“So… How are we gonna do this?”

“...”

“I know we need a distraction, genius! Just how are we gonna perform a distraction?!”

“Calm down, Lyra, Mr. Sombra could hear you…”

“Great! If he comes in the girl’s lockers, we will at least have a decent reason of accusing him!”

“Oh my… Forget I said that.”

All the girls in Vinyl’s class were not taking off their casual clothes, switching to something more appropriate for the sports class. They had been given the usual five minutes to do so, and everyone was in an apparent rush. While Lyra was struggling with her shoes, Octavia was sitting quietly in a corner, doing her best to change clothes without being seen. Suddenly a pair of hands appeared in front of her eyes, delivering a message only the two of them -since Lyra was unavailable- could understand:

Here, lemme hold this in front of you.

As Octavia looked up to see Vinyl facing her, the latter grabbed a sport towel and held it in front of her friend, hiding her from sights without drawing too much attention. Octavia blushed, and proceeded to get changed faster, but stopped instantly when she met the DJ’s eyes.

“Vinyl… What are you doing?”

Not only was the blue-haired girl turned towards Octavia this time, but given her look, she was obviously focused on a certain part of her friend’s body. Interrupted by the cellist’s question, Vinyl’s head rose up in surprise, with now both confused and embarrassed eyes.
When the two girls’ eyes met, Octavia’s cheeks became crimson red, redder than the last time she was in this room.

“Vinyl! Heavens, stop!” The cellist exclaimed, quickly finishing putting on her shirt and grabbing the grey towel from the girl’s hands. This drew the attention of a few students, who swiftly got back to changing up after looking at the clock on the concrete wall.

“...Fuck.”

The DJ was just caught red-handed by her friend, that wasn’t the plan. Now Octavia had taken refuge all alone in the corner, lacing her shoes, her face so red Vinyl heard several worried voices behind her.

“Alright girls!” Lyra said, clapping her hands and ready to go, “Let’s do this as fast as we can, I’ve got places to be and people to do!”

Preferring not having to face the look of the cellist for now, Vinyl followed Lyra outside the locker room, along with the classe’s girls, obviously lacking motivation about the upcoming two hours. Vinyl accelerated to get closer to her partner, and motioned her hands as they advanced towards the gymnasium.

“Yeah, I have Discord’s mystery pack or whatever. Don’t worry, it’s well-hidden. Just remind me to avoid eating spicy food for the next three days or so…”

The lyrist watched as her friend gave her a suspicious look, filled with so much doubt that she could become the poster child for a conspirationist website.

“I’m kidding! I have it right here, inside my towel.” She said, holding a rolled green sport towel.

“...”

“Nah, he won’t notice anything, almost everyone’s got one! By the way, you’ve talked to Octavia concerning the distraction thing?”

“...?”

“Octavia. Distraction.”

“...”

“You know, so that Sombra can be like ‘Oh I’m not looking towards the closet oh wee mama!’...”

She was met with shameful eyes, an expression she wasn’t used to see on the DJ’s face.

“Vinyl, what happened? You know what, I don’t even wanna know. We need to get her ready nice and quick, you can take care of that without Sombra noticing?”

“Alright, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“You need me to what?!”

“Raaaahhh! Never speak too soon!”

Octavia and Vinyl were running around the gymnasium, alongside the rest of the class, breathing heavily and feeling their sweat ice in the cold air of the room. The class had barely started, but everyone’s stomachs were already aching from this sudden effort after lunch. The running made it harder for Vinyl to write, and since cell phones were forbidden here, she had to use basic sign language to communicate with Octavia. Plus, it was quiet, so Mr.Sombra wouldn’t have any reason to complain.

Yes, you know, just fake being hurt or something.

“Even if I did, I recall our teacher doesn’t have much consideration for our well-being.”

“After last week...” Lyra added, running next to Octavia, “...The vice-principal came to talk to Sombra and told him that from now on he should personally bring anyone who’s injured to the school nurse. That’s what she told me.”

Why were you with the nurse?

“I was bleeding from the back of my head.”

“Oh dear, what happened?”

“I may have slipped on an empty peanut butter crackers bag.”

...Okay, so, that’s perfect: you fake an injury, you get him to take your to the infirmary, and we put this in there.

“Like daddy in mommy!”

Don’t listen to her. You think you can do that?

“I… I don’t think so… I’ve never really lied…”

“You mean except the time when you lied to your parents about not seeing us anymore?”

“Well…”

“And that time when you broke out of your own place to come to a party?”

“I… Alright Lyra, yes, maybe it has happened quite more than I’d have liked. But this isn’t the same thing, this is a teacher!”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t give him the right to be a fucking asshole.”

“Lyra please, your language…”

“All I’m saying is, you’ll barely be lying! You just act like you’ve twisted your ankle or something, then he brings you to the nurse -don’t say anything to him by the way- he leaves you there, and you’re good!”

