Chapter One: Our New Roomate is a Pirate
With a barely audible tick, the small arrow of the clock slid into place, marking the hour and pulling a lime green string taut. On the other end of the string, the needle of a phonograph hovered above a shiny black record. The string gently lowered the needle to the record's surface.
Octavia drifted awake to the sound of Symphony's "Song for the Sunrise" slowly filling her room, as she did every morning. A delicate smile played across her muzzle as her magenta eyes flittered and flicked open.
WUBWUBWUBWUB!
There was a crash as her door burst open, nearly flying off its hinges, and a streak of white and blue shot inside.
"Ga-ga-ga-ga-good morning, Octy!" Vinyl Scratch shouted. "I don't know about you, sister, but I am ready to drop this 'morning' thing, almost as if it were a bass, ya feel me?"
"That joke is nearly as offensive as that infernal noise you're disturbing the peace with," Octavia replied. "It's barely even gone seven, you know."
Vinyl just grinned, her purple shades no-doubt hiding a terrifying manic stare. "If I'm gonna get up this early, I'm doin' it my way!"
"Uurgh. Well, at least you won't be slovenly. Just see to it that you're on your best behaviour – we don't need to scare the rent money away."
Vinyl batted the air with a hoof. "Pshaw, you know me, Tavi, I'm all about not scaring money away. With my charm and general slickness, our new roommate's gonna be paying my portion of the rent as well as hers, just out of gratitude!"
"Gratitude for what?"
"Basking in my awesome presence, of course." Vinyl slid her shades down her snout to cock an eyebrow at Octavia. "I mean, you pay for it all time!"
Octavia could only turn her eyes to the ceiling and let out a heavy sigh.
***
Sparkler looked at the number on the door, and then down at the one on the slip of paper magically suspended in front of her face This is the place, alright, she thought. She lifted a hoof and knocked. Once, twice, thrice. That's polite, right?
There was some low muttering, followed by a melodious "Coooming!" and the door slid open. A grey mare about Sparkler's age, or possibly a little older, smiled at her from the frame. She was wearing a bowtie and had a well-kept black mane.
"Octavia, right?" Sparkler asked.
"Yes indeed!" replied the grey mare. "And you must be Sparkler! It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
"Likewise. Now, about –"
"FRESH MEAT!"
The cry came from inside the house. Octavia was violently yanked from her place in front of the door, screaming as she went. Sparkler heard a crashing, followed by a soft tinkling, and then something blue and white jumped into her face.
"AH! NO! GET IT OFF!"
The thing retracted and revealed itself as the head and spiky mane of a white unicorn with a grin full of teeth and a pair of magenta glasses that sat jauntily on her snout.
"Hellllllo, Miss Sparkler!" the thing cried. "I am the one... the only... not-an-imponynator... absolutely-genuine... one-hundred-percent-certified-not-fake" – she took a deep breath – "Vinyl Scratch! My roommate almost forgot to introduce me."
Sparkler blinked.
Vinyl's grin fell instantly. "Octy! Octy, she's into shock! I told you my presence was too much for some ponies to handle! Quick, get some paper! She needs an autograph, stat!"
A faint groan drifted from the other end of the room.
"You're right! No time for paper!" Vinyl's horn flared, and there was a whizzing sound as a quill cut through the air towards her. "I will sign... your face!"
The quill turned to Sparkler. It homed in. She didn't have time to scream.
***
"I really am truly sorry about what happened," Octavia told Sparkler a few hours and one trip to the hospital later. "Vinyl's... like that, I'm afraid."
Sparkler paused her trot and rubbed the patch over her left eye. "At least she didn't sign her whole name..."
"I suppose it always helps to look on the bright side." Octavia smiled weakly. "If there's anything, absolutely anything I can do to make it up to you..."
"Well, you could start by helping me move my stuff up to the apartment."
Octavia couldn't believe her ears. "Wait... you're still going to move in? You're not going to leave after my roommate half-blinded you?"
"Well, no. I, uh, don't exactly know anyone else in Canterlot," Sparkler replied, making a sweeping hoof gesture around the street they were walking along. "And I need somepony to help me find my way around these spires and all this marble. I didn't expect it to cost an eye, but..."
Octavia clasped her front hooves together in a gesture of overwhelming joy. "Oh, that's wonderful! You won't regret it, I promise! I'll be your guide to the city – help you understand all there is to understand about Canterlot! And I'll make sure to keep Vinyl under control."
Sparkler chuckled dryly. "I'll definitely need somepony to lead me around if she comes for my other eye."
Octavia bit her lip. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that, shall we?"
***
The next morning, Sparkler opened her good eye to see a pair of purple glasses hovering just above it. "I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's just my lack of depth perception making it look like you're trying to rub our faces together." Her nose wrinkled at the smell of a particularly strong brand of spearmint toothpaste. "Or perhaps not."
"Sparky!" Vinyl Scratch shouted, blasting her snout with a wave of painfully fresh breath. "Hey, can I call you Sparky?"
"No."
"Awesome, Sparkles!"
"It's Sparkler."
