Hexonxonx
Vinyl Scratch stood alone on the stage, the familiar throb of the music pulsing in her ears and under her hooves. The crowd of ponies on the dance floor was obscured by the brilliant stage lights and the haze of the club. To Vinyl, it looked like a brilliant, rainbow-colored sea, moving in time with her music. Manes, horns and wings moved in time with the gated drum kicks. Small eddies formed and disappeared in the wash of the dance as ponies broke time, moving against the wobbling bass or stopping to adjust their manes. Others joined the dance floor or left, moving through the sweat-soaked crowd like fish in rapids.
Vinyl loved it. As DJ P0n-3, for a few hours a night, three nights a week, this was her world to rule.
The night wore on as it always did. DJ P0n-3 wove her enchantments over the crowd, and they danced and paid their obeisances. Free drinks, bad requests and the occasional half-flanked proposition came her way in an endless stream of questionable offerings. The high priestess of the club remained aloof and above it all, though the drinks and the one-in-a-million request that wasn't awful were appreciated.
An empty glass disappeared from the small table next to Vinyl's turntables. It was almost instantly replaced by a full one, brought by a gushing fan. Vinyl looked down her muzzle coolly at the besotted brown earth pony, letting just the faintest trace of a smirk cross her face. He blushed hotly, visible clearly even through the glare, and disappeared back into the crowd. Vinyl allowed herself a grin. She definitely still had it.
Vinyl's horn glowed, levitating the fresh drink to her mouth as she absently tweaked the levels on her panel. She took a sip and grinned. Somepony had been doing his homework; Salty Dogs were her favorite drink. Salt, grapefruit juice and gin combined into the most perfect cocktail ever devised by ponykind.
Records spun and ponies danced, and Vinyl took a moment to enjoy it all. Her drink went down quickly. Vinyl happily licked stray salt crystals from her lips as she removed one exhausted record from her turntable and replaced it with a fresh one. The music continued, seamlessly transitioning from one pounding song to another. Vinyl bobbed her head, watching as the crowd swayed in front of her. She idly noted that the house lights seemed to be dimming. That was odd. Equally odd was the fact that the bar was now swaying along with the crowd, which it did not usually do.
Vinyl felt her feet go out from under her. Her treacherous turntable struck her in the face. There was a thud, the sound of a record scratching, and then the lights went out completely.
---
Blinking, Vinyl winced as light and harsh smoke attacked her eyes. It was bright, much brighter than the inside of the club, and her glasses were missing. Vinyl raised a foreleg to let her eyes adjust. The sounds of the club were gone, as well, replaced with a chorus of distant, metallic clanging noises and nearby gurgling, as of viscous liquid being pumped.
Once Vinyl's eyes adjusted to the light, she lowered her leg and staggered woozily to her feet. The club was gone. Ponyville was gone. She stood on a wide open sheet of gray concrete, cracked and pitted with age. The ground, such as it was, was littered with battered and broken pieces of machinery, rusted devices of unknown provenance and function. Many of them were torn open, spilling their clockwork insides across the ground in a macabre display. Others lay, seemingly intact but covered in years of rust and corrosion. The ground was pierced here and there by heavy bronze pipes, the source of the gurgling sounds.
Vinyl looked around for any signs of other ponies. All that Vinyl could see were ancient, ugly metal structures, built for function more than appearance and just as dead as the machine waste. Rust and corrosion caked these, too, and many of them were missing doors or had partially or completely caved in. She couldn't see anypony around, and given the state of things, Vinyl began to suspect that wherever she was hadn't seen anypony else in a long time.
Rubbing her eyes absently, Vinyl picked a direction. She began walking toward what appeared to be the largest group of buildings nearby, her hooves clacking uncomfortably on the uneven concrete. She picked her way gingerly, not wanting to tear her frog on a piece of rusty metal or give herself a stone bruise here, presumably far from medical attention.
A strange sound emerged from the hulk of what might have been a vehicle, something that sounded like a cat's hiss run through a vocoder, and Vinyl stopped in trepidation. She tentatively approached the hulk, craning her neck to look through a gaping rent in the thing's shell. At first, all she saw was more of the same confusing clockwork that littered the ground, as well as some rotting hoses. Suddenly, there was a blur of movement in the shadowed hole, and Vinyl stumbled back.
From the rent, something that could be loosely described as a cat emerged. Parts of the creature, if you could call it that, were identical to a cat, a scraggly-looking Stalliongrad Blue with a filthy coat. The rest of the 'cat', however, seemed to be machine. The right side of its head was brassy metal with a small, filthy lens set in in place of an eye and what appeared to be a small condenser microphone sticking up where the ear should be. Three legs were also mechanical, little hydraulic struts acting in place of muscle. The center of the cat's torso, too, was made of several interlocking, articulated metal rings that scraped together faintly as the thing moved.
