Underture in Adagio

by Violet CLM

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, DJ P0N-3, Equestria Girls, Octavia, Adagio Dazzle
Length: 5603

After the end of Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks, rival band leader Adagio Dazzle has lost faith in herself. Only her best friend, Octavia, and her worst enemy, Vinyl, can help.

Adagio Dazzle, brilliant classical musician and composer, has just lost the battle of the bands at Canterlot High after being betrayed by her best friend Octavia. She gives Octavia one chance to explain herself, but may end up learning--and revealing--far more than she had bargained for.

(Backstory: "Adagio Dazzle" appears to be the name of a new character in Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks. All we know about her at this time is her name, though the "Dazzle" part is probably exclusive to the toyline. Even her being female is just a guess. I decided to take a chance and make a whole bunch of undoubtedly incorrect predictions about the plot of Rainbow Rocks, as part of a shameless attempt at creating the very first Adagio fanfic.)

Published 2014-01-30 01:30:11 UTC
Last updated 2014-01-30 01:30:11 UTC

Chanson de Deux Amies

Adagio’s tears doubtlessly stained the sleeves on her one-of-a-kind Versace gown as she wiped at her eyes, but she was past caring. Dresses were no more than things, and things were no more than their prices, and she had all the money she could ever need. She could buy a new dress. She could buy friends, however temporarily. She couldn’t, it turned out, buy victory.

The door to her dressing room was closed, and she flung it open with a subhuman growl. The smash of the door meeting the wall was loud, and painful, and music to her ears, even though her hearing had been dulled by that puerile “Rainbow Rocks” noise. Adagio’s last tantrum had been when she was three years old, and the movie her father was taking her to was sold out. Her father had been prepared to wait until the next showing, but when she began to scream, he turned around and drove them back home without saying a word. That silent disapproval hadn’t totally cured her of her rage, which still came out from time to time, but now it was stronger than ever before. There was no point in staying calm when she had lost.

There was a stool by one of the mirrors, which she’d sat on while applying her stage makeup just half an hour ago. Adagio roared and kicked it, her tall red boot smashing satisfyingly into the thin wood, and the stool flew against the back wall and lost one of its legs. Adagio smiled. The light bulbs were the next to go, smashed to pieces by the stool’s lost leg as she swung it about her, smashing, smashing, smashing. Sunlight filled the dressing room from the window slit set into the top of the back wall, mocking her efforts to destroy the bulbs yet also giving her the light to see what she was destroying. The crunch of broken glass beneath her boots was a glorious sound, one that told the world that she was still a powerful woman and not to be trifled with.

A poster advertising the climactic Biannual Band Blitz caught her eye, and she ripped it to pieces without a thought. All the faces she had come to hate—Rainbow Dash and the rest of them, Twilight Sparkle somehow back from magical ponyland, and of course Vinyl Scratch—tore apart between her sharp fingers like so much meaningless trash, their insipid smiles failing to save them from her wrath. Adagio and her own bandmates were on the poster too, of course, but she gave that no special consideration and broke her own image in half as readily as the others. She had nothing left to her in the world, nothing that mattered.

Except… Adagio halted, the last fragments of the poster slipping from her loosened grasp. Her violin case rested on the table, miraculously untouched by the broken glass from the light bulbs she had strewn all across the dressing room. Her own violin case, containing her own violin, not the one the school had lent her for the purposes of the band blitz. Did she really want to destroy that too? Gently, almost reverently, she opened the case and lifted the well-worn instrument out to look at. It had been with her a very long time. She’d even composed Nocturne No. 9 on it, breaking from the genre’s typical reliance on piano music to create something new and beautiful. Today the world had spoken and had told her that the instrument was dead, that its time of capturing hearts was over and she needed to move on, but that didn’t mean she was ready to listen. Her violin could live another day.

But that music! Six exquisitely printed sheets of music lay within the case, and her vision briefly reddened at the sight of them and their duplicitous title. She laid the violin carefully aside and grabbed at the sheets, ready to tear them apart and put the whole sorry business behind her where it belonged.

