Vinyl’s glass slammed down onto the bar once again, this time with enough force to create a small crack in the bottom of the tumbler.
“Barkeep, keep ‘em coming!” Vinyl called out, drunkenly observing her now-cracked glass. “And I’ll need another glass.”
“Look, Vinyl, first of all, my name is Mixer, and second, I know it’s none of my business, but you’re obviously broken up over something, and clearly the last eight or nine vodka-7s haven’t been helping,” said the bartending pegasus.
Vinyl waited a second before responding. “Nine?”
“Honestly, I lost count a while ago, I’m just guessing,” responded Mixer. “If you ask me, it’s time to call it a night, get some shut-eye, and try again tomorrow.”
Vinyl indignantly stared at Mixer and tapped her hoof on the bar in front of her. Mixer sighed and began pouring her another vodka-7, reluctantly. “You’re the boss...”
“You should listen to him, you’ve been sitting there moping around ever since I got here, and honestly, you’re kind of killing the mood around here,” a pegasus sitting at the other end of the bar chimed in. Her coat was a light, almost baby blue and her mane was fashioned into a large, very elaborate mohawk. At first glance, her mane was a very bright, hot pink, but her roots appeared to be a natural light brown, indicating that she had dyed her hair that way. Either it was from the distance or her inebriation (or perhaps both), but Vinyl had trouble making out what exactly her cutie mark was, though it looked like either a hammer or a guitar in front of a starburst shape.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I ruining your night?” Vinyl asked, offended.
“To be honest, yeah. I came in here to have a drink and I’ve had to listen to you sob over there for the last hour and a half,” the pegasus responded.
“You’re free to leave if you want, there are plenty of other bars around here,” said Vinyl with a wave of her hoof.
“Or maybe you should leave and let everypony else enjoy their evening without you raining on our good time,” said the pegasus, becoming increasingly agitated.
“And maybe you should mind your own damn business and let me be,” barked back Vinyl. That must have been a breaking point for the pegasus, as she immediately got off her barstool and walked towards Vinyl. Vinyl, recognizing the pegasus’s advancement, got off her barstool and moved towards her.
“Hey, hey!” Mixer said, sensing the clear confrontation that was about to happen. It did little to stop Vinyl and the pegasus from getting into each other’s faces.
“Maybe we should take this outside, if you got a problem,” said the pegasus, threateningly, turning her head.
“Do we have a problem? I dunno, do we have a problem? Because if you have a problem, I suggest you stop being such a pussy and do something about it!” Vinyl seethed back at her, rage once again filling her eyes. She barely finished her sentence before the pegasus reared up and slammed both of her hooves into Vinyl’s face, tossing her on her back. The pegasus attempted to pounce on Vinyl, but she quickly bucked her with her hind legs and sent her back stumbling.
“HEY, HEY STOP, THAT’S ENOUGH!” Mixer shouted, now running around to the front of the bar. Vinyl returned to her hooves and grabbed the pegasus by her head, managing to land a few solid punches on her before the pegasus flew up and lifted the DJ off her feet, sending her flying and landing hard on her back. The pegasus landed firmly on top of Vinyl and stomped her hooves into Vinyl’s body and face. Vinyl summoned some magic from her horn and managed to grapple onto the pegasus’ mane, though the alcohol in her system caused her concentration to waver slightly. She intended to pull the mare off of her, but instead ripped out a chunk of hair from her mane, causing the pegasus to stumble back in pain and giving Vinyl a chance to get up and grapple with her again. Vinyl managed to push the pegasus into the bar and land another punch on her before the pegasus wrapped her leg around Vinyl’s and tripped her. Vinyl fell to the ground and hit the back of her head on the hard tile floor, sending her into a bit of a daze. The pegasus once again mounted her and landed at least 3 or 4 hard punches into Vinyl’s face before Mixer’s magic grabbed both of them by the tail.
