It was a cold winter day outside. The sky was grey with clouds, wind blew harsh through the streets, and snow fell thin but icy, threatening to seep into any opening it could find among one's clothes and chill the wearer down to their bones. The perfect weather to sit inside, on a comfortable padded seat, sipping on a mug of warm chocolate sprinkled with holiday-themed candy that added to the price more than it did for the taste and enjoying the artificial warmth of the heating system, all while looking out at the less fortunate students and adults forced to trudge through the wind and snow. And at the seven girls in sparkly dresses fighting a giant ice-cream monster. It was that time of the month.

Trixie leaned away from the window, relaxing into the diner's seat, and enjoyed the taste of her sweet, hot drink. She'd left her winter jacket, scarf, and woolly hat on the coat rack by the door, but her blue sweater and thick purple pants still did wonders to keep her pleasantly warm. She fancied getting a winter-appropriate cape, with a fur trim and all. That could be nice to have if she wanted to do outside shows during that time of year. Then she looked down at the steaming mug in her hand, remembered how much of a relative economic ask it was to get the candy-sprinkled cocoa, and filed the new cape idea away for later consideration. Once she was as successful as she was talented. For the time being she'd stick to treating herself on a smaller scale.

Across from her at her table sat two other girls. Lavender Lace and Fuchsia Blush, Trixie's bandmates and probably the closest thing she had to someone she could call a friend. Jury was still out on whether Sunset counted or not, and even more shaky when it came to the rest of the girls flying around defending the town outside. The two both had chocolate mugs of their own. Without candy sprinkles, of course, although they had respectively opted for a marshmallow and whipped cream to top theirs off.

Lavender Lace, being the one sitting farther away from the window, craned her neck and leaned over the table to get a better look at what was happening in the street. "You think they're going to be okay out there?"

Fuchsia Blush focused instead on her cocoa, leaning into her seat and gently blowing on it before taking a sip. "I'm sure they will," she replied afterwards. "They always are."

Lavender propped her chin up with a hand, elbow resting on the table. "I don't know. That thing is throwing cars at them."

"Are the cars hitting?"

"Doesn't look like it."

Fuchsia shrugged. "Then there's nothing to worry about." She took another sip of her cocoa, eyes blissfully closed.

"They're still gonna have to pay for the cars later." Lavender leaned back and looked at her own mug, pondering whether she wanted to drink from it yet and risk scalding her lips or wait it out a while longer.

Fuchsia opened a single eye and looked towards Lavender. "When has money ever been a problem for them? Between the music career and Rarity's parents I'm pretty sure they're the only reason CHS is even still open despite being nearly destroyed twice, and everything else that's happened."

"I guess you're right." Lavender finally brought the mug up to her lips, felt the chocolate's temperature against them, then set it down without drinking. "I guess she is rich. And they are pretty successful. And-"

She was cut off by a noise from the other end of the table. It sounded like something trying to force its way out of Trixie's throat, though it was unclear how much of it was deliberate and how much was her choking back her own words before she said something regrettable about her overly successful potential friends. Fuchsia chuckled at that before sipping on her cocoa again, both eyes closed once more. Lavender kept quiet, and finally decided to tackle her chocolate after blowing on it for a bit. The silence stretched on for a while, to Trixie's increasing unease, until finally she broke it again. "Do you have any plans for the holidays?"

Fuchsia set her half-empty mug down on the table and opened her eyes. "I'll be visiting relatives next week, for about a week. I should be free after that." She looked towards Lavender. "You?"

Lavender set down her mug too. "We're leaving in a couple of days. Mountain resort. I should be back around the same time you will be."

"Alright." Trixie had some more of her own cocoa. "When you're both back in town, we could get together to do some rehearsals."

Fuchsia, her eyes still half-lidded, shifted her attention back to Trixie. "Do you have some new material, or are we playing Tricks for the fiftieth time?"

Trixie pouted and crossed her arms. "It's a perfectly good song."

"It's also your only song. You can't fill a set with just one song. We're never going to get a gig without at least a full demo, even if you want to play covers."

