Larger Than Life

by Equimorto

Wildfire

"What are you doing here?"

Rainbow looked down at her guitar with a frown, then at the amp it was attached to, then still frowning she looked back up towards the door. "Practising?" she said, confused by the way it seemed so obvious and yet apparently wasn't immediately apparent.

"I don't think so," Trixie said, crossing her arms and pouting as she stepped inside. She had her own guitar strapped over her back.

Rainbow blinked. "Well, I've got some bad news for you, 'cause it is what I'm doing." She gave her strings a couple taps, fingers itching to get back to playing. "Are you going to let me continue or what?"

Trixie pouted harder, a feat which Rainbow was previously convinced only Rarity could pull off. "I booked this room for myself. Now shoo. Let someone with some actual talent play."

Rainbow was normally annoyed by attempts to poke against her ego, but she'd long accepted that being bothered by those that came from Trixie was like worrying about getting wet walking out in the rain. They were expected when dealing with the girl, and so frequent that by then they'd lost their edge. "There's no booking the rooms, Trixie. First come, first served. Try being a little faster next time."

The other reason Rainbow didn't bother with Trixie's poking was that the girl got riled up enough for both of them, even at just the most veiled hint of a comment against her. "I don't believe someone as lazy and unimportant as you could understand the concept of being kept by more pressing matters requiring one's attention. Then again, it is fortunate that such tasks fall to someone qualified, and not you." Trixie slid her guitar to her front and hooked it to the other amp in the room. "Such is the burden of greatness." She tossed her hair aside with a broad stroke of her hand.

"Bold words coming from miss third place."

Trixie's previous, contained outburst had been a facade, and Rainbow's words shattered it, leaving her practically fuming. "I won that battle, fair and square!" she barked. "It should have been me going against the Dazzlings, not you cheaters. I would have had no trouble stopping them!"

"Uh-huh." Rainbow gave her most unimpressed nod. "Sure seemed like you might have with all the not stopping them you did."

Trixie crossed her arms again, closed her eyes and looked to the side indignantly. "It was all part of my plan. I don't expect you to understand something like that though."

Rainbow shrugged. "Do you even still have a band, or did the others leave after you wouldn't stop pretending you're a solo act?" She absentmindedly plucked her guitar's strings a couple more times.

"How I spend my time is no business of yours." Trixie got her hands into position on her guitar, ignoring Rainbow. "Please quiet now. But feel free to stay here if you really don't want to leave, maybe you'll learn something about how to actually play." She began to run her pick over the strings while her hands danced higher up along them. Her song didn't make it two seconds in before being interrupted by a riff from Rainbow's guitar. Trixie looked over at her, furrowing her brow. "Must you? I'm trying to practise."

"I thought you were trying to annoy me out of here with what you were playing." Rainbow blew a raspberry at Trixie, then began to play her own song as if nothing had happened. She, too, was interrupted by the other's music just a few seconds in. Both guitars went silent again.

"Is that what you're trying to do right now?" Trixie underscored her comment with a raised eyebrow. She went back to playing, straight into a solo rather than toying around with chords.

Rainbow huffed. "A shred-off, then?" she asked, speaking loudly and yet still barely making herself audible over Trixie's music. She waited a few moments, studying Trixie's movements, then picked up alongside her and played her same notes back at her in time, before taking the tune into her own direction as soon as Trixie let go of it.

The brief moment of triumph Trixie had experienced at Rainbow's silence, guessing the other was too impressed with her skill, was dashed away, and in her resulting quiet she was even more bothered as Rainbow deliberately began to play her song faster than she had. But at least she knew what notes were coming next, and right at the point Rainbow's pick was briefly still her own came down hard on her strings, blasting away the other's concentration as she delved into another, more complicated solo.

Rainbow, having snatched back the pick that had slipped from her fingers after Trixie's deliberately loud interjection, glared at the girl and her hands, then began to follow along with the new song and quickly caught up.

Trixie was prepared, and hastily switched to a different variation of the tune, letting Rainbow's notes ring off against her melody. Rainbow was quick to adapt though, and even quicker to play, enough so that she began to slip in extra notes between the ones Trixie was playing and left her sounding like the backing track to the real solo.

Trixie found herself struggling to keep pace with her own song, and staring angrily at the other she found only the girl's smirk mocking her. Rainbow was preparing to speed things up further, and Trixie refused to let that happen. Gritting her teeth and ignoring the momentary dissonance that resulted from the switch, she began to play a completely different song. Her fingers danced and stretched like a spider over the strings of her guitar, her hand gliding up and down its neck as she finessed her way through one finely adjusted and carefully planned set of simultaneous presses after the other, always pushing down exactly where on the string she wanted to.

