Twilight Sparkle walked through the streets of Ponyville, her hooves clicking on the cobbled streets. Store fronts passed her by as she continued to enjoy the beautifully warm sunlight that Celestia bestowed upon the ponies of Equestria. It was a nice day out, the sweet chirping of Blue Jays as they flew around, chasing after one another. The weather out was warm, but just enough to be comfortable. Other ponies chatted with the vendors, trying to bargain for the last of their goods, some already sold out of their respective sales items. Couples walked past her, nuzzling each other and barely paying any attention to the road they trotted along.
Twilight continued to walk down the street, enjoying what she could of the day. Coming to a stop at Applejack's apple cart, she pulled a bit out of her saddle bag and tossed her a coin, taking an apple as she left. It was a bright red apple, grown and ripened to perfection. Opening her mouth wide and about to chomp down on the apple, she stopped short of her bite, an unusual noise piercing her ears. A loud but muffled, and also a somewhat dull thumping was ringing throughout the town square, shaking some vendor carts. Fruits of all kinds began vibrating loose and toppled to the ground. Looking throughout the town square, Twilight noticed that everypony was just going along as if the sound wasn't there, although some vendors were picking up their fruits, annoyance slapped on their faces. She stood there dumbfounded, wondering why the other ponies seemed not to care at all about the strange thumping noise that echoed through the walls of the town.
She thought of possible reasons on why they wouldn't have cared for the noise, and raising a hoof to her chin, Twilight began to fall into a semi-deep thought about why they wouldn't possibly care. It didn't make much sense for any reason to ignore it, unless it was a sound that they had become accustomed to. But why would they be accustomed to such an irritating noise, especially if it made them work a bit harder to make sure their sales items didn't fall off the carts?
A loud shout and scream burst through her eardrums, followed by the loud screeching of a needle sliding across vinyl on a switchboard. Vinyl Scratch... Twilight thought to herself, looking over towards Vinyl's house, whose windows were boarded over in order to keep the inside dark. Small beams of multicolored light could still be seen shining through the poorly placed boards. Why must she always be so loud? She asked herself, racking her mind for a sound canceling spell. Remembering just the spell to use, her horn began to glow, a small bubble forming at the tip. Straining her mind, Twilight concentrated on making a field big enough to encompass Vinyl's home. With a sudden POP, the thumping and various other noises emanating from Vinyl's home ceased to exist outside of the sound barrier. Various ponies in the square nodded their head at Twilight, muttering thanks and waving to her a good day.
She continued on her way, heading towards the tree the towered over most other buildings in Ponyville. The tree was what she called her home. Twilight grasped her door in her magic, swinging it open and shutting it behind her as she trotted into her house, the bell over the door ringing as she entered. Shaking her head to clear her mind, Twilight took a book off of the shelf and tried to read it, but it didn't help what was in her mind. It throbbed through her thoughts, pulsing them in a steady beat. Throwing that book on the floor, she pulled another off of the shelves and put in right in front of her face in an attempt to drown out the banging that echoed inside of her mind.
But her attempts were all in vain as the wubs, as Vinyl told her they were called, continued to play in her mind. It was not what she would call music, nowhere even near what she considered to be music. Octavia was more of her type of music; music played with a gentle classical tone, reverberating stories of time through its cords. But these... wubs. They weren't music, it just sounded like somepony took pots and pans, and clanked them together to make noise, recorded what they made, and even publishing it for every other pony to listen to. It didn't make sense why anypony would enjoy such crude sounds, but everypony had their own opinions. Some of what she had heard even sounded like somepony put a cat into a blender and recorded the noises that it made...
Twilight began to ponder on how easy it must be to do the things that Vinyl does, and how easy it must be to make sound. Everypony can easily make noise, she thought to herself. Looking around the library, she noticed a vast array of items that she could possibly use to create 'wubs'.
Reaching out with her magic, Twilight enveloped the bell that hung silently over the door, and placed it at the top of the loft next to her bed with a small clink. She continued to look around the room, nothing conspicuous visible. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a blender sitting on the counter, still drying after she had used it earlier that morning for a hay smoothie. Twilight walked into the circular kitchen, a stove occupying a small area on the far end, polished redwood counters wrapping around the walls, broken by a sink and a refrigerator. In the center was an island, cabinets residing underneath the counter tops. She swung open the cabinets, pots and pans tumbling out of their hiding places, making loud and obnoxious clanging.
A spark of inspiration lit a fire in Twilight's mind, the pans and the blender become surrounded in a violet aura. Twilight walked back out into the center of the library, tossing the pots and pans up into the loft, creating mess of a pile consisting pots, pans, bells, and a blender. She thought back to what she remembered some of the noises sounding like, but was there any reason to use a living being? Twilight bit her lip and thought it over, a protection spell coming to mind that should hopefully keep any living being safe. With that, she went on with her maniacal plan.
“Now where to get a cat...” she mumbled under breath, walking to her door and looking in the direction of Carousel Boutique. “Opal!”
Opal was fast asleep in the small, blanket and pillow filled bed that Rarity had made for her. She didn't care for Rarity at all, in fact she considered Rarity to be her own servant. After all, she did deserve every small thing that was given to her, no matter what it was. A small sliver of sunlight made its way into her eyes, claws becoming drawn and paws flying, expecting somepony to be shining something into her eyes. But nopony was there, just the draped lavender curtains parted just enough for sunlight to reach through and wake her from a much needed nap. Opal looked towards the door that she was closed behind, knowing Rarity was off in the other room destroying her play balls of yarn for something stupid.