“Alright, that’s enough from you two, get the fuck out of here!” he called out as he dragged them to the entrance. He didn’t even bother to open the door for them, instead opting to use their bodies to painfully burst through the door before heaving them out onto the sidewalk. The pegasus quickly returned to her hooves as Vinyl lay in a heap, coughing and trying to regain full consciousness.
“Get the fuck out of here, both of you. Vinyl, you’re cut off for the next week, I don’t wanna see you here again until then. Now get out of here before I call Celestia’s guard!” angrily called out Mixer before retreating back into the bar.
Vinyl slowly began to stand up back on her hooves before she felt a sharp kick to her midsection, knocking her off her hooves and back onto the sidewalk.
“That’s for ruining my night, bitch,” the pegasus bitterly said. Vinyl attempted to say something, but all that came out were coughs, the wind being kicked out of her. Recognizing her victory, the pegasus flapped her wings and flew away, but not before spitting on the fallen unicorn. Vinyl lay there for a moment as her breath slowly returned to her. The door to the bar swung open again, and out flew Vinyl's broken sunglasses, striking her squarely on her already-bleeding face.
----------------
Vinyl stumbled her way to a nearby park and planted herself on one of the benches to catch her breath. The alcohol in her was causing her to slowly lose grasp on her memory of the night, though she had small, yet vivid flashbacks to the pegasus pouncing on her and landing a few blows on her. She massaged her rib cage with one hoof, her face with the other. One of her ribs may have been broken, though she wasn’t entirely sure. She felt the left side of her face begin to swell up, and already her left eye had begun to close up from bruising. She spat, and what came out was a combination of about 25% saliva, 75% blood. She breathed somewhat heavily, coming out more as a wheeze than anything. She imagined she’d be in a greater level of pain had she not had so much alcohol in her system to dull it away, at least temporarily.
She sat there for a bit, not necessarily thinking about anything, the vodka sort of keeping her mind on a single track. Within minutes, she had completely forgotten the path she took to get to this park bench, and honestly, had no idea which direction her apartment was from that point. Vinyl began to wonder to herself how she had gotten to this point; in the long list of bad nights she had experienced as a DJ, this was definitely a new low for her, but she couldn’t quite remember how it had all come to this.
Octavia.
The name popped into her head, and in an instant, a flood of memories of what happened between them surfaced into her mind, as vividly as if she were sober. The things she said, Vinyl flinging her cello across the room and Octy crying in a heap over its ruins. She remembered the agonizing, paralyzing guilt she felt in that moment, the agony that she must have put Octavia through, and it all began to wash over Vinyl in that moment.
Almost instantaneously, she broke down into deep sobs. She buried her face in her hooves, but it didn’t help. It wasn’t a silent kind of a cry, but a loud, messy weeping. Her tears were met with cries of anguish, despair, pain, and self-loathing. She didn’t know if she could ever be happy again; she wanted to die right then and there. Her only saving grace was that, it being 2:30 at night, nopony was out to see her pathetic sight. Tears flooded into her eyes faster than they could dispel them, blurring her vision as if she had dunked her head into a pool of water. A combination of blood and mucus leaked from her nostrils. Losing the will to even sit up, she crumpled onto her side, turning her tears to the cold wooden bench she sat on.
She wanted to stop and regain control of her senses, but at some level, she also wanted this. She felt as thought she deserved the physical and emotional pain she was experiencing, because Octavia had been too good to give that inflict that on her herself. At some level, Vinyl wished that by destroying Octavia’s cello in front of her, it would have gotten a rise out of her, and maybe she could have lashed out at Vinyl some way. She could have yelled in Vinyl’s face, or even physically attacked her, something, anything, just enough to give Vinyl the punishment she felt she deserved. But instead, she did just the opposite - she did nothing. No words of protest, no severance of their friendship, not even a single word towards Vinyl, she did nothing, allowing Vinyl to wallow in her own misery without any catharsis to alleviate it. With this thought, Vinyl curled up into a ball and wrapped her forearms around her legs, turning her head and continuing to cry into the coarse, wooden bench.