Vinyl Fiction

by Waxworks

Rating: mature
Tags: DJ P0N-3, Dark, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Horror, Sex, Science Fiction
Length: 5933

Vinyl Scratch seeks the Blue Ghost; something she sees when her music is just right. Her efforts to reach it are taking their toll, but has she finally found the way?

Vinyl Scratch, the prime DJ in the city, has seen a phenomenon she calls the Blue Ghost while DJing and when on heavy drugs. Her efforts to see the ghost have started coming at a cost, not just to herself, but other ponies in the clubs she plays at. Still, she refuses to stop. It feels too good, and she's sure something will come of it if she can just get the music right.

Published 2017-07-25 20:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2017-07-25 20:00:06 UTC

The Blue Ghost

The music pounded throughout the club, and the lights strobed in time with the incessant beat. Vinyl threw up a hoof and pumped the air along with it as she mixed her tunes harder and faster. Her glasses made the club look far darker than it actually was, allowing the lights to be her only illumination to see what was going on. She glanced out at the dance floor and saw ponies everywhere bumping and grinding. Some had their cybernetics flashing, and she was kind of irked to see a few were off beat. Like, seriously, you can sync the music to the beat. There is literally an app in the club for that specifically.

Vinyl shook her head and focused back on her music. If they didn’t clue in soon, she’d have one of the big boys escort them out. For her music, you needed to be in the ‘zone’, and that included the lights. It was an experience. This wasn’t just dance, oh no, this was a full sensory overload that she had spent her life perfecting.

You’d come in, and be given a chip, and a drug. You had to have the right sensory augment for this, and you still had to have your normal tongue, or it wouldn’t work. You come in, flip on the chip, take the drugs, and then Vinyl would play. The sights, sounds, flashing lights, and the pounding of the beat would all combine with the drugs and the augment to give you the ride of your life. Ponies would lose themselves in it, and when it was all over, remember nothing except the absolute bliss. She was a peddler of sensations, and she was one of the best. She came at a very high price, but ponies were willing to pay to forget a few nights of their dreary lives.

Sadly, Vinyl herself had only a faint idea of what exactly it was that happened, since she didn’t have any of the augments herself. She was pure horsemeat, which was a rarity in this day and age. She’d thought about getting some, but she didn’t know if any of it would impede her ability to play her music the way she normally did. Like, would using the turntable or the mixer be changed if she got hoof improvements? Would her ability to enjoy the drugs she took before each performance be impeded by an improved stomach or mouth? Would she still see the lights the same way if she got eye augments? Ear augments were absolutely out of the question, so she had none, and she intended to keep it that way.

Vinyl looked back out at the crowd, filling the floor below her platform from wall to wall, with all of the guards at the edges. She was reaching the crescendo of a song, and the good part was about to happen. This was when everypony danced for her the way she wanted them to. It gave her such a rush, and the voyeuristic portion of it was not lost on her. She didn’t really care, though.

Vinyl Scratch popped another capsule of Excite!™ in her mouth, and leaned heavily on the mixing console. The music started bending and warping as her hooves moved gracefully across the dials, switches, knobs. She pushed, pulled, turned, and flipped various parts of the controls and groaned in ecstasy. The music thrummed through her body from all sides, even through her headset, and she looked down at the ponies on the club floor.

They were curled up in a writhing mass of bodies, covering it from wall to wall. They were engaged in all sorts of lewd, violent, and insane acts the likes of which they never would have attempted if not for her. Her music ended up pulling out all their inhibitions and causing them to do whatever they wanted to do, deep down in their heart of hearts. The violent ones were extracted from the pile by the guards before they murdered anypony, but she had, on occasion, been asked to play for that purpose. Murders look intentional if you force a pony to do it with music. The sexual acts were allowed to continue, as well as the strange ones or self-mutilation. If ponies wanted to hurt themselves or stare at the ceiling unmoving for the rest of the night, they were welcome to it. She didn’t give any number of shits. She just hoped ponies would eventually remember to get themselves on the damn pill. It wasn’t her fault if they got pregnant while here. They signed a damn waiver before entering.