Opal glared with malice through the door at Rarity, who she could hear readjust herself from the uncomfortable glare Opal had directed at her. Opal walked with grace towards the curtains that hung tied by ribbons to the walls, and raising a paw and drawing a claw, she took a quick slice at each ribbon, the part in the curtains disappearing. Most light in the room dissipated, leaving Opal to using her cat eyes to navigate through the room. She made her way over to the bed, laying back down and placing pillows over her head to drain out the noise of Rarities sewing machines and constant bickering of imperfect measurements and flaws in her work.
The cat fell back into its slumber quickly, where it dreamt of flying through the clouds and watching over all of Ponyville. But this was wrong for Opal, seeing as how she was scared of heights. She looked down in her dream, and began to panic. All flight in her body was lost as she was sent fumbling through the air, gaining speed as her body accelerated towards the ground. Opal awoke in a fright in the moments before impact, throwing some pillows off of her body.
The first thing that she noticed was that she wasn't in the home she had become accustomed to, but she was rather floating through the air in her bed. She looked around to see what ignorant fool would take her from her sleep, and take her from home for that matter. Turning around, she noticed a purple unicorn with a horn aglow, smiling feebly up at her. Opal let out a malicious hiss and swung a paw at Twilight even though she was too far away to possibly hit. Twilight spoke to her, but she brushed it off and kept swinging at her, each attempt failing. Half way through her last swing, her mind went dull and black as she lost connection with reality.
“I'm sorry, Opal,” Twilight told her. “But I really need you for an experiment, and I don't want to get scratched by you again.”
Twilight stood in her loft, staring at her pile of pots, bells, a blender, and an unconscious Opal in a cage. She just stared at the pile, contemplating what she was going to do with this mess. The stairs loomed in front of her, calling for her to toss a pot down. It mocked her, telling her that she wasn't any good at anything if she couldn't even make 'music' with something as simple as pots and pans. Taking a look at Opal, her horn began to glow, enveloping Opalescence in her magic, casting the best protection spell that she could muster from her heart. The spell strained Twilight's mind, and she cringed after completing it, a migraine building up inside of her head.
Opening her eyes to study the work she had completed on Opal, she was surprised with the results. Opal had an eerie red glow about her, giving off a small amount of light as the aura around her pulsed slightly in unison with each breath. Twilight took a mental note of the situation, now that she knew what the spell did to an living being.
She took the pots and lined them up at the beginning of the stairs, placing other pots and pans behind those in a queue of what to give a swift kick down the stairs. Placing the blender next to an outlet, she placed the dual prongs into the socket, a small light coming to life on the blender as electricity flowed through its circuits. Gingerly lifting Opal in her hooves, she took the cat and placed her into the blender as best she could, shoving her in with all four hooves. Once she was in the blender as far as she could be, Twilight placed the cap on top of opal and placed a locking spell on it to prevent the cat from escaping the clutches of the blender it would come to dread. A tape recorder flew next to Twilight as she summoned it with her magic. She took a minute to think over what she would call this noise, and what she would call herself. After much internal debate, she took a deep breath before pressing record.
“Twilightlicous here, and this is called – Noise.” She told the recorder with a smug look upon her face.
She gave the first row of pots a kick, sending them flying down the stairs, clanking, thumping, and banging their echoes throughout the house, coming to a hard, clanging rest at the bottom of the stairs. Before the last pan made its way to the very bottom of the stairs, she whispered “This won't hurt... I hope.” to Opal, switching the blender to a high setting. Opal began to whine and yowl as she attempted to claw her way out of the container she was entrapped in. The motor whirred, slowing and straining as the blades inside of the blender removed the hair from Opal. From within the flurry of hair and cat, she could distinctly see the face of Opal calling to her, “This will be the last thing you ever do.”
Twilight looked away from the blender to keep her eyes from coming into contact with Opal's. She kept her mind locked onto the rows of pots in from of her, calculating the perfect timing for each kick and change in blender speed within her own mind. With the timing of the next kicks and blender pauses planned out in her mind, she became enthralled with herself on how easy this was. Some ponies said that the music Vinyl listened to was nothing but noise and that it took no talent to make it. And she proved their assumptions right, she had little talent in what she was doing and this noise sounded exactly like the 'music' that she had heard playing from Vinyl's home. Not only was this partially a scientific experiment to determine whether the claims of other ponies were right, but it also gave Twilight the chance to relieve her stress by kicking pots and pans down stairs. Much to her surprise, it was actually rather soothing to be able to kick things, even if they did make such loud noises.
Twilight gave another kick into the rows of pots, knocking each down the stairs one by one, all the while changing the speed the blender operated at, using every function that was on its control panel. A smile came across Twilight's face as she was becoming pleased with the results of her 'noise'. It sounds just like what Vinyl was playing! she thought to herself, an absolute look of glee falling upon her face. She kicked the last row of pots down the stairs, leaving the blender on a low to give a deeper whirl, even though Opal was still meowing at Twilight to go to hell.
Twilight pressed the off button on the blender and pressed stop on the recorder, Opal falling out of the blender, her hair butchered and cut short at random places. She about to rewind it and press play before she noticed a mare sitting over the threshold of the main door. It was Vinyl Scratch, and she sat there with her glasses in her hooves, and tears flowing from her eyes. Twilight became worried that she had accidentally kicked a pan or a pot into Vinyl, possibly injuring her. But this assumption of Twilight's became void as Vinyl came to speak from under her tears.
“That... That was beautiful.”
