She's Not From Around Here
It was unusual for Bon Bon to act without a plan. She didn’t like to improvise, because she ultimately wasn’t very good at it. Normally, she would be certain to have measured contingencies on top of meticulous plans for any circumstance. However, after the past three years, she was tired of planning and waiting. The situation had reached a boiling point, and it was impossible to sit on her flank any longer, even if that meant improvising.
Interrupting her wife’s lyre performance, she said calmly with a smile, “Hey Lyra… I think I’m gonna go for a walk, ok?”
The mint mare furrowed her brow with a frown. “Is something wrong, Bon Bon? You normally like to listen to me play after dinner.”
Shaking her head, she stood up from their couch and started for the door. “It’s nothing like that, love. Your music is as beautiful as you are. I just remembered something I need to take care of. It’s been bugging me for a bit, and I figured that now is as good a time as any.”
“Is it something important? You can tell me, you know.” Narrowing her eyes with suspicion, Lyra added, “This isn’t some secret agent thing, is it? I thought you didn’t do that stuff anymore.”
Bon Bon waved a dismissive hoof as she flashed a reassuring smile, “No, no. I’m retired, remember? Don’t worry about a thing, Lyra. I just wanted to run a quick errand before it gets too late. I’ll be back in time for bed, ok?”
Lyra was clearly unconvinced, but nodded slowly. “Alright, just be safe out there. And don’t forget to wear something warm, the pegasus report said it’s going to be nippy tonight.”
Bon Bon blew her wife a kiss before wrapping herself in a dark coat and leaving out the door of their home, into the brisk, autumn evening air of Ponyville.
Most ponies had turned in for the day by now, with the Sun hanging low in the sky just above the horizon. There would be a few stores still open, but not many, not that Bon Bon intended to visit any store today. Instead, she began her walk towards the edge of town, headed for a particular house owned by a particular pair of ponies.
Except, one of them wasn’t a pony. She knew that for certain by now, and that was her real reason for going out so late in the day. It was a truth that had been haunting her, tittering in the back of her mind to the point of near obsession. Numerous hours that she normally would have spent with her wife have instead been spent watching and studying the peculiar habits of Vinyl Scratch, one of Ponyville’s resident celebrities. In preparation for what was to come, Bon Bon began to go over the facts in her mind, trying to make sense of the enigmatic DJ for the umpteenth time.
At first, Bon Bon was ready to write off the DJ as merely an eccentric, but as time went on, Vinyl’s irregularities only became increasingly apparent. She seldom ever went outside, and when it was, it was never to shop or to eat. Instead, Vinyl would leave her home to wander the town, seemingly at random, achieve nothing of note, then go home again. The few times that the DJ left home with purpose was to perform at a party or show, playing her bizarre music to a stunned audience.
The music was yet another odd detail about Vinyl’s life. As far as Bon Bon could tell, Vinyl Scratch appeared almost entirely out of nowhere in Manehattan about ten years ago, and made a huge splash with the new genre of music that was apparently invented by her, using devices and techniques that had never before been seen. She travelled across Equestria, playing at venues big and small, and even performing for royalty in Canterlot. These days, DJ Pon3 was practically a household name, and yet she decided to settle down in Ponyville of all places, with Octavia Melody, of all ponies.
All of this was compounded by the oddity that started Bon Bon’s relentless search for answers about the mysterious mare. Not only was every aspect of Vinyl’s life bizarre and extraordinary, but the mare has never once been known to utter even a single word. Perhaps a few hundred years ago, being mute might have been dismissable as an excusable ailment, but advances in medicine have rendered mutism a thing of the past, making it unthinkable for someone of Vinyl’s fame to go on with such a disability.
A gust of wind blew away Bon Bon’s train of thought as she held her coat tight, trying to avoid becoming too cold. She couldn’t help but admit to herself that tonight was in fact a terrible night to do this, but the niggling concern in the back of her mind couldn’t wait a day longer. It may have been the incessant intuition of her years as an agent, but she knew that if she was going to get any sleep at all going forward, she had to have answers.
