It’s a black bus with dark tinted windows that pulls onto the premises of the festival grounds, past all these people working to set up stages and fence off areas. The sky is ominously grey today, but in the end, this will matter little.
The bus comes to a halt. The doors open and you can hear them coming. It’s the heavy, metallic clinking of their shoes that alerts the few groupies that are already lingering here, waiting to catch a glimpse of their stars. The heavy clunk-clunk of horseshoes is as far away from the cheerful clip-clop one would associate with ponies as a Howitzer is away from a BB gun.
The fans cheer as the first head appears, and the ponies file out of the bus.
We have all seen the pictures. They are ponies. But there is metal. There is leather. Studs, nails, sunglasses. Tribal tattoo patterns shaved into their fur.
They are ponies, but don’t you dare call them cute, or even little. Heavy steel horseshoes nailed to their hooves, rings and studs pierced through ears and nostrils. Spiked and studded leather wraps forelegs, hind legs, necks.
A crowd has gathered around the bus and they whistle and yell; the names of their favourites or just in general howling in appreciation.
The first to leave the bus is Oddity, always one for the spotlight, and she spreads her wings like a queen of the skies. Some say she pretends to be an alicorn. Such blasphemous talk only makes her laugh, of course. Her butt mark (we have been advised to avoid the term ‘cutie mark’ at all costs), a neon-green fractal, is glowing even without direct sunlight.
Then comes Cloudburst, shaking her long mane that this time is dyed pink and black. She looks haughty with the heavy black eyeliner, but waves her fore hoof cheerily at the fans. The tip of her horn is steel-capped; I wouldn’t mess with that mare if I was you.
Katabatic Wind hops out of the bus without bothering with the stairs, spreading his wings and taking to the sky in one smooth move. He’s a show-off, that one, but he has something to show off all right. He angles his wings tight and does a double looping before flashing them out again, catching himself just before he hits the ground, swooping up over the cheering, hollering fans. He stops, hangs in the air lazily flapping his wings, and is already gauging the clouds that overshadow the festival grounds.
The cheering fans fall silent when the heavy footfall announces him, and the stairs vibrate under the hooves of the massive unicorn stallion who emerges from the bus, his fur so black it absorbs all light, or so it seems. No one knows if the colour is real, no one has ever dared to ask. Heavy Metal is one of a kind; he has unicorn magic despite his father being an earth pony, a fact that is undeniable. Thick fetlocks cover his hooves and he easily tops the other ponies by a hand (and probably outweighs them by several stone).
His mark is a burning guitar although he plays bass, and on the few occasions where he did a gig with otherwise all human metal bands, he was quite the crowd magnet.
And finally, there he is. Heavy Metal has just cleared the stairs and out he sweeps, and the crowd goes wild.
The red bandana is a bright contrast to his fur the colour of an overcast sky, and how this pegasus manages to fly like he does without losing his shades is anyone’s guess. He flies a round over the gathered fans before gracefully landing next to his companions.
The Trailblazers have arrived.
We’re in the backstage area now, in the portacabin assigned to the five ponies that are both weather management and special FX team for the festival. It’s the first time they’re giving an interview, exclusively for the Rolling Stone.
“When I was waiting for my butt mark to appear I wouldn’t in a million years have expected for it to happen on this side,” Phone Fryer says and his eyes twinkle behind his blue, round shades. “Here I was, stupid little colt, come over for the first time with that 'friends with earth' program of back then. Friends took me to Wacken that year, and that music pushed all my buttons. Got a bit carried away.” He winks. “Several hundred people losing their phones in one zap, and I got this sweet little baby here. And the rest is history.”
He shows us his flank, the mark there is a bright yellow lightning; it looks like a high voltage warning sign. Which, admittedly, is spot on. He’s not called Phone Fryer for nothing, even if he hasn’t fried any phones for a long time. And considering the popularity of this stallion, a lot of people from back then kept that short-fused, useless phone as a devotional object. They apparently go on eBay for several hundred dollars nowadays.
The stallion is a legend in his own lifetime. Totally hyper by the wild music, the heavy drums and untamed riffs, the young colt got carried away and jumped on a cloud, chucking a lightning bolt across the sky. Within the space of a heartbeat, several spotlights on the stage were out. The people in the first three rows looked as if they had been through the scariest haunted house experience ever, and the whole festival was without communication.
When the dust had settled, demands for compensations began to arise. Not wanting to put any strain on the budding diplomacy between the worlds, Her Majesty Princess Celestia forked over enough money to replace three times as many phones and encase them in platinum. After the claims had been settled, the rest of the money went to several charities.
“But the reports of how cool the lightning looked made their course through the internet,” Phone Fryer says. “And some people with a good business sense saw an opportunity. I had my first job interview less than six months after getting my butt mark for destroying phones of the collective value of a five digit amount.” His grin is impossibly wide; he’s a deviant and he doesn’t deny it. “But I knew I couldn’t do this alone, so I went home and asked around.”
Oddity was the first who agreed to come over and try things out. Off festival grounds, of course. Over fields with no civilisation nearby.
“No one had any idea what my mark meant,” Oddity says. “But I guess going into another world to accompany metal bands with lightning and thunder effects is as odd as it gets.”
The first festival to employ the two for spectacular SFX was also the first one to issue the warning that electronic devices should not be carried close to the stage.
