/pj250/ There Are (No) Heroes


                                            The stallion opened his mouth wide and let his twitching, salivating tongue hang still for a few moments over a long line of dirty-whitish crystals on the table, in anticipation of what would come next.

                                            Having edged himself enough, he finally dropped his head and devoured the salt in one long lick, leaving a wet trail all over the tabletop.

                                            The inexpressible sensation of euphoria and ecstasy filled his mind through his taste buds. He blinked a few times, enjoying how everything around became more clear, more colorful.

                                            "What an outrage! Drugs are bad, you dirty, dirty colt! Haven't I told you?" an older earth pony mare, with a cutie mark of a ruler and several pencils, playfully chided him, while lowering her head and nipping on his left hind knee.

                                            "Drop it right this instant and come here for your counseling!"

                                            She turned around, raising her tail and winked at him. He snorted loudly, his nostrils flaring, his upper lip lifted up.

                                            "Ay- aye, Mrs. Slide Rule," he groaned hoarsely, reared up and mounted her with so much vigor she took a few steps forward unable to hold his onrush.

                                            The stallion made a few energetic circular motions with his hips, searching for an opening and snorted with satisfaction when his dick finally slid into somewhere warm and snugly.

                                            "Hey, Boom Zoom, that's a wrong hole, you little rascal!" she protested coquettishly and pushed back with her rump, taking him as deep as she could.

                                            He didn't answer, grabbing a mouthful of her mane with his teeth instead, spearing her, savoring the feeling of her ass around his dick.

                                            His wings unfolded and stood up, enframing his neck and head like a some triumphant's laurels.

                                            "Mmmmmmmmmmm, yes, yes! Just like that! You're delicious, my dear-- ahm-- my favorite pupil!"

                                            He doubled his efforts, hammering her butthole, smacking his nuts against her groin producing loud slaps. Colorful circles flooded his field of vision, a post-effect of the ingested salt. Strangely enough, while enhancing all his sensations it also helped him to last longer.

                                            After a several more minutes, when the mare under him was on the verge of collapsing in an orgasming heap, he also came, flooding her colon. They stood motionless, basking in afterglow. Then then she tried to wobble and he got off her back, letting her go.

                                            Boom Zoom looked at her with a stupid longing expression on his face. No other mare, no other filly his age in the high school never got his rocks off like his homeroom teacher. The beautiful, desirable, sensual, voluptuous Mrs. Slide Rule...

                                            She inhaled sharply and a dull green glow outlined her figure. Boom Zoom winced and turned his head away.

                                            A morphing changeling never was a pretty sight after all.

                                            "Fuck you, Drone!" he whined, "Couldn't you fucking stay like that a very little more?"

                                            "Eat a dick! I need all the juice to maintain the cool form for the performance, you feathered idiot," a reformed changeling, who now looked like a weird cross of a bug and a deer dunked in a puddle of rainbow, answered in a disgustingly pleasant tone that sharply contrasted its words.

                                            "Shit, I feel like a faggot." lamented Boom Zoom.

                                            "Fine, don't eat a dick then," deadpanned Drone.

                                            "I swear, if every time you say this I'd get an ounce of love..." it muttered under its breath, irritated, then continued aloud again "You know damn well all drones are genderless."

                                            Boom Zoom stroked down his iroquis-styled mane with his wing and suddenly staggered.

                                            In a moment he regained his balance, helping himself with an energetic flap from his wings.

                                            "I mean, yeah, but--," the pegasus pawed the floor with his front hoof, trying to bring a thought through the drug-induced haze, "But I sometimes think--"

                                            "Your fault. Clearly isn't your strongest forte." said Drone sympathetically and began to walk towards the door out of the dressing room.

                                            "--how do you get the new ones, eh?" Boom Zoom finally collected his wit.

                                            "By salvaging remaining eggs from the former hive incubator, retard. But one not supposed to talk about that out loud, obviously."

                                            "Wh-- Why are you telling me then?" asked the dumbfounded pegasus.

                                            "Because your're an utter idiot, so it's fairly safe to assume you won't remember any of it."

                                            Boom Zoom gargled and vomited a little onto the floor. Drone winced and stopped on his tracks, turning around to face the pegasus.