No, what Vinyl was looking for was what she called the Blue Ghost. Some nights, when playing for the crowd, when it hit this point in the songs, she saw, overlaid in the HUD of her glasses, the Blue Ghost. Only when on Excite!™ and only during the climax of the song, when everypony fell under her sway. It would appear in her glasses and speak to her. She knew it was real because after the first few times, she went to debug her glasses and found traces of code in there she didn’t recognize. She wasn’t the most capable decker, but she recognized there was a trace of somepony else in there. Somepony she didn’t know or recognize. It helped her compose, and helped her perfect her craft in ways she hadn’t imagined doing before. The Blue Ghost was her muse, and she wanted to see her more and more.

Vinyl kept the music going, her vision swimming and the music thumping through her whole body as the crowd went to new heights of debauchery. She started seeing the first hints of her Blue Ghost appearing in her glasses, the text overlay going crazy and spouting gibberish at her as the Blue Ghost took over. The Blue Ghost’s face appeared, that ethereal muzzle smiling calmly at her, it opened its mouth to speak to her and at the first word, there was an explosion on the dance floor. Through the drug-filled haze, Vinyl saw one of the patron’s cranial augment spark and smoke, then explode. At the second word, there was another one, somepony’s foreleg this time.

Every time the Blue Ghost spoke to her, another pony’s augments were destroyed in a fit of fire and smoke. The bouncers were frantically separating the crowd from each other to try to minimize the damage from the continually exploding cybernetics. The patrons themselves were too drug-addled to protect themselves.

The guards motioned up at Vinyl to stop the music, but she could barely move. The Blue Ghost was talking to her, and she barely understood what was happening. On a fundamental level she understood, but her muse was telling her something amazing, and she needed to listen, even if other ponies died, she had to hear what was being said.

One of the guards swiped his access card and burst through the security doors into her booth high above the dance floor. He roughly pulled her off the mixing console and switched the whole thing off. She weakly swiped at him as her Blue Ghost slowly disappeared from her glasses, whispering one last word accompanied by a final explosion from down below. As her ecstasy-laden brain slowly started to pick up on what had happened, she started giggling, then laughing, then promptly blacked out.

The next night, following a visit to her personal physician and an admonishment to ‘cool it’, with the constant drug abuse, Vinyl was sitting in her work room staring at her computer and console. She held her glasses in her hooves and turned them slowly, looking at them carefully. She had no idea what the Blue Ghost was, and after last night, she felt a little wary, but what else was she supposed to do? Give up entirely on seeing it again? She hadn’t told the doctor about, no matter how many times it had happened. Maybe she should.

Being entirely meat meant she was susceptible to a lot of medical issues that augmented ponies weren’t, and she had the distinct disadvantage of being completely unmonitored. Her glasses helped a little, but they were still limited in what they could do.

Vinyl sighed and tossed her glasses onto the desk, then leaned back in her chair, swiveling left and right. She hadn’t gotten the full message from her muse last night, and felt more than a little disheartened. She’d have to run a previously built mix for her next show. None of the attendees would care, but she would, and that was the important part.

She looked over at the newsfeed pulled up on one screen about last night’s show: “9 dead at DJ Pon3’s latest show. Augments haywire with unknown cause!”

As amusing as it was, this wouldn’t be a detriment to ticket sales at all. In fact, it would probably increase the amount of tickets she sold as thrill-seekers and anti-augment activists latched onto the news. Some ponies thought she hated augments because she didn’t have any, but that wasn’t true at all. You needed at least the cranial augment to properly enjoy her shows, so it was required. No explaining that to some ponies, though. Some were just that stupid.