“Is that Chanson de Deux Amies?”

Adagio knew the voice without needing to turn around. “Octavia.”

“Adagio. See, I know your name too! How jolly.” Adagio could hear the worry in Octavia’s voice, much as she tried to make herself sound cheerful. She knew Octavia far too well to be fooled by her so easily, or at least, so she’d thought.

“It is indeed Chanson de Deux Amies. I was about to shred it when you came in.”

“I would rather you didn’t.”

Adagio spat, the drops of spittle landing on the topmost sheet and staining the hated song. “Why in heaven’s name do you expect me to care?!” she asked, and spun around.

Octavia was standing in the doorway from the dressing room out to the stage, her right hand stretching behind her back to clutch at her other elbow and her head tilted a few inches to one side. She wore one of her oversized colorless sweaters with the necks that made her look like she’d been half again as large when she got dressed that morning, plus a tasteful purple skirt and some near-black laced boots that stretched up to the base of her knees. It was an inoffensive look, but it wasn’t the distinctive costume that Adagio and her bandmates had all promised to wear. On the other hand, nothing about her appeared to be spiky or rainbow-colored, so at least her betrayal hadn’t stretched so far as joining the enemy.

Octavia took a few moments to respond, and when she did, there was more fervor in her soft voice than Adagio was used to hearing. “Because I wrote it with you.” Octavia took a few careful steps forwards, her eyes flickering down to the ceaseless shards of broken glass as she moved. “Because we named it after our friendship, and I hope that—“

Agadio cut her off with a contemptuous flip of her hair. “What friendship?”

“I like to think I’m still your friend. Maybe even better now than I was yesterday.”

“Ha!” Adagio snarled once more and flung the sheet music at the table, crumpled but still intact. “Yes, a fine friend who betrays me and everything I’ve ever lived for! The best of friends! Or what, are you going to tell me it wasn’t your idea? That the talented, implacable Octavia Melody was convinced to abandon me by who, Trixie? Sunset? Or else—“

Octavia cleared her throat, and Adagio went quiet. That wasn’t a good sign. She’d seen what happened when Octavia cleared her throat, and it was usually very loud and resulted in whatever poor sap had gotten her mad lying on the floor and begging for mercy. Octavia preferred being a cheerful person, or at least neutral, but there were times when someone questioned something really important to her, like, say, her friendships… Adagio kept her lips closed and waited for the shouting to begin.

It didn’t begin. Octavia crossed the remainder of the room silently and took Adagio’s hand in hers, and Adagio was startled by how cold and sweaty she felt. Unless that was her own sweat she was feeling, of course. She had to admit she wasn’t in the best of states.

“You can tear it up if you really want to,” said Octavia eventually. She used her normal voice, with all its elegance delivered so plainly and naturally that it somehow came off as completely unaffected. “The song, I mean. But we have been friends before now, you must admit, so please just let me explain. I’ll say my piece, and then you can hate me or tear up your music or whatever you want.” She squeezed Adagio’s hand. “If you’re going to hate me for what I did, at least let me tell you why I did it.”

Adagio stared at the floor, where snippets of Octavia’s reflection were visible in the scattered bits of glass. Part of her wanted to laugh or growl or something like that, wrest her hand away, maybe even shove Octavia aside and run. But the traitor made a good point; her hatred for Octavia Melody would surely be passionate and eternal, so why not learn the reason behind it too, for that extra measure? Or if by some miracle Octavia managed to have a good excuse, well, there was something to be said for a world where she still got along with her best friend, if such a world was possible…

Octavia must have taken her silence for consent, for she looked Adagio in the eye and said “Vinyl and I have been dating for the last four months,” and Adagio choked because whatever she’d been expecting to hear it had absolutely not been that.

Her shock, however, was quickly replaced by anger. “That’s all?!” She wrestled her hand away from Octavia’s grasp in order to place both hands against her hips and glare. “You’re defending your betrayal because you fell in love with the enemy? Oh, and you’re my true friend because you didn’t tell me, at any point in four months, that you’d found a girlfriend?”