Bon Bon walked through the empty streets of Ponyville, the occasional gust of wind whipping her coat about and chilling her bones, but she carried on with conviction. She knew that the sooner she reached her destination, the sooner she could get out of the frigid wind, so she kept walking despite the biting cold.
Even with her pace, it still took her several minutes to trudge across town and reach her intended destination, the exceptionally peculiar home of Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody. It looked as though the inhabitants couldn’t agree on one paint scheme, and decided to instead paint half of the house one way, and the other half another. Just one more oddity at the end of a long list of reasons why Bon Bon was stepping up to the door now.
Just before knocking, she paused and thought about what exactly she intended to do next. It was clear to her that Vinyl Scratch was anything but a pony, but her exact nature was all but impossible to nail down. She wasn’t a vampire, because she went out during the day. She wasn’t a changeling or a demon, or a zombie, or anything else that Bon Bon was familiar with. It was something beyond her expertise, and that was frightening. The only solace she felt was that if Vinyl really intended to do harm to the inhabitants of Ponyville, she likely would have done it by now.
Glancing back at the sun, she saw that the glowing orb was disappearing from sight, enveloping the world in darkness. Seconds later, the moon peeked out from its hiding spot across the sky, and began to rise. Knowing that she couldn’t stay out for long, and that Lyra would begin to worry soon, Bon Bon raised a hoof and gave the door three quick knocks.
It didn’t take even ten seconds for the door to open, and Bon Bon came face-to-face with the more refined of the two inhabitants, Octavia Melody. The cellist wore an expression of indifference, clearly unsurprised at Bon Bon’s unannounced visit, but also not pleased by any means.
“Good evening, Bon Bon. What an unexpected surprise,” said Octavia with a tone that felt scathingly polite, “Please, don’t stand out in the cold. Come in.” The grey mare stepped aside, allowing Bon Bon to enter through the open door, closing it behind her as she passed the threshold.
Bon Bon raised an eyebrow, seeing that the design scheme of the house extended to the interior, neatly cutting the cottage cleanly in half. The left side was furnished in a way befitting an ex-member of the Canterlot Symphony. Finely crafted wood tables and cabinets with a fine velvet couch and expensive-looking lamps. The other half of the room, however, was clearly furnished by the DJ herself. Massive speakers and various electronic studio equipment, posters on the walls, and a beanbag chair in the corner, all splashed with neon paint and lights.
Before the clashing of aspects gave her a headache, Bon Bon turned her focus to the couch by the door, and more importantly, the “pony” who sat in it. Vinyl Scratch sat lounging on the fine velvet couch, splayed lazily across it as she watched Bon Bon from behind her iconic violet shades, her face deadpan and calm. In front of her was a small, round coffee table with a tea kettle and two cups.
“How can we help you this evening, Bon Bon? Shall I take your coat? We have some tea, if you’d like some of that to warm up.” Octavia’s voice was as harmonic as her instrument, and still carried an air of dignity despite the thinly veiled contempt beneath her words. It was clear that Octavia didn’t want her here, but was still keeping up impressions as best she could.
“I uh… Sure, thanks. Some tea would be nice, actually.” Bon Bon shed her coat and passed it to Octavia, who hung in on a hook by the door. With deliberation, she stepped over to one of the nearby chairs and sat down, facing across the coffee table from Vinyl Scratch. Octavia left the room, and came back with an additional teacup for Bon Bon, before serving the tea, and sitting down beside the DJ.
Taking a sip to warm herself, Bon Bon cleared her voice before speaking again. “So, you must be wondering why I’m here at this hour.”
Octavia glanced at Vinyl, who shrugged, and nodded toward their guest. Finally, it was the cellist who spoke, her voice as cold as the air outside. “You’re here because you’ve been stalking Vinyl for the past three years, correct?”
