Broken strings

"All right everypony, class is starting, get settled now."

Cheerilee's voice pierced through the noisy classroom and calmed down the chattering. There were sounds of chairs being moved, tables being adjusted and muffled laughter. Then after just a few seconds, the entire classroom was silent.

Cheerilee waited until the whole classroom was quiet, then she spoke up, "Before we start today, I'd like to introduce a new filly who will be joining us today." She turned to the side of the room where the entrance was and said gently, “Come on. Don't be shy. You can come in now."

A light-grey pony came into the room. She had beautiful, light-purple eyes and smooth, long black hair. It seemed that she was carrying a big, black box with some sort of musical instrument inside on her back. She seemed too nervous to look up at any pony, so she just kept her eyes focused on the ground right in front of her foreleg.

"Well," Cheerilee gave her an encouraging look and asked, "would you like to introduce yourself?"

The new pony nodded a little and said nervously, "Hi... My name is Octavia." Despite her shyness, her voice was smooth like silk.

The roomful of little fillies stomped their hooves and chattered a little bit, welcoming their new friend.

"Well then, Octavia, why don't you sit next to... VINYL! Wake up already!"

The pony named Vinyl jerked awake. She had a fur coat as white as snow, and a mane with two shades of light blue. It was obvious that she was indeed sleeping from her tilted glasses and a line of drool slowly flowing down the corner of her mouth.

"There Octavia, that will be your assigned seat."

Octavia nodded in silence as she made her way to the back row of the classroom, trying her best to not hit anypony with the giant black box on her back. Everypony's eyes followed her to her seat, and then they went back to Cheerilee as she gave instructions on the day's lesson.

It took a while for Vinyl to understand what just happened. She looked at the grey pony sitting down next to her with curiosity. Then, as the lesson started, she moved over a bit and whispered, "Hi! I’m Vinyl Scratch, wha-- what is your name again?"

The grey pony completely ignored her.

Thinking that maybe she was too quiet to be heard, Vinyl decided to move even closer, and whispered louder, "Hi! I'm Vinyl Scratch, what's your name?"

The grey pony lifted one of her eyebrows and look at her with the same look a parent would give to their disobedient child.  Then she shifted her eyes and had them fixed on the teacher, ignoring Vinyl once again.

It was pretty obvious that this grey pony did not wish to talk right now, so Vinyl just mumbled something and went back to her nap until she was woken up by what felt like a hoof tap on her shoulder.

She looked up and saw that the new grey pony was the one who woke her up. She yawned and said, "urg... what?"

"Class is over, Vinyl."

"Oh, it is...?" Vinyl finished the sentence with a big yawn followed by a deep sigh.

For a second, the grey pony seemed to be annoyed by this, but she soon put on a smiley face and said in a rather cheerful tone, "Hi, my name is Octavia. Very nice to meet you."

"(yawn) Nice name, Octavia..." Feeling a bit uneasy from the serious conversation, Vinyl decided to propose a new topic. She looked around and saw that the big box that Octavia was carrying had been carefully placed at the corner against the wall, so she decided to ask, "Hey, what's in the box?"

"It's...something I play." Octavia hesitated a bit for some reason.

"Oh really? Is it a umm..." Vinyl tried to think of something that an earth pony could play, which took her a good 10 seconds.

"Is it a, I don't know, a harmonica? With like a stand?"

Octavia looked at Vinyl as if she had just said something really stupid, which she had. Vinyl realized it after she saw the size of the box which was obviously oversized for a harmonica.

"Okay beats me, what is it?"

"It is a cello. Well, in fact, it is a custom piece so it's a bit different from a normal one. I would not be surprised if you guessed a double bass or something along that line, but a harmonica..." she gave Vinyl a challenging little smile.

Vinyl felt taunted, and just when she was about to speak, she realized something and dropped her jaw.

"You're playing a cello... and you're not even a unicorn! How... how do you play a cello without magic?"

Octavia answered with a simple "I just do", but Vinyl couldn't help but feel that Octavia was hiding something underneath that. But out of respect of her privacy and fear of offending her, Vinyl pretended that nothing had happened and decided to shift topic.

"Hey, you have a soprano clef for a cutie mark. That must mean your talent is music! Oh, I bet you are super good at playing the cello!"

Just when Octavia was about to reply, a voice cut her off, “Hi Octavia, what’s in that huge black box?”

Both Octavia and Vinyl turned around to see two male pegasus standing in front of them. One of them was dark brown, and the other one was light orange. Vinyl didn’t know their names, but she had heard bad news about them. They were the biggest jerks in the school, and they were well known forlaughing at and calling some ponies names. Judging by the grim smile on their face, she guessed that they had not come here to make peace with the new pony.

But before Vinyl could tell Octavia to not answer, Octavia had already turned around and said, ”It is a cello. A custom cello, to be precise.”

The two pegasus looked at each other for about two seconds, and then burst out into nasty laughter.

“An earth pony who wants to play cello? This is the funniest thing ever!”

Octavia’s face turned a little red. She bit her lip but said nothing.

“Yeah, what are you going to play it with? Your teeth?”

Vinyl felt the anger inside of her building up. She suddenly stood up, walked in between the two pegasus and Octavia, and then she turned to facing the two jerks, looked at them straight in the eye, and said in a threatening tone, ”Leave her ALONE!”

The brown pegasus was a bit surprised at being stood up against, but he quickly regained his senses and said, ”Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?” Then he took a step forward, almost smashing into Vinyl’s forehead with his own.

Vinyl didn’t speak. Instead, she used magic to levitate her glasses out of the way, directly staring into the pegasus’ eyes with her own.

She had the most red eyes, more crimson than the sunset on a summer night. The Pegasus’ courage failed him. He mumbled, “Let’s get out of here,” to the other pegasus, and they left with a loud “HMPH!”

Vinyl sighed a little, put her glasses back on, and turned back to see if Octavia was all right. She looked, only to find out that the seat had become empty while she had been arguing with the pegasus. She looked up and saw the back of Octavia disappearing through the exit of the classroom.

“Wait up, Octavia!” Vinyl quickly dashed forward and ran after the grey blur of the pony.