Vinyl lit her horn up and flipped through the channels until she got to her email and sifted through them, seeing if anything new had come up. Most of it was just spam fan mail she never responded to. Acting aloof seemed to get her more and more fans for some reason. There was just no reasoning with some ponies.

She stopped when she reached one email from an unknown recipient. Her eyes widened as she looked at the gibberish in the subject heading. This was the same text used by her Blue Ghost! She hastily opened it and sifted through the plainly unfinished text.

She couldn’t read it.

She slammed a hoof on the desk in frustration. Of course she couldn’t read it. She wasn’t high, nor was her music playing. She rubbed at her face in anger. Her next show wasn’t until tomorrow! This was going to drive her crazy until she could figure out what it meant. A full day and a half of not knowing was simply unacceptable!

She lit up her horn and floated over her bag. She opened it up and tossed aside disks, clothes, and documents until she found her little capsule. She popped it open, took out some Excite!™ and popped it in her mouth, then turned back to her computer and flipped it on full blast. The music hammered into her, shaking her chair and knocking some things off the desk. She put on her glasses and stared at the email, waiting and praying that it start making sense. She felt the Excite!™ start taking effect and her vision began to swim. Blackness took hold at the edges and worked its way inward until the only thing she could see was the email. Slowly the text started twisting until it started to make sense, coalescing into a message only for her.

Quickly, Vinyl picked up a pen and started scribbling down the message on the wall. She briefly thought about using paper or typing, but she didn’t want to accidentally delete it or lose the paper when the Excite!™ really hit her. This way, she couldn’t possibly lose it or erase it unless the whole wall came down. She scratched frantically at the wall, horn blazing and flickering as the world moved and shifted. She spun around in her chair as she really got going, hooves held high as colour danced across the ceiling with her music.

Some time later, Vinyl pulled herself to a sitting position and looked around her studio. Wires were unplugged and strewn everywhere. Her chair was upended with the pen stabbed into the back of the headrest, and one of her monitors had a writing program open with gibberish mashed into it.

The mention of gibberish made her remember what she had been doing instead of working, and she hastily wiped the drool from her cheek and stood up, looking at the wall she had written on. There were pen strokes through the middle of the message here and there, but it was still entirely readable! She clapped her hooves together and bounced up and down in delight, giggling. Her Blue Ghost had sent her a message! Her! Specifically! All this time she worried she was just another stop on the Blue Ghost’s travels through cyberspace, but this proved that there was more to their relationship than that. She could only hope this would help her find out exactly what that might be. The Blue Ghost constantly helped her with her music, so Vinyl wouldn’t mind if it was just more of that, but surely there was some sort of bigger reason the Blue Ghost came to her so often, and why it had felt the need, after all this time, to act out against those who attended her shows. That was odd.

“DJ Pon-3, whereupon you chance to receive and interpret this message, book a show at the SubVentri Neon club. I will know, and I will arrive at the usual time.” The message read. She had to read underneath some curse words and other lines she’d scribbled on top, but she was fairly certain she got it. It didn’t seem quite long enough for the message written in the email. It was not a one to one transcription of the amount of words in the email, where there was a whole second paragraph in the email beyond just the one sentence Vinyl had translated.

That was confusing and a little worrying. It either meant she had missed it during her trip, or she hadn’t been able to translate it during the trip, which was strange in and of itself. She didn’t want to fail her muse, so she had been hoping to get the whole thing. If there was some other requirement she failed to bring, she might get in trouble.

Vinyl shook her head and started cleaning up her studio. If her Blue Ghost was going to chastise her for being a failure, so be it. She was DJ Pon-3! Most highly requested nightclub musician in Manehatten Novus! She would show up, perform, and discuss everything with her Blue Ghost when it came down to it.

Vinyl hopped a little and smiled wide. This was going to be a show to remember! There was no way she was going to be denied no matter what night she requested. SubVentri Neon was on the seedier side of town, and barely had room for 100 guests. It was poorly rated in every periodical that bothered to describe it, and then, usually only in passing to talk about how somepony got some rare disease from the shitty drugs that were peddled outside it.

