• Published 31st Dec 2019
  • 1,464 Views, 155 Comments

Filly Friends - thehalfelf



In the morning, Vinyl Scratch would be leaving, and Octavia didn’t know if she would ever see her again.

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Beat

Beat

The trouble began in my second year of high school, Vinyl’s third. We were finally on our way to Manehatten to visit Grandma Serenade. When I was younger we used to visit every year, but between sickness, court dates for Vinyl, and issues with Father and Mother’s concert schedules, we hadn’t gone in some time.

Four days before Hearth’s Warming, over four years since Vinyl moved in with us, we boarded a train to Manehatten to visit my grandmother. It was just the two of us today, Father and Mother had obligations until the day before the holiday.

“What’s your grandma like?” Vinyl asked as the train began to pull away from Canterlot.

I took a moment to think, really think about Grandma Serenade. After all, I hadn’t seen her in several years, but I did know some things. She was a third generation Manehattenite, living just a stone’s throw away from the city’s university district. She’d been born in that house, and said every time she was asked about moving that she would die in it.

I knew she loved to cook. I knew that she’d been a widely known singer during her own career. It was joked about between my parents, and her, that she was going to live forever. Seeing as she’d already outlived four husbands, it may not have actually been a joke.

“She’s nice,” I eventually decided on.

“I’d believe you more if it didn’t take you, like, a minute to say that,” Vinyl replied with a smile. She didn’t press further, though. After digging them from her bag, she popped on a pair of headphones my parents had bought for her.

I had a book.

We passed the trip mostly in silence. As we approached Manehatten proper, Vinyl began nudging me out of my deserved window seat so she could get a look at the city itself. Where Canterlot was mostly smaller, cleaner buildings, Manehatten was dense and tall. Space was definitely more at a premium on a mountainside, but normal grid layouts were considered boring. Our home was well planned, but was designed to look haphazard.

Manehatten was all long, tall lines. The streets were completely straight, the buildings soared in the distance, steadily growing larger from the outskirts to the city center. It didn’t look dirty as much as cluttered. Though, thinking of how long it must take to clean all those windows, I did not envy the pegasi residents.

Vinyl whistled as the train thundered into a tunnel, heading towards the main station. “I knew it was a big city, but jeez...”

After stowing my book, I turned to look at her. Even with the city out of sight, her muzzle still pressed against the window. “It’s smaller than I remember,” I replied.

Her head whipped around, mane smacking against the window. “How... but...” she spluttered for a moment, then fell silent. “Oh, ha ha, very funny.”

“I thought so.”

We made sure to double check our bags as the train slowed to it’s final stop of the run. Ponies were already joining the slow moving stream towards the doors when we stepped from the compartment and joined in. The line shuffled out of the car itself and to the doors leading back to the station. Every so often, someone in line would peel off to meet a relative, or friend from another car, but most of us were still together when we exited into the station proper.

The actual train platforms were all underground, and the train ran through a tunnel for a good portion of the last leg of the trip. As we walked through the station towards the outside, bits and pieces of the Manehatten skyline peeked through the high, vaulted windows of the station.

I had to keep VInyl from walking into other ponies on multiple occasions.

Then we were outside. As we’d walked, the stream of ponies from the train had turned into a full river, who were now forced to split around us, right outside the door. More than a few shot us dirty looks, but she didn’t seem to care.

She also might not have been able to tell, with her head looking straight to the towering buildings all around us. I did my best to nudge her off to the side, but the stubborn unicorn wouldn’t move, so I satisfied myself with issuing quiet apologies to all who passed.

After ten minutes of Vinyl’s only movement being a slow turning of her head, I wandered off to hail us a carriage with some bits Mother had provided. I found one willing to wait a moment and returned to my friend.

“Come on, we need to go. Grandma Serenade is waiting,” I said to her uptilted head.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” she replied, not looking at me.

