//------------------------------//
// Chapter 18 
// Story: Vinyl and Octavia: University Days 
// by DawnFade 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 18



-----


The exterior of the exam centre was painted black. All the windows were covered on the inside by heavy blood-red curtains, preventing the milling crowd of students outside from seeing what horrors awaited them. An abstract sculpture was embedded in the ground near the doorway, in the form of a mare cowering from unseen foes. An icy wind picked up, shearing through what little clothing the students wore. From atop the building, a crow cawed harshly.

Octavia swallowed nervously, feeling very small in the shadow of such an imposing building. “It d-doesn’t really fill you with c-confidence, does it?”

“No,” Bonbon replied in a small voice. “No it doesn’t.”

“You two are such babies,” Vinyl muttered under her breath, earning a nod of agreement from Lyra. Things were still a little weird between them, but the looming exams had given them a shared purpose. Namely, keeping their friends from freaking out.

“I can fail this and still pass the unit,” Octavia squeaked.

“You’re not going to fail,” replied Vinyl flatly. “If worst comes to worst, we can have Psych pull some strings about the whole ‘discouraging you from studying’ thing.”

“I doubt even he could revert a bad grade.”

With an ominous creak, the door swung open. Unfortunately, rather than an eldritch creature dripping with the blood of innocent students, something infinitely more horrifying appeared in the doorway. A middle-aged stallion with thick black glasses and a light brown coat. His monotonous voice brought hush to the nervous rabble. “All the students taking the psychology exam, please follow me. No talking. Once the exam begins you will not be allowed to leave until it is completed or time runs out.” He turned and stepped back inside the building.

The front of the crowd drifted forward uneasily, none wanting to be the first through the door. Octavia’s breathing became shallow as Vinyl shuffled forward to follow them. The cellist’s hooves remained rooted in the ground, as rigid as tree trunks. “Vinyl!” she tried to call, but all that came out was another breathless squeak. Luckily, the DJ noticed she wasn’t following and doubled back.

“What’s up? C’mon, we gotta go in.”

“I can’t.” She hoped her wide eyes would be enough to convey her terror. Almost half the students were inside now.

“Yeah you can. Trust me. You’ll do fine.” Vinyl tried to summon a cocky grin, but seeing how worried her fillyfriend was made it difficult to smile.

Octavia grimaced. “I don’t feel well.” And she didn’t; her stomach churned and twisted, making her nauseous.

Vinyl frowned and raised a hoof to take Octavia’s temperature. Sighing, she let it drop to the ground. “It’s just nerves. I promise you, when you sit down and open the booklet, you’re going to feel really silly for being worried. You’ve got this, filly.” The unicorn looked back at the quickly-thinning group of students. Only a few dregs remained. “And… if worse comes to worst, look at me and wink three times, and I’ll… make a distraction or something that ruins the exam so you get to retake it.”

“You would do that?” Octavia asked incredulously. University exams were no laughing matter. They decided the future of many students, and ruining one would bring heavy consequences.

“For you?” Finally, Vinyl managed to crack a confident smirk. “Damn straight.”

The cellist barely resisted the urge to engulf her fillyfriend in a grateful hug and settled for a shaky smile. Just knowing that she had a way out, no matter how risky, helped ease her anxiety. “Thank you.”

The DJ puffed out her chest. “It’s my job. Now come on, let’s go wreck this thing.”


---


“I have failed everything, ever.” Octavia rested her head on the table and covered it with her hooves. The ambient noise of the university tavern did little to put her mind at ease. It was full of students with shaking battle-worn hooves and sunken eyes that had seen too much. Such was the hour after a university exam.

“Am I going to have to spend all night reassuring you?” Vinyl muttered, her patience having run dry in the first five minutes of the ordeal. “If anypony fails, it’ll be me. At least you have the brains to get a good grade.” The unicorn took a sip from her non-alcoholic cider and placed the mug back on the table before adding, “I kinda wish you’d used the escape plan. At least then I could chalk my bad score up to being crazy.”

“Oh, stop putting yourself down, it’s getting tedious,” Octavia snapped.

Vinyl glared at her and started to reply, only to catch herself and take a deep breath. “Babe, we’re stressed out. Let’s just try to forget about school and chill out, okay?”

“Oh Celestia, we have our musical theory exams in an hour!” the cellist exclaimed, abruptly sitting upright. “And then my history exam is an hour after that!”

