Strumming

I walked into the common room after school, to check in on Ashley more than anything, to find her sitting on the couch and holding a solid black guitar, which she was strumming experimentally.

I blinked. "...where did you get that?"

"Hey, Taylor," she said sounding more chipper than she had been for a bit. "It's my sword. All-Love. I shapeshifted it into a guitar."

"...Why?"

"I was sitting there bored, decided to try and sort through my absorbed memories and then I realized that Beast knew how to play guitar," Ashley said... I was getting way to jaded to how things worked out in her universe. "So I decided that was more interesting. I mean, a guitar is kind of like a banjo, so, I figure that if I practice and get good at employing those inherited skills that I can apply that to a banjo."

"Why? Why do you want to learn to play the banjo?" I'd never asked her that.

Ashley shrugged. "Why not?" She started playing a few random notes and cords.

Or at least, I thought they were random. After a bit, I started to notice a pattern. Something vaguely familiar. Like... Like something from a tv show I'd never watched but was on like, all the time on certain channels in some form or another... Like she was playing a recurring rift or something and... God, this was gonna bug me all day.

Missy came in a little bit later, walked past the couch, then paused and turned to look at Ashley. "...Is that the Transformers theme?"

Ashley shrugged. "Maybe. I'm just playing random notes that sound good together."

Missy blinked. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Not a clue," Ashley admitted.

This prompted Missy's eye to twitch. "You know about the 80s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon but don't... It's a cartoon, been on since the eighties, been rebooted a couple of times. War between two factions of transforming robots that disguised themselves as cars and trucks and junk? Except in the 90s when they were animals for some reason. Basically exists to sell toys?"

"Sorry, I've kind of got a weird pop-culture reference pool," Ashley said, sounding genuinely apologetic.

"The main good guy is named Optimus Prime?"

Ashley's eyes lit up. "Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about now."

Missy marched around to look Ashley in the eye, shifted into her youthful red-skinned form, and held up a glowing fist. "I swear to god, if you tell me that Optimus Prime is real in your universe I will give you cancer."

Ashley scoffed. "Don't be silly, Missy."

Missy shifted back and sighed in relief.

"They got shifted off into their own separate universe by a cosmic hiccup of some kind forever ago. They all live in Earth-91274 now."

Missy's fist stopped glowing. He got sort of a tick in her neck, making her head twitch to the side.

And then she screamed. as she was still in her younger form, it came out as a shrill, ear-raping shriek. Then she stomped off

Once my ears had adjusted, I noted that Ashley had switched tracks. Now she was playing something more... Even. And Twangy.

Then she started singing. " An old cowboy was riding out one dark and windy day. Upon a ridge, he rested as he went along his way. When all at once a mighty heard of red-eyed cows he saw, plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw. Yippie-ay-yeah, yippie-ay-ooh... The ghost riders in, the sky! "

I sat there and listened to her play and sing to herself about a swarm of exhausted, tortured ghosts warning an old cowboy that he was doomed to Hell unless he repented his sins immediately. My only thoughts were that Ashley was singing in a way that was far too upbeat for such a morbid song.