Chapter 5: Fighting Off the Gladness
The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville
Chapter 5: Fighting Off the Gladness
“...and that’s just some of the amazing uses of the common apple core,” Graphite told the mesmerized Vinyl Scratch as he turned to open the door to the treehouse. “Apple Incorporated, what can I do for...?” he started, staring out into the night to see who had knocked.
Stepping into his vision was a massive red earth pony with tired eyes. “Graphite, I need t’ speak with Applejack,” he said in a gruff voice.
Vinyl looked at him, confusion evident on her face. “Applejack?” she asked plaintively.
Graphite laughed nervously at the much larger pony. “Big Mac, you need to get your eyes checked,” he said cautiously, pointing at the hat on his head.
The pony looked wearily between Graphite and Vinyl. “Of course, ‘Applejack’,” he drawled with a touch of sarcasm. Evidently, this wasn’t the first time he had been asked to play this particular game. “Can I speak with ‘Graphite’ then? Or is she somepony else?”
“I’ll get her,” Graphite said, starting to head upstairs. He then stopped and looked back at a confused Vinyl. “I mean ‘him’!” he corrected himself.
Big Mac shook his head sadly then began to wait.
Vinyl Scratch studied him for a few moments. “You’re the same color as my eyes!” she finally concluded in a bubbly voice, lifting her sunglasses to show him.
Big Mac looked at the obviously mesmerized pony in pity for a few seconds. “Eeyup,” he finally said.
Neither pony said anything else for several minutes.
Finally, both Applejacks (the real and the fake) descended the stairs together. “I’ll leave her be,” Applejack told Graphite in her native accent (referring to Rarity). “I ‘spect she’ll work the rest out herself.”
“Eeyup,” said Graphite jokingly as they reached the ground floor.
Applejack turned her most devastating glare towards her underling. In response, Graphite grabbed Vinyl and fled for another room.
“It’s good to see you, brother,” Applejack said to Big Mac when they were alone.
“Likewise,” said the large pony.
“Well,” Applejack said sadly, “you wouldn’t have rushed to get here at this hour unless there was some bad news, so spill it.”
“It’s about Rarity,” Big Mac began.
The mare in question immediately stuck her head out of the door of the upstairs room.
“Yes?” asked Applejack.
“Badlands have been overrun by the Diamond Dogs. We tried a raid, but there were too many of them. T’would take an army to get any diamond dust out of there now.”
It’s not “diamond dust”! How many times to do I have to explain that...! No, I promised I’d let this go. “Diamond dust” it is...
“This is horrible!” exclaimed Rarity as she raced down the stairs. “Of all the bad things that could possibly happen, this is the worst...possible...”
“Now don’t you start!” warned Applejack, shutting Rarity up by shoving an apple into her mouth that seemed to have come from nowhere. “I can get us an army. Or better yet, arrange for the Senate in Canterlot to vote for an army and do the work for us. It’ll just take some time, that’s all.”
“But time is exactly what we do not have!” Rarity replied. “I’ve had to use my supply of dust a lot faster than usual as a result of this cursed Celebration tomorrow. I don’t think I have enough to last another month!”
This got a gasp out of Graphite, who had been trying to overhear the conversation from around the corner.
“I can’t possibly get Diamond Dogs out of the Badlands in a month without looking really obvious,” Applejack said, putting one hoof to her forehead in order to think. “Unless, perhaps...what if Vinyl’s reprogramming included a report about why it would be absolutely necessary for the Princess herself to intervene?”
Graphite whistled in admiration of how well his boss thought on her hooves.
Applejack in turn smiled to herself on hearing the obvious sign of her follower’s admiration. And I didn’t need to ‘dust’ him, neither! she thought.
Big Mac, walking around the corner to find the source of the sounds he heard, cleared his throat to get the attention of the two mares. “You might need to re-think your plans,” he informed them sadly, pointing to a spot behind Graphite.
Everypony looked to see that Vinyl Scratch had been replaced by a hay bale on stilts wearing a pair of cardboard sunglasses.
At the exact same moment, the chief of the dungeon guards skidded into the tree house. “The prisoners have escaped, including that little dragon fellow!”
