I said hi.

That’s all I did and he looked at me like I was crazy. Well, I might actually have been, but like, that’s beside the point. His eyes told me to leave him alone and his grimace said some words I wasn’t comfortable repeating, but like, he could have been a nice guy.

And then he walked around me.

See, I had kind of stepped in front of him in the hallway and made him stop walking. It was a little rude, yeah, but he always walked so quickly, there was no way I could have caught up to him. And it wasn’t so much that he walked, but glided across the floor.

So, he glided around me and kept going. There were only a couple of people in the hallway, and they all stared at me in surprise. My best friend, Octavia, walked up behind me.

“Vinyl, what did I tell you? He doesn’t speak to anyone except the teachers. I’ve only seen that once, actually,” she said to me, and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Well, yeah, but he could’ve at least said hi back. That’s just rude,” I replied, and walked off in his direction. There was something about this guy I liked, and I didn’t know what it was. I did know that whatever it was, it had prompted me to speak to him.

I’m normally the one that never says anything. When Sunset Shimmer had tried to bully me into submission, well, I kinda did what the guy just did to me. I just ignored the mean ol’ witch. Even when the Dazzlings had convinced Trixie to trap the reformed Sunset and the Rainbooms under the stage, that weird talking dog had come to get me. I followed him, helped them out, and used my epic as can be transforming car to give them a sound boost. And throughout that entire endeavor, I never said a word. It’s not that I was shy or anything, I was pretty confident and stuff, I just never really had a reason to say anything. I always threw on my headphones and lost myself in sweet, sweet dubstep.

Speaking of which… I looked around, and noticed Vice-Principal Luna watching me with a look I knew well. It said, ‘Don’t even think about it.’ So, with a dejected sigh, I moved on. The school had this dumb policy about electronics. The only time it was okay to use them was during study hall, lunch, and if you had a free period. Actually, I had my free period then, so I spoke up. “I’m on free,” I said nonchalantly, and pulled out my massive, sound canceling headphones. VP Luna nodded and went back inside her office.

I decided to give up on the guy for the day, and went outside to sit next to the giant horse statue in front of the school, hoping that Sunset and the others weren’t there. I mean, we were all cool, but I kind of just wanted to chill by myself. Thankfully, only one of them was there. It was the adorable one. She meekly waved at me, but unlike usual, she didn’t give me that awkward smile.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, halting the process of adorning my headphones. She was shy, yeah, but she was sweet. If nothing was wrong, she would always smile and wave at her friends. Even in that simple act, she somehow maintained highest level of adorable possible. It was sweet enough to give Pinkie Pie cavities.

She shifted in place a little bit, causing her boots to click quietly on the ground. “N-nothing’s really wrong… but there was this really big guy… he’s really scary.” At this, I got a little irritated. I’d only been friends with the Rainbooms for a month or so now, but a friend of mine is not someone you mess with. It’s a good way to get your butt kicked in a heartbeat. Not by me, I couldn’t do much. But I could get a good look at the guy and tell the Rainbooms.

“Where is he?” I asked calmly. It was always a bad idea to get angry around Fluttershy, because her delicate temperament made her think you were mad at her.

She pointed to her right. “Um… over there, under that tree thingy… but Vinyl he didn’t-” Her words were lost to me as I clamped my headphones on and stomped over to the aforementioned arbor. I knew the girl who had built it, her name was Rose. Cool chick, frequented the club I played at. The vicious sounds of aggrotech flooded my ears and got my blood pumping. I was getting close to the arbor now. A few more yards...

I exploded into the arbor to see him. He was just sitting there, on the ground with his back leaned against one of the arbor’s columns. He had his right leg out straight, the left folded with his knee in the air, his right arm laid out beside him, and his left arm resting on his waist, while his hand fiddled with something in his lap. For the first time, I actually looked at him. Looked carefully, and took in his features, his attire. And it stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was all so weird.

His hair was long, kind of like Octavia’s, except it hung freely around his shoulders. The color was a direct inverse to my own shocking two-tone blue. While my hair was mainly dark blue, with lighter streaks exploding through it, his was a violent red, with darker red streaks flowing through it. He was pale, like I was. He had red eyes, like I did. He wore shades, like I did. But it was all so different on him. He wore narrow shades with red lenses, and they rested on the edge of his nose so he could see whatever was in his lap. His skin was pale like the moon; mine was pale like a ghost. His eyes were red, like blood, while mine were red like wine.

His clothes were even weirder. Now, I’m not normally one to judge, seeing as I wear some pretty off-the-wall stuff, but his duds were just so… plain. He wore a simple white leather jacket over a tucked-in red t-shirt, matched with white jeans, and red pointy-toed boots. I looked at his hands; he wore several rings. One was big, with a cross emblazoned on it that sat on his left index finger. His other hand had two rings, one on the middle with a stylized emerald heart, and another on his ring finger that was just a plain band. They were all silver. But I could also see what looked like scars along the sides opposite his thumbs.

