Pizzicato and Changelings (for a Pegasus Heart)

Vinyl Scratch lands a gig for DJ Flopsy Mopsy: the public party for the royal Canterlot Wedding of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Shining Armor—in a stadium-sized venue. Handling this taxes her fledgling DJ abilities, but, when she thinks she owns all the hooves, all Tartarus beaks loose. Then she'll need the abilities she learned from Princess Nightmare Moon.

Fourteen chapters, updating Tuesday/Thursday or when increments of 50 likes are registered. Vote and comment.

This story contains British Trottingham dialect; these bits are not grammar errors, though I do use AmEng spellings. Pizzicato was written to be standalone, specifically as an exercise in writing stories in a series such that no story requires the reader to have read any previous story first. In fact, reading the Knight of Equestria stories in the opposite order of publication will prove very interesting. (#2 was written after #4 and the current #3, and yes there is a finished sequel!)

Flopsy Mopsy is a DJ becoming a musician, so, as you might imagine, music is important to her, and the story! The author notes contain links to dance music that is relevant and ponified in the story. You fun will be doubled if you listen first, or click the YouTube links found in the text.

A big thank you to my pre-readers, DoContra and Loganberry.

A little extra from a future Songbird Serenade...

Music Biz's Wicked Tongue: So, Miss Serenade... World renown DJ, songwriter, records topping the charts, fans cry "Songbird" at you, Friendship Festival headliner... What's the scoop with the serialized stories The Strand is launching? Self-aggrandizing fiction?

Songbird Serenade: Self-aggrandizing? (She shuffles some pages on the table before her and takes a deep breath.) On the evening of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration, a blank-flank teenager was expecting to scrub and dust, helping her immigrant parents clean Town Hall overnight. She was... okay with that. Her family was glad for any opportunity. Her Trottingham accent worried her—

WT: Your accent—

SS: Might her classmates discover she was a peasant who cleaned up after other ponies and always would? She jammed with a nascent DJ named Vinyl Scratch, but, with her sorry excuse for being a DJ next to her only friend, she had no dreams of a musical future.

(Her blue eyes catch mine for an instant.) Little did I know at the dawn of the Age of Harmony, I would meet its first monster.

The filly made it to her next sunrise, but would be piecing herself together for the rest of her life. Ultimately, without Princess Nightmare Moon there would be no Songbird Serenade. This is one of those stories.

WT: Are you saying the stories are autobiographical?

SS: (She covers her face with her mop of bangs after I see incipient tears.) It's a confession. She dislikes the filly she was. As for the mare she became... (Shudders)