With a sigh, I positioned her between myself and our waiting ride and began pushing. Vinyl protested at first, then with a testy, “alright, I’m going!” started to follow properly along.

I gave the waiting carriage driver directions and we boarded the second stage of our journey. The Manehatten station of the Equestrian Railroad was towards the middle of the city, while the University District actually sat outside the city, towards the north-east.

Halfway through the ride, I wondered if we could have just taken a connecting train straight there, but as we had already left the main portion of downtown Manehatten, it was probably too late to worry about now. Vinyl, likewise, had grown tired of staring at the receding skyline, and was passing the time by making funny faces out the window to other carriages.

At long last we stopped in front of a small, thin townhome. I thanked the driver for waiting, and gave him a generous tip from the bits I had left. Vinyl had already carted our luggage to the door and was waiting on me. I followed the path through the postage-stamp yard, climbed up two creaky wooden steps, and, joining her on the front stoop, knocked.

My hoof barely left the door before it was thrown open to reveal a stern-looking mare. Her coat and mane, once a light blue and grey respectively, had dulled with time. Her sharp eyes however, a deep silver color, had not.

Seeing us, she smiled. At once her entire demeanor changed from dismissive annoyance to warm and inviting. “Ah, Octavia, I’d almost forgotten you were coming today,” she said to me before stepping forward for a hug. When we parted, she turned to face Vinyl. “I see you’ve brought your fillyfriend as well. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

It took a full five seconds before I processed what she said. The whole while I nodded automatically, until it all caught up. I nearly jumped back in surprise, almost falling off the stoop. “N-No! She’s not-- we’re not-- she... This is my friend, just my friend, Vinyl Scratch! Did Mother not tell you about her?!”

They both burst out laughing as I finally trailed off. “Of course she did,” Grandma replied. “How could I not know, with how she’s the reason you haven’t been to visit in six years?”

Vinyl had the courtesy to look apologetic, and I tried to stammer out another reply. With my brain still a little toasty from the last one, it probably wasn’t very eloquent. Grandma Serenade cut me off.

“I’m teasing, of course. Now come in, you two are like to catch a chill in the cold. Or a bug, the way your mouth is stuck open, Octavia. Close that at once.”

The two of us were shuffled inside soon after and settled into our shared room for the stay. Unfortunately, my earlier overreaction ended up becoming a running joke over the next three days until Mother and Father arrived. Grandma Serenade started it, but it was no surprise when Vinyl ended up joining in.

Thankfully, my darker coat hid any blush of embarrassment.

We spent the first two days of our trip all sitting together and talking, catching up, and filling Grandma in on Vinyl’s situation. On the third day we were kicked from the house with a replenished bag of bits and told to go and amuse ourselves for the day, so Grandma could prepare for my parent’s arrival.

“Sweet! I was hoping we would get some time to explore,” Vinyl said, bumping me with her rump until I faced the same direction as her. “My friend is going to be playing in the city this weekend, and I wanted to see.”

“I was unaware any of your friends practiced instruments.” I stepped into place beside her and followed deeper into Manehatten. “What sort of show?”

“You’ll see. We just need to find a place called The Back Hoof.”

“So, you don’t even know where we’re going?”

“Nope.”

I tried to give her a dirty look, but Vinyl refused to look at me. She instead trotted to the nearest passerby on the street and proceeded to ask, “hey, could you give us directions to The Back Hoof?”

The businesspony didn’t answer, just shot her a weird look and smiled briefly before hurrying away. I saw Vinyl turn to presumably shout at him again, so I reached out a hoof and pulled her back.

“Must not have heard me,” she said before making a beeline for the next unsuspecting pony.

Three hours of walking, two carriage rides, and a quick doughnut pitstop, we finally arrived at a suspicious-looking door set down into a stairwell at the bottom of a building in a back alley. In lieu of a proper sign, somepony had carved ‘The Back Hoof’ into the dirty brick wall of the stairwell.

