Vinyl Scratch wasn’t out front of Octavia’s house the following morning. Sweetie Belle arrived to find Octavia leaning against the side of her house by herself, sipping coffee out of a disposable cup.

“Hey, what happened to Miss Vinyl?” Sweetie Belle asked as she approached.

Her new, pink school bag bounced against her flank as she walked. A gift from her sister to congratulate her on her new school, the bejeweled bag weighed heavily on its strap from the extra school supplies and books Twilight had brought over.

Octavia took another sip. “She decided to go into work today, so she took the transporter circle to the school. She should be there by now.”

Sweetie Belle tilted her head. “If she has an instant way to get to Canterlot, why do you take the bus?”

“It has to be activated by unicorn magic.”

“But I’m a unicorn!”

Octavia smirked. “Teaching staff only.”

The bus came again and landed in front of the pair, just as it had the day before. Octavia crumpled up her cup and threw it on the ground before climbing on, followed closely by Sweetie Belle.

Sweetie Belle felt the metal bus rise under her hooves as she walked, shakily, to the back where Octavia sat.

The grey mare leaned against her seat’s window, looking outside with one hoof on her chin. Her teacher’s bag filled up the rest of the space on the bus bench.

Octavia looked up to see Sweetie Belle standing in the aisle, a look of confusion on her face. The teacher raised an eyebrow. “You’re wanting to sit next to me? I thought you were a teenager.”

“Are you calling me a filly?” Sweetie Belle interjected. “I just wanted to sit in the back seat because it’s, uh, cool.”

“There is literally another back seat right behind you.” Octavia pointed across the aisle.

“Right.”

Sweetie Belle let the bag slide off her sore shoulder and land heavily on the seat. She cautiously lowered herself to the brown leather soon after, though she continued to face the aisle and, of course, Octavia.

The teacher, her job being what it was, was well aware of the young student who kept looking at her. Her plans to enjoy a quiet and peaceful ride like she was used to were ruined, so she sighed and relented, “Is something wrong, Sweetie Belle?”

She coughed. “What? Oh, no, of course not.”

“Then is there a different reason you keep staring at me?”

“Well . . .” Sweetie Belle rubbed the back of her head. “It’s just that, this school isn’t anything like I thought it would be.”

Octavia nodded. “Bad first day?”

“A professor tried to fight me and Diamond Tiara!” Sweetie Belle said.

“Ah, yes, Naught Note,” Octavia said. She smirked. “He spoke pretty well of you and your little shield trick.”

Sweetie Belle smiled. “So does that mean I’m already ahead of the other students?”

Octavia stifled a laugh. “Hardly. Being able to manifest your magic with music is one thing, but effectively controlling it and knowing how it works is something else entirely. You impressed your professor, but you’ve still got a long way to go.”

“Oh.” Sweetie Belle looked down at her hooves.

“Hey,” Octavia said, tapping Sweetie Belle carefully on the shoulder, “just because you’re not the best now doesn’t mean you never will be.  That’s what the CMMA is all about.”

“I guess you’re right,” the teenager said, laying back further in her seat and crossing her front hooves over her chest.

Octavia smiled to herself and enjoyed the rest of the ride in peace, watching the fields between Ponyville and Canterlot drop away as the bus rose into the sky.

The bus landed, like before, at the front steps of the school. Octavia and Sweetie Belle walked up the front steps together, but when they came to the split in hallways, they had to go their separate ways.

“I have Miss Vinyl’s class next,” Sweetie said uncertainly to Octavia when they stopped at the hallway crossing.

“Oh, you’ll enjoy her class,” Octavia said, “so long as she stays awake. Trust me; I should know.”

The grey cellist left Sweetie Belle there, who watched the mare go until she was out of sight. Sweetie took a deep breath and continued on to the last hallway that she hadn’t explored.

In most parts, it was exactly like the others, though the lack of it curving around the edge of the school was a little unsettling. It just stretched on and on until it ended in a red door that was barely visible from so far away.

Sweetie Belle found Vinyl Scratch’s room, “42”, but when she pushed the handle to open the door, precisely nothing happened.

Locked? Sweetie started to shake her head. How could it be locked? Miss Octavia had said Miss Vinyl was here today!

When she tried the door handle again, a voice came from behind her, “That’s not gonna work, kid.”

The teenage student turned around to find Vinyl Scratch leaning against a door across the hall from her, playing with her electric blue mane. She had a wide smirk planted on her face, below eyes that Sweetie couldn’t tell if they were red or purple. Maybe something inbetween.

“Miss Vinyl!” Sweetie Belle said. “Why is your door locked?”

Vinyl walked across the hall to her. “Class is cancelled for today for the rest of the students. You, however, get a little extra lesson.”

