How About a Rough Estimate?
The entire foyer of the concert hall was engulfed in noise created by the dozen or so groups of ponies scattered about. The carpet underneath their hooves didn’t do much in easing the cacophony. Ponies chatted about business and the news. They told stories about the misadventures of their fillies and colts and raised glasses to their well-being. Glasses clinked, wine was consumed, and the conversations passed on. Many of them were pretentious unicorns, of course, dolled up in extravagant dresses and suits. The mares’ manes were drenched in hairspray to keep it in place. A spark would turn into an explosion that would completely destroy the concert hall.
In one circle was the concert’s performer. Beautiful cello music was provided by Octavia, and she was getting her round of praise and gratitude for it. She was always a fan-friendly musician. She took photos with them; she took photos of them when they asked, and she drank (or rather sipped) with them. Fans were the ones that provided her life for her, and she was grateful for them.
Octavia looked up from her glass. In front of her were two mares whose names weren’t bothered being told to her. She didn’t mind—she wouldn’t remember if she saw them again. Both were unicorns, sisters probably. One had auburn hair with goldenrod highlights and a teal coat. The other had a solid teal mane and a turquoise coat. The former’s mane was curled thanks to a magical curling iron. They quickly said their compliments and left, leaving Octavia and her roommate alone.
Octavia looked to her right to see Vinyl Scratch chugging a glass of wine. Vinyl still had her shades on, and an unclipped clip-on bow tie laid lazily around her neck.
Octavia sighed. “How much wine have you had?”
Vinyl waited until the last few drops were finally gone before pulling the glass goblet from her lips and answering, “I don’t know. I kinda lost count during your performance. Heh, and I’m only buzzed.” She examined the glass. “This is some really weak shit.”
Octavia rolled her eyes. “That’s one bit.”
“Really? The swear jar? You know I can’t be held responsible for my mouth when I’m drunk,” Vinyl stated.
“You’re not drunk; you’re just buzzed. Remember?” Octavia replied with an unamused look, brows straight and eyes partially closed.
Vinyl sucked her teeth. “Damn.”
“And that’s two.”
Vinyl sighed, drooped her head, and trotted off. “I’m just gonna get more wine.” Octavia shook her head in disappointment and wondered how she puts up with it. Her attention shifted from Vinyl to the mint-green unicorn waving to her. Octavia waved back, the smile on her face telling what needed to be said.
Lyra, with a staggering and light-headed Bon Bon at her side, approached her, making her way through the crowd of ponies. She and her obviously drunk marefriend were dressed up, though not quite to the same extent as the rest of the crowd.
“Hey, Octavia!” Lyra exclaimed. Bon Bon spat out the same phrase, only except it was slurred and sounded like a random combination of sounds instead of words.
“Lyra, Bon Bon, I’m pleased that you two could come!”
Bon Bon erupted into a fit of alcohol-enabled giggles. Octavia knitted a brow to Lyra, who shook her head.
“You said the word ‘come.’” Mount Giggles erupted again, much louder than the last time. Lyra rolled her eyes. “Sorry, she gets immature when she’s drunk, among other things,” Lyra explained as Bon Bon threw a hoof around her mare for support.
“What other things?” Vinyl asked, sipping her wine instead of gulping it down like a shot and causing Octavia to jump at her voice.
She took a deep breath, and exhaled, “Geez!” She jabbed Vinyl in her ribs with her hoof. “Don’t do that! You know I hate it when you do that!”
Vinyl stumbled back a bit from the jab, but she quickly caught herself. And the puckish grin on her face never faltered.
“So, what’s with Giggles?” Vinyl asked, gesturing to the muddled mare with her drink.
“High-class settings make her nervous, and she drinks excessively when she’s nervous. Put one and two together, and we get Bombed Bon,” Lyra explained.
Vinyl chuckled, “I hear that.” She raised her half-full glass with her magic. “To alcoholism!” she toasted before swallowing the wine in a single go.
Bon Bon, meanwhile, had been sniffing Lyra’s mane and coat. “You smell like my sour apple saltwater taffy,” she cooed.
Lyra blushed, “Oookay, I believe that’s our cue to leave. Oh, Octavia, thanks for the seats. you were wonderful.”