It was then I noticed that he was looking right back at me. His eyes darted back and forth, up and down, and any other direction he could manage. Even the way we looked at each other was different. I was taking him in, absorbing his features. He was examining me, cataloguing everything about me. It almost felt… dirty.

He never, ever said a word. He just stood up, put his phone in his pocket, and touched his fingers to a small device on his belt. Of course, I hadn’t noticed the headphones in his ears. They were covered by his hair. He reached up and I flinched, thinking he was going to hit me. His right middle finger touched against the center of his shades and pushed them back up.

Suddenly, Fluttershy came jogging up behind me, breathing heavily. “Vinyl! I-I tried tell you, but he didn’t do anything. He just… scared… me.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even noticed that I had taken my headphones off. When did that happen? I gathered myself back up and looked him in the eyes. “So, hey ther—”

He walked around me again and in the process, nodded to Fluttershy, who blushed furiously.

I was speechless. This guy had he nerve to ignore me twice, nod to my friend, and not say a word. He wasn’t shy, like I had thought, he was just a jerk.

“Principal Celestia?” I asked, as I knocked on her door.

“Yes?” came her soothing voice from the other side. “Come in.”

I slowly opened the door, and walked inside. “Um… Hi.”

“Miss Scratch, if you came to make small talk, I do have things I could be doing.”

“Uh, no… I was wondering if you could tell me about that guy with the red hair,” I stated awkwardly. My face had to be as red as my eyes.

“Heath Burns?” she asked, leaning back in her chair.

“No, the other one, with hair kinda like Tavi’s, and the white clothes. Kind of a tall guy?”

“Oh." Her face faltered for a moment, which I'm pretty certain meant she was about to lie to me... "I don’t know much a bout him, myself. Quite frankly, I’d forgotten all about him. I think his name is Roman… I’m not sure. On his first day, he came by, picked up a schedule and a map, and left.” The Principal paused for a moment and crossed her arms as she looked at me with wide, concerned eyes. “Did... did something happen between you and him?”

“Not really. I said hi a couple of times and he just brushed me off,” I told her coolly, and narrowed my eyes. She was hiding something.

“Well, if anything does happen, come to me first. I don’t want to hear about anyone being pummeled by cellos or lyres.”

I smiled awkwardly. “Yes ma’am. You made that perfectly clear last time.” Of course, she would bring up that fight with Trixie. “To be fair, though, she kicked me in the stomach.”

“I don’t care. Ocatvia, Lyra, and Bon Bon all have a reputation for their tempers. I really don’t want them handling something like that on their own. I understand they want to protect you, bu-”

“Right. I’m just gonna go.” And I did just that I stood, and walked out of her office as fast as I could.

“Finyl, what’f yoh pwoblem wiff vat guy?” Lyra asked as she leaned her chair back at the lunch table.

“Lyra, please! Refrain from speaking with your mouth full. It’s appalling.”

“Gotta go with Tavi on this one, that’s pretty gross,” I said, and took a bite of my burrito. After I swallowed, I grabbed a napkin and wiped a bit of meat off my lip, a habit I picked up prom the aforementioned cellist. “And my problem is that he was a total douche to me. And the way he was looking at me…”

“Vinyl, I saw you two, he just looked at you,” Bon Bon said from behind her sandwich. “Just looked you square in the eyes.”

“Not in the hallway, I saw him again under the arbor. I thought he had messed wi— there he is!”

“What?” Octavia turned in her seat to get a glimpse of the man. “My goodness, he’s as tall as I am!”

The red man was walking over to a table that I knew very well. It was where my band mates were sitting. He walked up behind Rarity. His arm went around her and he sat a notebook on the table in front of her. He said something, but he was too far away to hear. After that, he turned and walked towards the exit, which meant he would pass by… “Hey, I gotta go. Tavi, take care of my tray?” She nodded. “Thanks! Owe ya one.” I snagged up my burrito and walked briskly out the door, and went around the corner to wait for him.

It was a moment before he came out, longer than it should have been. When he came through the wide double-doors, he looked in my general area, and strode off in the opposite direction. I silently cursed myself for assuming he would come my direction.

I made my way back to the lunch table to find Octavia and the others looking at me nervously. “Hey, what’s wrong guys?”

“He stopped at our table,” Lyra said quietly, which was definitely not like her.

“He said to tell you to leave him alone,” Bon Bon added.

I looked to Octavia for her input, but all I got was a look I didn’t usually see. The kind of look that makes you think of sad kittens. “Vinyl, I don’t think you should talk to him again. He seems… ominous,” she said gently. “I don’t like the feeling he gives off.”

