Chapter Ten
The morning saw few clouds on an otherwise sunny day. The air had a gentle warmth to it, and it was complimented by a soft breeze. Two mares walked near the western edge of the quiet farming town towards a small red schoolhouse, a matching flag on a pole flapping peacefully. Several years had passed since Octavia last set hoof in the building, yet by all accounts it did not look as though it changed much. She was split between wanting to groan or giggle at the sight of the heart-shaped decals still shiningly brightly from different points on the structure.
“That’s where you went to school here?” Vinyl asked.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Octavia replied in an annoyed yet cheery tone.
“Nothing, it’s just… It’s so small.”
“Yes, well,” Octavia said, stepping towards the schoolhouse, “there really isn’t very many fillies or colts here at all. You’ve seen the size of this town. Why are you even surprised? We used to play on the equipment here all the time.”
Vinyl shrugged. “I always thought it was like a utility closet for groundskeepers or something.”
“Vinyl.”
“What?”
Octavia sighed. “Nothing. Shall we?”
“Mm-hm,” Vinyl hummed. Octavia walked up to the schoolhouse’s door and gave it two knocks. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Vinyl grinning and bobbing her head to an unheard beat. After a moment the door swung open wide to greet its two guests.
“Oh, right on time!” Miss Cheerilee, a fuchsia earth pony, said happily. Closing the door behind the two musicians, the teacher addressed her dozen or so students sitting in barely knee high desks. “My little ponies, we have two very special guests today! I want you to give a big Ponyville welcome to Miss Octavia and Miss Vinyl!”
“Actually, I usually go by—” The DJ’s voice was drowned out by a practiced and almost bored sounding chorus of “Goood mooorning Miss Octavia and Miss Vinylll…” Despite the robotic tone of the foals’ greeting, most of them bore bright smiles and shining eyes. Celestia, these kids are cute, Vinyl thought to herself, deciding to forget about finishing her sentence. She noticed one filly looking at her funny, as though trying to remember something. Vinyl tried to not stare back; she looked familiar somehow.
Octavia blushed slightly and giggled at the sight. “Hello, fillies and colts.”
“Sup.” Vinyl grinned.
“Vinyl, Octavia, why don’t you start by talking about what you do in your careers?” Cheerilee suggested.
“Yeah, sure,” Vinyl answered. “Octy, you wanna go first?”
“Vinyl, please don’t use nicknames in front of the students,” Octavia said in a hushed whisper. The DJ only continued grinning in response. Clearing her voice, Octavia spoke up to address the class. “Well, as Miss Cheerilee said, my name is Octavia. I currently play with a number of different ponies and ensembles in Canterlot, and—”
“What’s a on-sawm-bull?”
“Apple Bloom, you need to raise your hoof if you want to ask any questions,” Cheerilee instructed.
“Oh, sorry…” The small yellow filly with a red mane and large pink bow containing it put one foreleg in the air.
Octavia giggled and waved the hoof back down. “It means a group of ponies who play music together.”
“Why not just say that?”
“Scootaloo.”
“Sorry…” This time an orange hoof went into the air.
It was Vinyl’s turn to chuckle. “That’s just how they talk in Canterlot, kid.”
Octavia gave the DJ a quick look before continuing. “Yes, well, as I was saying, I play with a number of different and very talented musicians in Canterlot, and—”
“What’s Canterlot like?”
“Sweetie Belle! Really, girls, try to show some respect for our guests!”
“Sorry, Miss Cheerilee…” A small white unicorn with a lavender and pink mane sank into her seat.
Octavia considered making another attempt at finishing her first sentence, but before she could another filly spoke up.
“Why are you even asking? We’ve been to Canterlot!”
“I just want to know what it’s like living there!”
“Diamond Tiara, Sweetie Belle, please!” Miss Cheerilee was starting to lose a small amount of patience. She turned to the cellist. “I’m so sorry, Miss Octavia. Maybe we should hold questions until the end…?”
Octavia nodded. “That may work more in our favor, yes.” She turned to face the class. “Does that seem reasonable to you fillies and colts?”
Most of the class nodded at her, two or three looked at one another with anxious looks, and two others looked as though they didn’t care either way.
“Very well,” Octavia said, standing up straight. “To continue, I play with a number of Canterlot’s finest. We work in a guild of sorts. That means a group of ponies in one town who work and practice together,” she explained to the class, a few faces clearly wishing they could voice enough to ask for the meaning of her words themselves. They stayed obedient and remained quiet, however. The orange pegasus Cheerilee called Scootaloo opened and closed her mouth a few times, but also remained silent.