Octavia thanked her before Lyra and Bombed Bon turned around and began leaving. “Come on, dear. Let’s get you home and in bed,” Lyra said, helping the staggering mare beside her.
“Will you be there?”
“Of course!”
“Yay!” Bombed Bon cheered. “Out of the way, ponies! I’m eating taffy tonight!”
The two finally disappeared into the crowd of ponies near the exit. Octavia turned her head to see Vinyl stifling a laugh.
“Oh, Celestia,” Vinyl finally said after controlling herself for once, “we should get Bonnie drunk more often.”
Octavia’s only response was a grin while shaking her head. She looked down at her glass of wine. It was her fifth since the end of the concert, and she would be lying if she didn’t say she was feeling a little tipsy. But she wasn’t close to being like Vinyl had been so many times before. Vinyl probably had a much larger tolerance for alcohol because of the amounts she had ingested into her body. Octavia also reasoned that the lack of such an intolerance was the reason why she probably had as much of a buzz as Vinyl at that moment. Oh well, she thought before throwing back both her head and glass. She didn’t plan to stay much longer before going back to her and Vinyl’s hotel room and nuzzling the poor unicorn to death before drifting asleep.
Octavia hoofed Vinyl her glass. “Can you take care of this, dear? I need to use the restroom before we leave.”
The word “leave” sparked a gleam of thankfulness within the unicorn as she gleefully replied, “Sure! Anything to get us out of here that much quicker!” She levitated the glass and trotted off in the opposite direction as Octavia.
As Octavia made her way though the crowd toward the restroom, she could occasionally catch a word or few of somepony’s conversation. One conversation in particular caught her attention the most.
“...yes, Octavia is a lovely mare and a fine cellist,” a black-maned stallion in a double-breasted suit stated, “I only wish she wasn’t one of those damn fillyfoolers....”
Although she was unsure what exactly, Octavia felt something snap inside her. A normal, completely sober Octavia would merely let the comment roll off her shoulders (haters gonna hate, as Vinyl would put it). But a few glasses of wine were collected into a body that was accustomed only to small, infrequent tastes of alcohol; and Octavia was feeling a little bit...ballsy. She hated being called such a degrading name. She loved Vinyl, yes; but a pony just doesn’t call a Pegasus a “cloudhoofer.” It was a slur, and if he had called her that in the presence of Vinyl or the DJ’s friends, the stallion would’ve been curb-stomped.
Now she wanted to do two things: shame the stallion that said it and hopefully set everypony straight.
Octavia went over to the nearest table that served the wine and climbed onto it. She first tried to whistle for everypony’s attention, but received no results. Using her hooves as an amplifier, she called, “Hey, you pretentious pricks!” That, however, worked.
Every set of eyes in the lobby directed a confused glare at Octavia, every set except a pair of cerise behind a pair of purple shades. She grinned, said “Sweet Luna, this is gonna be good!” and took a seat in an unoccupied chair nearby with another glass of wine.
“I first want to thank every single one of you motherfuckers for coming here tonight,” Octavia continued. The crowd gasped collectively as she said her swear, and she reacted by chugging a full glass of wine nearby. “Wow, this is some good shit! Okay, there’s something I want to say...” Octavia quickly scanned the crowd for the stallion. He was a few ponies away to her right. She pointed at him “...and it is that, that cocksucker right there called me a fucking fillyfooler.” More gasps, more wine for Octavia. “And I one thing to say to you and that is that you are a damn bigot for saying such a slur.”
“But I didn’t mean to use it as a slur!” the stallion defended.
“Suck a dick, asshole.”
Drink.
“It’s a fucking slur no matter how you use it, shit-for-brains. And if you were to use that kind of language with my friend’s type of company, your fucking teeth would be knocked down your fucking throat. So the next time you open your mouth to spew some shit, you better double-check it before you say it.”
Drink.
“Capiscè?”
The stallion sheepishly nodded.
“Good, because second: I am a fucking fillyfooler. And if you flowery fucks can get the rod out of your ass long enough to accept that, then we’re good. If not, then fuck you and get the fuck out.”
Drink.
From her seat, Vinyl muttered, “Oh, shit.”
“That’s three bits, Vinyl!” a much more tipsy Octavia shouted.
Vinyl only hung her head and sighed.