“Extra lesson?” Sweetie asked, her voice rising to a noticeably higher pitch.

“Yeah, just something that every student goes through their first time here.” Vinyl sighed and looked at a clock that hung in the hall. “We’d get started already if that other newbie from Ponyville would show up already.”

“Her name’s Diamond Tiara, you know.”

Vinyl’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, of course I knew that.” She turned and yelled down the hall, “If Diamond Tiara doesn’t show up in the next twenty seconds, she’s expelled from the school!”

Sure enough, before the echo could even fade, the pink filly with the tiara placed high on her head came running up to Vinyl and Sweetie Belle, panting and out of breath.

“I-I’m sorry, I was late,” Diamond Tiara panted. “Please don’t expel me!”

Vinyl Scratch laughed. “It’s not like an ordinary teacher could expel a student. Celestia knows I’ve tried . . .”

She started walking down the hall toward the red door it ended at. “Come on, we need to get you two properly initiated into this school.”

Sweetie Belle and Diamond Tiara looked at each other before shaking their heads and following after the music teacher.

The three all came to a stop at the red door at the end of the hall. Unlike all the other very plain and wooden doors, this one was made of metal and securely held shut by a large lock.

Vinyl’s horn glowed and the lock clicked open. With a push of her hoof, the door swung inward to reveal a large, plain concrete room.

It was dark when the students followed their teacher inside, though Vinyl illuminated the room a moment later with the flick of a switch.

The room was bare save for dust and, oddly, a concert speaker in the middle of the room. Other than that, the only interesting feature was a large spiral staircase at the rear of the room that led far down into the darkness.

“Just why exactly did we come here?” Diamond Tiara said. “And what’s with the speaker?”

Vinyl walked over to the amplifier and hefted it onto one shoulder, though it required her to stand on two legs as she did so. Somehow, she kept herself from falling over.

“Well, we came to this room specifically to get my amp, here,” the teacher said. “For the rest, we’ve got to head down to the basement.”

Sweetie Belle looked over the edge at the massive number of stairs and the perceived hour or so of walking just to get down all of them.

“Um, is there another way to get down there?” she asked.

Vinyl smiled a toothy grin. “I was hoping you would say that.”

She smacked the side of the amp and a small compartment on it flipped open. A pair of dj’s shades fell out, and landed perfectly over her eyes.

“Okay, stand back,” she said.

At first, there was nothing. Vinyl’s horn glowed faintly and her head bobbed, but nothing accompanied it.

Then, a beat at the edge of hearing started to pick up. It grew louder and louder as bright blue magic pooled itself at Vinyl’s feet. The music settled into a steady tone, and the pool began to slide its way across the floor.*

The magic washed over Sweetie Belle like a wave that made her body tingle and warm a little. Then, the wave continued on until it was over the edge of the chasm, in the empty middle of the spiral staircase.

Instead of falling, however, a bright blue disc of solid magic formed. A platform that stood effortlessly in the air.

Diamond Tiara and Sweetie Belle were hesitant to climb on, though Vinyl jumped onto the platform without visible worry, instead choosing to continuously bob her head to the beat.

“You two coming or what?” she yelled over the music pouring from the speaker.

The students reluctantly climbed on and the platform descended into the darkness.

The music boomed and echoed down the hollow chamber as the magical platform fell. The platform itself even moved and thumped to the beat, prompting Sweetie Belle to move closer to the center just so she wouldn’t fall off.

Vinyl’s expression behind her dj glasses was unreadable, and she didn’t offer any explanation as to where they were going.

Sharp blue magic lit the area around the platform, but Sweetie Belle still couldn’t see the bottom of the chamber for several minutes. When she finally did, it rose up to greet them until they landed firmly on the ground.

The music stopped and the magic faded away to nothing. Vinyl threw her glasses back into their compartment and walked calmly into the cavernous room they had arrived at.

Fluorescent lights on the ceiling turned on with the flick of a switch to reveal a sweeping, concrete room filled almost entirely with . . . boxes. Lots and lots of boxes.

Sweetie Belle looked around. The wooden boxes didn’t have any tops, and on closer inspection they were all filled with instruments. The room must have had tons of them!

“So what exactly are we doing down here?” Diamond Tiara asked.

Vinyl smiled. “It’s time you two got assigned your instruments!”

Sweetie Belle looked at the shiny, red guitar that had caught her eye. “Wait,” she said, “aren’t we going to have something where we pick whatever instrument, like, calls to us?”

“Nope.” Vinyl laughed. “If we did that, every pony would be going for the awesome guitars, even if they’re no good at them. When you’re evaluated before you come to the school, we select what instrument you would wield best.”

