5. Guitar centred

Octavia picked the short straw. Vinyl had been seen by one of the Pinkie Pies on Sunday, so her following them again would be sure to draw attention; while Trixie had no reason to enter the music wing at all. The cello practice room was close to the room the Rainbooms used, so Octavia had every excuse to be standing right outside their door listening.

“Come on girls, I spent ages writing this,” said Rainbow Dash from the other side of the very opaque door. “You’ve got to get it right.”

“Except that Rarity did most of the lyrics,” pointed out Applejack.

“Yeah, then I set them to music.”

Octavia carefully slid the door open just an inch so she could see inside.

“Music that Fluttershy wrote,” added Applejack again.

“Oh, but you did that guitar solo all by yourself,” Fluttershy reassured her.

“And you helped me get the rhythm right, Applejack,” added Pinkie Pie. Is that Polkadot Pinkie, Pinstripe Pinkie or Patisserie Pinkie? wondered Octavia. Vinyl’s descriptions hadn’t made the differences clear.

“So it’s all of ours! But mostly mine.” Octavia groaned. Rainbow Dash was such a jerk sometimes.

“Ah’m just saying...” muttered Applejack.

“When you should be just playing! Come on, Pinkie?”

Pinkie Pie – whichever Pinkie Pie it was – tapped her drumsticks together with a “One, two three!” and the girls started again on one of their annoyingly upbeat songs.

”There was at time we were apart, but that’s behind us now.

See how we’ve made a brand new start, and the future’s lookin’ up.

Ooh-oh, ooh-oh!

And when you walk these halls you feel it everywhere...”

“Stop, stop, stop!” shouted Rainbow Dash.

“Whatever is it this time?” Rarity asked.

“You were late coming in on that bit, Rares. And Pinkie, your timing is off.”

“But I’m trying extra-hard, Dashie.”

“Yeah, I can tell, but hitting the drums extra-hard doesn’t help.”

“This was easier when Twilight was here,” said Fluttershy despondently.

“I know what you mean,” said Applejack. “Everything just sort of came together. Like the magic knew how to make it work, y’know?”

Magic? Are they talking about time Sunset Shimmer blew up half the school? Twilight was the name of the girl who helped stop her, right?

“Well she’s not here now,” said Rainbow. “She’s off being a pony princess in another world. So we’ll just have to make this work the hard way.”

Twilight is a... ‘pony princess’? In another world? Are they talking about a computer game or something?

The girls started playing again.

”We are all together!

Ah, oh, ah-ooh-oh!

Now it’s better than ever!

Ah, oh, ah-ooh-oh!”

Octavia was shaken out of her distaste for the music by the incredible sight of Rainbow Dash glittering and levitating off the floor. She watched on in amazement as one by one the girls started to transform, growing fabulous longer hair, sticky-up ears, and in the case of Rainbow and Fluttershy, wings. Wings! How does that work? Do they have holes cut in the back of their shirts? Are the wings somehow incorporeal at the base? Are they even real objects at all, or just an illusion?

She scrambled for her phone, desperate to record this for the girls to see.

Trixie squinted. “I... don’t really see it.”

“Yes, I’m aware the recording isn’t brilliant, but I did see it. Look, right there, those are wings on her back.”

“That blue smudge? It kind of looks like the light from the window behind her.”

“And would the light make her hair grow longer like that?” challenged Octavia, pointing at the long rainbow-shaded ponytail that was just barely visible.

“Maybe she got extensions?”

“I’m not sure I see it either, but if Tavi says she saw it then I believe her,” said Vinyl, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Vinyl.”

Trixie shrugged. “So... what exactly does this mean? The Rainbooms can suddenly grow wings and cat ears?”

“Cat? That’s not what cat ears look like. More like fox ears, surely.”

Octavia was losing patience. “I’m fairly certain they’re pony ears,” she pointed out.

The other two squinted at the screen. “No, horse ears aren’t that shape. Could they be cow ears?”

Vinyl turned to stare at nothing for a minute, thinking. Octavia quietly asked her, “A penny for your thoughts?”

“This magic thing happens when they play, right? But they only do that in the practice room. Or on stage if they did a show, but there’s nothing until the festival in a few months. We need to lure them out somewhere we can see them. Somewhere they’d feel comfortable playing.”

“Could you invite them to one of your gigs?”

Vinyl scrunched up her face. “Not really the right style. And they’d know it was me. I’m sure Pinkie has my number. Or one of them does,” she added.

“How about the shop?” wondered Octavia. “It’s perfectly normal for musicians to visit a music shop. And with the way she treats her instrument, Rainbow Dash is going to need a new one soon.”

Vinyl considered it. “Yeah, we can drop a hint or something, maybe a leaflet or a sale voucher, and lure them in. But you wouldn’t normally play more than the odd riff in the shop. How do we get them to play enough to... y’know, start the magic?”

Trixie broke the silence with a mischievous laugh. “I have an idea,” she said.

“Rainbow Dash, I simply don’t understand why you can’t just play the guitar you have,” said Rarity as the girls entered the shop.

Vinyl was working the till that day, as arranged. She wouldn’t have been, but she asked her uncle for extra hours, saying there were some USB turntables she was keen to buy and needed the extra money. She sat behind the counter, carefully looking bored.

