//------------------------------//
// An Opening 
// Story: Fangs: The Order 
// by Sapphic 
//------------------------------//


*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Octavia...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*


"Neighbor?" I was wide eyed by the claim. I hadn't even know the apartment across from mine was open.

The ashy colored mare smiled at me.

"Yep! We saw this apartment in a magazine and couldn't resist moving in, it's perfect!" She was definitely the excitable type; she would probably get along with Vinyl in that aspect. She also seemed to understand the perfection of the apartments here, so that gave her some approval from me as well.

"Nice to meet you all." I managed to suppress my awe of the rock in front of me and smile.

"Oh! I almost forgot to introduce ourselves. I'm Flint Steel, call me Flint though."  She chirped, turning to the mountain beside her and nudging him.

The mountain smiled gently at me before speaking.

"Stone Wall. Nice ta' meet you." His voice was higher than I expected, but not high by any stretch.

"Octavia Melody. Nice to meet you."

The last mare seemed a bit too shy and got somewhat out-shadowed, literally, by the other two. I still couldn't, for the life of me, remember the mare's name.

"So you all alone in there? No offense, but it seems like an lotta' space for a single pony." Miss Flint mumbled.

True, it was a lot of space for a single pony - and I had actually lived alone for some time so I knew perfectly well just how much extra space there was. But now that Vinyl was living here, the space wasn't too extreme.

"Oh, no. I've a roommate in the bath right now. I could fetch her if you'd like to meet her." I smiled.

"No need, we don't mean to bother." The giant spoke.

"It's no problem at all, it's about time for Vin-" I was about to finish my sentence when a crash came from the bathroom that drew all of our heads towards the hallway.

"Sounds like she might need some help herself." Miss Flint chuckled, getting a massive elbow from her side that seemed to knock the wind out of her for the moment. I was personally amazed she wasn't on the floor from the gesture.

"We'll be headin' on Ms. Melody. Pleasant meeting ya'." The mountain groveled before turning and walking away with Miss Flint being dragged along by a hoof. The other mare gave me a brief smile before turning to trail behind them.

Well they seemed nice at least; the giant one also seemed to have some manners about him as well. He seemed to be mannered to me like most nice nobles around Canterlot were to mares. Then again, he did elbow the one beside him with an elbow that probably could've broken my door down with ease. He was probably at the "playful harm" stage with that mare though. They could've been in a relationship. Married maybe? Was the familiar mare with them their child?

I decided to stop making assumptions, as my mind usually took me down a highly unlikely and dramatized road.

I turned my attention back to the hallway and began a hasty trot to the bathroom where the crashing sound had come from.

I walked up to the bathroom door and gave it a few knocks. I noticed the sound of running water was still audible so I figured she was still showering

"Vinyl?"

"Yeah?" Her voice sounded dreamy.

"Is everything alright in there?" I wasn't going to try going in there, it only ended in awkward situations in the past. She didn't respond however, and I began to worry for her.

"Vinyl?" I called again.

No answer.


*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Maple...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*


"You didn't have to hit me so hard." Flint whined.

"Ya' shouldn't have poked fun at Ms. Melody." Stone shot back.

"What, all I did was say her friend might have needed her help. And why are you being so defensive? Got a crush on her or something."

"Not at all, just don't like you being disrespectful to neighbors. You didn't grow up like me so I don't expect you to understand my morals." Stone said.

We had since dragged Flint back to our new apartment; though I was sure she could walk on her own, Stone decided to just drag her along the ground for the short walk across the hall. Stone had even tossed her inside like she was weightless as a sort of punishment for her, though she seemed to enjoy the airtime. The landing was a different story.

"Maple you seemed a bit shocked back there, something bother you? Flint asked, getting up and dusting herself off.

She was right. I had been a bit shocked at who had answered the door because it was that mare from the forest. She was snooping around our camp at night and my brother had found her. We thought she was a vampire, so we decided to detain her. As it turned out, she wasn't, but soon after she got in one began attacking the entire camp until luring my brother and the rest on a wild chase, leaving me and Octavia alone at camp. It turned out there was two of them, and one was in the camp with me and Octavia, snooping around somewhere. Octavia had found it, I think, and I went to check on her.