“PINKAMENA!!!” exclaimed Rarity, shaking one hoof at the ceiling in exasperation. She wasn’t sure why precisely she was required to do this every time her arch-nemesis outsmarted her. She just knew it was the expected thing to do under the circumstances.
Spike crowed about the success of their deception all the way back to the abandoned warehouse that was the Dreaded P.D.P.’s headquarters, with Vinyl Scratch passively following where she was led. He was careful, though, not to say anything negative about Rarity to set off her programming.
“Well,” the always-morose Pinkamena said to him with what might almost be mistaken for a triumphal tone. “You wanted her, and now you’ve got her, and a great deal quieter than I expected her to be. But dusted is still dusted. What are you going to do with her?”
“Well first of all,” the worried dragon said as he started inspecting Vinyl from all sides, “I need a little more light.” With a bit of effort, he broke a wooden slat off of a nearby crate, and then lit it on fire with his breath.
“NOOO!!!” screamed Pinkamena, knocking Spike aside and stamping furiously on the torch until it was extinguished.
“What did you do that for?” Spike demanded as he got up.
“Well...uh, somepony could have seen the light!” Pinkamena explained.
Spike didn’t buy it. The only windows in the warehouse were mounted near the ceiling, making it highly unlikely that a tiny little torch would be visible from outside. It seemed more likely that the fire that had brought her to Ponyville had had some long-term effect on her.
“I’ve got to get her to snap out of this spell!” said Spike, looking at the unicorn. Vinyl in turn just stood there, her head and tail both drooping. “She told me that there’s something wrong with the world, something bigger than anything going on here in Ponyville,” he told Pinkamena.
Pinkamena walked by Vinyl slowly, lightly running one hoof through her coat and getting it coated with dust. “Well maybe getting this stuff off might make it easier. Although like I said, I’ve tried everything.” She fiddled with one of the crates in the warehouse, and returned with a large electromagical fan. Ten minutes of tinkering later, and it was now a mechanical fan powered by a long ripcord which was wound around it. Pinkamena tied the free end of the cord to a hind leg, and took off running a circuit of the warehouse.
The fan succeeded in blowing all of the diamond dust out of the coat of the passive unicorn, and into the air. Spike and Pinkamena sneezed simultaneously.
“Oh no!” Spike exclaimed, running up to the pink pony. “You gotta fight off of the gladness, Pinkamena!”
Pinkamena raised an eyebrow. “You’re strange, Spike,” she said. “And you don’t have to worry. I’m too messed up in the head for Rarity to ever get her hooks into me.”
Spike walked back to Vinyl Scratch and studied her closely once again.
“Vinyl, can you hear me?” he asked.
She did nothing.
“Rarity wants you to look at me.”
Still nothing.
Standing in front of her, he said, “I think Rarity is a big fat-head!” and then flinched in anticipation of a tirade.
And Vinyl remained motionless.
“Well that’s something,” admitted Pinkamena, trying (and failing) to comfort him. She looked out between the slats of a boarded-up window at the night sky. “You know, I always think better on a full stomach. How about some supper?” She opened up another crate and pulled out the straw used to pack it.
Spike made a face. “That’s OK, Vinyl brought me a snack,” he said, reaching up on tip-toe to open one of the unicorn’s saddlebags. Digging around for a few seconds, he triumphantly fished out a pale blue amethyst, but it slipped out of his claws and bounced from the top of one wooden crate to another: tink-tink-tink-tink-tink!
Vinyl’s ears instantly swiveled to follow the sound.
“Do that again,” Pinkamena told him.
Spike turned around and noticed the change in Vinyl’s ears. “The song!” he exclaimed. He backed up to the nearest crate, and started using his tail to start pounding out the rhythm she had taught him, over and over again:
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Thump-thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump-thump...
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... "Can you hear the drums, Doctor?"
First!
EDIT: ...I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST DID THAT. And not even correctly, either!
Also, beginning to see elements of comedy come into play here, although I'm beginning to question the narrator...
1294194
that would strongly imply that the whole events are really just vinyl having lost her mind, wouldn't it?
this story, i swear.
definitely not what i expected, but great nonetheless.
