"What the fuck?"

For the residents of room thirty-two – and of those close enough to it – the day was off to a terrible start. Their usual late morning slumber had just been interrupted by a set of agony inducing screams, along with the sounds of someone violently rearranging the contents of the aforementioned room.

"Dude... what the hell?" one of them moaned half-asleep.

"Where is it?" the loud voice came again.

The victims of the noise groaned and rolled over. Knocked out of their pleasant dreams, they were now trapped in the nightmare of a hangover. Thirsty Thursday was a must-attend for all of Camden College, and the East Wing Dormitories – or "E-block," as they liked to call it – were no exception, famous for being its "night watch". Stay all night, sleep the entire day after.

Today, however, was going to be an exception.

"Where the fuck is it?" it came again, followed by something crashing against the wall.

Oh god... they thought. It's that dumbass rocker kid from thirty-two again. The fuck is his problem?

The culprit was merciless. He kept running up and down his room, not stopping for one second. He screamed at the top of his lungs while occasionally throwing something or moving some heavy piece of furniture.

"Where'd it go? Where? Where the hell is it? What the fuck, man?"

"Calm down, bro!" one of his roommates said.

"Shit, guys... What's with all the shouting? I'm trying to sleep..."

"Where? Where? Where is it?"

There was no mistake. It was gone.

He checked under his bed again and stared at the empty space where it used to be. A large, rectangular clear spot in the sea of dust and trash.

Did those jerkoffs swipe it from me? Is this some sort of shitty prank? he thought.

By now, the room was an absolute mess, even compared to how it usually looked. Still, no amount of destruction he caused has managed to uncover it. His blood boiling, he grabbed whatever item that was close enough to him and smashed it against the walls, despite the protests of his roommates. He then rushed outside and frantically begged whoever happened to pop out of every room he tried if they knew anything. The responses ranged from threats, to pity, to just plain laughter, but not one of them had anything useful to say.

It all seemed hopeless. Slowly, he dragged himself back toward his room while feeling like he was about to cry.

What a perfect fucking start for a perfect fucking day...

As his head started to clear up a bit, he began to notice just how strange it all was. There was no sign of theft in the room – or at least none that he could find – and no one could tell him anything useful. In fact, hardly anyone he asked even knew he had the thing. Aside from that, theft was very rare in the dorms. Respecting the property of another was a sort of unwritten law that they had.

He sat down on his bed, then leaned forward to look under it once more.

Gone. Not even a trace of someone trying to drag it out of there. All the rest of the junk that he had down there was right where he left it. Even the thick layer of dust he kept there was completely undisturbed, save for that one clear spot where it used to be.

Letting out a painful sigh, he thrust his back on the bed.

It's almost as if... it just vanished into thin air...

-----

"Whaaa— OOF!"

Hayfeld groaned as the left side of his face turned into pain.

He wanted to die. Just lie there without moving a muscle and wait for death to take him away.

His limbs were positioned awkwardly by the fall, the joints beginning to throb. Hot gravel cut into his face, and he could feel the noon heat burning his back. None of it was enough to will him to move.

Instead, he looked up to the sky. Bright, blue, and not a single cloud in sight. Celestia's sun traveled slowly along its path in the heavens while giving its warmth unfazed by the gloom that came over Hayfeld's mood.

He sighed and went back to staring at the ground. Today was supposed to have been a perfect day. It certainly seemed to start off that way as he thought back to it: Saturday morning. Sleep in. Maybe have breakfast for a change. Kill some time at home, then get some fresh air by going for a walk. No hurry. Nothing to do today. Nothing to worry about.

By noon it became incredibly hot, which was not uncommon during summer near Los Alicornes. Everypony else in the neighborhood had decided to escape to the beaches nearby, his parents included, meaning he had the whole house to himself for the weekend.

He had trotted down the empty streets and smirked as he noticed the last of the "evacuees" in the distance. Ponies rushed to their carriages with their luggage, then hurried off after the rest of the horde toward the coast while cursing to themselves for waking up so late, which meant having to spend the trip in the unforgiving heat.

For him, a heatwave was not much of a problem. He could easily ignore it and pass it off as a sort of pleasant warmth, not to mention enjoy the peace that it brought: no traffic, no commotion, and no noise. It almost gave him a sense of strength and superiority that he was able to stand his ground here, while everypony else just ran away.

He had left the streets after a while and decided to head for Anaheim Park -- "the woods," as the locals referred to it. It was not a real forest in any way, since it was only two or three acres of ancient oak trees with a dirt path winding through it. Nothing more than a small green island among the endless suburbs.