And that's where the memory stops. After that there was a gap, presumably the vampire had knocked me out. Though it didn't make sense because I was still alive when I woke. A vampire would have feasted immediately, but I didn't even have any bite marks. I thought that maybe Octavia had saved me, but I thought it unlikely given the idea I got of her on the short time we talked.

She didn't seem to recognize me, which was good, but I couldn't shake the awkwardness of the whole situation off.

"No." I said flatly.

"Really?" She pushed.

"Nothing, I'm just not that good with meeting new ponies." I said, ending the discussion. I was obviously dodging her at this point but I figured I could work the angle of us not knowing each other that well to my advantage.

"You seemed pretty easy meeting me and Stone. And from what I've heard where kinda intimidating." She said back, proving an excellent point.

"Let 'er be Flint, we still have to talk about what we're gonna do about those bedroom curtains." Stone interrupted, saving me from spilling my personal encounter with the grey mare to Flint.

"Yeah, blue on white is too abrasive for me. Beige would've worked far better." Flint agreed.

I still couldn't get over what fashionistas these two were. I'd expected them to be cold and calculating ponies with only the drive to kill the vampire, yet here they were talking about how the curtains didn't go with the wallpaper. I, the lower ranking soldier, was turning out to be the one trying to lead us to completing the goals.

"What about finding the vampire?" I suggested.

"Let us have our field day, I'll stop by Shakes' tomorrow once I get the address of the bar and something proper to wear so we can maybe get our first lead." Flint said, waving her hoof as if trying to fan away my suggestion.

"To wear?" Stone raised a bushy brow.

"I want to surprise her, it's been awhile since we've talked." She replied in good spirits.

"Aye." Was all stone said back.

After that the two got down to business with renovating the place, doing everything from moving furniture around to simply throwing some of it out. They took sheets from rooms and swapped them with other sheets from other rooms, pillows got the same treatment. They took down the blue "abrasive" curtains and put them in a pile of the other things that they didn't like. I decided to simply sit on the couch in the living room, since it seemed to be untouched by them.

The home was simple, a kitchen and living room combined together with a hallway leading off to the left that had three doors down it. One was to the bathroom and the others to two bedrooms. It was generically painted with a few miscellaneous paintings here and there to try and provide some color, but it didn't work in the slightest.

As they finally finished, they came back to the pile of "useless" things they had found throughout the apartment and scooted them into the middle of the floor.

"Flint?" Stone said suspiciously as my curiosity rose.

"I'm doin' it, just gimme a minute." She said, tilting her horn down towards the pile of clothes, a menacing and vibrant orange circling around it.

It sort of looked like my own magical color.

'So she's teleporting the pile away? Seems a bit excessive, especially since we'll have to pay the apartment building in property damage. Though money doesn't seem to be a problem with them and I don't think they would qualify their tampering as property damage to begin with.' I thought, watching as Flint's horn charged ever more.

Suddenly, the pile began to glow orange itself as the teleportation spell reached its peak.

Well, at least that's what I thought.

The pile actually just burst into bright orange flames, flames that reached upwards and almost touched the ceiling. I felt the heat from the flames forcefully embrace me, like being held near a furnace.

I panicked.

My eyes went wide and I reeled back from the flames as I charged my own horn out of instinct; though I didn't know how to teleport. The most I could do was form a small, air tight, barrier around the flames and watch as the fire died down. What was left of the pile was nothing more than a new, black, pile of burnt wood, cloth and ash. 

I heard the maker of the flames let out a disappointed "Aww."

As I regained my senses I looked at Flint.

"Why would you do that?!" I screamed, forgetting this was my senior officer I was talking to - a general no less.

"Seemed like the best way to get rid of it." She shrugged, still calm despite my yelling.

"Burning it?!"

"Yea." She said simply.

"B-But...Why!?"

"Well, my name's Flint and flint makes fire. What'd you expect? For me to water them away?"

I couldn't believe she was talking to me like I was the crazy one here. She had just, in an attempt to get rid of something, set it on fire and watched it burn to a crisp. Not to mention that the rather large pile had burnt both easily and quickly, suggesting the heat was immense.

"You could've easily just-" I began, only to have a deep and gruff voice intervene.

"Oi, stop it you two." He did make my voice drop from screeching, but I wasn't dropping this that easily.

"What if she burnt the house down?!" I said in a louder-than-inside-voice tone.

