Meeting Her... Neighbors?

by SisterHorseteeth

Rating: teen
Tags: Romance, Equestria Girls, Sex, Profanity, Slice of Life, DJ P0N-3, Sonata Dusk, Narcotics, Lemon Zest, Drama, Dazzlings
Length: 12048

Coming home from Star-Swirled, Lemon Zest decides midnight is a great time to introduce her girlfriend, Vinyl Scratch, to Lemon's eccentric, musician neighbors and friends.

The summer Star Swirled Music Festival was great. Besides getting to see a whole bunch of her former classmates again before college, Vinyl Scratch got to play her biggest gig yet, capping off the second night of the festival -- and Lemon Zest, her girlfriend of two years, was there to cheer her on.

After driving Lemon back to her place, Lemon has one of those ideas. You know, the kind of idea that shows some serious problems if you think about it for more than a few seconds, but she's so excited about it that it's hard to say no.

Minutes after midnight, Lemon has decided she wants to introduce Vinyl to those eccentric, reclusive neighbors of hers that she's always talking about. These neighbors are her friends, and they're also fellow musicians, who played their first set in ages at Star Swirled, back on day one.

It's just gonna take maybe ten minutes, and then the rest of the early morning is theirs to spend together.

...It does not take just ten minutes.
Furthermore, Vinyl already knows these people.

Rated Teen for Lemon Zest swearing like she's still a teenager (which an 18-year-old numerically is); drinking while under 21; (references to) smoking weed while underage; and one or two vague, oblique references to sexual acts.

This story was written for the Rainbow Rocks 10th Anniversary Shipping Contest, where it received a Judge's Prize.

Published 2024-08-07 07:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-08-07 07:40:00 UTC

Never Make Important Decisions on an Empty Stomach, Late at Night, or in the Middle of Summer

“Yeah, I just like driving at night more,” announced Lemon Zest, apropos of nothing. Well, other than her being the passenger of a white convertible speeding down the highway at night. “Like, I don’t go night-driving for fun like Izzy, but it’s a heck of a lot chiller when it’s just me on the road to, like, Pop-Goes-the-Weasel or wherever the munchies are taking me, haha.”

Her driver said nothing, which may have been because she would have had to compete with the pumping dubstep that thumped and ratcheted through the radio, like a raging minotaur going ham with a pair of power drills in a storm drain.

In other words, it went hard.

But the driver did dial down the volume when she heard Lemon’s voice. It didn’t have to go down that far; Lemon was a loud talker in her own right, thanks to years of hearing damage.

She continued without waiting for a reply. “Like, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be more dangerous or something ‘cause you can’t see shit or whatever, but that’s what headlights are for, right? So I dunno what the big problem is.”

Another noise-factor in the driver’s continued silence might’ve been the wind whipping past her ears. The top was down on her convertible, the breeze carrying her and Lemon’s hairs in trailing streaks of electric blue and acid green. As they zipped past a 24-hour diner, the grease and sweetness of late-night breakfast wafted through the air.

That top wasn’t going back up; as summer evenings went, this was as hot and muggy as any other – and besides, what’s the point in owning a convertible if you don’t ever convert?

“Besides, like, even if I wrap myself around a tree, it’s not like anybody except me beefs it. Daytime, I’m saddling a lotta folks with medical bills if I screw up, but at night, I ain’t hurting anybody.”

But to be perfectly honest, there was only one reason the driver was silent, and that was because she was mute. There were many things she might have said to her passenger, but signing and driving at the same time was exactly the kind of recklessness she really wanted to object to.

But there was something she could do.

The driver took a hand off her steering wheel to rest it on the shoulder of what used to be Lemon’s Crystal Prep jacket just a few months prior, before she ripped the sleeves off and turned it into a battle vest. That hand traced its way down Lemon’s arm until it took her by the palm and laced their fingers together, weaving stark white with ruddy pink.

“Aw, shit, man, you’re right. I’m sorry, I forgot it’d hurt you too, haha…”, she chuckled, nervous with guilt.

The driver’s hand squeezed tighter, before letting go and returning to the wheel.

A few seconds passed before Lemon spoke up again. “Hey Vizzy, ‘sit cool if I take over the aux cord?”

Vizzy (or Vinyl Scratch, as she wrote it) nodded and gave a quick thumbs-up. Normally, her rules were “Vinyl’s car, Vinyl’s music”, but she made an exception for Lemon.

So, Lemon plugged her phone in and started blasting her metalcore playlist instead, swapping the sterile, machine artifice of wubs and dubs for the viscerality of bloody screaming and the grimy riffs of the guitar.

In other words, it went just as hard.

Vinyl didn’t used to listen to all that much in the way of metal or punk. Then she met Lemon. It was at the Friendship Games, back in 2015, when they were both still in highschool. A bit of headphone swapping in the interest of cultural exchange led to numbers being exchanged too, and then, well…–

Just as she was about to reminisce about the early days of their relationship, Trixie Lulamoon’s show-van suddenly veered – fifteen miles over the speed limit – around to pass them in a non-passing stretch of the highway. It was marked for non-passing because it went around a blind turn over a sheer cliff. The frightened shriek Trixie let out as she pulled back out of the oncoming lane just in time for a semi-truck going the opposite direction (and blaring its horn) to roll through almost made up for the heart attack she gave Vinyl, who’d stomped on the brakes so hard her foot hurt.

“Haha, damn,” commented Lemon, completely unfazed, before going back to listening to the radio.

Several songs passed in shared wordlessness, Vinyl’s girlfriend of almost three years contentedly banging her head to the breakdowns, before Lemon piped up again. “Oh shit, we’re in Canterlot already. Sick.”

That late at night on a Sonday, the city streets were almost as empty as Lemon liked them, but they wouldn’t be so perfectly desolate as she hoped. Plenty of other Canterlites had to come home from the Star Swirled Music Festival, too.

In the suburbs where Vinyl went to school, they passed Bulk Biceps escorting Ditzy Doo to her door like a proper gentleman. Meanwhile, that Wallflower girl they brought with them started the walk home alone, so as not to make things awkward by letting Bulk drive her home, too. She probably didn’t have to; Ditzy didn’t have a jealous bone in her body, and Bulk was absolutely smitten with her.

They got stuck at an intersection behind Snails, who took nearly a full cycle to realize the light turned green, even as Snips hollered at him to “Just go already!”. Their one-sided married-old-couple sort of argument carried out their rolled-down windows until they finally turned out of Vinyl’s way. It was weird to think of those as anything but freshmen, but they’d be graduating next year, if they managed to hold onto their C-minus-averages.

As they cut through downtown, they spotted Sunset Shimmer lurching out of the RV she and her besties (and, as the rumors had it, her polycule) drove to Star Swirled in. She staggered, dead-tired, down the city sidewalk, towards a lonely brick rowhouse, at the door of which she stumbled onto her knees and kissed the welcome mat as though she’d been in exile for several weeks.

Everyone Vinyl went to school with was madly in love with somebody, huh? Or at least, it felt that way. Maybe it just felt that way because she was one of them?

Lemon’s schoolmates were the same way, from what Vinyl had seen. She could tell there was something passionate going on between Sunny Flare and Sour Sweet, the moment the two of them happened to be in the same room as Vinyl, and she did not particularly want to find out what kind.

Eventually, the particular girlfriend-girlfriend pair in Vinyl’s car reached the wealthy neighborhoods, where both of their families lived. Vinyl’s was rich enough from her father’s robotics job to fund certain hidden modifications to her ride that weren’t exactly street-legal… while Lemon’s parents literally founded the Lema-Lima soda company, making them some of the richest people in Pedestria.

They were stopping, of course, at the Lemon family mansion first, which made Vinyl’s place look like a cardboard box. The gate guard let them into the driveway, where they rolled past fountains sculpted to look like tipped-over soda cans and bottles brimming over with fizz, up to the garage for the detached house that Lemon basically moved into, just far enough from the main building that her jam sessions didn’t carry all the way over.

