Random Acts Of Chaos

by Gritty Metal

The first Rehearsal

As Applejack, Big Mac and Pinkie Pie entered the factory building they looked around in amazement at the large room full of production machinery. Then they reached Rainbow Dash and Gritty Metal at the western end of the factory. "Well, look at tha'. Our dear Gritty really did put his money where his mouth is," Applejack uttered in disbelief. Her eyes widened at the sheer size of the factory.

Pinkie ran ahead towards her own drum set, filling with a sudden rush of musicality as she sat on the drum chair and playing a few punk rhythms on their brand new set. "Hey, Gritty, listen to this..." she said smiling while beating on the drums like a mad mare; somehow it did sound good though. Her energy was converted into musical genius with every strike of her drum sticks.

Gritty smiled about the joy Pinkie found in her instrument and hoped that she would stay this energetic throughout the rehearsal. He looked at Big Mac, handing him the microphone including the stand and small amplifier and watched his joyful reaction to the diversity he could achieve with his voice. Also Rainbow Dash now swung her guitar around her neck and started fretting her harmonic notes, strumming the guitar like an old legend of Rock. Only one pony was missing: Octavia.

Gritty walked towards the entrance to the factory hall, where he saw Octavia slowly making her way towards the abandoned factory. She really was a slow walker... something that was really not helpful in this situation. Gritty walked outside to meet Octavia who was now approaching him with her solemn trot. "Oh, hello, Gritty. It is most pleasant to see you. Would you be so nice and tell me where exactly our rehearsal room is?" she said with her usual high-class-attitude.

Gritty looked at her with a wide smile on his face, "It is right here, behind me." He pointed at the old production facility with pride. "it may not be the most glamorous of places to rehearse, but it's a start, I'd say."

Octavia's right eye twitched a little, "This filthy place is our rehearsal room?" She stared at him, her jaw dropping to the ground as her eye continued twitching.

"Yeah, that's it..." he said. He couldn't really understand her bafflement at the room provided to her. It seemed all fine to him; after all it was only a rehearsal room, it's not like they were going to live in the old production site. "Why?" he asked, "isn't it what you expected?" He gave her an asking look. Well, he could already deduce her answer from her face, that quickly turned almost blue with shock. Gritty stood in front of her with a concerned look on his face as he uttered, "Hey, Octavia. Breath; in and out in and out... Always continue breathing..."

Octavia was starting to breath again, still in shock as she stared up the face of the dirty building. "You really want me to enter this... abomination of a building?" she asked her right eye slowly losing its spastic twitch. She was very unsure of the conditions of this filthy building that should be their new band room. "Is it even safe? I mean would it not collapse with the vibrations?"

Gritty looked at her, his face filling with a look that could just be called the look of "are you kidding me?". "Really, that's what you're concerned about? A collapse? I can tell you this much: It is safe," he gnarled. "The thing is gonna survive a band playing in it regularly." His face now displaying a look of bored concern.

"But, are you sure? How could you be sure? And also, is it cleaner on the inside?" Octavia asked still a bit paranoid about her health and bodily well-being. She turned to look at Gritty in the one second, fixing her look back on the building the next. "It really doesn't look clean to me..."

Gritty shook his head, giving in to his frustration about Octavia's germophobe attitude. "Look," he said, slightly annoyed "there's probably less germs flying around inside that factory than the total germ count in your muzzle; even after brushing you teeth for five minutes." He was getting rather scientific on that topic. He had an older sister, who had studied Biology at the Canterlot School of Science and thus had some knowledge on the topic of germs. "So, please do me the favor and actually get in over your irrational phobia? Please?"

Finally, as Gritty couldn't get Octavia to enter the production hall with him he had to proceed to push her into the factory by force as she froze in shock at not only the germs in the factory but also those inside of herself. After bringing her back to her senses he showed her her new instrument, "An electric bass guitar. And you have even remembered my roots in classical music," she said casually as she placed the bass' belt around her neck. "It's fretless." She looked at Gritty with a pleased look. "Now let me try this out..." she tried to produce a sound, but failed. "What am I doing wrong? Could you please instruct me?"