                                            "Go get some water. I'll clean here."

                                            Boom Zoom nodded obediently.

                                            In an unsteady gait he went towards the door, bumping changeling away, soliciting a muffled swear from it.

                                            He took the doorknob with his wingtip, pulled the door open and almost fell out of the room.

                                            Drone took a mop in it's greenish aura and began to swab the floor.

                                            "And continuing like that, we gonna run out of eggs pretty soon..." it whispered, "But, on the bright side, if that bitch Ocellus hasn't evolved yet, it must mean that Mother is actually still alive."

                                            At that thought he smiled with a genuine warmth.

                                            ***

                                            Boom Zoom went to the prop room and looked around.

                                            Focusing his eyes he tried to find a sink. It was protruding from it's tiled spot on the the wall right opposite the door, unnaturally white and standing out among the dimly lit prop room.

                                            But the salt fucked up his color perception, so the pegasus needed some time to locate anything of interest in his path.

                                            When Boom finally managed that, he clumped about towards his intended target, not turning away his head even for a moment, showing a bit of a tongue, stuck out in determination.

                                            The sink greeted him with a pleasant chill and metallic odor of a permanently leaking pipe.

                                            He grabbed a cool, formerly-chrome-plated-now-corroded knob with his teeth and turned the faucet on.

                                            Stream of water hit the drain with a loud 'fshhhhhhhhhhh'.

                                            Boom Zoom stuck his head under it, enjoying the cool wetness and soothing noise, then opened his mouth wide and began greedily chugging.

                                            Even through the sizzling of water around he heard a low, reverberating chords.

                                            They echoed with a dull pain through his head, due to his senses altered with substances.

                                            "Can you fucking knock that off, Jutta!"

                                            A griffon hen, their bassist, sitting in the corner tending to her huge bass cello, looked at him for a moment and let out a short squawk full of contempt.

                                            He made a rude gesture towards her with his wing.

                                            She showed him a middle talon, then returned to fine tuning of her bass.

                                            Boom Zoom rested his head onto the corner of the sink, not noticing the streamlets of water pouring down to the floor through his mane, and looked at her feline rump, perched on the tall barstool.

                                            Sometimes, like right now for example, he contemplated on his desire to hatefuck a griffoness.

                                            Not necessarily Jutta herself -- although it was tempting -- just some generic, abstract one.

                                            To put on the heaviest earth pony shoes and kick her in the barrel till she couldn't stand.

                                            To trample and break her wings with his front hooves.

                                            To pluck feathers from her plumage with his teeth.

                                            To hilt into her, tearing her vaginal cavity, much shorter than an equine one, till it would turn into a fucking bloody mess.

                                            He longed to dominate and maim this utterly hated creature that took away the skies from him...

                                            "You're disgusting."

                                            It wasn't the griffoness speaking. Boom turned his head, looked to the other corner of the room, and saw their guitarist, Morning Star.

                                            The unicorn mare was just standing there, tidy and well groomed, as always. Her slender and statuesque frame would have made her a perfect gravure model.

                                            She held an amulet in her telekinetic grasp, a medium sized disc with Sun and Moon engraved.

                                            "Well, fuck, and you aren't, so what?"

                                            Morning Star sighed and focused back on the amulet, her lips moving in a silent prayer.

                                            Boom Zoom was too young to remember the former rulers of the country.

                                            He knew what they taught him at school, about how Celestia ruled for 1000 years and then there was Luna, and then they decided to abdicate because Princess Twilight was awesome and always right about everything.

                                            Or at least it was what he managed to get out of it.

                                            Also he knew what his mom had told him, mainly about the splendor of the Summer Sun Celebration which she attended a grand total of three times in the past.

                                            But she always has been missing it, after the holiday was cancelled due to Princess Twilight's decision that it's "insensitive" towards other creatures or some shit.

                                            He never gave it much thought.

                                            But Morning Star apparently did.

                                            Meanwhile his head cooled enough for the nausea to subside and the pleasant chill of water turned to a bitter cold.

                                            Boom turned the faucet off and smirked, feeling much better now.

                                            He wobbled, sending a flurry of water droplets flying across the room.

