“Abbey Road, the big house that looks like it’s been split,” you said to yourself, reading off the newspaper held in front of you in your magic. In front of you, stretched the street in questions, and idly, you wondered why the note specified the house, considering, as far as you could see, there was only one on the entire block. It was indeed split though, so maybe the note was just to tell you that yes, that was a house someone lived in, rather than some avant garde art project that had been built just for the heck of it.
Not that you would have turned away even if you’d thought that. You couldn’t really, considering everything else. You needed a job, and after being rejected from everywhere else, well, this was the only one that was left in the Ponyville paper. It included room, board, and a few bits a week, and all you had to do was be a housekeeper for some mares. That didn’t sound too bad, and hopefully, unlike everypony else in town, they’d see past your...deformity, and let you stay with them for a while.
Walking towards the house, you looked at it, and wondered just why it was constructed the way it was, with the place split down the middle, like it was two separate homes fused into one. Even the roof had somehow been split, with two different types of straw making it up. That had to be hard to do. Maybe the mares who lived here were construction workers, or artists like that white unicorn in town. Maybe the house was like this when they bought it, and they’d just kept the theme. Either way, you walked towards the front door, and slipping the paper back into your saddle bags.
“Don’t screw this up,” you told yourself, adjusting the bags so they covered your flank, and then moving straight towards the door. Putting your hoof against it, you prepared to knock, when suddenly a blast of sound threw the thing open, blowing you backwards, and landing on your back, with your legs in the air. Stunned for a moment, you were almost frozen to that spot, and barely noticed as a gray earth pony came charging out of the door, her ears down against her head to block the noise. She didn’t notice you either, obviously, as her hooves came down right on top of you, knocking the air from your lungs in a huge wheeze, as she stopped just so that her hind legs were situated right on your chest.
“Vinyl! That’s too loud!” she shouted against the music, her voice almost completely lost amid the cacophony. You heard her well enough though, and were about to offer assistance, when she began to bounce on her hooves, her legs raising up only to come back down hard, making it impossible for you to catch your breath.
“Vinyl!” she cried again, louder this time, and getting her powerful voice stuck in your ears as they started to ring with her words. You could feel her body growing heavier on top of you too, probably some earth pony trick she was using to make her words louder, which also made her body more massive. This had the added result of making it impossible for your to move as she stood there on top of you, your legs flailing in the air, as your lungs demanded air you couldn’t give them while she was there.
“VINYL!!!” she shouted at last, this time her voice booming out like a massive explosion, and causing you to swoon. You vaguely heard the music finally cease, the noise dying away at the edge of your hearing, even as it felt like you were going deaf. Above you, you could see the gray mare sigh to herself, in frustration or relief you weren’t sure, while the door got a new pony in it, this a white unicorn with odd tinted glasses and a pair of headphones hooker around her neck.
“What Octy?” she said, walking over towards the gray mare. Her vision must have been clouded by those glasses, because she didn’t see you, and when she came to a stop, you felt her hind hooves land on top of you, adding to the weight on your chest, and making you squirm, but unnoticed by the two mares.
“Vinyl, you have to keep that sound system of your’s down. Remember, that ad I put in the paper said to come by today, and we don’t need your ‘wubs’ driving off the applicants,” she said, forcefully driving her hoof down into your chest with a kick.
“Aw, come on Octavia, they’re gonna have to get used to some noise living here anyway. Besides, aren’t butlers and maids supposed to be all stoic or something?” complained the unicorn.
“You know we’re not going to be getting a professional housekeeper, right? This is probably just going to be some colt or filly from around Ponyville looking for some work away from home,” chastised the earth pony.
“Yeah, yeah, but they’re still going to be…” as she spoke, a paper held in magical grip floated up towards the pair, coming to a stop right in front of them, and causing them to go quite. Looking at it, they found Octavia’s ad had been circled in the thing, and then looked towards where it had come from, suddenly noticing you on the ground, with their hooves digging into your chest.
“Oh my, I’m so sorry sir,” said Octavia as she leapt off you, while Vinyl just walked, her hind hoof pressing itself firmly into your chest as her weight settled on it for a moment, before the two mares were standing in front of you. The unicorn, to make up for not noticing you, maybe, used her magic to raise you back to your hooves and hold you there as you regained your composure and were finally able to stand on your own.
