Wub Wars
Two mares, one house, different music genres and pranks. Yes, hell does break loose in this place quite often, especially when a good prank (or a damaging one) is pulled. A surprisingly good pranker though is Vinyl Scratch, which does make sense with her attitude at times. She's laid back and a bit lazy, unlike Octavia, who is organized and wants to get things done. This is why Vinyl cannot resist her pranks, it drives her room mate absolutely bonkers! To her, it's funny when Octavia is mad.
Pranks don't happen everyday though, they happen every once in a while, but still Octavia does not see them coming. She has probably slapped whipped cream on her face 42 times in the past few months. She has probably been soaked through by a overhead bucket of water 56 times in the past six months. She has come home to find her cello strings cut around 22 times in the past year. Yeah, she really has a problem going on but doesn't seem to expect it, the problem being Vinyl Scratch.
Vinyl's pranks have been going on for probably a year and a half now and Octavia is becoming quite tired of it. At first she didn't know what a prank was and Vinyl had to sit her down and explain what a prank was and where it came from....basically the birds and the bees of pranks. At first she thought they were funny or just "cute" as she had said a few times. After a while she realized that they were very repetitive and just plain annoying. Vinyl didn't seem to have gotten that memo and continued doing the same things over and over again, and still getting the same amount of pleasure out of it.
There have been times however when Octavia decided to get back at Vinyl and try to stop her pranks. One time she super glued Vinyl's radio to a classical station and locker her in her room for ten minutes. When she opened the door she found Vinyl with her hooves to her ears rolling around on the floor. Vinyl stopped her pranks for a week and a half, then the hell continued for Octavia. This is when the whipped cream to the face prank came in....it made for very sticky mornings.
Anyways, Octavia had tried multiple things to halt the pranks for good. She tried to hide Vinyl's records, change the lenses in her goggles to distorted vision, putting hot sauce in her morning oatmeal, even lock her down in her workshop (which was the basement). All attempts worked but only delayed her pranks. They would always come back. Octavia seeing that her own pranks didn't seem to work and nothing else she tried did. She had to think of something to do!
She thought for days, pondering what could be done to stop Vinyl from causing daily hell under their roof. She thought of harmless traps, torture (simply playing her cello for a "captive" audience), and many other ways she could force Vinyl to stop. She knew that not one would work though, that DJ was a tough cookie that wouldn't crumble easily. After her many days of thinking (and going through more pranks) she finally got her idea.
At first she didn't want to do it. She had before promised herself that she would never walk that road under an circumstance. She knew though that she could not refuse the idea, it went straight to the core of Vinyl Scratch's soul, her very passion! After thinking it over for maybe an hour or so she decided that she must go through with her plan. She walked straight into the kitchen where the white DJ was and stared her in her red eyes.
"Vinyl Scratch!" Anger rippled through the air.
"Wo! What's with the sudden anger, Tavia?" Vinyl was completely confused.
"You know what you have done you....you bafoon!"
"I do? Wait, bafoon? That's the best you got?!" Vinyl was now slightly mocking the cellist.
"Never mind that! Your idiotic little pranks have gone on long enough!"
"Oooooh! She's a little feisty today! So, how you gonna stop me huh?" Vinyl was becoming excited now, she wanted to hear what Octavia's little plan was.
"I challenge you to a electrical music competition!" Octavia was still quite mad.
"You mean you challenge me to see who can produce a better dubstep song?! HAHAHA!" Vinyl was now rolling on the floor with laughter.
"I'm serious, if I win you have to stop your pranks."
Vinyl picked up her queue. "And if I win? How 'bout you have to cut your own cello strings!"
Octavia gasped in horror. Cut her own strings?! She could never do that to "Craig", as she had started calling her cello. Her teeth began to chatter a bit as she thought of the bargain. If she won she would've beat Vinyl at her own game AND stopped her pranks for good. If she lost though, she would be forced to continue going through hell AND hurt defenseless, innocent Craig! She knew though that she must do it, for the better good of...well herself of course!
"You are on!" A smile grew on Octavia's face as her confidence flew outward.
"Ah yeah! Let's get ready for Wub Wars!"
With that the two shook hooves and went their separate ways for the day. The deal was made and the date was set for their battle of Wubs, the following Tuesday at Sugar Cube Corner (Every other day was booked for bingo). At bed time, Octavia lay in her bed thinking of the challenge she was heading into. Could she really win? Dubstep was Vinyl's career, really her life itself! It was her best talent. Octavia had never once tried to produce an electric song of any sort. It couldn't be hard though right? There was cord progression and melodies right? Yes, but there is a little bit more, as she will soon find out.
