First Impressions - Chapter 2
A Change Of Scenery
Chapter Two – First Impressions
The young DJ was sitting at a mahogany desk, wearing her three-quarter-length cyan jeans and a white tank top. She had brought along a bag that was filled with clothes and some of her most popular records, as she had been able to get a gig in a local nightclub, but that was all she had until the moving van came with the rest of her stuff in three days.
There were portraits all over the walls and numerous bookcases. She was in the middle of a talk with her life-saver, Top Chart. They had been discussing many things about her new job. While she was guaranteed the place, they still had to discuss exactly how much she was being paid and some other stuff which Vinyl blanked out - probably some rules and conditions and some other stuff that she never listened to. She was going to be getting an apartment in the building but she would be living on the same corridor as the students that were specialising in music.
“Thank you again! You have literally saved my life,” the blue haired unicorn said as she stood up from the desk.
“Stop thanking me! A mare of you stature and career should never be thanking a classical musician like me,” he laughed.
“I have one last question...”
“Hmm?” He lifted his head
“Can I have a map or something? Just to get used to the place...” She was a little embarrassed by asking the question.
He held back a laugh. “Don’t worry, there’s one in your folder, along with information about all of your students and when you will be teaching.”
“This is gonna be so much fun!”
“Really?” He asked, a little surprised.
“What’s so surprising about that?”
“What? Oh, no, I didn’t mean, eh... I wasn’t implying... I jus-I just, eh...” He mumbled uncontrollably.
“I’m just fucking with you,” Top Chart turned red as he looked everywhere but at Vinyl. “Anyway, I should probably get going. I wouldn’t want to keep you from all your important pony stuff,” she gestured to the paperwork that he was slowly working through. “PEACE!” she shouted before leaving the office.
Vinyl stepped out into the semi-crowded corridor, thankful that it was around two in the afternoon, as lots of students were either out eating or were taking part in some of the few lessons that happened during the break, leaving the halls a lot emptier and easier for her to find her way around. The unicorn, being as awkward as possible, decided that it would be more fun for her to just wander about instead of actually heading to where she would be staying and getting ready. No, that was too mainstream for Vinyl.
She went everywhere both in and around the school grounds; the main canteen to see how bad the food was on campus, which was surprisingly good, or it at least was by Vinyl's standards, then to the English department, ecology, anthropology and everything else. There was even a part for skywriting, which shocked Vinyl the most, not just because it had it’s own actual place in the University but because it was a lecture hall and not something more outdoorsy.
Her little search was cut short when she finally stumbled across West Block, which contained her, and the music students’, rooms. It was along the outer part of the University, probably not even on the grounds of it, and was just hired out for the extra accommodation. It then occurred to Vinyl that she had no idea where her room was. Top Chart had just told her the name of where she would be staying and to get checked in. There was no mention of a room number or something like that.
Deciding that there was nothing else for her to do, Vinyl headed inside to get checked in and was immediately overwhelmed by its style. Not even surgical theatres were as clean as this place was. The lobby was sparsely populated around the edges with ponies coming in or out of the building. Only a few were standing at the desk, either with bags or just talking to the staff. She crossed the small lobby to the main desk and was welcomed by a pale pink mare with a smooth, wavy, burgundy mane, sitting comfortably behind the desk and tapping rapidly into the computer. She looked up to see Vinyl approaching.
“Welcome to Aliqueens, how may I help you?” She asked in a warming voice. Vinyl couldn’t tell if it was forced, or if she was genuinely happy.
“I’m here to check into a room?” Vinyl asked, unsure of what to do.
“University accommodation or personal business?”
“Er, University reasons.”
“Okay. I need your name and student ID number.”
“Vinyl Scratch and T34.” The receptionist stopped typing into the computer.
“I’m sorry. Do you you mean S034?”
“...No. It’s definitely T and no zero.” The mare looked up at Vinyl for another second before tapping at the keyboard again.
