=Am I Evil 18=

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oGqIfnIAEA

>It was raining in Stalliongrad.
>You were walking down the sidewalk in the downpour with your hands in your pockets and coat hiked up. This city had an almost oppressive quality to it that you’d never noticed before. The almost black water stained buildings contrasting with the gaudy neon lights illuminating all the convenience stores, shoddy motels, and strip clubs contrasted well with the season biting winter cold you’d heard about, on its way out as spring set in in early March.
>It’d been about ten days since the events of the back alley, when those fans had spit on Chrysalis, and everyone’d been dealing with it their own way.
>The band hadn’t play a show in the entire time, which was public knowledge. You had scheduled yourselves to get one week off at the end of every month of touring so you didn’t all burn out or kill each other.
>What they didn’t know was that you’d all barely seen each other at all during that time.
>Sombra claimed to have drifted around in a camper the entire break, camping in the wilderness and going to “clear his head”.
>Eris had spent much more time than usual at her apartment in Manehatten, you had barely spent time with her which sucked hard.
>Artemis had actually spent all of his time in Canterlot seeing to real-people politics and leading a sudden expedition into the Graveyard of the Forgotten in the Forbidden Forrest, something about a mysterious magical drifter causing trouble, but nothing had come from it. Whatever, you knew Artemis and you knew when he was distracting himself from his thoughts.
>And Chrysalis…well…
>The Changeling Queen had taken it the way she takes most critiques of her character, personally.

>You come up on the hotel the road crew was staying at in the nicer part of town and look up through the rain. The light from the room on the eighth floor was on and the door open to the balcony.
>You sigh and walk under the veranda over the front door, shaking yourself off and joining the other leaning on the wall.
“She still at it?”
>”Yep.” Sombra says, taking a drag on his cigarette.
>You look past the mountain-man at the light again.
“How long’s it been?”
>”She was in that room when I got to this city and working the entire time, you?”
“Same…”
>Damn.
>You lean back against the wall.
“Was she always like this?”
>Sombra gets that far off look in his eyes that people who’ve lived for a thousand years get sometimes. “She’s always had an ego about her…”
“Says the self-proclaimed king.”
>”You know what I mean.”
>You did.
“Like Eris-ego bad or…?”
>Sombra shakes his head lightly and drops his cigarette, stomping it out. “Not as big or as all-consuming, but definitely more fragile. It used to be no well-kept secret that you could bait an attack by the Changelings right when you wanted it by insulting Chrysalis’s character.”
>From up above, a plastic bag filled to the brim with energy drinks clangs and clatters into the dumpster underneath the balcony.
“…Those kids did more of a number on us than I thought they would.”
>”We did it to ourselves.” Sombra says exhaling the last of his smoke. “We set ourselves up after we started with those humble intentions and it’s no wonder we got toppled so easily. We let it all go to our heads.”
>You sigh again.
“Ready for the show tomorrow?”
>”As I’ll ever be.” He says.
>You pat him on the shoulder and head to the door.
“Later.”

>You head up to the room you and Eris were in and open the door. The room was clean of almost all clutter.
>The room was NEVER clean of almost all clutter.
“…Eris?”
>”Here…” you get from inside the room.
>You walk in and shut the door, finding Eris laying on her side at the foot of the bed watching her animes like a dead leopard laying on a tree branch.
“Hey…”
>You take a seat on the lounge at the foot of the bed.
“What happened? Where’s all your stuff?”
>She blinks slowly. “I sold it.”
“Whaaaat? Why?”
>”They didn’t make me feel good anymore.” She says flatly.
“So your car?”
>”I don’t know how to drive anyway.”
“Sir Bearington?”
>”He’ll have a better home.”
“…The custom handcuffs?”
>”I could tell you don’t like them.”
“Yeah but you did.”
>Eris half-heartedly shrugs on the bed and watches tv. “I just wasn’t feeling them anymore…sorry.”
“Are you still feeling me?”
>Eris tears her eyes away from the tv and looks at you. “Yeah, of course.”
>The two of you look into the others eyes for a bit.
“…Okay.”
>You recline in the lounge and look at the tv, maybe Eris was right in her doldrums…
“So who’s punching who now…?”

