The rambling, mournful sobs of an ashen grey earth pony echoed through the streets of Ponyville, filling the air with a melancholy wail and attracting more than a few curious glances from nearby pedestrians. The mare's hair, normally combed and straightened with an almost obsessive zeal, now lay ragged and wilted at her shoulders. Her signature bow tie, the very staple of her appearance, was crooked for the first time in its illustrious career. Tears fell freely from her eyes and matted her fur into a damp polka-dot pattern. It didn’t take a keen eye to see that this pony was a wreck.
Luckily, her cries didn't fall on deaf ears. "Octy?" A confused voice broke through the cloud of grief and alighted in the pony’s ears. “Octy, my goddesses, are you okay? You look terrible." The source of the voice, a pearly white unicorn with a single musical note stamped to her flank, ran over to the crying mare, offering a supportive embrace. "What's gotten into you?"
"Oh, Vinyl it’s... it’s these!" Octavia Philharmonica unceremoniously shoved her hooves into her friend Vinyl Scratch's face. "T-these stupid hooves!"
Vinyl raised an eyebrow and cocked her head, sending a shiver down her electric blue mane. What in the hay is she going on about now? I can’t leave my house for ten minutes without getting myself all tangled up in her business. "Yeah, Octy, they're hooves. Everypony has them." Thinking it was perhaps some sort of injury that made her friend go bonkers, she grabbed the cellist’s offending appendages and turned them over in her grasp, scanning for cuts or bruises. Not surprisingly, she found nothing that might hint as to why she was losing her marbles so violently. She turned her gaze back to Octavia’s wide, panic-filled eyes. "I don't see anything wrong with them."
"Of course they look fine. That's not the problem!" the earth pony practically screamed in reply.
Maybe it’s her brain that’s having problems, not her legs. Taking a step back from the apparently crazed mare, Vinyl stifled a chuckle and replied, "Well then what is wrong with them?"
As soon as the words left her mouth, Octavia broke down into another fit of hysterics. "I-it's about my music-playing."
"You mean that thing you do with your violin?"
"Yes, my cello,” she corrected, deadpanning. “You see, I woke up this morning and went to work on the new concerto I was commissioned to make by the Grand Duchess Hoofmann—she’s an aristocrat from Canterlot, you wouldn’t know her. But when I went to pick up my instrument, I-I—" She cut herself off with another sob before blurting out hysterically, "I can't play the cello anymore!"
Vinyl was more than a bit dumbstruck—and apprehensive—at this revelation. "But Octy, isn't that your special talent? You're like, a master at the viol—cello! Are you just writing a piece that’s too hard to play or—"
"No!" The tears in the earth pony’s eyes somehow morphed into daggers that shot right through Vinyl’s vulnerable skull. "No musical piece is too difficult for me!" The bravado that filled her voice suddenly vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but a weak, grief-addled whimper in its wake. "When I tried to pick up my cello, it just slid right out of my hooves! I finally managed to prop it up against the wall, but even then I couldn't even pick up the bow! It's like I've been defying the laws of physics for years just by holding it!"
She sniffed, wiping away an errant tear before continuing. “Finally I gave up on holding it and just propped it up on my shoulder—at least then it wouldn’t collapse again. I could finally pick it up, but when I started playing—" her voice broke as a fresh torrent of tears slid down her panicked face. "I could barely hold down the strings! I tried everything, but all that came out was a Celestia-awful scraping noise! I sounded like a tone-deaf foal who had never even picked up a cello before in her life!” More tears slid down her already wet cheeks.
“Tavi, you’re being crazy.”
“I know, but, I-I can’t—” She finally allowed herself to collapse wholly into the stunned unicorn's arms. "I just don't know what's going on, Vinyl! I feel like I’m going insane. That instrument is my life, how could I just wake up one morning and not be able to play it?" Letting out another wail, she added, "It just feels so unnatural, like it wasn’t designed to be played by ponies at all!" Her crying immediately ceased as her own words registered in her head. Despite her emotionally distraught state, she still managed a tiny, gasping giggle. “Oh my, I really must sound crazy.”
