Jingle Bells, This Song Smells

by Frazzle2Dazzle

The Song That Never Ends

Trixie flopped to the couch in the apartment, groaning into the throw pillow.

Oh, how she’d love to throw that pillow right now…

Just getting back home from work, she was free from that song once more… The song that seemed to be playing more and more often in the mall, echoing through the building and infesting people’s ears. She swore she even heard people humming it!

If there was anything to be done about it, she’d have already done so. But alas, it seemed formally written letters did not look convincing to the manager when pushed under the door of his office.

She’d have to try for the top of the door next time if her Heist^_TM with Starlight didn’t work. Maybe find some blackmail…

But before I can do anything else, “Must… Get… Energy… Back…” Trixie grumbled out as she got up, stretching her limbs as she went to the fridge to grab one of the energy drinks she left there.

The door to the apartment opened as she sat back down, and she turned to see Starlight walking in.

“Finally! Trixie had such a long day, Starlight, let’s go and get that song dealt with already!”

“Trixie… One minute, please.”

Trixie paused at how… Tense Starlight sounded, and looked closer to see a twitching eye, straining neck muscles, and a scary frown. Definitely not a winning combination.

“Uhhh… Okay?” Trixie didn’t try stopping her as she walked to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Trixie did however move to listen at the door… Only to flinch back at the muffled scream that poured out from the room.

A moment or two later, and the door opened back up with Starlight looking a lot calmer, “Hi Trixie, how was your day?”

“It was… Okay. But I should be the one asking, what happened with you?”

Starlight’s eye twitched again, but she took a deep breath in before slowly releasing it, “So… You know how we’ve been hearing that song more and more, right? Well-“

---

”Now bring us some figgy pudddiiiiing~!”

“Guys, that’s not one of the songs!!!”

”And a cup of gooood cheeeer~!”

“Gahhhh!!!”

---

“For three hours straight, through rehearsing, lunch, all the other breaks, it feels like nobody would shut up at any point about the song, they were even replacing lines with the lyrics! I feel like I’m going insane!”

They were back over at the couch as Starlight recounted how the majority of her day went, sitting together in solidarity over their shared annoyance.

“Geeze…” Trixie gave Starlight a pat on her shoulder, “And I thought the mall was bad… What the buck’s going on in this town?”

“Whatever’s going on, we can find out when we get to the ‘Jaunty Shells Concert Hall.’ The sooner we do, the better,” Starlight patted her bag with a grin, “I took the liberty of rounding up some things we might need for this… Investigation.”

Trixie’s mouth turned upwards in a grin, “Spy gadgets! Please tell me you have spy gadgets!”

“Haha, well, it’s not quite that advanced, but I think we can get through security with this stuff. How about you, got anything?”

Trixie nodded as she got up to the table, where a bag was sitting open, “I prepared them before I left this morning, they should’ve fully set by now,” grabbing something from the bag, Trixie produced a small egg-like object that was blue with sparkles on it, “Voila, Trixie’s Disappearing Smoke Bombs! For any quick getaways we may need!”

“Aren’t they a little….” Starlight tried to think of a good word that wouldn’t hurt her friend’s feelings, “…Unpredictable?”

“Please! I only ended up on that rooftop one time! And the bird was fine afterwards!”

Starlight still held reservations, but sighed as she acquiesced to Trixie’s contribution, and got up to the door, “Alright then. Let’s get going.”

“Yes! Onwards! To revenge for our ears!” Trixie declared as she ran out the apartment door.

---

The venue was in the middle of the entertainment district of the city, where all kinds of theaters, arcades, fancy restaurants, and bars resided. The specific concert hall, named after the musician Jaunty Shells who had passed away years ago, was right next door to an arcade and a fast food place, which made the stakeout easier.

While the place wasn’t exactly like the prison Alcatraz made, there were still a whole lot of cameras and guards at a lot of the exits. It was something to mull over while eating some overpriced burgers.

“So, there’s a camera on every entrance, a guard at every exit, and a million ways we could fail. Any bright ideas, Trixie?”