“Essentially how our guild works,” Octavia continued, “is that all of us have our own experiences and connections. Whenever a call or scroll comes in asking for performers for an event, we decide amongst ourselves who will attend said event, unless of course the pony hiring the performance asks for anypony specifically. Through the guild I’ve performed for many events and important ponies over the years, including various ceremonies, weddings of esteemed individuals, and even the Grand Galloping Gala. My work keeps me quite busy, but when one works so closely to their special talent it can all be very rewarding.” Octavia’s eyes opened and looked upwards at the ceiling for a moment. “I believe that’s about the general idea of it. You may ask questions now,” she said, her gaze returning to the little ponies in front of her.
A few hooves rose into the air. Octavia looked over to Cheerilee, who gave her a small nod. Octavia picked a random hoof. “Yes, in the spectacles.”
A grey filly with a white mane put her hoof down. “You said you play at weddings… Does the include the royal wedding?” A few of the fillies looked more interested, the colts a little less so.
“Actually, that one was me,” Vinyl said, stepping forward. Octavia felt a pang of irritation.
“Ooh-ooh-ooh!” Sweetie Belle’s hoof waved in the air furiously. “That’s where I know you from! We were there too!” she said, motioning to herself, the orange pegasus on her right, and the yellow earth pony on her left.
“Yeah, right,” Diamond Tiara said, folding her forelegs. “Stop trying to make us believe that.”
“Oh yeah,” Vinyl said, scratching her chin. “You’re Rarity’s sister, right?” Sweetie Belle nodded vigorously, while Diamond Tiara’s jaw dropped.
“Your music was fun!” Sweetie said enthusiastically. “It was different, but fun!”
Vinyl chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve heard stuff like that before.”
“So when you play music, how do you—”
“My little ponies!” Cheerilee called. “We are forgetting our hooves again!” The foals settled down, several hooves rising into the air as they did. All of them were looking at Vinyl. Cheerilee spoke again. “Now, does anypony else have any questions for Miss Octavia?”
Each raised hoof slowly lowered, and Octavia’s heart sank with them. Sweetie Belle looked to the cellist, and after a thought put her hoof back into the air. Octavia looked at her and nodded.
“So, um, what kind of instruments do you play?”
Octavia gave a small smile. “I’m classically trained to use most string instruments. I tend to switch between the cello and the double bass, although I also have a good amount of experience with the violin.” Vinyl gave a warm chuckle.
“Oh… That’s cool too, I guess.” Sweetie Belle looked as though she was hoping for a different answer.
“Anypony else?” Cheerilee looked around at her students. “No? Well then thank Miss Octavia, and give your attention to Miss Vinyl.”
The fillies and colts in the room clopped their hooves together politely, attention now on the white unicorn standing before them. Octavia couldn’t help but feel somewhat hurt, and a little irritated; she had hoped the students there would have been much more interested in what she had to say.
“Alright, so me,” Vinyl said, taking a step or two forward. “Like Miss Cheerilee said, my name is Vinyl, but in Manehattan I go by my stage name: DJ Pon-Three.”
Scootaloo put her hoof up. “Now, now,” Cheerilee said, “We said no questions until after our guests speak.”
“It’s okay, I got this,” Vinyl said. She gave a quick point to the orange pegasus.
“What’s a stage name?” Scootaloo asked.
Vinyl chuckled. “Good question! I guess it’s kind of like a nickname. It’s not your real name, but it’s what a lot of ponies know you by when you get famous. It gives you presence. Character.”
“Like digging ditches?” Apple Bloom asked. “Mah sister says that builds character.”
Vinyl laughed again. “No, what I mean is it’s like you’re a different pony when you’re on a stage. Some ponies like to pretend they’re somepony else when they’re in front of a crowd.”
“Why?”
Vinyl shrugged. “We all have our different reasons, I guess.”
“What’s your reason?”
“Hm?”
A small blue colt in the back with a spiky tan mane spoke up for the first time that day. “Why would you want to be somepony else?”
Vinyl considered his words for a moment. “I guess I never thought about that,” she finally admitted. “Came to me in school, and I guess it just kind of stuck.” Octavia shifted awkwardly. “Anyways,” Vinyl said, continuing, “I’m big on the club scene in Manehattan.” Octavia’s head shot up, her eyes wide and pupils small. “And I play the music in the clubs there. Every so often somepony who’s heard my work or who I owe a favor to will ring me up with a gig. Then I ship all my gear to their place, and usually they have a few ponies to help unload and set up and stuff. I play the music I like, and I get to play it as loud as I like all night long.”
Most of the students were leaning forward in their desks, eyes wide.