In what was becoming a disturbingly common occurrence, Vinyl took the responsible role and pushed her own feelings aside in order to soothe Octavia. “Relax. Even though we’re studying different kinds of music, our exams are in the same room. I checked. We can do the same thing we did for psychology.”

“W-well what about history then?”

“I won’t be in there with you physically, but, uh, I’ll be there… in spirit?” she finished hopefully.

“I’m doomed,” came the muffled reply as head met table once more.

Vinyl sighed and looked across the crowded room. In a corner booth, Bonbon was slowly rocking back and forth while Lyra hugged her. It was tempting to yell another gay joke at them, but in the wake of the exam, she decided to leave the ceasefire unbroken. If they were a couple, cool. If not, cool. After all, wasn’t that how she wanted ponies to treat her own relationship with Octavia?

“Look on the bright side: it’ll all be over after today.” Smiling reassuringly, Vinyl reached across the table and touched Octavia’s right forehoof. “Just get through this day, and that’s it.”

The cellist looked up and hesitantly returned the smile. “I don’t suppose you have a spell that will take us to tomorrow morning?”

“Nope,” she lowered her voice, “But if you follow me back to our room, I can make time fly.”

Octavia giggled and nodded. “Okay then.”

It took a moment for the words to register in the DJ’s brain. “Wait, really? I mean, I was just trying to be cheesy, but if you want to…”

Her fillyfriend just kept smiling as she left the table. Vinyl almost knocked it over in her hurry to follow.


---


The atmosphere outside the building where the music exams would take place was much less foreboding than the psychology building. Either that, or the massive release of endorphins had given the couple rose-tinted vision. Regardless, the two mares felt absurdly confident as they waited for the door to open.

“We have this,” Octavia stated with determination.

“Got,” whispered Vinyl as she tried to scrub the remains of a blush from her cheeks.

“Hm?”

“It’s ‘got’. We got this.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. ‘Got’ is past-tense, and–” Octavia was saved from having to launch into a full explanation by the exam coordinator pushing open the door, waving once, and retreating inside without ceremony.

This time, the pair moved forward without hesitation. Just before they stepped inside, the unicorn nudged her fillyfriend. “Say it.”

“It’s wrong.”

“Just say it.”

Octavia sighed and tried to look annoyed, but she couldn’t help but smile as she replied. “We got this.”

“Damn straight.”

Inside, a maze of desks spaced evenly apart over a large hall greeted them. Upon each desk, a small booklet rested, just like last time. Without even saying anything, they quickly found the middle of the room, where the booklets marked ‘classical’ and ‘modern’ ran parallel. They took desks beside each other and watched as their fellow music enthusiasts shuffled into the room.

Music.

If there was one subject Vinyl and Octavia were prepared for, it was music. Vinyl knew exactly what she was good at and wasn’t afraid to shout it out loud. The much more modest Octavia was also not unaware of her own talent. It was undeniable after so many years and classes, but she would always hesitate before declaring herself the best, a trait her fillyfriend did not share.

Being aware of their skill did little to defuse the tension. If ever there was a way to truly determine if their confidence in themselves and each other was well-placed, it was with this exam.

Vinyl closed her eyes and cast her mind back to her final gig before the semester started. The lights, flashing and strobing in time with the beat, the dancers, throwing themselves around the floor in reckless, ecstatic abandon, and her mixing table, with all the switches in their perfect positions and the power of the world beneath her hooves. That was talent. Nothing her exam results said could ever convince her otherwise. She was the best damned DJ in the entire world.

Octavia, too, shut her eyes and sought reassurance from distant memories. Her first cello instructor, eyes watery with emotion as he watched her perform in her mother’s study. He had choked back tears and whispered with a cracked voice, “Perfect.” The little grey filly had smiled, her mother had frowned, and the instructor had been replaced. His words, however, and what they meant to her, could never be taken away. For the briefest moment, many years ago, she had been perfect.

Backed by the confidence their recollections gave them, the couple reached forward and opened their booklets as the timer began.

Octavia was the first to realise, but Vinyl followed only moments after.

I know this!

The questions seemed ludicrous, their answers obvious. Vinyl almost started giggling when she finished the first two pages in less than fifteen minutes. This was nothing! The psychology exam had been tough but fair, and she had expected the same here. For the first time in her life, she was annihilating an exam!