“Oh? Your room is number 114, floor level 11. Should be on the right from the elevator on the left side” She stood up from behind the desk and walked to one of two doors. She tapped a small serie of digits into the coded lock of the door, opening it after a quiet beep and walked in. Vinyl just stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether she was able to leave or not yet. The mare returned holding a small card.
“Your keycard, Ms. Scratch,” she said as she held the card out towards Vinyl, who took it slowly.
“Thank you.”
“Good luck at your new job.”
“Thanks… Wait, how’d you kn-”
“Oh,” Vinyl gave a single chuckle.
“Enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks,” Vinyl turned turned and walked around the right of the desk to the elevator, still taking in the majestic lobby around her. She was a little excited to see what a classy apartment would actually look like.
“Woah... That is a lot of floors.” Vinyl admired the list of floors that went over 30. “I don’t think anypony would mind me going and checking out the roof view.” She began to reach to press the top floor.
“HOLD IT!” A mare spoke, causing Vinyl to immediately retract her hand and wonder where the voice came from. The mare in question entered into a view. Or was she classed as a filly? maybe a young mare? She decided that it wasn’t important. Vinyl could tell that she was an earth pony by the obvious lack of horn and wings. Her fur was a dull grey and she had a long, straight, black mane and tail, giving Vinyl an image of her being very strict and serious, but Vinyl couldn’t judge her just yet. There had been many times that ponies had judged her badly and she didn’t want to do that to somepony else. The mare was wearing a tailored, grey suit jacket and boring black trousers, neither of which helped to disprove Vinyl’s thought of her ponyality. Not that she was judging her...
“Thanks,” the mare stated as she walked into the lift and took her place to Vinyl’s right, showing that she was an inch or two taller than the DJ.
“Floor?”
“Twelve” Vinyl pressed the buttons for floor eleven and twelve. There were a few seconds of silence before the mare spoke again.
“So are you in the University?” she said after noticed the two floors pressed.
“Yeah. How’d you know?” Vinyl replied.
“Floors ten to fifteen have been hired out by the Uni. It allows more and bigger rooms for each subject and saved the complication of having to build them all.”
“A place like this, though? That can’t exactly be a cheap and efficient way of doing it.”
“Well, from what I understand, the grants per student were enough to maintain the cost of the living conditions, and these accommodations have given a more relaxed environment for the students.”
“Wow. How’d you know all that?”
“My parents fought hard for me to get one of these rooms. They wanted a very relaxing and professional accommodation for me so I can be at my best all the time. Whenever I said I would be fine with the normal then they gave me the list of reasons and every small detail about it and why I should have one. It was only after that when they realised all music students would be getting a place here.” She chuckled quietly to herself, remembering their reactions when they found out they didn’t have to do all of their work. “So, how come I haven’t seen you here before?” She continued.
“I’m new.”
“Oh! What subject are you specialising in?”
“Music. More specifically, electronic music or the ‘undesired arts', as many upper class ponies have called it.” This was Vinyls’ turn to smile a little at the numerous arguments she had gotten into with ponies offending her music genre.
“I can understand that being annoying.”
“You do music as well?” Vinyl asked, completely forgetting the mares earlier hint..
“Yes. The cello, not a particularly popular instrument like the violin or flute, but not one of the lesser known either. The perfect balance, I think.” There was a slight ‘ding’ as the doors opened onto floor eleven.
“I’ll, eh, see you around, I guess.” Vinyl took two steps out off the lift, but quickly turned back to face the mare. She stuck her hand out towards her. “I should probably mention, my name's Vinyl Scratch.”
“Octavia.” She accepted the handshake. But she was a little shocked that she had not introduced herself earlier, that was not how she was brought up. “It was a pleasure meeting you.” Vinyl smiled and took off down the hall, leaving Octavia alone in the lift.
“Well, that was rather civil for a mare of her ‘mus-” She immediately stopped herself from going any further. It wasn’t right of her to say something like that so early.