The cat hissed again in its strange, electronic tone and Vinyl took another step back. It sat down on a rusty shard jutting out from the hulk, apparently satisfied, and began rhythmically thumping its its only natural leg behind it, against the side of the vehicle. The thumping was in perfect synchronization with the distant clanging sounds. All else aside, Vinyl had to admit that the cat could keep a good beat.
Opening its mouth, the cat began to call. Rather than a meow or whine, the sound that came from it was purely mechanical, a modulated bass thrum in time with the thumping of its leg. Other 'voices' began to call back in an electronic chorus that Vinyl would not have minded having on an LP.
After a moment of this strange serenade, Vinyl resumed walking. She watched the cat warily and it watched her but made no move to follow or stop her. As she walked, her pace began to match the rhythm the creatures were setting.
After many minutes, Vinyl approached her goal. The cluster of buildings she approached seemed no more intact than those she'd left behind. A large, ruined Quonset hut with a gaping, rusty hole in the side was the largest. Smaller outbuildings surrounded it, placed seemingly at random.
Vinyl paced around, investigating the smaller buildings. They were all small sheds or garages, the largest barely the size of Sugarcube Corner's front area. Doors were ripped off, roofs destroyed. They were almost all empty or littered with more of the same mechanical trash. One had one of the mysterious pipes leading into it and disgorging a viscous black liquid into a drain in the floor. Vinyl gagged at the stench of the black liquid and moved on quickly.
After inspecting what seemed like dozens of buildings, Vinyl encountered one that appeared intact. The outside was corroded, but there didn't appear to be any holes in the structure, and its doors were not only still on but secured with a padlock. She began searching around for something to remove the padlock with.
Something was nagging at the back of her mind as she searched. Something had changed. She stopped, looking around at the dead landscape. It was just as still and quiescent as it had been since Vinyl arrived. Vinyl realized then that it was also nearly silent. The strange singing had stopped, as had the distant clanging that set the beat for it. She put it out of her mind and resumed looking.
A droplet from the sky landed on the ground before Vinyl, then a second and a third. Rain, Vinyl noted idly. She saw that, with a slight sizzling sound and metallic tang in the air, new pockmarks appeared in the ground where the raindrops had fallen.
In panic, Vinyl ran back to the hut. Vinyl was no doctor, but if the rain was scoring holes in concrete she was reasonably sure it was not healthy for ponies. She ran up to the door and spun, kicking at the lock.
The ancient lock shattered under Vinyl's hooves, and she turned quickly. She grinned triumphantly as her horn glowed, swinging the doors open. With no time time to wonder whether the shed was safe or not she dove inside, away from the deadly downpour.
Light stabbed at Vinyl's eyes suddenly as the doors slammed shut behind her, and she squeezed them shut. The air seemed to be free of the acrid smoke that had been outside. Confusingly, it smelled clean, fresh and vegetal, not at all what Vinyl had expected inside an ancient shed. She gradually began to notice other oddities. The ground was soft and mossy under her feet. Instead of the sucking sounds of the strange pipes, Vinyl began to hear distant music.
She blinked, gradually letting her eyes adjust to the light. Rather than inside a shed, she found herself standing at the edge of White Tail Wood. The distant music seemed to be coming from the direction of Ponyville, which Vinyl knew was just down the nearby trail and over a small hillock. She turned, confused, but the doors she had come through were nowhere to be found among the majestic oak and ash trees around her.
Vinyl shook her head and began walking uncertainly back toward Ponyville. Had she been dreaming? Whatever had happened, she was here now, albeit still missing her glasses.
As she approach Ponyville, the sound of the music got louder, and Vinyl furrowed her brow. Four-on-the-floor beat, funk bass... Disco? She grimaced as she continued walking, the music getting louder. Even at this distance, the music was as loud as Vinyl would have expected it to be right outside the club, and was accompanied by what sounded like a rough drum line that was even louder. Was someone trying to both annoy and deafen Ponyville?
Coming over the hillock, Vinyl stopped as Ponyville came into view. There were ponies dancing. Not just ponies, a lot of ponies. From what Vinyl could see, the entire population of Ponyville could have been out in town square, dancing in time with the out-of-style music.
Walking down from the trail, as she got closer she could see that the ponies were all drenched in sweat and exhausted. Some looked like they were well past ready to pass out, but were still furiously dancing, hooves thundering on the flagstone. Some she recognized from the club. There was Rainbow Dash, her vibrant mane soaked in sweat and stained with dust, moaning in agony as she danced a cruel mockery of the Hustle. Over there, Cheerilee, tears streaming down her face as she did a series of painful-looking pivot turns on one foot. Junebug had apparently lapsed unconscious, but her hooves still moved without her, pounding viciously on hard stone.