“So, you okay there?” asked Vinyl as you finally stopped swaying on your hooves and at last caught the breath that had been knocked out of you.
“Yeah, I’m ~cough~ I’m fine,” you tell her, trying your best to smile at her, she lowers the purple shades from her eyes so she can look at you with her magenta colored eyes, but after a moment, she just shrugs, moving the glasses back up on her muzzle.
“Good, I suppose we should invite you inside then,” said Octavia, the earth pony doing her best to brush you off a bit with her hooves, before motioning for you to follow the pair into their home. Inside, the place is as odd as it looks from outside, with everything split down the middle. On one side, you see the tech and turntables a DJ would normally use at a nightclub, while the other seems to be hoof made for someone more into classical music, including several old crank record players, contrasting greatly with the much more advanced turntables.
“So, you’re interested in the job as our housekeeper?” asked Octavia, as she led you toward a couch at the rear of the room, split like the rest. Vinyl, with a blue glow of her magic, moves a chair toward you, and you take a seat with them, curling your legs under you as you sit down, and they do likewise, Vinyl’s tail swishing back and forth, as if in time with a beat only she can hear.
“I’m interested, yes. Your ad says you’re looking for someone basically to help out, right?” you asked, and Vinyl nodded.
“Yeah, we kinda keep weird hours from each other, and sometimes leave our stuff all over the place. Before, we’d be doing our best to clean up after each other, but after that whole wedding fiasco, we kinda don’t have as much time anymore,” said the unicorn, pointing to a small pile of old Hayburger Princess wrappers on her side. These were counterpointed by a similar stack of brown boxes from a cafe in town, much more high class, that had been stacked neatly on Octavia’s side of the home.
“Yes, we’re just so busy, and worse, we tend to forget things when we’re on a creative bend that we need somepony to help out. Maybe even remind us to eat, something that has happened to almost the point of hospitalization for both of us in the last month,” says the gray mare, and as if to prove her point, Vinyl’s stomach suddenly growls, causing her to rub it with one of her forehooves.
“Yeah, that too. We’d rather not end up in a bed just because we forgot to eat something,” agreed the DJ.
“Now then, for payment, we’ll do free room and board, we have a small space room just down the hall for you. We had expected somepony a bit younger, but if you’re interested, a more mature presence might not be so bad,” says Octavia with a rather disarming smile. Returning it, you nod.
“Sounds good. I just need a place to be for a while anyway, so if it’s just food and a place to sleep, that’s fine with me,” you tell her, and the two smiled, obviously relieved to hear that.
“Excellent, then why don’t you go put your saddlebags in your new room, and you can get started cleaning up?” offered Octavia, and you rise from your seat.
“I’ll take you to your room,” says Vinyl, and the two rise off the couch, Octavia moving back towards her side of the house, while Vinyl leads you down a small hall off to the side on her side. The place is dark, like a small bit of night that never saw dawn, and the doors in it were outlined with glow sticks that were obviously powered by magic, given that Vinyl recharges one that’s flickering as you pass.
“That’s gonna be one of the things you’ll be doing, making sure these aren’t going out, and replacing them when they hit their limit,” she tells you, and you make a mental note of it, before she stops, turns around, and presses her horn against your’s, forcing a bit of magic to pass between you. When it’s over, you feel a slight buzz in the base of your skull, but also somehow, you know how to cast the recharging spell for the glowsticks.
“Now don’t go forgetting that, cause casting that teaching spell is not easy,” she orders, and you rub at your horn with your hoof while nodding, noticing as you did, that you can’t seem to stand up straight, even when you feel you are, as Vinyl seems to be almost an inch taller now.
“Awesome, here’s your place,” she said, and pushed her hoof against the door, opening to a room that seemed...average, all things considered. No glowsticks or the lick, just a bed with a mirror/dresser combo against the wall in front of it.
“Now, my room’s right on the other side of that wall, but I don’t want to hear you saying my music’s too loud or something. I’m not a mare who takes well to criticism, and neither is Octy no matter what she says. Got it?” she says, and you nod again, feeling a bit nervous as, whether she realized it or not, her voice got a slight edge to it, and somehow, she seemed to get even taller as she spoke to you.
