Played on Strings

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Rating: teen
Tags: Thriller, Octavia, Science Fiction, Adventure, Crossover, DJ P0N-3, Doctor Who, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Colgate, Death
Length: 30367

Strange forces are meddling in Octavia's life. New music and ancient magic collide as warring forces attempt to gain a foothold in Equestria’s music scene and take control of the culture.

All her life, Octavia has felt like she’s been dancing to another’s tune. She’s grown used to the feelings of deja vu and being strung along, and has found success in spite of her strange feelings -- friends, a good job, a wife. Her latest gig, however, threatens to throw open her past and set her future on a wildly different trajectory. Powerful forces are warring for control of Octavia’s fate, and time is running out. Take a seat -- the concert is about to begin.

Part of the Wibblyverse Continuity.
Part one of Doctor Whooves: Friendship is Wibbly Series 2
Previous Story:Mind and Matter
Next Story: The Secret Garden

Published 2021-08-28 03:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-10-03 03:43:45 UTC

Hello, Goodbye

Music, as many individuals will tell you, has incredible power. It has the impossible ability to stir up feelings of love and joy and beauty in the hardest of hearts. It can stay with you for hours, even days, pumping through your veins like lifeblood. It brings people together. But there is another side to music. Its abilities are not solely positive. There are songs which call up memories of loss, of fear, of pain. They stay with you for hours, even days, grating on your mind like a bow drawn across a string. They are haunting and beautiful and terrible. And they never really leave you.

One such song is being played even now, a rehearsal of a grimly compelling disasterpiece in a far grander sin-phony. In a house on a cliff overlooking the grey and murky sea, the haunting melody of a bow rubbing a string cuts as deeply as a blade rubbing across a neck. The metronome ticks out its time, a comforting constant in a sea of uncertain change and terrible beauty. Comforting, that is, until the listener realizes that the music is not being played in time with the frantic ticks. The music is deep and slow and ominous, like a circling shark. The maestro plays on.

The bow is as thin and pale as bone. The instrument is stained darker in some spots than others beneath the varnish. It is best not even to speculate about the strings. Slowly but surely, the metronome reduces its speed, decelerating in fits and stops and flailing strokes, but at long last it succumbs and ceases to tick entirely.

The music continues for a few notes more, and then the bow is off the strings. There is no grand flourish, nor even a small one. It is simply and geometrically removed. The room is silent, and then the silence grows textured. A fanciful listener might suppose that they could hear the barest memory of applause, an echo of glory.

The maestro bows to the emptiness. It was a good rehearsal. The only thing he needed now was his audience.

Octavia hummed a little as she arranged her luggage. Her wife watched idly from the doorway. “Need any help, Octy?”

“No thank you, Vinyl. I believe I can manage to sort out what I’ll need. Let me see. Socks, no. Dresses, none. Dress shirts, ditto. Collars, three. Bow ties…” she quickly multiplied out the columns and rows. “Twenty-eight.”

Vinyl blinked. “I thought you were going to be gone for a week.”

“Yes, you’re quite right,” Octavia agreed. “Twenty-eight won’t be nearly enough.”

The unicorn snorted back a laugh. “You aren’t going to go out and buy more, are you?”

Octavia rolled her eyes and sniffed. “Don’t be a third-chair percussionist, Vinyl. There’s nowhere near enough time, for one thing.”

They stood in silence for a long moment. As ever, Octavia cracked first, breaking down in peals of laugh-snorts. Vinyl Scratch lasted only another few seconds before cracking a grin and letting out hissing snickers. “Oh, Octy. Have fun at your gig, alright?”

“Oh, no fear there, Vi,” the grey mare said, grinning sunnily. “Seaside, fresh air, bright weather… it will be wonderful.”

Vinyl snorted. “Well, in that case, don’t have too much fun. I really don’t wanna have to travel all the way to… wherever you’re performing… to bail you out. Not after Trottingham.”

Octavia pouted. “Oh, poor Vinyl. You spend all your time in clubs, and you don’t know how to party…”

The unicorn rolled her eyes. “Octavia, I swear, if you get drunk and start dancing on tabletops in whatever bar that town has…”

“It’s called Hayburg, I seem to recall.”

“Not exactly the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra, huh?”

“No, and thank Celestia for that!” Octavia rolled her eyes. “Those bores wouldn’t know avant-garde if it hit them over the head with a mallet while dancing the Pony Pokey in a rainbow leotard.”

Vinyl paused. “It sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Oh, very much so,” Octavia agreed happily. “That was a good night. For me. Less so for the woodwinds!”

“You goof,” Vinyl chuckled, leaning in to nuzzle her wife's neck. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“I assure you, my love, that I shall miss you no less,” Octavia replied lightly, snapping her suitcase closed. “Come along, Vinyl. The others will be arriving shortly, I’ve no doubt.”

Octavia strode through the streets of Ponyville like a goddess, unburdened by care. Vinyl struggled along behind her with her suitcases. Octavia had fairly reasonably pointed out that for all the good an earth pony's strength was, the luggage was too large for her to carry, and it would be more convenient for Vinyl to levitate them along. For her part, Vinyl didn't object. She had been the pack mule in their relationship for years now, and she had grown used to it.

Octavia's cello was the sole exception. Octavia could handle that instrument like it was an extension of her body. Vinyl wouldn’t go so far as to say that the cello was her wife’s sole love, but it was usually the only thing that the mare wanted between her legs.

Vinyl chuckled. On the one hoof, an asexual cellist raised by a strict mother, sent to boarding school, and placed in one of the most well-respected orchestras on the planet. On the other, a DJ from lower Manehattan, raised by two parents best described as laissez-faire, attended public school up to graduation day, and famous in the club world. If you had to pick which one was going to be the wilder of the two, you would be wrong. Octavia was, in Vinyl’s considered opinion, a perfect rebel against everything her mother had tried to make her into. The cellist was crass, snarky, and usually at least a little bit drunk, on alcohol, music, or both. Her friends and bandmates were… well, usually they were more responsible than Octavia, with the possible exception of Beauty Brass. However, they were eager to follow in the cellist’s hoofsteps all the way off the edge of a cliff.

And I’m just letting them loose on a little village by the sea, Vinyl thought guiltily. If I didn’t have that gig in Baltimare next week... Ah well. Hope Hayburg has good property insurance. Good luck, dudes. Sooner you guys than me.

“Oh, look, they’re already here!” Octavia trilled, jerking Vinyl from her reverie. “Come along, love, I’m sure they’d love to say hello.”

The unicorn glanced up. The usual suspects were trotting over.Frederick Horseshoepin, Beauty Brass, and of course, Harpo. Vinyl grinned weakly. “Yay,” she said.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t like her wife’s bandmates; all of them were tremendously charming, in their own separate ways. They all had similarly peculiar senses of humor. Fred and Beauty were a very sweet couple, and Harpo was a marvelous artist -- a photographer and painter as well as a musician. Taken on their own, they were all positively enchanting, scintillating company, and ponies who Vinyl was always pleased to list as her friends.

When they were all together… well, that was a different matter.

Nevertheless, she grinned at the approaching trio of ponies. “Hey, Freddie, how’s it shakin’?” she asked warmly, taking the white-maned stallion by the hoof.

The tall stallion grinned back at her. Then, not quite unexpectedly, he began to shake his tail jerkily back and forth and up and down. “It’s shaking pretty well, I’d say,” he replied with a slight wink. “And yourself, Mrs. Scratch?”

Vinyl smirked. “I’m doing pretty well, too. Got a gig in Baltimare comin' up. Guess we’re all getting a taste of the sea this week.”

Frederick’s bright smile could light up a dark room. He had a sort of aura to him, the kind that came from sheer contentment with and understanding of the world. Which, no surprise there, given that he was the eldest and best-travelled of the band.

“Hey, c’mon, Fred, don’t monopolize our poor DJ friend,” a sky blue mare said lightly, bumping him aside with one curvaceous flank. She smiled at Vinyl, her adorable, youthful face framed by a cloud of brown hair. When the two had first met, the unicorn had barely been able to get a word out through the haze of brain-addling attraction. But she was older, now. More mature. “Bello, Heauty.”

Octavia swallowed a giggle. Beauty smirked lecherously. Vinyl’s face turned so red that Big Mac would be jealous. Fred winked. “None of your up-and-down, in-and-out, twenty-four-seven-up-and-over-the-hedge, now, Beauty.”

Vinyl blinked, momentarily distracted from her embarrassment. “What does that mean?”

Fred shrugged. “No idea, but it sounded good, didn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, you two, stop teasing the poor mare,” the last member of the quartet admonished, stepping up. He looked like a younger Frederick, but painted blue and deep violet.

Vinyl smiled. “Hey, Harpo.”

Born Harpsichord Parish Nandermane, the stallion had cut his name down to the far more manageable ‘Harpo Parr’ early in his career, on grounds that it could be printed in larger letters on a libretto or musical program. He was soft-spoken, a tad shy around strangers, but terrifically loyal. If Octavia was the group’s brains (an admittedly terrifying thought), Fred was the soul, Beauty the backbone, and Harpo the conscience. He nodded at the unicorn. “Hello to you too, Vinyl.”

The unicorn was struck once again by how oddly similar the group was. Fred and Harpo could have been father and son, and Octavia had Beauty’s hairstyle, except a bit longer. They all had remarkably similar manes, actually. As far as Vinyl knew, that had been true even before they had split ties with the CSO to form their own ‘avante-garde’ chamber music group. Given what she had seen of Octavia’s childhood photos, it was entirely possible that it had been true for as long as they had been alive.

“So, when do you guys need to catch your train?” Vinyl asked.

Frederick put a hoof to his chest. “Don’t tell me you’re that eager to see the tail ends of us.”

“Oh, lovely Vinyl,” Octavia wheedled.

“Gorgeous Vinyl,” Beauty put in.

“Brilliant Vinyl, you wouldn’t want us to go already?”

“Course she wouldn’t, patient mare like her. Oh kindly Vinyl!

“Fantastic Vinyl.”

“Charity Vinyl.”

“Perfect Vinyl, you wouldn’t see us off without a bit of lunch first, would you?”

Laughing, Vinyl held up a hoof to ward off the steadily encroaching bandmates. “Alright, alright, fine. Octy, whaddya think, Sugarcube Corner?”

The grey mare’s eyes lit up. “Brilliant! Ooh, you lot are gonna love meetin’ Pinkie Pie. Remember that time we played the Gala, the one where old Bluey got a cake smashed over his head? She’s the one who had us do the Pony Pokey!”

“Always good to meet a fan,” Beauty grinned.

“Yeah, especially one who really understands the music we’re tryin’ to make,” Frederick added drily. Vinyl sometimes wished that she could tell when Octavia and her quartet were being facetious.

“Come on,” the dun stallion continued with a toss of his head. “Let’s get over there, I’m starved.”

The party trickled down the road toward the pastry shop. However, Harpo hesitated for a moment, glancing over his shoulder. He felt as though he were being watched. Across the road, he glimpsed a figure standing in the shadowy window of a closed music shop for the merest of seconds, framed by saxophones and violins. But then he blinked, and it was gone.

The harpist shook his head after a moment and trotted after his bandmates. From the shadows behind him, a nearly-invisible figure watched him go. Dark eyes glittered from behind an ossified mask that obscured its features.

Vinyl led the quartet through the doors of the gingerbread house bakery. “Nice place,” Harpo murmured appreciatively, glancing around.

Octavia grinned and quickly secreted herself in a nearby booth. Vinyl frowned slightly, but none of the others seemed to give any kind of notice. “Oh, Pinkie!” Octavia called. “Have you met my friends?”

Vinyl’s stomach dropped. “Tavi, don’t--”

“They’re new in town!”

There was a bang. The next thing anypony knew, they were covered in confetti and wearing party hats. “Hi there!” Pinkie said from behind her party cannon. “Welcome to Ponyville!”

Octavia burst into laughter as her three bandmates stood there, stupefied. Vinyl rolled her eyes, but took a bite of the cake she was suddenly and inexplicably holding. Frederick recovered first. “Alright, Tavi,” he said, waggling a hoof at her playfully. “Alright, you got us right good. Just so long you realize this means war.”

Octavia smirked. “Be a bit of a boring gig if it didn’t.”

“True, true,” Frederick agreed. “Be hell on old Tapper, though.”

“Like she said,” Beauty said, sliding into the booth across from Octavia. “Wouldn’t be any fun it it wasn’t.”

“Ooh! Who’s Tapper? Are they visiting Ponyville for the first time, too?” Pinkie asked, rolling a cart of pastries to the booth.

“‘Fraid not,” Harpo said, snagging a cupcake off the edge. “She’s our conductor, meeting us at our gig.”

“Party’d be wasted on her, anyway,” Beauty said. “She’s a bit uptight.”

“More tightly strung than my bowhairs,” Octavia agreed. “Still, she has her moments.”

Vinyl glanced up at the clock. “Hey, guys? You might want to make this to go. Your train leaves in fifteen minutes.”

“Is that all?” Harpo asked, reaching for an eclair.

“And it takes about twenty to get to the station from here walking.”

All four musicians froze. “Go!” Octavia shouted, grabbing her cello. Beauty vaulted over the table, and Harpo grabbed the pastry cart. All four of them raced out the door, leaving it swinging as they went.

Pinkie tapped her hooves together, looking at Vinyl awkwardly. “Um… I guess I’ll bring you the bill?”

Vinyl rubbed the bridge of her snout with a hoof. “Yeah. I guess you’d better.”

Fifteen minutes later, Frederick, Octavia, and Harpo sat together on the train with their instruments and sweets. Beauty had gone to the washroom to clean off the tray of custard creams that she’d faceplanted into when the cart had jogged on the edge of the platform. Octavia selected a jelly-filled donut from the pile and sat back in her seat, content. “It’s been too long since our last gig together,” she said warmly. “When was the last one, again? Six months ago?”

“Seven, I believe,” Harpo replied. “In Windy City.”

“That’s the one,” Octavia said with a nod.

“Didn’t you mention you found a stallion you were interested in, then?” Frederick asked, looking at Harpo thoughtfully. “What was the fellow’s name? He was a kirin, wasn’t he?”

Harpo’s mouth pinched into a tight line. “Glade Glow,” he said shortly.

“Oh, dear,” Octavia said. “I know that look. Was he straight?”

“No,” Harpo said, a sullen look coming over his features. “He fancies blokes fine.”

“But just not you?” Fred asked gently.

Harpo’s mouth puckered like he’d bitten into a lemon. “I’d rather not talk about it just now,” he said shortly. “How about you, Octavia? You and Vinyl getting on alright?”

“I should say,” Octavia replied. “Sometimes I don’t know how the poor dear puts up with me, but she always does. I really do think that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Fred nodded, looking oddly pensive. “Octy, pet. Could I ask a… bit of a personal question?”

“‘Course,” said Octavia easily.

“You and Vinyl…” he looked out the window for a moment, somewhat abstracted. “Have you ever thought about, well… having kids?”

Octavia blinked. “Well, that’s a bit out of the blue,” she mused. “I… no, I can’t say as I’ve ever really considered it, and Vi’s never really brought it up, either.”

“Now that you’re thinking about it, though,” Fred pressed. “Do you think you would? That you could?”

“I really don’t know,” Octavia admitted. “We’ve got the dog already, but it’s easier to care for a dog than for a kid. I’d have to talk it over with Vinyl first, really. Look here, Freddie, chuck, what’s all this about?”

Fred pursed his lips, looking from Harpo to Vinyl with a measured gaze. “Beauty --” he began.

The door to the compartment slid open. “Are my ears burning?” Beauty teased, sliding gracefully into the seat next to Octavia. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, though, and Fred looked away quickly.

Harpo paused. “Beauty,” he said.

“Hm?”

He nodded to the other pony standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Who’s that little old stallion?”

“Oh,” said Beauty. “I made a friend. Mines, be a love, come in and sit with us!”

She turned to the others and explained. “I found the poor fellow alone in his compartment, and though he looked so terribly bored. He’s a musician himself, and all!”

“Beauty,” Octavia scolded. “You know the rules. Band members only on these trips.”

Beauty pouted. “I think we can make an exception for a fellow musician,” Harpo said charitably.

Octavia scrunched her muzzle and looked the stallion over. “Oh, alright,” she said. “But only because he looks very clean. Would he care for a cupcake?”

“What flavor is it?” Fred interjected as the stallion tried to speak.

“Chocolate,” Octavia said. “With peanut-butter frosting.”

“Oh, I don’t know if he looks like a peanut-butter kind of fellow,” said Harpo.

The stallion tried to speak again. “You’re right,” Octavia agreed. “What about this nice pink sugar cookie?”

“Clashes with his eyes!” Beauty objected. “Nice peach cobbler will do for him fine.”

“Can’t have a cobbler,” Fred said.

“Why not?”

“He’s not got shoes on.”

“Ah, right you are,” Beauty said nodding sagely.

“Right,” said Fred. “Nice chocolate chip cookie? All in favor?”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Quorum!” said Fred triumphantly, hoofing the cookie over to the entirely flummoxed stallion. “Here you are sir, and much joy may it bring you. I wish you all the luck in the world on this new venture.”

“...Thank you?” said the stallion, a slight Hosstrian accent noticeable in his voice.

“Celestia,” Octavia muttered in a stage whisper to Harpo. “Can’t get a word in edgewise with this one.”

“What’s your name, clean old stallion?” Fred asked.

The old stallion paused for a moment, eyeing the others warily before replying. “My name is Key. Minor Key.”

The Night Before

“Well,” said Minor. “Here we are. Home sweet home.”

His four guests studied the building in front of them. It was a tall, crooked old house, taller than it was wide. At some point, it must have been some kind of color, but the paint was so faded and bleached by sunlight that it was hard to tell what it might have been. It wasn’t in bad repair, mind, the paint wasn’t peeling; it was as though it had been sucked dry by some kind of pigment-hungry vampire.

“It looks in very good repair,” Beauty said. “For a house of its age.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fred asked hotly. "Just 'coz it's old doesn't mean it's breaking down, you know --"

“No, 'course not," Beauty said hastily. "Just, you know. Must have a history, yeah?”

Minor Key shrugged. “Not particularly,” he said. “It was one owner from new when I bought it. She liked to look at the sea.”

“Oh,” Harpo said. “Good view, then?”

“It inspires me, at times,” Minor replied, trotting up to the porch and unlocking the door. “Wipe your hooves on the mat, please.”

The interior wasn’t quite as colorless as the exterior, but everything seemed to be undergoing the same color-leaching process as the walls; it was merely that they were all at various stages of the same inevitable process. “Dig the aesthetic,” Octavia said. “Very… heirloom-chic?”