                                            "Why you, fucker," muttered Jutta, wiping her bass with her wing. Its dull, dirty surface, once shiny and lacquered, didn't benefit too much from that.

                                            Boom Zoom ignored her and started to walk towards his own instrument when his still drugged vision caught a glimpse of the large golden-bound book, adorned with an stylized unicorn silhouette, laying on the padded stool.

                                            "Hey, Star!"

                                            She didn't even twitch her ear.

                                            "Star! Why are you never do your mumbo-jumbo with this?" He pointed with his muzzle towards the Book of Harmony.

                                            The mandatory thing to have at every establishment and household.

                                            "Mountain of lies by an unreliable narrator, sprinkled with a pinch of truth," quietly answered the mare without turning to him.

                                            "Shit like that can make you end up in a reeducation facility," squawked the griffoness from her corner.

                                            Having finished with the bass she reached with her talon and picked up some bloody remains from the plate standing before her.

                                            She opened her beak wide and tossed a chunk of somebody's corpse into, gulping it in one go.

                                            Boom whinced with disgust and continued his stride towards his hardware.

                                            "But so is the carrion, so is the Salt," Morning Star answered Jutta in a calm tone.

                                            "And so is the prayer..."

                                            "Yeah, yeah, we all realy on the same cloud here, I guess." Boom Zoom remarked, finally getting to his keyboard.

                                            He turned it on and booped several large keys with his muzzle, producing a set of consecutive notes.

                                            "We wouldn't have been if your idiotic government didn't make all of us flock here, to Equestria, and stay together." Jutta ruffled up her tuft and plumage like an angry pigeon.

                                            "Do you fucking think it's me who is fucking happy about it, huh, Jutta?" Boom Zoom snapped back, "I fucking got kicked out of the Wonderbolt Reserve because they enlisted a bunch of your shitfeathers and forced us to train in formation together, and I was stupid enough to speak out."

                                            "I know, I know, you weren't up for competition." Jutta laughed with her piercing screechy laugh.

                                            "Eat shit, chickenbitch! You know bloody well that our aerodynamics are too different to make any consistent flight pattern possible when flying in formation, made for a uniform team!"

                                            Boom Zoom's nostrils flared, his ears went flat against his head, unusual clarity in his eyes.

                                            Morning Star turned from her amulet at last and looked at him, her face darkened with sorrow.

                                            It was the most intelligent and eloquent phrase he uttered in a long while.

                                            As usual, it had been happening when he was talking about the applied flight.

                                            Right now, though, he looked like he seriously considered leaping at the grifoness and multiplicating the number of bones in her body.

                                            Jutta sprung to her paws and took a defensive posture, subconsciously aligning her sharp talons and beak into an ideal battle triangle.

                                            Morning Star, her stoic expression unchanged, lit up her horn...

                                            Suddenly, the door to the dressing room flew open.

                                            "Can you rather not, please, feathered morons?" Drone stepped out and went to the center of the room, looking fearlessly between the two angry would-be combatants.

                                            His eyes flashed toxic green for an elusive fraction of a moment. If Morning Star blinked she would've missed it outright.

                                            "Your stupid shit gives me creeps and fucking drains the power. I can't do my job in such an antagonistic atmosphere," it said in a cheerful upbeat tone of a complaisant store clerk.

                                            "I am-- I mean I was an infiltrator, not a combat drone, you know? We aren't built to tolerate shitflinging like that."

                                            Boom Zoom and Jutta looked at him with confused expressions, like if they tried to discern what's going on at all.

                                            Then Jutta giggled involuntarily. Boom Zoom snorted, amused.

                                            "That's better, dear colleagues," Drone's maw curved in a heinously sweet smile, "C'mon, we have a concert to play and money to make. So we all can continue indulging our little vices."

                                            Drone lifted his drum kit with it's weird leaf-colored telekinesis and relocated it closer to the closed stage curtain.

                                            Then it lifted the drumsticks and took the usual spot behind the drums and cymbals.

                                            Morning Star sighed with relief.

                                            A changeling infiltrator, even if reformed one, was a great asset to ensure the peace and quiet in the collective.

                                            She nuzzled her amulet and carefully hid it into her guitar's case.