}------{
Vinyl walked down the corridor, counting the numbers as she went and secretly listening in to whatever noise came through the doors. The DJ may have respected ponies’ privacy, but she still wanted some idea of who her new neighbours would be. Fortunately for them, she didn’t hear much. She turned back to enter her room. It was a plain, red door with the golden digits of the room’s number at about eye level. The was a rectangular handle above the keycard reader and a small number pad next to it. Vinyl pulled the card from her pocket and slid it down the scanner. A few seconds later, a small beep sounded and the door unlocked, opening into her new home.
She stood in the doorway with awe, gazing at her room. Vinyl dropped her bag at her hooves and looked around. The walls of the place were a nice, pure, deep red, with the bottom hoof being a clean, snow white. Directly in front of her was the main part of the room. Four steps down from the door was the main section of the room. A few metres to her left, and still on the raised floor, was a black door with two thin, horizontal white strips across it, the lower being just above the white part of the wall and the higher another hoof up.
And then she stared at the two ponies already in the main section of the room and on the sofa both of whom were staring back.
The pony on the near side was looking at her with full on confusion. Her hair was a light yellow that sparkled like gold in the lighting, not incredibly long but enough to curve over the part of her left eye and still make it down to her neck. It complimented her neatly groomed, grey coat very nicely. Her outfit of the day was a loose, plain blue T-shirt along with a darker blue pair of track pants. Not a complex set of clothes, but Vinyl would have been lying if it didn’t look comfy. The mare continued looking for a few seconds before her head turned towards the other pony on the further side of the sofa, whose eyes showed more than just confusion. She seemed frozen with fear.
The other mare just stared at Vinyl, not looking away, just blinking. She could have even had a heart attack and Vinyl wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. A strand of her short, purple hair fell in between her eyes but she still didn’t move. Her fur was also a shade of grey like the other mare's, but a lot darker and not nearly as neatly kept. She was wearing a blue plaid shirt, top button undone, along with dead black jeans. Vinyl got the idea that both of them seemed to like the colour blue. Her mouth slowly opened as she prepared to speak.
“...Ahamanubuna… Aahh hummna?” The mare stuttered, but that wasn’t what grabbed Vinyl’s attention. What she saw was the two teeth that stuck out more than the others, and a lot more sharp. The other mare lightly kicked her leg.
“You may want to repeat that. Only without the garbled language.” She smirked, earning an annoyed look from the fanged pony.
“ah-aha-um...Who-who-who are you?” Well, there went Vinyl’s theory of her recognising her.
“Names Vinyl Scr-”
“I-I-I-I know that.” Nevermind, Vinyl was right. She did recognise her. “I mean what is-what are you-you...” She began to repeatedly point her finger towards Vinyl and laughed a little awkwardly. “What are you doing here? Of all places?”
“...I’m gonna be living here for a while?” Vinyl had no idea whether or not she had entered the wrong room and the key had malfunctioned or something. The purple maned mare held back a slight squee and rubbed her right hand around her chin and neck before settling with resting her head on her fist.
“Would you just excuse me for one minute?” She stood up and walked past Vinyl, smiling all the way, and walked through the door that to right of the entrance, to the left when walking into the room.
Vinyl took a few steps down into the main section of the room, looking around and taking in the layout. Around the left corner from her original view and behind the sofa was a small alleyway-like thing with a single door on its left wall. To the right of that, and still in the main section of the place, were two doors, one on either end of the wall with the same colour pattern as the other. She turned around and saw the kitchen behind her and to the right. It was hiding behind the wall on her right as she entered. Her gaze returned back to the other mare, who had now stood up from the sofa and was still smiling at recent events.
“Sooooooooo… Hi, my name's Derpy. Derpy Hooves. I think i heard your name was Vinyl?” One more of the mare's features became noticeable to Vinyl as she walked closer. Her eye, or one of her eyes, to be precise.