“So yeah, I guess that’s basically it,” Vinyl said, rubbing her chin. “You guys have any questions?” Several hooves shot into the air. “Yeah, you,” the DJ said, pointing as a grey-ish white colt with a dark mane.
“What do you mean by ‘equipment’?” the colt asked. “Don’t you play an instrument?”
Vinyl chuckled. “Kind of. See, what I do is a lot more electronic based. I take sounds and stuff from other songs, and… I guess it’s like taking them apart and putting all the pieces back together again in a way I like,” she said with some thought. “So I have some machines and stuff that let me do this, and some speakers that plug into them so I can make it really, really loud. Does that make sense?” The colt nodded, but his face still showed a little confusion. “Okay, you,” Vinyl said, pointing to a filly.
“What’s a ‘club’?” Apple Bloom asked. Octavia’s heartbeat quickened. “Ya mean like the ones mah brother Macintosh uses when the moles start getting ‘venturous in the orchards?”
“You’re Big Mac’s sister?” Vinyl looked over to Octavia briefly, before returning to the filly. “Remind me to tell you a story later.”
“Vinyl…”
“Clubs!” the DJ said, startling the cellist. “Clubs are these places where ponies go to hang out. Have fun. They get pretty crazy. There’s really no place like ‘em.”
“Yes, but, uh,” Octavia coughed, “They’re also meant to be enjoyed by older ponies… They’re not meant for colts and fillies your age.”
After hearing this, some of the students look disheartened, others enthralled by the idea of something so forbidden. Vinyl shot Octavia a look through her glasses. Cheerilee start looking uncomfortable. “Why don’t the two of you talk about your school?” she said, hoping to change the subject.
“Ah, yes, The Manehattan School of Music,” Octavia sighed, a small smile crossing her face. Vinyl broke her gaze with her. “One of the finer academies in Equestria, if I may say. Students from several different regions go to study there. I learned a lot from its educators, and entirely owe where I am now to it.”
Vinyl gave a brief huff. Octavia looked at her.
“Did I say something wrong, Miss Vinyl?” Octavia asked coolly.
Vinyl shrugged. “Yeah, that school was good to you, I guess. It’s only good if that’s the kind of thing you want to learn though.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Octavia asked, rounding to face her counterpart.
Vinyl shrugged again, and continued staring at no place in particular. “Just that they teach very specific things there,” she said. “The stuff I use every day they didn’t even touch. I mean, yeah, the first few years were nice to get the basics down, but after that it was just jumping through hoops. I learned what I really wanted to on my own. I’m doing just fine now, even without a piece of paper from that place to prove I’m worth anything.”
“Vinyl!” Octavia said, her shock obvious. Her voice got very low. “You cannot say that in front of these students!”
“What, that I didn’t graduate?” Vinyl didn’t bother to quiet her voice like Octavia did. “What’s so bad about that? School wasn’t right for me, and I’m doing just fine without it.”
Octavia turned to the class and gave a strained laugh. “Oh, she’s just kidding, kids,” she said. “Of course it’s very important to get a proper education, and—”
“Whoa! Hold up!” Vinyl said, now turning to face the cellist. “I am not joking here! The fact of the matter is, some ponies go to school, and some ponies don’t, and you don’t have to graduate in order to be successful!”
“Successful?!” Octavia cried, now looking right into a pair of purple shades. “You think spending every day and night playing for a crowd barely even coherent for scraps of cash from shady club owners and selling T-shirts with a pretend name on it from a rickety stand in order to pay rent on an apartment that’s barely livable is successful?!”
“Hey! I’m not telling them how you live!” Vinyl screamed back. Cheerilee raised a hoof, but quickly retracted it when voices escalated. “Miss prissy-pants here is doing sooooo great! In fact, sacrificing every pony who ever cared about her turned out so well, that she didn’t even bother trying to talk to them in bucking YEARS!”
“Vinyl, you are so… UGH!” Octavia threw up her forelegs in disgust. “You can’t just tell these kids to not go to school! If they want an excellent career they need to study, and get in the right circles, and—”
“BUCK that!”
“Girls!” Cheerilee was desperately hoping for some lid on the situation, but it was clear it boiled over long ago.
“Not every pony is meant for school! But you just can’t see that!” Vinyl was reeling. “Some are, but you can’t tell every pony they have to! That’s not how life is! Some of them will find out that they’re not good at school, but you can’t leave them to think that means they’re worthless! There are so many ponies out there changing the world, and have no slip of paper telling them they’re qualified for it! THEY FIGURED IT OUT ON THEIR OWN!”