(In theory, the Lemons had a valet that could have taken over the parking for Vinyl’s car, but after the man accidentally activated its special features that one time, he’d refused to ever get inside without some sort of proof the machine had received a certified exorcism.)

Anyways, the car was parked and it was time to get out.

Lemon was barely onto her feet before Vinyl had circled around and threw her arms around her.

“Hahaha, love you too, Vizzy!” The hug was swiftly reciprocated. Lemon was the type to thump her girlfriend in the back a couple times when she hugged her, which was exactly what DJ P0N-3 needed after the long, high-energy show she capped Star-Swirled off with. It was as close to the professional back-massage she deserved as she could get at that hour. Even if it took only a few knots out of her back, it was a blessing.

And, like all hugs they shared, it was over too soon. Lemon broke off first, offering, as recompense, a kiss on the cheek and her full attention, the latter of which was the most precious gift she could offer.

|So…|, signed Vinyl, |is it just me, or was that the hypest Star Swirled ever?|

Lemon didn’t know any Pedestrian Sign Language when they first met. Their chats back then were mostly by text, same as with most of Vinyl’s classmates. But one day, before they started dating, Lemon randomly surprised her with a simple signed |Hello|… fingerspelled because the internet wasn’t doing a good job teaching her, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she’d decided to pick up PSL just for Vinyl.

It probably should have been obvious to Vinyl that there was something deeper than just friendship going on, but to be honest, Vinyl was trying to avoid thinking about love back then.

The tensions surrounding the Battle of the Bands, back in freshman year, didn’t all go away when the thrall of the sirens (literal, actual sirens from Sunset’s pony world) was dispelled. For most of CHS’s students, the things they did and said while under the influence of the Dazzlings’ songs were just meaningless aggression: lies were hissed and insults spat, not because anyone believed them, but because the people spewing them were angry and just wanted to hurt whoever pissed them off. Those were usually pretty easy to apologize for.

But some people already had that venom hidden inside them, all neatly bottled up, and they were just too polite to let it out… until the sirens’ song coaxed it from their lips.

Octavia Melody was a very polite young lady, as the teachers liked to say. Her sense of etiquette was unparallelled in the school – even Rarity was a little more likely to commit a faux-pas here or there than Octavia. She appreciated the quiet and the arts in equal measure, and her parents had ensured she knew four languages going into highschool, one of which was PSL. How someone like Vinyl managed to earn her affection and become her girlfriend was a miracle she didn’t want to question.

Maybe she should have.

Things were going smoothly as ever between them when the Dazzlings came to CHS. Octavia was set to perform at the musical showcase that got recycled into the Battle of the Bands, while Vinyl… kinda got blocked by the rules requiring fully original compositions, so the mashups and samples she usually worked with needed to be thrown out the window. She just didn’t have time to sort out a set she could guarantee was clean, so she was just going to support Octavia from the audience. It was going to be so romantic.

But then the sirens entered the picture, and everyone who listened to their songs started getting snippier, surlier, more competitive, or all three.

Vinyl wasn’t affected because she happened to be listening to her own music whenever the sirens showed up, and Octavia… she handled it with all her usual tact and grace.

She didn’t even mean it in a mean way when she said dubstep was an aging fad and Vinyl needed to look into a new genre if she wanted to find success as a musician. She was genuinely looking out for her girlfriend. Why did Vinyl have to get so defensive? Why was she acting like such a child?

Despite those remarks, Vinyl did still watch Octavia’s performance in the bracket, even if she didn’t really want to, anymore. Attendance was kinda obligatory.

And when Octavia lost in round one, Vinyl tried to console her.

“I suppose this makes has-beens of us both,” was all Miss Melody bitterly mused, before storming out on her own.

Vinyl wouldn’t see her again until after the spell was lifted. Octavia immediately, sincerely apologized for hurting Vinyl’s feelings. She truly regretted the injury she had caused her girlfriend, from the bottom of her heart.

But she could not bring herself to take anything she said back. Not without sacrificing her honesty.

The two of them carried on in that zombie of a relationship for another year. They didn’t even do anything together the following summer, but when sophomore year started, they just returned to their old routines, going through the motions. This went on for a semester and a half, before Octavia politely thanked Vinyl for her time and apologized that she would be cutting things off, one unassuming day in the Aperil of 2015, just a month before the Friendship Games.

Being single again hurt worse than any given day of being together with Octavia, but it was also liberating. No unspoken expectations Vinyl was expected to mind-read, no elegantly-masked disrespect, no quietly-festering contempt, no criticism for her passion.

So Vinyl wasn’t looking to dip her toes back into love again, and definitely wasn’t sure what to do when, at nine AM on a random Satoeday, Lemon called her – even though (for obvious reasons) she didn’t like taking calls – sounding high as a kite, and explicitly, directly confessed her love multiple times over. She wanted to be Vinyl’s girlfriend.

Vinyl ended up asking for more time to think about it, hoping Lemon would forget, and sure enough, she did! …Which is why she asked again, a few days later (and sober this time), as though it was the first time she’d asked.

Second time was the charm. Vinyl said yes, because she had thought about it, and what she realized was this: Lemon Zest was basically the complete opposite of Octavia Melody: carefree, informal, straightforward, fun. Heck, she even wanted an open relationship, if that was alright, and while that might have been a breaking point with anyone else, it was just another way Lemon was the opposite of Octavia, and that was enough to get Vinyl to try it.

Given that the two of them had made it through two school years and almost three summers together without any serious fatigue… they were making it work.

Anyways, by this point, Lemon had become fluent enough in Pedestrian Sign Language over the course of their relationship to follow Vinyl’s gestures, though she stumbled over a lot of the signs herself and preferred to just talk back if she could. This was absolutely fine with Vinyl – though, it would help if she didn’t get lost in her own head when she was supposed to be listening to her girlfriend’s answer.

Vinyl smiled apologetically. |I’m sorry, I… missed all that.|

“Hahahaha, yeah, you went on a wicked face journey. No probbo though; lemme just take it from the top:

“Hell yeah it was! Shit was killer. Got to scope out all the up-and-comers, got to pig out on funnel cake, got to cheer on my favorite musicians in the whole world! I had a fuckin’ blast, hahaha.”

Vinyl affected her posture with mock injury. |Hold on. ’Musicians’ plural?|

“Oh come on, babe, you know you’re the best!” Lemon ducked in to plant another kiss on Vinyl’s lips. “But just because you were the highlight doesn’t mean I wasn’t gonna be there for my best buds playing their first concert in fuckin’ forever, too.”

|The other Shadow-Bolt girls? They have a band?|

“Nah, nah, nah – god I wish, though – my other buddies.”

|…I didn’t see the Rainbow-Booms| – the amount of times they came up in casual conversation, it was quicker to sign the band’s name like that than to fingerspell it every time – |on the lineup.|

“Nope! Not them, haha! My other, other buds.”

Vinyl’s hands stopped signing and came to a rest on her chin while she tried to figure out which of her girlfriend’s many, many, many best friends she was talking about.

It couldn’t have been her garage-bandmates because then Lemon would have been performing onstage with them (and Vinyl would have scheduled her sets around being able to go see the Meat Rinders, as they were calling themselves that week).

As far as Vinyl knew, Lemon never mentioned anything about her various weed dealers being musicians.

What did she know about them? Well, she was pretty sure the act in question played on day one, since she spent most of day two with Lemon, so she ventured to guess, |Are you talking Post-Crush?| That fit with ‘first concert in forever’, being a stop on their reunion tour, but she wasn’t sure if K-Lo was on the same level of ‘buddy’ as the sister of buddiest-of-buddies Indigo Zap.