Vinyl's mind spun. Before she could even finish processing what she was seeing, however, a loud peal of laughter cut through the music. The hair on her neck stood up. Vinyl had only heard that laugh up close once before, and that had been enough. Like so many other ponies in Equestria, it still occasionally haunted her nightmares. She turned, slowly, and looked up toward the source.
Hanging in the sky was Discord.
The blasphemous obscenity laughed outrageously at the spectacle before him. He was dressed head-to-tail in a yellow leisure suit. A huge matching leather top hat sat on his head, perched lopsidedly over his antler. His eyes were covered by a pair of rhinestone-studded pink sunglasses. Somehow, the absurdity of the apparition just made him all the more terrifying to Vinyl.
Discord looked down from his vantage, leering directly at Vinyl Scratch with a vicious grin. He reached his lion paw out and a giant turntable appeared before him in the air. Lightning lanced from Discord's paw, playing over the record, and with a resounding scratch the music changed to a faster tempo. Screams and cries erupted from the crowd. Vinyl looked away from Discord and saw ponies being jerked around as though they were puppets on unseen strings, their tortured dances changing to match the new music.
Vinyl's heart pounded in her chest, but she remained unaffected by Discord's spell, her hooves still obeying her as they always had. She looked around in panic, trying to decide where to go and what to do, when she felt an irresistible tug at her horn. She was fairly dragged by her head and found herself face to face with Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight looked terrible. Like everypony else, she was drenched in sweat. She whimpered piteously with every uncontrollable step, and Vinyl noted that her hooves had already developed cracks. She groaned and jerked her head in the direction of the library, then turned and began dancing toward the tree as quickly as her uncooperative hooves would allow. Vinyl set after her.
A roar erupted from the air behind them and the music changed again. Twilight jerked, her hooves going out from underneath her before she was once again dragged upright to dance to the new rhythm. She continued moving as quickly as she could, incoherent gasps coming from her mouth instead of words.
The duo reached the library. Twilight's horn glowed and sputtered, and the door was flung open. An incoherent scream came from behind the two unicorns. Vinyl looked over her shoulder and saw Discord descending toward the two like some gaudy avenging spirit. Twilight threw herself through the door and Vinyl dashed through behind her.
The ground spun underneath Vinyl's hooves and she slipped and fell on her side, heavily. Once again, the door was gone, as was Twilight. The ground was slick and black, covered in thin grooves, and was spinning rapidly.
Rising to her feet as quickly as the unsteady footing would allow, Vinyl took in her surroundings. She was standing on a round, spinning plateau with nothing around it but empty blue sky. Vinyl's mane fluttered in the breeze as the ground spun. She looked down and tapped the ground with her hoof, experimentally. It had the familiar feel of LPs made of her namesake.
A loud thump and the enormous record jumped, nearly sending Vinyl tumbling again. She turned rapidly, looking for the source of the thump.
Discord was there again, shed of his absurd costume. A giant record player arm seemed to jut from his back and his mismatched feet stood on the player head, the needle below him bouncing in the record's groove. He grinned malevolently down at Vinyl as the moving record brought her close to him.
Panicking, Vinyl began running against the record's motion, trying to keep as much distance between her and Discord as she could. As she ran, she felt the record speeding up. She ran faster and faster, the ground moving under her like a treadmill. Discord laughed that infuriating laugh as, even at a full gallop, Vinyl began to lose ground.
Vinyl grit her teeth angrily. Whatever was going to happen, she wouldn't go without a fight. She reached out with her magic and gave the record arm attached to Discord a good, hard shove.
The arm bounced. The needle skipped and there was a record scratch louder than thunder, followed by a sharp cracking sound and a scream from Discord. Vinyl watched as his antler simply sheared off as if the loud scratch itself had broken it. The antler bounced to the ground, sliding on the record surface.
Vinyl grinned and grabbed the broken antler with her telekinesis. She let herself be spun toward the enraged Discord, and dragged the antler roughly across the surface of the vinyl in one long scratch, from the outside to the inside.
The sound was unlike anything Vinyl had ever heard. It was thunder, earthquakes, winds and screaming all in one. It seemed to come from everywhere, the record, Discord, even Vinyl herself. Vinyl watched in fascinated horror as Discord began to simply fall apart. His horn, then his paw. Talon, then wings. Piece by piece, the ancient spirit of disharmony simply fell apart, screaming until even his head split in two, the two halves, frozen in mid-scream, bouncing from the record and falling into the void beyond.
Vinyl looked around. There was still no way to escape this, and it seemed as though the record was still picking up speed. Faster and faster it spun. Vinyl's inner ear spun unpleasantly. Her mane whipped and wind roared in her ears. Faster and faster. The wind stung her eyes, and she squeezed them shut.