“YOU’RE NOT CHANGING THE WORLD BY CLUBBING, VINYL!”
The DJ was silent, her mouth slightly open. She stared at the grey mare before her, Octavia’s chest heaving. “I’m changing my world,” she said, several decibels lower than most of the conversation had been. “Believe it or not, I matter there. Ponies know me. Ponies like me. And they like me for being who I am. And I think I’m going to head back there.” Vinyl turned towards the door, stopping briefly. “The next time you try to enter that world, Octy… Remind me that I never gave you a visa.” With that, the DJ left the building.
Octavia stood where she was, still taking heaving, gasping breaths to refill her screaming lungs. The schoolhouse was the quietest it had been all day, with its teacher’s mind racing to find a proper way to manage damage control. Eventually a yellow filly turned to the white unicorn sitting next to her.
“Ya know, mah cousin from Manehattan is comin’ in a few weeks… Maybe we can just see if she knows anythin’ about the music there.”
- * - * - * -
Vinyl sat alone in her shared bedroom, drawing casually on a piece of paper in front of her. A record player nearby was quietly playing her latest taste in the rising techno music trend. She looked up when the sound of soft hoof steps reached her doorway. Her roommate stood there, a scroll poking out of her saddlebag.
“Hey, Octy, what’s up?” Vinyl asked. Her roommate said nothing. “Right… Listen, I think it’s kind of cool how you want to just be called ‘Octavia’ now. It’s like a lot of the big artists do these days, you know? Like some day you’re going to be so famous you only need one name.” Octavia continued her silence. “Look,” Vinyl said, grabbing the paper in front of her and holding it up for the cellist to see. “I’ve been working on my own stage name. I think ‘DJ Deadhorse’ (you pronounce the five like an ‘S’, you see) might be a little too harsh, but I kind of like the sound of ‘DJ Pon-Three’. Just ‘Scratch’ is a good second though…”
Octavia gave a huff. Vinyl looked up from her list and into a cool set of purple eyes. “I did not ask to be called by my first name to try to be artistic, Vinyl. And the very notion that you’re attempting to find a imaginary title preceded by ‘DJ’ just goes to show how little respect you have for this craft at all.”
Vinyl’s paper fell to the floor as its owner fell backwards in shock, mouth gaping open. The cellist hardly seemed to pay it any mind, instead focusing on removing the scroll from her saddlebag. She placed it at Vinyl’s hooves. “Sign this,” she said simply.
“Wh-what?” Vinyl asked, some of her senses returning to her. “What is it?”
“A room change request.”
“What?!”
“It’s for me, Vinyl. I’m not asking you to leave.”
“That’s not the point!” Vinyl stumbled to her hooves. “Why would you want to leave? We’ve shared this room since we were fillies!”
“I’m finding it rather difficult to focus on my studies,” Octavia said, looking around the room.
“What, is it the music? I thought you were starting to like it! You said so last year! I can turn it down if—”
“It’s not just the music, Vinyl.”
“What are you talking about?”
Octavia looked at her. “It’s hardly personal. The fact of the matter is that in our last year of classes, I need to be in peak learning conditions. The last few years of living together I somehow managed to stay on top of everything, but living with the poorest performer in the class… Well, statistically it doesn’t present the best odds for graduation.”
Vinyl was still for a moment. “Are. You. Kidding me?!”
“I hardly jest, Vinyl.”
“You honestly think… Octavia! We have lived together for years, and you’ve always come on top of every test! You really think you’re in danger of not graduating because we hang out?!”
“Hardly,” Octavia said with a flick of her hair. “But I do feel the need to take measures against such.” She tapped the scroll between them with a hoof. Vinyl looked down at it, then back up again.
“You think I’m a joke…” Vinyl said through gritted teeth, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “You think that just because I’m not very good at taking tests that I won’t ever amount to anything, huh?!” Her voice raised considerably. “IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK?! SAY IT!”
Octavia regarded Vinyl’s demeanor with a quiet indifference. “I don’t believe I need to.” She tapped the parchment between them a few more times. Vinyl’s eyes squinted into the violet pair in front of her, the warmth the color used to bring her no longer present. She finally squinted her eyes shut and promptly sat on the floor. A quill from her desk was suddenly surrounded by a light blue aura and levitated down to scribble hurriedly before being violently launched perpendicular to the two mares.
Octavia casually picked the form up, rolled it, and replaced it in her saddlebag. “Thank you.” She stepped back out into the hallway, stopping for a moment. “Good-bye, Vinyl Scratch.” Vinyl said nothing; there was no longer anypony in the doorframe to say anything to.
