Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Intermission (Chapter N2) – “Relapse shmelapse, it's a party, and hey, at least I'm not snorting and mainlining heroin anymore...”

As a bonus for copping out a few days earlier when I promised a chapter, here's a little extra something for putting up with me, yo. A sneak peek of sorts into the future as Nightmare Night takes hold of Equestria and the whole kingdom kicks into action and begins to party. It's pretty short, but all the same, I hope you enjoy it!

First off, blame Pinkie Pie. She's the one who had the acid.

Second off, hey, it's just a little acid.

Third off, ever watched Roger Waters put on a light show for a rock opera masterpiece on a big screen after dropping a couple hits? It's a beautiful thing.

As for what Pinkie subjected me to. Well, let's just call it an experience.

When they call her the Premier Party Pony, they're not just whistling Dixie. After everybody finally crashed out asleep at Twilight's, cider-fueled alcoholic blackouts eventually claiming the whole lot, the two of us went hopping from party to party, eventually hitting the road to several swingin' soirees in Canterlot. All expenses were apparently paid, because I don't remember seeing the baker spend a single cent. Rather, everybody else was more than glad to supply her with whatever she wanted or needed at the time, which included whatever I wanted or needed too.

I guess when you encapsulate the very spirit of partying itself, parties just sort of gravitate to you and happen regardless.

Kind of reminds me of someone, Pinks. I see him in you more and more with every passing day.

Pretty goddamn cool.

Anyway, our final destination for the night (or early morning, if you're nitpicking) was a posh nightclub throwing a decidedly un-posh and completely off-the-hook concert party. Several bands had played before we arrived, but several more were still booked to perform. From heavy metal to country and western, punk rock to techno rap, a little bit of everything came and went.

Dressed as a ponyfied version of Storage Wars star, Barry Weiss, a costume that I felt secure in knowing only I could truly appreciate (and apparently my pink partner-in-crime too, who somehow figured it out immediately), I stepped up to the front of the stage and bore witness to many a badass musician.

Right next to me, bouncing around absolutely everywhere, was Pinkie Pie, dudded-up with all of Rarity's extraordinary skill as a white pegasus version of herself, complete with scrambled egg hair and a pair of wings that I'm shockingly certain were real.

With a snicker, she referred to it as one of her greatest surprises yet.

Am I missing something? Guess I'll have to ask around.

The first performer to play since our arrival stepped up onto the stage with a reserved and humble air about him that hooked me before he even began to play. What can I say, I'm biased towards nice guys. They don't act like they're the center of the universe like Bono does.

Introducing himself as MandoPony, the caramel-colored colt started things out with a cute ukelele song... which went way out into the left field all of a sudden as it turned out to be the into to an entire power ballad featuring electric ukelele and a whole host of other instruments. A white sheet was pulled away during a brief pause, just as the intro ended, suddenly revealing an entire band. As the song kicked into full swing, yet more left field hits rang out across the ballpark, ranging from a startlingly kickass woodblock solo reminiscent of something Tom Waits would've pulled to the most adorably placed bell chimes in music history.

Then the brass section opened up and things got really crazy.

Seven songs later and while we weren't quite sure what genre we'd just seen perform before us, we were shouting for encore after encore all the same. With a bright smile, Mando pretended as though he didn't have something planned, then caught a mandolin in midair as it was thrown to him and began to chug out some truly haunting chords. A folk song for the record books followed, spinning a sad tale with an uplifting sound about an old stallion's farm being sold after his death and being paved over into a five-lane highway. The sadness really sunk in when a vocal solo rang out, a little filly trotting forward to ask how it all had come about, how the old farm and town she knew and loved had been dominated by asphalt and cement.

I watched some of the toughest looking ponies (if you can believe ponies are capable of looking tough anyway) wipe their eyes and toast their beers, cheering.

I was one of them.

Next up was, much to my surprise, Pinkie Pie herself.

I swear, turn your back on that pony for a second and she's on stage with an electric guitar in her hooves.

She proceeded to take a double-shot of the greenest liquor I'd ever laid eyes on, whistled in appreciation of what I would imagine was a burn that rivaled the color, then jumped into an Americana-style blues song about life after reentering society as a former felon.

I wish I could even begin to explain how odd it was hearing her cheery voice sing something like that. Even still, she painted the picture beautifully. I have to assume she'd practiced it before, which only made the image in my mind that much more implausible.

After that, she looked out across the crowd and smiled, then alerted us that a band would be joining her to assist in performing her second song. With a giggle, she added that while it was also the only other song she'd be playing, it was over 20 minutes long.

Every pair of eyes in the club boggled in anticipation.

Four other ponies hopped up onto the stage, all members of group known as Free Rides; one of them a pony going by the curious title, Tarby. The smile on his face alone told me that I was indeed in for a wild ride.

What took place thereafter was a dark song about murder and cannibalism, narrated to us across a wide range of genres from the perspective of an empty shell of a pony only capable of hollow smiles. The light and luster of the world had left her eyes, leaving only a deep darkness in their wake. The darkness engulfed her, swallowing her whole, and in the heat of the moment she claimed a life. Now convinced that the only path she could tread was following through with what she had done, our “protagonist” then baked her victim into a batch of cupcakes and served them to her unwitting customers.

The cupcakes went over splendidly with those who sampled them, spurring the monstrous baker on to do the whole deed all over again... and with one of her dearest friends too.

It was creepy, it was horrifying, and it was amazing. The spirit of the holiday was captured in a masterpiece of a horror story presented by a band that looked like they were having way, way too much fun with what they were performing.