“Mmm. You’ll find no shortage of bedrooms at the top of the stairs,” Minor said. “Take whichever you like on the second floor. Mine is in the cupola, and none of the others have been used in quite some time.”

“Right-o,” Octavia said. “Bags the one nearest the bathroom!”

“What? No, you can’t bags something you’ve not even seen,” Beauty argued, all four musicians suddenly fighting their way up the stairs.

Minor rubbed the bridge of his muzzle gingerly. Other life-forms. Why.

With a sigh, he trotted deeper into the house, making for the kitchen. Theoretically, at least, he understood that one was meant to feed guests. While he doubted his ability to cook much, he suspected that he might at least be able to throw together some kind of rice dish. He made his way through the twisting, narrow corridors of the building that he had come to call home, every wall lined with bookshelves. It was an impressive collection, if somewhat unfocused in its subject matter. Sheet music, books of obscure and terrifying old fables, several grimoires of the arcane, textbooks on the study of acoustics, all this and more rubbed up against one another, their covers made sickly and gray by the dim, greenish light of the hall.

When he entered the kitchen, all thoughts of cooking flew out the window. There was a mare lounging on the counter, clad in tall white socks, a tan blazer, and a skull mask. She looked at him, and while her eyes were hidden in the hollow, shadowy sockets of her mask, he could feel their intense gaze on him, flickering with a particular combination of mischief and disdain. “Hello, Key,” Rita said.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Checking up on you, naturally,” Rita said lazily, rolling over on the counter. “And, by extension, my little… subjects.”

“Were you indeed,” Minor said crossly. “One would almost think you didn’t trust me.”

Her lips twisted into a smirk.

He continued, “And what, pray tell, would you have done if one of them had come in here, instead of me?”

“They wouldn’t have,” Rita said.

“You can’t know --”

“Oh, yes I can.” She chuckled. “For all your research and your little plans, it’s really rather embarrassing how little of the big picture you can actually see.”

“And what would you know of my research?” Minor Key asked.

Rita sat up on the counter, the shadows beneath her mask darkening as her expression fell into a scowl. “Mind your words,” she said coolly. “And remember; it’s only your own fault that I couldn’t wait for you in your study.”

Despite himself, Minor couldn’t resist a small smirk. “Well,” he said. “As you can see, your precious cargo is well in…” he paused a moment, distracted. “Well in hoof,” he said, oddly uncertain of himself for the briefest of instants. “Yes.”

“And what have you learned of them?” Rita asked.

“That they are powerful,” Minor said without hesitation. “Powerful and totally unaware of it.”

Rita snorted. “Aside from that,” she said impatiently. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Minor considered. “They’re deeply irritating?”

Rita sneered at him. “Useless. I doubt you could even tell me which two of them are married. For someone who so craves information, Strings, you are a singularly poor observer. And you’re very bad at providing it, as well.”

Minor Key flared up. “That’s not true,” he said. “I observed plenty. Their little hidden sorrows, their oblique pains, I saw them all. Octavia seems content enough; a few hints of childhood trauma, a small amount of guilt concerning a loved one, some minor anxieties -- little more. The blue one, Lyre --”

“Harpo.”

“Whichever. He’s pining over some creature. Seems quite frustrated with the path his life is going. I suspect he feels unappreciated. As for the other two -- I think that they must be the married ones. Their intimate irritations and grievances with one another cut deeper than any of the others do. Gotten worse recently.” He tilted his head. “How’s that for observation?”

Rita nodded. “Decent enough,” she said. “I had suspected as much, but I suppose you’re useful enough for confirming that my designs haven’t gone completely to shit.”

She turned to face away from Minor. “That Octavia… she’s the closest thing I have to a weak link in this chain.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Keep a close eye on her in particular.”

Minor Key looked at her sourly. “And my payment for the services rendered?”

Rita considered. “Scarcely worth it,” she mused. “But… very well. You may have a scrap.”

Along the wall, her shadow distended, producing something out of the darkness -- a glowing little piece of violet light. The shadow stretched across the wall, blotting out the light from the bulbs overhead, turning it a deathly pale red where it once shone bright, until it reached out to Minor Key’ own shadow, which reached out and snapped up the ball of light like a dog desperate for a scrap of bacon. For a moment, his shadow turned darker, deeper; then it had faded to normal once again. Minor shuddered as chills rolled down his spine. For a moment, his eyes were clear and his muscles untensed. For the briefest of instants, he looked almost young.

Then the moment passed. He let out a long sigh. “Will that be all?” he asked after a long moment of silence, his voice clipped.

There was no reply. He looked around. Rita had already gone.

With a snarl, Minor swept a hoof across the counter, sending the cookware there crashing and clanging to the floor. He stood there for a long moment, breathing heavily as he stared at the mess he’d made. Abruptly, he turned on his hoof and made his way out of the kitchen, all thoughts of making dinner for his… ‘guests’ forgotten. They could fend for themselves. He had work to do.

The four bandmates poked around the room Octavia had chosen as her own. “It’s not a bad house,” Octavia said. “Just…”

“Old,” Beauty finished, nodding. “And dusty.”

“Decrepit and creepy, you mean,” Harpo muttered, glancing around. “No wonder old Key is letting us stay here on the cheap.”

“You’re just bitter because your room has that weird-ass Big Mouth Billy Bass on the wall.” Octavia said.

“To be fair, it is a bit weird that it was mounted right over the bed,” said Fred.

“I’m pretty sure it’s an actual taxidermy fish,” Harpo said, shuddering a bit. “And I don’t know what that song it played was meant to be, but I hope I never hear it again.”

“I --” Beauty paused and tilted her head. “D’you hear something?”

All four of them peered out the door and down the hall, only to be treated to the sight of their host storming up the stairs, across the landing, and up to the next floor. The band watched him stomp upstairs until he was out of view. After a few moments, they heard the crash of a door being slammed shut.

“Wonder what’s got his knickers in a knot,” Beauty said mildly.

“I don’t reckon he wears knickers,” Fred said, rubbing his chin. “Doesn’t seem the sort.”

“Easier to knot your knickers if they’re tucked in a drawer somewhere,” Harpo observed. As he spoke, the faint tones of a violin being tuned up could be heard echoing through the halls.

“True, true,” Fred agreed. “Still. Seems to me that our esteemed host might be hiding more from us than just his poor housekeeping and weird singing fish.”

Harpo shook his head again. “I really hate that thing. Can I convince you lot to help me make one of the other rooms fit for equine habitation?”

“It was hard enough cleaning out these three,” Octavia protested. “I’m not about to go for four.”

“It’s alright, Harps,” Fred said, slinging a hoof around the younger stallion’s withers. As he spoke, the faint violin music from above shifted from warmup exercises into a melody. “Your dear ol’ Uncle Fred’ll keep you company. It’ll be like a sleepover!”

Harpo pulled away from Fred’s grip more forcefully than any of the bandmates would have guessed. “One, you’re only five years older than me,” he said. “Second, I don’t need or want your pity!”

“Whoa,” Octavia said. “Now hang about, Harpo --”

“What, and you’d just leave me?” Beauty snapped. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this point after what you’ve been pulling lately”

Fred’s shocked look twisted into a scowl. “Oh, hello, pot, the name’s kettle,” he said.

Octavia shook her head. All of a sudden, the mood in the room had shifted. It was as though the entire atmosphere had changed. Her bones ached, and her mind felt stupid and slow. When she looked at her friends, all she could see in her mind’s eye was every time their teasing had pushed that bit too far, every time they’d let her down, every time they’d done her wrong. She realized she was clenching her jaw again. She realized she could taste blood.

Something was wrong. Something was inside her, humming a tune that she couldn’t quite hear consciously, but which had locked her muscles and bones, until no course of action was left to her but anger.

“I can’t believe you,” Fred said, glaring at Beauty. “All those times you broke off our plans, and for what? Where have you been?”

“At least all of you have partners,” Harpo snarled.

Octavia tried to think, but her memories were tinted blood red. Her mind awhirl, she sought any kind of solace.

And like magic, she remembered. The thumping beat of a club, the lights, the drinks, the friends… and the beautiful musician who took the stage. They had all been there that night when she first saw Vinyl. They had all encouraged her to go follow her heart, even if she felt like something was pulling her back. These were her oldest and best friends, and they had always been there for her.

She opened her eyes. “Right,” she said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

The others fell silent, their faces still tight and harsh, but their mouths shut at last. “It’s been a long day,” Octavia said. “We’re all tired out and apparently properly stressed out. So. Who wants to go out and find a party to crash?”

The tension did not vanish, but it dispersed somewhat. “That sounds lovely, Octy,” Fred said. “Though, our esteemed host did suggest that this wasn’t exactly a party town.”

Harpo shrugged. “Well, if we can’t find a ruckus, we can always start one ourselves.”

“That’s the spirit,” Octavia said, grinning broadly. “Come on, then, let’s get out of this old misery of a house and get absolutely smashed.”

The magic words had been spoken. The other three brightened up and made for the door.

“After you, Beauty.”

“Oh, no, Harpo, I insist.”

“Fred should really be first out, age before beauty an’ all.”

“Oi, you…”

Octavia watched, puzzled. The argument hadn’t been forgotten, clearly. She could see it in their eyes, smoldering embers of resentment. She could feel it in herself, too. But far stronger than those tatters of anger was the intense fear that gripped her heart. For a moment there, she had almost lost control of herself, body and mind. She hadn’t felt that way since…

The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and she bolted for the door after her bandmates.

In an empty hotel room, all was quiet and still. Then, with a quiet wheeze, a light flickered into existence, then grew brighter and louder, stirring the curtains and sheets in the breeze. Finally, with a last thump of the engines, the TARDIS materialized.

The doors clicked open and Romana stepped out into the room beyond, a wary Vinyl Scratch only a few steps behind. “Where are we?” Vinyl asked.

“A few rooms down from Octavia’s,” Romana replied, moving to pull open the door. The numbers on the outside flashed in the light, reading ‘067’.

“Okay…” Vinyl paced the room slowly. “So, like, now what? Do we just go up to Tavi and ask, ‘hey, have you noticed any weird fluctuations in time,’ or whatever?”

“Oh, no,” Romana said. “That would be absurd. Partly because she wouldn’t have noticed anything, given that she’s inside the distortion, and partly because we really don’t want to announce our presence here any more than we have to.”

“What? Why not?”

Romana shut the door again. “Changes in the timeline on this scale almost never happen naturally. I suspect that some intelligent force is behind whatever is happening to your wife and her friends.”

“Yeah, which is what, exactly?” Vinyl asked. “You’ve been pretty vague. ‘Time sense’ this and ‘danger’ that -- what kind of danger are you talking about?”

Romana sighed, not looking at Vinyl. “It’s difficult to explain in temporal terms.”

“This is my wife we’re talking about. Try.” Vinyl said.

After a moment, Romana nodded, and turned to sit on one of the beds, gesturing for Vinyl to do the same. After a moment, the DJ hopped up onto the other bed, looking at Romana face to face, waiting for the Time Lady to speak.

“The Web of Time,” Romana said after a moment, “is the term used for the causal links between every event in all of conventional spacetime. Ultimately, everything is linked to everything else, though often in extremely tenuous ways. The further out in time and space you go, the less effect any individual event has in the grand scheme of things.”

“So if I were to step on a butterfly some trillion years ago…” Vinyl said.

“You’d have nothing more weighing on your conscience than a dead butterfly,” Romana assured her. “The Web of Time has varying degrees of flexibility -- some points are fixed, immutable events, which time travelers can’t and shouldn’t interfere with. Other points are sort of tipping points in space and time, which can push the future one way or the other. Most other points can be… well, flexible. Those are usually fairly unimportant events, like going grocery shopping or having tea, that kind of thing.”

“Okay,” said Vinyl.

“About an hour ago, Sunday was an ordinary day. When your wife and her band departed for Ausseil, it suddenly became a tipping point.”

“Oh,” said Vinyl. “I’m guessing that’s bad.”

“Very much so,” Romana said grimly. “Once it’s ‘happened’, and been observed by a time traveler or other achronological entity, it will become fixed, shaping the future of Equestria and potentially the whole of Gaea.”

“...Huh?”

“It’s the observer effect, very complicated,” Romana said. “People within the time stream don’t properly count, since they’re part of the event. It’s sort of like how the cat in the box is probably aware of whether it’s alive or dead, but it isn’t one or the other until the box is opened.”

Vinyl stared at her. “Are you high?” she demanded. “Cats in boxes? What the fuck--”

Romana heaved a deep sigh. “I’ll explain some other time. Right now, I’m going to go check on your wife and her band. I want you to keep out of sight.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they all know you’re supposed to be in Ponyville. I have at least a modicum of plausible deniability.”

“...I guess,” Vinyl relented.

Romana peered down the hall. “Look, you can hide behind one of the potted plants if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Alright, alright,” Vinyl said. “You’ve just got me a little worried, is all. I wanna be there for Tavi.”

Romana nodded. “I can relate, believe me. But you are here for her, aren’t you? She just… well, she just can’t know it yet, that’s all.”

“...I guess,” Vinyl said again. “Alright, go… knock on the door, I guess. But if your cover gets blown, I’m not hiding any longer, alright?”

“That’s completely fair,” Romana said.

“As long as that’s clear.”

Romana paused for a moment to wave her sonic pick at the key card reader on the door. It beeped once. “Light your horn for a moment,” she said.

Vinyl looked skeptical, but did as she was told. The card reader beeped again.

“I’ve keyed it to read our magical signatures,” Romana explained. “To keep the TARDIS from being disturbed.”

“Oh. Smart,” Vinyl said.

The two mares trotted purposefully down the hall. Romana nodded to a large potted plant just a meter away from room 064. Vinyl crouched behind it, albeit reluctantly. She peered around the edge of the pot to get a look at Romana as the Time Lady rapped sharply at the door.

There was a pause, and then a click as somepony on the other side turned the knob. “Yes?” a female voice asked that Vinyl recognized as Octavia’s conductor.

“Hello,” Romana said, pouring as much charm into that one word as she could. “I’m from the front desk, it’s about the band --”

“Oh, you’re here about the luggage,” Baton Tap said.

“Er,” said Romana. “Yes?”

“Right, yes. Sorry to leave it in the lobby like that, but I wasn’t going to haul it all the way up to this room just to make you cart it all back down again.”

“Of course,” said Romana. “I understand.”

“The address is, let me see…” Baton ruffled about for a moment, seemingly looking through some papers. “806 Anderschwelle Road.”

“The address,” Romana repeated blandly.

“...Yes?” Baton said. “The address where the Krikkits are staying, since your management downgraded us from a suite to a single-bedroom. I mean, it isn’t that I blame you personally or anything, but I would appreciate a refund for the trouble, at the very least.”

“Of course, yes,” Romana said. “I’ll be sure to inform the desk.”

“I appreciate that. If there’s nothing else?”

“...No, thank you, that’s quite everything I needed. Have a nice day, madam.”

“And you.”

There was the sound of a door clicking shut and Vinyl peered out from behind the potted plant. Romana arched an eyebrow at her. “Convinced yet?”

“...Yeah, that sounds pretty suspicious,” Vinyl conceded. “Alright, alright, I believe you.”

“Excellent,” said Romana. “806 Anderschwelle Road, here we come.”

“Er,” said Vinyl. “We’re gonna need to take their luggage along with us, though.”

Romana shrugged. “So be it.”

Vinyl winced. “Every try to carry a cello, a sousaphone, and a harp at the same time before?”

“Ah.” Romana rubbed her chin. “Let me see if the TARDIS is up to making a few short hops, then…”

Meanwhile the Krikkits had managed to find one of the taverns that Minor had mentioned on the train ride. “The Fox and Grapes,” Beauty read aloud, arching an eyebrow. “Sounds a right laugh.”

Fred pushed roughly through the double doors and into the pub beyond, the others following not far behind. Immediately, every eye in the place was on them, and while the band weren’t exactly strangers to having an audience, the cold and distant curiosity in the eyes of the patrons made all of them stumble.

The barmare broke the silence. “Strange e’en for it,” she said, giving the four earth ponies the once over with a fish-eyed gaze.

“Strange evening for what?” Octavia reposted.

The barmare, a round mare whose greying coat still bore a hint of orange, sucked her teeth for a moment. “Strange e’en,” she said at last, “fer strange ponies.”

“Stranger than most,” rumbled a big workhorse near a table in the back. “Whatcha call that manecut you all got?”

“Arthur,” Fred snapped back.

The burly workhorse stared at him for a moment, then made a sound like he was choking. It took the musicians a moment before they realized the muscular pony was chuckling. “City slickers,” xe said with mild contempt. “What’s got city folk comin’ out to these parts?”

“Er,” said Harpo. “Would you believe a concert?”

There was a prolonged silence at that.

Beauty leaned over to Octavia. “Maybe we should’ve just raided Minor’s liquor cabinet, eh?”

“Musicians,” said the barmare with a hint of contempt in her voice. “You’d not happen to be friends with him in the old house, would ye?”

“We… know of him,” Fred said cautiously. “Why?”

“Can’t trust that old place,” said another patron. “Can’t live with it, can’t knock it down. Just have to… stay still. Silent. For there is strange music there.”

"What do you mean?" Fred asked. "What's so strange about it?"

"You ask too many questions," the barmare said. "Don't like ponies who ask questions."

"Never have to put up with them for long, though," a mare sitting near the wall commented, and a rumble of unpleasant laughter rippled through the room. Fred, Beauty, and Harpo all backed up, closing a protective circle around Octavia.

Octavia, for her part, was looking off, glassy-eyed, into the middle distance. “Alright,” she said, the air in the bar crystallizing as she spoke. “Let’s do the show right here.”

The workhorse from before let out a pained grunt and shifted in xer seat, but could not rise. The dulcet tone of a cello filled the air and the lights flickered and spat, the bulbs humming as they glowed brighter than they were ever meant to, forming a spotlight on the band. And without entirely knowing how or why, the quartet began to play.

Within ten minutes, the whole bar was singing along.

In an hour, the concert had spilled onto the street.

It was only at the two-hour mark that the police finally arrived, sending the festivities into disarray, and it wasn’t until Octavia was hurrying up the path back to Minor’s house that it struck her that none of them had brought along their instruments.

Fixing a Hole

Early the next morning, Romana and Vinyl made their way up Anderschwelle Road, pulling a cart stacked high with luggage behind them. “Alright,” Romana said, munching on a danish she’d snagged from the continental breakfast in the lobby. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to deliver these suitcases at the front of the house, while you slip in through the back and investigate the house.”

Vinyl waited for a moment. “That’s it?” she asked. “That’s your whole plan? Are you gonna, like, also come in and help me look around?”

“Unfortunately not,” Romana said, looking genuinely apologetic. “I need to get back to the TARDIS and try to make some sense of the readings.”