While her friend was busy realizing how thoroughly ridiculous she sounded, Vinyl eyed the ever-mounting number of ponies who had stopped to stare at the scene through her peripheral vision. She wouldn’t be the only one who thought that. Sadly, this wouldn’t be the first time the cellist had delved into the realm of self-induced insanity, and Vinyl knew that if she didn’t try and remedy the situation right away, the grey mare would likely drive herself crazy. She sighed frustratedly, knowing that this wouldn’t be the last time she would have to hold her friend back from the edges of mental instability, and grabbed her friend's jaw so that they were staring eye to eye. "Octy," she stated in a clearly forced but professional tone, "how is this possible? You've played cello all your life and just now you can hardly pick the thing up, let alone play a tune?"
The blubbering mare in her arms could only nod before drooping her head like a wilting flower and sobbing into her electrically vibrant blue mane, turning the once-dry hair into a wet, twisted tuft.
Alright, this all sounds way too crazy to be true. Looking down at the hyperventilating earth pony, Vinyl easily concluded that she wasn’t lying or playing a prank—the panic in her eyes was far too genuine (and Octavia’s acting and pranking skills far too terrible) to be anything other than the complete truth. Sighing, she hung her head in defeat. This is totally going to throw off my day.
She’s your friend, her conscience countered. Just do it.
Ugh, I’m gonna end up regretting this, I just know it. "Alright, you say you can’t play anymore? Show me."
The crying ceased. A confused and scared Octavia tentatively stepped out of her friend's arms almost like a foal taking their first wobbling steps. "Show me? What do you mean, 'show me'?"
Vinyl rolled her eyes. Octavia was always hard to get through to, especially in times like this. Momentarily she pondered how the two had somehow remained so close despite both of them being so thick-skulled. "I mean, take me back to your place and try to play for me. Maybe you just need some outside perspective on the whole thing."
"Vinyl, this isn't going to work—"
"Don't care. We're going, and that's final." Before Octavia could object, she found herself being half led, half dragged by her front hooves down the streets, only slowing when Vinyl got close enough to one of the curious onlookers to growl out a curt, “What are you looking at?” She tried valiantly to wiggle her way out of Vinyl’s surprisingly strong hold, but found herself far too worn down from all her sobbing and moaning to put up much of a fight. With a huff she yielded to her obviously-stronger friend and let her hind legs drag as the odd pair slowly made their way towards the cellist’s home on the far side of town, leaving a small crowd of thoroughly confused passerby in their wake.
“Wow Octy, you really let the place go.” For once, Vinyl wasn’t just giving her friend a hard time—the house was in complete disarray. The interior floor was littered with parchment like Discord had decided to make it rain half-finished sheet music. Several music stands lay toppled on their sides as if they had been thrown about by a tornado. A lone cello was haphazardly propped against the wall, the tuning pegs digging into the wall and leaving deep, marring scratches in the faded lavender paint. The disarray was almost hard to look at, even for a pony as unorganized as Vinyl. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it actually looks worse than my house!”
“Thank you, Miss Scratch.” More sarcasm flowed from Octavia’s reply than water flowed over Neighagra Falls. “I couldn’t really find the time to tidy up when I realized that I could no longer do the one thing that brings joy to my life anymore.” She mock bowed, nearly tripping over a stray stand in the process. “So sorry.”
The DJ just rolled her eyes and walked over to the cello and eyed it critically, finally gathering the courage to poke it. She half expected it to come to life and bark at her, as her friend’s testimony had make it seem like the instrument was possessed. Finally, she gave the disparaging musician a shrug. “Sorry Octavia, I don’t see anything wrong with it. Looks like you’re just crazy.”
“Oh, thank you so much for that valuable assessment.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Wha—no! This isn’t funny, Vinyl.”