“But what about Ms. Redheart? What will she say?”

“...”

“Lyra?”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“What? So you haven’t thought this through?”

“Sheesh Octavia, come on! It’s perfect! We won’t get a better opportunity, I thought we all agreed to do this!”

Octavia turned to her left, panting like crazy under the effort, and looked at Vinyl. The one who set everything in motion, the one who had helped her times and times again, and who had convinced her to perform this stunt. Never had the DJ ever let Octavia down. So now was not the time to let her down.

“...Alright, I’ll do it.”

“Nice! Alright, you’re ready?”

“Wait, are we doing this now?”

“Sure, the earlier the better! Vinyl, catch!”

“Uh?”

Before the two other girls could say anything, Lyra placed her foot right in front of the cellist’s legs, who proceeded to trip and fall down, aimlessly trying to find something to latch on to. As she was getting dangerously close to the concrete floor, her right wrist was grabbed by a white hand, stopping her inches from the disaster. Vinyl looked at Octavia with confident yet kind eyes, and dropped the cellist on the floor.

“Ouch! Lyra, Vinyl, why would you-”

“Hey hey hey! What the hell is going on?!” A deep voice yelled from the other side of the gymnasium. As soon as the students heard these words, they quickly backed away from Octavia, followed by Vinyl and Lyra.

“...”

“I want to stay with her too dude, but we gotta make it look legit…”

Vinyl knew it. Of course they had to. Octavia was already on to them, and Octavia was about to get yelled at a second time. They didn’t need any more suspicions.

“What happened?” Sombra asked, visibly both annoyed and angry, with his newspaper still in hand. He looked at Octavia struggling on the ground, faking an internal injury the best she could. “You again?! What did you do?”

The teacher’s imposing stature was towering Octavia, still on the ground, obviously terrified about her current situation, as were the rest of the students. This man didn’t seem like the kind of person one wanted to anger twice in barely seven days.

“I… I think I may have twisted my ankle, sir…” the girl muttered, not daring to look at the man directly in the eyes.

“Have you now? It seems I can’t have a nice, simple two hours-class without you ruining it uh?”

“I…”

“Don’t answer! Jeez, one day kids will learn what a rhetorical question is… Now stand up!”

“I don’t… think I can sir.” Octavia answered with a surprisingly convincing voice.

“Is she actually… good at this?” Vinyl thought while watching the scene with a worried eye. This wasn’t the field of competences she expected the cellist to be skilled in.

“Do I look like I care about what you think? Get up.”

Octavia rose up with much -although fake- difficulty, to face the teacher, while carefully avoiding to look at him. She was rubbing her right ankle with her left foot, and kept it a couple of inches from the ground to simulate pain.

“Damn…” Vinyl thought, looking at the faces surrounding her, “Everyone’s legit scared for Tavi… Can’t say I blame them, and can’t say I really don’t want her to be alone with this fucker.”

“Goddamn! Last week you fell from fatigue, now this?! What are you made of, porcelain?!”

“I’m… I’m sorry sir…”

“You better be! Interrupting my class again! The hell have I done to you?!”

Sombra stopped himself, putting his hand against his grey chin, sighing as loud as he probably could. He then turned to the rest of the class, with eyes filled with both anger and frustration:

“What are you all doing standing there? You think this is a show? Last time I checked, I ain’t freaking Hugh Jackmare, so get back to it! Two of you stay to get this one to the infirmary!”

“Aw shit…”

“Ah fuck!” Lyra barely muffled, completely panicking. In a momentum of madness, she turned to the first person she had in her sights:

“Hey, Pinkie Pie, want to make the easiest ten dollars of your life?”

Meanwhile, the rest of the class was slowly getting back to work, stretching before they run again, with nobody daring to come to the teacher and answer his call. Vinyl was starting to seriously worry about their near future, when suddenly, a pink ball of happiness busted in to almost yell in the professor’s ear:

“Hey, Mr. Sombra sir! Aren’t you supposed to bring students to Ms. Redheart yourself?”

“What the-”

“Well you’re certainly an annoying one! Again! Guess I’m unlucky with my class this year, everyone’s on my ass like goddamn creditors! And where did you get this from?!”

“Aw, you know, it’s high school…” Pinkie Pie answered cheerfully with her usual smile, “Everyone knows everything!”

Sombra rose his head, looking at the ceiling and massaging his nose with his large hands. He obviously wasn’t pleased with the situation, and even less pleased by the increasing number of annoyances he had to deal with.

“And he’s about to deal with one huge fucking more…”

“Alright, you noisy bra- kid, I’ll bring this one to the nurse, and when I come back, your shoes better smell like burning rubber, because you’re doing ten more laps!”

“Oki doki!” The pink girl smiled, completely unaffected by this punishment.

