The crowd’s roars and applause was almost deafening. It served as wonderful atmosphere for four men as they made their way down a walkway from a large, square platform where a large drumset was left. James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo, and Lars Ulrich gave one last look to their countless fans as they cheered them for an awesome show.
Kirk pumped his fist up, his hand gripping tightly on the neck of his ESP guitar, causing a louder wave of shouts from the crowd as they disappeared into the back hallways of the arena where they had performed. Once they were completely hidden, James looked to Robert and gave the bassist a well-deserved high five. Lars threw his sticks to the ground, letting out the excess energy he had built up on that last encore.
It was a great night for Metallica, and it was only made better by performing the music that they loved to play to their adoring fans, and the ones they would for years to come. Surely, their passion and love for music would continue on through the year–
_________________________________________________________________________________________
“Five-million dollars?” shouted Lars as he and his other three bandmates sat on leather couches around a table in a large, white room deep within the arena, a stack of papers and sales reports scattered on it. “That’s fifteen dollars less than the last show!”
“Seriously, man?” Robert wondered, running his hand through his silky brown hair. “God-damn, are we just not cut out for this anymore?”
“Guys,” shouted James, fanning his hands in a calming gesture, “guys! It’s okay! We’ll get through this like we always have, just like we did with Napster.”
“And don’t forget about Lulu,” moaned Kirk.
“Shut up! That was a great fucking album and you know it! It’s not our fault that our so called ‘fans’ are just jealous that they’ll never produce art like we did!”
“Come on, that album was made just so we could squeeze some money off the hipsters. You have to admit that we went a little overboard with that one.”
“You know what?” Lars said, sitting up out of his chair and approaching the guitarist. “You sound like one of those goddamned YouTube trolls! If Lou wasn’t dead, he’d kill himself listening to your bullshit! May he rest in peace,” he suddenly whispered.
“Well,” Robert spoke in, “he didn’t really seem to give a shit about the backlash…”
“What” James shouted to him, “are you going to take his side now?”
“Listen,” Kirk spoke in, “I’m just saying that we should probably take our music in a better direction. You know, like how we did with Death Magnetic! People loved that album!”
“Yeah, well,” huffed Lars, “people aren’t going to listen to that old-timey shit anymore! All they’re into now is One Direction and… metal… screamocore. We need to keep up with the times.”
“Only when we do,” James said with a sneer, “those basement-dwelling haters are just going to break our balls over it.”
All of the sudden, Robert sat up in his spot, a silly grin appearing on his face.
“Speaking of basement dwellers…” he exclaimed, gaining the attention of the other bandmates.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The four of them gathered around a Macbook and looked to a YouTube page playing a video, showing colorful cartoon ponies singing as they appeared to be plowing snow and waking woodland animals from caves.
“What the fuck is this?” James asked. “Is this that My Little Pony shit?”
“Yeah,” Robert replied, scolling down, “but just look at this.”
The other three leaned in to see the view count, their eyes widening upon seeing the number, which had already surpassed one-million.
“One million in only four months?” Lars asked. “Jesus, that’s more than any of the videos we did with Lou in three years.”
“May he rest in peace,” Kirk added quietly.
“And they just keep coming,” continued Robert. “I’m telling you guys, we’re sitting on a gold mine that we’ve been crazy not to dig up.”
“Right,” James agreed, “but we can’t just up and become… what is it, bronies on the drop of a hat like that.”
“True, but we should hop on this gravy train before it runs dry, and there looks like there’s still plenty to be had.”
“But how will we do that?” asked Kirk. “I don’t think that up and performing My Little Pony covers is going to immediately win people over.”
“Who says you need to do covers to win a crowd?” crooned a female voice from the doorway.
The four bandmates shot their heads up to see three teenaged girls standing inside the room before the doorway. The girl in the middle had unnaturally light-yellow skin and was wearing a purple, short-legged one-piece outfit, matching boots, purplish-pink sleeves and matching stockings. Her long, and puffy harvest-orange hair was tied back in a thick pony tail by a spiked band.
