Octaves

by JapaneseTeeth

Chapter 1: The Root of All Evil

Octavia gazed out the window as she went through the motions of her cello exercises. She had been lucky enough to be placed in a dorm room that overlooked nearly the entire campus of the Canterlot Academy of Music. For the first time this year, it was warm enough to keep the window wide open. In the distance she could see a few weather pegasi shooing away a few lingering clouds.

Below the window, she could see the ponies who were finally starting to go out and enjoy the weather. A few who were walking down the road past the front of the dorm had stopped to listen. In the branches of the tree that stood in front of the dorm, birds were at work building their nest, tweeting an accompaniment to her strings. She smiled. She could hardly ask for a better-

WHAM.

The sound of a door slamming open behind her shattered the mood like a bowling ball through a stained glass window. She twitched so violently that she hit a flat note. The birds in the tree squawked and fluttered away, and the few ponies who had paused to listen cringed before continuing on their way.

Octavia sighed and put down her bow. She didn’t even need to turn around. Her roommate could never just open the door like a normal pony.

“Hello, Vinyl,” she said, making only a token effort to conceal the frustration in her voice.

“‘Sup, Tavi.”

Octavia heard the pop of the fridge door opening, and the clinking and crumpling noises of Vinyl rummaging around in it. In a minute or two, Vinyl would retrieve whatever unhealthy edible that she had come for and hoof it right back out the door to… wherever it was she spent her time. Vinyl’s tendency to spend virtually none of her time in their room aside from the occasional nap on the couch was the only thing that made the living arrangement bearable. As soon as she was gone, Octavia could resume her exercises.

She waited. Behind her, her roommate popped the top off of a bottle and guzzled it before smacking her lips loudly and belching.

“We’re outta root beer,” Vinyl announced as she slammed the fridge door.

“What do you mean we?” Octavia muttered to herself as she waited for the door to slam shut. It didn’t. In fact, she could hear Vinyl standing there. It was the headphones. When Vinyl wore them, they functioned more like small speakers. Octavia couldn’t hear the music, but she could hear the thumping that passed for a bass and percussion. How Vinyl could hear anything else was a mystery.

“What do you want, Vinyl?”

“Me? Oh, I got what I want.” There was a loud crunch, and several smaller crunches, the unmistakable sound of Vinyl finishing off a bag of chips and leaving crumbs on the floor in the process. “This is something that you want.”

“Huh?” Octavia put down her bow and turned to look over her shoulder. Vinyl was lounging against the doorway. Her usual grin seemed a little wider than usual, and her saddlebags looked unusually full. Octavia wasn’t sure she wanted to know why. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

“It means you’re gonna owe me one,” Vinyl said. One of her eyebrows moved. Octavia assumed it was a wink, but the sunglasses made it hard to tell. She couldn’t remember if she had ever seen Vinyl’s eyes. It was less of a problem than one would think; Vinyl’s expression was rarely anything besides that same grin.

“And why, pray tell, would I owe you ‘one’? One what?” Octavia gingerly placed her cello back in its case. Clearly, this would not be one of Vinyl’s quick pop-ins.

“‘Cause as soon as you sign this little paper, you’ll have enough bits to buy a dozen of those old-timey bass things!”

She whipped a wad of papers out of her saddlebags and shoved it towards Octavia. It was crumpled, and had a coffee ring from what must have been an oversized novelty coffee mug on it. The mess was held together by a single staple in the corner that was on the verge of giving up.

“It’s a cello,” Octavia muttered as she hesitantly accepted the paper, holding it carefully in fear that any additional damage would cause it to shred. She perused the first few lines. “Vinyl, this is one of your homework assignments.” She read a bit further. “And it was due last week.”

“Whoops. Wrong paper.” Vinyl snatched it out of Octavia’s hooves. “I’ll have to get an extension on it. This is the thing you need to sign!”

Octavia found another clump of equally-crumpled papers in her face. These seemed to have endured the trip in Vinyl’s bags a bit better than the homework. As she looked more closely it was obvious that they were printed on high-quality paper, with an embossed seal of some sort in the corner next to some official-looking letterhead.

“Canterlot Records Incorporated?” She flipped to the next page. Like the first, it was a solid block of legal jargon. “Vinyl, what is this and why do I need to sign it?”

“You need to sign it so that you’ll be able to get your royalties from my hit single!”

Octavia stared at her, unwilling to believe what she had just heard. “Your what?”

“My hit single, duh. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“H-how do you even have a hit single?!” Octavia sputtered. “And why would I receive royalties for it?”

“Well, I don’t have one yet if you want to be technical. But it’s gonna happen pretty soon.”

“Perhaps you ought to start at the beginning.” Octavia took a seat on the sofa. If she was going to be trapped in a conversation with Vinyl, she might as well be comfortable. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Wow, you really are oblivious, aren’t you?” Vinyl began to rummage through the chaos of her saddlebag. “Feast your eyes on this.”

For the third time in five minutes, Octavia found Vinyl thrusting something in her face, so close that she could barely make out what it was.

“Will you just give me some space?” she snapped as she grabbed the object out of Vinyl’s grasp and began to examine it. “Oh my.”

Octavia found herself holding a record case. Enormous neon pink and green letters, scribbled in highlighter, dominated the cover.