“Well, yeah, I saw them too, and I guess Sunset and Pinkie too for some reason, but that’s not them, either.”

Maybe earlier in the day, Vinyl could keep this guessing game going, but late as it was… |Last guess, and then you have to tell me: was it your mysterious, reclusive neighbors?| This was frequently Vinyl’s last resort answer, both a joke and completely serious.

“Hey, you got it! That’s thems!”

|…Your neighbors played at Star-Swirled.|

“Yuh-huh.”

|Cool.| She honestly should have expected that. From the tidbits of gossip Lemon shared about them, they seemed eccentric enough to be inexplicably involved in just about anything under the sun, sorta like how Sunset’s pals seemed to just happen to be there whenever some freaky magic incident was going down. |Were they any good?|

“Hell yeah!” Though, Lemon lowered her voice, as if these neighbors were listening in, and added, “Though they played a lot of new synthy stuff and, man, I dunno, I just like their old stuff better. Their bass riffs are fuckin’ diiiiiiiiirty, man – I can’t get enough.” She shivered with delight as whatever tune she was alluding to wormed its way through her brain.

Frankly, she was maybe a bit jealous that another artist’s music was having this effect on her girlfriend. Maybe. But, admittedly, she didn’t really shoot for arousing with her own compositions. Energetic, thrilling, intense, for sure – but nothing particularly horny. She probably wouldn’t have been allowed to play at so many CHS events otherwise. Hard to justify getting too mad at losing a game she wasn’t even playing.

Vinyl clapped her hand on Lemon’s shoulder, just for a second. |Easy there, tiger. You look like you’re gonna ear-orgasm| – there was another portmanteau Vinyl had half a mind to put in the dictionary – |and I didn’t bring a mop.| That last sign left her hands in the perfect position to mime the act of actually mopping up.

That got Lemon laughing – really laughing, not just chuckle-saying “hahaha” – and that was worth so much more to Vinyl than holding onto envy. As much as Lemon found everything a little funny (and more so if she was high), it was a lot rarer to say the right thing to break through that equalizing wall of passive humor and make her straight-up double over, clinging to the hood of Vinyl’s car for support.

It took the girl a solid minute and a half to get over her giggles. Vinyl wasn’t even really sure what she signed was that funny. |You… cool?|

“Yeah, haha, I’m good.” Lemon pushed herself off Vinyl’s car – a little too hard, but Vinyl was right behind to catch her. “Now I wanna find out how they liked Star Swirled. I didn’t see any of ‘em today, so I couldn’t ask. I think they left after their set.”

|Did they have another show scheduled somewhere else?|

“Nah, I think they just wanted to get outta there.”

|Then it doesn’t sound like they wanted to be there.|

Lemon shrugged. “Maybe. They’re wicked antisocial. But I know for a fuckin’ fact they had a blast putting on their show. They looked fuckin’ more alive since they moved back in.” (These neighbors of hers had only returned to their estate three years ago, after a long absence.)

|Fair enough. I guess I shouldn’t speculate about bands I haven’t seen.|

At that point, it looked like inspiration slapped Lemon across the mouth. “…Well, hell, you wanna meet ‘em?”

|…At this hour?| Vinyl glanced at the clock on her dashboard stereo. 12:07 AM. She’d usually be hopping in the shower before bed about now.

“Pfft, they’re not gonna be asleep yet, haha. These guys’re real night owls.”

|I was thinking more about my sleep.| Well, that wasn’t entirely the case. She was tired, sure, but if Lemon wanted to spend the rest of their night together some other way, Vinyl might be up to it. Meeting Lemon’s neighbors was not in the list of activities ‘some other way’ could entail.

“Ahhhhh, come on! It’s right across the street! Shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes!”

|I don’t know.| It’s not that she didn’t want to – she loved meeting other musicians. Just… eventually. Not necessarily at midnight, unplanned and unannounced.

Lemon took her hand in hers, leaned in close, and puppydogged her soft, lemony eyes up at her with a long, pitiful “Pleeeeeeeeeeease?”

You know what? The middle of summer was made for bad decisions. |Okay,| she signed, with her free hand, before pulling the other free (Lemon knew better than to hold on too tight) to add, |Let’s go.|

But not by car. With one press of the remote in her pocket, the engine went to sleep. All the heavy musical equipment she’d had installed kinda did a number on the gas mileage, and Blue Planet had a whole lot to say about that when he found out the wub-whip’s dark secret. She still felt a little guilty about driving it to school, but on the other hand, if she didn’t bring a mobile transforming DJ station everywhere she went, the Battle of the Bands would have gone down a lot differently.

Besides, it was a pleasant night for a walk. It had cooled down just enough to be comfortable with her jacket unzipped, the crickets were playing their violins, and she needed a good stretch after the car ride here, anyways.

|You got any jams for a midnight stroll?|, she signed, but Lemon was way ahead of her, plugging the Y-cable she kept in her back pocket for just these moments into her phone, so they could both listen on their own headphones.

Hand in hand, ears in cups, they began their walk back down the Lemon mansion driveway. Lots of couples held hands, but their setup was special: Lemon’s hand went around whoever’s phone they were using, Vinyl’s hand around Lemon’s hand, and both of their thumbs poised over the skip button if they weren’t feeling this one.

The current track wasn’t a skipper, though. Apparently, the genre for their walk was hip-hop, which was more Pinkie’s and Indigo’s scene, but it’s what Lemon’s erratic mood swerved toward, and Vinyl was always happy to listen to the beat under the words.

And this, like every other music choice the two of them made, went hard. Her head was already bobbing with the first harsh, industrial drones of the backing track.

“Yeah, hahaha, pretty good, ain’t it? I know Doom Grasps’s supposed to be, like, hipster-baby’s first alternative rap before moving onto stuff that’s underground underground – like, Antimony Fandango subscriber starter kit shit – or at least that’s what the internet tells me, but I dunno, I could stay and listen a while. MC Glide fucks that flow good and hard, haha.”

…Hard to make out that flow when Lemon wanted to talk over it. Not that Vinyl didn’t hang on every word the chatterbox said.

“I mean, not as bad as Izzy gets. Like, shit, dude, when Indigo actually plays me someone new, it’s always the dopest shit, but god, she’s always stuck on like three songs when she’s got the aux. Fuckin’… Bratty Albano spits fire all over his discography, but my girl’s just got Yoga Pants on her playlist five times in a row, I swear!”

Vinyl silently chuckled. Rainbow Dash was like that, too, or so she heard.

It wasn’t long before they reached the other side of the street and the kinda-rusty-looking gate meant to keep out the rabble.

…It didn’t do a good job, though. It stood wide open, without a guard in sight, and creaked rustily in the gentle breeze.

This… wasn’t really how Vinyl expected Lemon’s neighbors to approach security. Like, even though her own family were Sci-Twi rich, not Lemon ultra-rich, they had a security guard (granted, that was more because her father brought work home often enough for corporate spies to potentially target their place, rather than any fear of the burglaries their state-of-the-art home security system was made to stop). It just didn’t seem right for anyone loaded enough to live next to Lemon to just… leave their gate open.

Predictably, they demonstrably weren’t expecting guests, because all the lights along the path were off. The only light she could see coming from anywhere on the premises seeped from a single window of the house itself. Thankfully, the moon was out to light their way.

…Not that there was anything pretty to look at. The dry, brown grass grew up past the knees, riddled with weeds (or, as Wallflower insisted, native grasses, wildflowers, and saplings). Speaking of trees, actually – the landscaping in general was weirdly wooded, like the mansion hadn’t had a groundskeeper in so long that an entire forest sprung up around the sidewalks.

All in all, the vibes were screaming ‘long-abandoned house, haunted by either ghosts or squatters’, and Vinyl wasn’t entirely sure she felt good about this adventure anymore. Part of her wanted to sign something to Lemon, but… holding onto Lemon’s hand kept her from losing her cool even worse.