“So the dude’s got bad vibes. So does Sunset,” I pointed out, but to no avail.

“Yes, but we know Sunset is good. This fellow, we don’t know anything about him. He could be a serial killer for all we know.” While my firend had a point, I’d never let that stop me before. But if this guy had Octavia rattled, it would probably be best to listen.

“Alright. I’ll leave him alone.”

Nine days had passed, and I had kept my word and left the red haired guy alone. I avoided him in the hallways, stayed away from the arbor during free period and always made an effort not to look his way at lunch.

Today, unfortunately, it was unavoidable. It was the tenth day, and I had practically forgotten about him, until he straight up stepped in front of me.

I smirked, and attempted to step around him, the way he’d done me, but all he had to do was hold out his arm to block my path. “It’s Vinyl, right?” his voice was kind of gravelly, but smooth at the same time, like a note played poorly on Tavi’s cello.

“What do you want?” I snapped, remembering how shaken my friends had been.

“I need a favor.”

“Okay, why should I help you? You’ve been a douche since I tried to introduce myself,” I stated with an intense look in my eyes, which he probably couldn’t see through my shades. They were mirrored, unlike his.

“Because it’s for Rarity. I’m sure you've noticed, but she’s sick today. I was supposed to drop some stuff off with her, but I don’t have her address.”

“Text her.”

“… or my phone,” he said, looking at the ground. Hold up, was he embarrassed?

“Fine, I’ll take you to her place after school,” I said callously, and started to walk away.

“Like, in a car?” What? I turned back to look at him. Was he stupid or something?

“Yeah, how else?”

His face started turning as red as his hair. “I… can’t do cars,” he muttered under his breath.

“Come again?”

“I just need her address, that’s all,” he said, acting like it was what he’d said before.

“Here.” I grabbed his arm and pulled up his sleeve, then scribbled the fashionista’s address down in (ironically) red ink. “Before you go, I gotta ask, what did you say to my crew?”

“I said, ‘Tell that blue haired girl to leave me alone.’ That’s all. Why?”

“They were pretty shaken up,” I said, glaring at him. Though, again, he probably couldn’t see it through my epic shades.

His eyebrows shot up like he was amused or something. “Sorry, I tend to frighten a lot of people.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

"Really."

"Yes, really!"

Suddenly, the weirdo took a step towards me, and I found my back against a locker. My face started burning as he leaned down and looked into my eyes. I felt a finger against the rim of my shades and they were promptly flicked up, revealing my eyes to him. His face was so close, I could smell his breath, which oddly smelled like cherry candy. There was literally an inch between his lips and mine... and then it stopped. He pushed off the locker and took a few steps back. “You’ve got beautiful eyes, Miss Vinyl, you should show them off.”

I cleared my throat awkwardly, and stated obviously, “Yours are the same.”

“Not quite. Anyways, I best be going,” he said, then turned on the ball of his foot and walked away, waving behind him.

“What a douche…” I straightened out my dress, even through it hadn’t got messed up, and walked away towards Octavia’s class. Which was also Lyra’s class. Bon Bon was in the gym at the time, so bugging her was out of the question. But then, Lyra and Tavi were in band so… wait… “Was he wearing earrings?”

Six more days passed, and me and Red still avoided each other like the plague. He sat under the arbor during free, and I had taken to chilling by the horse statue. Sometimes, I watched him. He would sit there, and fiddle with his phone, listening to music (I assumed). Sometimes, I felt him watching me. Of course I kind of did the same thing he did. I played with my phone, listened to music, and sometimes I’d play a game on my laptop.

On the sixth day, my world went to hell. Or rather, I should say the sixth night. I had a gig at a swanky club called Crystal Palace. It was the sort of place where folks sat at tables and drank martinis and talked about how rich they were. They didn’t dance and I absolutely hated that. But the job paid well, so I took it. I had just pulled up in my sick ride, and had handed the key to the valet, when this chick bumps in to me.

“Terribly sorry, dear, I didn’t see you there!” I looked up to see this insanely skinny model-looking lady, with pink hair and a silver silk dress. “Hold on, aren’t you a little young to be here?”

“I’m the new DJ. Name’s Vinyl Scratch.”

“Scratch? Any relation to Cornelius Scratch?”

“CD Scratch is my dad,” I said bluntly.

“Oh Cornelius was such a stupendous violinist! How is he faring?”

“Well enough I guess. Uh, who are you, exactly?” I asked, feeling a little dumb for not knowing.

“Oh, I’m sorry! My name is Fleur Dis Lee. I’m a renowned model,” she said, fanning herself with her hand dramatically. Her eyes focused on something behind me. “Um, it seems that poor boy is having some trouble…”

I tuned to see the valet was sitting in my car and looking at the controls like a retard, so I walked up and leaned over the side. “Dude, there’s the ignition. Do I need to tell you where the pedals are?”