“Welll…” Trixie held up one of her smoke bombs.

“No Trixie. That’s going to be way too flashy.”

“Awww…” Trixie grumbled a little as she leaned back in her seat, “Theeeen… How about taking that in?” she said while pointing to where one of the guards for the building had just parked a van, just barely getting out of the vehicle before making his way to the door.

It had the logo for the Jaunty Shells venue on its side, so there was little doubt to its origin, and only the question of whether it was coming or going remained.

Starlight almost couldn’t believe that stroke of luck, but there was still the matter of getting on the vehicle.

“Wait, that’s one of those ‘Starlight made a weird plan’ faces! Let me guess…” She held an excited grin as she pulled out the smoke bomb again, “You need a Boom?”

“Well, not quite a ‘Boom’, but I’ll take it,” Starlight looked around as the guard was ordering, before settling on the bathroom, “Can you set it up to go off over there?”

“With pleasure!” Trixie immediately got up, a smoke bomb in hand with a piece of almost invisible string in the other. To unfortunately set the mood, the song that brought them there in the first place came on as she was tying the trap into the door, setting it to go off when it was next opened.

Though… Starlight noticed a change that came over the crowds from the song. It was like everybody got a little glassy eyed, their conversations dying off into little snippets. Even the guard seemed pretty out of it, singing quietly along to the song.

Aaaaand, I think this just got creepier, Starlight shivered in place as she got chills from how still everything was.

“Aaand, done!” Trixie grinned as she sat back down, “Should have our distraction aaaany moment now!” she paused as Starlight didn’t respond, finally noticing the disjointed chorus singing, “Uhhh… What’s going on?”

“I think it’s doing more than being annoying, Trixie…” she quickly got up, looking around to confirm that, yes, nobody was paying attention to them, much less anything else, “Let’s take this chance and get in there.”

“What about the keys?” Trixie’s words halted Starlight as she poked a hole in the plan.

Ice cream and crackers! No biggie, maybe nobody will notice if we use Trixie’s bombs to-

“Heyyy, can you hear me?” her blood ran cold as she turned to see Trixie waving an arm in front of the guard. He simply nodded numbly, still softly singing to the song, “Oh, great! Can you give me your keys real quick?”

And like magic, he casually obeyed her and pulled a pair of keys out of his vest pocket, handing them to Trixie. After saying her thanks, she grinned as she walked past a stunned Starlight.

Starting with a small sound that was some mix of astonishment and anger, she followed Trixie outside, “What the buck! That could have made things so much harder, Trixie!”

“It worked out, didn’t it? Besides, they looked hypnotized, I just wanted to test if they were hypnotized! After Sunset’s big debut of magic, you gotta check for these things.”

Starlight couldn’t physically keep being so angry at the unnerving train of logical leaps and mental gymnastics Trixie had to do for that. So she didn’t stay angry.

A deep breath in… And out. In… Out. And she was calm again. You could hardly see her eye twitching!

“Okay… Let’s just… Get into the van, Trixie.”

They left the keys in the ignition while hiding in the surprisingly sizable gap between the seats and the cab wall.

Eventually, the guard had finished his meal, coming back humming the song. He seemed surprised, patting his vest all over and scratched his head with a frown. He sighed while facepalming before sitting down and starting the van up, grumbling to himself while unknowingly smuggling a pair of teenage intruders into the venue.

---

The first of Starlight’s gadgets was a pair of hats. Not quite fashionable like Rarity might have wanted, but they were functional.

There were a series of dots on them that disrupted how a camera saw their heads, making them blurry. Maybe not something people would notice at first, but it would buy them enough time to sneak around and investigate.

Thankfully the driver never checked behind his seat to see if there were stowaways.

A few minutes after he was gone, Starlight peaked a head up to look around through the windshield, only seeing a regular garage. “Coast is clear, Trixie. Come on!”

The first step was completed. Now for the second step of their plan, blending in.

“Ugh, it’s so dark in here,” Trixie grumbled as they walked along the wall, ready to freeze if they heard anything, “Still a no on phones?”