And Lemon just kept walking along, like nothing was wrong.

As they neared the porch, Vinyl spotted dim flickers of light bursting from a darkened window. Rationally, it was just someone watching TV or getting some late-night gaming in – but on the other hand, perhaps it was some kind of sinister alchemical witchcraft, which was probably as real as everything else Vinyl thought was fake until it showed up at her highschool one day.

While Vinyl was working that over in her head, Lemon dragged her up to the front door, paused their music, and said, with a grin that always came before poorly-thought-out mischief, “Vizzy, go over there,” pointing to a particularly unlit corner of the porch. “Light’s busted on that side. You’ll be a surprise.”

|You sure?|, Vinyl signed, refusing to budge from Lemon’s side. |What if they answer the door with–| The first signs that came to her head were the set for ‘dark magic’, but thankfully something that looked less deranged came to her head: |I don’t know – a gun?|

“Nahhhhh, they won’t.” Lemon scratched the back of her head, but that smile refused to be wiped off her face. “Well, one of ‘em might have a bat or something – but don’t worry, it’s just for show. She likes to act like a scary bitch but she’s actually pretty chill. You know, like ZoZu!”

ZoZu, or Sour Sweet, was… still kind of scary, actually. Yes, her Sweet-then-Sour deal was mostly a persona… but the real woman underneath was mostly just Sour – a walking knot of anger trying to reinvent other emotions from first principles. And if she could ever be called ‘chill’, she was chill in the way a spider waiting in its web is chill.

…But she was also Lemon’s close friend, and that meant Vinyl was getting to know her, too. Once she got past Sour’s suffocating intensity and abrasive personality, Vinyl began to appreciate the great (albeit morbid) sense of humor and an indirect sort of honesty that were hiding in plain sight. Sour Sweet was definitely an acquired taste, but one which Vinyl was on the way to acquiring.

Maybe these neighbors of Lemon’s were like that, too.

|Alright,| Vinyl decided. |If you trust them, I trust them. But if we end up in the hospital, I’m writing ‘I told you so’ on your cast.|

“Wicked! Here,” – Lemon pulled her headphone jack out of the Y-cable and handed the phone to Vinyl. “Hold onto that for me.”

And so Vinyl stepped into the shadows.

After flashing a thumbs-up, Lemon casually raised her fist and hammered the front door like she was with the FBI. Each deafening blow chipped off flakes of (likely leaded) paint. “Doorbell doesn’t work either,” she casually explained, under the booming thuds.

All at once, the light that was on turned off, the flickering light froze on an eerie purple glow, and a third light clicked on behind a window on the highest floor. The porch light flicked on, too, but just like Lemon said, only one half of the porch lit up, and it was not Vinyl’s half.

Minutes passed without any other indication anybody had heard Lemon’s racket. Then, the heavy stomping of boots on squealing floorboards emanated from multiple directions inside, bleeding through any hole it could find in the old house and converging behind the door.

Vinyl’s apprehension was still mostly under control as the denizens inside began fidgeting with the lock. It’s not like she was certain she was about to die or anything.

…But she had a pretty strong feeling she was about to get yelled at by multiple angry strangers, and maybe have a gun pointed in her face for emphasis. It wouldn’t be the first time Lemon’s habit of kinda just ignoring most social graces had landed them both in hot water.

So, she was prepared to back off and scram with Lemon in hand, if she needed to.

That plan did not fly out the window when she happened to recognize the women who opened the door. In fact, she got that plan fired up and ready to go the moment she saw the violette with the pigtails and a heavy pipe wrench in her palms, the bluette with the ponytail and a disarmingly innocent smile, and the golden diva shrouded in curling locks of amber, poised to shove the aforementioned blue girl at them.

These were the Dazzlings.

The sirens.

The three sirens that entranced the school and led to the breakdown of Vinyl’s last relationship.

The sirens Vinyl also incidentally helped beat by freeing their enemies, The Rainbooms, from a trap they weren’t getting out of on their own.

The same sirens she helped again by mixing up the backing track for “Got the Music In Me” and playing it live with The Rainbooms as they crashed the Battle of the Bands and bested the sirens in magical combat (which was also kinda the point at which Vinyl’s expensive hobby started turning into a career).

Those sirens.

And they looked deeply unhappy to see Lemon.

“Are you ffffffucking kidding me, grasshead. What the fuck is your problem?”, growled Aria Blaze, lowering her weapon until it hung limp at her side. “It’s midnight. I’m trying to watch some damn TV. Take a hike.”

Before Lemon could respond, Adagio Dazzle declared, “I’m going back to bed. You two have fun,” and then booted Sonata Dusk out the door, before slamming and locking it behind her sister(?).

For her part, Sonata lost her balance, stumbling past Lemon, tripping down the porch steps, and landing on the pavers, but other than some groaning, she seemed to be fine. She was back on her feet in seconds.

“Hiya, Lem,” she said, wiping the dirt off her graphic tee (a joke about two living tacos, one of whom had a bite taken out of it and looked depressed, while the other asked, |Do you want to taco ‘bout it?|).

“‘Sup, Zona.”

“Not much. Just decompressing.” And then, on the way back up the steps, she added, “Oh, hi, DJ P0N-3.”

If Vinyl wasn’t already staying still for the ruined surprise, she would have frozen solid right there.

Sonata likewise stopped in her tracks, blinked a few times, and stared at the unexpected DJ.

–And then she bolted for the door, drumming her hands and shrieking, “Lemme in! Lemme iiiin! DJ P0N-3 found us and she’s back to finish the job! We never shoulda gone to that stupid festival!”

But the door remained closed. In fact, Vinyl could swear she heard the volume on that distant television going up a few notches. Sonata’s sisters(?) weren’t listening.

Hopelessly, Sonata threw her back to the door, shielding her face with her arms and shouting, “Don’t turn me into a robot! I’m too dumb to be a good cyborg!”

But when no field-cyborgification was forthcoming, Sonata peeked between her bare blue wrists and saw Lemon snickering into her hands, and Vinyl raising hers in what even the PSL-illiterate understand to mean, |I’m not gonna hurt you.|

“…You’re not here to cut out our brains and put them in a fishtank that turns into a mixing booth?”

|What?| Another sign that Sonata should have been able to read.

“Dude, what?”, Lemon also asked, still laughing at what she must have assumed was just some high-concept bit. She turned to Vinyl. “You weren’t even at their show yesterday, were you?”

|No. I didn’t even know they were performing in public again.| Considering they lost their voices when the Rainbooms’ kelematechnics smashed their amulets…

“So did she maybe go to your…”, trailed Lemon, trying to think this through. “Wait, wait, wait, ‘again’? So you have heard of The Dazzlings?”

|Yes.|

“Why didn’t you say so?”

|You… never actually mentioned them by name.|

“…Huh. I thought I did. Whoops, haha. –But yeah, The Dazzlings are my neighbors. How sick is that?”

Vinyl glanced back and forth between the show-offy grin on her girlfriend and the now-less-terrified-more-really-confused side-eye Sonata was giving the both of them. Before she could figure out how to tactfully answer that question, however, Sonata instead asked, “Hey, uh, Lem? Why’dja show our, like, eighth-worst enemy where we live?”

“Your what?!” As much as Vinyl had been waiting for her chronically-oblivious sweetheart to notice the tension between them, it still hurt to see her confident ease do a backflip, break its neck on the concrete, and shatter into a bewildered backfoot. “So wait, wait, you two already know each other and you don’t like each other?”

Sonata walked over to the side of the porch opposite Vinyl, putting their mutual friend between them. “You know how we told you about that chick who crashed the Battle of the Bands (even though she wasn’t a contestant!) and helped those Rainbutts (who were disqualified!) kick our asses before we even got to finish one song? That was her.”