“Good, let’s get you unpacked and ready to work then,” she said, and without warning, she lifted your bags off your back, causing you to try and grab them, but her magic was really strong compared to your’s, like a child struggling against an adult, and so you found the things lifted away from you, revealing as they did so, your flank. Your blank flank.
“What in the?” said Vinyl as she looked at it, just dumping the bags in front of the dresser, and coming close to you, making you feel quite small indeed as her hoof pokes at where you cutiemark should be, the cold touch making a thrill run up your spine as you try to pull away, only for her to grab you up in her blue power, and force you to stand there as she investigates your body.
“Well, what do you know? I thought I recognized you. You’re that adult blank flank the three fillies in town were talking about last week. Didn’t they drag you all over trying to help you find your talent?” she asked, and you blushed as you remembered the incident. After the three young fillies in Miss Cheerilee’s class had gotten their cutiemarks, they’d run roughshod over you, and kind of forced you to follow them for several hours. It had not been your finest moment, to have those three young fillies dominate you like that.
“I, yeah, that was me,” you tell her, and blush even harder when she lets out a bark like laugh, but she doesn’t say anything else before walking out of the room, to let you grab the crumpled up bags she’d just dropped, putting everything in your dresser, and then looking at yourself in the mirror.
‘At least the bed is plenty big,’ you think to yourself, as you look over at it, and then start out the door. Over the next hour, your find yourself having two mares ordering you around, as they have you not only clean the house, but do other chores and help them with their music too. It’s back breaking work at times, especially when Vinyl has you haul a huge speaker up to her ‘Wub Nest’ in the attic, but you actually find yourself enjoying it, a the two musicians start their practicing, giving you background music to the chores.
At the end of the day, as the sun slowly starts to set, you smile at yourself, using your magic to levitate the sheets up, and then fold them nicely, before climbing into the bed. Drifting off to sleep, you’re still smiling. Said smile is wiped off your face in the morning, as a blast of wubs wake you, shaking the house, and causing Octavia to scream in frustration. She’s so mad that, when you try to set you hoof on her flank to show your support, she doesn’t even feel it, instead whacking you with that same flank, and then walking all over you, towards her own room.
Over the next few weeks, this pattern continues, the girls giving you tasks to do, usually cleaning, tuning, or grocery shopping, and then seeming to forget you exist. Worse, Vinyl remembers you at the worst times, usually to make fun of you for your blank flank, or how short you are compared to her. She’s not being mean about it, not really, but she’s not gentle either, making the barbs hurt all the more, and each time it makes you wish you could just fold up on yourself and disappear.
Soon enough, the first month passes, and you find yourself embarrassed to go outside. Something about it just feels so...big. At first, you have trouble putting your hoof on it, however, and so you just try to help out around the house. Luckily, there’s plenty to do there, like cooking, cleaning, and even moving supplies around still. Today, for instance, you’re helping Vinyl with a speaker that seems a lot bigger than when you’d put it in her Wub Shack, the thing now looking like it’s at least twice as big as you.
“Okay, lower it down carefully now, Mareservant,” she says from above, and you can feel your cheeks reddening at the sound of her little pet name, even as above, you know she’s not even paying attention. In fact, she’s still making wubs, the vibrations of it making it hard to get a stable stance on the ladder leading up into her special space. Backing down it slowly, one hoof at a time. Almost to the bottom, you are startled when the last step is a bit longer than it should have been, and you fall with a cry, landing hard on the wood below.
“Ow,” you groan for a moment, only to let out a strangled cry as the speaker you’d been holding lands on top of you with a heavy thud. A strangled wheeze comes out of your mouth, as all your air escapes in one breath, leaving you gasping on the floor. Above, Vinyl barely hears your cry, but the deep thud of the speaker is enough to get her attention. Saving her place in her music with a flick of her hooves, she walks casually towards the ladder, and then looks down to see the speaker at the bottom.