He always liked to go for a walk here. Plenty of shade, good atmosphere, and with everypony gone there was complete silence, save for the occasional breeze blowing through the trees or a couple of birds singing. It was a place where one could forget all of their troubles and immerse themselves in the beauty and peacefulness of nature.

This heartwarming state of bliss had lasted for about five minutes, until he suddenly felt his legs stumble over something. A harrowing moment of free fall came next, which was concluded by his face making intimate contact with the dirt.

So there he lay, sprawled out on the path and refusing to get up after being robbed of his perfect day. Death was a little slow to come and provide mercy, however, and the pain from his legs was starting to become unbearable. Not wanting to suffer any more before "passing away," he shuffled his legs around a bit in an attempt to arrange them more comfortably.

That was when he felt his hind legs bump against something. Something large.

What the hay? he thought.

He had managed to fall after stumbling over something, that much was certain, and no doubt the object behind him was the source of his misery. Something did not make sense, though. He wanted to turn around, but then hesitated. Doing that would mean getting up, and the ground suddenly felt so much more comfortable.

His curiosity eventually won over, so Hayfeld let out another groan and groggily pulled himself to his hooves. He quickly dusted himself off, spat out a small amount of dirt that was crunching between his teeth, and checked his jaw to make sure it was not broken or had any teeth missing. Finding himself still in one piece, more or less, he took a deep breath and slowly turned around.

In front of him, on the ground, was a large cardboard box.

Hayfeld quickly glanced around. His eyes darted back and forth between the trees as though he hoped to find somepony hiding there after pulling a prank on him.

Nothing. He looked back down at the box with a perplexed look on his face. As caught up as he may have been in the tranquility of the park, the object was not exactly something he would not have noticed while walking straight toward it.

How the hell did I manage to stumble over this thing?

The more he thought about it, the less sense it made: the box was not small enough to blend in, and it definitely was not camouflaged or anything.

Where the hay did this thing come from?

Perhaps a unicorn might have been able to teleport it beneath him. Wait, those kinds of spells usually involved a fair amount of light and noise, right? He could not remember seeing or hearing anything before falling over the object, though.

But... it couldn't have just popped up out of thin air... right?

He walked around the box to inspect it, though he still gave it a wide berth as though it were some sort of cursed object. The box was light brown, the cardboard rather worn and dirty, with several patches of duct tape along the edges. Aside from its miraculous appearance out of nowhere, it showed no symptoms of the supernatural.

Only one side of it featured something out of the ordinary: two lines of unfamiliar, strange-looking symbols written in black.

His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward to take a closer look. The symbols were rather crudely drawn – as far as he could tell, at least – the lines rather wobbly and the ink unevenly spread. Although it appeared similar to Equestrian writing, he could derive no meaning from the words, or whatever those shapes were supposed to be.

Is this thing from abroad? Perhaps... from space?

"Oh come on, you idiot!" he muttered to himself, then rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. "Get a hold of yourself!"

Inching a bit closer, he prodded the top of the box with his right forehoof. He paused, then began to wonder if he should take a look inside.

Finders keepers, right?

Finding no resistance, and his curiosity now too strong to hold back, he slowly pulled it open.

The first thing to hit him, oddly enough, was the smell. Though it was not exactly unpleasant, it was mind-numbingly strong, even causing his head to recoil in the first few moments. He quickly took a deep breath and held it for the time being in order to avoid being distracted by it any further.

The right half of the box appeared to be almost empty, with the exception of a few small paper bags at the bottom. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be the source of the alien fragrance, and by opening one of them he found that they were full of small, green colored clumps of a substance he did not recognize.

Some kind of vegetable or berry perhaps?

Whatever it was, he certainly did not dare try tasting it to find out. Instead, he sniffed at the bag again. The smell reminded him of the herbs he has seen some ponies use as incense, like at those exotic therapy sessions that his mother used to visit. A bit stronger and not nearly as sweet, though the true nature of the aroma was beyond what he could put into words.

He set the little package back down, focusing instead on the other half of the "treasure chest," which was tightly packed with several dozen large, thin, square-shaped pieces of cardboard. Each one sported a wide variety of colors – though mostly dark ones – and their smooth surfaces were polished off to a sheen.

Why do these look so familiar?

He picked one up, then peeked inside when he found one of its edges to be open.

What the... Vinyl records?

Hayfeld sighed in frustration. First, it's somepony's weird hobby, and now this? I managed to stumble over somepony's music collection?