DJ PON-3

Below that a crudely drawn pony caricature with enormous sunglasses stood at a badly-drawn and ill-proportioned turntable, flanked by speakers that shot out lightning bolts in a variety of eye-searing colors. The rest of the empty space had been judiciously filled with explosions, starbursts, and magical auras.

“I drew it myself!” Vinyl said proudly.

“I can tell.”

“It’s not the final version of the cover, okay? We’re going to hire a professional graphic designer to make that.”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “And what, exactly, is this a cover for?”

“My debut EP, obviously.” Vinyl’s eyes shimmered, even through the sunglasses. “I’ve spent months in the sound lab putting it together! Seriously, where did you think I was all this time? Raves? Well, I did go to a bunch of raves. Gotta test out new beats somewhere. But I wasn’t partying all the time.”

“I see,” Octavia muttered. She had never really given the matter much consideration, but now that she thought about it, Vinyl had to be somewhere when she wasn’t sleeping on the couch. “You’re telling me that you’ve spent the last semester and a half secretly recording an album.”

Vinyl shook her head emphatically. “No no no! It’s an EP, not an LP. That comes later, after my introductory tour.”

“Whatever,” Octavia said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “And I happen to be eligible to receive royalties for this… whatever, because…?”

“Well, I was putting one of the songs together, you know, the one that’s going to be my first big single that’ll land me on top of the charts? And I thought that it needed a bit of a unique hook!” She dumped her saddlebags on the floor and sat on the couch next to Octavia, putting a foreleg over her shoulder. Octavia glowered at the excessive familiarity, but Vinyl either ignored it or didn’t notice.

“A unique hook?” Octavia asked.

“Yeah! You know, something to make it really stand out from everything else. So I thought I’d give the song a real classy edge.” She swept her free hoof across the air in front of her, as if she were presenting something. “So I kinda sorta maybe recorded your bass… er… cello practice and sampled it in the song.”

Octavia felt a sharp pang of annoyance, but it quickly faded into a more mild displeasure. It was hardly worth getting angry over. She still wrinkled her nose and snorted.

“What? I gave you a co-writing credit, didn’t I?

“You could’ve asked,” she grumbled.

“Yeah, I guess I could’ve.” Vinyl shrugged. “But I forgot. There’s nothing I can do about that now, but hey, at least you get your piece of the pie, right?” She held up the paperwork once more. “You just gotta scribble your name on here and when the song goes big, you’ll be rolling in bits! Well, not rolling, exactly. You get like, half a bit every time the song is played. But they’re going to play it a lot.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

“Oh please. I know what makes a popular song.” She leaned in uncomfortably close. “Me!”

Octavia leaned back. “Of course, because you have so much experience in the music industry. I must have forgotten about all those other songs that you released.”

“You don’t need experience when you’ve got talent,” Vinyl snapped. “And I’ve got talent to spare. Except I’m not sparing any of it. I’m hanging on to all the talent. All of it. Even the extra stuff.”

“You might have talent,” Octavia said, emphasizing the ‘might’, “but that doesn’t guarantee anything. There are numerous composers whose talent wasn’t recognized until after they died.”

“Then it’s a good thing I decided to be a DJ instead of a composer,” Vinyl retorted. “I’d rather be alive when everypony wants to listen to my music.”

“And what makes you so sure that they’ll want to listen to you?”

“What makes you so sure that they won’t?”

Several answers jumped into Octavia’s head, but she bit her tongue. “Listen,” she said, “I’m just saying that it won’t be as easy as you think it is.”

Vinyl stood and took a few steps toward the door. She was still smiling, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “That doesn’t matter. Easy or not, I’ll be able to handle it.” She nodded at the packet in Octavia’s hooves. “Are you gonna sign that or not?”

Octavia looked down at the papers. She wasn’t sure that she even wanted her name on whatever it was Vinyl had done to her playing, but at least Vinyl had bothered to put it on there. And on the off-chance that Vinyl was right, perhaps she would be able to buy some new strings, at least.

“Well?” Vinyl held out a pen.

Octavia took it and scribbled her name on the line.

“Thanks!” Vinyl grabbed the papers and stuffed them back into her bag. “When my tour comes through Canterlot I’ll send you some tickets!” She threw the bag over her flanks and headed for the door.

“Vinyl.”

“Yeah?” She looked back over her shoulder.

“Good luck.”

Vinyl smirked. “Don’t need it.” She vanished into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.

Octavia snorted and glowered at the patch of crumbs that Vinyl had left on the carpet. Then she sighed and turned back to her music. Real music, composed for and played on real instruments. Like the cello. How anypony could prefer futzing around with a turntable made in a factory somewhere over something crafted by the hoof of an artisan, she would never understand.

She sighed as she looked out the window. The weather team was starting to roll in the clouds.

“And today was going so well.”

Author's Note:

First chapter of a little side project I've been working on.

Comments

[Yami Vizzini]

-we came in?

I actually listened to Octavarium again recently, so when I first read the draft chapter title the song popped into my head, but I never imagined it was more than coincidence.

[CrystalMoon884]

Wow. This looks really good! Can't wait to read the rest!

[Shenzy]

DJ PON-3

Isn't it P0n-3? ... A zero, not an O' ?

[Tayman]

Not bad. I liked how Vinyl has some sense of discipline (going out and composing an album) while still keeping some of her boorish habits.