To say the day hadn’t gone well would be an understatement. To say that her head buzzed with unharmoniously clashing musical notes would be putting it mildly. To say that at that moment Octavia was a pony what even Celestia herself wouldn’t want to trifle with was…actually that one is pretty accurate.
Octavia’s scowl could have split mountain ranges in half. Each hoofstep was punctuated by a dull silence that masked the screams of thousands of grass blades as they were unceremoniously stomped on. The cello strapped across her back creaked with each sway of her body threatening to over balance the tired earth pony with every step. Ponies left and right of her ducked out of the way without her even acknowledging them.
In truth there was only one thing on her mind; getting home. Todays practice had been a total shambles! Not only had Brass unknowingly managed to dent her sousaphone, which had the effect of turning all her notes into ear piercing screeches, but Parish had been mopping over a recent breakup with his marefriend and had consistently fallen out of time. These events had caused Frederick to lose his cool and the earth pony had ended up storming out of the practice room grumbling about being surrounded by amateurs.
Octavia meanwhile had tried to keep a calmer head but even she had to admit that the ladylike façade that she kept around herself was showing signs of cracking. The incident in Canterlot with her ensemble would have been manageable had it not been for everything else that had happened to her. Firstly the hotel had managed to lose her bags and when they turned up it looked like they had been run over by a herd of buffalo. Then the taxi driver had got lost on his way to the station which had resulted in her missing the train leaving her stood on the platform for three hours until the next one came. During this wait the weather ponies of Canterlot had decided to move up a scheduled downpour and Octavia had found herself caught out in it resulting in her being thoroughly drenched.
Octavia gave a gruff snort as she continued on through Ponyville. Despite all the trials and tribulations she had suffered she was almost home, almost able to sit down, relax and forget about the last few days in their entirety. Her mind began to wander, dreaming of a blissful warm bath and an expertly seasoned daffodil sandwich before a long and restful night’s sleep. Despite the annoyance that bubbled inside her she allowed a gentle sigh to escape her lips as she rounded a corner and turned onto her home street.
She stopped dead, the quiet sigh of lost hope sliding from her lips as she looked ahead of her. The street was populated with nicely kept thatched roof cottages, each with a small garden outside and each individual in its own way. The third house along was her home, it was this house that she was currently looking at.
The garden looked more like a battlefield, flowerbeds having been trampled all over and colourful streamers scattered all over. Even from where she stood she could see that there was a pony asleep under the rose bush and the door looked like it had been stained with something. Octavia found her teeth starting to grind as she stood silently in the middle of the road. The fur on the back of her neck started to stand up as her face began to twist and contort with newfound fury.
“That little minx,” she muttered to herself through clenched teeth, “I’m going to…”
And then as suddenly as it had appeared the expression on her face faded away and returned to her normal cool calm exterior. She took a small sigh and raised a hoof to her forehead before setting off down the street once more. Pushing open the garden gate she couldn’t help but notice that it was slanted at an angle and one of the hinges seemed broken. The pony under the rosebush didn’t even seem to notice her but then if his snoring was anything to go by he was too intoxicated to even be classed as alive.
At the front door she found herself hesitating, not just out of fear as to what she might find inside but because of the odd liquid that stained the wooden panels. Cautiously she leaned forwards and sniffed it before pulling back sharpish as the scent of apples filled her nose.
“Cider…oh Celestia please don’t let it be as bad as I fear…”
Giving another sigh she reached up and pushed the door open. It creaked loudly as it opened, Octavia noting that the door hadn’t been doing that when she had left on her trip. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the slightly dim lighting inside but as they did she wished she had been blind. Furniture lay upturned and scattered all over the room, pictures had been knocked off the wall, rubbish and empty cider mugs were piled high in the corners like odd shaped cocoons and in the middle of the room, spread out on her back over the top of an upturned sofa was Vinyl Scratch.
Octavia felt her eyebrow twitch as she took the sight in. Again her teeth began to grate together but again she took a deep breath and allowed herself a moment to calm down. Shutting the door she placed her bags down next to the now broken coat hook and trotted slowly over to the sleeping unicorn. For a moment she simply looked at her friend with a fiery glare. Vinyl herself lay on her back, sprawled out like an animal fur on a drying rack. Her mouth was wide open and the snoring coming out of it could have awoken the dead. Drool leaked from a corner of her mouth and ran down the side of her face before dripping off and pooling on the blanket she lay on.