“But what does it matter?” Sweetie Belle said. “It’s just an instrument.”

Vinyl’s eyes lit up. ‘That’s just what I hoped you would say.”

Her horn glowed and an acoustic guitar rose from a nearby box, flying over the heads of the two students until it rested in the air next to Vinyl. With another touch of magic, some of the strings began to be plucked and move on their own.

A quick and clean song started up, and magic again pooled at Vinyl’s hooves. The only difference, however, was that the magic appeared sickly and grey, and the pool didn’t move, but more . . . pooled.

The guitar was put back in its place and Vinyl hefted her amp onto her shoulder again.

“Now, see what you can really do when you use your true instrument,” she said.

Another techno song began to blare out, though no magic was visible everywhere around Vinyl.*

Instead, the music teacher tossed the amp in the air, which began to glow blue from the magic. Out of the bottom of the black amplifier grew a long, black staff. Two large, blue blades grew slid out of each side of the amp, sharpening to a deadly point.

By the time Vinyl caught her amp by the staff, it had been transformed to a giant, music-playing, battle axe. The musician’s hooves glowed with magic as she held her axe and struck a battle pose, complete with the cocky grin.

Sweetie Belle and Diamond Tiara watched the whole thing wordlessly, their eyes growing wider by the second.

Sweetie Belle gulped. “Woah.”

“Cool, huh?” Vinyl said. She twirled it in the air as she hopped around on her two hind legs.

She used her magic to levitate an empty wooden box in the air and cut it in half with the axe. The blades sliced through the box like it was thin air, and the two pieces fell to the ground in perfect symmetry.

“See, that is what you can do with the right type of instrument.”

The music stopped and the amp returned to its normal form. Vinyl placed it on the ground. “Okay, who wants their instrument first?”

Diamond Tiara immediately stepped forward with a smile on her face. “I’m just sure I’ll get something that fits me,” she said in a haughty tone, placing a hoof on her tiara.

Vinyl rolled her eyes and led the filly to a large box in the middle of the room. The teacher fished around in the container until she produced a new music instrument that made Diamond Tiara’s eyes grow as large as saucers.

In a field of Vinyl’s magic was a violin made of elegant, smooth wood cut in beautiful lines that showed off the instrument’s wonderful curves. The strings were tuned to perfection and the bow in the same quality as the main instrument.

Diamond Tiara took the instrument in her hooves with a mark of reverence and looked down at it.

“Is it really mine?” she whispered.

Vinyl nodded. “As long as you’re enrolled in this school, it’s all yours, kid. Go nuts . . . but if you break it, then only Celestia can help you.”

Diamond Tiara suddenly cradled the violin much more carefully in her hooves.

Vinyl walked up to Sweetie Belle, who was still near the entrance of the room, staring at the ground. She kicked at a stray pebble and sent it bouncing away in the cavernous room.

“You ready?” Vinyl asked.

Sweetie slowly nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

The box Vinyl led her to was placed near the far wall of the chamber. The little wooden crate was sitting all by itself and, unlike the others, had a lid on it.

Vinyl’s magic popped it open and reached inside, only to produce an instrument that Sweetie Belle had not been expecting in the least.

It was, at its core, a piano. A keyboard, really. However, it was much thinner than a keyboard and smaller; at the end of the keyboard was a small protrusion, almost like a handle. It was also colored a very brilliant pink.

“It’s, uh . . .” Sweetie Belle began. “What exactly is it?”

“It’s called a ‘keytar,’” Vinyl explained. “It’s the instrument that the staff agreed would fit you and your, uh, abilities best.”

The blue magic surrounding the keytar turned to pink as Sweetie Belle accepted the instrument from her teacher. She looked carefully at the keys, and gave them a few hopeful presses, producing an off-balance chord.

“I don’t even know how to play keyboard very well,” she said. “My instrument is my voice.”

“Learn to make do.” Vinyl laughed. “Be glad you’re not one of the Neighponese exchange students. The teachers gave him a block of metal to use.”

“What happened to him?”

“He dealt with it and is back home right now as an exchange program; they call him Hagane over there.”

“Hagane?”

“Fullmetal.”

Sweetie Belle took another look at the keytar, and then carefully slung it over her back via an included strap. It hung across her flank opposite her schoolbag.

She continued to look down at the ground and bite her lip.

Vinyl put a hoof on her shoulder. “Are you alright?” she said. “I know a lot of this can be overwhelming at this.”

“It’s not that, it’s more . . . is my voice not good enough?” Sweetie said. “Why do I need an instrument if I can already do that shield thing with my voice? Am I not good enough?”