"Pfft, it's a magical fire not an actual one. Though I could start a real one if you wanted me to."

"But-"

"Drop it both of ya', what's done is done. Either way the pile is taken care of. We can get a broom and sweep up the rest." Stone sure was being lenient to the fact she had just committed arson.

The room went quiet at the mention of sweeping.

"Maple-" Stone began.

"What?! No way, I didn't burn the pil-" I interrupted him only to have it done onto me.

"Maple! As your senior officer I'm giving you an order to sweep up my ash pile!" Flint's firm voice rang through my ears.

"That's not fair!" I said, sounding foalish.

She simply stuck her tongue out at me and trotted away.

I turned to Stone for his input, for a nod or shake of the head, but all I got was a tilt of the head to the side towards a broom and dust pan in a corner of the room.

My head hung low in defeat as my horn sparked up and brought the pan and broom towards me.


*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Octavia...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*


"Vinyl, if you could lean your head back a little..." I requested to Vinyl, who complied by leaning her head back into my chest with a dumb smile.

"A-A bit too far Vinyl."

She pretended not to hear me. Or maybe her selective hearing was impeccable, but either way I persevered.

I found myself on the edge of my own shower with a small sponge in hoof, on my haunches, leaning in towards the stream of water coming down onto Vinyl. I was trying to not get myself wet, but it wasn't exactly working out for me. At all. How exactly I ended up in this position I wondered myself. I had began to worry when Vinyl hadn't answered me the second time at the door of the bathroom and ended up coming in against my better judgement. 

What I found was Vinyl on the floor who, when I asked her, said she had slipped.

I asked if she was okay, and she replied with:

"Can you wash me?"

I went silent at that request and just gave her this look that I could only imagine was wide eyed, a red blush that could challenge Vinyl's eyes, and my mouth in a small "o" shape. 

She, of course, wasn't phased by the awkwardness of her request and I don't even think my reaction registered in her head.

And now here I was, teetering on my hind legs scrubbing her mane with a sponge.

The process would've been far less painless if she didn't begin slowly inching forward unconsciously every time I began to actually start scrubbing. I had to ask her to scoot back every minute or so and the result was a wet patch on my chest where she would go back too far and hit me with her wet mane. She seemed more clumsy that usual, and not in the way where she was teasing me with it; she seemed genuine with it.

I decided some conversation might be a good idea to break this silence that only I seemed to mind, and I had a perfect thing to say.

"Vinyl?"

She was silent, but I went on anyways as I got under her ears and she began inching forwards again.

"Shakes stopped by awhile ago asking if you were going to be stopping by the bar later tonight for that job offer she mentioned to you."

I felt a bit offset by the thought of Vinyl being the one bringing home money for the rent of my home. Not only was rude of me since I was the owner of this apartment, but it was a bit damaging to my pride. I felt uncomfortable with reliance on somebody for something that was within my control; I felt like that took away the title of ownership from me.

"Hmm..." Was all she gave to me as a response, nothing more.

"...so do you plan on going to meet her?" I pressed.

"Maybe..."

'I guess I'll have to take her, I wouldn't feel comfortable with her going like this on her own. I don't mean to sound motherly over Vinyl, but she was about as easy to convince of doing something as a drunkard at the offer of a drink. You'd really expect vampires to be wise creatures, but I guess that only rang true with some.'

"Vinyl, could you sit back up please?" I asked again, somehow just as kind toned as the first time I had asked her to sit up.

Her reply  to my request was simple grunt of approval as her body stayed at the angle it was currently at.

"Vinyl, washing you is challenging enough as is. You leaning forwards only makes it-"

Her leaning body suddenly gave out under my scrubbing and she fell forwards onto her stomach, her chin hitting the tile floor of my shower with a bone chilling sound; she didn't seem afflicted by it however. The sudden removal of her body - which was the support for my own - sent me forwards and tumbling on top of her, into the stream of shower water.

I had been trying to avoid the inevitable "second shower" that I was bound to get when I agreed to help Vinyl wash herself off, but now that it had happened there was pretty much no reason to be upset. If anything, washing Vinyl would be a lot easier now since there was nothing to risk since my mane was already re-wetting itself.

I could only let out a sigh.