1294194
The drums, the neverending drums!
I had that thought too. Go Whovians.
1294194
The drums were more a tat-tat-tat-tap, still crazyness is involved
1294194>>1294335
Wrong number of beats.
1294194
That's what I thought the first chapter, but then I realized it is one too many taps. The Master was four not five. Woulda been cool though.
1294492
Two hearts and a pulse of magic. she is a unicorn after all, who knows what they look like inside.
1294544
I'm sorry, did I miss something? I thought we were talking about the beats in the Master's drum beat thing. When did how many hearts a time-lord has and magic have to do with it?
I'm confused!
Of course I'm not going to complain if Vinyl IS a timelord! That'd be awesome!
1294491 1294492
Last line had two sets of four.
1294584
You people are going to be so disappointed when I put out the next chapter and reveal she's a Reaper instead of a Time Lord...
a.wattpad.com/cover/47568041-288-k818609.jpg
1294609
Wait a minute... She's actually a Slitheen, isn't she?!
I'm calling it now.
cdn.broni.es/images/emotes/mlp-phuh.png Still confusing, but my feeble mind is slowly piecing things together. Slowly.cdn.broni.es/images/emotes/mlp-pdetermined.png
1294584
Wait really?
HOLY CRAP! You're right! Ignore the author, he's totally wrong.
OK, now these comments are confusing me more than the story itself - guess I should get around to reading chapters 4 and 5 and hope my head doesn't explode from confusion tonight.
1294583
time lords have two hearts, hence why the master heard four drum beats. vinyl hears 5, so, two hearts and the horn gives a pulse to it?
1294752
Oh now I see what you meant by pulse of magic. I knew the beat was from a time-lord's hearts, but I'm too tired to properly connect the dots. I really should go get some sleep... But right now, ponies.
Wubstep > mind control
This is the only time I've ever been so interested in something that makes so little sense.
This has to be one of the most pleasantly unpredictable stories I've ever read. There is nothing about the alternate universe that I don't love.
The minor expansion of the non-alternate universe setting feels a little off, I think. Didn't really care for Celestia's Nightmare Moon counterpart, it just seemed gratuitous and very fandomish. But as to the 'main' setting this story is working in, it's simply fantastic.
And in some ways I think it would be even better if you never explained it all and just left us wondering wtf is going from gag scene to gag scene. Because really, lols is its own justification, innit? At this point finding out what's going on would almost feel like being forced to look at a car engine when you really just want to admire how shiny and pretty and fast it is.
1294572
I live to serve.
Toronado is dashing rogue hero in Equestria...I love you.
1294584 Anyone else notice it's the show's theme?
1295417
No it isn't. That would be Dut-dit-dut doo-da! Dut-dit-dut doo-da! Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh! And I certainly wouldn't describe it as a "rock song with a persistent bass and drum line".
But keep submitting your guesses, because the next chapter will reveal the answer. (I suppose I should stop saying which guesses are right or not, just in case somebody gets it right...)
Man, I stay up way to late reading these things... but I just can't stop. Maybe I should take a break.
Staring blindly into space.
Getting up to splash my face.
Wanting just to stay awake.
Wondering how much i can take.
Should I try to do some more?
... wait a minute.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
1295505 Well, feels like a rock version to me, then. Just the beat with no lyrics or chorus lyrics.
Even if she understands what is going on, nopony will help her. Since they are so different from their core personalities, changing the world to what it should be is death for all of them...
1294583
The beats were The Master's heats. For whatever reason, he could hear his pulse at all times, and his heartbeat was always even, no matter what. Helped him keep a cool head, but he still flipped eventually.
Anyways, I kinda have to wonder what is going on, and I hope we find out exactly what's happening at this point.
1294194 That would require exactly four beats. She was hearing five.
1294491 Ponies have 2 1/2 hearts. Hence 5 beats.
Hmm, seems like genre conventions are taking over here. Not really noticed though.
How genre-savvy of her.
I'm pretty sure that last sentence is all the explanation Rarity needs, really. If it's the thing to do, it's the thing to do.
1294194
I should hope so, they're in the opening song.
Rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum.