Almost But Not Quite Sonic Sunglasses
Author's Note
User: GunfStep
Prompt: "As for the fic, random topic... Uh...
Vinyl has lost her glasses, Tavi knows where they are.
Hopefully that's a good enough prompt. Go wherever you want to with it!"
Almost But Not Quite Sonic Sunglasses
Sunday morning.
A fuzzy little pony woke up from her fuzzy little sleep after several fuzzy little yawns.
On soft, teetering hooves, Octavia Melody trotted across the space of her apartment. She blinked dizzily, smiling away the tender layers of slumber still hanging off her frazzled velvety features. A fluffy purple robe adorned her petite figure, flouncing with each waking step.
The mare entered her kitchen, poured herself some coffee, and took a long steaming sip while she squinted out the window overlooking her dew-laden garden.
"Hmmmmmm..." Was all Octavia had to christen the moment. It was a good day to be a pony, and she confirmed it with every smiling breath.
Ten more succulent coffee sips later, and Octavia was just starting to plan her full day: violin recitals, flower petal snacking, pillow fluffing, and all of the tiny naps in between...
...when she was suddenly alarmed by the sheer absence of something. Or—more precisely—the absence of somepony.
"Hmmmm..." She sipped. She thought. She squinted. "...where in blazes is Vinyl Scratch?"
Placing her mug onto the kitchen counter, Octavia proceeded to pad across the household on little horse feet. She looked through the living room. She gazed into the den. After much hesitation, she even braved a glance into the bathroom. Alas, there was no fuzzy white deejay to be found.
"Hrmmm..." Octavia tapped her chin in thought. "...last I saw her, she was packing up her things to go perform a show at Sugarcube Corner late last night." After a brief cloud of worry, Octavia's purple eyes brightened. She turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and made a bee-line for the broom closet. With a flick of her hoof, she opened the door.
Th-Thrump! A white unicorn tumbled out of the narrow enclosure where she had been sleeping upside down. Vinyl Scratch lingered on the plush carpet, stretched out on her back with a lampshade plastered tightly over her skull. With pained breaths, the deejay struggled to sit up straight.
Octavia giggled. "Looks like somepony had a lively show last night." She adjusted her robe and folded her forelimbs. "Precisely at what hour did you return home?"
Vinyl said nothing. Even if she could—she couldn't. The haggard horse girl sat up and attempted to wrench the lampshade off her cranium.
After a sigh, Octavia leaned in with a smile. "Here, love. Allow me." Biting her bottom lip, the cellist assisted with whatever meager strength she could lend. Not long after, the offending item was removed from Vinyl's skull with a comical pop! "Hmmph! It doesn't even match our drapes!" Octavia fondled the lampshade with distaste. "Lemme guess, the bloody thing belongs to the Cake family? Bah..." She looked up. "Well, I suppose we should be taking it back to Sugarcube Cor—" Octavia froze in mid-speech.
Vinyl Scratch looked at her. Or at least she tried. The unicorn was squinting... squinting hard. Octavia took exceptional note of this because she could see her roommate's naked eyes in all their naked magenta adorableness.
"Uhm... Vinyl? Darling?" Octavia tilted her head to the side, ears twitching with fuzzical curiosity. "What happened to your shades?"
Vinyl shrugged, turned around, and bumped into a wall. Her muzzle scrunched, but she shook it off, took a deep breath... and bumped into a piece of furniture instead.
Octavia winced, watching as her poor friend proceeded to stumble her way across the apartment like a snow-white pinball. "Vinyl, for Celestia's sake! Slow down and... be careful." She stretched a hoof out. "You... you lost them at your little concert last night, didn't you?"
Vinyl yawned, waved a hoof from side to side, and then proceeded to wash her face in the kitchen sink. Emerging from the basin, she squinted her thin red crescents across the apartment, resembling in no small part a naked mole rat with an electric blue mane. Shuddering through her next breath, she proceeded to limp tiredly across the domain to where her turntable resided.
"Vinyl, please..." Octavia fidgeted worriedly in place. "Surely you can't expect to make music in such a dreadful condition! Your poor vision, darling! How will you tell the records apart from coasters?"
Vinyl waved her off. She turned the local amps on—only to wince from a thundercrack of monstrous feedback. Sighing, she nevertheless proceeded to tune and tweak the dials of her turntable, preparing to do the inevitable.
A lump formed in Octavia's throat, because she hated to see her humble pony friend suffer so. The mare brushed her smoky bangs back, her mind racing for a solution. As soon as she thought of something, she brightened.
"Of course!" She squeaked inwardly, dimples showing. "But first thing's first!"
Octavia turned and galloped lightly towards her room. She suddenly knew what to do that day. Albeit, before anything else, her forthcoming quest required a bow tie.
Octavia adjusted the article in question before leaning against the glass counter with a sigh. "But surely you had to have found it somewhere on the premises, Mrs. Cake!" Octavia's face hung fuzzy and long... but mostly fuzzy. "My roommate performed here last night! She was the center of attention for... whatever show was performing!"
"I don't know what else to tell you, Miss Melody!" Mrs. Cake continued sweeping up confetti and streamers from the floor behind the dessert displays. "I wasn't the one who threw the party last night! Pinkie Pie was! Me? I'm just on clean-up duty."
"Precisely!" Octavia gestured. "Which is why you—of all ponies—stand the highest likelihood of having found my dear companion's shades!" She bit her lip. "Poor Vinyl needs those glasses to see! To function! To compose the masterpieces that she's most esteemed for! Even those I scarcely listen to any of the plebeian ear-rattlers, but still!"
"I believe you, Octavia. But I'm sorry! I simply haven't seen any such glasses left around here!" Mrs. Cake paused to tap her double chins in thought. "Hmmmm... I don't suppose it could have fallen into Pinkie's cake batter...." A beat. "Naaaaaah..." And she resumed sweeping.
"Well..." Octavia sighed. "...if you didn't sweep it up, and it didn't fall into dessert cream, then where—pray tell—could the shades have gone off to?"
"Well..." Mrs. Cake smiled. "Pinkie Pie may be a real party-goer, but she's also a very responsible pony. And she's got a keen eye for detail, don'tchaknowww?" She gestured out the nearest window. "Odds are, if she found something here overnight that doesn't belong in Sugarcube Corner, she probably took it to Ponyville Lost and Found!"
"Oh?" Octavia leaned forward with a hopeful grin. "And who's in charge of Ponyville Lost and Found?"
Thwump!
Derpy Hooves slapped a warped cardboard container down onto her store's dusty counter-top.
"Ta-daaaaa!" She grinned in opposite directions. "Ponyville Lost and Found! At your service!"
"Mmmm... yes... very well..." Octavia muttered into her fetlock. She stood up straight, brushing her bangs back. "Do you have anything from Sugarcube Corner? Preferably something that might have been left there overnight?"
"Well, that depends." Derpy reached deep into the container, licking her lips. "I should have everything organized in here based on date... location... date... whoops! Did I say 'date' twice?"
"Yes, you did. Now would you please—"
"I love raisins! Heehee! Don't you?"
"Miss Hooves, I implore you—"
"Herrrre we go!" Derpy whipped out a shoebox with the word "Saturday" sloppily written on the outside in crooked black marker. "This should be what you're looking for!"
"Oh! Smashing!" Octavia's teeth glinted through a dainty smile. She rubbed her hooves together, leaning forward. "Oh, do please open it! This is precisely the moment that I've been..."
Derpy opened the box, turned it upside down, and shook it. No less than two dozen purple-and-blue shards fluttered to the countertop between them, along with shattered plastic frames.
"...waiting for." Octavia blinked, hear ears drooping... fuzzily. "What in Tartarusian blazes is this?"
"Your friend's glasses!" Derpy said. "See? There's about... uhm..." She pointed, squinting in random directions. "...twenty-three... twenty-four... twenty-five... twenty-six... Yup!" A proud smile. "All of her glasses! You're welcome!"
"Miss Hooves... how..." Octavia grimaced as though she was foaling an elephant. "How on Celestia's green Equus did they end up like this?"
"Uhhhhhh... ... ... entropy?"
Octavia folded her forelimbs. "I'm deadly serious! These are my friend's prized eyewear! And now they're practically dust! How am I going to explain this... th-this catastrophe to her?!"
"I dunno." Derpy shrugged. "I wouldn't be too worried, though! Your roommate seems like a kind and understanding pony! After all, she did stay late last night at Sugarcube Corner to perform for the Hippopotamus Delegates visiting Princess Twilight from Hippopotastan!"
"Huh?"
"Even after they allegedly broke three of Pinkie Pie's chairs!" Derpy Hooves tossed her mane. "Hmmmf! Those Hippos really do like to sit their big butts anywhere they want! It's a wonder that Princess Twilight tolerated their rudeness for as long as she did!"
Octavia looked at the shattered glasses... then back at the pegasus talking to her. "They sat anywhere they wanted, huh?"
"Yeah! One even got drunk and sat on a horse trough! Turned it into a kiddy slide! Heeheehee... ohhhhhhhhh I wish I had finished college."
"But... but..." Octavia sniffled, rummaging her hoof pitifully through the sedimentary pile of glistening fragments. "...how am I expected to remedy this? My poor roommate works so hard and asks for so very little. These were her only... only pair of shades! How is she expected to make her beautiful brand of music without it?"
"Well..." Derpy rubbed the back of her head, smiling. "I suppose if the glasses were put back together..."
"Miss Hooves!" Octavia scooped the shards up in her forelimbs and protectively flinched away from the other mare. "No offense intended, but I shudder to think that you offer repair services, considering—"
"Oh no no no no..." Derpy waved a dismissive hoof. "Not me!" A breathy giggle. "My friend! The Doctor! He's very... very good at making broken things tick again! I suggest you go and ask him for help!"
"Well... erm... I guess that depends." Octavia cleared her throat. "Precisely what is he the doctor of?"
The stallion waved his hooves dramatically toward his laboratory ceiling. "TIMEEE!"
Octavia winced, standing across the lab table from him. "Good... Goddess, my dear fellow." She coughed. "Could you attempt to be slightly less bombastic in your exclamations?"
"Ahem..." Dr. Whooves nervously chuckled, adjusting his necktie. "A thousand pardons, milady. It's simply that I don't get many ponies visiting me down in my lab, much less requesting my assistance."
"Yes... I can see that." Octavia nervously eyed the whirring gizmos, sparkling tesla coils, and rocking pendulums surrounding them in the dim abode. "Nevertheless, your beloved friend Derpy insisted that you and your scientific talents were capable of restoring my roommate's eyewear so that they're good as new."
"Sounds like a challenge!" Dr. Whooves winked. "One that I whole-heartedly accept, my dear! Now..." He rubbed his fetlocks together. "...if I may see the article in question?"
Resisting the urge to whimper, Octavia melancholically reached into her saddlebag, whipped out a plastic bag, and dumped its glittery contents onto the table top between them.
Dr. Whooves whistled, leaning in to ogle the shards up close. "Blimey! What happened to the poor thing? Did a hippopotamus sit on them?"
Octavia squirmed, glancing aside. "Well..."
"Never the matter!" Dr. Whooves raised a hoof, smiling brilliantly. "You've come to the right pony! I shall use my well-honed gifts of science to solve this dilemma and restore your friend's irreplaceable eyewear!"
"With what?" Octavia smiled with a tender flicker of hope. "Glue? Plastic mold? Nanomachines?"
"Even better!" Dr. Whooves' teeth glinted in the electric light. "My Chronoton Reversal Machine!"
Octavia's muzzle and ears fell. "What."
"No time to waste!" The stallion scooped up the shards in one hoof and ushered Octavia across the room with the other. "Excelsior!"
Cl-Clack! Dr. Whooves slapped a translucent blue dome down over a pedestal containing the neatly-arranged remains of the shades. The chamber in question was surrounded by multiple robotic arms descending from the ceiling and armed with sparkling manacrystals.
"Uhm..." Octavia began, but couldn't finish.
Dr. Whooves took her gently by the shoulder and led her several steps away from the pedestal in the center of the lab. He hoofed her a set of goggles, smiled, and then pointed at the ridiculously convoluted arrangement of wires, metal limbs, and manabatteries erected before them.
"Behold! My Chronoton Reversal Machine!"
"So I imagined." Octavia gulped. "Will it restore Vinyl's shades?"
"Let us first put on our goggles—for safety, my dear—and we shall find out together!"
Octavia sighed. The tiny pony put on her tiny pony eyewear. "My dear Doctor, I surely hope you're not using my roommate's beloved possession as a flagrant excuse for unchecked scientific experimentation."
"Perish the thought!" Dr. Whooves shook his head. "This will benefit both of us! And science! But m-mostly us! Ha-Hah!" He slapped on his own goggles and trotted over to a giant lever. "You see... how it works is that the polarized manacrystals affixed to the metal arms will focus their chronoton beams onto the pedestal in alternating frequencies. Once they have a fix on the contents within the container, they will proceed to reverse the chronoton flow contained within. This should create the effect of fixed time, albeit contained within the fragmented space afforded by the dome's antichronoton shielding! If it's successful, what we will both observe is the pieces of your friend's shades forming back together, in essence reversing the cause and effect of the structural damage initially inflicted upon it!"
"Erm... I see..." Octavia fidgeted with the goggle strapped to her fuzzy head. "But, in the end, they'll be good as new?"
"Yes! Or, in a manner of speaking, 'in the beginning!' Hah!" With an ambitious smile, Dr. Whooves flung the red lever right next to him "Go, Science! Go!"
Science went.
With a loud mechanical buzz, the three metal arms spun faster and faster around the blue dome and the broken shards lying inside.
The two ponies watched, their bright pony eyes blinking behind the bulbous goggles adorably adorning them.
At last, the arms flickered with shimmering light. Lightning bolts danced, shooting deep within the round container. However—just as quickly as the dazzling display began—it ended. The arms whirred to a stop. What's more, the shards inside the pedestal's dome remained broken, scattered, and unaffected.
Dr. Whooves blinked. "Huh." He threw the lever back and trotted forward.
"'Huh?!'" Octavia grimaced. She pulled her goggles off (pausing to toss her majestic smoky mane, just because) and stammered, "'Huh' what?"
"Very curious." Dr. Whooves stood above the dome, rubbing his chin. "I'm positively certain I've thought of everything. Why didn't the chronoton emitters create a field of reverse time?"
"Perhaps they're feeling petulant." Octavia folded her forelimbs with a huff. "I most certainly am."
The stallion turned about, sighing. "My dear lady—" Suddenly, his eyes bulged. "Good heavens!" He grasped Octavia by the shoulders and dragged her towards the center of the room. "Look out!"
"Guh!" Octavia flinched against him, trembling. "Look out for what?!"
"Look!" Dr. Whooves pointed with his hoof outstretched.
Octavia watched with her muzzle agape as two translucent ponies moved about backwards. It took several blinks for her to realize that the equines were exact duplicates of herself and Dr. Whooves—marching the exact same steps and motions—only sped up and in reverse.
"What in bloody Tartarus...?" The cellist slurred. "Are we dreaming?"
"Not even in the slightest!" Dr. Whooves blinked hard. "Why... this explains it! This explains everything!"
"Explains what?!" Octavia stammered, watching as her own ghost walked backwards out of the laboratory, followed by a translucent Doctor.
"Quick!" Dr. Whooves galloped for an exit on the opposite side of the room. "We must go outside to know for sure!"
"Go outside?!"
"And bring your friend's shades! It's of utmost importance!"
"But... I... it... grrrrrr..." Octavia frowned, popped the dome, and scooped the shards back into her saddlebag. "Science... bollocks!" And she galloped after the stallion.
Once Octavia stood with Dr. Whooves outside, she immediately wished she hadn't stepped out.
The two ponies gaped as villagers trotted in reverse. Birds flew backward. Grass blades and flowers shrank. The sun sped from west to east.
"It's just as I thought!" Dr. Whooves smiled in spite of the apocalyptic madness unfolding briskly all around them. "The reversal... the accelerated state of things..."
"Uhhhhh..." Octavia grimaced as she watched a snail cruise backwards over its own sidewalk slime. The mare gulped and looked aside at the stallion. "What's just as you thought?"
"The anti-chronoton dome!" Dr. Whooves said. "Instead of absorbing the energy streams, it repelled them! As a result, your roommate's shades haven't been exposed to reverse-time! We have!"
"What?!" Octavia squeaked. She made nervous horse noises as the sunrise sank and the moonfall rose. Stars spun psychotically above their fuzzy heads. "You mean we're being thrown backwards in time?!"
"Yes!" Dr. Whooves grinned wide. "Isn't it terrific?!"
"No, Doctor! It most certainly is not!" Octavia grasped his tie, trembling. "I refuse to be a teenager again! All of that acne devastated me!" She sniffled. "Not to mention the positively boorish 'Fuzzy-Fiddler' name-calling..."
"Fear not, milady!" Dr. Whooves patted her shoulder. "It was only a moderate dosage of chronoton energy! I doubt we will be accelerating backwards much further!" Just as he said this, a bright light came to a slow stop over their heads. He smirked skyward. "Behold!"
Octavia looked up in time to see an evening sun lurch into place. Time froze, wobbled, then oozed forward at normal speed. The ambient sounds of the world rolled into crackling normalcy. Birds chirped and flew naturally. Ponies walked their dogs in the right direction and pine cones fell as pine cones were used to falling.
"Oh... good heavens..." Octavia fanned herself. She nevertheless winced. "But—pray tell—what day is it?"
"Mmmm... that's a very good question." Dr. Whooves tapped his chin. He turned and called across the street. "Hello there, Doctor! What time is it?"
Dr. Whooves scuffled to a stop in front of a bakery, blinking. "Why... Seven o'clock! Saturday afternoon!"
"Thank you, my good Doctor." Dr. Whooves bowed.
Dr. Whooves bowed back. "Anytime, Doctor. Now please be a responsible stallion and stay out of the lab for the next foreseeable future!"
"Already ahead of you, Doctor!" Dr. Whooves waved. As the other Doctor trotted off, he turned to smile at Octavia. "Right, then!" An eyebrow twitch. "That would explain a few things!"
Octavia's muzzle hung wide open. After a few blinks, she shook it off and stammered: "What am I supposed to do now?! I'm right back where I started! In fact..." She gawked at the setting sun. "I'm before where I started!"
"Indeed!" Dr. Whooves winked and pumped his forelimb. "Which is precisely why you should take advantage of the moment!"
"What?! How?!"
"Isn't it obvious?" Dr. Whooves pointed towards Sugarcube Corner in the distance. "In just a few hours, your good friend will be performing at the cafe downtown! That should give you plenty of time to trot inside and replace her intact shades with the broken shards!"
"What..." Octavia leaned from side to side, her brain dizzy. "...what will that accomplish?"
"That, my dear, is what we call a predestination paradox! And quite a convenient one at that!" He pointed at the bag of broken shards in Octavia's possession. "Those shards will forever exist in a self-causality loop. In the meantime... you can carry the unbroken shades with you into tomorrow!"
"And... Vinyl can... wear them forever more?" Octavia blinked.
"Precisely! No, you don't need to thank me. Just live on in peace and prosperity as happy little ponies should! Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and sequester myself inside a secluded storage warehouse somewhere." The stallion trotted off—but suddenly jerked in place. "Oh! And by the way—some friendly little advice. Ahem." His eyes narrowed. "You would do well to avoid making physical contact with your other self from this time period."
"Erm... why is that, Doctor?"
"Because the same matter cannot occupy the same space." The stallion adjusted his tie and galloped off, grinning. "Allons y!"
Octavia stood alone... a tiny little pony with tiny pony trembles. Nevertheless, she adjusted the weight of the broken glasses in her saddlebag... and trotted bravely towards Sugarcube Corner beneath a setting sun.
She didn't proceed directly to the deejay's stage inside the cafe. She couldn't. Vinyl hadn't arrived yet, which meant her intact shades weren't anywhere to be found. So... Octavia had to wait. She sat in the corner of the bustling establishment, huddled in the shadows so as not to be seen. It worked, for the most part. Even Twilight Sparkle and her friends were too busy setting up decorations to take notice of the out-of-time equine.
Octavia sighed. Each breath she took sent shivers up her spine. She couldn't quite put a hoof on what it felt like to live yesterday all over again. The closest thing she could compare it to was swimming through a dried block of stale bread crumbs. In the far-off distance she thought she heard ravenous buzzing noises—like metallic mosquitoes—but she did her best to ignore them.
Soon, the delegates arrived. They were four big round brown mountains of flesh, and their mouths somehow seemed even bigger whenever they yawned. Applejack nervously offered the foreign hippopotamuses some apples to nibble on before the show. The visitors easily inhaled the fruit by the bucket, making the poor farm mare flinch.
Even Twilight—normally a well-mannered-mare—had to take twice as long to compose herself before trotting up to an open mic. "Good evening, fillies, gentlecolts, hippos from afar!" The alicorn winced as a far-off chair crunched loudly beneath's a delegate's haunches. "Uhm... Rarity? We need another stool!" Taking a deep breath, the Princess continued to address the gathered party-goers. "Well, let's not waste time mincing words for the s-sake of pretense! We've made new friends with the stewards of Hippopotastan! This is a moment to revel in life, companionship, and—" Crunch! "Rarityyy! Another stool! Anyways... uh... errrr... yeah! Friendship! Here's DJ-P0N3."
Octavia spat out the sweet tea that she didn't even know she was drinking. "Pfffft!" She rubbed the dribble off her dainty chin. "Blast! She's already here!"
Sure enough, the spotlights converged on the cafe's stage. There—standing in all her fuzzy white glory—was Octavia's dazzling roommate. The deejay adjusted her healthy shades with a glint of electric light and proceeded to flood the entire establishment with bass... bass... bass.
Ponies danced and cheered. Laser lights and party streamers flew every which way. The hippos yawned.
"Well..." Octavia took a shuddering breath, shouldered her saddlebags, and trotted out from her corner. "...now's my chance."
The cellist crept along the edge of the room, unseen by the ponies who were dancing, raving, or just simply swaying with the frenetic techno beat. Her violet eyes remained locked on Vinyl the whole time, careful to observe the precise moment when her friend removed her eyewear.
She passed several ponies, coming uncomfortably close to a few of them during her stealthy sneaking.
"Hey!" Lyra Heartstrings slurred to her best friend, juggling a half-empty cup of cider. "HIC! Did you know that at least nine percent of all Hippopotastanis support the Changeling State?! HIC! That's gotta be... what... at least sixteen million of 'em!"
"Tch..." Bon Bon rolled her eyes. "That's a scare-tactic if I ever heard one!"
"No, dead on!" Lyra sipped and slouched drunkenly against her friend. "Ponies have fact-checked that noise, yo!"
Octavia bit her lip, approaching the stage. She hid behind a painted wooden cupcake, peering over Vinyl's turn-table.
A hippo yawned and stood up, leaving her bent chair beside the rest of the delegates. "I'm going to go use the little horse room! Be back in a moment!" she exclaimed, waddling off. Octavia eyed the chair... then Vinyl's proximity to it.
The deejay continued spinning away at her records, twirling the dials back and forth as the speakers beside her shook and wub-wub-wubbed.
"How do I get over there without being seen?" Octavia thought aloud.