"I am not playing covers! The Great and Powerful-"

"And it barely has any guitar in it," Fuchsia continued. "I mean, seriously. Putting aside for a moment the fact that you insist on having two samplers as the entire rest of your band, you'd expect your main single to at least have some shredding when you're the one with an electric guitar in hand. And you're the second best guitar player in the whole school, it-"

Trixie made another one of her choked sounds of poorly contained indignation.

Fuchsia gave her a flat look and something like a smirk. "Come on now. Rainbow beat you fair and square, magic or not, and it's all on camera."

"One of your most popular videos, actually," Lavender cheerfully chimed in. "Or, well, one of the most popular videos you're in. It's actually on the Rainbooms' channel."

"But the people in the comments do want to see more of you playing guitar," Fuchsia said. "You're good at it. And we know you've been practising."

"Yeah," Lavender spoke up again. "We've heard some of the stuff you've been playing on your own. It's really good."

"Not good enough," Trixie hissed, looking to the side. Then she furrowed her brow and looked back to the other two. "You've been spying on me?"

"Just listening from outside when you're playing by yourself at school," Fuchsia replied. "The room isn't exactly soundproof since Sunset's experiments blew off some of the panels, you can kind of hear everything if you lean against the door. Anyway, the point is that it's good stuff." Quietly, she added, "Better than Tricks if you ask me."

Trixie heard that and huffed, but said nothing. Lavender spoke again. "Why don't you show us some of what you've been workshopping, and we can help you figure things out if you feel like it needs some improvements?"

A streetlamp flew towards the window, only to be caught in the glow of Twilight's magic before it could crash into it. It then proceeded to be hurled back towards the monster on the other end of the street, while Twilight gave a sheepish wave and an apologetic smile to the customers inside the diner. Trixie sipped on her chocolate, swallowing some of the candy. "I'm not sure. I'm kind of particular about creative control when it comes to my own work."

"Yeah, we know," Lavender replied flatly. Then she cleared her throat and quickly went back to drinking.

Fuchsia looked between the other two, barely hiding a smirk. "It's not exactly hard to tell, even if we weren't literally part of your band. I mean, 'Singer Name and the Xs'? That's what bands get renamed to after they have a falling out and one member wants to be in charge of everything."

"Or when it's a supergroup," Lavender said.

"That's 'Singer Name's Band Name', and the singer name is usually excluded when people bring it up, it's just there in the logo. And then there's the cases where the band name was actually the project name for what was supposed to be just a couple of connected concept albums and what's now treated as the album name was actually just the subtitle, and, well, anyway." Fuchsia focused back on Trixie. "We know what you're like, and we haven't dumped you yet. It's okay if you want to show us your unfinished material. We're the ones who'll need to perform it anyway."

"Maybe playing something other than the sampler for once," Lavender said, quietly.

Trixie was still pouting. "Why would you ever ditch the Great and Powerful Trixie?" Her voice rose as she continued, "It should be a privilege for you to be deemed worthy of being part of her band and..." She trailed off upon seeing the other two's expressions.

"Come on," said Fuchsia. "That might work when you're trying to get little kids to help you out with setting up a show. We never bought into it."

"Although it is kind of cute," said Lavender.

"And it's not like we're getting paid. Not with only one song to our name anyway. We're with you because we like what you do. And because you're tolerable. Even genuinely nice sometimes." Fuchsia finished her mug of cocoa in one long sip. "So it would be nice if you opened up some more instead of being too focused on how you present yourself to bother curating how others see you."

"It's okay if you're critical of your own work, but you'll never know if something is good enough if you never show it to anyone else. At some point you need to put yourself out there. And this isn't like you. You love showing off." Lavender smiled at Trixie. "No offence."

"None taken." Trixie sighed. "You're right. It's just... It's different, when it comes to music. I don't know what it is. I don't have a problem when it comes to shows, whether it's magic or singing. Songwriting just gets to me a different way. Maybe it's the competition."

The ice-cream monster's head slammed into the glass wall of the diner and splattered on it, temporarily darkening the room before the girls outside began to remove it. Lavender looked with concern at it, while Trixie and Fuchsia ignored the whole thing. "They could have gotten someone hurt," Lavender said.

"The glass is reinforced," said one of the waitresses nearby, "it shouldn't be a problem. And if they do break anything it's getting docked from Pinkie's pay."