That was a serious misrepresentation of events! Vinyl had to set things straight. |One: they were trying to take over the world!| Or at least, that’s what the Rainbooms claimed. She… kinda missed all the build-up to their climactic confrontation. |Two: they locked the Rainbow-Booms under the stage so they’d be disqualified as no-shows.|

“No, Trixie did that,” objected Sonata.

Vinyl raised a brow over the rim of her shades. She wasn’t expecting Sonata to know PSL too. That kinda took away any hope of privately signing anything to Lemon. But she kept her cool and carried on her counterargument with, |And the world domination?|

“Oh, no, yeah, that was super us.” It wasn’t so much an admission as an unrepentant (even nostalgic) statement. “But Lemon already knows that.”

Vinyl looked to her girlfriend, expecting… she didn’t know what she expected.

All Lemon had to say for herself was a shrug and a, “What can I say? Trying to take over the world with evil music is fuckin’ sick.” She shrugged a second time. “It’s not like they can do it again.”

“And you can thank this dork jockey over here for that,” said Sonata, pouting and crossing her arms. “For realsies, why’dja bring her here? What’s going on?”

“I wanted you guys to meet my girlfriend, Vinyl Scratch.”

Sonata blinked. Then blinked again. Finally, she said, “Wow! And I thought Aria had bad tas–” Lemon whipped her loose headphone cable at Sonata, catching her in the arm. “Owie!”

“Dude, don’t talk about Vizzy like that.” She continued to twirl her headphone jack like a flail.

“Fiiiiiine,” groaned Sonata, still rubbing the fresh white welt, “but mostly because I’m not really that mad at her.”

|You aren’t?|

“Not as much as my sisters. Don’t get me wrong – I still think you pulled some no-fair out-of-nowhere bullshit – but like, at least we got to run away afterwards? If we did beat the Rainbooms and make them our thralls, then the next guys would be the cops and the army. They’d probably figure out the headphones trick like you did, and then it’d all be over, and I don’t like getting shot at or put in a cage under Zone 51 and dissected alive. So, like, I’m not gonna thank you, but I can’t get that mad at you, either. …‘Specially if you’re not here for robot-y revenge.”

“Wait, yeah, what was that about turning you into a robot?”, asked Lemon.

“…Something Ari told me, and I’m starting to think she made it up to scare me.”

Nobody really seemed to know how to carry on the conversation from there. Silence reigned for a minute or so before Vinyl asked, |Did your sister really lock you out of the house?|

“Yeah.” As if to prove it, she rattled the unturning knob. “She does that sometimes.”

|So… when does she usually let you back in?|

“When she gets the mail. Hey, are you losers hungry?”

There was absolutely no pause between those two statements. Vinyl wasn’t sure what to make of the non-sequitur, but Lemon answered with a resounding, “Fuckin’ always!”

“Then let’s go,” she said, with a wave of the arms, and went down the porch steps, Lemon following right behind.

Vinyl started to sign, |Where are you going?|, but nobody was looking at her. They were already several strides down the grass-choked path.

She wasn’t happy with this change of plans. Lemon said they’d be back at her place in ten minutes, but now they were getting something to eat? And, okay, at least one of the sirens didn’t seem that dangerous anymore, and maybe, in theory, Vinyl could make friends with them at some point, but did they really have to do that tonight? Vinyl wanted to spend her time with Lemon, not Lemon and her retired magical supervillain neighbor.

There was a way out of this. She could always just run up, tap her girlfriend on the shoulder and let her know she’s heading home. But would she really prefer to spend it alone than with a third wheel?

…Would she really prefer to leave Lemon alone with a not-so-mythical siren, regardless of how much they hung out before, or how open their relationship was, or how much of that fabled seductive power was gone now? Vinyl tried not to mind who else Lemon fooled around with, but she really didn’t want to think about having to share Lemon with any of The Dazzlings.

Ugh. Well, the thing about summer being for bad decisions was, it was also for dealing with the outcomes of those bad decisions. Vinyl hurried to catch up.

About halfway back to the gate, Sonata swerved into the tall grass, taking a skinnier sidepath that Vinyl had completely missed on the way in. She’d been assuming Sonata would lead them to the gate, or maybe the garage-y structure that looked like it was converted from some stables, so they could go out and hit up some fast food place, but here they were, disappearing into the forest.

“Watch out for massasaugas,” Sonata advised, brushing through the foliage. “Ari stepped on one like a year ago and its teeth got stuck in her boot. Didja know rattlesnakes are actually, like, super tasty?”

“ZoZu legit says the same thing, haha. What’dja do to it?”

“Well, I hit it with a shovel until it stopped moving.”

“After that, I mean.”

“Oh! Yeah, so, after I cut it up, I tried my chicken taco mix on half the meat and I made a sorta gumbo-y dealio with the other.”

“Damn, now you made me even hungrier.” She playfully punched the siren in the arm, and the siren shoved back. Even though it looked just as playful, it tweaked a protective nerve in Vinyl that made her move to stand between the two of them.

“It was really, really good,” Sonata continued. “I woulda done something with the skin but I kinda tore it up. Whoops.”

At that point, two low-hanging branches crossed over the path, which Sonata had to duck under, but once she was on the other side, she announced, “Here we are!”, her voice muffled by the layered leaves.

Lemon stopped just long enough for Vinyl to grab her wrist and give her the ‘are-we-still-sure-about-this’ head-tilt. As chill as Sonata seemed, she still wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to follow her into the woods.

“Don’t worry, the night’s going great! You got Zona to come around! I’m just gonna have to reintroduce you to the others some other time,” she assured Vinyl, not entirely grasping her concerns. “Now c’mon! I’m starving!”

And with that, the oblivious dope she was in love with scurried under the branches.

Well. Not like Vinyl was gonna turn back alone. Into the woods she crawled, and – oh, there was an entire second house behind those trees.

This place might have been in even worse condition than the main one. She could point out the cracked foundation or the odd dangling shutter, but the big, obvious problem was the tree that just sorta fell on the roof at some point, long enough ago that the bark had all rotted away.

Sonata was already at the door, tucking a key under the faded welcome mat. “So, this is our guest house. Haven’t had guests since the second or third time we went on tour, though!”

While Sonata’s eyes were on her, Vinyl took the opportunity to sign, |Second or third time? How long ago was that?|

“Let’s see… I think it was 1850-something? We went to the South to soak up all the bad vibes, and we kinda got stuck there a while. Like, decades. It sucked sooooo bad.”

…So the Rainbooms weren’t mistaken: these sirens really were immortal.

Vinyl primed a follow-up question, but Sonata had already turned around to enter the decrepit guesthouse.

Fortunately, this hole did seem to have working electricity, unevenly flickering on when the siren brushed her arm along a wall. And following her inside, Vinyl was at least happy the floors were kinda swept…-ish. It looked like someone lived here, at least, even if that someone slacked on the upkeep.

But then Vinyl saw the lightswitch. There it crouched, plateless, just nakedly crammed into a hole crudely dug into the wooden wall.

Sonata caught her staring at this insult to the trades and said, “Yeah, we didn’t really start using this place, either, until we came back for the Battle of the Bands. We had to replace the wood stove in here and since we couldn’t just charm an electrician anymore, Aria figured it out herself.”

|Couldn’t you just… hire one?|

“Probably? But Ari and Dagi (mostly Dagi) won’t let me just get a guy for it for the same reason everything’s” – she gestured all around her – “still the way it was when we moved back in. They don’t really like having humans who aren’t under our spell snooping around.”

“Except for me!”, interjected Lemon, as Sonata led them through the dusty living room.

“Oh, no, ha; they don’t like you snooping around, either. They just can’t stop you without calling the cops and having even more humans snooping around.”