The whole situation was starting to feel rather anti-climactic. Disappointed as he was, he decided to examine his find anyway. The jackets and the records themselves appeared to be in rather good shape, at least compared to the box they came in. He assumed the previous owner must have been very fond of them. That, or simply has not touched them ever since they were left inside.

Sighing again, unimpressed so far, he took a closer look at the jacket he pulled out before, and was instantly taken aback by what he saw.

The cover featured an all-black background with more of the foreign symbols at the top and bottom, this time written in red. Though the shapes appeared to be much less sloppy than the ones he found before, perhaps even somewhat artistic, he did not bother trying to read them. The image on the cover took up all of his attention instead: a blood red painting of what looked like the skull of some creature. A creature that crawled out of a nightmare.

The thing had huge, razor-sharp fangs, all of them on display with its jaw wide open as though it were howling. A pair of huge tusks grew out of the sides of its mouth and pointed upwards. Its eye sockets were large and menacing, and the top of the skull sported a line of short spikes jutting out from the bone. A chain hung from the aforementioned tusks in an arc below the skull with several other ornaments attached to it.

He blinked. What in Celestia's name am I looking at? he thought.

He was no expert on music in Equestria – having only a modest collection of his own – but he was pretty sure no such record existed anywhere near this place. In fact, he was not entirely convinced that it could exist anywhere in this world. No cover art he has ever seen looked anything like this. Ugly, violent, powerful, and even slightly terrifying.

A grin of excitement crept onto his face.

In other words: this looks awesome!

That settled it for him. He would take the box home right away. With the cover art alone being this impressive, he could not wait to find out what the music on the LP would be like. He reinserted the jacket, closed the box, then carefully placed it on his back and made sure it was in balance. Pausing for a moment, he took one last look around just to be sure that whoever might have lost the goods was not suddenly rushing back toward him. Nopony was around, so he just shrugged and took off.

A swift gallop in such heat was not exactly a pleasant thing to do, but Hayfeld did not want to waste any more time. He rushed out of the park and headed for the main road, since that offered the quickest route back to the street where he lived.

The neighborhood was completely devoid of any activity by now. Occasionally, he would see a carriage or two moving down the streets, either out delivering mail, cleaning the streets, or on some other type of official business. The pavement was so hot that he could almost smell his hooves burning, so he did his best to move from shade to shade whenever possible.

"Come on!" he groaned. By now, he was panting, sweating, and thoroughly frustrated. While he was never a big fan of having to hoof it, the feeling of that box bouncing on his back was all the motivation he needed to keep going.

There! That's it! Finally, we're in the home stretch!

Hayfeld cheered in his mind when he noticed the corner two streets ahead and recognized the trees that lined the opening of Sunset street. Just a couple of houses beyond that was his place: a nice, old-fashioned, single-storey home with a modest front lawn. One which he "promised" his mother he would take care of while they were gone.

Well, it was morning, and I was still half-asleep...

He raced past the familiar – and rather disgusting – mix of oak and palm trees, dodged the spray from the sprinkler that had been set up next door, and finally collapsed on the front porch to take a quick breather before going inside. The moment the door closed behind him, he breathed a sigh of relief and slumped down on the floor with his back against it.

"Finally... home... sweet home..." he muttered between gasps. A smile flickered across his face when he noticed just what a huge mess the place was.

I must have "promised" to take care of that, too.

The chores would have to wait, though. He trotted into the living room and slid past the couch toward the far left corner, where the family's old turntable rested on a dusty bookshelf. He picked it up and swiftly headed for his own room, then locked the door behind him. Finally inside his safe haven, he unceremoniously dumped all the items he carried upon his bed and set about putting the ancient device back in working order.

He made sure that the surface was more or less clean, the stylus and the spindle still functioned, and that the crystals powering the machine still had some juice left in them. The worthless things cost only two bits, and their shoddy capacity did not hide that fact, but fortunately they hardly ever used them anyway.

"Okay, all set! Let's fire this bucker up!" he exclaimed to himself. He flicked the power switch on, and the turntable sprang to life, emitting all sorts of metallic noises as the inner machinery was set in motion.

Picking up the infamous sleeve a second time, he was once again amazed by the menacing cover. With an expectant grin, he pulled out the LP itself and placed it on the turntable. After pressing "Play," he leaped back to the center of the room to face the lone speaker connected to the worn device, then rubbed his hooves together in excitement.

Here we go!

The stylus dropped down onto the surface of the disk. There was a loud popping sound, and for a couple of tense heartbeats all Hayfeld could hear was the telltale scratching of the head as it ran through the empty areas of the record. Then, all of a sudden, a low, growl-like sound came out of the speaker.