The glass crunched once more beneath her boot as she stomped, and Octavia backed away a few inches, eyes wide and hands held pleadingly before her. “No, that’s not what I meant!” She sounded almost frightened, to Adagio’s further shock and alarm. “Please, Dagi, just listen to me!

“You remember last semester, our final exams in music? You stayed until the very end of the period because you wanted to perform your piece just for Mr. Sandwich, not for the rest of the class.” Adagio nodded slowly, her face sliding into the frown at the thought of that particular day and that particular exam. “Vinyl asked me out after we were both done and in the cafeteria, and I was so thrilled from my performance that I said yes… and I’ve never looked back since.”

Octavia smiled, her eyes taking on a faraway quality as she recounted the events of the previous semester. “She told me how she’d been watching me for a while and really liked my music, and I, uh, you know how I get really wordy and formal when I’m nervous, well, there was a whole lot of that. Lots of ‘heretofore’ and ‘indubitably’ and ‘good heavens’ and so on. We made plans for that weekend, and I was so excited to tell you all about it…”

“…but Mr. Sandwich told me my final project was no good, and I stomped out in a fury…” Adagio thought back to the aftermath of that disastrous performance, and her eyes widened. “Vinyl Scratch! The first thing I saw when arrived at the cafeteria was Vinyl and Flash Sentry, playing some banal rock and roll piece about love and how ‘awesome’ it is. She was playing that… because of you?”

Octavia nodded, her eyes now sad and half-closed. “Yes. You came over to me and started ranting about how awful their music was and how much you hated both of them. I thought very well, Adagio’s just stressed about something and taking it out on Vinyl and Flash, I’ll tell her about my date later when she’s calmed down… and then you never calmed down.”

Adagio rubbed at her eyes, though her tears had long since dried up. Well, no wonder she’d never heard about Octavia’s new girlfriend, if she’d made a point of explaining how awful she was right off the bat and pretty much every chance she got thereafter. Sure, that didn’t mean Octavia couldn’t have told her about it anyhow if she’d really wanted to, but then Adagio would just have said… what?

“Your girlfriend’s a proper ass,” she said after scarcely a moment’s thought.

“And that’s why I betrayed you.”

“Oh, you’re admitting it now?” Any sympathy she’d been feeling for Octavia was lost in an instant, and Octavia shrunk from her glare like she’d been struck. “One flirty glance from some girl in a short skirt, and… well, I guess we all wear short skirts here, but that’s not the point.”

“No!” There were tears in Octavia’s eyes, or at least the beginnings of tears, which wasn’t at all what usually happened when she cleared her throat. “It’s barely about Vinyl at all! I just thought I should finally tell you, because you know, ‘cards on the table’ as the peasantry say and all that.” Her tone and vocabulary took a strong turn for the nervously formal and Adagio almost allowed herself to laugh. “I didn’t betray you because of Vinyl! I betrayed you because of you.

“Dagi, you’re the best classical musician I’ve ever met. Well, besides Octavia Melody, naturally,” she added, and Adagio barely snickered at their old joke. “You used to love that. You used to love music! But you were different after that exam. Suddenly you didn’t talk about how wonderful classical music was, but about how awful every other genre is, and the people who play it, and the people who listen to it, and so on. You changed, and… not for the better.”

Adagio sputtered, taking refuge in denial. “Seriously, Tavi? Of course I still love classical music! I started this band, didn’t I? Training Trixie wasn’t exactly easy, but I did it, and all so we could play in the Band Blitz and entertain the whole school.”

Octavia raised a professionally clipped eyebrow. “To entertain the school, Dagi? Or to show up Vinyl Scratch?”

Adagio made to answer, hesitated, and in that moment was lost.

She could picture Octavia’s face the day she’d proposed taking part in the competition, kindly yet skeptical. Octavia had told her then that Canterlot High wasn’t exactly a secret hotbed of classical music enthusiasts, but Adagio had laughed her off and insisted that they would win anyway. And that initial optimism had pushed them through weeks of rehearsals… if optimism it truly was, and not stubborn jealousy. Had she wanted to win, or had she wanted the other teams to lose?