Lemon wasn’t one to let Sonata telling her that her sisters actually didn’t like her get her down. “Nahhhhhh,” she said, with a dismissive wave, “they’re just tsunderes like in Sunny’s mangas or whatever. They just won’t admit they like me, hahaha.” Well, Vinyl had to admire that unwavering spirit of hers, even if her analysis wasn’t all that sound.

“Eh…”, Sonata doubted, before changing the subject – coinciding with her pushing through a loosely-mounted pair of saloon-style doors whose unoiled hinges whined at her passage. “Anyways… welcome to… my second kitchen!”

The doors didn’t quite swing shut behind her, so Vinyl and Lemon slipped through without making nearly as much noise.

Vinyl was prepared for the worst. If this was as much of a sty as the rest of the sirens’ mansion, she resolved to turn around and go home, with or without Lemon.

…But inside was honestly the cleanest space she had seen since setting foot on their property. There were still dust bunnies in the corners of its aged hardwood floors, but the marble counters were clear and the lavishly-decorated china dishes that stocked the cabinets were all put away behind fancy crystal-glass windows. Some of those windows were broken, but someone had gone to the effort of covering over the breaks with empty trash bags to keep the dust out.

“So… DJ,” Sonata said, settling on a nickname, “you got anything against beef?”

|…I’m trying to cut down on red meat.|

“Well, too bad, ‘cause that’s what I’m making. That’s not a dealbreaker, is it?”

Vinyl never actually agreed to a meal in the first place, she wasn’t that hungry to begin with, and she wasn’t lying about cutting down on red meat. She was about to sign, |It is,| and tell Lemon she was ready to go home when her girlfriend gave her the brightest, widest grin and grabbed her by the hands.

“It’s worth it, I promise,” she gushed. “Zona’s a really good cook.”

“Uh-huh! Best in the world!”, said cook hollered, from the bottom of a freezer-trunk that bit down on her waist like a toothless mimic, leaving her… shapely… round… pyjama-shorted butt… dangling outside.

Vinyl shook her head and looked away. Unfortunately, she chose to look at her girlfriend, who was definitely, unambiguously staring at the siren’s ass, too. Now, obviously, having an open relationship meant there weren’t any rules against checking out other women (sometimes, they even got together and compared notes), but…

But Vinyl was jealous. She couldn’t help it. She wanted Lemon’s time and attention, and here Lemon was, giving it to Sonata. Just because Vinyl avoided caring who else Lemon had the hots for didn’t mean she wanted to watch her crush on somebody else, let alone – again – a siren. Vinyl wasn’t sure she was in the right to feel this way, but she couldn’t convince herself she was wrong, either.

Sonata burst back out with a frozen packet of ground beef, and said, as she ripped it open, “So?”

Whatever else factored into her decision, she didn’t want to just yield Lemon to Sonata. |I guess a little won’t hurt. I’ll stay for a bite.|

Lemon cheered. “Trust me, Vizzy, one bite’s all you need to be hooked for life!”

There was one thing Vinyl wanted to clear up, though. |That sounds like drugs. Or magic. There’s no magic in your cooking, is there?|

“Just the magic of friendship (bleh)”, Sonata bluhhed, before dumping the meat in a pot on the stovetop and… pulling an industrial-grade hairdryer out of a drawer. “Don’t tell Dagi I’ve been keeping this here. She’s been looking for it for months.” She then proceeded to start blasting the frozen meat with hot air from above as the burner warmed up from below.

Since the siren’s eyes were fixed on her cooking, Vinyl had Lemon relay her followup question: “You’re into friendship now, too?”

Sonata snorted. “I’ve been making friends since we got stranded here, silly. It’s not hard, and that mean unicorn and that loser princess and her dumb friends definitely didn’t invent it.” She set the hairdryer aside and started dashing spices into the meat quicker than Vinyl could keep track of. “There’s pleeeeenty of old Meskiddan ladies in Canterlot who wanna talk about their families and swap recipes and stuff. I even know some of them from back when they were young hotties. Like, know know.” With a giggle, she put on a voice that was about 80% generic old lady to 20% Meskiddan and quoted, “‘You remind me of a girl I used to know.’ Heck, some of them still even got it, if you know what I’m saying.”

Great. Cool. Now Vinyl had confirmation that Sonata was interested in girls and had a very active sex life. Because that’s what she wanted. Very cool.

Vinyl changed the subject before Sonata could decide they didn’t get it and needed elaboration. She had Lemon ask, “So where did you learn sign language?”

Sonata didn’t look up from where she was eyeballing the appropriate amount of water for a pot of dry, brown rice. “Oh, yeah, that’s a funny story. So, you know, we don’t exactly live like it, but we’re still rich. We’ve been rich baaaasically since the Boytish moved in and started calling this place Pedestria. It’s weird: the more money you have, the easier it is to get more of it, and all it takes to get to that point is getting written into a few old widows’ and widowers’ wills.”

The can opener forced Sonata to pause the story while she cracked open the black beans and the diced tomatoes, leaving Vinyl to silently hope the sirens never accelerated the timelines on any of those wills.

“But even after the stock market happened,” she continued, “we still sometimes just seduced people for fun – no songs, even; all game – just to get away from each other for a few years. And back in the fffffifties, I wanna say,” – that would have been before PSL was officially recognized in schools, Vinyl observed – “there was this really rich, suuuuuper pretty heiress who was completely deaf. I remember her name because it was kinda funny: it was Pearly Whites, but she never, ever smiled.”

A new cold wave of disdain surged through Vinyl’s gut. This Ms. Whites being treated as a trophy for her disability rubbed her absolutely the wrong way.

Meanwhile, the only thought that occurred to Lemon was, “Haha, that’s a dentist-ass name.”

Sonata giggled. “I know, right? Anyways, obviously, our songs wouldn’t work on her, even if Ari got mad and cheated, so getting Pearly eating out of one of our hands woulda been, like, the true test of our skills. Especially because we definitely weren’t the only three vying for her. She had suitors, like, up and down the block.”

Once she got the beans warming up on the stove, next to the (regrettably fantastic-smelling) beef, Sonata pulled out a bunch of unlabelled jars and a mixing bowl. One of them looked like some kind of flour, so she must have been making tortillas from scratch.

…Kinda going all-out, wasn’t she?

“But everybody struck out with her. All the suitors, and Dagi, and Ari, and me. And, f’realsies, you shoulda seen how mad Dagi got that she couldn’t just shake her hips to get Pearly drooling after her. You could build a sauna around her; that’s how steamed she was.

“After a while, this game kinda started eating into our grazing-on-strife lifestyle, so Ari and Dagi kinda started focusing on that. But not me! I kept–”

Mid-sentence, Sonata ducked out of sight, behind the island in the middle of the room, for several seconds before whopping out a heavy, antique wood-and-steel tortilla press, which she set on the counter with the utmost care.

“I kept trying,” she restarted. “Eventually, I saw her doing hand-gestures with her family butler and the other help.” Between every sentence, she pressed out another tortilla with a lot of straining and grunting. “So I sorta charmed my way into her staff.” Press. “Then I got the run-down on sign language from them.” Press. “It didn’t take me long to learn at all.” Press. “I’m way better at picking up new words than the others.” Press. “Sometimes Dagi still says ‘everypony’.” Press. “And Ari likes to say ‘fuck’ a lot but I used to be able to get her so mad she’d say ‘rutt’ instead.”

Funny anecdotes aside… |Back to the story. Let me guess what happened next:|, Vinyl instructed Lemon to relay, as Sonata kept churning out raw tortillas, |you made all the other servants look bad until you were positioned to make your move on her.| It was an accusation she made without thinking about how exactly that would give her an advantage if Aria and Adagio couldn’t get anywhere with her, but Vinyl was too irritated to care about that.

Lemon hesitated. “Uh, Vizzy, you sure you want me to say it like that?”

Sonata looked up from her tortilla-pressing. “Say it like what?”