"Listen, Sparkadoodle, I'm real sorry for that little accident yesterday, and I'll really like to make it up to you, because we're roommates now, and that means we need to be besties."
"That's real nice of you, but I–"
"It's not even, like, slightly negotiable." Vinyl's voice had become deadly serious, to the point where Sparkler could feel her intense gaze even through opaque shades.
"Well, unless you've got some instant eye-healing cream or something..."
Vinyl jerked backwards before thrusting a hoof in Sparkler's face. "Even better!" A piece of cardboard fell off Vinyl's hoof and drifted onto Sparkler's snout. "I'm giving you a personal invite to my next gig! I want you to be there, at The Place, when I wub the woof – err, roof – off!"
"Err, thanks, but... what exactly is 'wub' supposed to mean?"
Vinyl Scratch, who up until that moment had been twitching and buzzing with nervous excitement, suddenly stopped moving. Her manic grin drooped into a blank expression that Sparkler didn't think suited her well. Her white coat almost seemed to grow whiter, and she stood motionless, hovering above Sparkler's bed for a full minute.
Sparkler took deep breaths to calm her nerves.
"You... don't know what wubs are?" Vinyl said at last. "Throughout your entire life, from when your mother brought you into this world to this very moment when you are a fine young mare and my soon-to-be bestie roommate superpal... during all that time... nopony has ever – not even once – not even half a time – thought to mention to you that there is a purpose for ponies to trot upon this giant rock?"
Suddenly feeling very trapped between the white forehooves pinning her blanket down, Sparkler managed to croak, "...No."
"Well then you're in for the time of your life!" Vinyl yelled, her grin snapping back onto her muzzle. "Times two!"
Sparkler forced a grin.
"Yes indeed, Sparkplug! This Friday your life will change forever!"
"I wonder how many times my name's going to change before then..."
"Too many times to count!" Vinyl lifted her hooves up and bounded off Sparkler's bed, dashing for the door before freezing in its frame and turning to look back. "I just winked at you, Sparklark, but you can't really see because of my glasses. It was a super awesome wink, really a great way to end to end our first of what are sure to be many bestie heart-to-heart chats. Have a rockin' day!"
And then she was gone. Sparkler breathed a sigh of relief, but as her exhale ended, she remembered the ticket in her forehoof. She still had no idea what "wubs" were supposed to be, but she could feel a headache coming on just wondering about them.
"Maybe it'll be fine," she said to nopony.
"It won't," nopony replied.
"Octavia?" Sparkler asked, looking at the prim shadow in her doorway. "You're not nopony!"
Octavia trotted up to Sparkler's bedside, her face painted with sympathy. "I heard the whole thing – you poor pony!"
"Is – is this 'wub' thing bad?"
Octavia's right eye twitched. "You... you have no idea."
Sparkler gulped, pulling her blanket up to her snout. "Can I, uh, would it be okay if –"
"No! You absolutely cannot deny Vinyl's generous invitation. Once she gets that ticket in your hoof, it's over. You may have had a chance before, but that ticket in your hoof is like a signature on a legally, causally binding contract – signed in blood!"
"Well, I could make an excuse. Like, I think maybe I have – uh – family coming over that day! Yeah, that's it! Family." Sparkler nodded her head vigorously and suddenly got a very serious expression in her eyes. "Family is very important."
Octavia cocked an eyebrow. "Nice try, but you wouldn't have come to live in Canterlot on your own if you really thought that. Besides" – she scooped something off the floor with a forehoof – "she gave me a ticket too, and I am not going to suffer alone."
Sparkler let out an exasperated sigh.
"Oh come now, it won't be that bad – well, no, actually it will. It will be truly horrible. Never mind. You'd better show up."
***
Friday came far sooner than anypony except Vinyl Scratch wanted it to, and Sparkler felt she had barely woken up before it was already Friday night and time to head to The Place.
"Octy, Speckler, this is going to be" – Vinyl paused dramatically for almost a minute – "incalculably awesome. Like, they will have to invent new instruments to measure the level of awesomeness we are about to witness, and then they will have to invent units for those instruments to measure in – units that are exponentially larger than anything the scientific community has ever used to measure awesomeness before!"
"Seriously?" Sparkler mouthed to Octavia.
Octavia leaned over to whisper in Sparkler's ear. "Vinyl's master's thesis was titled 'Towards a Global Taxonomy of Awesomeness'."
"Vinyl has –" Sparkler started, cutting herself short when she decided she didn't really want to know.
"I won't tell you about her PhD then. Although it was a frightfully influential work."
Vinyl wrenched the front door of the apartment open with blue magic, nearly tearing it off its hinges. "Come on girls, time is wasting! The Doctor of Wubology has a club full of patients to treat, and their condition is critical!"
With another one of her maniac grins, Vinyl spun around and raced out the door. Octavia and Sparkler hung back for a moment before the former started walking determinedly forward. The latter stood still.
"Hey!" cried Sparkler, feeling a strong earth pony leg wrap itself around one of her own. "What's the big –"
Octavia shut her up with a horrifying death glare. "If you don't come with us, I can promise you'll be sleeping in the street tonight. And I will throw everything you own into the fireplace for kindling. It'll save on wood costs; I don't know what Vinyl keeps doing with the stuff."