---
"-k she's gonna be okay?"
"I-I don't know, Rainbow Dash, she hit her head pretty hard."
"Nurse Redheart's comin', y'all!"
Once again, Vinyl blinked. The world was a blur in front of her once again, but hearing the voices of ponies was already somewhat reassuring.
"Hey, I think she's coming around!" called an unfamiliar voice. In front of her, a green-and-purple splotch resolved itself into Spike, Twilight Sparkle's assistant.
"Vinyl! You okay?" Vinyl turned her head, looking toward Rainbow Dash.
"Don't move your head, please," a soft voice said. "We need to make sure you didn't hurt your neck."
Vinyl blinked again and reached a hoof up to rub her pounding forehead. "I'm fine, thanks," she said, shakily. "What happened?"
"You fell and hit your head on your console," Rainbow said, the pegasus looking down at Vinyl with concern.
Vinyl glanced around. She was lying on the ground outside the club, surrounded by ponies. Some of them were from the club, like Rainbow Dash, but the ones that were talking to her were Rainbow's friends and local celebrities. Even if she didn't recognize the voices, everypony knew about Twilight Sparkle and her friends. "What are you guys doing here?" she asked, trying her best to sound nonchalant. "They don't usually send heroes for head bumps."
"I got a letter from Princess Celestia a few minutes ago saying that we needed to come talk to you. It sounded like it was an emergency," Twilight Sparkle said, looking down at Vinyl. "so I went and got everypony and we came straight here."
"It does seem rather strange that the princess would send us for this," Rarity said.
Princess Celestia was concerned? Maybe there was more to her dream than Vinyl had thought. "Hey, uh," she said, "maybe I should tell you about this hallucination I had after I f-"
"Hey, guys, where'd this come from?" Rainbow Dash piped up.
Vinyl turned her head, against Fluttershy's orders, and looked toward Rainbow.
She was pointing at the broken antler.
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
768 users online
716,977 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
woah.
Loved the way you described the scenery here. Overall nice story. Have 4.5 stars, mate.
I seem to have stumbled upon the transcript for Aphex Twin's next music video.
Hmmm... interesting bit. Clearly something new with Vinyl.
That was totally crazy. I've read nothing like this before. Good show!
Uh-oh, I got a bad feeling about this...
Good imagery and overall unsettling vibe, quite unexpected. Although it's labeled "Complete" I get the sense this story is far from over. Again, good work.
desmond.imageshack.us/Himg710/scaled.php?server=710&filename=capturetut.png&res=medium
Trippy.
Great story, and I loved how you included that bit of hoof anatomy. I don't think I've seen that particular detail in any other pony fanfic yet.
Like LSD you can read.
That was interesting. (to be truthful it reminded me of Soul Eater, everything Steampunk, and I want to see more)
i made an account just so i could follow this story you get all the stars here buddy
4.0 for an amazingly done story 1.0 for vinyl.
Awesome!
...I have only so much patience for a decision on creating another chapter, let alone a chapter itself. 1000 years of patience dissipates after a while...
268638
Sorry, but this is complete as it is and I don't think I've ever suggested otherwise. But I am willing to provide some explanation.
There were a number of things I wanted to play with in this story. One of them was characterization without dialogue, which I think was successful. Another was a free association narrative, providing a "plot thread" in the form of essentially nightmarish things with certain recurrent themes happening to and around Vinyl and allowing meaning and a "story" to emerge for the reader. The last thing (figuratively and literally) that I want try was (ab)using the Tethercat Principle, as it's called. The story ends on a deliberate cliffhanger; there's clearly some sort of objective reality to what happened to Vinyl, or at least objective reality has a link to it, and that's what we know. Vinyl will always have just gone through a harrowing experience with no explanation at hand and the Mane 6 will always have just found Discord's antler when he was thought to be petrified.
It's all terribly pretentious, to be sure.
268889 Tis disheartening to hear, you made it come across as there was more to be seen, and as I might add, I despise cliffhangers and things to that effect. In other words, I still feel now as if you deliberately trolled without you making it seem so. This relatively angers me, and I will not forget it...good story, though I thought it had potential to be more than a one-shot, and probably still does, if you would put effort into it. I am sure you won't, and I'll be damned to my own moon if I'm wrong.
276350
Sounds to me like I succeeded at everything I set out to do.
276611 why yes you did you insufferable parasprite...congratulations, have my hatred.
Oohh.... Dark Trippiness go! This explains Vinyl's Bass Cannon so well... she made it to prepare for Discord.
I think that brown earth pony could have chosen a better target for roofies than the DJ; it would seem somepony noticed her unconsciousness.