“Scratch. It’s Vinyl Scratch. Quick question. What was with that other mare's teeth?” She didn’t care how rude she may have sounded when asking it, which was probably very, seeing as she hadn’t been in the room five minutes and was already commenting on somepony's looks. Derpy gave a confused look in return.
“What? OH! Oh, you mean the fangs. Yeah, first of all, her name is Shockwave.” She gave a little bounce as she pointed towards the door that ‘Shockwave’ had disappeared through. “Secondly, she is a bat pony, so, eh, that means fangs and big leathery wings, and it's also the reason for her grey fur and purple mane.”
The two mares stood awkwardly a few steps apart from each other, neither knowing what to do in this position. Its not exactly everyday that somepony random walks into your room with a keycard and claims to be living there. Shockwave walked back into this section of the apartment.
“So, two phone calls, many tears of joy, a long series of screaming at the top my lungs and one secret picture later, I hath returned!” she announced, looking chipper. Vinyl laughed a little to herself at the list.
“I didn’t hear you scream, though,” Derpy said, still looking confused.
“It’s soundproof, remember?” Shockwave waved her arms in the general direction of the room while still looking at Derpy.
The three of them just stood there, looking around around the room. Vinyl was taking in the actual layout and how this was a room for Uni students. She knew it was, of course, from a pretty big hotel, but the fact that it had been hired out didn't change that it was still pretty big. Her mind kept jumping back to when she was in Uni. Having a room that was maybe one tenth of this size and sharing it with another pony. Now she was in a place which could fit at least fifteen ponies had they all been given the same amount of space.
“Soooooooo... Why are you here exactly?.. I didn’t mean that I don’t like you or, not want you here. It’s just that, well. You’re kind of passed Uni years for your career and already pretty famous.”
“It that obvious?”
“To me, yes. I doubt any other pony here even knows you… apart from Lyra, maybe. I can never tell with that mare, but I think she might have heard about you? I don’t really know,” she replied, a little confused while doing so.
“Well, seeing as I can’t exactly hide it from you for too long, and I’m gonna be living here, I should probably tell you.” Vinyl had hoped that something like this wouldn’t happen. Her plan was to completely mind fuck everyone after being around them for a while. That isn’t really a possibility for the ponies that she was going to live with. “I’m... I’m kinda gonna be your, eh... I’m gonna be your new music teacher slash professor slash tutor slash whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-call-me.”
Their reactions were weird to say the least. Shockwave just kind of froze, staring at nothing in particular and letting a smile of shock and disbelief spread across her face. Derpy, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly over enthusiastic about the idea. Her shoulders dropped down and her head fell back to help make it that much more obvious.
“Yeah. That’s how I figured somepony would react.”
“Wha-oh!” Shockwave shook her head to release the dazed state. “Sorry, I shouldn’t ha-”
“-Not you. I’m talkin’ about Derpy.” Shockwave turned towards the yellow maned mare, who began blushing heavily
“...Sorry.” She looked down at her hooves
“No need, It isn’t exactly a good thing to hear that you teacher or whatever will be living you. Just be thankful that I’m not dating your parents, though. that'd even worse.” The trio chuckled lightly for a few short seconds.
Another session of awkward silence took place, this one winning the all-time trophy for most awkward. It didn’t take long until Derpy slowly turned and walked into the door on the left side of the wall, behind the sofa.
“So... I should probably show you around?...Maybe?” Shockwave looked questioningly at Vinyl, who was looking around the place. “Seriously, give me some clues as to what to do here. I got no idea as to what happens now.”
“You don’t have to do anything. I mean, this is a pretty open apartment. I can see pretty much everything here. Just do whatever you normally do.”
“Yeaaaaah, that can’t really happen. Normal kind of walked out the door when you walked in, so I’m probably just going to stand somewhere in this place while taking many, many photos of you and stare constantly. That good?” Vinyl laughed. She could already tell that she was gonna like this mare, especially for weird little moments like this.
