Broken strings

This is extremely uncomfortable and just weird. Octavia wanted to shout for help, but she heard a loud “puff” above her head and hoofsteps, so she decided to quiet down and listen for a while.

It was Twilight and her friends. Even though Octavia wasn’t a very close friend of theirs, they had known each other for quite a while. Twilight started talking. As a professional musician, Octavia had great hearing. Even though she lowered her voice and the ceiling was quite thick, Octavia could hear what Twilight was talking about.

“Girls! What do we do? Octavia is here?”

“WHAT?” Rarity shouted, but then it sounded like her muzzle was stuff with something.

“Shush Rairy, she is right here under this library. I told her I have to experiment on some science stuff and I will have to go back in a sec. Now what do we do?”

“Well what is she doing here? Isn’t she still a bit shot in Canterlot or wherever?” Spike said.

“No... well, yes, but she came back to visit Vinyl.”

Then everypony gasped.

“You have no idea how hard it was to get her to come here. I ain’t good at lying.” Applejack said.

“She called a few days ago, I was just glad I was able to come up with something to hide it. I told her that Vinyl had moved away.” Pinkie said.

“But, she will find out about the truth someday.” Rainbow Dash said, “We can’t hide it forever. We should just let her know.”

“No! That’s not what Vinyl told us to do.” Twilight said, “We’ll have to keep her busy. She can’t stay here for too long, being such an important pony and all. We’ll just have to keep distracting her until she had to leave for some other performance.”

“Well… umm… but, isn’t that unfair for Octavia? I mean, Vinyl was like her best friend.”

“I know, Fluttershy.” Twilight sighed and said, “But we all promised Vinyl to keep it a secret.”

A secret? Vinyl is keeping secrets? From her? Octavia felt a bit light headed. What could Vinyl be hiding? Could she have… fallen in love with another pony?

Then it all makes sense. Vinyl didn’t want to break it to Octavia, so she decided to keep it a secret from her. The reason her letters had become more and more simple, must have been because she had lost interest. Maybe she had already gotten bored by Octavia’s letters.

“Well, so what should we do?” Applejack asked.

Twilight sighed, “I have an idea. Pinkie, you know everypony around here. Make sure to tell everyone about this and tell them to not slip a word to Octavia.”

“Go it Twilight. Whoo! You know what could be fun? A welcome back party for little Octavia!”

“First of all Pinkie, Octavia doesn’t seem like the type of pony who would enjoy your parties. Secondly, she is two years older than you are.”

“But!”

“Yadi Yali Yada, anyway. Spike, can you write a letter from Vinyl’s perspective, telling Octavia that she had to move away for an important… DJ show?”

“On it!” The little dragon answered and ran away. Octavia could hear his footsteps disappearing into another room.

“Rainbow and Fluttershy, can you girls talk to whoever is in charge of the weather so it will rain for at least a week? In fact, try to make it a storm if possible.”

“Ehhh I don’t know Twilight… it’s kind of hard to change the weather plans.”

“Spike! Spike?”

The little dragon ran back into the room.

“Yes Twilight?”

“Take a letter. I will write the letter to explain the reason behind this. I am sure they will understand.”

“Got it!”

After a short while Twilight was done talking.

“And… Done!” Spike repeated after Twilight and said.

“Now, Rarity, how many dresses do you have?”

“How many? Ummmm…” Rarity said, “Enough to occupy her for two days, I’d say.” She giggled after wards.

“Great. Applejack, you know where her cello is, right?”

“Urg, yes Twi, but what…”

“Hide it.”

“Twi I don’t think…”

“She is a world famous cellist. To her the cello must be more important than anything else. If you could hide it somewhere she couldn’t find, then she would have to spend all of the time she had looking for it instead of finding Vinyl.”

“Twi I am not sure this is such a good idea.”

“Ummmm in fact… Rainbow, could you put it somewhere safe in cloud scale?”

“I can do it in ten seconds, FLAT.”

“Twi, I don’t think we should…”

“Well then, you girls get to work. I will keep distracting her.”

“Twilight!” Applejack said loudly, but everypony else shushed her.

“Quiet Applejack! We can’t let her know about this, remember?” Twilight said.

“Ahem, sorry. But Twilight, I…”

“You pinkie promised. We all did, to Vinyl. Now move along, I need to get back before she got suspicious.” Twilight quickly trotted away, and then Octavia heard the door to the basement opening.

Twilight came in. She was holding a piece of metal in front of her with her magic. She placed the metal down on the control panel and turned to Octavia, “Sorry I took such a long time. I had a crazy study night yesterday and everything was just a mess.”

“Huh, you don’t… say.” Octavia said.

Twilight gave a forced smile.

“Well, now it’s time to start. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll play you some music, and this machine right here will record your thoughts. I will see if there is a difference from your reaction when you hear good music and bad music.”

Octavia decided to play along and try to get to the bottom of this.

“That sounds wonderful.”

“All right, let’s start with this… Ah, Rebuck Black, Friday. I’ve heard this is a terrible piece.”

“Really.”

“Well, here goes. Please focus on the music.”

The music started playing, and soon Octavia felt like her head is going to explode,

“What is this Twilight?”

“Well, this is Friday by…”

“No, no, no! Such… abomination! The rhythm is repeating endlessly and pointless, the chords are cheap and incomplete, and the lyrics… Urg, could it be any more stupid? Please turn it off. It’s giving me a headache.”

Twilight turned off the machine and the voice of the annoying filly disappeared.

“Well, now let’s start on something more…”

“Twilight, I thought you were going to test on me when I play my cello.”

“Oh! Yeah, about that…” Twilight said, biting her bottom lips, “Well, I figured that we should change the plan a bit…”

“Oh really? And it was because?”

“Well… you see, I think…”

“That I can’t play the cello if you girls hide it away, right?”

Twilight’s eyes opened up wide, her voice shaking.

“No Octavia, what are you talking about?”

“I am talking about you telling Rainbow Dash to hide my cello inside Cloudscale. For Christ’s sake Twilight, I am a musician. I have good ears.”

“Oh no I was talking about the… other cello, you know it’s funny there is actually another pony called ‘Octavia’ who lives here.”

“Uh huh.”

“And she is a cellist too, what luck huh? He-heh.”

“Sure.”

“And I was just talking about pranking her by hiding her cello… you know, she loves pranks so yeah.”

“Oh…” Octavia exclaimed.

“Yep, that’s my story and I am sticking to it.” Twilight raised her head and said.

“So when will I get the chance to meet her?”

“Urg… well, she is out of town right now Heh… but she left her spare cello in her house so we decided to hide it…”

Octavia looked at her.

“Yeah any way…”

“Twilight, you knew she didn’t believe a word you said, right?”

Applejack was standing at the entrance to the basement.

“What… Applejack? What are you doing here?”

“Sorry Twilight, but I just can’t keep up with this anymore. I think little Octavia deserve the truth.”

“But what about Vinyl…”

“The fact that Octavia came back to visit was enough, Twilight. I think we can tell the girls to come back now. We should pay Vinyl a visit tomorrow, together.”

Twilight sighed. She pressed a button on the panel and released Octavia. Applejack walked up and patted Octavia on the head.

“Thank you, Applejack.”

“It’s okay. We’ll bring you to her, tomorrow.”