“As much as I’d like to know what that puddle we stepped in was, still a no. We can’t risk getting caught.”

“Yeahhh… Figured.”

The garage itself wasn’t all too big, having only a couple vehicles there, but it had an open entrance from the surface and didn’t look well maintained. If lights were supposed to be on here, they certainly weren’t for them. Maybe a good thing if they didn’t know anybody was still down here.

There were two spots of light in the whole place, the first being sunlight streaming in where they came in from while the other dimly shone from a door along one wall. It made it seem eerier than it probably was.

Sneaking over, the door thankfully let them in. Through it seemed to be a series of smaller storage rooms, full of stage equipment, liquid for the fog and fire machines they sometimes used, and spare parts for all the stuff they might need.

And of course, there were also uniforms.

“Good grief... Is this what Rarity feels like?” Starlight held up the drab gray and pink combo of the shirt and pants, the colors looking like an awful shade for both.

“As long as it lets us stop whatever’s happening here, it could be green and purple for all I care,” Trixie slid the outfit over her own clothes, the tight uniform obscuring that she had two sets of clothes on, “And you can’t even tell there’s a fabulous Trixie underneath this!”

Starlight grumbled, but knew Trixie was right. Whatever the distaste, they had to get to the bottom of this.

Their hats were a little strange being indoors, but she had thankfully not gone for a standout black color and settled for a dull grey, which wasn’t too far off from the outfits own color palette. They might get a raised eyebrow, but she didn’t expect anybody to stop them for wearing the caps.

From there, as they walked up a set of stairs down the hall and entered the main building, it was just a matter of- “Hey, you two!” -not drawing attention.

Starlight inwardly cringed as she turned to see a green man walking over, in a slightly more elaborate uniform.

“Yes sir?”

“You’re the new gals Shipwright sent over, right?”

“Uhhh,” Justrollwithit! “Yes sir! We were told to report to you!”

“We haven’t even been told what we’ll be doing yet.” Trixie added in.

“Huh… I guess she must be busier than I thought if she didn’t tell you your job before sending you my way,” he muttered under his breath before continuing, “You, blue girl, you’re with the sound stage. You’ll help with setting up for the concert,” he then turned to Starlight, “And we’re understaffed on janitor duties, you’ll be cleaning up a few halls. You’ll be working with our sanitation manager, Tossup, until you learn the ropes. Got it?”

Not bothering to give them time to complain, he pointed Trixie off to where the main hall was while he called over Tossup, an elderly man, to take Starlight over.

Well… I guess we cover more ground this way?

Starlight could only hope this turn of events would yield some good fortune for them as she gave a nod to Trixie before walking off to start her own journey through the building.

---

Trixie groaned as she dragged her feet. This was not the kind of job she thought she got assigned with.

It seemed that while everybody else was busy setting up music equipment or cleaning the seats, she was stuck with going every which way to get them their food like she was some kind of water girl.

It left her with almost nothing to do as it seemed like they didn’t trust her to do anything, and so she was left standing around and out of the way.

Now what am I supposed to… Oh yeah. Revenge mission.

She thought back to how everybody in the restaurant had fallen into a trance when the song started playing, leaving her and Starlight the only ones unaffected. It was unlikely that everybody had the same sound systems to listen to the song, so that only left the music itself as the culprit.

“Now where would a fancy music room be…” If she could get her hands on where it was stored, maybe she could reverse it or something and make everybody get unhypnotized.

Making sure none of the crew was paying attention to her, she made her way around curtains and other things to obscure herself as she went backstage, looking for where the computers were.

It wasn’t too hard to find the bulky equipment. It was in its own box for the audio tech to sit in while overlooking the stage.

“Time for some master hacking,” Trixie cracked her knuckles sitting down in the chair, “Aaaand… I don’t have those skills.” An obstacle to her plan…

…But somebody had left the computer unlocked, thankfully. A lucky break.

Going through some of the still open files, she didn’t notice the sounds of footsteps approaching.

---

Starlight walked along with the broom in hand, being largely ignored by everybody else around her as she made her way in and out of the various rooms when they weren’t looking.

