Octavia awoke the next morning to a steady “thump, thump, thump” of pain in her forehead. She groaned, making an attempt to stagger to her hooves before collapsing onto the ground again, scattering bottles across the floor. “Whatever happened last night must’ve been a real doozy…” she thought. “I can’t even remember the last time I got that smashed.” She chuckled to herself. “Not that I would have remembered, of course.”
She slowly tried to open her eyes, then instantly regretted it as an intense wave of light bombarded her. “Gah!” she screamed, closing them again. She wobbled onto her hooves, grasping at the countertop to try to stay upright.
“All right, first order of business: I’d like to be able to see. Seeing is nice,” she muttered, taking a few tentative steps toward the direction she was pretty sure her bedroom was in. She kicked a few bottles as she did so, hissing in pain. Taking a hoof off the counter, she groped around in front of her, moving as many bottles out of the way as possible. Satisfied the path was somewhat clear now, she placed her other front hoof on the ground, then shakily took a step forward. “Well, I haven’t fallen over yet. Looks like I’m getting better.”
She blindly felt around in front of her, feeling around for the doorway that led into her room. “It was over here, wasn’t it?” she thought as she slowly crept down the hall, her right hoof never leaving the wall. Finally, she felt the wall end in a corner. “Aha! The doorway!” Stumbling over and collapsing onto her bed, she blindly felt around for her bedside table. After a few minutes of groping around, she finally found the sunglasses and earplugs she kept there. “Yes! Victory!” she whispered, putting them on and finally opening her eyes. She flinched at the bright light streaming in from the window, but at least it was bearable now.
“All right, do I have anything I need to do today? Because otherwise I’m just going to go back to bed,” she whispered aloud. Her brain slowly warmed up and began running through all her possible appointments. “It’s not a Wednesday, is it? I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I already met with Fancy Pants, and I already sent my new song in to—” Her brain froze. The name “Sound Wave” brought all her memories of the night before crashing back down, tearing through a few synapses along the way.
A date. He had set her up on a date, and threatened her if she didn’t go. And not just any date, either. It was a date with another mare, the one from that terrible dubstep piece. At least, she was pretty sure that’s who it was. It was a few years ago, after all, and she’d tried to suppress the memories of it since then. “Should I even bother going?” she thought briefly, before the memory of the notecard flashed in front of her, snapping her awake. “I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
She sighed and began running through how to approach this “date”. The tabloids would be all over this, so she couldn’t look like she wasn’t taking things seriously. She decided her signature bow tie would be formal enough. She tied it loosely around her neck, briefly glancing in the mirror to make sure it was presentable. It was a bit sloppy, but no one would be able to tell from a distance. “Good enough for the cameras, good enough for me,” she concluded.
Was Vinyl in on this whole scheme? From their brief time working together, Octavia had found her to be… Unpredictable, to say the least. It certainly hadn’t been a good first impression. Vinyl’s first words when she walked into the studio had been, “Who here is ready to party?!” followed by her knocking over Octavia’s glass. The sudden rudeness of it had startled Octavia, causing her to drop her bow, which was accidentally stepped on when Vinyl careened into the booth next to her. Specifically, her bow worth 5,000 bits that had been carefully oiled a few moments prior. Vinyl still had yet to really apologize for that.
So this was the pony she had to pretend to be interested in. She mentally groaned and glanced at the clock. “Well, at least I have some time to sleep before I have to start this ridiculous facade.” She set her alarm for 3:30 and flopped into bed, her bow tie coming undone in the process. “I am so not looking forward to doing this sober.”
“That no-good, dirty, rotten, bottom feeding scumbag!” screamed Vinyl, throwing her pillow across the room. Several more insults were screamed as she pounded her head against the wall, most of which would have been far too excessive to repeat if a teen-rated story were written about her. After a few minutes she gave her head a rest and stopped, a small bruise forming on her forehead. She panted heavily, gritting her teeth. “That son of a bitch is lucky he’s got dirt on me, otherwise I’d be beating him into a pulp right now. You know what, screw it. I don’t care what gets out, I’m not doing it!” Another pillow flew across the room, and Vinyl stood there panting and staring at it.
As the adrenaline from her outburst began to slowly drain from her, she took a look around her room. Pillows lay scattered everywhere, and her fan letters, usually neat and organized, were strewn about the room, as if a tornado had blown through. Luckily, the framed letters she kept on her wall had escaped her fury relatively unscathed. She straightened any that had been accidentally bumped, then turned around to begin picking up loose debris.
“Oh, I know what will make me feel better,” she thought, picking up a pink envelope with her address scribbled onto the front in crayon. She opened it, smiling as she pulled out a letter and a slightly smooshed flower. “It’s the thought that counts,” she chuckled to herself, putting the flower on her desk and beginning to decipher the messy handwriting of the letter.
“Dear Vinyl Scratch,
im such a big fan of your music and i buy ever one the minute they come out and i can buy them! i love all of your songs and i have all of them in my collection even the ones that i dont like as much because i still love them!”
Vinyl smiled and felt her whole body relax a little. She glanced at the flower on her desk happily. “I need to find a vase for that,” she thought before turning back to the letter to continue reading. However, her body bristled as she read the next words.
“i hope yu have a fun time with your special somepony and that they give you lots of hugs and kissis because yu luv each other so much!!!
Yor #1 fan, Spring Step”
“This, this is just too far,” she thought, clenching her teeth so hard they felt like they could fly out of her mouth at any moment, “the one place I had left, and now it’s just a reminder of what a terrible pony he is. The first chance I get, he’s so dead! I’m gonna kill that slimy bastard!” Several more increasingly violent thoughts were had by Vinyl, but her thoughts were interrupted when she heard the sound of ripping paper, and realized that the letter she had been holding was torn in half. After her initial shock, tears began to dot the page, and she frantically dug through her drawer for the tape she kept in it. She abandoned her search when her vision became too filled with tears to see, and fell onto the ground, sobbing. She threw the two halves of the letter at her bed when she realized they would soon be soaked, and began to bawl into her hooves instead.
“Why? Why did I have to get myself into this mess in the first place?” she choked out as she cried. “I didn’t think that money-loving scumbag thing was bad enough for this, was it? Does he just hate me or something? Why would he do this to me!” Any further words were lost as another wave of sobs hit her, turning her words into an incoherent mess.
Vinyl woke up to the sound of birds chirping outside her window, through which a ray of light was streaming in. She groaned, pulling herself off the floor to her hooves. There was a wet patch where she had been lying, and her eyes stung. Her back hurt from the uncomfortable position she had fallen asleep in, and she stretched a bit to try to work some of the kinks out. She glanced at the alarm clock by her bed. It was almost 3:00. “Guh,” she thought, “almost the time when Wave told me to be at the Tasty Treat. Guess I’ve got an hour until my career’s over.”
She glanced around the room, then noticed her purple goggles by her bed. Normally she only wore them while she was performing, but they’d also be an excellent way of covering her eyes, which she guessed were probably bloodshot from last night. As she put them on, however, she noticed the letter she had ripped in half last night, tear stains blotting it and making it even harder to read than the poor hoofwriting and spelling had already made it. She got out the tape from her desk and began to put it back together again. As she reread the last line though, she sighed.
“I can’t let that filly down,” she thought. “She’s probably not the only one that expects me to have a fun, happy romance. They’d all be devastated if they found out that none of it was real…” Having finished taping the letter back together, she set it down on her desk and stared at it. “I can’t let them down…” She glanced at the clock again. 3:15. There was still time to get there.
“Smile for the cameras…” she thought, putting her goggles on and heading out the door.