Vinyl reattached the cords to her mixing console and started creating something new. Her muse had contacted her and she was feeling beyond excellent! This show was going to be expensive beyond belief, and SubVentri Neon would never know what hit them!

She shot off a message to the head of her personal security force, asking him to book her a night at the club. It didn’t really matter now that she knew she was going to be contacted. She couldn’t have handled the struggle of not knowing what was in the email, but now that she was certain she would be contacted, she could wait a whole month if necessary.

She chuckled when the inevitable response came: “At Subventri Neon? That hole?”

She shot him a quick message in the affirmative, and he gave her the okay. “Whatever you say, boss.”

She nodded, pleased, and left him to handle the arrangements. He’d get everything ready, handle security, handle the dates, times, and most everything else. There was a reason he got half her earnings. He was worth that much and more, and she wanted him to know that so long as he kept doing well, he’d never be taken for granted.

She stared at her music and smiled, cutting, pasting, copying, repeating, adding in heavier bass, and making sure that the song she was going to use for the climax everyone would be waiting for would be just perfect. Nopony expected to go home the same after her shows, and at a place like SubVentri Neon, ponies would be expecting that something special was up. She didn’t want to let them down.

After a short while, a message came up. “Show’s in two days. At a club like SubVentri Neon, I figure you got somethin’ big planned, so I cancelled tomorrow’s show. That’ll give you time to prepare, boss.”

Vinyl nodded, pleased. That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.

The next day was filled with constant changes to her music. Some parts weren’t standing up to her scrutiny as much as she might have liked them to, so she cut, and re-cut constantly. If her Blue Ghost was going to show up, it was going to be some of the best work she had ever created. She barely took time to eat, only stopping for a short time at the urging of her head of security. Same with sleep. She was too excited, but when he reminded her that she didn’t want to be nodding off during such an important performance, she took a few hours to rest.

He also told her he had gotten a pleading letter from the show she’d blown off. Fans weren’t happy, and neither was the venue, but she told him to just refund the whole lot of them to get them to shut up.

“That’s… uncharacteristically kind of you, but alright.” He said, bewildered.

She normally had a ‘no refunds’ policy, because she was in such high demand. She could go wherever, whenever, and most just had to deal with it. This time, she wanted to be left alone. It also had the benefit of making all the tickets to SubVentri Neon go for that much more. She could literally charge whatever she wanted and ponies would still buy it. Especially with the news that she’d blown off a high-end client for SubVentri Neon. She’d probably nearly bankrupted the poor club she’d ignored. She could hear the news now: ‘DJ Pon-3 cancels show at Ritz-on-Crackers to play at dive bar instead!’

She didn’t feel bad, though. Ritz-on-Crackers was boring. She only played for them because they kept paying her ever-increasing prices for them. If they wanted to waste their money on her, so be it. She even purposely played poorly for them to see if they noticed. They didn’t.

The big day came, and as soon as the afternoon arrived, Vinyl was showered, cleaned, brushed, and shined, and standing at the back entrance of SubVentri Neon with her personal cadre of security forces arguing with the lone security pony. She kept her smile on, but after the third time he insisted they had security covered, her head guard roughly shoved the fellow out of the way. Vinyl grinned and pranced inside. They’d have to kick everyone out that was already in there. She needed to set up, and that meant shutting the place down so she could get her custom gear in place.

Ponies were roughly ejected from the building as her security scoured the building. Somepony thought he would be cute and try to hide in the ceiling of the bathroom for a free DJ Pon-3 show. Cute, but ineffective.

Vinyl, meanwhile, paid very little attention to what was going on outside of her equipment. The venue itself was definitely not built for a performer of her caliber. The power grid was barely going to be able to handle all of her gear. She frowned and motioned over her head of security, pointing at the measurements. He nodded and made a call, and likely a bribe, but either way, the lights suddenly got brighter. She wasn’t one to argue with results. She bumped hooves with him and grinned wide. SubVentri Neon had tried to set up for her, and she appreciated the effort, but they were just far too shitty.