Octavia ripped her eyes from the unicorn and trotted into the kitchen. Much like the lounge the kitchen wasn’t much better. Pots and pans lay stacked up in the sink in such numbers that Octavia was almost certain there wasn’t any clean crockery in the whole house. Opened packets of snack food and drinks lay all over, some empty some half full, and in one corner three cider kegs were stacked up in a pile. One of the taps was dripping slightly, a small puddle of flat cider spreading out across half the kitchen floor.
Octavia took a moment to rummage through the dirty pots until she found a large pan that was only slightly mucky. She spent the next few minutes clearing the sink so she could place the pan in it then filled it with water before returning to the lounge. She came to a stop next to Vinyl and for a moment paused to consider her before dumping the entire pan of water over her head.
“I didn’t do it, you can’t prove anything!” screamed Vinyl as she bolted upright with shock.
The force of her actions sent her tumbling over sideways off the sofa she was spread across only to land with a wet splat in the pool of water that now occupied the floor. She groaned slightly, her head spinning like a top as she tried to work out what was going on. Slowly she raised a hoof to her head and rubbed her temple before looking up. Octavia stared back at her, looming over the unicorn like a spectre.
“…oh…uh…hi there Tavi…eh heh…”
“Vinyl…just what do you call this?” asked Octavia slowly, the earth pony doing her best to keep her voice calm.
“Uh…well…see…I invited a few ponies over for a party and…”
“Yes I can see that, one of them is still asleep in our front garden!”
Octavia huffed sharply and turned away.
“Oh I can’t deal with this right now, I need some rest,” she said sharply as she started to walk towards her room, “Just get this mess cleared up before I wake up!”
Vinyl slumped back to the floor as Octavia moved off. Her head was still spinning; evidently the cider she had been drinking didn’t feel like agreeing with her. She blinked slowly and slowly began to pick herself up off the floor. It was part way through this process that a shrill scream of horror rang through the otherwise silent house. Vinyl’s eyes shot open and her legs snapped to attention, it was Octavia. For a moment she wondered what the earth pony could be screaming about and then her previous words filtered into her mind.
“Oh by Celestia’s flank…” she murmured to herself before she rushed towards Octavia’s room.
As she arrived she found the earth pony curled over an object in the middle of her room. Her room looked like a herd of rampaging buffalo had run through it. Sheet music was scattered all over, neatly kept cupboards ripped out and their contents strewn across the room and bookshelves ransacked. None of it seemed to register though as Octavia turned slowly.
In her hooves were the broken pieces of a musical instrument. The string instrument was old but despite the dents and scratches that adorned its case it had been polished to the highest standards. Now though it was twisted warped and bent in all directions and no amount of wood glue was going to fix it.
Vinyl felt her life flash before her as she looked at Octavia herself. The earth pony who was normally so composed looked like a madmare. Her eyes twitched and a small twisted small sat on her face as she looked back at the unicorn.
“Tell me Vinyl, what is this?” she asked slowly, her words almost on the edge of insanity.
Vinyl swallowed hard before answering, “Uh…you’re great father’s cello?”
“Correct Vinyl…pray tell how did it happen to arrive in this condition?”
“Uh…well…I think Goldengrape might have had a little too much and decided it was just what he needed to play piñata with…”
“…Piñata…piñata…”
Octavia let out a small giggle, one that froze Vinyl to the spot. Octavia had tried to remain cool, tried to brush off her problems and keep going as if nothing had happened. Normally she had no issue…but it seemed this was just one straw too many. Gripping the broken neck of the instrument she leaped towards in a flurry of rage.
“VINYL!”
Next door Lyra was just about to sit down to enjoy her evening meal. The unicorn had spent a good hour hoof crafting her own variety of pizza complete with extra anchovies although even she had to admit she had no idea why she put them on in the first place…she never ate the darn things!
As she was about to levitate the first slice to her mouth though a cataclysmic boom echoed from the next house. For a moment she just looked in confusion out of the window but as the twin screams of two ponies filled the air she went back to her pizza.
“Octavia’s home,” she announced as Bon Bon walked into the room.
The earth pony looked out of the window at the next house with a smirk.
“Should make for some good gossip in the morning, mind if I get a slice of that?” she said calmly as Lyra levitated a slice of pizza towards her with a smirk of her own.