“...What readings are those?” Vinyl asked.

Romana grinned. “The ones I’m going to take as I drop off the luggage, of course.”

Catching sight of Vinyl’s discomforted look, Romana hastily added, “Of course, I wouldn’t send you in without an escape plan.” From her mane, she produced a thin brass watch. “This is a one-time-use vortex manipulator,” she explained. “I’ve already programmed in the TARDIS as the destination. Just pull that little knob on the side, and you’ll be back to safety before you can say ‘Rassilon was a dickhead’.”

“Oh. Alright,” Vinyl said, strapping the watch around her forehoof. “Cool, I guess. It still seems risky for me to go in alone.”

“I’d be lying if I said this won’t be a dangerous situation,” Romana said. “But I have confidence in you.”

When Vinyl made no reply, Romana playfully bumped her side. “C’mon. If nothing else, do it for Octavia, hey?”

“Listen,” Vinyl said, stopping in the middle of the street.

Romana paused as well, tilting her head. “I… don’t hear anything?”

“Exactly,” Vinyl whispered. “We’re in the middle of the street, just about the time when ponies should be going off to work or school or whatever, and we haven’t seen or heard any other creature on this road that I can remember.”

Romana paused. “That is… odd,” she agreed. She glanced around, then hurried up the path to one of the houses. She rung the doorbell. At least, she tried. It seemed to have broken, so she knocked instead. There was no reply.

Romana hastened across the yard to the next house and repeated the process. She tried again and again at five different houses, without a single response. All of their doorbells had been silenced. “Curiouser and curiouser,” Romana mused, pulling out her sonic pick and scanning the doorbell.

“Hey,” Vinyl said. “Look at this.”

Romana turned to see the other unicorn studying an anthill. Vinyl lit her horn and poked at the hill, gently at first, but with increasing force. No reply came from within. Finally, she just smashed the thing open, spilling dirt and thousands of little dead insects across the lawn.

Romana realized her mouth was hanging open. “I see,” she said quietly. “This bears… consideration.”

“Yeah,” Vinyl said. She hesitated. “Hey. Those houses. Do you think…”

“Whatever happened here, I suspect it occurred quite some time ago,” Romana said, looking at the peeling paint of the street. She peered in one of the windows. “Quite some time indeed,” she said, taking in the layers of dust that covered the room within.

She turned to see Vinyl looking at her with undisguised concern. “Vinyl, please. There really isn’t any other way.”

Vinyl took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, alright. Let’s get going.”

They parted ways a few houses before their destination, Vinyl skirting through abandoned backyards to help conceal her from watching eyes. Romana, meanwhile, made for the front porch of the old house. She made her way up the steps, leaving the luggage on the sidewalk for the moment. She tried the bell first, but like every other one on this street, it seemed to have broken. Instead, she rapped hard on the door, though even that sounded oddly muted. There was a long pause before she heard the faint sound of hooves coming toward her.

Please don’t be Octavia, she thought. Anypony but Octavia, and I’m fine.

The door creaked open, and Romana found herself face to face with an old, pale-coated stallion. He regarded her with suspicion. “May I help you?” he asked.

Romana arched an eyebrow at him. “You’d be Minor Key, I presume.”

“...I am. Who wants to know?”

Romana thought quickly. “...Minty. Minty Fresh. I was sent from the hotel to drop off these bags for your houseguests.”

Minor looked at the cart behind her and made a faint noise of recognition. “Very good. I will take the luggage to them.”

“I’m going to need to take the cart back,” Romana pointed out. “I can help you unload them into the house…?”

Key looked rather displeased at that, but reluctantly trotted back from the door as Romana started to levitate the luggage in. As she did so, she also quietly activated her sonic pick to start scanning for various types of energy and technology.

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” he asked after a moment.

Romana hummed. “What gave it away?”

“It was either that or you drew the short straw to come here,” Key said. “Most in the town prefer to leave this street alone.”

“But not you?” Romana asked.

“No,” Key said. “I have lived in this house for as long as I can remember. Part of… You could say that part of my soul is invested in it.” He attempted to smile, but it merely looked like he was baring his teeth.

Romana nodded slowly. “I see,” she said, switching off her sonic with her magic. She lifted the last of the bags into the foyer. “Well, I suppose that’s all. Good day, Mr. Key.”

She turned to go.

“Wait,” said Key, and Romana froze. Did he suspect her of something?

She turned, and found him holding a small stack of bits. “Your tip,” he said. “For coming out all this way.”

“Ah. Yes. Thank you.” Romana took the money and nodded to him politely before starting to push the cart away once more, speeding up as the stallion closed the door.

She was halfway down the road when she realized that she was sprinting and she had no earthly idea why. Some muffled, chilly terror had lodged in her heart, and she didn’t know how or why. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to slow to a canter. She was a Time Lady, after all. She refused to let herself be cowed by a terror that she couldn’t even sense. She would get back to the hotel and the TARDIS at her own pace, no matter what that gnawing sense of dread said to the contrary.

Vinyl was feeling more than a tad rattled herself. The distant roar of waves crashing against the shore far below the cliffs would normally have been calming, but here and now they felt wrong in a way that she couldn’t quite put her hoof on. She didn’t feel like diverting the precious mental energy away from this weird heist scenario toward figuring it out, either. She felt vaguely nauseous about the whole thing.

She pushed those feelings down deep as she approached the backside of the house. Licking her lips, Vinyl looked at the first window she came across. It had been years since the last time she’d tried to break in anywhere, since the time in high school she’d tried to scope out an abandoned warehouse for a rave. That particular adventure had ended with seven stitches on her barrel, plus a tetanus shot and getting grounded for three weeks.

Still, breaking and entering was like pulling a cart, right? Once you learned how to do it, you never forgot. Vinyl tugged at the window. It was latched from the inside, but that wasn’t much of a deterrent against unicorns. It was the work of a moment to telekinetically unlatch and raise the pane.

She hauled herself through the window and found herself standing on a kitchen counter. It looked, at first glance, to be nearly as abandoned as the rest of the street, with outdated furnishings and all manner of disarray lying on the floor. But no. There was no dust in this room, certainly not to the degree that she had seen through the neighbors’ windows. Somepony had been here recently.

Closing and re-latching the window behind her, Vinyl leapt to the floor, wincing instinctively at the clatter she knew her hooves would make on the tile floor. But the sound was once again muted and uncomfortable in her ears.

However unnerving the strange way sound carried in this place, it did at least have its uses in sneaking around. On the other hoof, Vinyl also figured she wouldn’t be able to hear any creature coming up behind her until it was too late. She nibbled her lower lip for a moment, thinking. Then she brightened and started rifling through the cabinets until she found the aluminum foil and some clear tape.

Removing her sunglasses, she carefully ripped a couple of small piece of foil off the roll. Being careful not to wrinkle them, she taped them to the inside of her shades, shiny-side out. She lifted them back onto her face, adjusting them carefully on her muzzle until she was satisfied with her jerry-rigged rear-view mirrors.

Somewhat reassured by this precaution, Vinyl warily made her way out into the hallway and deeper into the house.

Octavia woke up the next morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. That was the first clue that something was wrong. She had just been out drinking late last night, hadn’t she? She fancied herself quite good at not letting alcohol affect her, but she felt certain that she should be feeling less like a daisy and more like pushing them up.

She cast her mind back to last night. What had happened? She and the others had gone out to a bar -- perhaps neither the friendliest nor the most salubrious of establishments, but a bar nonetheless -- and then they had come home.

And in between, they’d --

They’d…

Octavia was still, the memory of strange music running through her head, dissociated from any other stimuli. There had been… a party? A dance? Something more?

Of course, it was now that the headache kicked in, and with a vengeance. She let out a long groan of pain, clutching at her temples.

“Good mornin’ to you, too,” said a voice from the door. Octavia looked up to see Beauty Brass looking back at her. The mare’s complexion was fresh and rosy, but her expression was decidedly haunted.

“Beauty,” Octavia muttered. “What the Tartarus hap--”

“C’mon,” Beauty said shortly. “The lads are out getting breakfast -- the kitchen looked like a bomb went off or something. Once that’s done, we’re rehearsing.”

“Does my input enter into this at any point?” Octavia asked, pushing herself up. “How are we going to rehearse, anyway? All our instruments are still at the hotel.”

Beauty shook her head once. “They arrived just this morning, with the rest of our kit. C’mon, then.”

Just like that, she was gone. Octavia merely sat in her bed for a long moment. Apparently, they weren’t talking about last night, then. Well. That was…

Her head pulsed again and she winced. Fine. That was fine.

She rose on unsteady hooves and poked her head into the hallway. Sure enough, her cello and luggage lay on the floor outside her room. She hastily unzipped one pouch of the largest suitcase and pulled out her bottle of aspirin, popping a couple into her mouth in hopes of reducing the severity of the headache. Deep down, though, she suspected it was pointless. The pounding in her skull was nothing that medicine could touch.

Breakfast was a sullen affair. Harpo and Fred had brought back scrambled eggs and hotcakes from Jenny’s -- the restaurant of choice for the morning after a night you’d rather forget. Although, ‘choice’ was probably the wrong word for it. It was just where you ended up, alongside the haggard and weary former partygoers and recently de-transformed hengstwolves and all-nighter grad students, all in a silent truce to not acknowledge any of the others.

It had, Fred said in the few sentences he’d spoken since returning, been rather more crowded than usual. The others had glared at him dourly, and he spoke no further.

The meal was bland and unpleasant. Octavia ate mechanically, letting the marionette of her body act out its scene. They sat at the table for nearly an hour, staring with glazed eyes at their empty plates before Harpo spoke.

“Rehearsal,” he said, his voice unfamiliar on his thick tongue. “We should…”

The chairs scraped back across the linoleum and the four musicians staggered from the room, heading to gather up their instruments.

Vinyl hurried through the house, trying to go as fast as she could without making too much noise. The strange muting effect helped with the latter aspect, of course, but even with her rear-view shades, Vinyl couldn’t help but feel a mounting sense of paranoia as she went through one room after the next looking for… looking for…

Well, fuck, what was she supposed to be looking for? Some big golden magic lute? A room full of weird technology, like the TARDIS control room? She just hoped it wasn’t a grimoire, because Minor Key had way too many of those to go through.

Vinyl shook her head. No, she decided. If there was some weird power in this house that could control her friends and silence the world, it wouldn’t be hidden on a shelf with a billion other books. Minor would probably need to access it a lot, right? It would need to be somewhere special, somewhere he could get at it easily.

She finished with the ground floor far sooner than she would have expected. For all the house’s apparent size, it didn’t have that many rooms. The whole place felt weirdly claustrophobic.

There was only one staircase that she could find that led to the next floor, and it stood in the foyer of the house. It was a grand old thing, with two bisecting flights of stairs leading up from the ground floor to connect on the second, before turning into a wider staircase that led from the second floor to the third. The whole thing was, unfortunately, totally visible from all three floors. Vinyl skulked in the shadows of the foyer for several minutes before she finally decided to risk it. She bolted up the stairs, all pretense at creeping gone. It didn’t matter. The musty old carpet, which was once probably red, swallowed the thud of her hooves, until they sounded like nothing more than a distant knocking, inaudible unless you were really listening for them.

She reached the top of the stairwell and slid into the shadows of a nearby hallway on the righthoof side of the stairwell. She felt her heart thudding against her chest, but even the rushing of her own blood sounded distant to her ears. “Fuck this place,” she said with feeling, though her voice sounded like it was coming through wads of cotton.

And then she heard a noise from further down the hall. That alone was so shocking that she nearly choked on her own spit. It was a clear tone, the sharpest and clearest thing she’d heard since setting hoof on this street. And, she realized as it went on, more noises joining it, it was familiar. It was the warm, rich tone of a cello. Then, a harp. Then, a piano. Then, a horn.

It was the same music that she’d heard dozens of times before, one of the Krikkits’ favorite warmup melodies. She blinked in the sudden light and realized that without meaning to, she’d started wandering down the hall toward the source of the music.

She stifled a yelp and all but dove into the nearest darkened room, her heart pounding once again. What had she been thinking? Romana had said that their presence here was meant to be secret, and she had just been stumbling through the house without a thought in her head!

Taking a deep breath in, Vinyl tried to regain her bearings. Well, at least she knew where the band was. She’d save this floor for later.

Vinyl peered back out into the gloomy corridor once more. It looked clear, and she quickly hurried back the way she had come. She peered around the corner again, only to see a figure descending the staircase.

Turning tail, she pelted back to the room she had just been hiding in and hid behind the door, laying flat on the ground. She pulled off her sunglasses so that she could see more clearly, and peered out under the gap at the bottom of the door.

After several harrowing moments, she saw a set of hooves pass her by, pale in the dim, sickly light of the house. She waited several seconds more before daring to rise and peer out into the hall directly. The stallion, an elderly and pale pony that she could only suppose to be Key himself, continued down the hall, apparently totally unaware of her presence. For a moment, the rather hysterical thought flashed through her head that he looked very clean for some kind of evil time mage. She watched him as he stopped in front of a door and stared at it for several seconds. Then, haltingly, he lowered his head and peered through its keyhole, transfixed.

“Creepy way to watch a gig for free, but alright,” Vinyl muttered. Then, the thought struck her. If he had come down from the third floor to listen to the music, then he might have been interrupted in the middle of whatever he was working on. And if he was going to be occupied down here for the next several minutes…

Vinyl looked hard at Minor to ensure that he was really that fascinated by the performance, and then she snuck back down the hall toward the staircase, keeping close to the wall and its shadows.

Vinyl had been quite correct in her train of reasoning. Only a short few minutes ago, Minor Key had been in his study, poring over grimoires and diagrams and sheet music. Occasionally, he would stop and paw at his coat, peering at the skin beneath as though to confirm that it was still there, before scrawling ever more details onto a complex diagram. After several minutes of this, he sat back in his chair and studied what he had drawn.

It looked like some strange form of deconstructed sheet music, with staves contorted into weird circles and twisted shapes, and notes that dotted the piece in patterns that seemed to be incomprehensible at first glance. As one looked further, however, it became slowly more readable.

Minor caught himself humming along quietly and bit his tongue sharply enough to draw blood. He breathed out softly and returned to studying the diagram. Eventually, he nodded, seemingly satisfied, and reached for the quill once more. With a deft hoof, he scrawled one last sigil into the center of the complex musical mandala.

Setting aside the quill and inkwell, Minor Key produced some tape and a square of steel plating from a drawer and affixed the paper to the metal. With one last brief, satisfied look to ensure that the sides were all flush, he rose from his desk and opened the closet on the other side of the room, quickly thrust the diagram in, and slammed the door shut. He watched it intently for several long seconds before he finally relaxed.

“That should be done by morning, I think,” he mused to himself. “Which means, I suppose, that I have all the rest of today to rehearse.”

With a sigh of contentment, he pulled down a case from the top of a bookcase. He flipped all three latches, one after the next making a harsh click as they snapped open.

Minor smiled as he opened the lid. Inside lay a delicate violin and bow, both pure white aside from the dark red strings and horsehair black as night.

He lifted the instrument to his chin with practiced ease. For a moment, he considered the effect that his music could have on his unwanted guests, then remembered that he really didn’t care. As long as they were alive, Rita could scarcely say anything.

Minor Keys lifted the bow and reverently laid it on the strings. He inhaled.

Then he froze, as a set of strings that decidedly were not his own came echoing through the house. Then more instruments joined in, harmonizing and rebounding off one another. For several moments, Minor just stood there, shaking. Snapping out of it, he replaced the instrument and bow in their case and hurried from the room, not waiting even to close anything behind him. He rushed down the stairs. The music felt familiar, painful and glorious and comparable only to one thing. He approached, the music becoming clearer and brighter with every step closer he came, swirling around his ribcage like a swarm of bees. The power was as terrifying as it was alluring, and Minor pressed on until he was at the final door.

It took all of his will not to throw open the door and drink it all in. But no. That would be… indiscreet. Instead, he crouched at the keyhole and stared through, mesmerized. The Krikkits were glowing.

Spectral golden forms swathed them, lighting their faces as they played, illuminating the slowly-growing smiles that they shared with one another. It was awesome to see. It was agony to be excluded. But for now, it was enough to be the audience.

The bees were stinging him from the inside, painful and unfamiliar emotions welling within him. Minor wept, unable and unwilling to leave. Not yet. Not now that he had found the replacement for his stolen soul.

Vinyl hastened up the stairs and glanced around. There was one hallway leading further back into the manor, and a few doors along the landing. One of those latter doors was hanging open. Vinyl peered around the corner. “Oh,” she said aloud, straightening up. “Yeah, this place looks haunted as shit.”

By her count, there were around seven weird old books lying open, with more on the shelves that lined the room, bumping shoulders with still more esoteric bric-a-brac and trinkets. Weirder still, sheets of parchment hung from the ceiling on strings, twisting and spinning slowly by some invisible force.

Rather more subtle, Vinyl glanced down at the threshold and saw that the floor was inscribed with some kind of runes. Warding magic had never been a specialty of hers, but she could recognize it when she saw it. Carefully, she lifted one hoof over the line, readying herself to use her emergency escape button at the first sign of danger.

She set her hoof down. Nothing happened, which she felt was a little anticlimactic.

“Alright,” she muttered, stepping back. “I can’t hear anyone coming, and I won’t be able to see them, either. Time to get creative.”

She trotted back to the stairwell and lit her horn, swiping it in a straight line -- a trick she’d picked up from her good friend Neon Lights, justly famous in the game for his gratuitous use of special effects.

The barest hint of magenta fizzled in the air, a spiderweb strand of magic at chest-height for an average pony. The instant anypony broke the tripwire, Vinyl would know about it.

Satisfied with her precautions, she hurried back into the study. “Alright, fucker,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve been looking at.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t find much -- at least, not much that she could realistically put together into a coherent narrative. Three of the books were on the properties of crystal, one on the history of the Crystal Empire, two on something called ‘psychic vampires’ of which changelings seemed to be a subspecies, and one that was just a very dry old book of musical theory. Key’s interest in crystal seemed to extend further -- many of the weird talismans and trinkets around the room were made of the stuff, all of them colorless and transparent. The ones not made of crystal, however, were made of another unusual material.

“Bone,” Vinyl muttered, running a hoof over a strange, spiralling horn. “Crystal and bone. I don’t get it. What kind of pony is so obsessed with this stuff that he makes a violin out of it?”

None of it made sense. The research, the sheet music, the bones, none of it seemed to add up to any kind of coherent evil plan. Maybe Minor was just a serial killer with a couple of weirdly specific hobbies?

Then, something clicked in Vinyl’s head. Specifically, the tripwire she’d laid in the hallway. “Oh, shit,” she muttered. “Alright, goodbye forever, creep.”