Eventually, everything was connected. It took her several hours to change everything SubVentri Neon had given her to work with, but at least they tried. She ran some experimental beats, causing dust to fall from the ceiling, and making some of the walls vibrate ominously, but she nodded in satisfaction. She was prepared.

She turned everything down and played some boring regular music and let a few of the ponies back in to enjoy the hours before the show was to start. She was here as a gift, so she might as well be nice. Those she let back in were told in no uncertain terms that they were to leave by 9:00pm, or they would be ejected from the premises forcefully, and not nicely. That was the extent of her benevolence.

She was informed the line had already started forming outside and smiled. Her Blue Ghost should definitely be pleased by that. She fiddled with her glasses, changing the spectrum they were filtering, trying to see if anything was out of the ordinary with the venue. She wanted to say there was something odd, but if there was, it wasn’t very strong. She didn’t put much stock in it, instead just attributing it to her wishful thinking.

9:00pm eventually came, and to a pony, every single pony who was inside left. Deciding it was better to not incite her wrath. She had her guards keep most of the employees out, except for the bartender. She was equipped with the necessary gear to survive Vinyl’s performance and remain lucid. Ponies would expect a certain caliber of drink when they came here, and if she was good enough at mixing, her career was made, having worked during a performance of DJ Pon-3. The poor mare actually looked scared. Vinyl hoped she could handle what was about to happen.

Ponies were allowed to file in, making sure they fit the criteria. They had to prove it to get the tickets in the first place, but some folks tried to get somepony else to buy the ticket for them. They were ejected with extreme prejudice and given no refunds. Read the damn rules, ponies.

Once all the ponies had filed in, with an even more massive crowd piled up outside to try to get a glimpse of whatever she had prepared for this unusual performance. Her security head had called in backup forces, probably spending a lot of her money to do so, but Vinyl didn’t care. He was smart, and well-paid. It was in his own best interests to keep her alive and well. She wasn’t focused on the money anyway. This was the moment! Her Blue Ghost was going to visit her!

Vinyl gave herself a once-over to make sure everything was prepared. Her glasses were cleaned and functioning fine, she’d brushed her mane and styled it. She had even filed her hooves to make sure they were clean and proper. She was ready for this, no matter what would happen.

She stepped into her booth and looked down at the crowd. None of them could see her eyes, but she was scanning the crowd for anypony that might possibly be her Blue Ghost. Having only seen her in the net, she had no idea if she would still appear the same outside of it, but she thought she’d try. The crowd stared back expectantly, just waiting for her to do something. The only one who wasn’t staring was the bartender, who was busy mixing a drink like it was any other day. Vinyl liked her. She made a mental note to hire her herself.

Vinyl looked over the crowd once more, disappointed that she couldn’t find anypony that might be her Blue Ghost, but she would have to just satisfy herself with waiting. She had said ‘the usual time’, which meant at the climax of the show, when the ponies were deep in the throes of mindless self-indulgence of their particular vice. That would have to do. She could wait. She had to wait.

Vinyl put on her headphones, and heard the crowd give a collective intake of breath. All eyes but two were on her, and she smiled wide, showing the crowd her pearly white teeth. She lifted her hooves in the air, held them for an agonizingly long time until some ponies started to fidget, then slammed them down on her console and started the music.

A cheer went out from those present, and they started dancing. It always began pretty normal, and those who had been to one or two of her shows before were pretty easy to pick out. They were just standing around, enjoying the music, but not dancing very hard. They might bob their head a bit, but mostly they were drinking slowly or watching other ponies. Maybe even picking out targets for when things got crazy.

Vinyl grinned. They should know by now they couldn’t avoid taking the drugs. She motioned to her security head and pointed them out. They’d take their drugs, or they’d be removed from the building. Nopony got to sit idly by while she was playing. You danced, or you left. Forcibly.