The girl to her right was fuchsia-skinned and was dressed in a white, sleeveless blouse beneath a green waist-cut jacket with the sleeves torn off, along with hot-purple pants and boots of a slightly darker color. Her hair was a solid purple with turquoise streaks that was split off into long pigtails held by star-shaped clips.
The final girl to the center’s right had a light-blue skin, wearing a dark purplish-red coat with short sleeves and a short pink skirt, her boots being a hotter shade of pink. Her sky blue hair with royal-blue streaks was tied in a simple ponytail behind her. Each of their necks were equipped with black chokers containing a ruby gem in the center.
“Hey!” shouted Lars. “How the fuck did you get back here? Security!”
“Oh, don’t worry about them,” the fuchsia-skinned girl said non-chalantly. “We can be… very persuasive.”
“With our mouths!” the blue-skinned one blurted, earning the other two girls’ frustration and Metallica’s disgust.
“Jeff is so fired…” whispered James, his face buried in his hand.
Seeing James, the blue-skinned one gasped and ran over to him, pawing at his chest and mewling like a kitten.
“I’ve always thought you were my favorite, James” she moaned, clutching his shoulder.
“Uh…” James loudly inquired, frozen stiff by awkward fear, “are you eighteen yet?”
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be…”
She suddenly felt a sharp tugging on her ponytail pry her from the rhythm guitarist and singer by the yellow-skinned girl, who promptly took her place and stood in a professionally straight manner.
“Please forgive her,” she said, “she’s incredibly stupid.”
James refused to say anything in response, fearful his vocal opinion of her would hurt her already damaged feelings.
“Allow me to introduce ourselves,” she continued. “I’m Adagio Dazzle, your #1 fan back there is Sonata Dusk, and the last one is Aria Blaze,” she said, motioning to the fuchsia-skinned girl.
“Cute,” Lars said, approaching her from behind. “Just tell us what you need so you can get out of here.”
“Oh,” Aria responded in faked coy, “it’s not about what we need. It’s all about what you need.”
“Listen,” Kirk said, “we’re all married, and–”
“Married?” Sonata responded. “What did you–”
Suddenly, it hit her, and her eyes shot open wide with both shock and humor.
“No,” she howled, “really?! You thought that we were here to… Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious!”
“Just cut to the fucking chase!” Lars shouted.
“It’s just that we couldn’t help but overhear you wanting to reach out to the… brony community, and we were more than interested in helping you.”
“How do you think you can help us?” asked Robert.
“Can we perform with you?!” squeaked Sonata, buckling her legs as if she had to keep from urinating.
A fuchsia hand reached over and placed itself over the other’s mouth before it pushed back, sending her away.
“Not to sound that direct and stuff,” clarified Aria, “but that’s pretty much what we’re here for.”
“And what makes you think we’ll let you?” asked James. “And you think you’re experts on My Little Pony?”
“We…” Adagio responded deviously, “know some things.”
“Besides,” Robert said in James’s ear, “look at these girls’ getups. They probably breathe My Little Pony every day. And their names too…”
“Listen,” Aria interrupted, “just let us sing for you, and if you don’t like us, then you can send us packing.”
“Not that you won’t like us,” purred Adagio.
“Especially once he hears our voices,” added Sonata with pep.
“Sonata, just shut up and let them hear us.”
The four men looked on as the three girls stood close to one another. Lars crossed his arms, just waiting for the second they’d be finished. With a slow, transfixing breath, the three girls let out a soft note from their throats, flowing to the next ones like liquid silk. At first, the band members casually nodded their heads in unanimous appreciation, but as they continued, they all appeared to be getting more and more into it.
The three broke into separate harmonies, the added homophony further entrancing the men as their mouths lazily opened. A green mist escaped from each of their mouths and slithered towards the three girls like ghostly snakes, which formed into a single mass before it divided into three, a single third seeping into each gem on the girls’ necklaces. Once the last of the mist flew in, the girls stopped singing, smiling confidently to see the floor reactions of the band.
“So,” Aria coolly asked, “how was that?”
The men shook themselves out of their trance before they came to their senses.
“God damn,” James panted, “you girls have got some pipes. I think you’d make a great addition to the team.”