If Bon Bon had any tea in her mouth at that moment, she surely would have spit it out in shock. She stared wide-eyed at the pair in front of her, her mouth agape as she mentally flailed about, searching for words. She was so certain that she never gave away that she had been tracking Vinyl this whole time. Whenever she went out to follow her, Bon Bon always made sure to have a good reason to go out at that time. To think that Vinyl had her pegged from the very beginning was unthinkable, and yet here she was, back to the wall, with the pair glaring at her unspoken admission of guilt.
When Bon Bon didn’t respond, Octavia continued with a sigh and a nod. “Although we’ve expected a confrontation from you for some time, I must thank you for not getting the guards involved at least. It makes things easier for all of us.”
Bon Bon swallowed nervously, finally able to recover her composure. “So you’ve known this whole time… Are you going to kill me?”
Octavia recoiled in horror, her intimidating veneer stripped away as her face twisted in disgust. “What? Heavens, no! What gave you that impression?” Beside her, Vinyl sneered in amusement, a small snicker escaping from between her teeth. “I meant that we can settle this amicably like civilized ponies, specifically without bloodshed. If Vinyl wanted you dead, she could have done so as soon as you started spying on her. You never made a move, so neither did she.”
Bon Bon raised an eyebrow at this, curious. “So she is dangerous? I wasn’t ever sure.”
With a roll of her eyes, Octavia sighed again. “Well, she certainly has the capacity to be dangerous, but she’s never been the type to seek conflict. She’s an artist, after all.”
Bon Bon took a sip of the tea, darting her eyes back and forth between Vinyl and Octavia before placing the cup back down again, frowning. “So what is she anyway? Because artist or no, she’s definitely not a pony, and she’s no monster I’ve ever seen before.”
“Wait, you’re saying you don’t know?” Octavia pursed her lips, turning to Vinyl again. “Should we tell her? At this point, it doesn’t change much, does it?”
Vinyl put a hoof to her chin, carefully considering the notion. Turning her face down, her shades slipped down her muzzle, revealing the intense cerise irises behind them. Vinyl’s eyes sparkled with a distinctly calculating intelligence, which sent a small shiver down Bon Bon’s neck. For that second, Vinyl looked like a predator, sizing up a meal. Then the DJ readjusted her shades to cover her eyes once more, and nodded with a cocky grin.
Octavia looked back at Bon Bon and took a deep breath, steadying herself. Finally, after several seconds, she announced aloud, “Vinyl Scratch is an alien.”
Bon Bon frowned, scrutinizing Octavia for any signs of lying, and ultimately finding none. The grey mare seemed completely genuine about the outlandish and absurd statement, and even though she wanted to laugh, she couldn’t help but feel compelled by the sincerity on display.
“An… Alien? As in, an extraterrestrial?” When Octavia nodded slowly, Bon Bon snorted in disbelief, crossing her forelegs. “You really expect me to believe that? Everyone knows that aliens don’t exist. Even if they did, Princess Luna would have noticed something falling from the stars.”
“As ridiculous as it may seem, it’s the truth. Besides…” she paused, glancing again at the electric-maned mare, “Luna couldn’t have seen it happen if she was still trapped in the moon.”
Bon Bon bit her cheek, realizing that Octavia’s reasoning was sound. She made the assumption that Vinyl Scratch had only appeared in Equestria in the last decade, but it very well could have been much longer than that.
“So, humouring the idea that Vinyl Scratch is an alien, how did she land in Equestria? Why? How long ago?” Before Bon Bon could fire off another question, Vinyl suddenly put up a hoof, frowning. An instance later, she was on her hooves, which surprised the confectioner. Vinyl then made her way across the room, to the mountain of audio equipment, and began searching for something among a stack of boxes.
Glancing at Octavia with a confused expression, Bon Bon whispered, “Uh… What is she doing? What is she looking for?”
“I believe that she’s searching for her first record.” Calling out to the DJ, she said, “Vinyl, dear, I think it’s in the box labelled ‘classic hits.’ It should be in the back.”
Sure enough, a moment later, the mute musician procured a record from the indicated box, and placed it gingerly on her turntable. Switching on the device, she aligned the needle, and let it play.