Sighing a heavy sigh that was fast becoming the most common noise from her throat, Sparkler stumbled forward into position next to Octavia, and the two mares trotted out the front door, shimmering pink magic reluctantly pulling it closed behind them.
***
The club was hot, noisy, dark, and altogether too similar to what Sparkler's older brother had always told her dragon caves were like. She'd spent many foalhood nights in the throes of horrifying nightmares brought on by his gruesome stories. A glance at a bare torch on the wall sent a shiver down Sparkler's spine.
"Isn't this place cool!" said an excited voice. "I have to ask Vinyl how she finds these crazy weird clubs sometime. I mean, who even knew there was a party spot in Canterlot named 'The Dungeon'."
Sparkler looked away from the rough wood and dangerous open flame of one of the many torches lining the wall and faced the voice's origin: a green-coated unicorn with a lime mane who Octavia had informed her was named "Lyra". Her grin, while not as wide as Vinyl's, was accompanied by that same frightening sparkly-eyed look that usually hid behind magenta shades. In Lyra's yellow irises, it looked positively psychotic.
"Aren't you guys just soooo excited for the music to start?" Lyra asked, prodding Octavia with a playful forehoof. "Sparkler – that's you name, right? I hope I'm saying it correctly – this is your first time listening to Vinyl's musical genius, right?"
Sparkler nodded so slightly she momentarily hoped that Lyra hadn't seen it.
"Well then" – Lyra's eyes seemed to glow even brighter than before, glinting like dragon's gold – "you are in for a treat tonight!"
Sparkler felt a warm gust of air near her left ear. "She's a beautiful lyre-player, one of the best, actually," whispered Octavia, her eyes darting quickly to and from Lyra, "but sadly her, um, taste in listening music leaves something to be desired. You won't find another pony in all of Equestria who actually likes Vinyl Scratch's insults to music and common decency – well, another pony of worth, anyway."
"What was that?" asked Lyra. "Couldn't hear you whispering like that, Octy!"
Octavia blushed and rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof, closing her eyes. "Nothing, nothing, don't worry about it, dear. Now, last time we talked you were telling me about waaaah –"
The floor shook, nearly knocking the three ponies off-balance. Sparkler broke out in a cold sweat. It's starting, she thought. Oh well, I've lived a good life, I suppose. I don't have too many regrets, really.
The darkness of the club instantly gave way to bright blue light that sliced through the middle of the room, moving from the floor to the ceiling, and illuminating a pony-shaped creature, standing on her hindlegs, forelegs raised above her spiky mane as if offering something to the heavens. Vinyl Scratch stood, bathed in light, in front of a large rectangular table with what looked like flat black dinner plates on top.
Ever so slowly, her forelegs bent downwards, and her hooves came into contact with the plates. She tilted her snout down, gave the crowd a devilish look from behind her magenta glasses, and then spun the plates.
The club exploded into noise and motion. Octavia and Lyra seemed to melt out of Sparkler's perception, and all she could see was the mare in the blue light, horn ablaze and sparking wildly, hooves twitching and turning and rotating two plates of black. A heavy, thundering rhythm filled the room and entered Sparkler's bloodstream through her ears.
For a time immeasurable, Sparkler stood transfixed, uncertain whether she was experiencing Neighvana or the final, most unspeakable torture in the depths of Tartarus. Eventually, her foreleg struck out to her side, and then bent at the knee, at a ninety-degree angle. Her face snapped down.
"Oh no..." she somehow heard Octavia murmur through the juddering beat. "Oh no... it's got her."
Sparkler's right foreleg came down onto the floor, making her left foreleg pop up as if in a chain reaction. She felt her shoulders moving up and then down, first left and then right, all in an involuntary reaction to the music surrounding her. Her tail flicked left, right, up and down.
And then she was lost. Right leg, left leg, back leg front leg. Head bobbing side to side, mane in her eyes. Tail swishing, flank swaying, hooves tap tap tapping to the insane, thumping rhythm. And from the corner of her eye, she saw Vinyl at the table with the discs, her hooves moving in a frenzy, and that wicked grin across her face.
The blue lights flashed white, green, red, orange, pink, purple, blue and then were flashing and flickering too fast for Sparkler or anypony else to notice the colours. Sparkler saw Lyra in front of her, her lime green body similarly caught up by the music's spell. Octavia was nowhere in sight.
Sparkler didn't understand why, but she just wanted to dance. And so dance she did. The rest of the night was a blur.
"Sweet eyepatch!"
"So what's a mare like you doing in a place like this?"
"Told ya Sparkladeedaa! I told you it would change your life!"
"Woo! Isn't this awesome? This is so awesome!"
"The best gig I ever had? Well, there I was, deep in Saddle Arabia..."
"I am so very, very sorry."
"Spooktastic, you are definitely my best new bestie ever! We're gonna be pals for life!"
"Words cannot express my regret."
"Hey, are you okay? Sputnik? Are you...?"
And then, total darkness.