She pulled the knob on her watch, readying herself for the sudden gut-punch feeling of teleportation. It didn’t come. “Oh, what the fuck?” Vinyl whispered. “Romana, I swear --”

She could hear muffled hoofsteps now. She had seconds at most before she would be discovered.

Nowhere Man

There was only one place Vinyl could see to hide. She leapt for the single other door in the room and fell through, pushing it shut behind her. It closed with nary a click. It was cold in the new room. Dark, too. The only light in the place was a faint, dusty trickle of pale light that streamed through a peephole. Vinyl pressed her eye to it and saw the same pony from earlier stumble into the room. He looked flushed, like he’d just been out for a jog. For once, he actually removed his duster coat and hung it on a hook. For the first time, Vinyl saw that the stallion’s flanks were blank -- he had no cutie mark.

Or, wait, that wasn’t quite true. There was a discolored splotch of something back there, but what it might have once been, Vinyl couldn’t tell. She watched him as he rushed around the room, carefully selecting a new set of books to examine before he settled back at his desk with quill and parchment. Vinyl couldn’t see what he was working on, but he seemed pretty intent. Seeing that he was distracted, she lit her horn to get a better view of the room -- just a little faint light, not enough for the elderly stallion to notice.

The room was not large. Vinyl could stand with her tail pressed to one wall and reach across to touch the other. It was perhaps three times that distance from the door to the back wall. The confines were made tighter yet by the shelves that lined the place, each one holding rows and rows of metronomes. She would guess that they filled around two-thirds of the available space. She took a step forward and nearly stumbled over something on the floor. She turned to inspect it, and was surprised to see a sheet of parchment lying atop a sheet of metal. Something was inscribed on it, but it was badly faded, and she couldn’t read it in the dim light.

She extinguished her horn, making a mental note to take the thing with her when she left. Then, she returned her attention to Minor Key in the room beyond.

Minor Key felt dizzy. He had sat and watched the Krikkits play through three whole songs, and though he’d never heard them before, he felt certain that he could sing them all, note-perfect.

When the band had stopped at last, to laugh and joke with one another, Key had finally worked up the wherewithal to rise from where he sat outside the door and stumble back toward his chambers. The power of their music had been intoxicating in a way that nothing else had been for as long as he could remember.

He needed it. He needed to own it, to use it, his own goals finally possessing a power source.

Minor flew into his study, closing the door behind him. He threw aside his coat and started picking up tomes of relevant lore. His gaze fell upon his violin, and for a second he longed to pick it up, to play it now, to siphon all that excess energy away…

No. He shut the case tight and returned it to its place on the shelf. It was no good to play without purpose, not now that he had made this incredible discovery. He needed to plan. He took out book after book, turning to familiar passages and digging deeper with what he had seen burning fresh in his mind.

Yes. Yes! At long last, he had found the power supply he had needed for his ritual. Finally, his great work would be complete, and his revenge would begin. And he would start with Rita’s precious little opening act…

Minor Key began to chuckle, deep and low in his throat, a low and gurgling laugh that seemed to fade in and out of auditory range. His eyes flashed with a strange light --
The door banged open. “Ahoy, Minor!”

Minor practically jumped out of his skin, scattering his papers on the floor. “Miss Philharmonica,” he said, once his heart had slowed once more to andante pace. “What an… unexpected pleasure.”

Octavia smirked at him, trotting brashly across the floorboards. “That’s what she said, eh?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

“Oh, you know,” Octavia said, trotting around the room, eyeing the various hanging sheets of music that hung from the ceiling. “Me and the gang realized we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you all morning. We figured, you’ve been cooped up in your study here all morning and thought, now there’s a cry for help if ever we’ve seen one. You must be bored out of your mind hanging out in this dank little cupola all day. It’s not even the cool kind of dank! It’s just…” She scrunched her muzzle. “Musty. Probably a health hazard.”

Minor scowled at her cavalier invasion and insult upon his personal space. “I appreciate your concern for my health, but --”

Octavia clapped her hooves. “That’s the spirit, Minor! Come on out and have a cuppa with us in the kitchen, get out of this moldering ol’ room for awhile.”

He took in a deep breath, realizing as he did so that this interloper wasn’t entirely wrong about the state of the air in this room. “Miss Philharmonica, I am really rather busy --”

“And you’ve been busy all yesterday, too!” She shook her head. “You have to learn to take breaks, mate. It’ll stifle your creativity just working on one thing all the time. You’d be amazed at the ideas that come to you when you’re not thinking about it. Look at me, I hardly ever think about anything before I do it, and… well, not to toot my own horn, because really that’s Beauty’s thing, but I would say that I’m a pretty successful musician.”

“Again, Miss Philharmonica, I must really refuse. My muse is here, you see.”

Octavia tilted her head and glanced around the room, clearly perplexed. “Your… muse? Where?” She eyed the bone trinkets with disfavor. “Er. Is your muse… quite well?”

Minor inclined his head. “Look out the window.”

“Oh?” Octavia did so, peering out to the horizon over the edge of the cliff, the narrow coastline that gave way to the vast expanse of ocean beyond. “Oh! The sea is your inspiration?”

Well, of course. She couldn’t see what he saw. She never would have come here if she could. “That is… one way of putting it, yes.”

Octavia turned from the window and nodded firmly at him. “Well then, you’ve definitely got to get out of this room!”

Minor’s mouth fell open.“...Beg pardon?” he asked, barely constraining his mounting irritation. Had the fool simply not been listening?

“Well, perhaps you can see the sea from here, but you can’t hear it, can you?” Octavia asked patiently. “Can’t feel it, smell it, taste it, can’t get the spray in your eyes and the salt in your coat… a seaside holiday is exactly what you need, Minor, and the Krikkits are just the band for the job!”

“I -- you --” He sputtered his indignation. To his great horror, he found that she had quite a good point. Had he ever gotten up close and personal with his divine inspiration? “At least let me grab my papers!” he finally managed to say.

Octavia frowned, looking him over. “Oh… alright, then,” she conceded. “One pen and one sheet of paper for notes, if you really insist. Then, grab your towel and trunks, we’re going to take a jolly dip!”

Vinyl peered through the peephole of the secret door, breathing as little as possible. The thick wooden paneling muted most of the sound, but she could still see Minor Key clearly enough through the peephole. He was, to all intents and purposes that Vinyl could see, dead to the world. He sat hunched over his desk, scrawling notes on a sheet of paper, occasionally picking up one book or another, scrutinizing it carefully before shaking his head and throwing himself back at the page.

Suddenly Minor jolted to attention, fumbling his papers to the floor as the door to the room burst open. A voice rang through, loud enough for Vinyl to hear, though it was so muted and muffled she couldn’t tell who was speaking, let alone what was being said. Judging from Minor’s sudden look of exhaustion, though, she could make an educated guess.

Sure enough, when he finally hauled himself up from his chair and threw open the door, Vinyl saw the familiar bright face that she’d been married to for the last twelve years.

Octavia and Minor chatted at the door for a few moments, with a strong imbalance of enthusiasm. Vinyl could almost hear them, but their words were muddled and indistinct, as though they were standing much, much farther away than the room would allow. It was dreamlike, almost dissociative to watch.

Then Octavia pushed past him into the room, and Vinyl’s heart almost stopped. She wanted to leap out from her hiding place and pull Tavi away, keep her out of this weird old stallion’s sanctum. Nothing about this place looked at all healthy.

Octavia trotted around the room, studying the hanging sheet music as she chattered away. Minor was growing visibly frustrated, though he tried to hide it behind his wearied expression. He showed Octavia something out the window, and she instantly lit up. Vinyl didn’t catch most of what she said, but she caught the word ‘beach’. She also saw Minor tighten up even more, shaking his head violently, but Vinyl knew that it would take far more than that to dissuade her wife.

Minor held out for barely a minute more before Octavia was all but pushing him out the door and down the hallway, barely pausing to let the stallion grab some things off his desk. Vinyl waited a minute more before finally letting out her breath, slow and shaky.

She froze, hearing nothing. She clapped her hooves and heard nothing, only feeling a vague tremor.

“*” she said, as loudly as she could. She turned to look around the closet she had thrown herself into, at the metronomes that lined the shelves. Hesitantly, she tried to start one. Instead, the pendulum bar merely lolled over, barely hanging on the pivot.

Vinyl felt herself suddenly seized by foreboding. There was nothing in here with her, but a nothingness that was given shape and form. A nothingness that wanted her to be nothing, too.

She hastily pushed open the secret door and stumbled out into the room beyond. At the last moment, even in her panic, she remembered to grab the sheet of metal from off the floor, dragging it from the terrible closet. She kicked the door shut behind her. It made only the most muffled of thumps as it slammed into the jamb, and Vinyl fell to the floor, trembling and gasping for air. The sound of her own lungs working was perhaps the most beautiful she’d ever heard.

After several moments, she pulled herself to her hooves. She desperately wanted to run, run as fast and as far as she could to escape from that terrible silent nothing which was held at bay only by a single door. But, she had a job to do. So, she shut her eyes tight and pictured Octavia’s cocky, grinning face until the terror had ebbed and her heart had slowed to its normal tempo.

She opened her eyes again, and regarded the room with a sharp, steely gaze before moving to tear open Minor’s desk drawers.

Minor Key was not a stallion accustomed to the beach. In all honesty, he wasn’t all that accustomed to other ponies. In short, he reacted to Octavia and Fred pushing him along the road down to the shoreline by going limp and unresisting as they ferried him down the cliff, chattering endlessly about something or other. At one point, he managed to shake himself from his fugue long enough to ask, “Where are your bandmates? The last time I counted, there were four of you. To lose one would be careless enough, but two -- unthinkable.”

Fred laughed and bumped Minor’s shoulder lightly. “Oh, you are a card. Isn’t he just, Octavia?”

“Beauty an’ Harpo went back to that hotel to fetch Tapper,” Octavia explained. “This can be a right little day out for us all! Gorgeous weather for it, too.”

Fred hummed his agreement. “Still ocean, no clouds… I don’t even see any gulls.”

Octavia gave a mock pout. “Somepony’s gone and chased them off already, then?”

Minor chuckled softly.

“Mm?” Octavia asked, looking at him.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just remembering, that’s all.” Minor’s gaze drifted to a long-abandoned nest that had fallen amid the brush, and he grinned all the way down to the beach.

It was breathtaking. The coarse, dry sand spread out like a wasteland to the left and right. Ahead lay the vast and uncaring ocean. Above, the uncaring, unchanging infinite void. Any direction you could walk in, it seemed, would end in lingering, isolated death.

“It’s wonderful,” Minor breathed.

He nearly fell on his face as Octavia gave him a hearty slap on the back. “See? I knew you’d love it!” she said jubilantly. “Doesn’t it feel nice to be out of that old wreckage?”

Frederick cleared his throat sharply. “Er,” Octavia said hastily. “I mean. Out in the sunshine, hey? The sun, the sand, and the surf.”

“...Yes, indeed,” Minor said darkly, glowering at Octavia sidelong. He had nearly forgotten his company.

“Come on, then,” Fred said. “Let’s get set up.”

He pulled a pack off his back and began to unroll towels onto the sand. Octavia popped open an umbrella and planted it firmly into the ground.

Minor elected to walk to the shoreline. The waves lapped hungrily at his hooves. He looked out over the sea, peering at the horizon to better see his muse. He saw no sign of them, though that meant little; they were elusive things.

He shut his eyes instead, letting his other senses do the work. He smelled the desiccating sand and salt so strongly they tinged his tongue, and the uncaring heat of the sun and chill of the ocean washed over his coat. It was familiar. He had been to a beach before, he knew. He could not recall where or under what circumstances, but he remembered that he had at one time been to the ocean before.

The roar of the ocean was hypnotic, as the music of the Krikkits had been. It filled the empty hollows of Minor Key in the same way, save for that it was heavier. Steadying. Cold. He felt his heartbeat and breathing slow and the thought swam through his head that this must be what it would be like to be in the presence of a god.

No. Not a god. Such things would have appealed to him once, but those encounters were practically common in this world. This presence was something… deeper. Bigger, as the Krikkits were.

The warmth of the sun faded, and the water turned icier and icier, each time taking a little longer to recede. Minor knew that it was only toying with him, that it would take him and consume him well before its final freeze, that his body would be crushed in the terrible embrace of the sea before becoming entombed there in ice until eternity itself came to an end.

How long he stood like that, lost in its implacable beauty, Minor could not have said, but when he came back to himself, it was to a worried-looking Octavia shaking him to alertness. “You still with us, Minor?”

He blinked and glanced back to the horizon. “...So it would seem,” he said dully.

Octavia kicked at the sand, not really knowing how to respond. “The others are almost here,” she said at last. “I saw them coming down the road.”

She paused. “They seem to have company.”

Minor blinked. “...Come again?” he asked.

Octavia pointed up to the cliffs. A throng of some several dozen ponies were descending. All of them were smiling. Leading the pack, laughing and beaming, Harpo and Beauty made their way down the cliff face.

“Oh,” said Minor, his face turning a very peculiar shade. “I see.”

Vinyl searched through the contents of the desk carefully and methodically, skimming every book, flipping through every file, and making sure to check for hidden drawers. She found nothing.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She found a great many things in those drawers, and it seemed incriminating. It was merely that she had no idea what any of it actually was. What use was a book on windigos in all this? Why did Minor have a whole book about some creature called ‘Entropy’ -- and who was that, anyway?

The only thing that Vinyl even remotely recognized was a slim, hoof-bound tome, little more than a teenager’s homemade zine, one that Starlight Glimmer herself had once made -- and later spent several years under Twilight’s tutelage trying to round up and destroy every known copy.

Vinyl flipped through it, carefully looking for anything that might have contributed to whatever might have disturbed Romana’s time senses. Again, nothing stood out to her -- not even Starlight’s actual spell for removing cutie marks was in here, only notes on the theory of it. Of course, it made sense -- why would a wannabe dictator write down the truth of their secret weapon where anypony could get their hooves on it?

Vinyl piled the pamphlet onto the stack of books she wanted to try and smuggle out of the house. Romana could probably make some sense of them, after all, and even if she couldn’t… well, it might delay Minor Key’s plans for a little while. She picked up the book stack in her magic and turned to leave.

There was somepony standing in the doorway. Vinyl froze, drinking the figure in. Her face was covered by a white mask of bone, rimmed at the edges with short, sharp spikes. She wore a deep grey skirt that hid her cutie mark. The only part of her that Vinyl could really see was her mane, which was a flaxen blonde. “Well, well,” the mare mused. “You certainly aren’t Minor Key.”

“...I’ll take that as a compliment,” Vinyl said, setting the books on the desk.

There was a flash of a grin beneath the bone, but it was gone just as quick. “Now. How did you come to be in my… associate’s… chambers, hm? Did you come in through the bathroom window? Walk up the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Green? Perhaps you took a long and winding road…”

Vinyl blinked. “Uh. It was the kitchen window, actually.”

The masked mare smirked. “Sorry. Inside jokes.”

“Uh… huh,” Vinyl said, watching the mare carefully.

“Now,” said the mare. “You’re in an interesting position, friend. I can’t actually cross this threshold, you see, so I can’t actually get in to kill you. By the same token, you can’t actually leave that room. A stalemate, if you like.”

“You’re going to kill me?” Vinyl repeated, her voice going up a few registers.

“Oh, certainly. It’s a cliche, I’m afraid, but you just know too much about what’s happening here.”

Vinyl snorted. “Lady, you got it all wrong. I don’t have a damn clue what any of this means. Actually, we’ve got time, why don’t you just explain it to me?”

The mare’s lip curled in contempt. “Please. I’m not that much of a two-bit villain.”

“You don’t actually know what’s going on, do you,” Vinyl said, starting to smile. “Minor’s warded this room against you -- he clearly doesn’t trust you, and all his books and shit are in here, not to mention…” she waved a hoof at the closet door. “That.”

“What?” the mare asked before she could stop herself. She quickly pursed her lips tight, but Vinyl had broken into a broad grin.

“You really don’t know what’s going on!” she said. “I bet that drives you nuts -- you seem like the kinda person who wants to be in charge all the time.”

“Does this have a point beyond riling me further?” the mare asked.

“Surprisingly,” Vinyl said, “yes. I’ll make you a deal, um…”

“Call me Rita, if you must.”

“Rita. I doubt I’m the thing in this room you want the most. I’ll give you all the information you want, and you let me leave in peace.”

Rita chewed that over. “I would be… amenable to that, yes.”

Vinyl breathed a sigh of relief. “Great. What do you want?”

Glancing around the room, Rita’s gaze eventually fell on the metal sheet Vinyl had rescued from the closet. “That,” she said, pointing. “Bring it here.”

“Alright,” Vinyl said, lifting the plate from the ground. “Keep your hooves where I can see ‘em.”

Rita sat neatly down and raised her hooves in the air. Vinyl looked her up and down, but saw no weapons. She made her way toward the door, never looking away from Rita. The mare’s eyes were shrouded in shadow behind the mask, but as Vinyl approached, she could see how her eyes kept flicking toward the threshold. The DJ slid the sheet of metal out, watching the floor as she did -- then quickly yanked her hoof back as a dark shape darted across the floor. There was a twanging sound, and Vinyl saw, to her horror, that there was a hole gouged deep in the wallpaper by the door. Slowly, the shadows shifted, and the shape of a hoof holding a knife twisted away from the wall. A shadow mare stepped out of the dark shadows of the hall itself, twirling its weapon with silent menace.

“You cheat,” Vinyl said, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

“As I said,” Rita said, picking up the sheet metal and pulling it away from the door. “You know too much to leave here alive. But I thank you for the lovely gift!”

Vinyl stepped back from the door and turned away, gathering up the books and papers she had been planning to leave with.

Rita arched an eyebrow. “You can’t still be thinking of getting away, can you? There is no other way out from this room, heavily warded as it is. That little trinket on your hoof will do nothing in here, nor can you simply teleport out. At least I will only kill you. You don’t want for Minor to put you back in that closet, do you?”

Vinyl shuddered. “I thought you didn’t know what was in there.”

“I don’t. But I doubt it’s pleasant, whatever it may be. Come here, it will be quick.”

Vinyl took in a deep breath, hefted the books, and bolted toward the exit -- though perhaps not the one that Rita had been expecting. In an instant, Vinyl was up and through the window and onto the roof beyond. The last thing Rita heard was the quickly fading cry of “Parkour!” before Vinyl was gone. She scowled at the window for a long minute, then shook her head. There would be other opportunities, she had no doubt. For now… she hefted the steel plate and parchment, thoughtful. For now, she had a recalcitrant agent to find.

Hard Day's Night

Scrutinizing a monitor, Romana typed a command in Gallifreyan and watched as the requested information loaded. She took a thoughtful sip of tea.