“I wonder if I should have seen this coming, given the reactions to asking for directions,” I muttered under my breath. I don’t think Vinyl heard over the gentle, deep thrum of overly bassy speakers.

Vinyl ducked her head out of the alley to check the sun. “Man, his set is almost over. We can probably catch the end though, let’s go!” She didn’t wait, just hopped down the stairs and let herself inside.

I followed mostly on reflex and was nearly blown away by an almost visible wall of sound when Vinyl opened the door. Even she recoiled back slightly before pressing forward. The music itself was not out of the ordinary to me; it was fairly similar to what Vinyl tended to make at its core.

To my surprise, the stairs continued down past the door itself, ending at a rather large and angry looking pony in front of another door. He eyed us as Vinyl approached; she almost had to climb on his broad shoulders to speak into his ear to be heard over the music.

I sincerely hoped there were speakers in here as well, and that we weren’t just hearing filtered noise from past this second door. As it was, my ears were doing their best to meld with the rest of my head.

Vinyl and the other pony - likely a bouncer - spoke for a few minutes before he stepped into a recessed alcove and opened the door for us. What greeted us inside was not a curtain of sound, but one of smoke.

Two or three dozen ponies loitered around the room, with about half of those on a dance floor that was still even lower. The other half were split between tables on the outer ring, and a bar on the back wall. Directly in the middle of the room, raised up just above head height from the dance floor, was a set of equipment similar to Vinyl’s back at home.

“That’s him!” Vinyl shouted into my ear, pointing a hoof at the stallion in the ring of equipment. She wrapped the hoof around me and pulled, leading the two of us towards the lowered floor, and the really big speakers.

We weaved through the crowd until we were right in front of the... stage? And the speakers. Vinyl put her forehooves on the speakers themselves and leaned over to talk to the stallion in the center.

I just kind of stood there, feeling the music through my bones, and tried to look inconspicuous. It wasn’t terribly hard, as the place wasn’t very crowded, and the few ponies who were there were busy with their own things.

The song changed once, I think, before the stallion picked up a microphone. “Aight ponies, I’m outta here. I’ll be back though, for all you crazy bastards still here tomorrow. Peace!” He clicked off the mic, shouted something to Vinyl over the music, and vanished.

She pulled me from where I settled on the floor and led me towards the back of the room, to a small curtained door to one side of the bar. We took a seat in a booth near the door and settled down to wait.

A few minutes later he appeared. Vinyl waved to get his attention. Now that he wasn’t surrounded by spotlights and beams of light I could get a much better look at him. He was a unicorn of a darker coat than Vinyl. He also looked a bit older than us, but not by much. He wore no clothing other than a hat and several pieces of jewelry, necklaces being the most prevalent.

“Hey, V, didn’t think you would make it,” he said as he reached our table, holding out a hoof.

Vinyl bumped it with her own. “I didn’t either. Man, do you know how hard it was to find this place?”

“Ah, right, you aren’t from Manehatten, I forgot.” He nodded once, then turned to look at me. “And whose this?”

“This is Tavi, my best friend. We’re here visiting her grandma.”

“My name is Octavia,” I stated as normal, and held out my hoof to shake. To my surprise, he knocked his hoof against mine as he had Vinyl, and rather hard. I set my hoof down, trying not to wince.

“Octavia, classy. I like it. They call me Shades,” the stallion, Shades, replied, pointing to a pair of thin sunglasses resting against the base of his horn.

Vinyl burst out laughing. “No they don’t, you idiot.” She turned to me and pointed a hoof at the now-nervous stallion. “His name is Hazelblossom.”

I couldn’t help it, I snorted out a laugh. It was always possible his coat was a hazel-type color, as it was hard to tell in the dark, smoky room, but it was still an odd name for a stallion. Hazelblossom snorted in embarrassment and tried to loom over Vinyl. “Nah, filly, they call me Shades, because of the glasses.”