And certainly, Adagio herself had never personally stooped so low as sabotage. But when a certain somebody else had offered, she hadn’t said not to do it.

“I think I understand you,” she said, and realized just in time that she’d broken the stool and so couldn’t sit on it. Leaning against the back wall would have to do. “Music is a beautiful thing, Octavia. It takes us places we’ve never been, or places we wish we could find again. It speaks to the soul, and I wanted to use it as a weapon, and you wouldn’t let me.”

Octavia shook her head. She looked very small, standing there in her oversized sweater amidst the debris of Adagio’s earlier rampage, but no less strong for her size. “I wouldn’t let you, and I convinced the others not to either. I know I should have said something sooner, instead of waiting until the last minute and disappearing, but I hoped you’d figure it out for yourself… I’m sorry.”

Adagio feigned surprise. “You mean to tell me you didn’t just enjoy the rehearsals?!”

“Okay, I was also enjoying the rehearsals.” Octavia made to hide her smile behind one hand, but her smiles were too wide for such theatrics. “Listen, Adagio, I did stay for your performance. You did a fine job, but…”

“But Chanson de Deux Amies is a duet.”

Octavia smiled again, this time openly. “Right. And neither part should be left to play on its own.”

Adagio stared at the still-open door to the rest of the school, staying silent for so long that Octavia began to look worried again. Did Octavia have the right to strip her of all chance of victory on a whim, or to teach her some moral lesson about music or friendship? Of course not. But she had apologized, and if the lesson was good enough, then maybe Adagio could teach it to herself?

But Adagio was a complicated girl, and she liked to think her issues were deeper than Octavia could analyze within no more than a couple years, however close they’d been in that time. “Hey, Tavi,” she said at last, “have I ever told you I’m a transfer student?”

“You have.” Octavia tugged at her sweater. “You’ve also never told me where exactly it was you transferred from, and you’ve been remarkably bad at pretending that was an accidental omission.” There was no scorn in her voice, only a sort of half-maternal amusement.

That was true, or at least the first part of it. Adagio liked to think she’d been quite subtle about changing the subject whenever Octavia or anyone else asked, but… well, even if not, she supposed that wasn’t really important anymore. “I used to go to the Appleloosan Academy for the Arts. Magnet school, very prestigious. I had plenty of friends and played plenty of music, all classical. Sophomore year I began to write and record my own pieces, and all my friends and teachers were very supportive.

“As the year went on, I got better and better. I found a winning formula and stuck to it, but with constant refinements and improvements, until I’d produced what felt like the perfect piece of music. I released it to the world, and it met with great applause and commercial success… relatively speaking, of course, given the niche quality of my chosen genre.” She grinned. “Not that I needed the money.”

Octavia smiled too. “What was it called?”

“Nocturne No. 9.”

“Holy shit,” said an unfamiliar voice from above her, “you’re Adagio Dazzle!”

Adagio screamed. The small slice of window at the top of the wall was partly blocked, by a white-skinned girl with wild blue hair and a pair of nigh-opaque purple sunglasses. Vinyl Scratch. The enemy. Unless Octavia was right and Adagio’s true enemy was herself or some similar bunk, but there was no denying the immediate visceral reaction she had toward the rocker girl. Adagio’s hands clenched into fists, Octavia’s waved a greeting, and Vinyl’s were invisible because the window slit wasn’t very big and she was probably lying on her stomach in order to talk to them at all.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m Adagio Dazzle. Dare I ask how you knew that?”

“I don’t! I mean, I didn’t.” Vinyl was a fast talker in the most literal sense of the words, her sentences marked with no more planning or elegance than her music. Yet somehow Octavia found her attractive… “I mean, I knew your name’s Adagio, but I thought you were just named after her and Adagio Dazzle was like hellishly old, like thirty. However old you have to be to be a big famous classic composer.”

