Raven Writingdesk was in a foul temper. Most ponies seemed to live their lives happily enough that they were unable to distinguish between a normal, day-to-day foul mood and when one became gripped by a foul temper. Raven personally found that a mood merely altered perspective, provoking more cynicism or hateful thoughts, while a foul temper… He had found foul temper to be not so much an internal struggle but rather a white-hot dullness that burns within an individual's chest creating a noise of rage that builds and builds until a pony wants nothing more than to do damage to another pony until their hooves stop twitching. Of course, drinking did not exactly help the situation, but since when are young adults known for wisdom?
Raven eyed the bottom of his pint with suspicion. He was certainly far enough down the line to pass-out-drunk that a pony could have slipped something in his glass and he would not have had a presence of mind to pick up on the change in taste. Then again, he was fairly certain this "friendly" establishment was watering down the beer; he'd never had a porter that tasted so much like cider. And there was that new voice of paranoia in his head; it had not been there when he graduated from schooling a month back, but it kept popping up more and more.
"Slipped something in your glass?" he thought to himself. "Only important ponies get drugged or poisoned." And he told his paranoia to shut up as he shoved his glass back across the bar. The bartender looked at him a little sideways, but gave him the refill. Raven put the last of his pocket change on the bar and took back his full glass. He had a sip and made a face at the full beverage; definitely tasted less like beer and more like water. Or piss. And that was all it took. The white-hot in his chest combusted and suddenly he felt very much as though he were no longer in control of his body. With as much resolve as one might employ to announce an engagement, Raven took his glass and smashed it on the head of the pony sitting next to him at the bar.
Bar fights are interesting ordeals. Most of the time, they get broken up pretty quickly and the offending party is chucked onto the street to be picked up by the cops, while some establishments let the fight continue and the patrons take bets on the impromptu occasion. And very rarely, one can find just the right kind of place where the moment something starts, it provides an excuse for every pony in the joint to dive right in. Before the glass from Raven's pint had even hit the floor, he was neck-deep in an all-out barroom brawl, a genuine anarchical melee.
Raven woke to a sound not unlike a rusty saw blade attempting to work its way through a particularly dense log. It took a few moments for him to realize that it was, in fact, his own snoring that he was hearing, which apparently was too hung over to realize it could stop now that he was awake.
"Hey!" And there was a sound of wood striking metal, only instead of hearing it, Raven felt it like a knife between the eyes.
"I said wake up!" Same sound and the blade twisted. Raven cracked an eye, only to close it again because apparently Celestia had raised the sun at about five hundred times its usual intensity; he could feel his corneas sizzling like bacon. Then, it struck him that he saw something unusual and, braving the pain, he cracked an eye again. Vertical bars and a blue uniform.
"Well, piss on me," Raven groaned, his own voice sounding like gravel in his ears.
"I think one of your cellmates already did," observed the voice that belonged to the uniform. "Now get up. As I am sure you are used to hearing, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here. Though we do expect you back for a court summons so you can pay your drunk and disorderly fine." Raven was vaguely aware that he was being hassled and pushed to his feet by another pair of uniforms, though he swiftly found himself flat on his chin when he tried to use one for support.
"Damn college kids," he heard a different uniform mutter. "Can't handle a hangover."
"When I was his age," Raven felt himself get hauled to his feet and prodded forward once more, "I never got hangovers. Guy must have consumed his weight in alcohol to be this out of it. Might even be drunk still."
"Nah, we tested him."
Raven cracked an eye again and found himself in a place with no natural lighting, so he peeked out of his other eye as well.
"Sign here," came a voice like a cymbal clash. He took the pen that popped into his vision and scribbled on what appeared to be a solid black line on the bottom of the paper before him.
"Close enough," the first uniform shrugged, and he was turned around into a blast of light. He wanted to close his eyes, but he was being hurried along too quickly to try and make the walk blind, so he just took it until his eyes started streaming.