Vinyl just laughed harder and swatted him in the chest. He deflated with an audible, “oof,” and rubbed where she had hit him. He left for a moment to order us a round of drinks - something hard for him, soft for Vinyl, and water for me - and they sat there talking for quite some time. I tuned most of it out after they got on the topic of the technical side of their music. I barely understood what little I knew.

They were finally stopped some time later, long after the next performer had taken his spot in center stage, by a mare’s voice that somehow managed to cut over the chatter of the now nearly full room, and the music.

“Octavia Philharmonica, Vinyl Scratch, what in the name of the Sun are you doing here?”

I looked over after hearing my name to see Mother, Father, and a very intimidated-looking bouncer headed straight for us.

<><><><><>

“I have no idea what the two of you were thinking, spending all day wandering the city just to end up in some back alley bar. Do you have any idea how long we spent looking for you two? What could have happened if we hadn’t found you?” Mother had been ranting like that basically since we walked into the door of Grandma Serenade’s house. Father had tried to calm her down a bit on the walk back, and was similarly scolded for his trouble.

He now sat behind her, well out of range.

“We just went to visit a friend of mine,” Vinyl answered. I’d not spoken a word since we had left The Back Hoof, and couldn’t bring myself to look at my parents. “We didn’t drink or anything, we were just talking.”

“Talking to a strange stallion in a strange city in some seedy little nightclub not even good enough to only be open at night!” Mother shot back. “To say nothing of how you found your way there in the first place! What if something had happened?”

“But it didn’t!” Vinyl moved to stand, but a quick shake of Father’s head was enough to sit her back down again. “Everything is fine, what are you so worked up over?”

“Everything is most certainly not fine! You two could have been hurt, or taken, or worse! A nightclub is not a place for two unaccompanied school-aged fillies!”

Mother stopped to take a breath, and Father finally cut in. “Girls, we just want to make sure you’re safe. And even if you weren’t in any danger, what you did was very dangerous. Melody is just trying to keep you in situations where you are safer. It wouldn’t have been as bad if somepony knew where you were, but nopony did.”

Mother tried to speak at that last point, but Father raised his voice. “You two are getting older, and it’s normal for you to start exploring and seeing the world for yourselves. We just ask that you do it in a safer, and more controlled way.”

As Father spoke, Mother visibly restrained herself. When she next spoke, it was more like her normal tone. “Either way, I think you two need to stay here, or with us for the time being. At least until your break from school is over. To your room then, please, until dinner.”

Vinyl looked like she wanted to argue, so I wrapped a hoof around her muzzle. “Yes, Mother. We are sorry to have worried you.” I then pulled her along to Grandma Serenade’s office, which had been converted into a bedroom for our visit.

Grounded. For the first time in my life, confined to my home or parent’s side for the duration of our break. Part of me was upset with Vinyl, but I was mostly upset with myself for going along with it. I should have known what we did would have upset Mother and Father, or at least wasn’t a very good idea.

“I don’t know what she is so pissy about,” Vinyl said as she flopped on the bed. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It was kind of dumb,” I answered in a muted voice. “We just wandered off.”

“So? It’s not like your Grandma asked where we were going! Besides, I used to do that stuff all the time!” She paused after saying that, and deflated a little. “Actually, yeah, you’re probably right. Sorry for getting you in trouble, Tavi.”

I sat next to her and patted her back. “It’s fine. I should have stopped us anyway.”

She tried to grin. “Yeah, come on, aren’t you the responsible one?”

I didn’t answer. We sat in silence until Father called us for dinner.

Author's Note:

Posting, technically, still on Monday. Actual AN to follow.
E: So, funny story. The chapter was actually ready to post around early yesterday afternoon, but I was distracted by IEM Katowice and playing board games with my editor / roommate. We finished our last game at like 11:45 and he says, "elfy, we didn't post a chapter." Cue panic to post before Monday was technically over. Sorry for the late chapter, but at least it's a good one, right?
Next week, I promise to post more on time. Have a good week!