What came forth from the speakers was at first jarring, a sudden cacophony of sounds that stabbed at Bon Bon’s ears. It sounded like the screeching and buzzing was somersaulting around the room, swirling in a chaotic whirlwind of sound, and just as it became too intense to bear, the sound tapered off, evening out and fading away into silence. Slowly, but steadily, a new sound began to emerge.
Low and gentle, almost furtive by comparison, the music began to build and take new shape, changing once every few seconds, never sounding quite the same but always keeping a certain melody to it. It was clearly the same song under the interchanging layers and notes, but evolving and twisting as it carried on. Bon Bon turned back to Octavia, to ask her what was going on, but she was surprised to see that the cellist had by now been overcome with emotion, shedding tears as she listened carefully to the song. Clearly there was something that Bon Bon was missing about this song, but couldn't understand what. She returned her attention to the tune as it shifted again.
Up to this point, the music was constantly alternating and fluctuating in theme and feeling. Now, it was securely cemented in a specific vibe, looping into itself with brief and repetitive motifs that almost felt hollow. These patterns shifted and alternated minutely, just enough to be detectable and keep the sound engaging, but ultimately lost much of the energy and character of the first half of the song. Slowly, these motifs carried on until they trailed off, and the song ended, leaving a vacuum of sound where the booming rhythms once occupied.
The trio remained in the silence for a moment, none of them moving. Eventually, Octavia broke the stillness and spoke, wiping a tear from her eye. “Thank you for that, Vinyl. It was as beautiful as always. Though, admittedly, I believe it fell on deaf ears.”
The DJ sighed and gave a small shrug before making her way back to the couch, plopping back down next to the cellist and resuming her laid-back position from before. She didn’t have to say anything for it to be obvious that she was glaring at her guest with disappointment, as though she expected the song to be some sort of point of enlightenment.
Bon Bon furrowed her brow at the pair across from her, still just as confused before. “Was that important, somehow? That didn’t exactly answer my questions.”
Octavia rolled her eyes, shaking her head with an amused smile. “Actually, it answered all of your questions, but I can’t blame you for not understanding Vinyl’s native tongue.”
Baffled, Bon Bon’s face scrunched up as she tried to understand the implication of what Octavia just said. “Are you trying to tell me that was a recording of Vinyl speaking? Now I’ve heard everything.”
In response, it wasn’t Octavia, but instead Vinyl who spoke next. Only what came out of her mouth was anything but words. Much like the “music” that she had just played, a stream of buzzing, screeching, and beeping rolled out from the DJ’s throat.
For the second time tonight, Bon Bon was shocked into complete silence. Sensing that her words had once again failed to land, Vinyl prodded Octavia with a hoof, prompting the mare to translate.
“Ah, yes… Vinyl said that ‘It’s not my fault that you’re too primitive to understand my awesome language.’ Don’t mind her, though. She says that about everyone, besides myself of course.” Vinyl murmured another series of unearthly noises, which somehow made Octavia blush sheepishly.
Ignoring that, Bon Bon pressed for further illumination. “So… How exactly can you understand her? What kind of creature even makes those noises?”
“Well, my cutie mark is for understanding music and musical theory,” explained Octavia, “When Vinyl arrived in Canterlot, I went to one of her shows to see what all the hullabaloo was about. As it so happens, my Special Talent helped me recognize her songs not as mere music, but as a sort of language. I was so taken aback, that I confronted her after the show about it. As it turned out, her songs are all poems in her native tongue that she writes and records, performing them as avant-garde electronic music. The song she just played for you was a recollection of her life here in Equestria.”
It was now that the reality of the situation was settling onto Bon Bon. “You’re serious… She’s really an alien. Aliens are real…” Slumping back into her chair, the retired agent felt her whole world slipping away under her. She had thought she had seen everything there was to be seen working as a special agent of the crown, and yet life somehow managed to surprise her again.
Recovering quickly from the initial shock, Bon Bon sat up again, feeling even more invested in this mystery than before. “So if that was her life story, what exactly happened? You’ve gotta tell me.”