Rainbow put her guitar case down on the counter and opened. The poor wreckage of an instrument emerged with a helpless ‘sproing’. Octavia was right, she’s utterly ruined it, thought Vinyl.

Rarity gasped. “Now I understand.”

Pinkie bounced around the store, picking out random instruments. “How about this one?” “Lookie here!” “Super groovy!”

“No, Pinkie,” said Rainbow in increasing frustration, scanning around the stock.

“Well, whatcha looking for?” asked Applejack.

“That’s the problem!” complained Rainbow. “I need something that looks as awesome as I’m gonna make it sound.” Casting around, she finally saw something that took her fancy. With a grin she reached for a huge double-necked guitar, only to find she had competition. “Hands off my guitar, Trixie!”

“I touched it first, Rainbow Dash!” retorted Trixie, right on cue, with just the right note of challenge.

“Sounds to me like this is a makin’ for a nice, friendly competition,” chuckled Applejack.

“All right! Let’s see who plays best!” proclaimed Rainbow, always eager for a fight.

Trixie feigned surprise. “A shred-off?”

“Shred on,” replied Rainbow Dash.

Nicely done, Trix. That went perfectly. Now let’s see what happens when she plays.

Trixie was exhausted. She lay slumped on Octavia’s bed, all four limbs spread out like a starfish.

Octavia had the video up on her computer. “See? I told you she had wings.”

Vinyl was leant over her shoulder, a little too close. Octavia could smell her. Did she have to be so maddeningly close. “And I believed you, Tavi. Still, it’s another thing to see it close up.”

“It sure is,” said Trixie without moving.

“I'm impressed by the footage you got here. And by the way you got Applejack to play along.”

“Tha’ much were easy, sugatcube,” drawled Trixie in an embarrassing imitation of Applejack. “I got myself paired with her in chemistry. Stroked her ego by letting her tell me all about alkalis, then mentioned how my guitar playing is so much more powerful and great than Rainbow Dash, and how I'd love chance to proved it.”

“Well, it worked,” remarked Vinyl. “They were eating out of your hand.”

“Sometimes my public image is useful.”

Octavia sat back in her chair, swiveling round to face them both. “So... what does it all mean? We’ve got a human version of Smarty Pants and Lemon Zest walking around, which is creepy. There’s the memories we have in common, which is extra creepy. There’s a rude shopkeeper who says none of us are real, like some sort of delusional nihilist. There’s a collection of Pinkie Pies, one of them apparently in a position of power, which would be terrifying in itself. And now we have a school band who create some sort of magic when they play, despite lacking any sort of talent.”

“Damn right,” agreed Trixie. “Amateurs, all of them.”

“You can add in the time Sunset Shimmer became an actual demon, turned half the school into zombies, and got beaten by the Rainbooms and that girl nobody recognises,” said Vinyl.

“Which principals Celestia and Luna have still failed to adequately explain.”

“And the fact that Sunset Shimmer seems to be friends with the Rainbooms now.”

“You know, I think she slept at the school,” said Trixie.

Octavia blinked. “Er... who did?”

“That girl. The one who wasn’t actually a student at all, but still won the crown.”

“Oh, that girl. Twilight, was it?”

“Twilight Sparkle,” confirmed Vinyl.

“Yeah, her,” said Trixie. “Only I saw her there really late at night, and she wore the same clothes the whole time she was here. I think she might have slept in the library. With her dog.”

“I'm sure that's against some rules. The thing is, it’s clear something strange is going on in this town, I just... don’t see what it all adds up to. Do either of you?”

Vinyl shrugged. Trixie made a half-hearted motion that might have been a shrug had she lifted more than half a muscle.

They fell quiet for a while.

Eventually Vinyl broke the silence, saying simply, “Ponies.”

“Gesundheit.”

She shook her head. “There’s something that woman in the shop said to me the first time I met her that’s been bugging me.”

“About people not being real?”

“No, something else. She said she knew every pony in this town.”

“A bit presumptuous, but that sounds like her.”

“Not everybody. Every pony. And she just said it straight, like it was normal: everypony.”

Octavia frowned. Trixie lifted her head to look at her askance.

“Um. That's probably not so unlikely, actually,” said Octavia. “How many ponies do you imagine there are in this town?”

“Applejack’s family have half a dozen,” volunteered Trixie.

Vinyl carried on, “And one of the Pinkie Pies, who wasn't at the meeting, got called the ‘premier party pony’. Again, like it was normal. They talked about colts and fillies as well. Then another one complained about having hooves.”

“Did she have hooves?” asked Octavia.

“Not that I could see. But she seemed to be implying that she would have hooves if she went to help the party pony Pinkie Pie.”

Trixie said, “There is that big horse statue in front of school.”

“Yeah, the school’s always had a horse theme, with the ‘wonder colts’ and all that. But now it seems like I keep hearing ‘ponies, ponies’ everywhere I go. Like it’s all connected,” she said. “Like there are ponies all over the place... but they don’t look like ponies.”

Octavia’s frown had turned into serious concern. “Vinyl, are you... suggesting that the town is being invaded by shape-shifting alien ponies?”