“And third, Vinyl is the best fucking marefriend I could ever hope for. She’s thoughtful as a motherfucker. She fucking remembers my fucking birthday, our anniversary. I fucking love her, I fucking love her with all my heart. So what if she’s considered to be uncouth? She has fucking heart, and I fucking love her.”
Drink.
“Vinyl! Vinyl!”
Vinyl climbed on the table beside her. “Yeah, Tavi?”
“I fucking love you, ya som’ bitch!”
“I love you, too, filly!”
Vinyl had been counting the drinks Octavia had drunk and estimated that about two more drinks would take Octavia from “Tavi with Balls” to “You-Talkin’-to-Me Tavi.” Sure, Vinyl could have trotted right up there and took Tavi away from the beginning. But that wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. So, Vinyl climbed down from the table and sat in her seat to watch the rest of the show.
Octavia took another drink; and instead of setting it down like she had done with the others, she just let go and sent it smashing to the ground.
“Now, on to every one of you pompous douchebags. If that...” Octavia pointed to the slur-saying stallion “...is how you think of me, then fuck you.” She pointed a shaking hoof at a random pony, a bluish-green Pegasus mare, and continued to point at other random ponies. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—fuck all of you.”
As Tipsy Tavi took another drink, Vinyl sighed. It had been fun, but now Octavia was getting repetitive and was losing its value of laughs. She finished her drink while Octavia was returning back to the stallion that started this all, and made her way through the crowd to Tavi’s table.
She grinned and offered a helping hoof. “As much fun as this has been, we should go.”
Octavia nodded clumsily at Vinyl and tried to climbed down. She stumbled a little, but she quickly had her gawky hooves on the ground without incident. She slung a hoof over Vinyl, who then helped her toward the door. Before they left, Vinyl looked back at the foyer and the ponies that stood mouth open and shouted “Peace!” before exiting.
* * *
The rays of mid-morning were what disturbed Octavia’s slumber. There was a small, throbbing pain in her head telling her that she had narrowly escaped a demise she had helped Vinyl pull through so many times before. As for the events of the shindig after the concert, they were hazy, especially after the seventh drink.
Octavia pulled open her eyes, cringing as they became exposed to Celestia’s bright light. She could see that she was facing the room’s doorway on the right side of the hotel room. She rolled over to her right side, hoping to cuddle with Vinyl a little before having to get up and catch the train back to Ponyville; but instead, Octavia found no pony with whom to cuddle. Then, her ears perked up to hear the start of a faint trickle of water from the bathroom. She sat up in bed, the sharp pain pulsating harder in her head, and rubbed her eyes with her hooves.
The sound of the shower stopped a few minutes later, and Vinyl soon emerged through the door. She was drying her mane with a blue towel.
“Good morning, gorgeous!” Vinyl exclaimed at the sight of Octavia sitting up in bed. “How you feel?”
“I have a small headache, and I feel nauseous. That’s about it.”
“That’s it? Wow. You remember anything about last night?”
Octavia sighed. “Yeah, vaguely. Did I really tell the entire room to get the ‘blank’ out?”
Vinyl laughed to herself. “Yes, yes, you did.”
“And the stallion that called me a fillyfooler?”
“Practically pissed himself.”
Octavia smiled. “That’s four bits, Vinyl.”
“Really? That you remember? What about you, huh? You sure did have the potty-mouth last night!”
“Alright, how much do I owe the swear jar?”
Vinyl scratched the back of her neck sheepishly. “I, uh, didn’t keep count.”
Octavia shook her head. “I’ll just put a fifty in the jar when we get home. That’s a fair-enough estimate, right?”
Vinyl only shrugged.
A lamenting frown replaced the light-hearted grin on Octavia’s muzzle. “I’ve probably ruined my career.”
Vinyl hopped on the bed. “Eh. That stallion deserved a public shaming for what he said. And in your defense, you were a little plowed. And the way I see it, you should always judge the music, not the musician. If any of those ponies really liked your music, then they’ll come back.”
“I suppose,” Octavia solemnly sighed.
“Great!” Vinyl exclaimed as she jumped off the bed and trotted over to the room’s mini-bar. She opened it and peered inside. With another puckish grin, she asked, “Now, how about a drink?”