The next day, Vinyl decided to show Octavia the works of her producing station in the basement. What is meant by "showing" is that all she did was point and say "That's were it all happens!" and walked out of the basement, leaving a confused Octavia behind. There was a whole collection of music controllers and buttons before her eyes! She did not understand any terms on any of the buttons and desperately tried hard to figure out just how to turn it all on. She finally turned it all on in the time of two hours, sadly though, she blew the fuse, shutting everything off again. Back to square one!
After many hours of turning on the machines, blowing the circuit, and turning them on again, Octavia finally managed to keep the circuit flow stable and actually start working. Problem here though, she didn't know what she was doing....at all. She just sat in front of the hundreds of buttons and knobs and just thought of ideas on how to start her piece. She finally decided that she would simply screw around with the buttons before her and figure out what they did. The first button she pushed was the power button to all the machines. Square on again!
It was once again bed time and Octavia had accomplished nothing but blowing the circuit at least ten times. It was Saturday, the challenge was on Tuesday and all she had heard sound wise was the sound of machines warming up and plainly shutting down. In other words, she was swimming from a shark with anchors attached to her legs. In other, other words, she was absolutely nowhere. Her confidence was considerably lowered now. How could she win if she couldn't even keep the machines on for two minutes?! This question haunted her for the rest of the night and gave her nightmares. She was being chased by giant buttons.
After a long, tiring night of pointless horror in her brain, Octavia woke up and immediately went down into the basement to work. As she walked there she saw Vinyl sitting in the kitchen with a smug grin on her face. What Octavia didn't know was that Vinyl was three fourths of the way done on her song. Vinyl had used her backup work station in her bedroom. It was a much smaller work station but it still got the job done.
Once again Octavia stared down at the buttons in sheer terror. After staring at them to make sure they weren't alive (those nightmares were really vivid) she began to experiment again. She was beginning to think that she knew what certain buttons did and it turned out she was right. However, she didn't know anything about dubstep, so for the rest of the day she researched the genre and figured out many things. Some of that information included wubs and how to produce them, wobbles and how to produce them, womps and how to produce them, yaws and how to produce them, suggestions for good electronic melodies, etc. She learned quite a lot from the books she had stolen from Vinyl's room!
Another bed time came and went and sure enough, it was Monday. The day before the day that Octavia either died of embarrassment or bathed in the full glory of victory! She preferred the second option. Anyways, her new found knowledge actually came to great use as she began to create a full dubstep song. It was slow, okay, ridiculously slow for a first dubstep song production. She literally worked the entire day. She still wasn't finished yet!
Octavia began to worry as she crawled into her bed. She wasn't even done with her song and she was expected to be at Sugar Cube corner at high noon (Vinyl had suggested that one of them would go out western style). Nightmares ensued that night, but not of buttons, of pranks and poor, poor Craig. One of her dreams had her drenched in mustard as she destroyed the strings on her cello with an over sized bone saw. for some reason though she also was wearing a clown nose and a sombrero...that's not really an explainable thing.
When she woke up the next morning, she reached to head and nose to feel for a sombrero and a clown nose (once again, vivid nightmares) and when she found that there was neither to be found she rushed to the basement. She began once again to work on her project vigorously. The hour of musical calling was almost at hand! She needed to finish and fast! At 11:30 she still wasn't done. Well, she was but the finalization process was taken way to long, the machines were suffering slight lag. Probably due to the little bit of water Vinyl had "accidentally" spilled onto them before she left. She is a pretty shameless character.
At Sugar Cube Corner the was a stage inside. The stage was set up with DJ equipment and was completely ready for the bloody onslaught of musical proportions that was about to happen, or at least the attendees wished it was going to be one. At 11:45 the ponies outside were let inside to find a place to either stand or sit, the Cakes didn't have enough chairs in their supply for the turn out. It could be said that around a fourth to half of Ponyville had shown up. Then again, Pinkie wasn't very good at math. She didn't have to be though, she was the quest MC who announced the competitors. A bit useless seeing that everypony knew who the battle was between, but it was added for show effect.
Everypony had found a place and the lights dimmed down. A spotlight hit the stage and out skipped Pinkie Pie. She halted in front of a placed microphone and smiled to the crowd. Most smiled back but some weren't in the mood, the wanted to see a battle, not an MC! Those that smiled though clapped for the arrival of the MC, signifying that the show was about to start. When the crowd had quieted down, Pinkie began to speak.