“Ah, of course,” replied Octavia with a kind smile. “Although I’m not fluent in her language, she has explained her situation in detail to me before in writing. She was passing by our world during a commute to a completely different, far-off world. A small piece of space debris struck her ship, and sent her into a tailspin down to Equis. She crash landed, and survived, but her ship was irreparably damaged. With no means to call for help, she elected to stay here, and try to adapt until the day she could escape.”
“So she’s stranded here? She’s not an infiltrator or invader or anything else like that?”
Octavia shook her head as Vinyl snickered. “Nothing of the sort. She was a sort of vagabond, travelling the stars on her own. She has no connections, and no one has ever come looking for her. Not to my knowledge, at least.”
Bon Bon nodded slowly, reconsidering her stance on the alien sitting across from her. “I see… That must have been lonely. What happened after that?”
“Well, obviously Vinyl didn’t look like a pony when she first landed here. For the first few decades, she merely hid from ponykind in the shadows. Observing us as we developed, learning about our society and language. Eventually, she craved company, and using what few tools and materials she had recovered from her ship, created a disguise that allowed her to blend in amongst ponies, albeit from a distance. Her first attempts didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and she was chased out from her fair share of medieval settlements, believing her to be a sort of monster.”
Vinyl mockingly raised up her hooves, waving them about while attempting to mimic the classic ghostly “Ooooo,” though what came out of her mouth was more like a distorted slide whistle.
Octavia giggled, playfully slapping away the DJ before continuing, “Yes, well, obviously she became quite the seamstress over the last few centuries. After all, you’ve been stalking her for about three years, and never even noticed that she’s wearing an incredibly elaborate costume.”
Bon Bon studied Vinyl up and down carefully, looking for seams or stitching or anything else that might betray signs of a disguise. When she couldn’t detect any such deformities, she cocked her head to one side curiously.
“So if you don’t look like a pony, what exactly do you look like?”
With a worried frown, Octavia turned to Vinyl, but the alien started to grin devilishly. Sensing what came next, the cellist’s eyes went wide as she tried to stop Vinyl. “Wait, don’t you dare! I just cleaned the floor yesterday!”
Unfortunately, Vinyl paid Octavia’s distressed wailing no mind, and Bon Bon watched in dismay as the DJ began to shed her skin in a horrifying display. First, her jaw unhinged and hung wide open, looking more like a snake than a pony, and her whole body began to shudder uncontrollably. In her convulsions, her shades fell from her face, revealing that her eyes were sinking into the sockets, leaving gaping holes where they were a moment ago.
Bon Bon resisted the urge to retch as a sickening squelching sound reverberated from Vinyl’s gaping maw, and slowly a mass of writhing blue tendrils began to pour forth from the unicorn’s gullet and onto the hardwood floor with a wet thwap. The dozen or so tendrils ended and joined together at the base, revealing a single muscled mass of electric blue flesh that slid out of the faux-pony skin with a nauseating slurping sound.
As the creature continued to shed its disguise, the form of the white unicorn mare slowly shriveled and collapsed like a deflating balloon. By the time the creature had fully withdrawn itself from the body, it lay in a heap on the ground, looking more like a discarded sack than a pony.
Bon Bon drew her eyes up from the false skin on the ground up at the fully realized alien form of Vinyl Scratch, which looked almost like a huge cephalopod, somewhat similar to an octopus with its long and thick tentacles holding it upright. Unlike the more common terrestrial creature, however, the alien that stood before her now had a long, sausage-like torso with a distinct mouth at the front behind a group of smaller tendrils, and a pair of red eyes that were currently staring down at her.
As it stared at Bon Bon, one of the longer limbs reached out to the limp skin on the ground and rifled about the slack mass until it procured the violet shades that Vinyl loved so much. The alien brought the shades up to its “face,” with one of the mouth tentacles curling around the nose bridge to hold it in place in front of its eyes. It then unceremoniously plopped back down next to Octavia again on the couch, to which the grey mare cried out in disapproval.
“Vinyl! I told you to never sit on my furniture without your skin! Your mucus is going to stain the velvet, and it’ll never come out!”