Vinyl laughed. “Well of course you’re good enough! You see, with an instrument, you can amplify that further, like—”

Suddenly, a scroll popped into being with a flash of magic right in front, and landed at her hooves. The unicorn picked it up and scanned the parchment, her eyes darting rapidly back and forth. Finally, she tossed it away once she had finished.

“Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go,” she said, “there’s a big problem upstairs, and, well . . .”

She backed away toward the entrance to the chamber, snatching up her amp as she did so. The previous song blared up again, and the platform reappeared.

“You two stay down here!” she called. “We’ve still got more to go over!”

The platform ascended up into the darkness and out of sight, with only the lingering beat of the music to mark that it was there.

Diamond Tiara marched over to Sweetie Belle, still clutching tightly to her fancy new instrument. She wore a smirk on her face under the confirmation that, again, she had something as valuable as she felt herself to be.

Sweetie Belle watched as her fellow classmate approached. “Nice violin you’ve got there,” she said.

Diamond Tiara nodded. “Yes, it’s very nice, of course. It’s only natural I would get something like it.” She looked at Sweetie’s keytar. “And what exactly is that?”

“This?” Sweetie Belle said, looking between the filly’s fancy violin and her own pink abomination. “This is, uh, well . . . only the coolest instrument ever! It’s called the keytar; it’s like a portable piano!”

She gave Diamond Tiara her most convincing smile.

“Right.” Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Sweetie Belle said. She rose up on her two hind legs and held the keytar with her front hooves.

However, the inexperienced filly wobbled and tried to steady herself by pressing her back against the wall behind her. Instead of feeling solid concrete on her back, however, the startled teenager fell right through the wall and landed on a rough stone passageway.

“Ow,” she moaned.

Sweetie Belle looked up to see the wall right where it should have been . . . but she was on the other side of it! She got up and pressed it with her hoof, only for it to go right through again.

“S-Sweetie Belle?” Diamond Tiara called. “What happened?”

“It’s a magic illusion,” Sweetie Belle said, poking her head through, much to Diamond Tiara’s fright. “There is no wall here.”

She turned around and looked down the new hallway. “The question is, what did they want to hide?”

Diamond Tiara’s voice came from the other side, “Do you really need to answer that question?”

“Oh c’mon, where’s your sense of adventure?” Sweetie Belle said.

“At home, safe.”

Sweetie Belle huffed. “Fine, be that way, but that’s not going to stop me.”

She turned around and walked down into the new tunnel, which was, strangely, lit by some sort of glowing substance that covered the walls. Sweetie Belle wrinkled her nose at it, but was thankful for the light.

Her trek wasn’t long, as the tunnel quickly met a right turn and ended in a short chamber carved out of Canterlot Mountain stone. The chiseled rock reached up to form a domed ceiling, under which was a single pedestal up a short flight of stairs.

What really surprised Sweetie Belle, however, was what occupied the pedestal. A single black crystal that seemed to almost float in the air above its perch. Though it gave off no visible signs of activity, the teenage filly could almost feel . . . something emanate from it.

That feeling almost seemed to pull Sweetie Belle closer as her eyes locked on it and she looked at it hungrily. It was so pretty . . . a very precious thing.

She quickly hopped up the steps toward it and reached out to grab it from the pedestal and take it for herself. The only thing that stopped her was a noise so annoying that it broke her concentration on the crystal.

“Sweetie Belle!” Diamond Tiara called. “I-I think Miss Scratch is coming back! You should probably, like, get out of there before you get us both in trouble!”

Sweetie Belle shook her head and blinked a few times. What had just happened?

Without a second thought, she pulled her hoof back away from the crystal, though the crystal wasn’t quite ready to give up so easily.

A tiny spark burst through the gap between the filly’s hoof and the black crystal, and shocked its way into Sweetie Belle.

She let out a shriek and fell down the stairs, clutching her injured hoof. When she looked at it, however, all she could see was the same white coat as ever.

“Sweetie Belle!”

“I’m coming, geez!” she yelled back.

With one last look at the crystal, Sweetie Belle trotted out of the odd chamber, favoring her uninjured hooves over the burnt one.

She appeared on the other side of the illusionary wall just as Vinyl arrived on her platform, music booming from the amp.

“Sorry about that, kids,” she said as she got off. “Had to help Octy will something upstairs. Hope you two didn’t break anything.”

“Of course not!” the two teenagers said in unison.

Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “Okay . . . well, come on, we’re gonna head upstairs and get you two back to class. You won’t want to miss your class with Miss Sapphire Shores on Vocal Harmonics, do you?”

The two fillies hopped onto the platform once more with Vinyl Scratch and it rose back up toward the school proper.

Still, as it fell away, Sweetie Belle couldn’t keep her eyes off the wall that wasn’t, and the knowledge of what lay within.

Her hoof tingled.