“Alright everyone!” The teacher yelled, “I’m bringing this one where she belongs, but let me be clear: this is not a fun, resting session, this is my class! And if you don’t want to end up with a nice “F” on your grade sheet, you’ll work harder, faster, and better! You think the weak built our world?!”

He paused, taking the time to look directly into Octavia’s eyes.

“They are nothing.”

He turned around and headed to the exit, followed closely by Octavia.

“Now get to it! No dodgers in my class!”

He then accelerated, until he reached the heavy metal doors he pushed violently without a care for Octavia walking a few yards behind him. Just as the cellist crossed the doorway, she gave a last look to her two friends, followed by something else. Something neither of them were expecting. Without even looking at what she was doing, she made a few motions with her hands, something as simple as two words, but which warmed Vinyl’s heart and appeased her mind, at least a little:

Good luck.

As soon as the door closed, Lyra ran towards the towel she had left along with the other students’ water bottles and jackets. Given the teacher’s anger, there was no chance he could come back for whatever reason, and even though the infirmary was on the second floor, they had very little time on their hands to carry out the plan.

“Alright, no time to waste, let’s just get this over with! We’ll just go in, hide… whatever this is in his bag, notice Discord, and get the hell out. If he surprises us, we just tell him you have a dirty clothes fetish, deal?”

“...”

“Okay, sounds good! Let’s do this shit!”

They both sped up to reach the closet where their teacher was supposedly keeping his personal belongings. Like Discord mentioned, it was unlocked. Open even. Sombra apparently didn’t think that anyone would be stupid enough to rummage through his stuff.

“Oh how wrong he is. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done and oh boy, has the past week set the bar.”

They both waited a few seconds which seemed like forever in front of the door, pretending to rest and drink, waiting for everyone to look in any direction but theirs. Once all the eyes finally focused back on the class -or on the phones, for the few who didn’t care about the teacher’s warnings- they pulled the door as quickly as they could, rushed in the closet and closed behind them, all of this in a mere second.

“Oh fuck it’s dark!”

Dark indeed. Vinyl couldn’t see anything past the outline of her hands. The room could’ve been the size of a shower or of a soccer stadium, that she wouldn’t realize. She searched blindly around the door for a light switch, without any success. As she turned to Lyra to try and ask for help despite the very likely possibility of not seeing her hands, she got completely blinded by a white light, she realized was coming from her friend’s phone. Lyra had managed to find the flashlight app on her phone, thankfully.

“Okay, so!” Lyra whispered with a bad 2000’s thriller character voice, “I find the bag, hold this!”

She handed the blue plastic bag, still covered in old tape, to the DJ, and used the phone’s light to look around the room.

“Damn, feels like I’m playing a horror first-person game kinda shit!”

The closet was indeed small, and the only furniture consisted of half a dozen shelves on the right wall, as well as a small steel table on the left. The walls were old, and damaged by a leak in the ceiling. On the shelves were many boxes of different sizes, filled with sport gears of every kinds: badminton shuttlecocks, soccer balls, volley nets, table tennis rackets,... Even a few old fencing helmets were lying in the dust. The table was covered in newspapers and empty coffee cups, but one piece of equipment got Lyra’s attention:

“The bag! Here it is! Come here, you motherfucker!” Lyra exclaimed, reaching for the bag placed under the table. It was a classic dark green duffel bag, very military-like, although quite empty, since the only things the girls could see through the opened zipper were casual clothes, as well as a water bottle and a pack of cigarettes.

“Ugh, and he smokes too? This guy really’s got all the bad habits!”

You smoke as well. And so do I sometimes.

“It’s not the same thing!”

Vinyl sighed, grabbed the bag and looked everywhere to find a place discrete enough to hide their package. After a few seconds, she finally noticed a pocket on the right, filled with shredded tissues and car tickets. It was the perfect size, and they could even hide it under the papers. She took the blue bag and shoved it right inside.

“Wait wait!”

...What? Vinyl asked, shaking her hands left and right.

“...”

What is it, Lyra?

“...Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”

“...”

“C’mon dude! Your silence speaks volumes! I mean… Anyway, we need to know!”

You mean you need to know?

“Potato-potato dude! Don’t act like you don’t care!”

“No Lyra, I act like he only have a minute or so.” The DJ thought. Yes, yes of course she wanted to know, but that was not the time. Or the place. Or anything that made it the right decision whatsoever.

“Look, I found a small opening! We can open it without damaging it or anything!”

But the temptation was strong. And Lyra wasn’t helping. Her curiosity had already put them on trouble’s way, now was not the moment to let that happen again.

“But if we knew what was in there, we could find out why Discord is helping us…”

“Alright, if you really don’t want to, I can just-”

The lyrist was interrupted by her friend crouching next to her, urging her with light repeated taps on the arm to open the bag.

