Chapter 5: The Veil Is Lifted
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Chapter 5: The Veil Is Lifted
Ugh, this story is going nowhere fast.
That’s it, I’m skipping ahead.
A week had passed, no obvious supervillain lairs had presented themselves, and the Best Young Musician Competition was ready to start up again. Thanks to all the publicity from that Visual Music-Boom, the contest had been moved to Vinyl’s home town of Ponyville.
(Not to mention lowering the chances that the BYMC Committee would be slapped with an even bigger lawsuit than they were already dealing with.)
This was the reason, of course, why there were so many pianos in Ponyville, for use by the competitors.
“Wait, I thought that the whole competition was supposed to be in Cloudsdale before the accident changed everything. So how come the pianos were in Ponyville just a few hours later?”
Shut up, Pinkie.
“Oops! Forget I even said anything.”
~ ~ ~
Alright, how many ponies am I missing at this point...Applejack and Rarity? And maybe that one pony, Octavia...Nah, I don’t know her that well—sorry, Vinyl.
Right, so Applejack pulled her cart into town early that morning, in hopes of selling “apples and apple accessories” to all the hungry ponies. (I never get tired of that joke.)
“You’re welcome.”
“Vinyl Scratch,” a nervous Applejack asked upon seeing the musician, “could I ask you somethin’?”
“Sure thing,” Vinyl said, heading for the cart.
The two ponies were the only ones occupying the street corner at the edge of town.
“I’m not keepin’ you or anythin’?” Applejack asked.
“No,” answered Vinyl. “Technically, my part in the competition is finished, but there’s a tradition of ponies being asked to do encore performances afterwards and, well...”
“...You figure there’s no way they won’t ask ya?” the earth pony asked with a smirk.
Vinyl shrugged good-naturedly. “Yeah. So what did you want to ask me?”
“We’re, uh...This is gonna sound a mite bit awkward, but...are we best friends?”
Huh. That wasn’t what I was expecting her to say.
Vinyl stepped back and bit her lip as she pondered her words. “Yes,” she answered cautiously. “Under the circumstances, I guess all six of us are best friends.”
Applejack furrowed her brow. “‘Under the...’” She trailed off, her bewilderment turning to mild annoyance. “Look, are you an Element of Harmony, or aren’t you?”
Vinyl clearly looked uncomfortable with this question. “Well, there’s six elements, right?” she asked.
“Right,” answered Applejack.
“And you, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity are five of them, right?”
“Also right.”
“So...I’m the Element of Loyalty?” Vinyl Scratch said this like she really wasn’t sure if it were true or not.
“Right,” Applejack said in relief. “You were there with us when we went into the Everfree to face down Nightmare Moon. We found out you were Loyalty when you went across that...”
Applejack’s confusion was suddenly back in full force. She leaned forward and looked intently at Vinyl’s back, like she was looking for a pack that she was sure had to be there.
“Applejack, are you OK?” Vinyl asked, resting a reassuring hoof on the farmer’s shoulder.
“It’s the darnedest thing,” the earth pony said, her eyes unfocused. “I woke up this morning with a funny taste in my mouth.”
Vinyl suddenly jerked back with a strange look of recognition.
In a flash, Vinyl remembered these were the exact words she had used on Applejack back in Twilight’s dream, when she was trying to get her to wake up.
“Like maybe you weren’t the same pony you were the night before?” Vinyl asked hopefully.
Applejack suddenly reached out and pulled the musician pony close. “How did you know that?!” she demanded.
You know, all this pony weirdness is starting to get on my nerves. It’s like they think this is a soap opera or something. I swear, if Rarity has a carriage accident and loses her memory...
That reminds me...
“Applejack, there you are!” the persnickety fashion mare exclaimed as she cut in front of Vinyl. “I simply must have a cruller, or I will die!”
Yeah, I don’t like writing for Rarity.
“Hold yer horses, Rares, I’ve got your cruller right here, just like always.”
“Thank you,” Rarity said curtly, as she took the fancy donut with her magic at the same time as she paid for it.
“Oh, you’ve got one of Twilight’s books,” observed Vinyl, pointing one hoof at the corner of a thin book poking out of Rarity’s saddlebags.
That’s one of the things I skipped over when I jumped forward a week: Twilight reacted to having all the library books glued together by asking everypony with a book checked out from her to turn them in by noon today, or she’d go crazy from reading withdrawal. Well, she might not have used those exact words, but you and I both know that’s what she meant.
Rarity carefully tucked the book in and arranged the flap of her bag so it was perfectly aligned. “Now be honest,” she asked Vinyl and Applejack, “what do you think of my dressup-thingee?”
“Rarity calls them ensembles, not ‘dressup-thingees’.”