There was a bright flash of light followed by a scream, abruptly cut short as Vinyl collided with the floor, books and papers scattering everywhere.

Romana set down her cup of tea. “How did it go?” she asked mildly.

Vinyl’s only response was to groan loudly and flop off the pile of books that had broken her fall, slowly rolling down to the ground.

“Jolly good,” Romana said, not looking away from the screen.

“I got caught,” Vinyl said.

Romana turned to face her for the first time. “By whom? One of the band members, or the mysterious Mr. Keys?”

“Neither,” Vinyl said, struggling back to her hooves. “There was another mare -- I tried to teleport away, but your ‘emergency escape’ didn’t work.”

Romana frowned. “But it clearly did,” she reasoned. “Seeing as it brought you back here.”

Vinyl shook her head. “There was a room that was warded against teleportation,” she said. “I had to… fuck. I just jumped out a fucking window!”

She sat down heavily, staring into space. “I could’ve died.”

Hesitantly, Romana reached out to pat the other mare on the back. “Well… I’m glad that you didn’t?” she tried.

Vinyl shook her head. “I brought back everything I could,” she said. “See if you can make any sense of it. I’m gonna go lie down.”

“Of course. The TARDIS will -- where are you going?”

Vinyl paused at the main doors. “We’re parked in a hotel room,” she said. “I might as well make use of it.”

“Ah.” Romana blinked. “Fair, I suppose. Oh, but before you go? The mare that saw you. What did she look like?”

Vinyl shrugged. “Dunno. She was wearing a mask.”

Romana’s breath hitched. “...What kind of mask?”

Vinyl rubbed her cheek. “I mean, it looked a lot like…”

“A skull,” Romana said the last part in time with Vinyl, her voice grim. “Of course.”

“You know her?”

“Probably not personally,” Romana said, turning back to the monitor. “Go have your lie-down, Vinyl. I have a feeling we’ll need all the energy we can muster.”

Minor Keys was having what, by almost any standard, would be considered a wonderful day at the beach. There were ponies everywhere, on the sand, in the surf, in the sky -- the usually sullen townsponies of Hayburg had undergone a nigh-miraculous transformation, laughing and playing all around. Ponies were splashing in the waves. Pegasi and batponies wheeled circles in the air, dodging around kites. Several burly workhorses had even set up a game of volleyball not too far down the coast.

It was a lovely day at the beach.

Minor despised it.

His cold and silent refuge had been invaded and overcome by this horde of rabble-rousing joymakers. The indignity that had been brought to his cold and silent shores alone was almost too much to be borne. Yet, he thought that even this he could have tolerated, if only he could have clung barnacle-like to the cliff face, skulking in the shadows and sullenly watching the beachgoers. Unfortunately, he had been captured.

“C’mon, Mines!” Harpo said, his hooves on Minor’s withers. “You must at least know what a conga line looks like, even if you’ve never been in one.”

“Must I?” Minor retorted.

Harpo, unfortunately, misinterpreted this as a simple desire not to participate, and slapped him fondly on the back. “Come on, you’ll have fun once you get into it! I know you must’ve had some fun in your life, you know. I can see those tattoos under your coat.”

Minor opened his mouth to retort, but the words were snatched from his lips as the line lurched forward. Octavia led the equine centipede, whooping and hollering, on its meandering march across the desecrated sands.

Minor struggled to keep pace with the juddering construct of bodies that twisted before him, all of their legs jerking out at odd angles in this parody of a dance. His own intestines were twisting as well, writhing as a burning sensation rose from somewhere deep within his chest. It was deliriously searing, a power stronger than even the music that his houseguests had so kindly served him a mere hour ago.

He paused at the thought, causing Harpo and all the others behind him to stumble for a moment before the forward pull of the remainder of the throng yanked Minor back into time with all the others. The music. Now there was a thought.

He peered over the heads of everypony else, to where Octavia led the townsponies in their rhythmic march. It was barely visible in the golden sunlight of midday, but she was resplendent in that same bright, warm energy, pulsing around her in time to the beat of the dance, flaring every time the line of revelers cried ‘Hey!’ and kicked their hind legs out. Now that he was aware of its presence, he could feel the same warm prickle on his shoulders and deep inside his core, see it as it traced patterns onto each and every beach party attendee. They were golden glowing tethers, leashing each and every one of them back to Minor’s houseguests.

He looked out to sea, in all its empty, starving glory, and the cold, gaunt specters that danced within it. A slow smile creased his face.

Perhaps, he thought as he joined his own particular song to the chant of the crowd, this would be a nice day at the beach after all.

Vinyl lay on the hotel bed, limbs spread out like a starfish, belly up. She stared at the off-white pattern of the ceiling. She almost wanted to close her eyes, but every time she tried, all she could think of was the shadows of the room shifting around her, the blade of an intangible weapon poised to strike --

She shuddered and rolled onto her side, curling up to stare out the window, instead. The light cut through the gauzy curtains and cast diffuse shadows across the room.

The thought that she could have died still haunted her, to a degree. It was a terrible feeling, that sense of being backed into a corner. Between the void in the closet and the mysterious masked mare, she wasn’t sure which had been more horrible. At least the void hadn’t talked back.

While all that weighed heavy on her mind, however, it was outweighed by several orders of magnitude by the thought that Octavia was still living in that damnable house. Vinyl was out of danger, at least for the moment. Her wife was decidedly not.

She tried to shut her eyes again, but her brain cast visions of Octavia, silently screaming as the darkness slowly spread across her body --

With a sudden burst of vigor, Vinyl rolled off the bed and trotted quickly back into the TARDIS. Romana might not have been the most talkative of mares at the moment, but she was a distraction if nothing else.

The hum of the console room rolled over her as she trotted back in, and Vinyl felt the muscles in her back loosen and her jaw relax. She hadn’t even realized she’d been clenching them.

Romana had moved away from her monitor to lean against the railing around the central platform, sipping tea as she stared off into space.

“Hey,” Vinyl said.

Romana acknowledged her with a single nod. “Feeling any better?”

Vinyl opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Taking her silence as an answer, Romana set down her tea and moved swiftly back to the console.

“I’ve been looking into your wife and her bandmates,” Romana began, tapping commands into the TARDIS. “There are -- well, quite a few oddities in their timelines. Individually, they’d be quite minor, really quite unremarkable, but when put together they start adding up.”

“Yeah?” Vinyl asked. “You mean like the way they’re all obsessed with bow ties?”

Romana paused. “I didn’t, actually,” she admitted. “That’s another interesting data point, even if I’m not certain where it figures in…” She contemplated that for a moment, then shook herself from her reverie. “No, I mean that there are certain events in each of their lives that seem to be shrouded in mystery. For instance, I couldn’t find a date for when any of them received their cutie marks.”

Vinyl frowned. “That’s… weird. Can you find that for other ponies?”

Romana nodded. “Yes. I ran a similar program on you, Ditzy, and a hoofful of other ponies as a comparison. So, if you could confirm that you got your cutie mark on July 12th, 987 Celestial Era…?”

Vinyl nodded. “Yeah. I was a late bloomer, actually, I only got it when I was sixteen. I was at a party, and the DJ just fuckin’ sucked. Super unprofessional, couldn’t read the room for shit, and just a real surly guy. So when he stepped out for his third cigarette break of the evening, I decided that I couldn’t do a worse job than him, and… yeah, the rest is history.”

“Interesting,” Romana said, though her attention seemed to be locked on the screen. “That was one of the more notable discrepancies, but there are other things too, when you look more closely. They all went to Mulliard at the same time, despite receiving better offers elsewhere. I can’t find any evidence of Harpo even applying there, but he was accepted nonetheless. Same story with the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra -- all of them were accepted at the same time, and all of them quit at the same time. Given their current group, I can understand that the latter might have a rather mundane explanation, but it is peculiar in light of all those other oddities.”

Vinyl nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that all sounds pretty… conspiratorial, I guess.”

“I think the fact that all of them not only share a birthday but were born in the same hospital is especially damning proof,” Romana added.

Vinyl tilted her head. “Huh? No, they don’t.”

“...Don’t what?” Romana asked.

“They don’t share a birthday. They weren’t even all born in the same year. They were all in different months, too, so it’s not like they even have the same birth date.”

Romana squinted at the screen. “That’s not possible. I’m looking at their biodata, and that simply doesn’t lie. If you were to corrupt it, it would literally change their history, and it says they were born on the twenty-ninth of February, in nine-sixty--”

She broke off suddenly, staring at the screen with new intensity. “The year nine-hundred and sixty-three, Celestial Era,” she said softly. “Which, as memory serves, is decidedly not a leap year.”

Vinyl stared at her blankly. “So, the TARDIS is wrong, then?” she asked. “Cuz, Tavi’s a whole year younger than I am, she was born in ‘72.”

The engines of the ship rumbled in indignation.

Romana patted the console absently. “There, there. She doesn’t know any better, that’s all. No, Vinyl, the TARDIS isn’t wrong -- well, probably not, anyway -- and it’s not a great idea to suggest that when you’re walking around inside her.”

Vinyl blinked. “Kay. Did not need that mental image. So what’s it mean, then?”

Romana let out a long breath. “I have a very nasty suspicion about that skull-masked mare of yours,” she muttered. “But I need it confirmed…”

She yanked down hard on a lever. “Sorry about this,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. “But I think we’re going to have to make a little trip off the beaten timeline.”

Harpo sat slightly away from the rest of the party, resting on a rock at the edge of the surf, idly kicking his hoof in the waves as they surged up the beach before falling back once more. He was fiddling with something hoofheld, his tongue poking slightly out of his mouth as he fixed his gaze intently on the object. He glanced up, however, as Minor Key approached him, and he gave the older stallion a wide grin. “Oi up there, Minor! Feeling inspired yet?”

Minor gave the harpist a tight smile and took a seat on the rock next to him. “It is, perhaps, rather too noisy for me to truly get my head around music at the moment,” he said. “But I will admit, getting closer to my muse has given me a few new ideas.”

Harpo’s grin brightened. “Brilliant! I’m sure we’d all love to hear a bit of it when we’re back up at the house.”

Minor gave a noncommittal hum in response. “And you, Harpo? How are you feeling this morning?”

“Much better for being out in the sunshine,” Harpo said. “No offense to your house, of course, but it is a little dim. And cramped. And old. And --”

“And what is that you have there?” Minor interrupted, a touch of ice entering his voice as he gestured to the object Harpo was working on.

“Hm? Oh, this. Just me camera,” Harpo said, holding it up for the musician’s inspection. It was a fairly nice model, sleek and black. “Photography, you know? It’s a hobby I’m looking into.” He scratched his cheek. “Not much luck yet, but oh well. Say cheese!”

Minor flinched as the flash went off in his face, and he barely bit back a snarl. Regaining his composure, he glanced back at Harpo. “You wished to photograph the party?” he questioned.

“The party, yeah, and the sea itself.” Harpo threw his hooves wide and quoted, “The Sun was shining on the sea, shining with all her might -- she did her very best to make the billows smooth and bright.”

“And that was very odd,” Minor murmured, “because it was the middle of the night.”

Harpo nodded enthusiastically. “You know Carol?”

“Lewis Carroll, yes of course,” Minor said, not quite paying attention.

Harpo paused. “...No? Bells Carol, the one what wrote Chalice in Wonderland.”

Minor shook himself. “Hm? Oh yes, of course.”

“I always wanted to write something like what he did,” Harpo said. “All psychedelic and sparkly, like. The others do too, but we haven’t got the right sound quite yet.”

“Mm,” Minor hummed. “What do the others think of your photography?”

Harpo shrugged. “Dunno, really. Haven’t showed them much of it.”

Minor nodded, looking out to sea. “That makes sense. They wouldn’t have paid attention to it, anyway.”

Harpo paused. “...What?”

Minor shrugged. “Well, you know. I haven’t known the four of you for very long, but I can tell a fellow outsider when I see one.”

Despite the warmth of the day, Harpo felt a sliver of ice in his stomach. “...You’re wrong. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Octavia is the clear leader,” Minor said. “Beauty and Fred are hitched. You are… what, exactly?”

“I’m their friend,” Harpo said. The words sounded oddly hollow in his ears. “I’m their friend.”

“Of course, I must have been mistaken,” Minor said, nodding as he continued to stare at the ocean waves. “You just remind me so much of myself at your age. Enthusiastic. Creative. But so very… alone.”

The golden sands were now dull and grey, and Harpo shivered as the breeze blew in from the sea. He rose from the rock, his flanks cold and flat where they had been pressed against the stone. “I… I’m going into town,” he muttered. “See you… when I see you.”

He trotted back toward the cliff. Minor noticed that he was far from the only one -- a trickle of ponies were making their way up the trail, shiving and sober, not one among them thinking to share their body heat with another. Minor watched. Minor smiled.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the beach, Octavia was reclining on the sand, resplendent in tiny, elegant sunglasses and a casual swimwear bowtie. Fred and Beauty stood on either side of her, diligently burying her in sand. “So, Tavi,” said Beauty. “We haven’t really caught up properly yet! What’s the hot goss out in Ponyville?”

Octavia tilted her head. “Well,” she said. “It’s been fairly quiet this last couple of weeks, really. There was a bit of a ruckus with the new alicorn, and Discord’s daughter returning, but it’s all been settled now.”

Fred chuckled. “How’s Fluttershy taken to having a new daughter?”

“I doubt she thinks of it like that,” Octavia said. “Seeing as Screwball’s older than civilization as we know it and all. But I think the two of them get on quite well, really.”

“Sounds nice,” Beauty muttered, a touch of acid entering her tone as she poured her bucket of sand over Octavia’s recumbent form.

For a moment, Fred’s face darkened. Then, with a shake of his head, he was back to his normal, smiling self. “And Vinyl?” he asked. “How’s she been, then?”

“Oh, lovely as ever,” Octavia said with a contented sigh. “Still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Fred chuckled, shoveling up more sand. “I mean, what’s she been up to, love?”

“Oh. Still composing, still performing, still much too fuddy-duddy to really carry off the DJ vibe. Not that I’d have her any other way, of course.”

“Of course,” Fred said. “You wouldn’t ever want her to change.”

“But she would if you really needed her to,” Beauty said, shoving her spade into the ground with a force that belied her light tone. “I can tell, that’s how much she cares about you.”

Fred let out a long sigh through his nose.

Octavia glanced from one to the other, taking in their tense shoulders and downcast eyes. “Everything alright?” she asked. “Anything I can help with?”

“No,” both said at once. They glared at one another over Octavia’s buried body.

“I’m going on a walk along the coast,” Beauty said shortly, turning away.

“Fine. I’ll be up at the house,” Fred said, turning in the other direction.

“Lads? Oi, lads?” Octavia wriggled against her sandy bonds, which suddenly felt much more abrasive than they had mere moments before. “Look, tell me what’s wrong or don’t, but could one of you give me a hoof out of this? Anyone?”

She glanced up and down the now-spartan beach and the slow trickle of ponies trekking back up the path to the top of the cliff. “Help?” she tried.

With none apparently forthcoming, Octavia sighed and began the laborious process of pushing herself to a sitting position, still glancing at both of her departing friends until they had passed out from her line of sight.

Minor Keys sailed through his back door, head held high and back straight as he made his way toward the library. He was displeased, though not exactly surprised, to discover that it was already occupied.

Rita sat before the hearth, which was crackling with unearthly red flames that made the shadows of her mask dance like juddering marionettes. Behind her, her shadow reared back, larger than life against the wall in the flickering light.

“Good afternoon,” Minor said. “To what do I owe --”

He paused, as Rita’s shadow swung its blade mere inches from his throat.

The mare rose from her seat by the fire, and threw a large, square object to the floor, where it clanged dully against the soft and aging wood. “Explain,” she said shortly.

Minor looked at the sheet metal with disdain. “So. You finally managed to circumvent my wards.”

“I said, explain,” Rita said. “I would prefer you to stay alive until my ends are met, but if you threaten my --”

“Oh, shut up,” Minor spat.

Rita stopped dead. Though her mask concealed her face, Minor fancied he could see her jaw hanging agape beneath the ill-formed mandible. Even her shadow seemed taken aback.

He took a step forward. “You always thought you owned me. You held my soul, my memories, and my very life in your hooves. Did you never wonder if I would resent you? That I would look for a new patron to avenge myself on the old?”

“Answer the question,” Rita said, jaw clenched and shoulders trembling. In rage, Minor wondered, or in fear?

“My muse came to me in my darkest hour,” he continued, taking another step forward. “In it, I felt a kindred hunger, a need for something that had been stolen from the core of myself, a raw-bit cold and lonely void where our hearts once were, a void that we were each desperate to fill. I sought to feed it in the only way I could, the only shred of my identity that you had left me. I played for it. Composed for it. Wrote for it.”

He kicked aside the sheet metal, engraved faintly as it was with something that might almost have been called music, though in no staff or key known to Gaea. “Fed it,” he whispered.

“What are you doing?” Rita demanded, taking a step toward him. Her shadow readied its blade. “What have you done? No more games, Key!”

“But it wasn’t enough,” he continued, his eyes foggy and unfocused. “My music was never enough to move any creature’s heart, let alone one so cold and empty as my muse of mist.” He broke into a wide grin, his eyes unchanging. “And then you dropped your pet project right into my lap.”

The shadow swung its blade along the wall, striking true at Key’s neck. The blade passed clean through. Minor Key, still standing tall and proud, began to laugh. “Fool!” he cried. “Fool! You can no more kill me than you could stab a cloud! My shadow is dead already, sapped away in honor of my magnificent muse!”

Rita backed away. “You’re insane,” she said. She paused for a moment and barked a laugh. “But then, that’s the way you always were meant to be, I suppose…”

Key tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

Rita held up a bottle of glowing golden aether. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she taunted.

Key stared at the bottle as it shimmered in the red firelight. “No,” he said, looking at her squarely, watching her face drop behind the skull she wore. “I don’t care. Whoever I once was, he is dead.”

He turned his back to her and trotted back out the door. At the threshold, he paused and glanced back. “You should get away from here, before you join him.”

With a muffled thump, Rita was left alone, staring at an old oak door. She did not blink for several minutes, only breathing heavily as she watched. At length, she turned to her shadow. “We,” she said, “are going to need some reinforcements. Now.”

Magical Mystery Tour

The TARDIS shook violently. Vinyl clung to the railing for dear life, while Romana did much the same at the central console. “What’s happening?” Vinyl demanded. “It wasn’t like this earlier!”

“We’re traveling outside of conventional spacetime,” Romana shouted back. “The TARDIS is trying to access a point that doesn’t exist in reality.”

“That sounds dangerous!”