The unicorn looked around cheerfully to see if other ponies were having as much fun. Sweaty brows and nervous swallowing greeted her. One mare looked to be on the verge of tears as she skimmed through the later pages, clearly realising she was out of her depth. Vinyl just couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for the others; she was just too happy.

Slowly, she turned to check on her cellist, hoping against hope that she was keeping cool. She really didn’t want to have to use their disruption plan, but if Octavia needed it…

The desk beside her was empty. The booklet, and her fillyfriend, were gone.

Vinyl’s heart sped up. She silently scanned the room, a heavy weight in her gut. If Octavia had run out of the room because she couldn’t handle her exam, Vinyl would need to go after her. But how did she get to the door without making any noise?

Her thoughts faltered as she spotted a grey flank near the front of the room beside the exam coordinator. Was she trying to talk her way out of doing the exam? Begging for more time to study? Vinyl felt like a failure, no matter how easy the questions were. She hadn’t made Octavia feel confident at all. She was supposed to look out for her fillyfriend and help her get through stuff like this.

Just as her smile began to slip away, a surprised voice echoed from the coordinator’s direction. “Already?”

A quieter, more eloquent voice replied. “I am as surprised as you are.”

The DJ’s fading smile reignited into a full-blown grin. Octavia wasn’t running away, she was handing in the exam. Internally, Vinyl whooped with joy.

That’s my filly!

Pride welled up in her chest, tempered by a little bit of shame that she had questioned Octavia’s willpower at all. Of course the cellist was fine; there should have never been any doubt. Well, Vinyl wouldn’t make that mistake again.

In an odd reversal of her highschool tests, she gleefully turned back to the booklet. The next few pages were no more challenging than the first. Even the long answer questions were easy. She could write books about this stuff, a single paragraph was no problem. Only another ten minutes passed before she trotted out of the exam centre with a huge grin and a beat to her step.

Octavia was waiting for her as expected, and the two almost ran to embrace. They bounced around in a circle on their back hooves, each holding the other upright.

“You were right!” the cellist yelled with a gleeful lack of composure. “It was so simple!”

“I knew you’d be fine, but damn, you were out of there in the first half an hour! You must have wrecked that test!” Vinyl was grinning so hard her cheeks ached, but she didn’t care.

They stopped bouncing and held each other close, both still on their hind legs in a very tall hug. “Thank you, Vinyl,” Octavia whispered. “I honestly don’t think I would have made it through the day without you.”

Chuckling softly, the DJ kissed her fillyfriend’s cheek. “Consider it... payback for that th-thing you did before we came down here.” She almost choked on her words, the memory brought back a lot of emotions that made it difficult to speak.

Twin pools of dark red appeared on Octavia’s ashen cheeks, yet she held Vinyl’s gaze steadily. “Well, I shall have to do it more often then.”

Vinyl swallowed. “I… uh, I think we should, uh, go eat.”

“Oh?” The cellist smiled coquettishly.

“Food! I mean food!” Damn it, now she was the one blushing.

“I’d love to, but I still have my history exam in a couple of hours.”

“Oh right, I forgot about that.” Vinyl pawed at the ground awkwardly. “Do you… still want me to wait outside for you?”

“Only if you want to.” She was feeling a lot more confident now, but the extra support couldn’t hurt.

A grin suddenly split the unicorn’s lips. “Yeah, I do.”

“Y’know,” a familiar voice piped up from nearby, “for a secret couple, you two are being pretty obvious.”

The couple realised they were still standing on their hind legs hugging, and quickly dropped down to all fours.

Ignoring the comment, Octavia smiled brightly. “Hello Bonbon! How did you find the psychology exam?”

The cream-coloured mare shrugged and inspected her left hoof. “It wasn’t too brutal, though if you could hear Lyra earlier you might think we were being assaulted.”

Vinyl chuckled. “Well, you know how students get. Some ponies really freak out before exams. Crazy, right?” She could feel Octavia’s unamused eyes on her.

Worth it.

Bonbon nodded in unaware agreement. “It’s silly, really. I mean, I was nervous, but it wasn’t debilitating or anything.” She jerked as a thought hit her. “Oh, I came over here to wish you luck in your music theory exams. Are they starting soon?”

Still half-scowling at Vinyl, Octavia raised her head proudly. “We’ve just finished, actually.”

“Really? That was quick.”

“We’re very good.” Octavia smirked.