-The next night-
>The four of you climb out of the car behind the open air venue you were playing at as the roadies start moving gear out.
>”Alright lads and lass, breaks’ over, let’s get back to it.”
>Eris and Sombra skulk towards the edge of the stage and peek out.
>”How’s the turnout?” Sombra asks.
>”A little less than we’re used to…” She turns back to him. “Do you think they know?”
“Know what?”
>Eris puts her hands in her pockets and kicks the gravel once. “You know…that we sold out.”
>”We did NOT sell out.”
>The four of you turn your attention to Chrysalis walking down the stairs from backstage, she carries papers with her. “And I’m not letting those little snots tell us that we did. All of you, here.”
>She passes the papers out, you look at it.
“A new song?”
>”Something that we’re gonna blast at 13 until those little bastards hear us and eat their words.” She looks over at all of you with icy green eyes. “All of you who can, now’s the night. No more fucking around. Filthy says our magic can affect the world? Tonight we’re putting that to the test.”
>The four of you are silent until Artemis speaks first. “Chryssy, I don’t-“
>Artemis gets a smack upside the head for his trouble.
>”We are NOT the half measures band anymore!” she shouts over your stunned silence.
>Chrysalis looks at all of you with fire in her eyes. “THAT kind of “oh we can’t do this” stuff? THAT’S why those punks got under our skin, THAT’S why what they said hurt. We were living it up but we didn’t DESERVE it because we were not living up to our potential.”
>She pounds her chest with her fist. “We’re THE heavy metal band on the continent. Ours is a world of sound and fury, fire and blood. If our music can alter the world then the world had better be ready because the train is barreling into the station.”
>You silently look over your paper.
“So…am I taking this solo or is Artemis?”

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSoijb2CN18
>You all silently take the stage in utter blackness and start your song as suddenly as you can to surprise the crowd.
>The song opens with a shared chorus that you belt with as much fire in your stomach as you can. After that came the riffs, something simple and heavy to draw in the working class people here but with as much power as you could muster.
>You weren’t sure how this music magic was supposed to work, but you did what was natural and felt the stage hum beneath you. Surely that was Sombra slamming out on the drums behind you.
>Chrysalis leans on a leg resting on an amp in front of her and overlooks the crowd while she sings. You float around during her first verse and try to look cool until she finishes and you start playing again.
>This time when you and Artemis harmonize, you see soundwaves erupt over the cheering crowd and knock the snow off a line of trees.
>HOLY TAPDANCING MONKEY-BALLS, IT WAS WORKING.
>Sombra hammers into his drums as hard as he can behind you, cracking stones with his force while Eris strums along her bass and vibrates your very bones.
>Chrysalis continues to sing and all at once, without provocation, the crowd screams at the exact moment she called for it, almost entranced by the music.
>By Celestia’s resplendent ass, it was working!
>You flash an amazed and happy grin to Artemis who mirrors your enthusiasm. The fire in your stomach flared again and released cold nitro into your blood, burning away the despair the jeers had caused and making you feel like your skin was as thick as the metal you stood on.
>What could possibly compare to –this- after all?

>The metal gods continue to smile upon you all as the song keeps going, Chrysalis leading the crowd in the catchy-as-fuck chorus she wrote.
>”LOUDER THAN HELL!” the shout.
>You stand beside Chrysalis as she calls for and play a pair of shredding bridges that arc lightning between the pot lights above you.
>Chrysalis raises her fist to the fans and gets a sea of fists in return, all raised in solidarity with her and drinking in the energy you exuded.
>She looks over to the far off mountain range Canterlot sat in with a maddened, almost seeming to try and find the naysayers who’d kept her down and daring them to do it again.
>Another chorus goes, the voices shaking the ground and making the stage rumble with raw power as your solo started.
>You rear back, climbing the neck of your guitar each time before you start proper.
>Putting your foot on the ledge near Sombra’s drum set and locking eyes with him, you shred across the guitar. Lightning arcs from the stage and into the sky as well as down your amps, attracting to the nobs on the end of your guitar and along your strings. At first, for a moment, you fear it. Then you feel the electricity enter into you and become a part of you, guiding your fingers along the frets and making you feel for a moment as if you could connect to every metal fan in the world and treat your guitar as an extension of your own body, tapping into Tirek himself.
>And as you did that and finished your solo, something very old and very far away felt its heart beat again.

>You float again as Chrysalis and Sombra play. You take this time to grab a new pic having either melted, disintegrated, or lost the old one with your metal.
>Chrysalis kneels over and holds a clawed hand to the air as she screams the chorus into the microphone multiple times, each time urging the audience to join along with a “LOUDER!”
>As soon as the song starts, it ends, with you sliding your pick down the neck of your guitar as the lights come on showing Chrysalis holding her arms out to 10,000 fans going more ballistic than you’ve ever seen.
>You’re close enough to hear her say “Now that’s how you make a comeback…”
>The power you felt and the feats you saw after just one song of letting go made it hard to disagree. It also made you hungry to see what other awesome shit you could do.