                                            A mere celebratory trinket many decades ago -- made to commemorate the return of the Night Princess -- nowadays it became the precious symbol of a whole epoch gone.

                                            Dangerous to get hold of and possess.

                                            Morning Star's smile became grim.

                                            She took out her magical guitar and began to tune it.

                                            The mare always loved the sound of her instrument, since the foalhood.

                                            She remembered how her teachers tried to talk her out of it, pointing that it's obsolete and inelegant. Just a failed experiment not worth the time and dedication, unlike the classical ones or the new and recommended musical devices of the many different cultures around.

                                            But once she heard the one single chord, clear and high as sunlight and powerful as firestorm, it's significance, the allegory within it became clear to her.

                                            As clear as the one in her own name.

                                            "Very good sound, Star! As always." Drone complimented her sweetly.

                                            She felt a jolt of happiness, although she immediately recognized it's attempts and collected herself.

                                            "Awww, but I really mean it," Drone protested, "Come on, I need all the power I can get, pretty please. It costs you nothing. I don't wanna be gaunt like those other poor idiots in FeFees Group.

                                            "That sweet nonsense about sharing love and letting it go is a total scam, like a starvation therapy--"

                                            A few loud, harsh noises produced by Boom Zoom's keyboard distracted it.

                                            "Tartarus and damnation!" exclaimed the pegasus, "The shit's kickin' good!"

                                            He looked at Drone with bewilderment.

                                            "Even better than the other one was. Dude, you always bring the most rad stuff! How hadn't they caught you yet?.."

                                            "I told you hundreds of times, pony cops aren't allowed to search the--" Drone paused "--"Friends in Harmony"" it finished in a mocking tone.

                                            "One of the only things worthwhile in your fucking mess of a country, really." Jutta remarked.

                                            The pegasus looked surprised, but not about what Jutta had said.

                                            "Yeah? You've told me?"

                                            Morning Star looked at Boom Zoom with a morose expression.

                                            "Boom, you are abusing salt too much."

                                            "Hey, you pray to the old gods too much," he retorted, then pointed with his muzzle towards Jutta,

                                            "and she eats bloody shit too much."

                                            "My bloody shit harms only it's source!" screeched the grifoness and laughed over her own joke,

                                            "I live off it. That's not my fault it's the way the nature created me."

                                            "So what? And I perform much better with my shit. I, like, feel the music in me!" Boom flared his wings.

                                            "And also ruts like a champ under it," Drone added, "His lust becomes more nutritious that way."

                                            "Duuuude..." Jutta drawled with a slight disgust evident in her tone.

                                            "What? That's not my fault it's the way the nature created me." Drone mocked her, "I was made to gulp marejuice or take a dick, depending on the target available.

                                            "I fucking lament that Mother never thought of simply setting up a legitimate brothel."

                                            "Screw you, whore!" exhaled Jutta.

                                            "Oh, yes, please do!" the changeling fluttered its nonexistent eyelashes.

                                            Boom Zoom let out a loud whinny, laughing his ass off. Jutta followed his example a moment later.

                                            Even Morning Star couldn't hide a tragic smile.

                                            Having laughed along with others for some time, Drone abruptly fell silent, his face became severe.

                                            "That's a harsh truth, folks. The way of the nature, I mean.

                                            "Everything kills everyone, everyone eats off everyone and everyone inhabits their own econiche. Or at least should." it said in a dead-serious tone and hit the drum, producing a low, morbid sound.

                                            "What's with the pathos? Have you overeaten?" Jutta made a jab at Drone.

                                            "Yes." it smiled sheepishly.

                                            "Thought so." the grifoness laughed some more.

                                            Morning Star looked at the clock on the wall.

                                            "I suggest we cut the chatter. It's already 8 o'clock PM, the auidence has probably started to gather.

                                            Would be bad if someone would hear us."

                                            "You really should say "somepony" next time, just for the sake of it." Jutta chuckled.

                                            "I fear I can blurt it out, by the force of habit, in some everyday conversation and get into trouble."

                                            "Fair enough." the grifoness nodded, along with Drone.

                                            Boom Zoom just continued to torture the keyboard, not paying attention to the others.

                                            They rehearsed in silence for a while.

                                            "You know, I'm actually glad sometimes, that we are together." Jutta whispered suddenly.

