Vinyl! Sarah! For God sake let me in! Get me away from these two!” Octavia’s voice pleaded from the other side, prompting Sarah to get up and open the door, and I was treated to the biggest test of my ability to stifle the giggles in my entire life.

One which I failed horribly the moment I saw Octavia’s current state.

“Isn’t she pretty?” Amy asked, or at least I think she did, I couldn’t tell from how hard I was laughing at the sulking gray mare whose mane and tail had been done up with pink bows, a small dress rather sloppily put over her neck.

“No… freaking… way!” I said, barely avoiding cursing in front of my nieces in between the hysterical laughter. “Babe, sorry, you just…” and just like that I started laughing again, tears forming in my eyes as I struggled to breathe.

“Sarah, please be so good as to remove these blasted bows already!” my girlfriend asked, then looked at me with a livid glare. “Vinyl, if I had hands, I’d be strangling you!” she snarled, lunging at me and pinning me to the ground. As if realizing her behavior was unbecoming of someone as refined as she preferred to be seen as, she took a few breaths and backed away, downcast.

“Babe?” I asked, cautiously approaching.

“That was rather crass of you to laugh at my predicament, Vinyl,” Tavi replied curtly as she slid her way out of the girly pink dress while Sarah helped get the bows off her mane and tail. “I’m not rightly sure I can forgive you so easily for it, given how you may have hurt my feelings more then I can manage…” she said. “Honestly, we’ve been together how long and you’d mock me like that?”

“S…sorry…” I said, no longer finding the situation funny. “Anything I can do, just name it, alright?” I offered, hoping I hadn’t gone too far. After what we’d been through it shouldn’t have surprised me my girlfriend would be feeling more fragile emotion-wise lately.

A second later I realized the trap I’d fallen into as stupidly as a Loony Tunes villain when a smirk formed on Octavia’s face.

“Hear that, girls? Vinyl is quite anxious to be your pretty pony princess. Do make sure she looks lovely, won’t you?” she asked, and Amy and Alicia immediately squealed with glee as I began to back away.

“Sarah, please help!” I begged, but my sister just shook her head.

“You brought it on yourself, awesome sister,” she said with a smile as I felt the twins hug me and begin nudging me back towards the bedroom.

You owe Tavi for the hell you dragged her through… you owe Tavi for the hell you dragged her through…

~

This debt is WAY past overpaid! I thought to myself as I stood there with a stone cold expression, Alicia circling around me as they put a glittery plastic tiara on my head and tying the big pink bow on the back of the pink girly dress they’d put me in that barely fit my body shape properly. Memories of that bad dream passed through my mind as they finally finished.

“Are… we… fffffFFFFFFFFUDGING satisfied, babe?” I asked, gritting my teeth.

“Not until you’ve looked in the mirror, Vinyl,” Tavi replied smugly as she gestured at the mirror with her forehoof while Sarah stood nearby, trying her damndest to keep a straight face. My ears drooped as I slowly approached, and shuddered when I saw myself.

The white unicorn in the mirror shared my wide-eyed, mouth-hanging-open expression as she looked back at me. My mane had been brushed strait and draped over one side, a tacky, glittery gold tiara sat on my head and I’d been put in some ridiculously feminine pink dress with a big bow on the back. My tail even got a pink ribbon tied at the end.

“Don’t you look lovely, Vinyl?” Tavi asked.

“Not the word I was searching for,” I grumbled. Any word I was searching for couldn’t be said aloud in front of the twins. “Are we even?”

“I don’t know. It’d be a shame to see you go back to your usual grungy self so soon,” she mused.

“Baaaaaaaaaaabe….!” I whined.

“Kidding! All is forgiven, Vinyl,” she replied, laughing with Sarah while I quickly used my magic to remove the tiara and ribbon off my tail, much to the girls’ dismay. The dress was much harder for someone with no hands to remove. Thankfully the girls knew playtime was over and helped get it off me. Shaking my head to get my beloved wild style back, I let out a sigh of relief feeling like me again.

Wait, what?

Dude, no! I’ve only been in this body for two days, this was far from feeling like the me I’ve been for the twenty-five years prior to that! Still, just as it had for a while there was that feeling of how this body felt right on me.