“This is such a bad idea…”

“I’m sure you’re thinking this is a bad idea, but come on! Where is your sense of thrill? Plus, what could go wrong? We’re just looking.”

“Lyra, please, never ever ask what could go wrong. I’ve seen enough 90’s cartoons to know where this will go.”

“Alright, let’s see… Careful…” Lyra whispered, opening a small crack in the bag with her index and middle finger, and peeking inside as soon as the slit was large enough.

Then Vinyl saw something. Something she had very rarely seen before. Lyra’s pupils widened, she moved the blue bag away from her head as fast as she could, and stayed still, without a word coming out of her mouth. She was unbelievably surprised, but that was not only that.

She was scared.

Vinyl took the bag from her friend’s hands, and quickly took a look inside as well. What she saw was… surprising: lots and lots of extremely tiny, almost glowing blue crystals, like thousands of minuscule gems enclosed in a dark cave. She had never seen these before, but she had a pretty good idea of what it was. At her right, Lyra whispered, still in shock:

“...The motherfucker gave us drugs…”

Calm down Lyra.

“No, I ain’t calming shit down! Do you even realize what we’re doing? Holy fucking shit we’re so screwed!”

Lyra was completely panicking. It was rare enough to get noticed when she did. Now she was walking in circles in the dark closet, hands on her face, muffling something between her fingers, which most likely contained the words ‘fuck’, ‘Discord’, ‘shit’, ‘drugs’ and ‘fuck’. Several times maybe. Vinyl was still crouched near Sombra’s bag. She had closed the slit with one of the pieces of duct tape placed on the blue plastic, carefully avoiding to place her fingerprints on the pouch, and erasing the ones they both would have made so far. She was scared, but she needed to stay calm. They didn’t have much time, they had to get out of this place.

“How can you stay so calm dude?! Do you even know what this is? It’s fucking-”

Before Lyra could continue, she got her wrist grabbed by Vinyl, as the latter half-opened the door to check for possible witnesses. Seeing no one around, she swiftly opened the door, pulling Lyra out with her, and closed behind them.

“...It’s fucking Storm King…” Lyra continued as the two walked forwards, “A brand new stimulant drug, even stronger than cocaine… Shit, how did Discord get his hands on so much of it? You have to sell a kidney to buy this shit!”

Her eyes crossed Vinyl’s. The DJ’s pupils were full of doubt, and the usual magenta was abnormally dark.

“I know what you think Vinyl. No, no, I’ve never taken any of this, I may smoke and shit, but I stay away from stuff like this. Don’t want to end up in a fucking rehab center… However, I’ve heard of it, everyone in the street has.”

“Thank god Lyra…” Vinyl sighed with relief, “The situation’s bad enough, I don’t need to picture you doing drugs in your spare time…” She continued signing, taking advantage of the fact that nobody around them could understand:

Ok, now we need to stay calm, don’t overthink it. I don’t think Discord wants us to go to prison, it wouldn’t be great news for him, so he must have thought this through.

“You’re putting waaaay too much trust in him dude, need I remind you-” She lowered her voice, noticing the curious looks, “...Need I remind you he tasked us with hiding some fucking drugs?”

I didn’t forget. And he’ll have to answer to our questions. But for now, let’s focus on telling him the plan is a success, and get Octavia back, alright?

“...Jeez Vinyl, of all the people out there, how are you always able to find the right words?”

That’s because they’re more than words, now let’s move.

Sombra should be back any second now. She grabbed Lyra’s phone, as well as a piece of paper Discord had given them. As she was entering the digits, Lyra commented:

“3-(81)-15-2093? What the fuck? What kind of a phone number is this?”

Vinyl ignored the note, and typed a few words addressed to her physics teacher:

Done.
PS: We need to talk.

Lyra barely had the time to put her phone back in her pocket when the gymnasium doors slammed open, as Mr. Sombra entered the room.

“Alright kids! I hope you’re all fired up, because now the real challenge starts!”

“You have no idea, shithead.”

Author's Notes:

My shame is only matched by the amount of time you guys had to wait for this chapter.

Who's the asshat who said "guhguhguuuuuh next chapter coming very soon..." FUCK THAT GUY aaaannnnd it's me. Oh.

To be fair! To be fair, my third college year started on September 3rd, it's a lot of work and even though I'll have more time on my hands through the year, the first weeks are always hard. I also had to find a roommate. And I did, one of my best friends. He doesn't like MLP though. But he likes carrots! Carrots are good! Gee, I'm tired.

Anyway, I really hope you guys liked this chapter! I know a lot of you were expecting it, maybe some lost hope because of this 50 days wait, but you know, it's there! I'm surprised I didn't get any downvotes for the wait... Oh wait a second, I can't, I litteraly have the best readers.

I love you guys, and see you next time for... a surprise.

I love you all, your glory matches your kindness
Gros bisous partout,

Saga.