There was a lot in there for Adagio to respond to, but she was still stuck on the logical impossibility at the heart of it, and so glared upward at Vinyl’s innocent enthusiasm. “But you’re a rocker. A disc jockey. Why on earth would you have heard of Nocturne No. 9?” Unless, she supposed, Octavia…

“Um, durr?” Vinyl stuck out her tongue. “Biggest single release of the year, a couple years ago? Why wouldn’t… oh, I get it.” She twisted her body enough to get a grasp on her sunglasses and pulled them off, revealing a pair of narrowed, shockingly magenta eyes. “This is classism, right? Look, Adagio, I love music! I’d be a pretty poor excuse for a lover if that stopped at the edge of rock’n’roll and went no farther.” Her eyes swiveled upward and she started to smile, a smile of pride. “I’ve got a country collection, some indie hits, some pop, way too much emo shit from freshman year, and every record Adagio Dazzle ever released. Who apparently is you!”

Octavia clasped her hands together in what looked alarmingly like supplication, teetering forward on the fronts of her boots. “Adagio Dazzle—that is, you, apparently—was unanimously voted the greatest new classical composer of the year! You had three or four amazing songs, all variations on a theme, and then… nothing. Not even a cover.” Her knuckles turned slightly white. “And you came here, to the middle of nowhere, to a school best known for its deep obsession with horses, and didn’t even tell anyone who you are? What happened to you?”

Adagio stared at the floor once more. She remembered the heady time after Nocturne No. 9 was first released, with new accolades coming to her seemingly every day. She’d strode through the Academy all but radiating joy, satisfied that she’d proved herself to the world. Her friends were full of awe and praise, and she handled it all as humbly as she could manage. Her agent had wanted more, and she’d dashed off three more songs, all, as Octavia had put it, variations on a theme, and then…

She closed her eyes as the memories came back. Endless composing sessions, far too many of them, spent staring at blank sheets of paper and a violin she couldn’t decide how to play. A million half starts, thrown out the window or crumpled into the trash can or set on fire, as she realized they were no good. Nights spent wondering what had gone wrong with her, and hating herself, when she should have been sleeping. Sheets of paper that taunted her with their emptiness, reminding her how many scores of notes she would need to write to fill even a single page. Letters from her agent and encouragement from her friends that got less and less frequent, as everyone around her realized that she had nothing else, that Adagio Dazzle was finished almost before she could begin. Eventually she’d even come to wonder if it might have been better not to begin at all. Wouldn’t it have been easier if she’d never been a star in the first place, rather than to have been a star, but a star that fell, so very, very fast?

“I had an idea,” she said, her voice sounding creaky though she knew she couldn’t have been silent for more than a minute. “I had a beautiful, perfect idea that made birds sing and grown men cry. I had an idea that made me a star. I had the skill to take that idea and turn it into music and play it as it deserved to be played.” She sighed. “I still have the skill. But I only ever had the one idea.

“The rest of that year was awful. I couldn’t think of any more music to write, so I threw away half start after half start after half start, and my life fell apart around me one piece at a time, until all I had was my stupid violin and some fame I didn’t deserve.” She grinned. “And lots of inherited money, of course. So I left and came here instead, to a dull school where I could do dull things, although I still played music because I’m a stubborn idiot.”

No one said anything for a while after that, not even the living monkey at a typewriter that was Vinyl Scratch. Adagio didn’t dare look up, not knowing what kind of reaction she’d gotten. It sounded like Octavia and Vinyl had enjoyed her song, well enough even to remember the author’s name, and she’d just told them there would never be another. Oh, and she supposed she’d insulted their school a little, but Octavia had done worse.

There were some shuffling sounds, and Adagio stiffened with surprise at the feeling of Octavia hugging her tightly from behind, surrounding her with the warmth of her improbable sweater and her affection. She held a small sheath of papers in one hand, slightly crumpled but still legible, and Adagio frowned. “What’s this?”

Octavia’s voice was gentle, if a little muffled by Adagio’s back. “You tell me.”