"Hiya, Tavi!" Pinkie Pie chirped, suddenly standing behind the startled mare. She grinned and shouted above the noise: "Whatcha doinnnnn'?!"
"Uhm... Uhhhh..."
"Lemme guess!" Pinkie smiled. "You've been thrown back a day because of reverse time and now you're having to replace your roommate's glasses with a broken pair and gallop away unseen?!"
Octavia gulped. "Erm.... m-maybe?"
"Cool!" Pinkie Pie pointed overhead. "Have you thought about using the scaffolding?"
Octavia looked up at the metal rigging stretched over the stage, complete with flashing and pivoting lights. "Oh. Huh."
"Heehee! Have fun, silly filly!" Pinkie turned away—"Oh! And be sure to try Applejack's caramel apples! They're to die for!" And she skipped off, humming to the techno beat.
After a deep sigh, Octavia leapt up with a tiny pony grunt. She caught ahold of the scaffold's support beam, adjusted her bow tie, then climbed forward. Slowly, inch by inch, she crawled directly over the stage, being sure not to make too much noise or movement.
Vinyl continued scratching and deejaying directly beneath her.
Biting her lip, Octavia snuck along—but froze the instant that Vinyl made a sudden movement.
Below, her roommate could be seen wiping the fresh sweat her brow. She slapped a dial on the turntable, and the current beat looped on repeat with only a slight rising tonality. The unicorn capitalized on the brief respite by removing her shades, resting her magenta eyes, and opening a bottle of drinking water. Octavia watched as her roommate's shades drifted telekinetically for a few feet... then was absent-mindedly placed square in the middle of the missing delegate's seat.
Octavia sucked her breath in. "This is my chance!" Swiftly, the mare shifted her weight until she dangled upside down from the scaffolding. Her hooves fumbled through her saddlebag, then collected the pile of broken purple shards in the crook of a fetlock. Licking her lips, she stretched out her other hoof towards the intact shades on the chair. "Come on... come on..."
Octavia could almost reach them. The faintest fuzz of her hoof scratched the outer edges of the plastic frames.
"So close... so cl-close..." Octavia squeaked.
Just then—Vinyl finished drinking her water and slapped a button on her turntable.
VROMMMM! The speakers shrieked, rolling the instrumental into the next thunderous track.
"...!!!" Octavia gasped—and dropped the shards altogether.
She watched breathlessly as the pieces fell directly onto Vinyl's other shades, making physical contact.
But that's not all that happened.
In a flash of crimson light, the shards merged together with the glasses. Octavia watched in a dumb stupor as both sets of eyewear morphed into a red gelatinous blob. Screaming mouths—complete with simian teeth—protruded at random from the bubbling liquid. Then, just as horrifically as the anomaly began, the puddle of shrieking red ooze shrank and shrank until it was nothingness.
Octavia blinked.
THUD! The hippo returned from the bathroom, as did her buttocks. She smashed the empty chair into oblivion, then continued to sit and enjoy the show.
"Rarityyyy! Another chair!"
Octavia winced. Waking up to the reality of the moment, she curled up until she was perched atop the scaffolding yet again.
This happened just in time, for Vinyl looked over to see the hippo sitting where her glasses had been. The DJ blinked her naked eyes... sighed... then carried on with the show as best as she squintingly could.
Octavia shivered. With a lump forming in her throat, she crawled out of view, hopped off the scaffold... and made a very awkward exit from the cafe.
The very next morning, Octavia woke to the loud slap of her front yard gate shutting.
"Guh!" The mare sat up in the middle of a rose garden. She blinked tiredly, her smoky mane frazzled and her beautiful coat covered in flecks of soil.
She caught sight of her past self trotting briskly towards Sugarcube Corner, humming triumphantly.
With a defeated sigh, Octavia stood up on aching limbs... and slumped her way inside her apartment.
The front door closed with a creak.
Vinyl Scratch paused in mid-sip of bottled water. Still tired, the unicorn squinted towards the front entrance.