It was a training session of about fifteen minutes with Tossup, basically amounting to ’Sweep the halls and put the dirt in here.’ Not too complicated.

So she did just that.

Moving along the halls with a broomstick in her hand, she swept them when people passed and checked the rooms when they didn’t.

It wasn’t all that many rooms though. It seemed like most of the building’s space was taken up by the concert hall with only a bathroom or entrance into the employee backrooms every now and then.

I’m never gonna find anything with this cover story…

Sighing, she finished off the hall and stretched. Her arms were already complaining as her stomach added in with a gurgle of hunger.

“Yeah… I guess I could have a bite to eat…”

Leaving the broom in the hall, she went through the door to the employee area looking for somewhere she could get some food, or even just a vending machine, when she heard a conversation from one of the open rooms.

“…and then he even barked for me, it was freaking hilarious!”

“No way, he was that deep under? How weak willed was that dude!”

Deep under…?

“Nah, he was pretty smart. He just had waaaay too much of the song already. I think I heard his daughter playing it, and then he just went brain dead. Bet I could’ve sold him his own shoes!”

Song? Selling a guy his own shoes? This sounds like… Starlight moved closer to the door, peering around the opening while staying hidden. Inside were a couple of people on a sofa, a guy and girl grinning at each other while lazing around. As opposed to the uniform she wore, they had regular, if very formal, clothes on. They clearly weren't here to work.

"And we have this miracle food to thank for that!" the girl agreed, taking a bite of something that looked vaguely like a cake from her plate, "Alas, if only we could hypnotize you into choosing better seasoning. This is way too sweet, man."

"Figgy pudding is figgy pudding, doesn't matter what I put in it if it still does it's thing and keeps us sane. Besides, you're judging it too much, this is great!"

So this keeps them sane... I guess I know who the masterminds are. But what do they get from this...?

...Well, besides controlling the city.

I need to get my hands on some of that, but I doubt they’ll hand theirs over peacefully… I need to get out of here.

"Get a better recipe at least. It almost hurts to eat this, gah…” the woman happened to glance over to the door, just catching a blur of Starlight ducking away, “Oh great… Chitin, I think we have another curious crewmember.”

He groaned, getting up and stretching, “Yeah yeah, I’ve got it. It’s your turn to put them back in line next time,” pulling out his phone, he put the new classic ‘Twelve days of Christmas Song’ on with the volume cranked up, “Man, this song gets on my nerves sometimes…”

And with that, he rushed out of the room after Starlight.

---

Trixie looked over the files, finding the audio for the song pretty quickly. She grinned while pulling it around to an audio software she was… Semi-familiar with. She needed sound cues for her shows, after all.

“Let’s see, ‘reverb’, ‘echo’, ‘noise reduction’, aha! ‘Reverse’! Now, let’s see what this does…”

She played the song for a few seconds, blaring out of the small speaker set next to the monitor.

“…Aaaaand my ears feel like they’re bleeding,” not quite what she wanted from that, “Hmm, maybe if I just-“

“What are you doing here?”

A hand on her shoulder corresponded with the question, making her jump in her seat, “Gahhh!”

She whipped her head around to see a tall woman with greenish-turquoise hair standing behind her, a predatory look in her eyes.

“Oh, uh, hi there, ma’am! I’m just part of the sound crew, and I decided to check out what’s on here to see if it’s in order, but it looks like it’s all A-okay! I’ll just be on my way now- “

“I think not,” the grip on her shoulder tightened, “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here… Did Saint Nick send you?”

Trixie’s mind blanked at that, “Saint… Nick?”

“…Hmph. Dumber than I thought. No matter,” her eyes started glowing, “It looks like I’ll still be able to steal Christmas, so your efforts are meaningless.”

Trixie struggled to break free of the grip, but the woman wouldn’t let her go, “‘Steal Christmas?’ Who are you, the Grinch?”

“I suppose I’m close enough. Now…” leaning around Trixie, she undid the reverse and played the audio for the metal song again, “Let’s see what you do know.”

The glow in her eyes got brighter, and Trixie’s mind blanked.