"Hello everypony! Today we have a special treat for you all! No, it's not muffins, but we have live music! Today, Vinyl Scratch will face off against Octavia to see who has made the best song. The rating of the song will be judged on your reactions to it as it plays through. So let everypony play fair and lets have some fun! Now will you please give a big, BIG smile for Vinyl Scratch with a new original called "Bounding"!"
The crowd began to cheer as Vinyl trotted out onto the stage and took her place near the given equipment. She placed the CD she had into the tray before her and closed it. She only now had to let it play and sell the song by doing special lighting and sound effects throughout the song. Vinyl had done this multiple times before and knew that she had a very high chance of winning anyways. Her song was very, very simple for somepony of her caliber.
It had a very simple drum beat, consisting of kick, snare, and hats. Her melody represented something of more of a relaxed feel. There were a few wobbles an womps here and there but it was nothing hardcore, which is what she was famous for. Still, the crowd liked it a lot and moved with the beat and cheered the whole way through. Vinyl just stood on stage the whole time with a smug grin, there was no way she was going to lose!
Her song came to an end and she left the stage with a wave of applause behind her. Upon her arrival backstage she found Octavia had actually shown up. No worry rose inside of the white mare though, she was way to confident in herself. She just stared at her room mate for a small bit and left the backstage area and entered the viewing area where the crowd was. After a couple minutes, PInkie came back out to announce the next competitor.
"That was pretty cool right?! Anyways, our next contender is somepony who really isn't known to like electronic. She issued the challenge to Vinyl just a few days ago, here we have Octavia!"
The crowd simply clapped for her arrival onto the stage. She did look a bit nervous but still plopped her CD into the tray before her. It took her a bit to figure out how to close the tray, she still wasn't very goof with this technology. It took her even more time to figure out the "play" button, which was interesting because it was the biggest button there. She did get the track to play, but gasps rose out in the crowd.
To their dismay, the music playing for them was classical. In fact, Neightoven's 8th symphony to be exact. Boos began to ring out from the crowd as their ears could take the sort of torture before them. The refused to listen to this music and continued to boo even louder than before. Octavia was looking very uneasy up on stage. Vinyl once again had her little grin upon her face. Suddenly though, the tracked stopped.
The boos stopped. The crowd wanted to make sure that the track was truly stopped. It wasn't. To their surprise a drum beat developed in their ears. It was just a kick but it was getting faster and faster. Pony's eyes grew wide as the kick kept gaining tempo. As the tempo picked up, a grin on Octavia's face grew with it. The kick was at its fastest tempo and then stopped for a slight second and then, it happened.
A drop so brutal is would've literally killed Celestia! The song was constructed so the chords were the same as Neightoven's 8th but with the addition of wubs, womps, wobbles, and yaws! Pitches were severely tested and strained in the song but all of them worked like a charm! Octavia had re-made the symphony into a dubstep work of art! Everypony was now cheering at the top of their lungs and began to literally head bang. Everypony was head banging, to Octavia's song!
All except Vinyl though. She simply stood where she was, with jaw dropped and goggles lowered so you could see her eyes. She was amazed......and shocked at the same time! Octavia had actually done it, she had beaten Vinyl Scratch at her own game! Well, at least that was how it looked, the official result hadn't happened yet.
The song ended and everypony in the room screamed at the top of their lungs! They absolutely loved the song! The screamed for more, but Octavia had only made one song so no more would be played. Pinkie came out and polled with the audience. Octavia did win by a landslide of cheers and screams. Vinyl was still in disbelief. How had she done it?! She would ask later, but she decided right now just to head home.
Vinyl was alone for two hours, there was quite a celebration going at back at the Corner. Octavia did come back and found Vinyl sitting in the living room waiting for her.
"Congrats, I guess...." The white mare said coolly
"Thank you, now, will you keep your end of the deal?"
"Yeah, I guess so. No more pranks from me, I promise. I do have to say though after thinking for a while that that was a great song....didn't know you had it in ya you silly filly!" Praise rained from Vinyl's voice.
"I didn't know either, but then I got some help...."
"Yeah, how did you manage to pull that off anyways?"
"Let's just say that you shouldn't leave books lying around!" Octavia gave Vinyl a big smile. They both laughed (even though at first Vinyl didn't get it at all). It was once again bed time and Vinyl crawled into her bed. She was still shocked that Octavia beat her, but it did indeed happen. She was sad that her pranks would no longer be happening, they gave her so much joy! She had made a deal though and she was going to respect it as a good friend.
Vinyl was woken up by an itch on her snout the next morning. She moved her hoof to scratch it and whap! There was whipped cream all over her face. All she could do was laugh.