                                            "I can say everything on my mind here and tell how much I hate everyone else. You included."

                                            "I guess, I can say the same. Although it's tiring sometimes, of course, but the bottled up anger is worse. It gives me a very strong ingigestion." Drone thoughtfuly clanked together it's pseudo-antlers.

                                            "Yeah. I absolutely hate that I need to pretend I'm some grass munching pansy, while the Griffonstone still lays in ruins, so they can siphon more of us into your shitty country--"

                                            "With your fucking kind around this place will also be in ruins soon enough." Boom Zoom interjected, leaving his keyboard alone for a moment.

                                            "Fuck you!" Jutta has reinforced her words gesturing with a bow.

                                            "You can't lick your own ass, kitty-failure," the pegasus looked her straight in the eye with a deadpan expression, but then coughed and began to laugh. His own joke got him.

                                            The grifoness huffed, but in a good-natured way.

                                            Suddenly, they heard approaching hoofsteps. The dull clopping of hooves over the wooden scene.

                                            The heavy dusty dark-red curtain jerked to the side slightly.

                                            The band fell silent.

                                            A relatively young unicorn stuck his head through the crack between the wall and the curtain.

                                            His mane was long and styled, like a mare's one. It was also brightly colored with all the warm colors in the spectrum, somehow resembling a reformed changeling's palette.

                                            Long fake eyelashes looked jarringly out of place on his squarish face.

                                            "Oh, you've already gathered!" He said with vomit inducing on-duty cheer in his tone, "Good, very good! The public is here. We can begin whenever you would like."

                                            The musicians exchanged glances.

                                            "The concert starts at nine thirty," said Morning Star calmly, "we will begin as it was agreed upon."

                                            The unicorn wasn't taken aback at all.

                                            "Sure, sure. Just thought you were so excited to share your music with everycreature so you would want to start early! OK, I'll make the announcement."

                                            He bailed out, his hoovesteps fading this time.

                                            "You know, long time ago, right after the warping-- oh, sorry, I meant to say """reformation,"""," Drone chuckled, "I knew a stallion who wanted a changeling to turn into his exact copy to screw himself."

                                            "Ew, what the fuck!" gargled Boom Zoom. Others just laughed. Drone continued:

                                            "This here moron, however, would rather try to turn into a changeling himself and be fucked."

                                            "He's OK though." squawked Jutta, "He hates our shit and leaves right after we start. An ideal Art Council official, really. I wish more were like him."

                                            "Agreed." Morning Star nodded and looked at the clock once more. "Alright, time to play."

                                            Drone lit up with his green aura and visibly rippled, deformed itself in an uncanny frightening manner and rearranged once more.

                                            Now he was covered from head to toe in the black chitin plates, his body angular and menacing, complete with fangs slightly protruding out of his mouth.

                                            The changeling drone of the times bygone.

                                            Jutta, being situated the closest of them all to the curtain-lifting mechanism, pulled the chord.

                                            The red veil crawled aside, revealing the musicians, seated and ready, to the public.

                                            ***

                                            Gathered on the meadow in front of the open theater scene there was a usual mish-mash of creatures.

                                            Ponies, kirin, griffons, rainbow-colored crowd of reformed changelings, a dragon or two in the back.

                                            The Art Council official, responsible for organisation, tried to herd the dragons closer to the crowd and they reluctantly took a few steps.

                                            After that he got up onto the scene. His horn lit up and a dull glow appeared around his throat -- a sound amplification spell.

                                            "Good evening, everycreature! Thank you kindly for attending our event. The Art Council of Equestria brings to you an amazing diverse collective performing in a new and popular genre of punk rock!"

                                            The public cheered. Some changelings, newbies to this band's performance perhaps, looked visibly flabbergasted by Drone's appearance.

                                            The Art Council functionary noticed it.

                                            "Do not be concerned, the drummer changeling's appearance is a stage make up! Everything proceeds under approval!

                                            Drone snarled at his words. Now, that it had fangs, its expression was looking much better.

                                            "So, without further ado, here they come -- an awesome band with an awesome name -- "Vaseline"!"

                                            Having said that, the unicorn stepped down and away from the scene.