Adagio looked down. The music of Chanson de Deux Amies was written there, on the papers that Octavia had asked her not to destroy. A violin and a cello played together on those lines, beginning in harmony but gradually branching out into their own themes, each somehow supporting the other as the piece went on. “A simple work,” she said, refusing to get too excited, “afraid of trying anything new. The instruments are too restrained. They don’t trust each other. We deserved to lose.” The switch to the first person felt natural and unpremeditated.

“Mmm.” Octavia nuzzled her slowly from behind. “The violin has a frustrating habit of not telling the cello about her time as a world-famous composer.”

“Well, the cello seems to have omitted a four-month relationship in her conversations with the violin.”

“The cello’s dreadfully sorry about that.” The hug got tighter. “The cello likes the violin a lot, and hopes for forgiveness and the chance to be better friends in future.”

“The violin is quite fond of the cello as well, no matter her betrayal.” Adagio sighed again and took Chanson de Deux Amies from Octavia, flipping slowly through its somewhat manhandled pages. “Do you really think we can fix this, Tavi? I still don’t know how I even managed to write this much. I have no reason to believe we can finish it.”

Octavia swiveled her around so they faced each other, intimacy limited only by Adagio’s superior height. “We’ll finish it together, because it’s about us.”

“Now kiss!”

“Shut up, Vinyl,” said Octavia, with a giggle and a cute blush. She pushed Adagio away and skipped to the window, where she swatted at her spiky-haired girlfriend and got laughed at for her troubles.

Adagio stared at the duet one last time. The idea of finishing it—making it the song it deserved to be—was a tempting one. But the memories of her last months at the Academy kept pushing at her thoughts, filling her head with impenetrably blank pages and a slow spiral into depression. “One idea,” she said, unconsciously saying the words just loud enough that the other girls would be able to hear her. “I had only one idea. How can I…”

“Okay, that’s bull!” Vinyl’s face disappeared from the window and, after a few moments of noisy scuffling, was replaced with a painfully gaudy bass guitar. The main body was black, but stickers of stars and rainbows covered it nearly from end to end, and several spikes protruded from it at odd angles and appeared to contribute nothing to its sound quality. Octavia reached up and pulled it into the dressing room, leaving space at the window for Vinyl to reappear, grinning infectiously. “There,” she said. “Take that guitar, Adagio Dazzle, and let’s see what you can do.”

Adagio drew back as if struck. “I beg your pardon?” Octavia offered it to her, and she sniffed. “I play violin, thank you, not guitar!”

“Yeah, yeah, but I’m not asking you to play it.” Vinyl reached to the side and put her sunglasses back on, every last one of her teeth showing in her smile. “I’m telling you to rock it.”

The challenge in her words and tone was obvious, and Adagio narrowed her eyes and snatched the guitar away from Octavia. “All right,” she said, “if it’ll stop that awful smile of yours.” She looked down at the brightly colored instrument, adjusted her grasp on it to feel less awkward, took a deep breath, and struck a chord.

The world exploded into color and sound. Brilliant beams of light shot from the guitar’s head and ricocheted about the room before disappearing down the hallway to the rest of the school. Points of sparkling light like miniature stars filled the air and spun around her in slowly fading circles, only to reignite in full brightness when she pulled another string. Imaginary tigers roared in the background of her consciousness, glittering fairies flew out from the sound hole, rings of multicolored light surrounded her fingers, and for an instance she swore she could see orange highlights in her hair and a pair of spiked, golden shoulder pads on top of her gown.

“That… cannot be normal.”

“It’s not,” said Octavia, who sounded like she was trying very hard not to laugh. “There’s still a lot of leftover rainbow magic in it from the concert. I should have warned you…”

Vinyl cut her off with a scoff. “Don’t listen to Tavi! That’s totally what it feels like, Adagio. Sure, most of the time it’s all in your head, but all the rainbow rock does is take that and make it physical. That’s what rock is! You don’t get any purified, beautified essences like with your classics. Rock’s dirty, intense, and raw. Falling in love, not being in love already.”