“Vic? You there?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, I’m cool, just glad to be outta all that girly-garb,” I replied. “Seriously, when’s dinner?”

~

“I’m just gonna say how happy I am to be able to still enjoy Chinese food!” I declared proudly, thrusting my hoof up into the air.

“If you can call it food,” my girlfriend replied. “But it would seem one has to go to the more genuine restaurants to enjoy the more genuine Chinese food.”

“Yeah, and that’s outta the question while we look like adorable alien horses,” I muttered, my ears drooping. My parents still kept stealing glances at me and Octavia, I guess it had to be weird having dinner with us thanks to how we now looked. Still, fun was had and I saw Octavia smiling again, like the times I’d brought her to have dinner with my parents and she could enjoy the sort of family interaction she didn’t get when she lived with hers.

“Hey, Aunt Vinyl?” Amy asked, prompting me to turn instinctively before realizing what she’d called me. Soon as I turned, my muzzle was greeted with a gentle tap of her hand. “Boop!”

“Good one,” I said dryly as the rest of the family laughed.

“Sorry, you’re just so cute!” Amy replied, hugging me. “And soft! Like a puppy or something!” she added, getting an eyeroll out of me.

“Great, I’m from an alien race that was practically born to be used for children’s marketing,” I teased, putting my foreleg around my niece and returning the hug.

“If I was a pony I’d love it! I bet it’d be really cool!” Alicia said.

“There are people thrice your age and without even a third your maturity that have thought the same thing, I’d wager,” Octavia remarked, holding her iced tea cup in her hooves and taking a sip.

“Be that as it may, we still got no clues where to go or what to do next,” I said, leaning and resting my head on the table, letting out a snort and blowing back my mane.

“If there’s more out there who turned into ponies, it’s gotta be showing up on the internet, right?” Sarah asked.

“More ponies?” Alicia asked. “Like Twilight Sparkle, or Fluttershy, or one of the Princesses?”

“Who knows,” I said, trying to avoid mentioning what I’d seen in that final episode in front of them. Last I recalled, Princess Celestia was certainly gone, it wasn’t likely we’d see her. Luna or Cadance, though, I guess we couldn’t rule out. “Wouldn’t hurt to find out, though I can’t imagine anyone posting they’ve turned into a pony without expecting everyone to think they’re nuts.”

“Not that it seems to stop some people from pretending,” Octavia added with an eyeroll. “It wouldn’t hurt to look again; we’re safe for the time being and away from bloody madmen in uniform.”

“Sure, but first…” I looked at my mom and dad. “Can we just, I dunno, watch a movie or something, like old times? If we find something and gotta leave, I dunno when I’m gonna see you again,” I said, trying my best to use my new adorable appearance to my advantage. Hey, if two eight-year-old girls can do it, I’m sure a small, cuddly-looking alien unicorn with huge eyes could do the same!

My efforts paid off. “Okay, I guess after we finish dinner. Anything you had in mind?” my dad asked.

“Vinyl,” my girlfriend said, narrowing my list down phenomenally by gesturing to the girls.

~

“Tron Legacy, that’s what you picked…” Tavi muttered as we went to the guest room that had been converted from what had been my old bedroom. “I thought you hated that movie.”

“Eh, still not a fan, but the music? That shit’s pretty sick!” I said with a grin, vocally mimicking Derezzed while I waved my forehooves back and forth. My girlfriend couldn’t help but chuckle as she watched me.

“Oh, Vinyl. Daft as ever,” she said with a smile, climbing up onto the bed.

“It’s why you love me, babe,” I said with a grin, climbing up after her and floating my laptop out of the bag we’d brought and nudging it open with my forehoof as we both lay down in front of the screen that soon provided the only light in the room other then the glow of my magic as I worked the keys and mouse.

After a half hour went by I rubbed my temples as best I could with hooves and flopped my head down on the bed. “Babe, this is getting us nowhere! Just a buncha freaks with too much fuckin’ wish-fulfillment I can’t even tell if it’s real or not!”