As her security went about handing out extra hooffuls of drugs and making sure every one of them had the chip in their augment, Vinyl waited until she was given the signal, then turned up the beat. Getting past that first hurdle was an annoyance, but a necessary one. Everypony had to be in the right frame of mind as she worked them into the next step.

Pony’s inhibitions were lowered by drink, drugs, and subliminal effects, and she started getting into a much more sinister beat. Low and heavy, but still rather slow, the thumping of the music shook the stage, the building, and the ponies on the dance floor. Their cranial augments supplemented by her own special program sent wave after wave of artificial pleasure into them, and they danced even harder.

Vinyl went from slow and low, to high and fast, revving up the beats per minute to get the ponies down on the floor worked into a lather, getting their heart rates up and releasing endorphins to help them feel even better about what they were doing. A sort of… addiction to her music, if you will. If they associated her shows with that feeling, they’d keep coming back, after all. No matter how much it cost them. It was part of why she was so popular after all. Vinyl smiled wider, pumping a hoof into the air as the music went on. Maybe it was also why she kept playing. It was a hell of a rush.

She kept going, an hour or two passing by in a blink as she popped her own Excite!™ pill. The first was just coming down when it was about time for the climax of the show. She breathed hard as she checked her glasses, making sure they were functioning well. Her playlist was in one corner of the HUD, and the email from her Blue Ghost was in another corner. She kept watching it for any signs or other messages, but nothing came so far. She was ready for whatever was coming, though. Her pulse sped up and she downed a glass of water, her security going to fetch a refill without even being told. She swallowed hard, a lump in her throat, but then slammed the switch for the climax.

The lights went crazy, flashing neon at a swift and steady pace, and the music switched to a low and heavy thrum, once again shaking the entire building as she turned it up. She popped her second Excite!™ of the night as a cheer went up from the crowd. It was swiftly neutered as things started going crazy, and ponies lost control of themselves. Her security head pushed the bartender down behind her counter, and Vinyl started laughing maniacally.

The music pounded incessantly, beating a sinister cadence to the writhing mess of ponies on the floor beneath her. Security wrestled all the violent ones off to a separate room where they could fight each other. In the process, one security guard got bit in the neck and lost a chunk of flesh. Vinyl just shook her head in dismay. He should have been more careful. If he survived, he would learn.

She turned back to the ponies on the floor in front of her and turned up the bass further. Her Blue Ghost was coming, and if this was what brought her out, she’d give it even more! Ponies on the floor were losing control, some even started frothing at the mouth as Vinyl forced her incessant music into their heads.

“Dance!” The music commanded.

“Perform for me!” It shouted.

A deep and resonant order burrowing deep into their subconscious.

Vinyl watched a trio of ponies ripping at each other’s clothes. All stallions lost in the throes of her song. Elsewhere a single mare stood naked on a table, undulating to the rhythm while a cadre of stallions stared blankly. One of the stallions finally got tired of watching and tilted the table, making her fall into their grasping hooves, and she disappeared under the pile. In another part of the dance floor, somepony was self-flagellating with a belt, while others near him watched in rapt fascination as he raised welts all up his back.

Despite all the completely off-the-wall behavior most were exhibiting, there was still some tame things going on as well. Off at one part of the dance floor, Vinyl could see through the strobe a few ponies just standing still staring straight upward, while another pony was cutting their manes off. Amusing, but they certainly didn’t stand out.

As Vinyl watched all the ponies dance to her music, she started to see changes occurring in her glasses. The text started warping, and she knew her Blue Ghost was on its way. Her eyes fluttered halfway closed and she sighed in bliss as the screen of her glasses started shifting to blue, and the words moved to create an ASCII face. It gazed at her with a small smile and mouthed something she couldn’t quite make out. There was no sound to go along with it, but she knew, somehow, that the Blue Ghost was pleased.