The other three members nodded to each other in agreement, to which Adagio and Aria smugly smiled.
“But you liked my singing the best, right?” asked Sonata.
“Doubt it,” Aria huffed. “Your singing is the worst.”
“You’re the worst!” she spat back.
“Girls, girls!” Lars laughed. “I think it’s clear that we have a deal here. So, how’s about we shake on it and then write up the paperwork?”
“That sounds…” Adagio responded, reaching her hand out, “dazzling.”
Lars firmly shook Adagio’s hand, sealing the agreement much to her and the other girls’ haughty delight.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The volume of the crowd’s shrill cheers surrounding Metallica were second to Metallica’s finishing of One’s frenzied and fast-paced outro. Finally, the song ended, and the crowd went even wilder as their shouts and cries of adoration became wilder than ever before. On the platform, Kirk and James looked to Lars to give the signal. With a nod, James approached his microphone and stand once again, taking in a breath for his ultimate announcement.
“Thank you, everyone!” he called. “Now, how would you like to hear some new shit?”
The audience was continuing to go wild, sending shivers of excitement down the band’s spine.
“This next song we want to dedicate all the bronies out there!” James shouted.
There were a decent amount of cheers from the crowd, but many, especially the ones closest to James, looked confused and slightly hurt.
“Jump in the Fire!” shouted a person near the front, his voice being picked up slightly by the microphone.
The crowd began to laugh and jeer, vexing James and Lars greatly.
“Hey, hey, now,” shouted James, “I know it’s strange, but they’re fans of us just like anyone else, and we should love and tolerate them.”
“Love and tolerate up your ass!” shouted a female fan from further away.
While her voice wasn’t carried as well as the previous fan’s, the ones around her shouted affirmatively, throwing their devil-hands into the air. James cocked his head, prepared to improvise.
“Well,” he said, “after this next song, I think you might have a change of heart, so I’d like you to give it up for… The Dazzlings!”
The crowd cheered instinctively as the three girls, equipped with headset microphones, appeared from the catwalk at the side of the arena and moved towards the platform. Before the crowd could react, despite most of them staring nonplussed and betrayed at the spectacle, the three girls sang their hypnotic song.
The soft, delicate, yet stirring voices of the three hushed the entire crowd. As the girls grew subtly louder, the gentle rings of Lars’s ride cymbals added to their sound. The crowd looked back and forth between the drummer and the singers, unable to fathom how they could be on the same stage together, yet alone performing together.
Then, the gentle, but funky riffs and low tone of Robert’s bass beat through the amps and speakers around the arena, beating on the chests and heads of the still wary audience. Just as it looked like the audience was about to turn, the girls prepared their mouths for lyrics.
“The night is young,” the three sang, accompanied by a heavy and resonant acoustic strum from Kirk’s guitar, “the music’s playing.”
Lars and Kirk looked to each other, grinning silly at the faces of the audience who were too stunned to react.
“Now it’s for you to hear what we are saying,” the three girls still sung, sweeping their bodies about gracefully, to James’s heavier triplets from his Gibson Explorer guitar. “Now that you’re here, and you are listening, we can see that your eye-eye-eyes are glistening.”
“This…” a fan on the floor of the arena muttered, “fucking sucks…”
“Don’t fear the feelings that you feel,” the Dazzlings sung, quickly reaching the chorus through a sudden bridge, “we just want your hearts to steal. Now that you all here tonight!”
Lars’s lead in with a growing rise on his crash symbals and the increase of volume on the guitarists’ instruments increased was followed by a singular bang from the instruments, pillars of fire shooting from the edges of the stage complimenting it.
“Let the sound of our song entrance,” the Dazzlings went on, Metallica grooving and bobbing their bodies to their rhythm, “keep your gazes on our dance, as you feel our music take hold. Don’t resist, you can’t fight it, your heart’s fire, we’ll ignite it, until your souls to us our sold… You’re under our control!”
The band continued to play, ignoring the gradually disgusted faces sported by a large number of the fans in the stands.
“Yeah!” one person in the stadium seating shouted, much to the irk of a gruff, muscular fan in a St. Anger t-shirt. “This is fucking metal!”