“Yet you still find place for sarcasm.”
“Just shut up, please.” Octavia desperately rubbed her temples, willing the rising headache that pounded her temples like timpani to go away.
Thankfully, Vinyl knew when to take a hint. “Okay okay, fine. Why don’t you just try and play it for me? Maybe I can find out what’s wrong with it.” A sudden thought made her snicker. “...or you.”
“Oh, ha ha ha.” As much as Octavia wanted to buck her friend in the jaw for all of her snide remarks, a tiny voice at the back of her head willed her to stay calm. Remember, she’s doing this for you. Although it couldn’t kill her to show a little more grace in the company of others... “You wanted me to try and play? Fine, I’ll play. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.” Grabbing the cello from its perch, she balanced it on its peg and brought the bow to the strings.
Or... at least she tried to. The aged wood clacked awkwardly against the cellist's hooves as she attempted to wrap her arms around the instrument. Evidence of her struggles became apparent with the shallow scratches that her flailing hooves inadvertently chipped into the surface of the lacquered wood. Her valiant efforts to try and support herself on it didn’t prove any more successful, and as she tried to balance herself on her hind hooves the only thing she accomplished was falling flat on her flanks to a symphony of laughter from her alabaster friend. In between giggle fits the DJ sputtered out, “Octy, you are hilarious!”
The earth pony moved to retort, but she was cut off as her cello, still teetering dangerously on its peg, finally decided to succumb to gravity's pull and fall right onto her head with a sound similar to a tree branch hitting a coconut. She didn’t even try to silence Vinyl’s uproarious laughter this time, settling on rolling her eyes frustratedly as her “friend” pointed and laughed like a common schoolyard bully.
“Vinyl...”
“Oh boy, you should have seen to look on your face!”
“Vinyl...”
“You were all like, ‘Sweet Celestia, I’m so clumsy! Whoops!’.”
“Vinyl...”
“I should have gotten that on film, I could’ve made a fortune off it!”
“Vinyl!” Only through shouting was Octavia finally able to shut the unicorn up. “If it’s not enough that you laugh at my misfortune—which, may I remind you, very well negates my entire life’s work—you have the gall," she stretched the word out like it was taffy, pushing the syllables far past their normal limits, “to point and laugh like I’m some oddity at a freakshow!”
Try as she might, Vinyl still couldn’t suppress the maddening chuckles that welled up inside of her diaphram. ”I’m sorry, it’s just—” Descending into another fit of laughter, her wobbling legs finally buckled and she hit the floor rolling, grasping at her belly. “Oh, I think I busted my gut!”
Meanwhile, her slate-grey friend was in sheer and utter agony, tears running down her face and tremors running their way up her spine like earthquakes. “Y-you laugh! If I can’t get out of this slump, it’ll mean the death of my entire career, the loss of all my well-earned respect within the community, and the derailment of my entire life!” Her voice cracked. “And you laugh! Oh, I have terrible taste in friends...”
“W-woah, hey now!” Vinyl knew she was many things that a pony might find unsavory, even downright repulsive. But a bad friend, she was not. “Don’t talk like that, it’s not your fault.”
Her lifeless pep-talk did little to bolster the other mare’s spirits. “It’s not my fault? How could it possibly be not my fault?” She gave her hooves a look that could have very easily incinerated them, had they not already been saturated like sponges by her own tears. “Unless, of course, you mean to blame the instrument.”
“Well, there’s an old saying that goes, ‘don’t blame the carpenter, blame the tools’.”
For a long moment, Octavia thought that the unicorn was just trying to lighten the already-abysmal situation with a little dose of odd humor. A tiny giggle fought its way through the seemingly impenetrable wall of sadness and rose up in her throat like a jubilant bubble rising from the bottom of the ocean, ready to break the surface of despair and put forth a joyous laugh. She looked up from her moping... only to see Vinyl wearing the most serious face she had seen on that mare’s face all year. “Vinyl...” Doesn’t that oaf know that—no. I’m not even going to try and correct her on this one. It’s a lost cause. “Are you honestly trying to say that it’s the cello’s fault for me being unable to play it?” Without thinking, she let out an scoff normally reserved for only the snootiest of Canterlot Elite .