“What does the other stuff do?” he asked, indication the various switches, knobs, and slides.

“Look, pal, you don’t worry about those. Your job is to park my car, not know it inside out. So go do your freaking job.” I was probably a bit ruder than was called for, but for some reason, the guy ticked me off. He wasn’t doing his job, and that meant I couldn’t do mine.

“Right, sorry ma’am,” he said, and then the engine roared to life.

And he took off...

Right into a lamp post.

The kid went flying.

He screamed.

My car was totaled.

I dropped to my knees.

What the hell just happened?! There were screams. I heard that Fleur chick hollering for someone to help the kid. I felt tears start streaming down my face. Today was one of the rare occasions that I had on makeup, so that started running. It burned, like staring at the sun, but for the love of god, I could not close my eyes. I could not look away from the horror that had befallen my precious Wub Machine.

A hand on my shoulder snapped me out of my daze, and there was a man with a curly blue mustache kneeling beside me. “Miss Scratch, are you alright? You weren’t harmed were you?”

“N-n-n-no…” The meek word escaped my mouth, despite my attempt to stem it‘s release.. “But, my car…”

“I’m sure it was expensive…” he said, and rubbed his hand across my back. It was comforting, at least. My car wasn’t expensive, it was one of a kind. There was no other car like it in the world; I designed it myself. And then I broke down, right there, and sobbed like a little girl. “Do you want me to call someone?” I nodded meekly, and pulled out my phone and handed it to him. He scrolled through the contacts, selected one and a moment later he started speaking. “Rarity? Hello, it’s Fancy. Don’t worry, Miss Scratch is unharmed. Her car was wrecked by the valet. Yes, he’s fine as well. Your friend is… distraught. Alright. Farewell.”

“She coming?”

“No, she’s occupied. She is, however, sending someone to get you. Some fellow named Roamer. Odd name, that is.”

About twenty minutes later, a tow truck arrived, and I gave him my address so he could drop my car there. It wasn't like Tavi had one. It wouldn’t be in the way. The truck left and I was stuck waiting for my mysterious ride. I was shocked when it came moments later.

A red and white Kawasaki Ninja rolled up and lurched to a stop, and a man in a red and white jumpsuit and matching helmet dismounted. He walked over and held out a second helmet for me.

“No! You are the LAST person I want to see right now!” I screamed, and ran off in whatever direction made sense at the time. I know it was the opposite direction of home.

Once I was a few blocks away, I pulled out my phone and dialed up Tavi. It rang once, and I got an immediate answer. “VINYL SCRATCH, DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I WAS?!”

“Sorry, Octavia. I’ll be home in a few hours. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” Beep. I hung up. I didn’t have anything else to say. It rang, and I saw it was Tavi, so I hit ‘ignore’ and kept walking. It rang again. And again. And it didn’t ring a fourth time. By now, I had walked another block, and my feet hurt.

An engine hissed up beside me. Ninjas were notoriously quiet bikes, I later found out. “Vinyl.”

“Go away.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

I turned and glared at him. He flinched. “And why not?!”

“Because I’m a jerk,” he said and dismounted. He shut the bike down and walked over to me. His gait was a bit more determined than usual. “I’m a royal ass, and I've been sent to pick you up. Now here’s the deal Vinyl, get on the bike, or I will use my spare helmet to knock you unconcious and you’ll arrive home draped across my gas tank like a fox after the hunt.”

“Let’s see you try. The Rainbooms would have your head!” I snarled at him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time. Most of them don’t exactly like me, if you haven’t noticed.”

“And why the hell would that be?”

“Because I made Pinkie cry.” The quiet night street grew even quieter. When had that happened? HOW had that happened? “Now, Rarity asked me to come get you, and I intend on doing just that.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Roma Heart.” he replied bluntly, giving a slight bow.

“Roma… can, you like… just… come back in a little while?”

“You don’t want to go home yet, do you?”

“No…” I said, as I felt tears coming back to my eyes.

“Well, come on. I find a night ride tends to soothe one's soul.”

“Where will you take me?”

“Somewhere amazing."

“… Okay.”

I didn’t care that he was still being an ass and I didn’t think about the fact that he could take me home and rape me. I just wanted some peace and quiet.

And right now, it seemed like he was the only place I was going to get it.

Author's Notes:

So, unlike the other incarnations of Roma, this version is NOT a vampire. Even though, by default, that's what I designed him to be... I just didn't want this to be a Twilight clone. Anyway, there will be, at the least, three more chapters.

>Edit note: changed 'made Sunset cry,' 'made Pinkie cry.'
made Celestia seem more conspicuous.
eliminated all comma splices.
changed sentence structures here and there.