The next day Manehattan’s School of Music practicals class began as it always did.
“Radio?”
“Here.”
“Ring?”
“Here.”
“Rush?”
“Here.”
“Scratch?”
A silence filled the room, one more pronounced than what was regular for the class. Ponies looked back to the percussion section where a certain white unicorn would ordinarily spend the first few minutes of class entertaining herself with various loud bangs and rattles. No pony stood there.
“Has anypony seen Scratch?”
Eyes turned instead to a grey mare in the strings section. She seemed completely oblivious to the onlookers, her attention instead on absent-mindedly adjusting the pegs at the top of her instrument.
The next few weeks were fairly uneventful. The sun rose, and the moon fell. Winter came and gave birth to spring. A school for musically inclined ponies held an annual ceremony with its students in the finest regalia, one in particular decorated with almost every additional article the school had to offer. She stood on a stage with a number of other ponies, shook hooves with some much older than she or her peers, received a small slip of paper with a few signatures written on its face, and left the stage to complete the yearly tradition. An older mare with a similarly colored coat and a mane to match her eyes could be seen speaking with her briefly, though if no one was paying attention they may have not even seen the act. The younger mare was shortly on her way, leaving the facility in which the ceremony took place. The older pony stayed where they had their brief exchange of words until a pony around her own age came to lead her outside the facility, gingerly cupping her hoof as he did so.
Meanwhile, in an entirely different part of the city, a white unicorn was looking up at a neon sign with some trepidation. Her electric blue hair was an absolute mess, many objects of unidentifiable origins embedded within. Her body was stiff in movement as though she hadn’t had anything to sleep on in several weeks. And she hadn’t.
As though under a spell, the unicorn entered the building in front of her. She was greeted by the loudest noises she ever bore witness to, but in time she came to understand that it was music. Music she recognized. Music she knew by heart. Somehow the building she had never once stepped hoof into felt almost like a home. She found a bathroom, and ducked into it. Alone in its depths, she stared into the unrecognizable figure in the mirror before her. She turned on a faucet and cleaned herself up the best she could under such conditions. Her mane came close to its former glory, but she knew she couldn’t do anything for the eyes that stared back into her. She left the bathroom and stepped into a part of the building where the music was the loudest, ponies moving their bodies whichever way they deemed best to the rhythm of the beat. Before long the unicorn was moving with them, and the more wild her actions became the less her thoughts plagued her. The music moved into her, through her, and out of her, and with it went all the worries and fears she had. For the briefest of moments, she felt something she dared to call happiness.
A tap on her shoulder revealed a stallion standing behind her holding a drink. She stopped her dancing for a moment, and looked at the concoction with apprehension. Something within her caused her to reach out, take the drink, and put it to her lips. The liquid inside tasted like something to fuel a machine, and burned all the way down into her gut. She coughed and spat and almost dropped the drink. The stallion who gave it to her took it back and gave her a gentle bump in her flank with his own. The unicorn looked at him incredulously, and then he did it again. She realized that these bumps were in time with the beat of one of her favorite songs, and soon it was moving her in the same way as before with the exception that her perceived happiness had somewhat increased. Wanting to see how much more happiness she could feel that night, she took the drink from the stallion a few times more despite its foul taste. She lost track of just how many times she sipped that drink, or even if there was only one she sipped from. She lost track of several things that night.
The next morning the white unicorn woke in a room completely unfamiliar to her, dawn just barely poking through window shades above a head that hardly felt still attached. With a groan she realized that she was not alone in the strange place; an unknown hoof was draped over her midsection. Despite her uncontrollable shuddering, the hoof did not move. Tears welled up in her eyes, her entire being riddled with fear. She wanted to get out. She wanted to leave. All she wanted was to go home, and forget that last however many hours even happened. When she remembered that she didn't even have a home to return to, her stomach threatened to leave her body as directly as possible. The worst part of it was she knew that a very good friend was going to be very disappointed with her.
Her friend.
Fear was replaced by a white hot fury, though the tears still remained.
“Buck Octavia. I hope I never see that bucking bitch again.”
Vinyl Scratch did not see any reason why any pony would envy her situation. That said, despite the fear, anger, and regret, as she laid there she realized that she was just happy to have a place to sleep.
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wow, am i the only one here who's kinda wishing that Vinyl doesn't forgive her in the end? 'cause Octavia was, and is still being, a major bitch.
Oy... some people/ponies will give up anything in the name if success. I can KINDA see Octavia's reasoning but at the same time she went about it completely wrong IMO. Still...great chapter and I can't wait to see what happens next!
Why do i read things labeled sad...?
Anyways, faved.