"Oh, for the love of Celestia," the first uniform sighed, then after a moment the brightness became tolerable as cold metal sat on his ears and straddled his nose. "You owe me a pair of aviators, you dumb bastard." And then he was shoved out into the crisp, Fall Baltimare morning. He sighed resentfully, being reminded for perhaps the tenth time that month why he preferred drinking alone. There were always more demons when a pony drank alone, but at least there were no follow-up fines. Not that he would be able to pick up this tab for the pigs. He sniffed and began to test out putting one hoof in front of the other; time to skip town.
"Hey!" Raven didn't have a chance to dodge out of the way a body ran into him from behind, its momentum feeling quite like that of another pony being tossed out after sleeping it off in a cell. "Watch the glasses!" the voice pierced his ears with all the keen subtlety of a cudgel wrapped in barbed wire. "These things cost more than that badge, pig!" There was an indelicate response involving rather base language. "Oh, bravo! Bravo! Way to show all the young'ins how to protect and serve, jackass! Yo, sorry about that. Didn't have much say in which direction I went." It took Raven a moment to realize the new voice was talking to him, so he picked himself up and adjusted his glasses, but when he was about to tell the mare off, he found that his hangover had taken most of the vinegar out of him.
"Whatever," he heard himself mumble.
"Oh, come on!" the voice continued, suddenly sounding way too cheerful for a pony with a hangover. "A night in prison isn't that bad." A hoof popped into Raven's vision. "Name is, well, not important, but everypony knows me as Vinyl Scratch."
"Everypony knows you, huh?" Raven squinted up at an electric-blue mane and a grin he could only describe as "audacious."
"Well, once I make it big, hell yeah, everypony!" Vinyl confirmed with such arrogant confidence that, despite himself, Raven smiled and took the outstretched hoof to give it a single, hard shake. "Hey, you look like a stallion that needs a pick-me-up. I know a coffee place around the corner I always go to after a night in prison."
"Well," Raven shook his head, his smile threatening to actually stay on his face, "I do always like to listen to the advice of veterans."
Turned out, Vinyl had not been kidding about the coffee place. Instead of asking what she would be drinking, the barista merely wondered how much the fine was this time.
"Five hundred and change, nothing major," Vinyl shrugged as she took her black coffee from the counter and handed Raven his, though neither of them even ordered. Or payed. "Must be losing my edge."
"Who's the stallion?"
"Fellow wayfaring soul on a walkabout," Vinyl smiled. "Thanks for the coffee, Jewel."
"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're a rather odd duck," Raven decided as they took their seats in a darker corner.
"And here you are following me around," the white mare shrugged.
"Fair enough." Raven nodded at her cutie mark, a symbol he recognized as double eighth notes.
"Music, huh?" he asked. He received a nod at his own mark.
"Writing, huh?"
"What kind of music do you put together?" Raven asked as he took a sip of his coffee, though he immediately balked at the taste, nearly snorting the concoction out his nose. He frowned into it, and then realizing what the strange taste was, continued to drink.
"Only sure thing to take the edge off a hangover," Vinyl nodded with a knowing smile, hoisting her own mug. "More alcohol. Cheers." They both drank. "So! Saw you start that brawl last night. Not exactly my thing, but figured it was as good an excuse as any to blow off some steam."
"I don't recall seeing you," Raven frowned.
"I was passing by when it broke out," smiled Vinyl. "Picked up the trashcan outside the door and put it through the window so I could join in." She prodded an angry cut under her right eye gingerly. "Sounded like a good idea at the time."
"But you're not into bar fights?"
"Oh, I'll try anything once."
"Huh… Well, thanks for this," Raven hoisted his mug slightly in salute. "Been here for a month now and I hadn't made a single friend."
"Psh, you must not be trying," Vinyl snorted good-naturedly. "I've been here two weeks and haven't paid for a damn thing because I made friends."