"Oh, right. She does work here." Lavender watched as the girl in question tried to eat the now inanimate ice-cream golem, while the rest of her friends did their best to stop her.

A few seconds passed in silence. Then, Fuchsia reached with a hand behind her back. "By the way," she said, nodding towards Trixie. "We got you a thing." She pulled out a small gift-wrapped package suspiciously shaped and sized like a CD case, and gently tossed it over the table towards Trixie.

Trixie caught it as it slid to a stop next to her chocolate mug, and eyed it suspiciously before looking at the girls. "What is this?"

"It's called a present, Trixie," said Fuchsia, while Lavender chuckled.

"I know what a present is," Trixie replied, indignant. "What is it?"

"You're supposed to open it," Lavender managed between suppressed fits of laughter.

Trixie huffed, but brought the envelope closer and unwrapped it. Her eyes lit up and annoyance left her expression once she had a look at the contents. "Oh my Hoofness. A limited edition reissue digipak release of Bal-Sotho's The Horsepower Cosmic, complete with the extended version of the booklet!" She looked up from the CD and at the two girls. "How did you know it's one of my favourite albums of all time?"

"You spent the entirety of our last supposed band practice session ranting about about it," said Fuchsia, smiling. "It's actually how you spend most of our rehearsals. Ranting and raving about this or that band you like and about how they write their songs."

"Trixie does not rant," Trixie replied, reverently sliding the present away in one of her sweater's pockets and keeping her hand on it once there. "Trixie educates."

"Whatever you say, boss," said Lavender. "That's another thing. For someone who keeps raving about guitar work and composition, it's really weird you don't have more material to work with that's more involved with those things. One would expect you to have some songs that sound like the bands you talk about."

"Well, they wouldn't quite sound like that," Trixie said. "Trixie would never debase herself with that kind of singing. But she may have been working on something similar, on the instrumental side. And she may grace her assistants with it when they're back from their vacations."

"Does that mean we get to play something else?" Lavender beamed. "You'll need a bass player, right? I can play the bass."

"I'll still need a sampler," said Trixie. "Or a keyboard, at least. Modern keyboards aren't really that different from samplers, anyway. Though most of the stuff you'd play on one is in playback when you're live anyway."

"Don't let Rarity hear that," said Fuchsia.

"Ha." Trixie stretched her arms over her head and leaned into her seat. "As if I would ever let the Rainbooms listen in on my plans."

"What plans?" asked Pinkie Pie from behind Trixie, as the rest of the band members turned magical girls walked into the diner.

"Ah!" Trixie lost her balance and tumbled over on the bench seat. Pinkie looked at her, shrugged, then skipped off towards the counter to order more ice-cream for herself. Fuchsia and Lavender both chuckled as Trixie straightened herself and adjusted her hair.

"I can do the sampler. Keytar. Whatever we settle on," Fuchsia said. "We still need someone to play the drums."

"There's that girl from Crystal Prep," said Lavender. "Headphones, long green hair, almost sent a bust off its pedestal last time she was at CHS because she was kicking around to the beat. She could be a good fit."

"I'm not sure I want to involve anyone from Crystal Prep," said Trixie. "I don't trust them."

"Well, most of CHS doesn't trust you or wouldn't be able to put up with you, and even if she does and could the best drum player in the school is already taken." Fuchsia threw a sideways glance behind herself and nodded towards Pinkie.

"I think she could find the time for our band too, if we asked her," said Lavender. "Pinkie always finds time to help people out. I don't know how she does it. Sometimes you would swear there must be multiple of her."

"Yeah, ain't that weird?" asked Pinkie from behind Trixie, licking an ice-cream cone. Trixie and her bandmates looked at her, alarmed. Then they looked towards the counter again, where Pinkie was chatting with her friends. Then they looked back behind Trixie, finding no one there. Finally they exchanged a glance and chose to move on with the conversation.

"Either way," Trixie said, "I don't want help from the Rainbooms. That's the competition."

"We could get Fluttershy to fill in for something, though," Lavender suggested. "What does she do in the band, anyway? Play the tambourine?"