“Oh, comeon dude, where the heck did you go?” she says, looking for you. Leaping down, she lands on the speaker with a thunk of hooves on wood, and her weight only makes it harder to breath as she stands there for a few minutes looking around. When she finally decides you’ve vanished, she lets out a groan of disappointment, and hops down off the speaker, grabbing it with her blue magic. Unfortunately for you, she grabs you as well, levitating you into the air for a moment, before she opens a closet, and tosses the speaker inside, your tiny form flying past her without notice, as Vinyl grumbles to herself about having to do everything around here.
Hours pass in the closet, as you try in vain to extricate yourself from the predicament. Around you, mounds of things are piled up, things you remember carrying only a few days ago, but now they’re too heavy to move by hoof, and you can’t get your balance to move them with magic. Luckily for you, at some point. Vinyl realizes she needs something, and when you fail to respond to her shout, she climbs down the ladder, and opens the closet, letting the contents spill out, giving you a much needed gasp of air.
Looking at her, you are finally forced to face the truth. You’re smaller. Not tiny yet, no, you’re about the size of the CMC, a colt or young pony, with strength to match. Of course, you’re only given seconds to come to terms with that, before Vinyl shoves you into the closet again, gathering you up with the mound of stuff and shoving you inside. You aren’t so helpless now though, and are able to escape after only a dozen tries, but when you emerge, you are merely given more things to do, as Vinyl, and even Octavia, don’t seem to notice your predicament.
To wit, when you go to her, to ask her for help, she doesn’t even notice you in her rush to get ready for a concert. Her hooves stomp over the floor, her earth pony strength giving each thud of their impact an almost deafening sound, and telling you to avoid her. You are able to stay back, but every cry you give out only makes you feel more powerless as she continues about her own business, until finally she leaves the room, smacking you with the door as she does so, never even having noticed you.
Weeks later, you’re even smaller. The girls have noticed, but neither says anything. Oh, they claim they’ve been contacting doctors and the like, but if they have, none of them ever come, and you never go to them. Worse, they still expect you to do your chores. Luckily, despite your size going from colt size, to the size of a small puppy, your magic remains, and you’re able to do things like sweep, mop, and even cook. Heck, the last is actually even easier now, as you can sneak bits the two mares can’t even notice.
Today, you’re cleaning under things. Normally a task that is back breaking, for you, you just wander under beds, dressers, and tables, pushing trash and dust out from it, and then gathering it up in a pan. Having done their rooms, you proceed to the living room, where Vinyl and Octavia are both sitting on the couch, going over sheet music. Not wanting to disturb them, you clean up around the edges of the room first, finding spent glow sticks from Vinyl’s raves, discarded sheets from Octavia’s music books, and even what looks like an old peanut butter and zap apple jam sandwich that is squirming, even as you shove it into the trash can, and make a note to burn the stuff inside.
When that’s done, you make your way carefully behind the couch the mares are sitting at, and with the delicate touch of your magic, you life the bottom up. Bringing your brush to bare against the dust bunny menace, you’re about halfway done when Octavia shifts above you suddenly. The couch, as old and worn out as could be while still being usable, drops the bottom, and you find yourself slammed hard from above, as the weight of the classical music pony smashes you into the hardwood floor.
“Hmm, if I take this piece, and move it here in the concert, I’ll have more time for the solo in the third movement,” says Octavia’s voice, as if to punctuate each syllable, she scootches her bottom around, causing the weight above you to lift, and then come down with an almost rhythmic cadence. Each smash leaves you gasping for air, only to have what little you can gather squeezed out of you a second later, as the mare above keeps going, smiling to herself as she works out the perfect arrangement.
“Oh my, I lost track of the time. Vinyl, have him clean up this room a bit when you see our housekeeper next. I think he left his supplies behind the couch. Maybe sweep up as well. After all, you’re the one making his work harder than it needs to be,” she says, the last in a chiding tone, before her hooffalls trail off, and the door opens. Freed from her weight, you drag yourself out from under the couch, coughing and choking as you force air back into your lungs, and then fall onto your side to recover. Above, Vinyl makes a dismissive motion with her forehooves.
“Meh, meh, meh. You make just as much of a mess as I do, Octy,” she says to the door, grabbing the broom and pan in her magic. With a single motion, she forces the pile of debris you’d been gathering into it. Of course, as you’re in said pile now, you are pushed into the pan as well, bristles roughly scratching at your coat, before you are slammed into the back of the metal thing with a tink sound. She then, without looking, dumps the whole thing in the trash, leaving you covered in goop and grime as you finally pull yourself free of it.