"Yeah, well, an outgoing mare is a little less threatening than a menacing stallion."
"Menacing? Oh, come on, well, maybe a little; you do kind of have crazy eyes. But my point is still valid."
"Definitely going to hit the road tonight, in any case," Raven decided. "Can't afford the fine they want to give me."
"Oh, yeah? Not from around here then?"
"Nah. I grew up in a small town a little way from Canterlot. I've been, I dunno… I guess like you said, I'm on a walkabout."
"Cool. Yo, I know you want to take off, but if you want to meet some really cool ponies, I got a concert tonight you should totally come to. Music, booze, hot mares, huh? Yeah? Yeah?"
Raven took a long swig from his coffee and bourbon to mask a smile. Now this was an intriguing pony. His brain wanted nothing to do with a party, but, what the hay, he was young and looking for… something. May as well attend.
"What kind of music did you say you were into?"
Raven looked down at the paper in his hoof, then back up at the dark collection of dilapidated waterfront warehouses. His initial instinct was that Vinyl may have unintentionally, or intentionally, given him the wrong directions. As much as the young mare had left a favorable impression with him, his evolving, or perhaps devolving, sense of paranoia kept prodding him to say that she had misled him.
"Hey."
Raven turned to see a group of approximately twenty mares and six stallions who were
about his age, a few older, a few younger.
"You here for the party, too?" Well, at least now he knew he was in the right place.
"Yeah," nodded Raven. "Just trying to pick out which place is ours."
"I'd guess the one that just kicked on the strobes," one of the young stallions pointed out and Raven turned to see the frosted, glass windows of the second closest warehouse as they began to flash sporadically.
"Good enough for me," Raven agreed and the party moved forward at a quick trot, and as they did so, he saw several groups appear out of the darkness from all directions, converging on the distant strobes as though it were the beacon of paradise. And suddenly Raven got the sensation that he had stumbled upon a world for which he was not entirely prepared.
The first thing that hit Raven was the bass. Before he had even reached the warehouse doors, he felt his teeth rattle in his skull; he could not even hear music, but he could feel it, which was a sensation altogether new to him. After all, he had grown up in Ponyville, maybe making the occasional venture to Canterlot, and when a pony heard music, what did that pony hear? Classical composition. 4/4 time or 2/4 time. But this…
"Crank the techno!" he heard some pony shout, and suddenly Raven was swept away in a press of bodies and voices raised in unmatched revelry, all writhing to a rapid-fire bass and jittering electronic noise. Lights came on, red, blue, yellow, purple, white, all accompanied by strobes that pulsed in time with the beat. Raven was completely out of his element.
"There he is!"
Raven turned, expecting to see someone half the warehouse's considerable length away, but instead Vinyl Scratch was right at his shoulder, already in the midst of a hoof-shake to hug style that he was not familiar with.
"How can you hear anything?" Raven shouted, surprised at how little of his own voice he could hear over the beat.
"You kidding? Wait until I take over the reins; I've got something special planned for tonight." She tossed a hoof over his shoulder and her posture became downright conspiratorial. "I'm going to make my name tonight." Then she leaned in so close, she was able to whisper and he still heard it. "It's gonna be epic."
"Glad I ran into you then," Raven shouted as Vinyl released him, not exactly certain how he was supposed to react to such a statement. "When do you get to take over?"
"Gotta wait until I feel just the right lull," she explained as they made their way to a neon-lit bar. "If a DJ is good enough to DJ a party like this, there should be no lulls, so when there is, it's open season. Until then," she swept a shot from a pony who wasn't looking, then pounded it like a pro, "we party."
Raven had never considered himself to be much of a party animal. Even when he got pretty drunk, he always got more sullen, rather than fun, so while he certainly imbibed with Vinyl, he avoided going too far into tipsy.