“I’m on the verge of giving in as well, Vinyl. But if we’re going to resolve this, we unfortunately have to keep looking through these unsavory prats until we find something that looks legitimate,” my girlfriend replied.

“Well lemme get some inspirational chords, here!” I said, floating my ipod and headphones and plugging it into the laptop. The window came up and I went to my playlist and switched it on. A grin quickly came to my face as the techno beats began playing in my head, with Octavia not having to fear listening to what she still called ungodly noise. Bobbing my head to the beats I moved the mouse along another place that I hoped would be more promising.

…And struck gold, or at least I hoped I did. The post was from someone who was claiming they became Princess Celestia, and had met with someone who had become Luna, along with having found others including three people who had turned into pink fillies of all things. “Hey, babe! Whaddya make of this one?” I asked. Tavi looked at me, saying something before pausing as we both realized my music was drowning her out and she shoved my headphones off with her forehoof.

“If it’s a hoax, it’s rather elaborate and appears to have gone through a great deal more trouble then anypon…” she facehoofed. “Anyone else has.”

“Weird, I thought Celestia had gotten thrown in a volcano, though,” I said, rubbing my chin with my forehoof

“I fancy it won’t hurt to ask,” Tavi replied.

Five minutes of setting up an account later, I switched on the laptop’s webcam and snapped a few photos; one of the two of us side-by-side, one with us cuddling, and then one where I was pushing Tavi’s face down onto the bed with my hooves while grinning. Attaching them, I focused my magic and began typing.

Hey, what’s up? My girlfriend and I saw your post and we’re hoping to all hell it’s legit. The same thing happened to us and we’re hoping you got some idea what to do next or where to go. Here’s a few pix as proof!”

“I still can’t believe you did that last one,” Tavi muttered, brushing her mane with her hoof. “What was that all about?”

“Hey, the stranger the pics are, the more believable they are!” I said, getting an eyeroll from her.

“I suppose all we can do is wait, then,” she replied as I closed the laptop and floated it onto the nightstand.

“Guess so… hope this one’s real. But that’d still be crazy if Celestia survived. I mean the goddamn Princesses gotta have some kinda answer to all this, right?” I asked as I tunneled under the covers and turned, poking my head back out as Tavi joined me.

“I really hope so,” my girlfriend said, staring up at the ceiling as she lay on her back.

“Babe, whatever happens, we’re through this to the end,” I said, nuzzling her. “…Cliché as that sounds.”

“Indeed…” she muttered. A moment passed before she spoke again. “Vinyl?”

“Yeah?”

“Ever wonder how we met? When we were… like this originally, I mean?” she asked.

I had to admit, she got me there. There were plenty of possibilities and I was kinda curious how the relationship between the original Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody started. “I dunno…” I muttered softly. “Maybe you heard my music and it made your heart just flutter!” I said with a grin.

“And my ears just hemorrhage?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

“Well, hey, we hooked up and have gone strong for years! Or… hooked back up if you wanna look at it that way. Guess it does make me wonder what it was like when it really started…” I mused, staring at the ceiling. “Either way, I definitely came out the luckiest mare around!”

“I…” I heard a yawn as my girlfriend snuggled up to me. “…can’t help but think the same for myself, as frustrating as you can be, sometimes…”

“Prude,” I teased, only to get nudged in the side by her.

“Barmy wanker,” she replied softly, her eyes closing and soon after, so did mine as we both drifted off to sleep from the latest day of our insane new lives.

Author's Note:

Phew, thought I wouldn't get it done in time, but here it is! The latest chapter! soon to cross over with a few of the stories A Love For Madness is tied to, though not as much as that story. I always enjoy a cross over, simply because it has that way of making the world a story takes place in feel bigger somehow.

Comments

[Scarlet Storm]

this story is still nice all the way through. Also first.

[Eclair the Pegasus]

I absolutely love it

[Commander Jenna Cipher]

A second later I realized the trap I’d fallen into as stupidly as a Loony Tunes villain when a smirk formed on Octavia’s face.

“Hear that, girls? Vinyl is quite anxious to be your pretty pony princess. Do make sure she looks lovely, won’t you?” she asked, and Amy and Alicia immediately squealed with glee as I began to back away.