Vinyl repeated herself, just as brazenly.

Sonata giggled. “Nah, but it probably woulda been faster if I thought to do that. That’s the kind of plan Dagi’s good at making, but like I said, I was alone. What actually happened was, I cheated the game to get her.”

|What? I thought you couldn’t sing to her.|

“Oh, I didn’t cheat that way, and honestly, it’s not really cheating. I just figured out she had an interest in medical science and let her write and sign about it to me until she was head-over-heels for her bestest listener ever, even though it all kinda went over my head.” She smiled, deviously.

Vinyl didn’t get it. |So wait, you just… got to know her as a person and let her fall in love with you?|

“Yeah! Totally against the spirit of the game, but it worked.” As Sonata started frying the tortillas, corn oil hissing and crackling in her pan, she let out a wistful sigh. “Pearly and me had a good decade together before I started getting too mood-hungry not to feed with my sisters, ‘cause that’s really the most efficient way to do it, and she was getting kinda bored of me, anyways. Sure, I was a great listener, but she really wanted a brainiac equal.” She gazed in silence at the pan for several moments before continuing. “I think she actually did hook up with a dentist? And I like to think she hooked him with the skills I taught her. She had some crazy tongue game by the time we called it off.” She looked up from the stove, meeting Vinyl’s blush with a grin.

Vinyl didn’t want to be embarrassed. She wanted to be righteously indignant. |You stuck around? I’d have thought you’d ditch her the moment you won.| She wasn’t trying to start a fight; just to put the siren on the backfoot.

But Sonata didn’t seem to take any offense to that. “Nah, that’s more Ari’s style. I’m not sure she’s even into love? But, like, remember all that stuff about being adored in our songs?”

|I never heard any of your songs.| She tapped on her headphones.

“Oh, right. Well, uh, anyways, being loved is a kind of being adored, even if Dagi was mostly thinking about the whole world being our fans when she spun those lyrics through our gems. And being loved kinda needs you to give love back, so… yeah.” The sudden scrape of a knife against a stone cutting board was shortly followed by the aroma of onions, tomatoes, and lime juice. “I loved her as long as the need to eat anger would let me, but you know, it wouldn’t be the first time that dumb side-effect of our immortality made me have to walk away.” She shrugged. “Guess I can thank you for not having to deal with that anymore.”

Cool. Great. There might have been bits of that story Vinyl could object to, but for the most part, it didn’t even make for good fuel for her dislike of this particular siren. What a waste of her time.

And yeesh, Sonata was as passive in the face of open hostility as Lemon. Why was a trait she appreciated in her girlfriend so frustrating from this woman?

That wasn’t where the similarities ended, either, as much as Vinyl hated to acknowledge it. She was stuck in a room with two attractive, airheaded musicians with no filter – one of whom she couldn’t get enough of, and one of whom made her want to leave the room. She hated to admit that she found Sonata attractive, because that made her feel unfaithful, even though that wasn’t a boundary in her relationship with Lemon. She hated to admit that she found Sonata annoying (albeit hard to describe as monstrous, anymore), because that made her feel like a hypocrite who couldn’t really call herself in love with her girlfriend.

How on Pedes was she supposed to square this contradiction?

What had been a really great day right until midnight sure was going terribly.

“Aaaaaand tacos are done!”, Sonata announced, as she bundled an arm-full of condiments from the fridge to the counter. The shredded cheese and sour cream were store-brand, but the guacamole came in a mason jar that suggested Sonata had made that herself, too.

Though, when she checked the sour cream, she made a hideous face and hastily chucked it into the trash can. “Uhhhh, be right back,” she said, covering all the pots and pans to keep the heat in. Then, fetching a conspicuous crowbar from an umbrella stand, she declared, “I gotta jimmy the window open on the main kitchen and get some more of that,” and hustled off without another word.

Vinyl turned to Lemon, working up the nerve to ask her if it was alright to just leave–

–and then Sonata poked her head back into the guesthouse kitchen. “Don’t tell Ari I have this,” she said, waving the crowbar. “It’s not hers, but she doesn’t want me to have it, either.” And then she left.

This time, Vinyl waited a few seconds to be sure she heard the front door slamming shut before getting ready to speak–

–but Lemon spoke first. “Hey, uh, is everything alright?”

Reflexively, Vinyl signed, |Yeah,| but then, |Actually, no. I can’t stand Sonata.|

“Yeah, that’s the vibe I got.” She threw her head into her crossed arms on the table. “Man, I wish I knew there was bad blood between you and The Dazzlings. I’m a fuckin’ dumbass – but what else is new, haha… ha…”

Part of Vinyl was cranky enough that she wanted to call Lemon out for moping about herself instead of paying attention to Vinyl’s feelings, but that part was unable to influence her all that strongly, as it was too busy waging war against another part, which insisted that feeling mad at Lemon was proof she’d wasted the last two years of both of their lives.

So she placed her palm on Lemon’s forehead, lacing her pale, white fingers through those greasy bangs of green, lifting her girlfriend’s head until her chin was resting on her arms. Vinyl pulled back and signed, |Sure, but you’re my dumbass.|

That got a giggle out of Lemon. “Thanks.”

But steering Lemon’s mood back towards the happy was pointless if she was gonna follow that up with, |Is it alright if I leave? I don’t mind you staying,| she forced herself to allow, |but I just want to go home at this point.|

Lemon frowned. “I… guess…”, she was about to concede, but then she shook her head. “No, please, just stick around for the meal. We’ll head out right after, I promise.”

|I know it’s rude to make her start cooking| – she signed, even though Vinyl didn’t make Sonata do anything – |and then walk out, but I don’t want to eat anything she made.|

“You need to eat something!”, Lemon objected.

|Why?!| Vinyl took off her shades to make the frustration and confusion she was trying to get across as clear as day. |I can just say I lost my appetite! It’s fine!|

“No. This isn’t about manners.”

|What is it, then?!|

“Babe, you skipped dinner.”

Vinyl tilted her head. No, she…?

“I tried to get you some funnel cake or churros or, like, anything, at Star Swirled, but you didn’t want any before your show, and then you drove right on past the diner I thought you wanted to stop at, so I know you haven’t eaten since lunch.”

Lemon was right. Vinyl hadn’t eaten.

Her girlfriend reached across the table to lace her fingers with Vinyl’s again. “Ain’tcha hungry?”, she implored, letting go so Vinyl could give her answer.

|No, I–| The rumbling of her stomach chose precisely that moment to betray her. |Okay, fine. I am hungry.|

“Right, and I don’t want you going home hungry, so I thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I get her some of the best fuckin’ tacos I’ve ever had?’ And, you know, I can have you meet some more of my friends at the same time.”

“Did I hear you guys are ready for some Sonatacos?!”, hollered Sonata, holding aloft a fresher tub of sour cream, with the crowbar slung over her shoulder.

Lemon looked pleadingly at Vinyl. At the same time, Sonata lifted the lid off the meat pot and that greasy, spicy, savory scent coiled her hunger into an aching knot.

With a sigh, she nodded her head and signed, |I’ll eat.|

Lemon pumped her fist. “Hell yeah! Me, too!”

Sonata was already plating her own. “Then come serve up!”

While Vinyl did get in line, she stood back and watched the others prep theirs, first.

The chef herself was going all-out with her fixings. There was not a single topping she excluded, from the laboriously-precise sprinkling of shredded cheese to the garnish of fresh pico de gallo she’d chopped up.

Lemon followed closely behind, going heavy on the beans and meat but putting the rice on her plate instead of in the shell. She skipped the dairy altogether (which was usually a sign that she planned on hanging out with Vinyl later and didn’t want the consequences of dairy to interfere), piling on the salsa and guac in their stead, and finished her plate of four with a thorough dribbling of hand-squeezed lime juice.