After the show, people began to actually believe it.
“It all sounded so surreal at first,” Katabatic Wind says. “I mean, as a pegasus, lightning and thunder and rain and clearing the sky is like mowing the lawn or something for you. But when Oddity asked me if I want to come along I said yes, and I haven’t looked back.”
Some people wonder how festivals were in the pre-pony time.
Oddity laughs, flashing her silver tongue stud. “They rocked as well,” she says with a grin. “You just didn’t have the dry and wet area and had to take the mud as you got it.”
The rain management is one of the greatest improvements for the festival business. With a pegasus or two on cloud duty, the stage areas can be kept nice and dry. For those who think a mud bath is essential for the true festival experience, there are special mud areas where the clouds are stored instead of just being dissipated. Ever so often, a pegasus flies over and gives those clouds a good kick to keep the dirt nice and muddy.
“And you didn’t have the living special effects,” Katabatic Wind continues. “Tame lightning and thunder is so much safer than pyrotechnics. And about twenty per cent cooler.”
“Ugh. Do you have to use that line all the time? And it depends on how you define safe,” Cloudburst cuts in. “People kept losing their devices in droves before anyone thought to involve unicorns. I think some got singed a little too.”
Having pegasus magic to control the weather is one thing. Using that magic to generate special effects like gusts of wind, lightning and thunder has its side effects, however. Failing stage equipment, phones and walkie-talkies got knocked out and, well, fried.
Phone Fryer laughs. “No one had ever tried that before. We had to make it up as we went along.”
“And give people a heads up.” Oddity swishes her tail.
A disclaimer with every sold ticket is now standard procedure: electronic devices within the markings of the stage area at your own risk. Nowadays, most people usually leave their phones in their tents and cars and the market for old-fashioned, analogue cameras suddenly exploded. Those who can afford it buy phone cases with shielding. It means no communication, of course, but they can take pictures and look cool.
The requests for help to develop a model of phone casings with thaumaturgic shielding is what brought the unicorns on board.
Cloudburst admits that she only came along to get a permit and visa to visit the other side.
“All the stories you hear,” she says. “I honestly only wanted an excuse to come here and have a look at things. But then I watched Fryer, Kaytay and Oddity and I knew that this is it.”
Now Heavy Metal speaks up for the first time. He looks far more dangerous than he is, his voice a deep rumble, but a pleasant one. He is known for giving little kids rides on his back.
“It was the same for me,” he says. “I only came along to see this world. But once I was here, I knew I didn’t want to leave.”
Like Phone Fryer, Heavy Metal is something special in more than one regard. It’s not a common occurrence, but it happens that a pony changes his or her name with the appearance of the mark. Both he and Phone Fryer not only changed their colt names after their mark appeared, but both of them gained their mark while here, on the other side, as the ponies say.
“It wasn’t easy,” Heavy Metal admits. “Cloudburst was better at this, she was older too, but I knew this was what I was going to do. That music made my blood boil.”
Which is kind of hard to imagine for that boulder of a unicorn.
“And once Fryer had filled us in on what they wanted us to do, me and Cloudburst sat down and started figuring out the spell matrix. It’s the one thing I’m good at.” He chuckles. “The folks back home weren’t happy I left school so early, but they've stopped complaining by now.”
With the unicorns, the team was complete and the road to huge success and popularity was paved. No longer at the mercy of uncontrollable, dangerous side effects, due to the shielding spell of the two unicorns, the festival organisations gave Phone Fryer and his wingmates free hands, or free hooves, as it were.
The electronics-wrecking static discharges are still there though. Cloudburst and Heavy Metal might one day be able to find a way around those as well, but why bother and diminish the experience? As far as we know, they'd rather add more light effects anyway.
Polaroid is back in business real big. Having a dark room and developing and processing your own photos has become a wide-spread hobby among true metalheads. These ponies have left their mark, pardon the pun. Festivals that have them listed as special guests are sold out in half the time than usual.
Our last question to the team is if they feel like outsiders when they are back home in Equestria.
They exchange a few grins; apparently this topic has come up before.
“Of course we are,” Phone Fryer says and flicks his ears. “We’re weirdoes. And you know, we’re not over there too often, just to visit the family. Because over here, we’re heroes.”
With that, he opens the door and the five of them file out, and to judge by the cheers and screams and whistles of the crowds outside when Phone Fryer sweeps up towards the sky – heroes is exactly what they are.
The Trailblazers have been on stage, or above stage, with names as big as Metallica or AC/DC. You haven’t lived until you have listened to Thunderstruck live on stage with real lightning crashing above your head, synchronized with Angus Young’s guitar and Phil Rudd’s drums.
Tonight will be a night to remember, in every sense of the word. The boys of Motörhead are here, and a lot of other bands with great names or not so widely known, but they all have come here for one thing: To honour and remember Lemmy.
There will be metal. There will be rock.
And there will be flashes of lightning and growling thunder and the skies will weep and we will all mourn the passing of one of the greatest legends in the history of metal.
What Lemmy would have thought of that five ponies would create the backdrop to his remembrance service?
“He would’ve laughed,” Phone Fryer had said.
He would have.
Author's Note
The comment section of Silver Glow's Journal is to blame for this. There was quite a bit of speculation going on regarding job opportunities for pegasi on earth. This was our take on it. :)