Adagio watched the guitar as she continued to strum its chords, gradually progressing into a simple, almost catchy melody. The tigers and fairies and multicolored lights had faded to a constant presence, still loud and exciting but not so much so that it was impossible to play a real song. And the more she played, the more she felt like she understood the unfiltered power swirling around her. You could achieve this kind of effect on a violin too, if you tried hard enough. More importantly, Adagio Dazzle could achieve it. She had the motivation. She had the skill. She had…

“An idea.”

Octavia looked at her curiously, hopefully as Adagio stopped playing and all the effects of the rainbow magic faded into oblivion. “You have an idea again?”

“I do!” Adagio laid the guitar on the table beside her violin and its case and began searching the messy dressing room for blank paper. “I’m not finished! I can still write! I need paper, I need to get this down before—“

“Eh,” said Vinyl, managing to sound cool and disinterested less than a minute after her enthusiastic description of rock and its charm. “Do it later. There’s an afterparty slash jam session at that diner Pinkie Pie works at, and we’re all late for it. Chop chop!”

Adagio blinked at her. “But I’m the enemy.” The words fell out of her mouth without her needing to think about them, but inwardly she reeled. She had never been the enemy before. Vinyl Scratch had always been the enemy, and before her those constant blank pages and sleepless nights, and before that the unfair details of her teachers’ tastes and schedules, and before that…

Octavia laid a hand on her arm. “Do you want to be the enemy?”

“No. Not really.” She looked around the dressing room again, desperately. “But I need to write this down! If I forget it now…”

“Then I’ll apologize, and you’ll have another idea later instead.”

“How can you be sure?!”

Octavia held up Chanson de Deux Amies again. “Because of this.” She looked pained. “Dagi, we wrote this because we’re friends, really truly, and the song is about us. You always used to tell me that music was a vessel for bits of life, which you could write into a song and then play back later on. How did you expect to write music, if you didn’t let yourself do any living that you could write down? Art doesn’t come from glaring at a wall and willing it to happen.”

“But…” Adagio gazed into Octavia’s intense purple eyes, grappling for more excuses not to go and see all the girls who had just beaten her in the band blitz with rainbows and rock and friendship. “But it’s a jam session! I don’t do jams! Composing is a thoughtful, meticulous act.”

“It can be,” said Vinyl. Her sunglasses were off again and she looked somewhat bored. “Doesn’t need to be. Look, Adagio, you’re great at success, but you’re lousy at failure, you know that? Your first big hit was so big that you threw away the rest of your music before you could even finish it, afraid it might not be totally perfect. One measly high school music teacher doesn’t like your song, and you live a life of misery and spite and jealousy.” She shrugged as best as possible from her position. “You need to learn to jam. Jamming’s all about failing, but with friends!”

Octavia smiled happily. “She’s right, Dagi. Come fail with us! Be inspired! I know a violin’s not really the most traditional rock instrument, but we’ll find a way to make it work, and… hmm.” She looked at Vinyl. “I don’t suppose Pinkie Pie has a cello? They’re not the most portable things in the world.”

“Doubt it.” Vinyl groaned and started to get up. “I’ll meet you two out front, okay?”

“Well,” said Octavia, “I guess I’ll be learning the bass guitar tonight!” Adagio tried to picture little Octavia Melody in a full rainbow outfit, hair filled with bizarrely hued highlights, strumming a gaudy black guitar like a wild creature. It didn’t make any sense. But she supposed she would never get to see it happen if she stayed behind.

Octavia took the guitar and walked out of the dressing room with its broken glass and broken stool and broken poster and broken past. She turned around and smiled invitingly at Adagio. “Coming?”

Adagio looked at her. Friends, Octavia and Vinyl had promised her. Friends, and failure, and life, and ideas. Friends who could accept her when she felt she had nothing to say and praise her when she did. Friends she could write with. Friends she could play with. Friends she could fail with. Friends she could live with.

She placed her violin in its case, together with the music for the unfinished Chanson de Deux Amies, and followed Octavia without once looking back.