                                            "One! Two! One, two, three!" Drone hit the cymbal repeatedly and the concert has begun.

                                            Jutta stroked the strings of her huge rounded double bass with a bow, giving a birth to an ominous, sharp and imposing melody.

                                            Boom Zoom followed her, hitting the keyboard face-first, banging the keys with his muzzle. He produced an amazing string of tones, very harsh to hear, but eerily captivating nevertheless.

                                            Drone was drumming its drums, performing a fast aggressive staccato.

                                            Morning Star have been waiting for her turn, looking at the audience carefully, spying on the government official.

                                            He stood at the last line, his sweet expression was faltering visibly even at that distance.

                                            The unicorn mare smiled.

                                            Finally, she saw him getting into his aerial carriage parked on the parking lot nearby.

                                            The concert was going on, public was diverse enough, a musical collective was as well, so his work has been done.

                                            The carriage took flight, being pulled by a griffon and a pegasus.

                                            Morning Star nodded to herself and struck her guitar with a plectrum, extracting a high and majestic chord.

                                            The first chord of the "Hymn to the Sun" actually, which nobody was playing anymore for decades, because it was deemed problematic.

                                            But because of that, nobody in the audience knew this centuries old song and could not expose her, with the Art Council official already being absent.

                                            Among the noise the other three produced, the ancient song sounded like a pillar of heavenly light, like a harsh reprimand, condemning the depravity and villainy of Tartarus.

                                            All four of them played their own thing.

                                            Without any coordination the concert sounded like a brash cacophony, but after the initial aversion one would have noticed a strange, twisted kind of artistic beauty in its dissonance.

                                            The public stood captivated and speechless, swaying with whatever rhythm they was catching through the noise.

                                            After some time, the creatures on the meadow began to slowly shift into a completely new formation.

                                            The dragons went further back, trying to keep as far from each other as possible.

                                            The ponies bundled together, the kirin crowd did the same staying closest to their equine cousins but without intermingling with them.

                                            The griffons gathered together, at a significant distance from everyone else, so as the changelings.

                                            The four musicians performed furiously, but at after a long last the time of the concert had finally run out.

                                            Jutta, Drone and Boom Zoom fell silent.

                                            The final chord of Morning Star's guitar marked the end of today's performance.

                                            The public exploded with applause.

                                            Those who had hooves have been stomping loudly. Those, who weren't blessed by nature as much were busy clapping their front limbs together.

                                            "Thank you! Thank you very much!"Morning Star bellowed using an amplification spell of her own.

                                            The concert goers began to disperse, once again separating themselves from the crowds of the likes of them. Some searched for the people they came with, some were going away on their own, dragons being the best example.

                                            Drone ran behind the curtain to revert to his usual reformed appearance.

                                            Jutta hugged her double bass and hid her face behind the instruments long neck, to cover her tears.

                                            Boom Zoom took his head off the keyboard, looking around groggily. The salt concentration dropped, drained by the sweating and now he began experiencing the harsh withdrawal.

                                            Suddenly, the lone earth pony colt broke away from the group of ponies he was with and trotted to the scene.

                                            He quickly ascended the stairs and stood in front of the band, breathing heavily with excitement.

                                            "I-- I want to-- That was awesome, really awesome and cool!" he blurted out.

                                            His eyes were sparkling.

                                            "I think--," he began, but stopped and dropped his tone to a whisper, "You are heroes! All of you!"

                                            Morning Star simply looked at him, as calm and collected as ever, and said nothing.

                                            "What the fuck are you on about, lad?" Boom Zoom interject in a harsh tone, "There are no heroes in a punk rock band, for shit's sake!"

                                            "I- I understand. Of course. Don't you worry!" the colt nodded. Still smiling he nuzzled Morning Star's chest, making the unicorn mare to recoil slightly with surprise, and ran off.

                                            "Fucking little shit," Boom Zoom grumbled.

                                            "Precious little shit," Jutta vocalized her opinion from beyond the bass.

                                            It was unclear, if she said it just to irritate the pegasus stallion or not.

                                            Boom Zoom gurgled and once again unsteadily trotted to the sink. Others began to pack their equipment, soon enough becoming accompanied by the muffled sounds of vigorous vomiting.