Yeah, I know, Pinkie, but I don’t like speaking Fancy if I can at all help it.
Now then...I have to describe what Rarity’s wearing?
Pinfeathers.
No, wait—snerk—I’ve got this.
Rarity, in honor of this being Shetland Day, was dressed in...a plaid kilt. And not the kinda-good red and black plaid. Oh no. Rarity was decked out in bright yellow and black. She looked like a road sign had picked a fight with a dark and stormy night—and got whupped.
“Wow!” the Element of Honesty exclaimed in astonishment.
“What?” Rarity asked nervously. “Is there a pleat out of place?”
“No...nothin’ like that, Sugar,” Applejack replied.
“So what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s...wrong, I guess,” Applejack said, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. “It’s just...striking, is all.”
“‘Striking’.” Rarity repeated dubiously.
“It’s also doing a good job at directing traffic,” Pinkie Pie commented as she bounced past.
“Now what’s that supposed to mea...” Rarity started to say, before she looked back at her...ensemble.
She sure looked surprised, considering that she’s the one who picked out that getup a couple hours ago. Come on, Rarity, you’re not going to start fighting my absolute control over you now, are you?
“Ooh!” Pinkie exclaimed as she backpedaled into the scene. “Rarity’s eyes look like a pair of maracas!”
I would have said a pair of dice myself. Snake-eyes!
So then, um...Hold on, my eyes just crossed or something. Weird.
Anyway, the sight-reading contest was about to start back up, so Vinyl and Pinkie left Applejack behind to continue her sales, and then they went over to join Twilight, Spike and Fluttershy outside the library tree, leaving behind an empty street corner.
~ ~ ~
Twilight was not paying much attention to the music being played by the competitors before her. Instead, with Spike’s help, she was cataloging the books that her fellow ponies had all turned in at 11:59 precisely. Her big frustration was that there was exactly one book missing: The Complete Dream Book, by Hollow Way. This was made a lot worse by the fact that this was the only book that had no borrower name noted in her records, so she had no pony to pester to get it back.
Eventually, she gave up and turned to trying to find out if the pony who summoned the fake monster and froze her books a week earlier was lurking in the crowd. She did this by quietly scanning the crowd for the mystery pony’s unique magical signature. A few minutes of this failed to turn up anything. This didn’t mean that the pony wasn’t around—just that she or he wasn’t actively casting anything.
That plan having failed to turn up anything, Twilight next turned to looking for anypony who looked suspicious.
She did this through the rest of the competition, which was taking place in the Town Square, the Town Hall not being big enough for the number of ponies that wanted to watch. I’m going to spare telling you much about how that competition went. That one piece of music everypony was required to play was still physically impossible, and several of the competitors had to be dragged out of the square in tears.
Once the last performer was finished, the three judges went off to compile their scores, as if there was any doubt under the circumstances who would win.
(I’ll give you a hint: it was the performer from a week ago who generated an entirely new force of nature the moment she finished playing.)
Meanwhile, an obvious suspect had finally presented itself to Twilight, in the form of a cloaked pegasus hovering over the other side of the street from her. The pegasus was diminutive in size, but made up for that with the pair of large cream-colored wings that stuck out of holes in the dark gray cloak.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” Twilight addressed the pony as she made her approach. “I was wondering if you could answer a few questions? Like maybe who—”
Twilight was interrupted by Fluttershy putting a wing over her shoulder to turn her away.
“Twilight,” the pegasus said, quietly but insistently, “could you please maybe ask somepony else those questions and let this pony go?”
Twilight turned to face Fluttershy and looked at her intently. She had to be sure that it was Fluttershy asking her this, and not Lux, because she didn’t entirely trust the faery. “But Fluttershy...?” she began to ask, before she saw from the look in her friend’s face that the question she wanted to ask would not be getting an answer. “All right,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll trust you. I promise you that she’s off my suspect list, whoever she is.”
Hearing this, Fluttershy nodded to herself, and then walked back into the crowd.
Spike, silently watching this exchange, looked back over at the mystery pegasus, and saw her start flying up the street.
Well, I made no promises, he thought to himself, and she’s most definitely on my suspect list.
The mystery mare made her way through the street fair, hovering down from time to time to examine the wares being offered by the street vendors before returning to standard pegasus elevation, and doubling back and forth several times, but always returning to the same spot. Finally, when it seemed like the majority of ponies were looking towards the bandstand, she ducked into an alley.
Waiting there for her was Fluttershy, who had taken another street to reach the exact same spot.
Spike, who had been tailing her this whole time, darted over to the entrance of the alley and peeked in. He saw that there was no way for him to sneak any further in without being spotted, but unfortunately the two pegasi were far enough in that he couldn’t overhear them from his chosen spot.