“Shut up!” the muscular fan shouted back. “I’ll show you metal!”
The fan punched him in the face, crushing his nose and knocking him unconscious instantly. As the muscular man tried to stomp the man in the chest, several fans grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away. Angered, the muscular fan swung his arms out, flinging a couple of fans down the stands where he knocked several over into the next row along with their beer.
“Hey!” shouted one of the lobbed fans running back up to the berserk fan. “Fuck you!”
As the angered fans were pushed, both mentally by the music and literally, they all began to brawl, and similar fights began to erupt in other parts of the stadium, which spread throughout the fans like a virus. Metallica and the Dazzlings still continued to sing and perform, the girls all smiling as they looked at the chaos unfolding around them.
The ushers tried in vain to settle the livid men and women down, only to be swamped in punching fists and kicking feet as they struggled to incapacitate the others. In the front, near the edges of the platform where the bands were performing, a couple of people hopped up, trying to climb up to the stage.
“Fuck you, Metallica!” growled one male fan in a mullet and a Master of Puppets shirt. “You betrayed us!”
Kirk noticed the man as his first leg got onto the stage. Though haphazard and flawed, the guitarist managed to continue playing as ran over and kicked the fan off the stage in the face. James and Robert, each on opposite sides of the platform, looked fearfully as more and more fans continued to crawl up, overpowering the bodyguards that they climbed over.
James looked over to the Dazzlings, watching with shock as they took the catwalk over to the arena’s exit, pulling their microphones off their heads and dropping them into the raging sea of fighting people. With a snap of Adagio’s fingers, the people whose fighting spilled onto the walkway suddenly rolled off, as if they were making way just for them. James could only notice from his vantage as the gems on the girls’ chokers glowed bright as they walked away.
“Wait!” James shouted, dropping his guitar and making chase. “What are you–”
Right before Adagio, Aria, and Sonata disappeared off from the crowds, the former snapped her fingers again, and the three of them turned to see as the fighting fans spilled back onto the runway, trapping James on it. He turned back, watching as Robert punched and threw fans charging at him from nearly every angle, his bass laid down on the floor. Kirk jabbed several oncoming people in the chests and heads with both ends of his guitar, bloodying many of them. Lars’s drum platform spun quickly, tripping many fans as they attempted to get on and get him. Those that were lucky were whacked off by Lars’s drumsticks. Despite his defense, the drummer found it difficult to hold on in his fortress himself.
Just then, a fan leapt up from the fighting crowd and grabbed hold of the waistband of James’s pants. Falling back to the ground, James was pulled in with him, disappearing underneath the ocean of black concert tees, tattooed arms and flying fists.
The entire area of the arena then began to turn green, which became a mist that was drawn to the Dazzlings’ glowing gem chokers. As soon as the mist began to get sucked into the centers, Adagio, Aria, and Sonata shuddered with the sheer, concentrated anguish and negativity that they fed off of, and it only kept coming.
By now, the fans had swarmed the platform, and none of the Dazzlings could see any of Metallica inside the scrum, but the Dazzlings didn’t care. Their mouths salivated as more and more of the green mist was drawn into their chokers, taking every molecule of hate and misery inside. Once it was all gone, the girls took a satisfied sigh and walked into the back-hallways of the area, the cacophony of anger drowning out more and more with each step they took.
“That,” Adagio growled ecstatically, “was incredible!”
“Much better than anything from Equestria, that’s for sure,” Aria commented.
“I sure hope James is okay,” Sonata said remorsefully.
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Adagio said with nonchalant insincerity. “How’s about we go get some Chipotle? My treat.”
“Really?!” squealed Sonata, any thoughts of James now erased from her mind.
“I think we deserve it after that performance.”
“I want to go to White Castle for some sliders,” spoke Aria in a guttural whine.
“No way!” snapped Sonata. “White Castle is the worst!”
“You’re the worst,” she responded.
“No, you’re the worst!”
As the fuchsia and blue-skinned girls kept on arguing, they continued down the hallways in search for a late-night snack, with the fans, Metallica, and their legacy being beaten to a pulp and torn to shreds behind them.