The Blue Ghost played music in her headphones for only Vinyl to hear. Secret songs that would make everypony who heard them love her, adore her, and dance for her. They would listen, and they would obey. Vinyl started moving her hooves to play some of the music. The current song stopped, and some of the ponies started pulling themselves together, slowly realizing where they were and what was happening. Vinyl’s head of security looked worried, and stepped toward her in concern. Vinyl raised a hoof to motion him back. Vinyl’s hooves flew across the mixing console, and just as some of the ponies were collecting themselves, she flipped a switch, and the bass started up again.

It was the most perfect sound Vinyl had ever heard, and she threw her head back in ecstasy, eyes rolling back in her head. The ponies down below did likewise, to a pony falling down to the floor motionless. Vinyl looked down and saw her head of security looking around in confusion, but she waved a hoof dismissively at him and he backed down, watching her carefully. Her hooves moved across the console some more, making sure everything was perfect, then she hit repeat and moved to her computer and keyboard, hooves beginning to type furiously.

Her Blue Ghost had shown her how to work with both the augments and the music in a chaotic and beautiful dance. In the years she’d been chasing it, she had been given tidbits here and there. Morsels, and nothing more. It had rankled that she couldn’t extrapolate any of it from what she’d been given, and up until now she wasn’t sure if it was a problem with her, or the Blue Ghost’s information. She could see now that it wasn’t her, and it wasn’t the Blue Ghost. She finally had the last piece of the puzzle, and it was never anything she could have figured out. This wasn’t a song, nor was it a program or a drug. This was something else entirely.

Vinyl typed while the music played, letting the ponies enjoy themselves as much as they wanted. It would be a night to remember for certain. It’s too bad none of them would remember it.

Finally, when she was satisfied it was all in place, and that the code was impeccable, she took one last look at the crowd down below, and motioned to her security guard to be watchful. She waited for his nod back, then hit enter, pushing the code into the receiving chip every attendee had attached to their heads. This was the reason for her strict attendance policies.

Everypony down on the floor jerked and shuddered as the code forced its way into their cranial augments, stray electrical signals making them twitch. There were a couple of shorts here and there, an electric burst indicating somepony didn’t have an augment sturdy enough to handle what she was sending out. She went back to the mixing console and double-checked everything, making sure the right frequency was going out, and nodded, watching and waiting.

The movements down below stopped entirely, and Vinyl was worried something had gone wrong, but slowly, one or two hooves here and there started moving, twitching along with the beat of the music. It started with a single pony, but slowly, more and more hooves got going, muscles spasming along with Vinyl’s carefully engineered tune. The incessant thumping provided the heartbeat of a crowd of ponies, slowly pulling themselves up from the floor. All of them in different states of disarray, but all moving in sync with the rhythm.

Vinyl bobbed her head in time, grinning wide as she watched the ponies pull themselves up, every movement perfectly tuned to the music. Her Blue Ghost, seemed to smile as well. The ASCII mouth in Vinyl’s HUD upturned in amusement or enjoyment. It didn’t matter which. She had successfully accomplished what she had begun all those years ago. The last part was just about ready.

Every pony on the dance floor was now standing, and they were all moving in a perfectly choreographed dance, shifting to and fro, not a single step out of place among them. Their eyes were glassy, and vacant as they stared at nothing, only caring about the rhythm.

Vinyl blew a kiss she didn’t know her Blue Ghost could see, but her Blue Ghost disappeared from her glasses. She watched, and waited, and her music warped as the whole building’s electrical system shorted out, the rhythm coming to a halt. Arcs of light illuminated the building, followed by her security head’s horn light. Vinyl wasn’t worried, though. She looked down below at the crowd, standing in a perfect square. They all looked up at her and opened their eyes, every single one of them glowing a bright blue.

“Let us dance, my beautiful DJ.” They said in unison.

Vinyl grinned wickedly.

THE END.