And I loved them for it.

Not the kind of song I'd like to jam to all the time, but placed in the right environment, which it was, I'd say that attempting to follow it would be a bullet-sweating task that no musician would want to face.

And yet...

The whole shebang ended with an absolutely insane finale.

A band fronted by their two vocalists, a white earth pony going by The Living Tombstone and a gray unicorn very fittingly named Mic the Microphone, performed a rap-rock song depicting a madman in the process of sorting through his mind in the aftermath of the end of the world. Equipped with speakers larger than refrigerators, a lighting and special effects crew that had clearly gone to college, and a set of four flat-screens playing a fucking terrifying video behind them, it was easily the most elaborate show I had ever seen. The song switched seamlessly between sets of Tombstone's smoothly sung vocals and Mic's hysteric shouts, the gray guy flashing his horn every now and again to cast an illusion and grant us a glimpse of a button, big and red, with the word “Launch” printed across it in bold letters. I watched in awe as they displayed the entirety of the Equestrian Kingdom melting down into nuclear war. Missiles and bombs rained from the sky, eerily familiar weapons of mass destruction that looked so distrubingly out-of-place in this land of pastel ponies.

Eventually, Mic's shouting grew to a fever pitch, his madness fully realized and his transformation into a genocidal maniac complete. Reacting like Batman to the Bat Signal, their lead guitarist, a white unicorn mare with a two-tone blue mane and enormous sunglasses, stepped forward and proceeded to blow our minds with a two-minute solo that Hendrix would have shared a high-five and a few ounces of mushrooms over.

She made that thing fucking scream.

And if that weren't enough, our puppet masters ended the song with an explosion, one that they were all too happy to fully render for us, blowing out every single speaker in the process.

When the dust settled, The Living Tombstone simply stepped forward and said, “It's been fun, Canterlot. We're The Wildest West. See you around, Space Cowboys.”

Right, like he was completely oblivious and didn't know they'd just kicked all of our collective brains in the balls and into the orbit of one of Luna's distant stars.

My God, we went apeshit. The crowd roared. It was deafening and so very thoroughly awesome.

It wasn't the greatest night of my life. That title belongs to the first night Twilight and I opened up to each other and told stories about our childhoods. It was, however, the single greatest party of my life.

Oh yeah, it was that in fucking spades, son.

To be continued in our regularly-scheduled programming, Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies...

Hello, everypony, Joseph Raszagal here to explain a few things!

Some of you might be confused about the music and characters used to present it, which makes sense considering some of the things featured were not created or ever even performed by the musicians that I had perform them in the story (to my knowledge anyway, it'd be awesome hearing MandoPony's badass singing voice in any of these tracks). I'd like to alleviate that confusion and straighten a few facts out. Well, what I was going for was one part atmosphere and two parts fangasm. I asked permission to use the characters, but considering my timing and the holiday and whatnot, they were never able to reply on time. So... uh... I posted it anyway.

Stop looking at me like that, I know it's underhanded!

But considering I presented them in what I perceived to be a positive light, I'm not really worried about it. In my mind, I pretty much wrote an entire chapter about my favorite musicians in the pony scene being awesome, so I think they'll understand. You may have noticed, however, that some of the linked songs did not quite match up with how I described them. Again, it was part atmosphere; what I was really going for was the right setting to introduce songs that I really, really, superreally wanted to add because I liked them so much. I feel that they fitted in nicely in the end and didn't feel clunky, so I'm happy about how the whole thing worked out.

That might be false advertising, but I'm not making money on this so I don't think I can be sued. Please don't test that theory for me~

Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for any confusion and to the musicians again for posting the story before receiving their full permission. The following links are additions to the apology, as well as a necessity because it would be an absolute crime in my book not to look them up anyway!

As for the most obvious problem, a lot of this music may not be everypony's cup of tea. I understand that, I really do. We all have different tastes after all. These are just mine.

1) Links (in no particular order):

http://www.youtube.com/user/MicTheMicrophoneZero

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheLivingTombstone

http://www.youtube.com/user/MandoPony

http://www.youtube.com/user/TarbyRocks

http://www.sailorkicks.com/

http://www.mischiefbrew.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/princewhateverer

http://defianceohio.terrorware.com/

http://www.tomwaits.com/

http://www.streetlightmanifesto.com/

http://www.thekillersmusic.com/

2) Songs Featured (again, in no particular order):

Olde Tyme Mem'ry – Erik Petersen

Something Broke: The Continuing Tale of Pinkie Pie and Ponycide – George DesRoches III

September – The Living Tombstone (feat. Mic the Microphone)

September (Metal Cover) – PrinceWhatever

Just the Right Bullets – Tom Waits

Sailor's Delight – The Sailor Kicks

A Dustland Fairytale – The Killers

Would You be Impressed? – Streetlight Manifesto

Oh, Susquehanna – Defiance, Ohio

The talent in this community is simply breathtaking. The Living Tombstone even got a brief mention in a Rolling Stone article about Daniel Ingram and pony music in general!

*Ahem* Sorry about that. Fangasming again.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Nightmare Night!

(I plan on keeping a close eye on my various inboxes for the next couple of days. If I'm asked to take this chapter down, I will gladly do so. Also, I know that there can sometimes be some friction between artists, and if for whatever reason I portrayed any of the borrowed artists / characters and paired them off with others that they are currently not so thrilled with, I meant no harm by it and, again, simply wanted to include a bunch of my favorite pony musicians.)

- Joseph Raszagal