“It is.” The shuddering stopped, and Romana wiped her brow. “Thankfully, I have some experience with trans-reality voyages.” She reached out a hoof and flipped a switch, causing the TARDIS doors to swing open with a faint hum.

Vinyl peered out onto the street and blanched. “This doesn’t look much like Liverypool to me,” she said.

“It’s not,” Romana said, stepping out into the road. “At least, not in any form you’d be familiar with.”

The sky above was a raw, open-wound red. Clouds as black as ink floated overhead, with no pegasi there to guide them. The land was perhaps even stranger. The buildings seemed solid enough when you looked at them directly, but if you glanced away, they turned shadowy and flickering, and were most decidedly not the same when you looked back at them, even if you couldn’t put a hoof on how.

“This is a base of the Faction Paradox,” Romana said. “It… shouldn’t be here. There was only ever one strategic command center like this in all the universe, and it was devoured in the War.”

“Devoured?” Vinyl echoed.

“By a rogue TARDIS, yes.”

Vinyl looked back at the blue box, perplexed. The light on top seemed to wink at her, and she quickly looked away again. “So, uh, where do we go from here?” she asked.

“The TARDIS listed their birthplace as the Meadowbrook Hospital of Liverypool,” Romana mused. “It should be quite close by. Keep your eyes keen for it.”

Vinyl glanced down the street, catching sight of a big red cross down the road. “That looks pretty likely,” she said, starting towards it at a canter, Romana falling into step at her side.

The hospital was a tall, square building of brick and mortar. It looked old and respectable. The same could not be said for the great spidery metal structures that poked through the windows.

“What…” Vinyl began.

Romana’s eyes went wide as she saw them. “No,” she said. “No, even they couldn’t possibly…” She cut herself off and went into a dead gallop into the hospital. Vinyl hesitated only a moment before rushing after her.

The inside of Meadowbrook of Liverypool was unlike the outside in almost every regard. Vinyl had expected tile floors and sterile, clinical cinderblock walls. Instead, she was faced with something almost organic. The wood floor felt soft, almost rotten as it bent under her hooves, but the boards looked healthy and strong. The walls themselves thrummed with a strange, rhythmic energy, like there was somewhere within the facility a distant, pumping heart. Cobweb-like material hung in corners and doorways, but when Vinyl ran through it, it tore strangely. It felt warm. It was almost like skin.

Thankfully, she didn’t have time to think about that much, because she was still chasing Romana through the corridors of this twisted building. The Time Lady seemed to run almost on instinct, up stairs and down halls, growing ever closer to the center of the building. All the while, the ‘heartbeat’ that made the walls pulse like a living being grew louder and clearer.

Then, all of a sudden, Romana came to a halt. Vinyl nearly smashed into her. “Romana? What? What’s the matter?”

Romana opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She appeared to be lost for words. After several seconds, she closed her mouth again and swallowed hard. “I can hear them,” she said at last, her voice hollow. “Torn from their home, stolen and mangled and twisted…”

Vinyl looked up at the name over the door. ‘Nursery’ it read, in bold blue letters. Slowly, she pushed open the door and peered in.

The whole of it was too much to take in, so she had to take it all in chunks. The rows of cylindrical steel and glass tanks that lined the walls, each one filled with a kind of viscous golden light, each one holding a floating infant form. The circle of candles in front of each one of those tanks, each one surrounding a pattern of strange and swirling symbols on the floor, each of them with the skull of some apelike creature in the center. The pulsing, organic cables of webbing that flowed from each tank, up along the walls, each one beating in time to a different rhythm, each one reaching back to the machine at the heart of the whole mind-bending display.

It looked like a player piano had mated with a pipe organ atop a symphony orchestra, a vast and mechanical display of keys and pipes and strings and drums all playing at once in dread cacophony, all with no creature sitting there to manage them. At least, Vinyl realized as she looked closer, no living creature. Certainly no whole one.

The whole display was bedecked with dead, pallid lumps of flesh and bone, all of them perfectly preserved and artfully arranged on the instruments. One couldn’t be friends with Lyra without recognizing them for what they were. Hands. Hands that clutched drumsticks, guitars, violins, saxophones. Hands that splayed out over keyboards. Hands that made all kinds of strange, arcane gestures that Vinyl couldn’t even begin to guess at the meaning of. There were several tongues, too, wagging over a series of microphones held tight in the clammy grasp of yet more of those disembodied hands.

“Hey, Romana?” Vinyl whispered. “What the fuck?”

Romana looked like she might throw up right then and there. “Perverted Looms,” she said softly. “Worse even than the remembrance tanks.”

“The what?” Vinyl asked.

Romana licked her lips nervously, casting nervous glances around the room. “Looms. They’re how Time Lords have reproduced for centuries, ever since the Pythia’s Curse rendered our entire species sterile. They weave biodata into new bodies.”

Vinyl paused for a long moment. “Wait. If Time Lords reproduce like this, then how did Dinky --”

“Oh, the curse was broken by my alter-time self during the early stages of her presidency,” Romana said dismissively. “Practically a lifetime before Ditzy and the Doctor met. But Time Lords are a conservative lot, and the Looms made birthing much more convenient, so they remained in vogue for many Houses. And then, during the war… well, they were hardly the only thing to be weaponized.”

Vinyl looked into the room, wide-eyed. “I -- they weaponized babies?”

Romana snorted softly. “Everything was a weapon. I dream of them, sometimes. There were poems that could delete an entire planet from the timeline. A gentle flap of a butterfly’s wing could result in the assassination of a foreign leader on a backwater planet. A warm summer breeze might --”

“I get the idea,” Vinyl said. “So… what do these do?”

Romana took in a long breath, then stepped into the room beyond, walking gingerly, as though any wrong step might take her hoof off. “They look like remembrance tanks,” she said. “A common tool of low-level Faction members, used to bring back the dead based on memories of others.”

“That sounds… kinda useful, actually,” Vinyl said, stepping into the nursery after Romana.

“In a sense,” Romana said, gazing into each tank in turn. “It made for troops that were difficult for time-inactive cultures to destroy. You wouldn’t want to use them to try and bring back a loved one, though.”

“Why not?”

Romana paused and looked at Vinyl. “What was Octavia’s favorite thing to have for lunch in elementary school?”

“...Huh?”

“What bowtie was she wearing on your second date? Can you remember the exact details of a conversation you had with her last week?”

“No.”

“The memory cheats,” Romana said, looking away again. “It loses information, and fills in the blanks with biases and convenient lies. You might bring back somepony you love, but they won’t be the same pony you lost.”

“Oh. So… who are these guys trying to bring back?”

“Good question,” Romana said thoughtfully. “At a guess… musicians.”

Vinyl cast another glance at the wall of dead hands. “Thanks for the insight,” she said flatly. Then, she froze, catching sight of something in one of the tanks. Bright blue coat, brown mane and tail floating, splayed out around an unconscious filly form. She pointed. “That… that’s Beauty Brass,” she said, voice tight.

Romana didn’t look at her. “I did tell you that this was where they were all born,” she said softly.

Vinyl looked around the room again, eyes wide. She saw baby Harpo, curled into a little ball. She saw baby Fred, floating upside down in his tank.

She saw baby Octavia.

Vinyl barely realized she was running at the tank until Romana grabbed her and pushed her firmly to the ground mere feet from where it stood, sending her sunglasses skittering along the ground. She looked up at the other mare, furious. “I have to save her.”

“If you take her out of that tank before she's ready, you’ll almost certainly kill her,” Romana said sternly. “Moreover, if you take her out of her timestream, then you’ll never meet her in the future. She has to stay where she is. No interference.”

Vinyl looked mutinous for another few moments, then slumped back, clearly relenting. “Fine,” she said. “So what can we do?”

Romana contemplated that for a moment. “This is a fact-finding mission,” she said. “I sincerely doubt we’ve found everything we can learn about this room. We need to keep looking.”

“Sure. But you can study the fucked-up hand machine on your own, I’m not going near that thing.”

Romana cast her eyes over the monstrous thing with disfavor. “Fair enough,” she admitted. “Fine. You keep looking at the tanks, but don’t --”

“I know, I know, I won’t,” Vinyl said.

“Don’t step in the candle circles, either,” Romana added, looking at them warily. “The Faction Paradox disguises a great deal of their advanced technology behind rituals and idols. The candles might not be just there for the aesthetic.”

“Noted.” Vinyl looked around the grim old room and selected a tank based on no other criteria than that she didn’t recognize the pony inside. Or rather, she realized as she drew closer, she didn’t recognize the yak calf floating in the golden glowing stuff that filled the tank. Looking more closely at the other tanks, she saw baby zebras, baby dragons, griffon chicks, minotaur calves, diamond dog pups, changeling pupae, and more. Only about half of the tanks that she could see contained ponies.

She returned her attention to the tank she had chosen, carefully skirting around the circle on the floor. Cautiously, Vinyl put her hoof up against the tank itself. She could feel it vibrating with the force coming from the rotting organ in the center of the complex.

Vinyl shut her eyes and felt the vibrations for a few minutes longer. Then, before she could think better of it, she turned her head and pressed her ear up against the glass. She jerked back almost immediately in surprise. She could hear music in there, faint and distorted through the thick glass, but certainly present.

Pushing her head back against the glass, Vinyl shut her eyes tight and listened. She could even hear faint words, though they didn’t make complete sense to her. “Hey -- Romana?”

“Yes?”

“How much do you know about history?”

Vinyl could almost feel the eyebrow being arched. “Yeah, fine, stupid question. Anyway, what’s a water loo, and why would uh… I think they said ‘Neighpoleon’... surrender there?”

Romana paused. “Come again?”

“Because, you know, Octavia sometimes calls the toilet ‘the loo’, so a water loo sounds like just a normal bathroom, right?”

“Vinyl --”

“And, uh, I’m not a historian, but Neighpoleon, did he… win when he lost?” Vinyl shook her head. “I dunno. Weird lyrics. Great tune, though, I’ll give the fucked-up pipe organ that much credit…”

Romana hurried over to press her ear against the tank as well. After a few seconds, her eyes went wide. She tried another one and muttered something about a queen, and then at another one, she said something about spices and girls. She straightened up. “Vinyl, check on Octavia and Harpo, I’ll see to Beauty and Fred.”

Romana’s tone brooked no argument, nor did Vinyl see cause to put up one. She pressed her ear to each tank in turn, then looked back to Romana. “Harpo’s was something about a garden full of octopusses.”

“Octopi,” Romana corrected.

“No, the song said octopusses.”

Romana’s lip twitched, but she merely asked, “And Octavia?”

Vinyl looked uncertain, now. “Yeah. That one was weird. I figured it out, though, the band behind these songs.”

Romana’s jaw dropped. “You did?”

“Yeah! They even said it; Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. You ever hear of them?”

“...In a sense,” Romana said. “I think… yes, I think I’m beginning to understand, now. We should head back to the TARDIS, we ought not to hang around here any longer than we need.”

“We’re just gonna leave the babies?” Vinyl asked, incredulous.

“Like I said, if we take them out now, they’ll almost certainly die,” Romana said. “I’m sorry, Vinyl. There’s nothing we can do here.”

Vinyl shut her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. I understand.”

She turned back to Octavia’s tank and rested a hoof on the glass. “Don’t worry, Tavi. I’m coming to save you.” She leaned in and kissed the glass, then turned and walked toward the door, head down.

Romana patted her on the withers, and both mares began the trek back out of the hospital.

Octavia made her way to the gig alone, her cello case bumping against her side as she trotted down the hill from Keys’ house. The evening was still and quiet. It felt like the whole world had heaved a final sigh and just couldn’t be bothered to breathe in again.

She could almost sympathize.

Things got a little better when she got into the town proper and saw ponies moving about the streets. She could see life, even if she wasn’t feeling it right now. Some ponies paused as she passed by, pointing and whispering, but she couldn’t even bring herself to smile and wink back.

She just trudged along until the pavements turned to carpet turned to wood flooring and the sound of an argument finally pierced her mind.

Octavia glowered up from where she was listlessly sat in front of a mirror. (How long had she been sitting there? How had she gotten here? Where was here?)

Beauty and Frederick were on the other side of the dressing room, looking fit to tear each other’s heads off. Octavia snarled and grabbed something off the table to throw at them. A vase of flowers shattered against the wall and scattered along the floor. Fred and Beauty stopped to glare back at Octavia. “Yes?” Fred demanded. “Can we help you?”

“Would you just shut up?” Octavia responded. “Either go to counseling or save yourself some cash and just divorce already. Spare me the theatrics.”

“The hell do you know?” Beauty demanded, storming toward Octavia. “Cheeky little -- I ought to rearrange your face!”

“Not when we’re about to go on,” Fred said, resigned.

Beauty subsided slightly. “Not when we’re about to go on,” she concurred. She paused and rested her head in her hooves. “Celestia, but I feel awful,” she groaned. “Did I just threaten to beat you up?”

“Believe so,” Octavia said.

Beauty shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said.

“What’s gotten into all of us,” Frederick muttered darkly.

Octavia took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, trying to find herself again. “Nor do I,” she said. “Why don’t we start with what’s bothering the two of you?”

“None of your business!” Beauty said shortly, then covered her mouth with her hooves. “Luna dammit,” she muttered.

Frederick pursed his lips, struggling to find the right words. “We’ve been… trying to have a foal,” he said.

Octavia brightened. “Oh, but that’s brilliant,” she said. “You two will be great parents!” She hesitated. “Provided, you know, you can get through whatever the Tartarus all this is.”

Beauty gave a small smile at that. “Hah. Thanks,” she replied. “Trouble is, whenever we try and get down to it, one of us always gets cold hooves.”

“She’ll back out because she’s not ready to commit to it, or I’ll start worrying about our finances or about turning out like my old man, or we’ll just have a massive fight just beforehoof,” Fred said, shaking his head. “After a few days, it all cools down a little, but when we bring up the topic again, some new obstacle rises to block us.”

“I see,” Octavia said, furrowing her brow.

“What can we do?” Beauty asked. “It’s like the whole universe has it out for us.”

Octavia chuckled. “Yeah. I know how you feel,” she said. “That’s how it felt sometimes when I was courting Vinyl. The schedules wouldn’t align, or I’d get distracted and run late for our date…”

“I remember that,” Fred said thoughtfully. “The two of you broke up a couple times, didn’t you?”

Octavia nodded. “But I kept tryin’,” she said. “If it hadn’t nearly always been my fault, I might not have, you know. But she was always so patient with me… I just knew that I couldn’t just give up on her. That I had to try an’ change for her. Be a better mare.”

She chuckled. “I was almost ready to quit the Krikkits for her, you know? But then things started going right. I don’t know if I got more compassionate or if the universe just got tired of fighting me, but I married that mare an’ I never once regretted it.”

Beauty snorted. “You sayin’ that love conquers all, Tavi?”

Octavia tilted her head. “Somethin’ like that, yeah.” She smiled. “Love and blind, stupid pigheadedness, anyway. That’s how I know the two of you can get through this.”

Hesitantly, her bandmates smiled back. For a moment, the lights in the room flickered and dimmed from a rich gold to a soft fluorescent yellow.

Then the door slammed open and the moment was broken. “Tapper!” Octavia yelped, for it was indeed their conductor standing in the doorway, her mane affright. “Haven’t you ever heard of knockin’?”

“Harpo,” Baton Tap said. “Have any of you seen Harpo tonight?”

“...No,” Octavia said. “At least, I don’t reckon…?” She glanced at Fred and Beauty, who both shook their heads in turn.

“I see,” Tapper said. “Well… Keep an eye out for him, won’t you?”

“It’s a bit late to start askin’ that now,” Octavia said. “We’re on in an hour and a half, we’ve not even warmed up yet!”

“Yes, well,” Tapper said. “I’ll get some stagehands to start searching for him. If he doesn’t turn up on time… well, we’ll deal with that when we deal with it.”

She turned and trotted out of the room, leaving the bandmates alone with their own silent worries.

The walk back out seemed longer and darker than the walk in had been, most likely because Vinyl wasn’t running pell-mell through the corridors and actually had time to look at the decor of the hospital. It was dark, with narrow halls and ceilings that seemed higher than they ought to be. The darkness seemed to pool in corners and flow down the halls like water, and like water Vinyl was gripped with a stone certainty that there was something swimming in those shadows.

As they were passing by a ragged sheet of something that looked like cobweb, but decidedly wasn’t, Vinyl turned to Romana to ask about it.

Before she could even form the question, the Time Lady shook her head. “You’re happier not knowing,” she said firmly. “Just consider it… biowaste, and leave it at that.”

Vinyl barely repressed a shudder and moved on, one hoof after the other, back toward the gruesome red light of the street outside.

After what felt like an age, they were back in the atrium of the hospital, the light shining oddly through the glass doors and casting strange, misshapen shadows on the ground. Vinyl didn’t care. Through those doors, freedom awaited her. She just kept moving, just kept moving across the floor.

“Ahem!”

The sound rang like a gunshot in the silent hospital. Both Romana and Vinyl froze in place and turned to look at the source of the voice. A figure, her ashen purple coat almost completely hidden by the nurse outfit and skull mask that she wore, sat at the billing department counter, hooves resting on the desk. She waved at them, her mask's sharp white teeth glinting in the red light. “Going somewhere?” she asked.

Up from the shadows, a figure rose, holding a katana. Vinyl froze as she felt the phantom blade come to rest against her throat. Cousin Rita rose from her position and leapt gracefully over the counter. “Let’s talk about your healthcare plan,” she purred. “And keep your wits about you, or it’ll cost you an arm and a leg.”

“A forehoof and a hindhoof,” Romana corrected archly.

Vinyl gasped and blood began to run from a slim line across her throat. Romana’s eyes went wide.

Rita grinned broadly. “How sweet. It’s almost like you care about her. Now, shall I tell you how you’re getting out of this alive?

“...Fine,” said Romana. “Let’s hear it.”

“Lovely. Come, let’s get comfortable. I’ll show you to the waiting room.”

It Won't Be Long

It was only half an hour before curtain when Harpo finally showed up. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Beauty snarked. “Where’ve you been all this time, then?”

Octavia gave the harpist a rather more concerned once-over. “Harps, mate, you look like shit. What happened to you?”

Harpo, dripping wet and shivering, gave no response. He didn’t even meet their gaze, just headed over to the refreshment table and poured out a libation of whiskey. This he knocked back before settling down on the floor.

“...Harpo?” Octavia asked.

“Towel,” he said flatly.

“Er… I’ll check round for one,” Fred said, hurrying off.

Harpo barely acknowledged this, instead reaching up to undo his bow tie. He tossed it and his collar aside before pouring himself another whiskey.

“Harpo, mate,” Octavia implored. “There’s something wrong here. Tell us what’s been happening?”

Harpo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well,” he said. “‘M not exactly sure, to be honest with you. I wasn’t -- I almost didn’t come?”