Gritty spun one of the knobs around to the max, "Try it again now," he said friendly as Octavia as he had understanding for her difficulties with the power supply. Rainbow Dash had had the same problem in the beginning. She strummed the string she was fretting one more time and the sound became audible. He smiled happily as everyone tried out their instruments and played around like the creative minds they all were. He especially paid notice to Rainbow Dash's impressive skills on the guitar; she had only been playing for a few months and she excelled at the art of fretting. After a few moments of tutoring everyone Gritty decided to actually take part in the improvisation, coming up with the one or the other usable riff in the process.

Everyone was happily playing their instruments or singing to the beat provided by Pinkie Pie, whose energy reserves seemed to be utterly humongous. The beat often varied over time to the delight of the other instrumentalists who also tried out some calmer tones and some less distorted guitar riffs with less refined tonal scales, sometimes drifting off into utter atonality. The rehearsal was very pleasurable and everyone enjoyed the improvisational elements; even Octavia got into the genre rather quickly, forgetting all about her germophobia while analyzing every other ponies styles and adding a dash of classical fineness to the raw sound of the band. Gritty felt that he had found a bunch of musical genius in the middle of nowhere and took a lot of fun from this fact. He felt like this band could be going places he had never dared to dream of; maybe even realm-wide fame.

Applejack enjoyed herself too, though not participating in the making of music she found the sound very special and the drive was sheer irresistible. She started dancing to the music that had some sort of magical Pinkie-Pie-Drive and melodious, partially classically inspired riffs and sounds. Through the open door the dense music thrashed its way through the outskirts Ponyville, attracting the one or the other musically inclined pony to the large facility of production that had been not producing any sound in so long. After a while a little crowd had formed inside the factory, cheering for the improvising musicians and moshing along with Applejack. Also Twilight Sparkle and Rarity were drawn to the epicenter of the noise that felt oh so soothing to everypony's ears.

The crowd, consisting of about 250 ponies, was now roaring with anticipation of the next beat change and was moshing and head banging like wild; the only one who held herself back was Rarity, who didn't want to ruin her perfectly coiffed hair. Somehow the music had such a strong drive though, that she couldn't resist for long; this was a whole new type of music that made the listener drop all inhibitions and literally forced them to be engulfed in an aura of some kind of "insanity", if one wanted to call it like that. Before long no pony was just standing there, not participating in the entire act of collective joy. No pony, not even Rarity, could resist the drive of Pinkie Pie's genius drumming and the awesome shreds of Rainbow Dash's guitar. Also Gritty's overlay-solos and Big Mac's vocal chops were irresistible, and Octavia actually found herself in an alternate version of her dream; being cheered for by a crowd big enough to fill a place like this enormous hall.

After a while the instruments died off and Gritty talked to the crowd of ponies that had gathered to mosh and cheer, "Hello, Ponyville. We are "Random Acts Of Chaos" and actually this was supposed to be a closed rehearsal... And it is also our first get-together as a band," he said sure of himself. "On the drums we have Pinkie Pie," he said as the crowd roared cheering Pinkie Pie's name. "On the bass: Octavia Melody," Octavia bowed before the crowd that applauded frantically to the cellist-gone-bassist. "One the guitars: Rainbow Dash and I," he exclaimed as the crowd raised their hooves into the air, screaming out their names. "And last but definitely not least," he built suspense up to the point where one could have cut the atmosphere inside the former production site with a knife, "Big McIntosh!" He raised his own hoof in the air as he led the crowd to a little improvised participation segment.

"Give me a R!" he roared into Big Mac's microphone and the crowd repeated after him. "Give me an A!" He repeated the cycle until it had spelled out "RAOC", the acronym for "Random Acts Of Chaos". After that he handed the microphone back to Big Mac and let him get on with his vocal work.

After nearly one-and-a-half hours the young band members were starting to get exhausted and had to break off the rehearsal, they put their instruments aside and placed them on their stands; but they would never forget about this day; The day on which they went from Noponies to "local celebrities", at least in the outskirts of Ponyville, within a very short period of time.