He wasn't certain how long he had been working on his wallflower routine when he suddenly realized that Vinyl was gone. For a moment, he bit his lip nervously, but then he reminded himself that mingling was really one of the cornerstones of such an occasion, though to even consider it in such multisyllabic expressions would already indicate that one is thinking about it too much. Raven called for one more shot, then began to scan the room for a solo mare that struck the right chord.
"Hi there."
Raven turned toward the voice and hoof on his right shoulder to find himself looking into the dark eyes of a mare that struck the right chord.
"You looked a little lost," the chocolate maned beauty shrugged at him. "Come on. The fun is over this way." And she walked, or rather strutted in an alluring and distinctly female manner, out onto the dance floor. Raven took a deep breath.
"Fuck it," he whispered to himself, then he downed his shot and followed the temptress. "What are you afraid of?"
For the next undeterminable length of time, there was no talking, just a beat, noise, manes, sweat, and curves. A lot of curves. Some parts seemed like they were in slow motion, a glance from under eyebrows here, a sway of the hips there, while the rest of the time it was as though reality kept having to catch up because of those lapses. And then it happened. There was a lull.
"Mares and stallions!" Raven knew that voice and swept his sweat-soaked mane out of his eyes to look up at a raised podium on the far side of the warehouse. Sure enough, Vinyl Scratch stood upon the metal structure, surrounded by amplifiers and subwoofers, most of which were taller than her. "My brothers and sisters in beat!" A vast cheer accompanied this last greeting, and Raven found himself among them. "I have journeyed to the mountain top! I have seen the face of the music! And I return to you with a gift from our gods!" The cheering reached a fever pitch. Vinyl brought up her hooves to quiet the crowd and after a few moments, a hush descended upon the assembly until it became a silence so eerie that Raven actually felt terror. "Mares and stallions…" Vinyl continued, a vicious grin of pride and expectation cutting clear across her face. "I give you… the wub."
There is a point at which a sound is no longer merely a sound. It does not achieve this state because of amplitude or frequency, but rather it is because it transcends mere waveform and becomes a force. A literal force.
No sooner had Vinyl uttered this odd new word then the collective power of the speakers, amps, and subs behind her combined into a blast like that of a massive cannon, creating a shockwave that shattered the warehouse's windows and nearly brought Raven to his knees. But that was only an initial volley, the opening salvo of a great military campaign set on world domination: Vinyl Scratch had brought dubstep to Equestira.
The initial blast did not behave as a techno beat, but instead elongated to a point of tension and instead of snapping off, it catapulted back into itself, creating a beat that was simultaneously regular but unpredictable.
For a single moment in time, that warehouse full of hundreds, perhaps a thousand ponies, stood in awe as the tidal wave of force-noise crashed over them, then the entire, vast assembly bounced once, and they were swept away. Fog machines erupted, green lasers joined the lights, and the strobes began their glorious work in proper fervor.
"Yo, Raven!"
Raven turned, for the third time that evening, finding Vinyl Scratch at his shoulder again.
"Cops! It's time to bounce!"
"Your gear!" he pointed up at all the equipment on the stage.
"Most of it doesn't belong to me, the rest is a casualty of war! Besides," she tapped her saddlebag, "I've got the tracks that matter."
They ran through the still dancing crowd.
"Shouldn't we put the word out the cops are coming?"
"They either know, don't care, or are too innocent to know. And if they're too innocent to know, then they'll get off easy. But you and I have priors that aren't even twenty-four hours old!"
Raven considered this and their options as they burst out a back door, picked their way
through broken glass from the shattered windows, then continued on deeper into the abandoned waterfront.
"Manehatton?" he thought.
"Manehatton!" Vinyl confirmed.
An hour later, Raven and Vinyl were train-bound for the short, single-hour trip to Manehatton. Neither had said a word since the warehouse.
Finally, Raven looked over at Vinyl, who was busy scrubbing some debris off of her glasses with her tail. She caught his eyes.
"Vinyl?" he began with a satisfied sigh and smile. "That was pretty epic."