“Um... yeah. That’s about it, yes.”
The notion was so bizarre, so unbelievably insane, that if it were any other pony on earth who had told her, Octavia would have laughed and turned up her nose. But this was Vinyl, the one mare who, through it all, never once proclaimed anything but the things she only found to be one hundred and twenty percent true. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I can’t go about blaming some strings attached to a piece of carved wood,” she gave her deposed instrument an affectionate tap, “on all my own faults. Perhaps... perhaps I’m just going through a phase.”
Plopping down on her haunches again (though this time with all the refined grace and style of a proper Canterlot mare) she rested her beloved cello on her legs, rubbing the smooth, lacquered neck affectionately like a mother would a newborn foal. “Yes, this whole thing must just be a phase. Besides, I can’t blame this poor thing, can I?” She absentmindedly tried to strum the worn strings, but only succeeded in making a few horrid plinking noises.
“Yeah...” Vinyl cringed as the piercing sound clawed at her ears painfully. Oh boy, looks like she’s finally bought it. Fillies and gentlecolts, Octavia has left the building. “Sounds very avant garde. Like... modern.”
And just like that, Vinyl Scratch unwittingly pushed her good friend Octavia over the edge of insanity.
“Modern?” As the word registered with the earth pony it began a complex series of chemical reactions in her brain that turned the inside of her head into one big firecracker, set to an alarmingly short fuse. “M-modern.” The voice of every critic in her illustrious history praising her accuracy for classical detail and prose played in her head like a maddening symphony, conducted by a crazed bandleader that seemed to pound her head with each rising and falling tide of music.
“Y-you think I’m... modern?” The firecracker that was once her mind finally reached the end of its fuse, exploding with a violently audible pop. “How dare you call me modern?”
“W-well, I was just trying—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” The earth pony was on her hooves now, glaring crazily at the cello in front of her. “Surely, I can’t be modern.” Her eye twitched frantically. “I can’t be modern.” The veil of denial (more like a steel curtain in her case) fell over her eyes, clouding her vision in a bleary, teary haze. “It must be that... thing.” Casting a vengeful look at her once-glorified instrument, she barred her teeth and hissed, "Surely, for it can’t possibly be me—I’m not modern, I’m timeless!”
Vinyl, dumbstruck at the sheer size of her blunder, just stood there and watched her friend’s descent into madness with a worried grimace. “Uh, Octy? Are you okay? You look kinda—”
“Crazy?” Octavia was suddenly right in front of the abaster DJ, pressing her greyed forehead against hers and breathing slow, heavy breathes onto her face. “I’m not crazy. I’m classical!” Poor Vinyl flinched and retreated as the deranged cellist continued her manic ramblings, settling into a fevered pace across the room as she voiced her discontent.
“I can’t be found modern, it’ll ruin my public appearance... it must be the instrument,” she mumbled, dodging all of Vinyl’s attempts to calm her down. “I must cleanse myself of it at once!” Her frantic pacing suddenly stopped, and she cast a deranged look at the previously discarded cello lying innocently on the floor.
“I must destroy it...” Octavia’s voice cracked as her eyes, once a placid purple, darkened to a blood-red crimson, darting about the room with a manic twitch. “Destroy...” Ignoring Vinyl’s repeated concerns and pleas to stop, she galloped up to the cello and attempted to pick it up in her hooves—though she was no better at balancing it in her hooves than she was playing it.
After a few moments of scuffling (and no small amount of profanity) the cellist finally get a hold of her most prized possession, brandishing it like a comically oversized baseball bat. By this time Vinyl was sure that some—no, all of the cords had finally snapped in her friend’s head. “Octy, what are you doing? You’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep this up!”