"Whoa!" he muttered. "I don't remember setting it that loud..."

The very next moment, the whole world tore itself apart.

A titanic wave of sound exploded into Hayfeld's dumbfounded face, then rolled over him like a freight train at full speed. His head snapped back, eyes growing huge at the unexpected sonic assault. Fast-paced drums, the same low, growling noise, accompanied by a similarly distorted, though somewhat higher pitched instrument.

"Is that a bass?" he wondered half-aloud.

While his mind was still trying to piece together what was going on, the vocals started coming in as well. Each line was followed by a change in the melody. The guitar – if his ears did not deceive him – screamed over the low bass and punctuated the end of each line of the verse.

The voice itself was quite clearly male, not to mention incredibly raspy, which made the vocals sound more like screaming than singing. Unlike all the writing he found so far, the voice definitely was not foreign, even if it was not exactly easy to understand.

There was a slight pause in the vocals. Hayfeld felt like he was slugged in the face by an Ursa Major. He clutched his head and sank to the floor slowly as he struggled to come to terms with the assault on his senses.

There was no doubt about it: nothing in the world sounded like this. There was no smoothness in it at all. No pleasant harmony. Only speed, distortion, and rage. He quickly glanced at the turntable itself. The volume knob was barely past "4," but he already felt like his eardrums were about to burst.

If somepony outside hears what's going on—

He reached out to shut the device off before it was too late. That was when he noticed that his left hoof was twitching. He paused and looked down, puzzled by the strange reaction. His puzzlement quickly turned into shock when he realized that it was not twitching at all: it was tapping the floor to the beat of the song.

What the hell am I doing? he thought, almost laughing despite himself. Looking up again, he turned his attention back to the song, which has since reached the second verse.

An awkward feeling crept up his spine. His hoof just would not stop. In fact, it was going at it even harder. A smile began tugging at his lips, and he was now tapping his hoof voluntarily. Something about the intensity of the song felt inviting. Dangerous.

Fun.

His head followed soon after as it bobbed slightly to the beat as well. All of his fear and uncertainty was being replaced by something else. Something new. A feeling that he had no name for, yet somehow knew he has been waiting to feel it his entire life.

By now, he was grinning wildly, stomping on the floor with both of his hooves. He could feel something welling up inside him. Something incredible. The volume, the sound, the speed, the lyrics. All of it worked together to stir up his insides, pumped him full of energy, then waiting for the right moment to release it all.

It felt amazing.

Just as he was about to go fully berserk, the song came to a sudden halt, with only the vocals keeping the onslaught rolling. It then took off again, even stronger than before. The melody shifted, now going to a new, more ominous place. He could feel that something big was coming up.

It's a guitar... It most definitely is a guitar... And right now, it's kicking ass!

Hayfeld lost it. Completely out of control, he started thrashing and throwing himself all around, bouncing off the walls, jumping off the bed, and smashing against the door. Howling in his ecstasy, the only sound he could hear was the electrifying scream of the guitar solo. He could feel his mane flailing about as he banged his head as hard as he could. Every joint, every inch of his body was exhausted or in pain, but he no longer cared. He just wanted the song to last forever. To have this feeling last forever.

The solo finally ended, and the verse riff returned, but that made no difference to him. He kept up his frenzy tirelessly, ready for the next round.

"The Ace of Spades!" he screamed in unison with the voice. He was banging his head so hard now that it was making him nauseous. It did not mean he was going to stop, though.

The tone shifted slightly once more, and the guitar screamed one last time. A final salvo of thunderous beats pounded the air in the room, and the speaker went silent. The song was over.

Hayfeld collapsed on the floor and panted from exhaustion. His whole body felt like he has been struck by lightning, and it was still coursing around through his veins. He closed his eyes and rolled onto his back while struggling to catch his breath.

"Fuck yeah!" he finally managed to cry out.

The young colt was grinning from ear to ear. He had no idea what just happened. No idea what it was that he just listened to, and why it made him act like he was completely out of his mind.

He did not care. This was the best day of his entire life.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, his head now resting on its side. Taking in his surroundings, he noticed that the mysterious box had been knocked off the bed, its contents now spilled all over the floor. One record landed right next to him, the black cover featuring the same foreign symbols in purple, along with what looked like a large diamond in the background.

Behind him, the speaker was starting up again.

Hayfeld let out a small laugh.

The best day of my life, indeed. And it's far from over...

Author's Notes:

DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony, Metallica, Motörhead, and all related products are properties of their respective owners.

Yes, I suck at writing a disclaimer...