shitty octascratch might delete later idk

“Hey, Vinyl, can you play me that record? Y’know, the one I reeeeaaaally like~”

She didn’t talk for Pinkie, perhaps the pony who knew her best in all Equestria aside from Octavia. It was different, with her. It was a form of respect, really. Even if she was closer to Octavia, and Vinyl certainly respected Octavia Melody in her own ways, she didn’t offer her the same courtesies that she did to Pinkie Pie.

Funny that. The closer she got to ponies, the more damage she could inflict upon them.

So when there was a certain level of respect—an almost (almost...) professional respect, in the case of Pinkie Pie—Vinyl kept a degree of distance.

She gave Pinkie a nod, and she smiled back. Vinyl quite enjoyed how Pinkie seemed to so fluently read her body language. Sure, there were others who could sort of get the gist, but Pinkie somehow had the ability to pick up on the little bits and nuances nopony else did.

Well, almost nopony else.

Pinkie’s music taste was eclectic, and Vinyl wouldn’t have had it any other way. Really, anything with a fast enough BPM and suitable energy in the performance was enough to get the party going for her (Vinyl died inside a bit at the pun), but Pinkie’s clear favorites? Vinyl couldn’t say the mare lacked taste. She had a knack for finding the most infectious, blood-pumping, yet somehow lasting and simultaneously fresh records of the genres she dug, from polka to bubblegum bass. Fuck, she’d even turned Vinyl onto some gryphon pop punk she’d never heard before that was as visceral as it was flank-shaking.

Vinyl really had no trouble saying it to herself as she watched the bubbly mare sashay away off into the waves of the party: Pinkie Pie was certainly a taste-setter.

Vinyl, of course, did make sure she only said that to herself. Perhaps Pinkie could already sense her feelings in her vibe. Wouldn’t surprise her.

There was no need to go and ruin a good thing and get Vinyl’s voice involved at any rate.

Vinyl smirked as she picked Pinkie’s select of the night from her record bay. She’d updated her turntable setup recently to have a jukebox feature, with a little modern touch: a chunk of CRT screen that displayed her musical library, as well as joystick from a scrapped arcade cabinet she’d nabbed at a resale auction. With a bit of simple programming (and a LOT of typing), she’d managed a basic display of her catalog of most-used records in her turntable that she could navigate.

She dropped her hoof into the joystick knob, and piloted her way through her vast-and-ever growing music library to “party metal”. She smirked as she heard the click after pressing the red plastic button (scavenged from the same arcade cabinet the joystick had once belonged to) situated right beside that treacherous chunk of cathodes, and watched as the little metal claw inside her jukebox-top mount just to the right of her snagged a disc by the hole in its middle and slid it out through a tiny slot directly into her waiting hooves.

Really, sometimes, honestly, it wasn’t all that bad.

Everything was still very bright, gleaming a bit too harsh on her eyes—but hey, that’s okay. That’s what the shades were for.

She was chill. She could handle this.

The disc dropped into place, and Vinyl smirked as the roaring major-keyed guitars and thundering bass roared from the subwoofers on her deck. When the drums kicked, there was no way to describe the sensation emotionally. Her whole body shook, right down to the marrow. Fuck it, she could feel her blood cells themselves vibrating, every neuron trembling as her horn sparked and she cranked the volume.

She was almost equine, here.

Almost real.

But it never lasts.

She looked down

And here the record spun
Spun
Spun
Spun

Slip
Skid
Spun
Star—