The alien known as Vinyl scratch made a dismissive buzzing noise, reminiscent of a pony blowing a raspberry, to which Octavia sighed in defeat.
By now, Bon Bon was completely and utterly mentally fried. Her expectations had been so wholly demolished that all she could do to cope was pretend like there was absolutely nothing strange about the sight in front of her. With a dumb smile, the retired agent nodded her head slowly, taking in every terrifying detail of Vinyl’s body. In some attempt to distract herself, she decided to continue the earlier conversation as her brain struggled to catch up.
“So, Octavia, what were you saying earlier about Vinyl’s attempts to acclimate to Equis?”
Pulling her attention away from Vinyl, Octavia politely smiled at her guest, remembering that she was recounting a story. “Ah, of course. As I was saying, Vinyl struggled to adapt to life here on Equis, but despite what her attitude may imply, she’s quite smart. Once she had perfected her disguise, it only took her a few years to learn the language and begin to cohabitate with ponies. An impressive feat, considering that she lacks any and all magic.”
“Wait, she doesn’t have magic? But I’ve seen her use her horn before. How does that work?”
“Oh, that’s a telekinesis device that Vinyl brought from her homeworld. Apparently where she comes from, it’s as common a tool as a hammer or wrench. She just dressed it up to look like a horn and wore it on her head to get by without her tentacles.”
Bon Bon nodded somewhat absentmindedly as she added “uses advanced technology as magic” to her growing list of reasons why she was going to need pills to get to sleep tonight. She immediately had to amend that list to contain one more reason as she watched Vinyl pick up her tea with a tentacle, and bring it up to her face to sip it. Only when she did, a small tube slithered out from the hole in her face and started to slurp up the tea like a straw.
“Speaking of horrific eating habits, that reminds me,” said Bon Bon as she desperately tried to visualize anything but that tube, “How come I’ve never seen Vinyl eat anything before? You’re already aware that I’ve seen her walking around town during meal hours, but I’ve never seen her eat anything before.”
“Oh, Vinyl always eats at home, and even then, it’s never very much,” explained Octavia with a chipper tone in her voice, “She has a very low caloric intake, which is wonderful because it saves on groceries. She usually eats just a single apple a week.”
Bon Bon opened her mouth to ask another question, closed it, and asked a different question altogether. “So as a recap, Vinyl is a squid alien from another planet who crash-landed on Equis centuries ago, lives amongst ponies in a pony skin-suit, speaks in EDM and uses her musical career as a front for her slam poetry hobby?”
Vinyl Scratch made a displeased honking sound, but Octavia rolled her eyes before nodding. “Yes, besides calling her a squid, that is more or less accurate. I hope you’re not planning on reporting us to the guard.”
Taking a deep breath, Bon Bon shook her head. “No, I don’t think I need to. Vinyl seems harmless enough. Though I need to ask, why did you move in with her, Octavia? I can’t imagine bunking with an alien in a small country town was your first choice. What made you leave behind your career and move all the way from Canterlot out here?”
Octavia blinked a few times, turning to her roommate. The alien blinked back, looking just as confused. Finally, after an awkwardly long moment, Octavia turned back to Bon Bon and said plainly, “Well, I suppose that’s because she and I are dating. It only makes sense to live together, doesn’t it?”
It was then, as unspeakable mental images began to conjure themselves in her mind, that Bon Bon decided that her curiosity was well and fully satisfied at that point. Picking up her tea, she quickly downed the rest of the hot, bitter drink, placed the empty cup back on the coffee table, and rose from her seat with a very fake yawn.
“Well, I’m pretty beat, so I’m going to go home before Lyra worries about me. You two have a lovely night.”
Octavia and Vinyl silently watched as she walked past them, pulled her coat off of the hook it was hanging from, and slipped it on as she opened the door to leave. Just before departing, Bon Bon turned to them and gave a polite smile and a small wave of her hoof. She then shut the door and began her walk back home through the howling winds of Autumn, vowing to herself that she would never pry into other ponies’ business ever again.