Rainbow tried to keep up. To her credit, she did fairly well, despite being forced to read Trixie's movements and mirror them with the opposite hand. She had enough of a sense for music that she could guess where things were going, and keeping up with Trixie's tempo was no issue for her. It wasn't any of those things that did her in, but she still gave out first.

"Ah!"

Rainbow's notes abruptly stopped, ending in a single strum of unpressed strings while her left hand sat a few centimetres away from her guitar's neck, cramped and curled in an awkward way. Trixie's own music came to a halt just a moment later, the girl panting as she shook her hands to work the built up tension out of them. Silence stretched for a few seconds.

Rainbow eventually worked her hand back into shape. "Wow," she said, bending and clicking her fingers together and listening to them pop. "How'd you manage that?"

Trixie allowed herself a smirk on her otherwise tired expression. "A magician needs to be quick and dexterous with her fingers, Dash." She held her grin for a few more panting breaths. "You're pretty fast, though. I don't think I'd be able to keep up if you took the lead."

Rainbow smiled at that. "Hah! Yeah. I've been told that." She sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck, and leaned against the wall beside the amp she was using. "You're pretty good at this whole guitar thing. Not as good as me," she quickly added, "but still pretty good."

Trixie rolled her eyes, but allowed her smile to stay. "Thanks," she said, feigning disinterest while looking at her nails. "I suppose you're alright as well." She finally looked back at Rainbow. "Now, will you let me practise in peace?"

"Hah." Rainbow shook her head. "Can't do that. We've got a gig coming up, and I need to make sure I'm on top of my game."

"Tonight's concert?" Trixie quirked an eyebrow. "Let me guess, you procrastinated on proper practice until the last moment."

Rainbow averted her gaze, but she did not have a valid response to that. A moment later she took the conversation elsewhere. "Either way, I'm the one who's doing this as a job. Kind of. I need to get this right." She tried a few strings on her guitar to make sure they were still tuned right. "The place we usually practise at is closed today, and the others are busy. We'll rehearse together later this evening, before the show, but I'm on my own for now."

Trixie leaned against the wall opposite Rainbow. The room wasn't particularly wide, though at least the absorbent panels it had been fitted with prevented music in it from bouncing off the ceiling and walls. It was too small to be a classroom, and had probably been a somewhat large storage closet before being made into a place for students to practise playing music. Not the oddest renovation the whole Battle of the Bands fiasco had brought to the school, and one of those sane enough to be kept once everyone was in their right mind again.

Trixie sulked a tiny bit. Rainbow did have a point, one of them was going to perform in front of a crowd that day and the other was just cultivating a hobby. She may have had a rivalry with the other girl, but that was no reason for ruining her night, her friends', their crowds', and more importantly the show itself. Her eyes fell on Rainbow's guitar. "Can't you just have that thing magic you a good performance or something?" she asked on a whim, recalling the first time she'd seen it.

"Doesn't work like that," Rainbow said. "I can get some magic out if I play well, sure, but not the other way around." She put on a confident grin. "Not that that's a problem for me, of course." Without waiting any further, she straightened and began to play again.

She was, as was at that point tradition in that room, interrupted by the other. However it was not Trixie's music that came to halt her, rather the girl's voice. "You're doing it wrong."

Rainbow stopped and looked at Trixie, perplexed.

"Your hand posture." Trixie took once more proper hold of her guitar and placed her hand back on the neck, pressing down on the strings where Rainbow was. "See? This is how you're supposed to hold it. No wonder you're straining your fingers."

Rainbow looked at Trixie, tilted her head slightly, then adjusted her hand's position to mirror the other. "Huh." She arched and relaxed her fingers a couple of times while holding the position. "You are right."

"Of course I'm right." Trixie used her free hand to slide her hair back past her shoulder, to avoid it getting in the way. "By the way, I think that part you were playing would sound better if you did it all downpicking." She played the section in question back to Rainbow. "Like this."

Rainbow played it back at her, doing as instructed, and listening carefully to it. "Hmm. Yeah, I guess it does sound better that way." She played it a couple more times, trying out the positioning Trixie had instructed her on. "Thanks."

Trixie looked taken by surprise at that. "You're welcome," she said after a moment. "You should lift your fingers before moving them and put them down after you've moved them, as much as possible. You're doing it all at once and it kind of bleeds through in the notes. On this song at least, it doesn't sound too good, you can do it intentionally on something written with that in mind."

Rainbow was still playing, but she nodded, still looking at her hand on the guitar's neck. "Say, are you free tomorrow afternoon?"

Trixie blinked. "Depends. Why are you asking?"

"Wanna hang out?" Rainbow turned towards Trixie.

Trixie stared back at her. She did so for a few seconds, in complete silence, her expression impossible to read. "Sure."