Beauty opened her mouth, her face tight and angry, and Harpo hurried to explain. “It was like, I really felt like I shouldn’t, you know? Like I’d be walking into something I couldn’t walk back out of.”

Beauty closed her mouth, her eyes suddenly abstracted. “I think I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s that pit in your stomach, innit. Like you’re about to do a drop on a roller coaster.”

Harpo nodded. “Yeah. Just like that. So there was that, and I reckon… I wanted to throw my weight around a bit. Show that you couldn’t do it without me. Show myself that I matter.”

“You been feeling like you don’t matter, Harpo?” Octavia asked.

“I… yeah. A bit,” he admitted. “Quite a bit, actually. That bloke I mentioned on the train -- he kept standing me up. Tried to go on three dates with him, and he flaked out every time.”

“Like when I was first tryin’ to court Vinyl…” Octavia murmured, rubbing her chin.

“And then, at the beach, Minor fed me a bunch of lines about how I was always fifth-wheeling and always looked alone,” Harpo said. “Made me feel like you lot didn’t care about me. Tartarus -- he made me feel like I didn’t care about all of you.”

Fred trotted back into the room. “Found one!” he said triumphantly, setting the towel down at Harpo’s side. He paused for a moment, studying his bandmate intently. “...Not sure you actually need it now, though.”

“Huh?” Harpo looked down at himself. The dirty water had vanished without a trace, leaving his coat clean and dry.

There was a moment of silence. “I don’t like this,” Beauty said. Harpo, what made you come here after all if you were so worried?”

“Well, I --”

The door swung open again, and Tapper swept in. “Harpo, you’re here at last. Not a moment too soon, either, you’re on in five.”

“What?” Harpo squawked. “I’ve not even had a chance to warm up yet!”

Octavia glanced around the room. “The way things are going,” she said, “I’m not sure that’s much going to matter.”

The ‘waiting room’, as Rita termed it, was a far cry from anything that would normally be in a hospital -- at the very least, not one that was remotely concerned with safe biomedical waste disposal. The chairs were chintzy and covered in a pattern of flowering vines. Romana had rolled her eyes when she had seen them and muttered something about the Faction going out of their way to break every Gallifreyan taboo, but Vinyl clung to them as an isle of sanity in a sea of terror. The walls were lined with monitors and cameras, showing scenes from all across Gaea. Each one was bordered by strange sigils in what Vinyl desperately hoped was brown paint. Most seemed to be showing movies of Octavia and her bandmates, but they were far from the only creatures shown -- from yaks to dragons to diamond dogs, Vinyl could see practically every sapient species she could think of depicted.

Then, of course, there were the bones. They were piled everywhere, arranged artfully into cairns. Objects sat before them like offerings -- drumsticks, guitar picks, LPs, strange silvery discs that Vinyl had never seen before, and more.

Romana and Vinyl sat on a couch, huddled together for the false sense of protection that it offered. Rita sat in the chair across from them, content as a spider in her web. “Can I offer you anything?” she asked. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Answers would be nice,” Vinyl said flatly.

Rita clucked her tongue. “Really. I try to be a good host, and for what?”

“Very well,” Romana said. “I’ll have some tea.”

“No, no, clearly you both want to cut straight to the chase,” Rita said, leaning back in her chair. “Very well. Ask away.”

“What are you doing to my wife?” Vinyl demanded.

A hint of a smile flickered beneath Rita’s mask. “Well, I suppose you could say that we’re providing… guidance. Isn’t that what everyone wants, really? To know exactly what they’re doing and where they’re going?”

Romana snorted. “That sounds an awful lot like predeterminism for a Faction agent,” she said. “And if I may say, it does seem quite banal for the Faction to bother with something like the music industry, especially if you’re only going to try and recreate something from Earth’s history.”

“You think you understand us?” Rita leaned forward. “You, in your glass boxes and ivory towers? You grew up so comfortable and controlled in your little bubble of the Homeworld. This is just a test run. See where it goes off the rails, find where the culture of this world diverges from what we’re familiar with. Wind it up like a toy car, let it smash against the wall, pick through the wreckage and find out exactly how it exploded.”

“I don’t get it,” Vinyl said.

“There was this band, back in our universe,” Romana explained. “Called the Beatles, very popular --”

“Beatlemania,” Rita said, savoring the taste of the syllables. “You couldn’t possibly imagine it, Vinyl, but try -- a whole world gone mad with desire, swept away in the zeitgeist. Stadium shows thousands strong, filled with screaming fans. Record deals, films, drugs, conspiracy theories, a murder or two, an oppressive and paranoid surveillance state mentality increasingly trained against them -- and in the middle of it all, four men who defined and were defined by the zeitgeist. It was truly the perfect storm.”

“They were fine,” Romana said. “I liked a few of their songs, I suppose.”

“Tell me, Madame President -- do you think it a good idea to try and antagonize me?” Rita asked lightly.

“I’m not the president of anything,” Romana said. “I never have been.”

“But you know that you could have been,” Rita mused. “That you were, down the other track of time. Does it ever bother you? Those sliding doors, missed connections…”

Romana’s jaw flexed ever so slightly.

“Hey, yeah, still here,” Vinyl said. “Can we get back to my wife? We’ve covered the what, and I guess… the why? But, like… what’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll live out the life of a rock star,” Rita said. “One in particular, really. Things will change. She’ll have to have never met you, for a start -- a little tricky to do retroactively, but not all that difficult.”

“Excuse me?” Vinyl said.

“You’re an outsider,” Rita replied dismissively. “Not part of the story. We might be able to tool you in as her first wife, but it would really be easiest just to retcon your relationship away.”

Vinyl could scarcely hear anything as Rita rabbled on, not over the blood rushing in her ears. Nearly two decades of marriage -- more than that of courting -- and this mare was talking about wiping it away like chalk. She forced her anger down. She couldn’t so much as touch Rita here, surrounded by shadow and bone. Learning more about her plans and hoping to derail them later would have to do.

“It’s a matter of ritual importance, really,” Rita was saying. “Your Octavia really shouldn’t have slipped out of alignment. The others are important too, naturally. The group wouldn’t be complete without all four. But in the end, it’s a matter of blood.”

“...Whose blood?” Vinyl asked.

“John Lennon’s, originally,” Rita replied. “Played, in this reality, by your wife. Ritually, it’s a very powerful ending, an assassination. None of the others had nearly such monumental finales. Well, unless you count Original Paul, but that whole thing was really more for shits and giggles than any special ritual purpose.”

“Assassination?” Vinyl repeated, incredulous. “Who the fuck would want to assassinate ‘Tavi? She’s… okay, she does have a knack for ticking ponies off, but that’s nothing anypony would kill her for!”

“Nopony. Yet. That’s still some way off in the future, and the details tend to work themselves out with this kind of thing. I imagine the inevitable backlash of tradition against the growing countercultural movement will be more than enough to produce a nice little assassin. Perhaps we can find a McCarthy to install in the government to really push against their ‘anti-Equestrian values’. Then the movement will have a martyr, and Equestria’s culture will skip the tracks onto an entirely different course.”

“And Octavia is… what, just collateral to you?” Vinyl demanded. “My planet is just some big experiment to you?”

“‘Experiment’ might be a strong word,” Rita mused. “I prefer to see it as a canvas.”

Vinyl’s face was getting redder by the second. Romana placed a hoof on her withers, warningly. “So,” she said, turning to face Rita. “You said there was a way we’d get out of this alive.”

“Indeed. My agent on the ground has gone rogue and risks jeopardizing my plans. He’s shielded himself against my most effective weapons, and therefore I need you to destroy him.”

Vinyl folded her hooves over her chest. “And why would we do that?” she demanded. “If he’s working against you, he sounds pretty alright to me.”

“As I said, there is the small matter of your lives being on the line,” Rita said. “What’s more, while I don’t know what he’s planning, I have reason to suspect that his schemes will have much more fallout than the fate of a few musicians.”

Romana leaned forward. “Exactly what makes you say that?”

For the first time, Rita hesitated. “He… hm. Well, let’s say that he isn’t exactly from around here, shall we? He made a deal with the Faction for the loan of his soul. We’ve been repaying him slowly ever since, but it has taken a toll on him.”

“His ‘soul’,” Romana said, leaning back in her chair, eyes lidded. “What’s that code for, exactly?”

“Memories,” Rita replied, her voice light. “Emotion, a certain amount of free will; the animating spark, if you will. I’ve been keeping him on a drip, addicted to his own past, but it would appear that some other power’s gotten their hooks in him.”

“What power?” Romana asked.

“Unclear. I suspect it’s tied to whatever you saw in that closet of his…?” She looked at Vinyl expectantly.

Vinyl just glared back at her. Rita huffed. “Look at it this way,” she said. “In my plan, Octavia stays alive for decades more. In Keys’... her lifespan, and that of the world, is likely to be far less generous.”

Vinyl took in a long, slow breath and let it out. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll work with you to get rid of Minor.”

“...And after that?” Rita asked.

“Then I’m coming for you,” Vinyl said. “And don’t try the shadow sword shit on me now, not when you just said you needed me.”

“Strictly speaking, you’re just an annoying attachment to securing her help,” Rita said, nodding to Romana. “But you are, unfortunately, largely correct. And you do have some useful information on the nature of Keys’ new master…” She trailed off, looking at Vinyl once again.

“Yeah. I do,” Vinyl said.

Rita sighed. “Very well. Keep your secrets,” she said dismissively. “I’ll let you take your Ship back, so long as you allow me to tow it. Nothing personal, you understand -- I only wish to ensure that there will be no funny business.”

“Of course,” Romana said. “Shall we go?”

“...Not quite yet,” Rita replied, rising from her chair. “I want to ensure that you won’t run out on me at the first opportunity. So, I propose a little… insurance.”

“Such as?” Romana asked, leaning away from the skull-masked mare.

“An oath,” Rita said. “Sworn in blood.”

“No chance,” Vinyl said, crossing her hooves. “I’m not about to put my blood in your hooves after what you just said about Keys, not to mention the whole lab setup upstairs.”

“I assure you, this will be a wholly temporary arrangement,” Rita said, producing a small blade from her sleeve.

“I’m gonna need a little more than that to go on, thanks,” Vinyl said, rearing back.

“It will be a temporary merging of our biodata,” Rita said. “If any of us comes to harm, all of us will suffer for it.”

“In that case,” Romana said. “You really only need one of us to agree, don’t you? I wouldn’t do anything that would hurt Vinyl, and I don’t believe she’d do anything to hurt me.”

Rita tilted her head. “How very bold of you,” she mused. “Very well, I can accept those conditions.”

“And once Keys is out of the picture, you’ll break the bond?” Romana asked.

Rita wrinkled her snout. “Of course. I know your reputation for danger well enough, I don’t intend to risk my skin any longer than I need to.”

“Then it’s a deal,” Romana said, extending a hoof.

Rita laid the blade along Romana’s leg and made a slight incision. To her credit, Romana scarcely flinched.

Having done that, Rita took the bloodied blade and made an identical incision along her own leg. For a moment, the knife glowed a dull red. When it faded, the blood was gone, but the clear stone at the end of the hilt had turned into a blood-red bead. Rita plucked the stone off the end of the knife and affixed it to the front of her dress.

Romana inspected her leg. The wound had already healed, as though it had never been there at all. “Very good,” she said. “Are you now satisfied?”

“I believe I am,” Rita replied, tucking the blade away once more. “Let us away.”

Rita had parked her… time machine next to the TARDIS. At least, Vinyl assumed it was a time machine. It looked like some kind of mausoleum made of bones. The skull-masked mare waved a hoof just above the surface of the box, and a set of rib bones swung silently apart like doors. Vinyl barely repressed a shudder, and she noticed that Romana’s mouth was tight and drawn. “Come on,” the Time Lady said, opening the doors of the TARDIS. “Let’s get out of here.”

The homey light and warmth of the console room was almost blinding after the dim red light of the parallel Liverypool, so much so that Vinyl had to put her sunglasses back down to keep from cringing away. But the hum of the ship was a rock she could cling to, and she sank down in the nearest corner, trying not to hyperventilate. Romana stood at the console, seemingly waiting for something.

“Shouldn’t you be flying us out?” Vinyl asked.

“We’re getting towed, remember?” Romana replied, something bitter in her tone.

“Oh. Right.” Vinyl hesitated. “So, who exactly are these guys? The Faction Paradox?”

“Temporal criminals of the first order,” Romana said shortly. “They work to destroy all sense of rationality and reason in time and replace it with gaudy paradox.”

Something on the console dinged, and Romana pulled down a lever. There was a thud, followed by a sort of pulling sensation, though the time rotors remained unmoving. “They’re reactionaries against all Time Lord society, and while I can certainly understand that as a motive, I cannot agree with their methods.”

Vinyl let out a long breath. “So… when she said she could erase my life with Octavia.”

Romana froze. “Yes,” she admitted after a long moment. “She could. And I have no doubt that she will.”

Vinyl stifled a sob. “If we let her,” Romana said. “And I promise you -- we won’t.”

“I just -- I can’t. I don’t think I could go on,” Vinyl said. “She drives me nuts sometimes, but I literally can’t imagine life without her.”

“You won’t have to,” Romana said, face hard. “You won’t have to.”

Even through the thick canvas curtain of the stage, the Krikkits could hear the cheers of the crowd.

“Hear that?” Fred asked. “They’re chanting our names.”

“Where’d they even learn our names?” Beauty demanded. “We’ve had gigs where the bloody heads of the theater only knew us as ‘Oi, you’.”

“We’d better live up to expectations,” Harpo said. “They sound hungry.”

“I don’t reckon that’s gonna be a problem,” Octavia said. “They’re too loud to hear us as it is.”

A stagehoof waved at them, signaling ten seconds until curtain’s rise. Tapper raised her baton. Octavia shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, leaning into the microphone.

“Stallions, gentlemares, and friends beyond the binary!” the emcee called, their voice echoing through the speakers and reverberating strangely. Harpo’s strings began to hum in resonance. “Tonight, I am pleased to present -- The Krikkits!”

The curtain rose, and glittering golden light shone across the stage. If the roar of the crowd had been hungry before, it was primal now, a cry of joy and wonder and rage and lust and ravenous hunger indeed.

Octavia stared out with a stage fright like she’d never felt before. Somehow, she couldn’t quite communicate that to her relaxed and smiling face. Her hoof rose, independent of her will, to wave to the crowd, and the cheers rose to a deafening degree. She waved her hoof down to quiet them, and they faded to a dull roar. “Good evening,” she said, and the noise shot up again.

“Ah, we are the Krikkits,” she said when the thrill had abated slightly. “And to kick things off tonight, we’re going to play for you -- Meant to Be!”

As the roars rose again, Tapper counted off the beats and Octavia began strumming out a pizzicato melody.

Ooh, now girl, you’re my only one,

That’s all I have to say

Let’s go out and have some fun,

I’ll turn your night to day!

Tell me that you love me,

And I’ll tell you the same.

Together we can shine like shooting stars

Love that can’t be tamed.

Let’s get together

Hold forever

Just the two of us, babe,

We were meant to be!

We were meant to be!

There is another me, girl,

Hiding in my skin.

Open up the door, babe,

Let my love pour in.

We’ve only this one life, love

So why not go and live?

Take a chance on me, babe,

And all I’ve got I’ll give!

Let’s get together

Hold forever

Just the two of us, babe,

We were meant to be!

We were meant to be!

Just you and me!

We’re meant to be!

The rest of the concert was washed away as Octavia’s mind was subsumed into the roar of the crowd and the golden light.

Octavia’s vision swam as she stumbled up the stairs, and her brain was fluffy like candyfloss, and seemed just as prone to melting away.

Flashes of memory burst in her mind and faded just as quickly -- songs and applause, laughter and jibes, a screaming wave that tried to wash over the entire band --

“Have a nice night now,” said the policemare, walking away.

Had they been arrested? No. Protected? Octavia swayed on her hooves as images of screaming fans echoed in her head.

The others still seemed out of it. Their manes were rumpled as they smiled and bumped against one another, celebrating a good night’s work. Octavia was tempted to say that their stares were empty, but that wasn’t true; it was only that the things staring out from their eyes weren’t her friends.

She said nothing. There was nothing to say, not here and not now. The memory of song after song being pulled from her lips like tissues from a box rippled through her mind, and she clamped her lips even tighter together as they all made their way up the stairs. She could almost feel the songs swirling in her mouth like toothpaste, trying to dribble out around the edges.

Octavia all but fell into bed, and was asleep before her head could hit the pillow. Her rest, however, was anything but peaceful.

Octavia woke with a start and fumbled for an alarm clock she didn’t remember setting. She groaned and rolled out of bed. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was, the carpet unfamiliar beneath her hooves. But this was her room, the one she shared with… her wife. Yes. It was perfectly normal not to remember your wife’s name first thing in the morning.

Octavia hauled herself to the bathroom and glared at the mirror as she dragged her comb through her mane. Satisfied with that, she headed downstairs for breakfast.

Her tea and toast was already sitting out for her. “Good morning!” she heard her… wife? call from the next room. “How are we today?”

Octavia gave an incoherent grunt and took a sip of tea. “You’d better hurry up,” her wife continued. “You’ll be late.”

“I only woke up!” Octavia griped, glancing at the clock. She blinked several times. Indeed, somehow nearly two hours had already passed. “Shit.”

She chugged her tea and picked up her toast in her teeth, barely pausing to grab her hat and coat before racing to get to the bus.

The bus itself was crowded today, and Octavia had to squeeze to get a seat, managing to snag a newspaper in the process. She paused, noticing that her picture was on the front page. She tried to read the headline, but the words swam before her eyes.

Flipping through yielded no further results. There was some picture of a pony who she thought might be in the House of Lords, plus some kind of war film. At least, she presumed it was a film. She realized that she was humming as she walked up the steps to the studio. When had she gotten here? The world seemed flat and grey today, like set dressing. She pushed open the door to the studio and

She was falling, now. Shapes and colors, strings and music, all tangled around her, a nexus point in a kaleidoscope’s nightmare. She ran her bow across her string, her own limbs guided in turn by strings of their own, golden gossamer things that wove strange patterns and hummed stranger melodies. Octavia was humming along. She had been for quite some time now.

Her body warped and stretched under the pressure, turning colors it had never been meant to, psychedelic shades of blood leaking from wounds she couldn’t feel. She was big, bigger than any pony she’d ever met, bigger than Celestia. Maybe bigger than the world.

Was she falling now, or running? Her wife was pulling her along now, farther and deeper. “Honey?” Octavia asked. She hesitated. “Vinyl?”

“Who’s that?” her wife asked, turning just a little. Her face was a mask of comedy, grinning blindly out into the world. Octavia tried to pull back, but the golden strings were wrapped around their hooves.