Vinyl’s eyes widened. Since when does she boast? Not wanting to leave her cellist hanging, she added, “The best, actually.”

The candy-marked mare barked a laugh. “You sound like Lyra. She’s always going on about how she could wipe the floor with most music students, even though she’s not even studying it.”

Octavia cocked her head curiously. “I was wondering about that. Why isn’t she?”

Waving a hoof dismissively, Bonbon began to move away. “Long story. Anyway, I’ll see you both later. I’m meeting her back at the shop.”

With their short rendezvous at an end, the couple meandered through the campus to the grassy court. The trees were grey with cold, and the grass was soft and slowly dying, yet study-weary students still lay scattered around the area, sleeping, talking, or simply enjoying the rare sunlight peeking through overcast skies.

Even a couple of teachers were sprawled out on the huge court. Education was exhausting on both ends, it seemed. A frizzy-maned psychologist was lying against a tree reading from a stack of gossip magazines, completely undisturbed by the giggles he elicited from passer-bys. For a moment, Octavia considered going over to talk with him, but thought better of it. They wouldn’t be able to say much in public anyway.

Vinyl must have been thinking the same thing, because she instead led the way to a clear spot in the grass and sat down wordlessly. The cellist joined her, sitting close enough that their hind legs were just touching. Vinyl’s hoof twitched, and Octavia knew without asking that her fillyfriend was resisting the urge to put a hoof around her. As much as she wanted to feel that comforting warmth, they had been far too obvious lately, so she didn’t question Vinyl’s self-control.

The only sounds were the dull murmur of conversation and the trudging of hooves on grass. Octavia felt her head getting heavy and even the thought of her impending history exam did nothing to boost her energy. The day felt as though it should have ended a few hours ago. All that stress and worry (not to mention their extra-curricular activities) had left her as exhausted as a marathon runner. Surely it would not be frowned upon if she fell asleep out here next to Vinyl?

Vinyl asked something, but Octavia’s eyelids were drooping, and her head slowly sank sideways to lean against the warm white mare. The DJ looked down at her lover, around at the other ponies, then back. Nopony was even paying any attention to them.

So, completely vulnerable yet invisible, Vinyl decided to let her guard down, and rested her head against Octavia’s. Finishing their music exam early had given them the virtue of time, a fact for which the unicorn was now infinitely grateful. Slowly, her eyes closed.


---


The estate staff threw themselves out of her way as she marched down the hall. A passing wall-sized mirror showed only a flash of dark blue as she passed. The carpet beneath her hooves was soft and yielding, a complete contrast with the owner. Guests would feel at home when they stayed here, safe, unguarded. Everything, from the warm glow of the lights to the unconfronting shade of pale blue on the walls, was designed to put ponies at ease.

At the end of the hall, she pushed through a grand double door into her bedroom. The term ‘luxury suite’ didn’t even begin to describe it, but she swept past the priceless decorations and made straight for her dresser. The wood was polished and old, carved by expert hooves, but it was the items atop the dresser that held her attention.

A small, ornate jewellery box and three framed pictures, one of which was face down. She spared a glance at the middle portrait, admiring her own sky blue coat, and a shorter glance at the one on the right, where a dull grey filly stared back at her uncomfortably. The face-down frame was ignored entirely.

She opened the jewellery box with a single, perfectly sculpted hoof, and retrieved its contents with another. An impressive silver necklace with an azure gem. She slid it around her neck with practiced ease, and smiled with satisfaction when the latch locked immediately.

Hesitant knocking from behind her quickly destroyed that smile. She turned quickly, ignoring the way her mane flicked in the opposite direction. “Yes?” she asked expectantly.

A member of the estate staff, a timid young mare with an hourglass on her flank, swallowed nervously before replying. “W-we’ve begun packing everything as you requested, madam.”

“Good.”

The mare made no move to leave. “May I ask a question?”

“You may.”

“Why are you going to Manehattan now of all times? The cold season approaches, and from what I recall, Manehattan winters are very unpleasant. Wouldn’t it be best to wait for summer to come around again?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I miss my daughter’s eighteenth birthday?”



 
 
IT BEGINS 

Keeping with our unbroken streak of having a new song every chapter, we have a sweet piece of electronic music by DJ Crash! 

This chapter goes out to Nick, Future Wonderbolt, for his awesome bit of fanart, and to Pastel Pegasus for his birthday! Sorry I’m late!