Finally – and still with some reluctance – Vinyl dished up, too. She’d start with one taco and see how she felt from there. She filled it up on beans and rice, no beef – again, trying to cut down on red meat – and shared Lemon’s appreciation for veggies, although she almost wished Sonata had thrown some bell peppers and onions on the stove. In any case, she had an unfortunately-wonderful-smelling vegetarian taco on her plate as she headed back to the table.

Though, when Sonata saw how little Vinyl had grabbed for herself, she presumptuously spooned a scoop of rice onto Vinyl’s plate, which only further irritated her, but what was Vinyl gonna do? Scoop it back into the rice pot?

The others dug in first, not even sorting out the beverage situation until Sonata was halfway through taco one of six. With a mouth full of mush, she waved at the fridge and slobbered, “I got Tiaras in the fridge. Help yourselves!”

|We’re not 21,| objected Vinyl, not that she even actually cared about the drinking age, herself, nor that she necessarily intended to drive home that night. Crashing in Lemon’s bed and driving home in the morning was always an option. She just wanted to spurn Sonata’s generosity.

Lemon certainly didn’t obey that particular law, bursting into laughter and getting up to raid that refrigerator. Waggling one of those Meskiddan beers in the air, she asked, “Want one, Vizzy?”

Vinyl shook her head. |Just pour me a water. Please.|

“Uh,” Sonata interjected, “use the pitcher in the fridge. The filter on the sink’s kinda going out.”

It wasn’t until Lemon was back with Vinyl’s drink that she took a bite of the taco and then another and then another and then it was gone. It was gone. She barely even remembered how it tasted, other than the fact it was good.

And she wanted more.

She heard Lemon and Sonata snickering as she got up to load more tacos onto her plate. These were mostly more vegetarians, but a beef taco somehow, mysteriously, made its way onto her plate as well, so she might as well try it.

She slowed down with the second one and actually savored it. For being thrown together in maybe half an hour, in a dismal little kitchen, it tasted better than anything she’d get anywhere except a Meskiddan family’s restaurant.

And, bite by bite, she found that her anger and apprehension were… dissipating. Her contempt for Sonata cooled into disdain, into dislike, into the forgive-but-don’t-forget optimism she imagined Sunset must have felt with so many of her friends, and her mistrust was buried under every sign she’d ignored that, as much as Sonata was, by no means, as innocent as she pretended to be during the Battle of the Bands, she also wasn’t a total puppy-kicking bitch and had her moments of compassion, too.

Vinyl’s frustration with Lemon vanished completely, forgotten like so many other minor squabbles they’d had. She reached over and took Lemon’s hand in her own, squeezing it tight.

Gosh, was she really just cranky because she was hungry?

As she was milling that revelation over in her head (while her teeth milled over some expertly-seasoned beef), a fourth person entered the kitchen.

Aria Blaze stopped at the entrance and stared at Vinyl Scratch. Everyone – even Sonata – flinched. But before anyone could say anything, her eyes flickered over to Lemon and the hands the two of them held. With an exhausted, wordless groan, she turned toward the stove and started shovelling meat and nothing else into a taco shell, which she ate by the sink, glaring at Vinyl the entire time as chips of tortilla and grounds of beef tumbled to the floor.

Dread and displeasure flooded Vinyl once again, though not as fiercely as they did with Sonata. The blue siren, at least, was playing nice. There was a snowball’s chance in Pandemonium that the surly violette would be half as friendly, and Vinyl doubted that just eating more food would help her get over whatever Aria might do and say to her.

But then, Aria walked out just as wordlessly – though not before snatching the crowbar off the counter along the way.

When the front door once again slammed shut, Sonata piped up first. “Wow, that went really well!”

|I guess?|

“I mean, she’s probably gonna yell at me about it tomorrow, or maybe tell Dagi to yell at me about it, but hey! I thought we were gonna have to break up a fight!”, she said, glancing at Lemon.

Vinyl signed, |And I guess it means we’ve already got our introductions out of the way, if I end up back here some other time…|

Lemon gasped, her eyes twinkling like she had a front-row view of a pyrotechnics-heavy metal show. “Wait, you’re not just cool now, but cool with coming back, too?!”

|Well… maybe, if I’m in the neighborhood.|

Sonata hummed, feigning reluctance. “If you waaaaant, maybe I’d be fine with it. I wouldn’t mind cooking for more than just my sisters and Lemon and me. Maybe I’ll even make chicken, next time.”

|I’d honestly eat beef again if you cooked it,| Vinyl admitted. |But I would prefer chicken, yes.|

“Gotcha. Then as long as you two don’t join Sunset’s dumb circle and lead them here, you’re welcome in my kitchen, even if my other sisters don’t like it!”

|Thank you.|

“Though… come to think of it, maybe you guys should get out of here before Dagi comes down, too. I think she left her window open and the smell’s probably gonna wake her up, if it hasn’t already. You really don’t want to try making friends with Crabby Dagi.”

“Haha, that’s fair,” Lemon said, getting up to grab a couple more beers for the road. “Gracias por los tacos, Zona.”

Vinyl nodded in agreement.

“De ‘nata!~” – Lemon snorted – “Thank you for introducing me to your girlfriend, Lem, and thank you, DJ, for not dragging me into your workshop and turning me into a robot!”

Vinyl still had no clue where Sonata was getting that from. Was she confusing her for Micro Chips or Sci-Twi or something?

In any case, Sonata showed them to the door, where, on the porch, Vinyl signed to Lemon, |Sorry for being a grouch. You were right,| then leaned in to plant a kiss on Lemon’s cheek (and discreetly clean off a stray smear of guacamole that had made its way there). She could come back for the beer on her lips when they were alone.

“Awh, okay, you guys are kinda cute,” Sonata admitted. “Now get going! I just saw Dagi’s light turn on!”, she warned, pointing to a glimmer of light through the canopy that shrouded the guesthouse.

“Yeah, okay, seeya!”

|Bye!|

Thankfully, Lemon knew the way out, leading Vinyl through the trees and between the tall grasses with an eager sort of haste. Soon, she and Vinyl put the gaping gates behind them, crossed the street, and made it back up to Lemon’s own garden suite, where Lemon asked her, waggling one of her leftover beers, “So… wanna sleep in my bed tonight? ‘Cause that’s what I wanna do.”

The decision was easy for Vinyl to make. She pushed away the beer, got in her car, cranked the ignition… and parked it in Lemon’s garage, in case it rained overnight. Then she took the beer, and took her girlfriend inside.

Author's Note

I actually wrote 3 pages of something similar to this, except with the Sirens being brought to watch Vinyl's show by Lemon, who was filling the role of roadie for them, before realizing that I had my timeline of Star Swirled all messed up.
Speaking of timelines: freshmen ruin any attempt to make sense of the EqG timeline because they stay the same age despite multiple years demonstrably passing over the course of the series. So, Snips and Snails here are technically a year too young to have been attending high school at the same time that they helped Sunset try to sabotage Princess Twilight at the Fall Formal, in the timeline I made and personally go off of. I'd try not to think about it too hard.

I like LemonScratch. It's not the ship I'm most passionate about, but a ship between two Shadowbolts was not eligible for this particular contest. I'll get my Sour/Sunny in on the next movie's anniversary.
On the subject of shipping choices, one idea I like coming back to is the idea that characters between Pedes and Equus will make wildly different decisions just because they were at different ages, with different social and technological contexts. In this case, I wanted to justify Octavia not being with Vinyl. If you're upset with Octavia for being so petty, you're free to be, but please remember that she was an underclassman at the time, which makes her an idiot by default. Were she and Vinyl several years more mature when they started dating, as on Equus, maybe she wouldn't have stuck to this elitism of hers.

On Sonata: the taco joke is dumb and I hate that it's the only thing about her, and yet I participate. Strange.

Here's a song I thought about while writing this.