The strings were getting louder, weaving over and around themselves, and still the laughing-masked mare pulled her on and on through the twisting, resonating golden threads that she could hear now in her bones, guiding her down the garden path to a home that was theirs (but not yet, not a home and not a them) as the strings grew louder and louder until she thought her head would explode --

And with the twang of one last bowstring and a brief flash of pain in her back, Octavia fell to the ground. Above her, the diamond starlight twinkled as though in applause.

Elsewhere in the house, Minor Key was sleeping no less fitfully.

His dreams were foggy, the details blurred and the faces obscured, but the memory ran through his mind like a half-remembered song.

“You’re sure about this?” one asked the other.

“Positive,” she replied. “It’s a potent artifact in fan culture. Two, really, if we find just the right…”

Her words blurred into obscurity. He was walking in a hall, tile clicking beneath his feet shoes hooves as he walked with purpose. His mind didn’t know where to go, but that was alright, his body was taking care of it. There were stalls that lined the hall, selling things that reminded him of other things, but the meaning of both was lost. Hats and pipes and magnifying glasses at one, art at another, figurines at a third, things that once had been signifiers but now were stripped of cultural significance.

If he turned his ear right, he could almost hear the faint straining of strings in the distance, growing closer as he walked along, among crowds of costumed people. He was costumed too. No, this is what he always wore. He didn’t normally wear clothes. Nopony did. But he wasn’t a pony. He had always been a pony. He was now not a pony, his forelimbs swinging at his side, his rear legs bending in a way he had never known as his distended muscles worked almost effortlessly to propel him forward on a meandering trajectory with a certain destination.

He stopped in front of one of the booths. The faces here were as blurry as ever, but there was something familiar about the obscuring. He had seen something, something he had wanted. The final piece.

“The final piece,” one of the attendants agreed.

“A real rarity,” the other noted. “Not a lot of Lovecraft cosplayers around, especially not as anything but Cthulhu.”

What an amazing coincidence, he thought, and the sellers laughed and took his money and handed it over. There was a stinging sensation on his wrist, a bead of blood welling up at the point of entry, but even as he saw it it seemed miles away. As though it were happening to someone else. As though it were happening to someone. Was he a someone?

The weight of the instrument settled in his hand. It had been new then, but now made familiar by years of use (how long had it been? Had this body ever been young?)

He tucked the violin of (mock?) bone and (painted?) sigils under his chin, experimentally running the bow across the strings, his body walking away from the booth, drawn inexorably forward by a tune now pulled from his body, twisting and turning in his soul and tangling itself up in it, yanked free from his chest like a string of handkerchieves and it hurt it hurt he fell to his knees tears flowing down his cheeks and splashing onto the bone of the instrument that he could not stop playing even in his agony as the floor seemed to give way beneath him all of the hall falling away into the fog as the melody crescendoed to a peak and

He knew no more.

With a Little Help From My Friends

Vinyl headed out from Sugarcube Corner, feeling slightly despondent. It wasn’t that she was unused to her wife going away for a weekend or so for a gig, but she still felt lonely being at home all by herself. She would have to have a friend over for dinner. Trixie would probably be free, Vinyl thought. She’d swing by the castle this afternoon and see.

As she trotted up the road to her house, Vinyl mulled over other plans for the weekend. Her old buddy Neon Lights had written her about doing another collab album a couple of weeks back. She could start mixing tracks for that. She could make some nice leek soup, too. Tavi hated leeks, so Vinyl saved them as a special treat for when she was out of town.

All those thoughts went right out of Vinyl’s head when she came upon her house and found the door hanging wide open. She was absolutely certain that she had shut it tight when she left -- she’d almost dropped Tavi’s suitcase in the process, so it left a definite imprint on her memory.

But now, the door was ajar. Were there burglars in the house? Burglars in Ponyville seemed like a ridiculous concept. Maybe it was just a friend stopping by, though Vinyl wasn’t expecting anyone today. She swallowed and stepped into the main hall.

There were no lights on that she could see -- not in the kitchen, not in the parlor, not shining under the bathroom door. She crept around the house. Fear prickled the back of her neck, fear like nopony should ever have to feel in their own home. No light from any room at all. Until she came to Tavi’s room.

Vinyl and Octavia had separate rooms. Vinyl liked a nice firm mattress, while Octavia preferred one so soft you could almost drown in the fluff; besides which, Octavia had a habit of sprawling out in her sleep and taking over the entire bed. After the third time Vinyl had woken up on the floor at two in the morning, both mares agreed that it was wisest to cuddle together, but sleep apart. Vinyl was absolutely certain that she had turned off the light in there before she and Octavia had left that morning. Someone had come into their house and was rooting around in Octavia’s things.

Vinyl set her jaw, anger slowly replacing fear. She levitated a nearby chair in her magic, brandishing it like a club, and stepped into the room. “Hey! Can I fucking help you?” she demanded, glancing around for the intruder.

A blue face popped out of the closet. “Oh, would you? I’d appreciate it,” Romana said.

Vinyl massaged her temples. She and Romana had relocated to the living room. “Okay,” she said. “Explain it to me again. Slowly.”

Romana let out a long breath through her nostrils. “Half an hour ago,” she said. “I felt something pulling on my time sense. That is, I should say, an innate Time Lord trait which can sense the immediate Web of Time.”

“Okay,” said Vinyl.

“I couldn’t tell much about what I sensed, but I’m certain that your wife is in the middle of it. She might be in terrible danger.”

Vinyl pursed her lips. “What kind of danger?”

Romana waved a hoof vaguely. “Time-related stuff. Difficult to tell, really. It felt like… a pulling. Like some creature or force is manipulating her timeline down a certain path? That really doesn’t do justice to the sensation, but as you don’t really have the necessary sensory organs to detect fluctuations in the Web of Time, I’m afraid that’s the closest I can do.”

“Okay,” said Vinyl. “Let’s say for a moment that I believe you.”

“I’m not fond of what that suggests about your faith in me,” Romana noted. “But very well.”

“Why didn’t you notice this earlier? You’ve lived in Ponyville for years now.”

“I don’t know,” Romana replied. “Something must have happened suddenly to cause this. Where’s Octavia now? I’d like to speak with her about this, if I might.”

“She’s headed to a gig,” Vinyl said. “With her bandmates.”

Romana glanced at her sharply. “Bandmates?”

“...Yes?”

“Four of them? Very close with Octavia?”

“...Yes.” Vinyl said, her heart sinking.

Romana set her jaw. “They’re in danger too, then. And did they, by some strange chance, happen to meet, let's say... a little over half an hour ago now?”

Vinyl nodded silently.

“Right.” Romana rose from the couch. “Right. You’d better come with me, Vinyl. I need to know everything about those four ponies and where they’re headed.”

Minor Key sat in the compartment, hooves folded tightly in his lap, a rictus grin spread over his face. He was what might be charitably referred to as being unused to the company of other ponies. This train trip represented the first time he’d left his home in a fortnight, and the first time he’d left his adopted hometown of Hayburg in even longer. He was not fond of spending time among others if he could help it. Every social interaction he had felt wrong in the extreme. Being here, in this cramped compartment with four of the loudest ponies he’d met in a long time, grated on every nerve in his body.

But he had been ordered here. He didn’t refuse orders. He had long since learned the consequences.

“So,” said the brown one -- Frederick? “What brings you out to Hayburg, Mines?”

“I live there,” said Minor shortly.

“Really?” said Octavia. “That’s good, you can give us the skinny on what it’s like up there. None of us have been before. What’s the music scene like?”

Minor considered this for a long moment. “It is… a peaceful town,” he said neutrally. “I would not call it a hub of the musical scene, but there is a decently sized concert hall in the center of town.”

“The Grotto?” Harpo checked.

“Indeed.”

“Nice place?”

“Would you refer to a nice place as The Grotto?” Minor asked. He was pleased to see that his fellow travelers looked rather disconsolate at that.

“How’s the night life?” Beauty tried.

“There are… taverns.”

The band exchanged more disappointed glances. “Ah, well,” Octavia said, after a moment. “If we can’t find trouble…”

“We’ll just have to make it,” Harpo agreed with a smirk, reaching across the carriage to hoofbump his friend. “Could do with a distraction, anyhow.”

“Cheers to that,” Beauty said with a nod.

Minor struggled to think of something else to say. He was gradually realizing that he hadn’t really had a conversation this long with anybody but Her in at least a year. “What…” he said slowly. “What kind of music do you… perform, then?”

“Call it fusion, if you like,” Beauty said. “We’re sort of a small symphony orchestra, if orchestras could ever be arsed to write their own tunes.”

For the first time, Minor felt a faint spark of interest. “You are composers, then. I, too, write all of my own songs.”

“Really?” Harpo leaned forward, resting his hooves on the cart of pastries. “I’d love to hear it sometime.”

Minor let out a short, harsh chuckle. “Perhaps you shall,” he said. “Indeed, perhaps you shall. Alas, my violin is not with me today. And you?”

Octavia shook her head. “All our instruments are either in the baggage car or sent ahead to the venue,” she said. “They’d not fit into this little compartment, anyhow.”

“We could do vocals,” Fred said.

“That’d leave Beauty out,” Octavia countered.

“That’s alright, I’ll keep time,” Beauty said, pulling the pastry cart a little closer to her, arranging empty pie tins on the top.

Harpo shrugged. “Right, then. One, two, one two three FOUR --”

“See now boy, I think you really got the moves
(Ooo-ooo) Turn me pink from my head to my hooves, yeah
Why can’t you see the way I long for you, boy?
When you can’t see me, it makes me blue.
(That’s what you doooo~)

Oo~oh every time I see you walkin’ down the street,
Yeah, and any (any) time that you and I meet, boy -
The colors they get brighter when I look in your eye,
And a rainbow arcs across the sky.

‘Cause (Oooooo) my knees get shaky and my face goes green,
And my heart starts to flutter if you know what I mean,
When I see you with another, boy, I just see red,
Because I wanna see dawn’s orange light with you in my bed!
(That’s what I said~)

Oo~oh every time I see you walkin’ down the street,
Yeah, and any (any) time that you and I meet, boy -
The colors they get brighter when you pass me by,
And a rainbow arcs across the sky.

So please, please say you’re gonna be my fellow,
(Ooo-ooo) Light up my life like the sun so yellow
Drape me in purple like your one true queen, boy,
And let me see their eyes all envy green
(When we are seen~)

Oo~oh every time I see you walkin’ down the street,
Yeah, and any (any) time that you and I meet, boy -
The colors they get brighter with you at my side,
And a rainbow arcs across the sky.”

As the last chords faded, all four of the ponies looked at Minor, grinning expectantly. He blinked several times, trying to focus despite the hammering of his heart echoing in his head.

“Magnificent,” he finally managed to say. “I’ve never heard… yes, it was powerful indeed.” He rose on shaky hooves. “I do beg your pardon, I must powder my nose.”

He stumbled out of the compartment, shutting the door behind him. He made it a few steps before he fell to the floor, shaking. He faintly heard one of the stallions say, “You reckon he actually liked it? Seemed he might’ve just been humoring us to me…”

Minor gave a quiet wheeze of laughter, something he hadn’t done in years. They thought he hadn’t liked it? The unobservant fools. Did they even realize the power that lay behind their notes?

He shook his head, then rose to his hooves again, walking slowly toward the bathroom. This required consideration.

The washroom was a large, ornate, and unisex room. It wasn’t very heavily populated at the moment, but a few ponies and a reindeer were all going about their business in peace. That wouldn’t do. Minor chose a stall and locked himself in. After a few moments of silence, he began to whistle deep and low in his throat, lower than any pony ought to be able to, hovering just below hearing range, a noise that was both piercing and utterly indaudible to any sapient creature that might concievably be listening. He kept up his whistling for several minutes, listening as a series of hasty hooves hurried out the door. When he was quite certain that he was the only creature left in the washroom, he unlocked the door and walked up to the mirror.

“Rita, lovely Rita,” he intoned. “Rita, lovely Rita. Rita, lovely Rita.”

There was a disorienting moment, where the lights faded to a dull green hue that gleamed and glistened unpleasantly on every fixture, where the world seemed no more solid or populated than a stage set. Minor could feel the rhythm of a heartbeat pounding in his head, but it was not his own heart, of that he was certain. He could see nopony. Not even in the mirror.

Then, the world snapped into focus. It still wasn’t the world he had left; it was a realm of shadows and weak reddish light. At least now, though, he was out of the liminal space he had come through. And now he was not alone. He could see her in the mirror, standing just behind and to the left of him, a pale purple mare garbed in an ornate and colorful dress, her face hidden by a bone mask with long, sharp tusks. He turned to face her. “Rita.”

It was impossible to see her expression behind the skull -- the shadows occluded her features unnaturally -- but it felt like she was smiling at him. “Key. You’ve found them, then.”

“I have. What am I to do with them now?”

“Keep a watch on them. A close one. I have arranged an opportunity for you to host them. I trust you will take advantage of it when the time comes.”

Minor Key recoiled. “Host them? As in, in my house?”

The shadows shifted, sharpened. The lights got no dimmer, but the darkness began to press in. “I trust you will take advantage of it when the time comes.”

Minor scowled. “As you say,” he agreed.

“Good.” The shadows receded, reluctantly, back to their corners. “Will that be all?”

He hesitated. Then, “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I believe so.”

“Then don’t let me detain you.”

The world flashed back through the liminal space for a moment, the barest moment of surface tension between the water and the air. Minor Key could breathe freely again, something he only ever realized when he had returned from that place. He took in a few long, shuddering breaths, then straightened up. He splashed a little cold water on his face, then made his way out of the washroom and back to the train carriage.

Vinyl trailed along behind Romana, still uncertain about what was happening. “This isn’t the way to the train station…”

“Trains?” Romana snorted. “No, we’re going to need something a little more robust than a train.” She pushed open a gate and trotted through into what Vinyl suddenly realized was Ditzy and the Doctor’s backyard.

Romana pulled a key out of her mane. “It’s a good thing the Crusaders are earthed today,” she noted. “The Vortex Manipulator might get us there, but the Ship should make investigation somewhat easier.”

“I -- you’re stealing the TARDIS? Won’t the Doctor be mad?”

“Probably, but it isn’t as though he has a leg to stand on as far as theft goes,” Romana said cheerfully, unlocking the door to the blue box. “I’ll leave him a note, you go on in.”

Vinyl stepped through cautiously, peering around. She had heard about the TARDIS before, though she’d never been inside, so the fact that it was bigger on the inside wasn’t exactly a shock. Nonetheless, she thought as she slowly made her way to the platform in the center of the room, it was odd to see it in person. The honey-brown walls stretched over her head, coming to a six-sided point high above her. Beneath that, a bronze and glass tube descended, finally coming to rest on the set of six trapezoidal panels that made up the central console. Vinyl paced around the central platform, which was tiled with red, gold, and violet hexagons, trying to take it all in.

“Right,” said Romana, stepping sprightly into the TARDIS and shutting the door behind her. “Where are Octavia and her band staying in Hayberg?”

“I think she called it the Day Tripper Inn,” Vinyl said. “Room sixty-four.”

Romana nodded, flipping a few switches, then pulling down a lever. “Right,” she said as the wheezing groan of the TARDIS engine echoed around the room. “This should get us a few rooms down from theirs, not long after they arrive. It’s just the four of them?”

“Yeah. Well, them and their conductor, Baton Tap…”

At the Hayberg train station, a skinny white mare with a short, dark-green mane and a cutie mark of a waving stick paced restlessly up and down, chewing ferociously on a piece of gum, cracking and popping it between her teeth. Suddenly, her ears pricked up and she looked around as she heard the train approaching. She stood back as it came into the station, watching as it disgorged its few passengers. She scrutinized the passing creatures, looking for familiar faces…

“Oi up, Tapper!”

Baton Tap almost leapt out of her skin as she spun around to face four familiar smirking faces. “How -- you -- why?” she sputtered.

“Us? Oh, we’re all right enough, thanks for askin’,” Harpo drawled, grinning at her crookedly.

Baton Tap merely sighed and rubbed her face. “I’m glad to see you’re all so happy,” she said bitterly. “I’ve been having a Tartarus of a day. You might as well wipe those grins off now, I’ve got bad news.”

“What?” Beauty asked. “The gig’s not canceled, is it?”

“No, not quite that bad,” Baton conceded. “It’s the hotel. I swear I booked a whole suite of rooms. Instead, we’ve got a double. I went and looked at it, and it’s the size of a shoebox. We’re going to have a very cramped time of it, I’m afraid.”

“How did that happen?” Octavia asked, surprised. “You’re the competent one, Tappy.”

“I don’t know,” Baton said miserably, starting to pace again. “I’m certain it looked large enough for us all when I booked it. Perhaps there was a misprint?”

“Excuse me,” a voice said quietly, and Beauty turned in surprise. Minor Key was looking back at her. “I believe I may have a solution to your dilemma.”

“That must be it,” Baton said. “They must have given us the wrong room. There must be a suite in that hotel somewhere, and they’ve bungled it all up! I’ll talk to the manager, see if he can --”

She turned and paused, seeing that she was no longer being listened to. This was not an uncommon occurrence, admittedly. “Who’s that—” Baton Tap began.

“WHO’S THAT LITTLE OLD STALLION?” the quartet interrupted in unison, looking up at her.

The conductor stammered for a moment, then recovered herself. “Well? Who is he?”

“Well, I think he belongs to Beauty, she’s the one that introduced us,” Harpo said with a nod.

“He’s a musician, owns a house ‘round here,” Beauty explained. “Up on... what was it?"

"Anderschwelle Road," the old stallion supplied.

"Yeah, that. Anyhow, he's willing to put us up for the weekend.”

“Nonsense! We can all squeeze into that room. Certainly, it’ll be a little cozy, but—”

“Tappy, d’you really want to be cooped up in that room all weekend with us?” Octavia asked, not unkindly.

Baton paused for a long moment. “...How much did you say it would cost?”

“He didn’t,” Fred said.

Minor Key named a figure. The conductor’s jaw dropped. “That’s… per head or per night?” she asked, scarcely daring to believe her luck.

“Oh, no. That will be all for the weekend. One gets very lonely, you see, out by the cliffs. There is only me and my music and the sea—”

“Yes, lovely, what’s the address? I’ll get the luggage sent over as soon as possible. Actually, Fred, you send me a note telling me where to have your suitcases dropped off, don’t let me keep you! Byeee!”

Octavia frowned as the conductor hurried off down the platform. “Where are you going?” she called.

“That room was paid for in advance!” Baton called over her shoulder. “I’m going to make use of it!”

Minor pulled out a hoofkercheif and coughed into it delicately. “Right. If you will follow me?”