"Songwriter," Fuchsia replied. "And she's great at it, I'm sure you've noticed. Which means we especially can't have her on, because the moment she gives a good suggestion on whatever we're working on, the boss here will have to throw the whole thing away because she can't accept using someone else's work, but also can't perform a version she knows isn't the best."

"I would never," Trixie replied at that.

"You failed a test you cheated on because you refused to copy Sunset's answers," Fuchsia said.

Trixie was silent for a moment. "Okay, maybe I would. Either way, no Fluttershy."

"I wonder if she would like the music you listen to, or the stuff you write," said Lavender. "Did you know she's a Skull Cruncher fan?"

"Skull Cruncher is a band for posers," said Trixie.

"They're popular," said Fuchsia.

"Yeah, exactly. Good bands and commercially successful ones don't overlap that much," Trixie replied. "If you're making something popular it usually means it's watered down so more people can like it. Real art doesn't appeal to the masses."

"That's a really convenient mindset to have when you're an unsuccessful artist," said Fuchsia.

Trixie huffed. "Maybe. Point is, we need a drum player."

"Well, you're sticking around town for the holidays. You can find someone by the time Lavender and I get back."

"I suppose I can. At worst I will ask Sunset to ask Twilight about that girl from CP."

"You could just ask Twilight."

"I could. Maybe." Trixie finished her chocolate. "Anyway. How long are you free for today?"

"Pretty much all day long," said Fuchsia. "I can even tell my parents we're having dinner together if you have something in mind, I just need to get back home before midnight."

"About the same," Lavender said. "As long as I warn them in advance. Why, planning something?"

Trixie shrugged. "We could go back to my place. Spend some time together. Maybe I can show you some of what I've been working on already so you know what to expect." She pulled out the CD she'd been gifted, and looked at it with a giddy expression. "Maybe we can listen to this together."

"Or maybe we can listen to something good," said Fuchsia, smirking.

Trixie hissed at her while putting the CD back in her pocket. "It is good."

"It certainly fits your theory about good things being something few people enjoy, then," Fuchsia replied. "Maybe we can put on the new Rainbooms album instead?" she asked, still smirking.

Trixie was practically fuming at that, even if she understood her friend was teasing her. Lavender spoke up. "Maybe we can watch a movie?"

"Yeah," said Fuchsia. "We could watch the Daring Do movie. You know, the one where- Ouch! That hurt," she said, looking at Trixie.

Trixie merely huffed, while pulling back her leg beneath the table. "Keep talking like that and I'll have you play the whole orchestral backing track live on the sampler."

"And risk ruining your performance if I get something wrong? How brave of you." Fuchsia massaged her leg underneath the table, but kept her smile.

Trixie huffed again. "Would you rather I replace you?"

"And be short two members instead of one?"

Trixie grunted. "I guess I'm stuck with you, then." She kept her annoyed expression for a few seconds longer, but eventually broke into a chuckle. "Thanks again for the present," she added, smiling.

Fuchsia snickered as well. "You're welcome, boss." Lavender smiled too.

Trixie stretched herself again. "Alright, then. Off to my place?"

Fuchsia nodded. "Sure," Lavender said. Then she looked down and quickly downed the rest of her chocolate.

Trixie was already on her feet, putting on her winter clothes and preparing to head back outside. Sunset noticed her from the other side of the room, and waved to her. "Hey, Trixie! How's it going?"

"Great!" Trixie replied. "And you Rainbooms better watch out. Next year I'm going to beat you!" Then, without further elaboration, she walked out of the diner, and proceeded to slip on a discarded portion of ice-cream golem on the ground and fall into a pile of snow on the side of the road.

Sunset looked at the scene, slightly confused, and then looked at Fuchsia and Lavender. Fuchsia just shrugged, then dressed herself and went out to help Trixie. Lavender gave an apologetic smile, headed for the door as well, then turned around and went back to the table she'd been sitting at to make sure they'd actually paid for their cocoa. Then she left, waving at Sunset.

Sunset looked at them leave, then shrugged and went back to her friends. "Trixie," she said with a sigh.

"Trixie," her friends agreed.

"At least she's got someone looking after her."

Author's Note

Credits to FanOfMostEverything for coming up with a suitable horsepun for Bal-Sagoth.