The sight of a limp, exhausted, sweat-stained Octavia shuffled gradually into focus. The cellist's crooked bow-tie matched her baggy eyes. Sniffling, the sad pony looked up, making sad pony sounds.
"I've... f-failed you, Vinyl..."
Vinyl raised an eyebrow.
"Sure, I may have crossed temporal frontiers hitherto unexplored by ponydom and challenged modern precepts of philosophical existentialism... but still..." Octavia leaned back and sighed into a dainty fetlock. "...the truth of the matter is... I went out with the full purpose of finding and repairing your precious shades... and I could not even manage that." She sniffled, hugging herself with slight trembles. "You pull so much weight around here... and this is the best that I can do in return?" Her eyes watered as she whimpered. "I'm a terrible... awful roommate. Sometimes... s-sometimes I wonder why you even put up with me..."
Silence.
Vinyl gazed at her with thin eyes. Then, without saying a word, she trotted briskly over to a nearby closet, opened it, and exposed an elaborate shelf filled to the brim with identical, matching purple shades.
Octavia's eyes twitched.
There were twenty-nine pairs of glasses all lined up in a row. One slot and one slot alone was missing. Vinyl picked up the twenty-ninth, flicked the frames open, and placed them evenly over the bridge of her nose. She glanced over at Octavia with a trademark electric glint... and smiled.
"Mmmmm..." Vinyl's nostrils flared, but she was grinning. Just a tiny, fuzzy grin. "You cheeky bugger."
Vinyl crossed the distance between them. She made a face, tapping the edges of Octavia's frayed bow-tie.
"Yes... well..." Octavia cleared her throat. "It's quite alright. I have multiple sets of them as well." She looked up, eyes tearing. "But only one best friend."
Vinyl winked beneath her shades... then leaned forward to scoop Octavia in a fluffy hug.
Octavia smiled and accepted the embrace. Fluff and all.
Several minutes and a long, warm shower later...
Octavia mounted a couch pillow, turned around three times, and sat down softly in her burgundy bathrobe. Sighing contentedly, she proceeded to brush and brush her smokey mane straight. "Do you know what I found out today?"
Vinyl shrugged curiously, fumbling through multiple record covers sitting next to her turntable.
"Sweet tea is a good way of making time past more swiftly forwards." Octavia's eyelashes fluttered. "Who knew that such a silly thing could ever come in so handy?"
Vinyl merely smirked. At last, she chose a record and slapped it in place atop her turntable. Pressing play, she filled the room with gentle violin strings and then proceeded to make a funky remix out of it.
"Hmmmm..." Octavia closed her eyes and continued to brush herself. "...some things never get old... no matter how many times you reverse it."
The two friends relaxed the soft morning into an even softer afternoon. It was a good day to be a pony, good enough to experience it twice, and Octavia confirmed it with every brush stroke.
"Aaaaaaaaaaand here it is!" Derpy Hooves dropped a cardboard compartment down onto the counter-top. "Let's see now... September... October... November Thirteenth—Ah hah!" She reached deep into a shoebox and produced a red paperback magazine. "It's exactly as you described it!"
"Yeah... uh... thanks..." Scootaloo shifted the weight of an orange jacket and gazed nervously over her shoulder. "Look... could you just hoof it over? I don't have the time to explain..."
"Huh... that's weird..." Derpy squinted towards the walls of the store. "...this almanac's dated for thirty years from now!"
"Miss Hooves... please..." Scootaloo gulped and reached a hoof forward. "I need it—"
"Gaaah!" Derpy jumped back from the shoebox. "How did that get in here?"
Clucking wildly, a chicken spontaneously leapt out of the box and straight at Scootaloo.
"Nooo!" Scootaloo flinched. "Keep her away from me—!"
But it was too late. The store erupted in a crimson flash of light, accompanied by bellicose screams.
"Whoah there, kid!" Derpy peeked over the counter. "You okay?" The red light faded, and the pegasus was left blinking. "Kiddo? Where'd you go?" A beat. "Heh... I'm tellin' ya! This silly app. brings all the kiddies out these days!"