Instead of answering, she just laughed maniacally and lifted her cello high above her head in a terrifyingly graceful display before bringing it down onto the floor in a calamitous explosion of wood and metal. The psychopath cellist slammed the dying instrument against the ground over and over like it was nothing more than a pile of cheap tinder. Her crazed laugh, accompanied by the jarring sound of splintering wood, created a melody tantamount to her madness.
Meanwhile, Vinyl just stared on, her jaw hanging open slightly. Finally, she managed to pick up her lower lip and stammer, “I-I’m just gonna go...” If Octavia heard her at all, she made no indication of it, continuing to smash her favorite musical instrument in a delirious rage as the DJ stealthily snaked her way out the door.
The walk home for Vinyl was one filled with a flurry of questions that blew about in her head like snowflakes in a blizzard. They pounded at her temples in droves, desperate to be answered. Unfortunately for Vinyl, she knew just as much about her friend’s alarming situation as the dirt beneath her did. Sighing, she mumbled to nopony in particular, “Maybe she just went bonkers.”
That train of thought certainly seemed the easiest to swallow. Sure, Octy was all sophisticated and whatnot, but those types always seem to be the ones that lose their marbles first. “Heh, yeah.” Now that she finally had time to step back and properly dissect the situation, she found that all the signs seemed to point to insanity.
“I mean, come on! She broke her favorite instrument, she flipped out when I called her modern, and she couldn’t even play a darn cello! That’s like... her thing!” A snort escaped her lips. “Can’t play musical instruments anymore... crazy!” For the first time all day she laughed at the pure preposterousness of her friend’s claims. Going crazy—that’s just... crazy!
The infectious giggle refused to leave her, and by the time she reached her apartment on the other side of town her spirits were high once more. With a smile on her lips and a beat in her head she strolled up and into her humble abode, letting loose a small chuckle as she opened the creaky old door and took a deep breath of the dry, stale air she had come to know and love. “Ah... aside from Octy’s craziness, this is shaping up to be a pretty good day.” Optimism practically oozed from her words.
With another sigh she entered her flat and walked right up to her own musical machine, her rusty but trusty old Techneighica T-1700 Turntable. Yet, even smothered by layers of cheery optimism, a tiny, infinitesimally small sliver of doubt compounded by worry somehow managed to creep into her head, burrowing into her thoughts like a worm.
“Couldn’t play music at all...” She bit her lip as that tiny dot of doubt seeped like ink into her brain, marring her thoughts with oppressive negativity. No, what am I thinking? Octavia was just being crazy. Yet even as she attempted to convince herself of her friend’s delusions, she found her hooves snaking their way towards the power button.
No... Her mind said no, but the rest of her body had other ideas. Acting of their own accord her hooves timidly tapped the “on” button, firing up the turntable and ratcheting up Vinyl’s anxiety tenfold. “Great, now I’m crazy—I’ve convinced myself that I can’t play anymore.” She raised her eyes skyward. “I’m just as crazy as Octy—”
Her voice was cut off by a horrific scratching noise as she errantly ran a hoof across the record. “Whoops, I-” She fumbled again with the vinyl disk, awkwardly punching at buttons and knobs. For the first time, she noticed that the tiny dials and switches seemed far too small for her ungainly hooves to manipulate.
Panic swelled like a balloon in her chest. Desperately she tried scratching the record - her namesake talent that had helped her find her cutie mark in the first place. As her hooves pressed down on the spinning record, she heard a sharp snapping noise as the vinyl warped and shattered into a million jagged pieces under the unknown strength of her hooves, littering the ground in tiny black razors.
Something was definitely wrong here. Vinyl had used this same turntable for her entire life to the point that it became merely an extention of her. Yet now each button and dial felt alien, a foreign sensation to her hooves. It’s almost like the machine isn’t supposed to be played with hooves...
She looked up, realization painting a look of horror on her face.
“Oh ponyfeathers.”
Edited by Dezi94 and Maskedferret.