“Yeah, that’s good.” Shockwave began to walk off towards the same door that Derpy had gone through.
She stopped just before it to say, “FYI, the door to the right of the entrance is for practice ’n' shit. This one,” she pointed to the room she was heading into, “is my and Derpy’s bedroom, so you will be inhabitening that one over there,“ she pointed to the door on the same wall, but on the far right of it. She was about to walk into the room, but Vinyl managed to quickly call her back.
“You forgetting something?”
“Wha-? Oh yeah. Erm, bathroom is down that little hallway like thingy. And if you are a lot dumber than everypony says, it is the only door down there.” Shockwave disappeared into her bedroom, but returned in less than a second. “One last thing! You may want to wash the sheets in that room... or just get new ones altogether, they haven’t been washed for a year or something. Whichever you prefer.” She left again before Vinyl could ask why.
Vinyl jumped onto the sofa and lay down across it, resting her head on the end. She looked around her new home.
“...I could get used to this.”Three, not 3. Use digits in mathematical calculations and words in sentences. You can use digits for birthdays as well, but even then you should use words. They look nicer and read better than digits.
Some people argue that you should indent new paragraphs as well as having a line between it and the last, and I did it in my second story, but there's no definite rule about it. The most correct, to my knowledge, is a line between two paragraphs but no indent. The indent is for sub-paragraphs, which have no line between them and the origin paragraph. Because they're technically part of the same paragraph, they have no line break, so an indent is used. Run this by Susan, because he convinced me to use both when creating a new paragraph.
Top Chart or Ryan Record? There are a few similar discrepancies in your story, and I am honour-bound, as your editor, to find them all. Please pick one. For now, I'm going with Top Chart.
Top Chart. Ryan Record was for when I was doing this for a human story.
Never end quotations with a full stop. Use a comma where a period would normally go. Exclamation and question marks are okay, though.
Races, e.g. unicorn, do not take a capital letter
I'm not going to change this, seeing as the language has now changed to accept it, but so is usually supposed to be followed by that, e.g. Rainbow Dash flew so fast that she broke the speed of sound.
This was 'erm', but I changed it to eh. Change it back if you want. That's just my preference.
Skywriting?
I wanted some outragouse class for some reason
Oh. Okay. It works.
Ms. is used for a woman of unknown marital status. Miss is for an unmarried woman and Mrs. is for a married woman. The receptionist doesn't know Vinyl, so Ms. is used.
Again with the 'yea's. Yea is a middle/early modern English word that is not, and I will not repeat it again, equivalent to 'yes', 'affirmative' or 'yeah' in the way you mean it. It is often used alongside nay, as in 'Yea or nay'. While it does technically express an affirmative or positive answer, it is not the equivalent to 'yes'. Please spell the word 'yeah', or use another. Use of 'yea' is incorrect.
~ Decaf
I no longer like this. Something simpler might be nicer.
I assume this is a ponification of foot, as in the imperial measurement. You're thinking in American. I won't change it, because the foot is used, but don't automatically resort to imperial measurements.
Yea (Also an alternate spelling for 'yay').
Strips or stripes? Either works for me, but I'm not sure which is better. I noticed it, anyway.
I hath, thou hast, he hast, she hast, one hast, we hath, you hath, they hath.
Purposely spelt badly with the "ening"
Why?
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CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
You sir, have peeked my interest.
We did it! It's up! Woop.
Im probably guessing since this story started in september, and the latest update was the 12th of may, when is this going to update?
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I am trying to get at least one chapter every one or two weeks.
You should know that i had actually written over 30,000 words for this before and published them all. But then deleted it because it wad in need of a re-write due to pacing and just down right stupidity on my side. So im not just going to upload once every few months. This should be getting fairly regular updates.
4383420
*brohoof*
Me right now:
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
still a few to many OC's
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So, how's that working out for ya?