What he was able to observe was that they were having a spirited conversation in hushed tones, with Fluttershy wilting under the words of the cloaked pony.
“Colts and gentlemares!” announced an amplified voice from behind the dragon. “We have the results of the competition.”
Spike turned to see Mayor Mare in a gray cloak walking out into the center of Town Square, stopping at the base of the acrobat statue. Gathered around that statue were Vinyl and the other competitors, plus the first, second and third place trophies for the competition. He was puzzled to see that there was no obvious means by which the earth pony’s voice was being made so everypony could hear it.
“I could tell you the third and second place finishers,” she said with a cold little smile, “but I doubt anypony cares.”
Spike frowned. He started to cross the street to get a closer look, but saw that Twilight and Pinkie were already moving to do just that. He began to make his way back to the mouth of the alley, but at that moment the mysterious pegasus flew out and soared over his head to land beside the mayor. It was now clear that they were wearing the exact same type of robe.
Fluttershy walked out of the alley, her head bowed. For a moment, she locked eyes with Spike, but quickly turned away from his look of quiet accusation. They joined Twilight and Pinkie without another word.
“First place goes to the pony of the hour, the valiant Vinyl Scratch!” the mayor announced mockingly.
Vinyl looked at the award, then looked around. When she saw that nopony was stepping forward to give her the prize, she reluctantly stepped forward and picked it up with her magic to hold over her head.
There was a polite smattering of applause, which quickly faded out.
“In honor of her victory, the committee requests an encore performance.” The mayor swung a hoof out to point at two instruments beside herself: One was an ordinary upright harp, the other a strange-looking instrument resembling a piano, but with two keyboards and no pedals.
After a moment, Vinyl recognized it as a harpsichord—an instrument exclusive to dragons. Her trouble in recognizing it had come from the fact that she had never seen one small enough to be played by a pony.
Vinyl looked back at the mayor, only to be met by an imperious stare and a forehoof pointing at her assigned instrument. Holding back her obvious complaints, the reluctant unicorn took her place at the harpsichord’s bench.
“Miss Scratch will be accompanied by the former harpist for the Cloudsdale Quartet, Parula.”
On hearing her cue, the mystery pony lowered the hood of her cloak with her wings, revealing a long, dark-blue mane that covered one eye just like Fluttershy’s manestyle. She settled behind the harp with a look of contempt for Vinyl.
Vinyl looked nervously at the mayor. “Is there anything in particular you’d like us to play?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the mayor with an entirely new voice, although one that was dreadfully familiar to most of the ponies hearing it. “I’d like you to perform a piece of my own composition.”
With a burst of white light, the pony’s cloak was replaced by a purple cape and hat, and her form turned from that of a tan earth pony to that of a bright blue unicorn. “The Great and Powerful Trixie calls it: ‘Music to Level Ponyville With’!”
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Even if it has not been forever, it has been long enough that I forgot which story this was. Y'know, until I looked at the story page
Hahaha at least you can blame Rainbow Dash for the plot holes!
I love how this is full of deliberate bad storytelling that say a lot about Rainbow Dash herself! Very well done use of the voice of the narrator.
You know, when I think about it, the GNPT may be more of the Mane 6's rivals than just Twilight. I can definitely buy Rainbow Dash nursing a grudge, especially since she never actually beat Trixie.
It's Rainbow Dash. Plot holes are both expected and forgiven.
I really couldn't tell whats going on throughout the chapter , and was that auther notes stapled to the story on various scenes?
...that song might just actually "level Ponyville".
Rainbow fails her job as a narrator!
Oh well, the Awakened isn't in danger yet!
Awaiting further releases.
2679165
Hm...not sure what to say. Maybe it's been so long since I posted the last chapter that you've forgotten what's going on: Vinyl Scratch, Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie are walking around inside Rainbow Dash's dream, trying to get her to wake up. Pinkie, being Pinkie, is the only one who can hear Rainbow Dash narrate this dream, and the stuff in pink is her talking back.
Oh, and just to complicate matters, Twilight accidentally created an imaginary friend based on Spike who's also in the dream.
The various other passages in color indicate times that Vinyl or Spike are thinking about what's going on. They're in color to tell you that Rainbow Dash can't tell what they're thinking.
Everypony else are characters being manipulated by Rainbow.
...Maybe.
As far as the chapter itself goes, Vinyl talked to Applejack, and nearly got her to wake up. Twilight tried to figure out who the villain of this dream is. Fluttershy is up to something with a mysterious musical pegasus named Parula. Trixie, magically disguised as the mayor, set up the music competition for no other reason than to trick Vinyl into playing a harpsichord. And Parula and Trixie are in cahoots.
2683027 i needed that summary ,
Thanks mate.