The next few days after that see you getting smaller and smaller still going from puppy size, down to rat, and then finally, down to the size of a tiny mouse. Every day now, you have to avoid the hooves of the mares, those massive pillars of bone and flesh falling from the sky with more than enough force to squish you flat. Worse, the mares aren’t even trying to hide the fact that you’re stuck here. Oh, they feel for you, you know they do, but neither wants to admit that they might have done this to you.
So you’re trapped, doing chores, and otherwise cleaning up after messes made by two goddesses, their bodies filling the sky every time they walk by you. When Vinyl needs help, she’ll call up, and expects you to come running, and if you’re slow, she’ll somehow teleport you to her, and then punish you by spinning you on her disks. Octavia, while not as vindictive, seems to have little concern for your tiny scale, often nearly sitting on you, and more than once flattening you beneath books of sheet music.
Tonight, you’re to make the two a meal. Something special, as both are going to be going out all night. Octavia’s quartet has a concert, and Vinyl’s doing an all night rave to celebrate something. This time, they’ve got you making a pizza, which is at least better than those pancakes from the weekend, where Octavia nearly ate you, slapping you onto her food as she rushed out the door. Luckily, you were too slick with butter, and fell down outside, but it was an adventure making it back into the house.
Still, you have to admit, watching as cheese, peppers, and sauces fly overhead, casting great shadows on you, and knowing they move at your command is actually kind of awesome. Once the pizza is ready, you hop onto the board with it, and gently begin to move it towards the oven, setting the thing to a nice heat, flames crackling in the pit below it as the metal thing gets warmer. Sliding the wooden board into it, you let the pizza slip off, only to be shaken as the board is grabbed from behind, and you’re sent flying.
“Hurry up, dude! We’ve got to go!” shouted Vinyl, and you scream as you land with a splat on the pizza, the sauce and cheese getting into your nose, making you cough and sputter. While you recover, outside, the white unicorn sees the pizza is in the oven, and slams the thing shut, before casting a quick spell to make the fire hotter, to make it cook even faster. Inside the oven, you feel the inferno below, each snap and crackle of flames echoing into the space, and making everything wavy.
Sweating already, coughing still with sauce, and now air too hot to breath, you find yourself wobbling towards the side, until everything goes dark. When you awaken, the world is finally cooler, and you take several deep, desperate gulps for air, trying to get enough to cry out to the mares, whose voices seem to be coming from all around you. Rubbing at your eyes, clearing away bleary tears, you look up to see Vinyl and Octavia, their heads like clouds as they look down at you, Octavia with a look of disgust, while Vinyl licks her lips.
“Vinyl, what did you do?” asked the gray mare, and her white companion just chuckled.
“Oh, I just made the cooking go faster. You know, just like everything else around here,” she said, and then a gleaming metal blade appeared in the air beside her, the edge of it glinting wickedly in the light. The blade dove down, burying itself in the landscape around you, and making everything shake like nothing else. The quakes were as bad as Vinyl’s worst bass cannon, and then got even more severe as she did them on the other side, before you found yourself rising in the grip of her magic.
The slice of pizza you were on rose to muzzle level with Octavia, who looked at it, not noticing the tiny bulge of your body in the cheese, and with a shrug, she opened her maw, ready to at least try it. Of course, Vinyl was never one to go halfway with anything, and she jammed the entire slice into her muzzle, causing Octavia to spit it out almost instantly, the mushed up pile, including you, landing back on the rest of the pizza. Cough, choking, and otherwise being miserable, Octavia took the plate with the pizza, and quickly tossed it into the garbage.
“We’ll -hack- ge-cough-t som-gack-ething on the way,” she said to Vinyl, smacking her, and getting a ‘what did I do?’ response, as the two quickly left, allowing you to wallow for a few minutes in the mess in the garbage, before pulling yourself out, and with a gasp, landing heavily on the floor outside. Looking around, you are startled as you actually get to watch as everything grows bigger this time, your reflection in the metal can showing you shrinking, but also, oddly, a tiny spot on your flank becoming visible, at least until you passed out.
When you awaken, finally, what feels like hours later, you’re startled to find everything is huge. Not like you’re the size of a bug, but like you’re the size of a microbe. You can actually see swirling eddies in the air above you, and you’re almost able to see individual photons in the light, as little balls bouncing everywhere. Startled, you find your body freezing up as you stare at everything, until your back feels something cool against it, and you turn to find a huge monolith of silver metal.
It soars into the heavens, climbing higher and higher until it’s out of sight, leaving you with only tiny impression of itself in the corner of your eye. Looking up as far as you can, you find your eyes growing pained, and quickly lower your gaze until you’re staring at your reflection, and you start. It’s you, your mane and coat color clearly visible, but it’s a you with something you’ve never seen before. On your flank is a cutiemark, one that, you might have had for a long time, but only now can you see it.
It’s a pair of hooves. One is white as snow, the other gray as smoke, and both hover in the air above a shape almost too tiny to see, but you know what it is. That tiny speck is you, and the hooves, that’s Vinyl and Octavia. Your special talent, it’s serving them. You don’t know how you know that, but you do know it, and it gives you pause for a long time, as you just stare, dumbfounded at the image before you. In fact, you spend so long staring, that your first hint of movement is when a hurricane hits you.
The force of the wind slams into your tiny body, swirling and twisting around you, and spinning you miles and miles into the sky, before you finally land with a thump. Oddly, you are unhurt by the impact, and you wonder if it’s like bugs that can leap many times their own height. Of course, your train of thought is rocked out of your head by a noise like thunder, but deeper, and with a vibration that makes your chest feel weird, causing you to fall to your side, even as you put your hooves over your ears.
You hear the noise again. Or rather, you feel it, as even covering your ears doesn’t seem to block it, as it comes from all around you, shaking the air. It takes you a few moments sitting there, to realize what it is. It’s voices. You’re so small, you can literally feel sound in the air, watching as it passes by in waves, and yet, you can’t hear it. You’re too small to hear what must be Octavia and Vinyl coming home, making you wonder what you can do, until again, you world is rocked, this time by an impact like a bomb.
Whipping your head around, you turn towards the impact, even as you dive down, the wind of it blowing all around you, but this time it doesn’t pick you up. Instead, you sit there, looking towards the source, and find a massive white pillar, which seems to be miles and miles wide, standing a continent away. It rises after another, more distant impact, sailing closer so that it seems to fill the sky, making you wonder if it will fall and crush you, only for it to land a few hundred yards away, and your eyes can’t help but look up it.
The pillar connects to something, far, far above, and you know what it is, but your mind refuses to comprehend it for several heartbeats. It’s Vinyl. You had used the word goddess to describe her before, her size and scope so much larger than your own, but now she’s...she’s beyond the gods. She is the heavens themselves, not just filling them. Her hairs are like huge pillars, her hooves entire worlds unto themselves, and her motion causes hurricanes as she passes, her hoof before you picking up, and flying over your head.
This time, you’re unable to resist, as the wind drags you forward with it, vaulting you into the air, and then bringing you down hard as it comes to rest, nearly crushing you beneath her tread. Luckily, you’re so small, the space between the floor and her hoof could have contained Canterlot and the mountain it rested on. Instead, you are simply crushed by the weight of knowing how big she is compared to you, before the hoof rises again, and this time, the wind it creates blows you backwards, rather than forwards, and you go sailing.
The world around you whips and twirls violently, making you feel sick to watch it, but unable to close your eyes, staring at the wonders of everything, trying to drink it all in before you inevitably smear yourself on the ground. Of course, soon the view of the world changes from one of white, to gray, as Octavia fills your vision, her face, those deep purple eyes, coming to be the entire sky as far as you are concerned, growing closer and closer, until you slam hard into her muzzle, landing with a grunt on her skin.
When you rise, you are surrounded. Not by hairs, as those are too far apart, but instead by her. Everything around you is Octavia, the sky, the ground, the very air sings with her power. Standing there, for some reason, you aren’t scared, you aren’t even mad at anyone. No, you are accepting. This is your destiny, the one you’d been searching for, and feeling the world with your magic, you begin to clean the house, things so large you can’t comprehend them, moving at your command, to serve the Musical Giants on which you now live.