*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Shakes...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*


My eyes glanced up to a small clock set up on the shelf behind the bar, it was about eleven o'clock now and Vinyl still hadn't shown up. I wasn't that worried about it since she wasn't renown for being on time anyways, but that was the whole reason behind my visit to Octavia's apartment; to make sure that Octavia knew about Vinyl knowing about needing to come to the bar. She was a bit more reliable.

The bar also had a noticeable amount of ponies showing up tonight because of Vinyl supposedly coming here, so a no-show would be a bit damaging to morale.

The door swung open suddenly, letting two ponies walk into the bar that the small audience of others gasped at. One was Vinyl, the other was Octavia; one was cheery looking, the other looked tired.

They walked through the crowed like the crowd wasn't even there and made their way up to me, ignoring the quiet murmurs of the five or six who watched them with excited eyes from booths throughout the bar.

"Well, look who's here."

"Hello!" Vinyl answered joyously.

My ears perked up instantly and my eyes narrowed in on the sound of that voice. Why did she have that voice? And why did she have to be here of all places when she had that voice!

"Hello." Octavia chimed in, much less enthusiastic than Vinyl's voice.

Something about the way they looked was off.

"Are...are you two wet?" I asked, pressing a hoof onto Vinyl and feeling the dampness. I had also done that to check her body temperature, which was a bit warm if anything but not as high as it gets when she is gets hungry.

"Vinyl had...troubles in the shower." Was all Octavia said.

It went silent.

"Well, uh, that's sad to hear." I chuckled awkwardly, my eyes falling back on Vinyl.

I needed to get more information on Vinyl as soon as I could because I didn't want her loosing it in here with the small crowd of ponies and painting my new wooden flooring red - blood stains are a pain in the flank to clean, not to mention the amount of air fresheners I would have to buy. I figured Octavia was my best bet, assuming she had remembered more since this morning about last night, and I had the perfect plan to get her alone.

"Hey Vinyl, can you go in the back real quick?"

"Sure!" Vinyl responded, trotting away happily to the back of the bar.

Flawless.

I craned my head, watching until Vinyl was out of sight completely and then closed the gap with Octavia and instantly began pressing her.

"Octavia how long has Vinyl been like that?" I could tell my voice sounded desperate and in all honesty, I was.

"Like what?" She sounded halfway oblivious to my question, but she also sounded like she knew a little about what I was talking about.

"Like 'a-little-bit-too-playful' or something along those lines."

She put a hoof up to her chin in thought, her eye closing to give her face a look of strain. It was a bit disconcerting that it took this much effort to remember if Vinyl had been acting weird throughout the day. While she had her head dipped down slightly, I scanned her neck for the obvious sign of why she might not remember and sure enough, I saw them. Two small holes, hardly notable thanks to her naturally dark coat, but I spotted them out nevertheless.

"Octavia, check your neck."

She looked at me oddly at first, but then followed my instructions and probed around her neck with her hoof. I could tell when she hit the two small marks thanks to her eyes going wide like saucers.

"W-Wha-? She was beginning to look a bit panicky, but I had to know the answer about Vinyl before I could even consider helping Octavia out.

"Octavia, try and remember something about last night. Anything about why Vinyl might be a bit wonky today." I was hard pressed for time.

"Sh-She took me under the bed when I wasn't looking and...injected something. She tried doing it again but...missed somehow and ended up swallowing some herself." It took all of about three minutes for her to say those two sentences alone. But what she had said in those two sentences was enough to peak my curiosity and concern.

"Wait, ingested it herself?" I asked, I had to be sure that was what had happened.

I wasn't an expert on Vampiric anatomy by any stretch of imagination, but I did know a little bit about how they worked thanks to a bit of field work. A few select - and by few I mean few - vampires had this sort of venom that worked as a sedative to help make the feeding process on prey a much more easy thing to do. In fact, I've heard of rumors where it is somewhat like an addiction for the prey and they offer their blood willingly in exchange for getting hit up with the venom. I don't know how Vampire fangs are built but I'd assume if they held a substance similar to this 'subdue' venom then it would be fatal for the vampire to expose itself, even on a mild level, to the venom. So, the fangs would either store it in a way that it can't escape into their body, or they simply make it on demand.

If it were the case that Vinyl had taken in some of her own venom, assuming she even made venom, it would be bad. Even if it were just a few drops it could be horrible; not to mention something like a mouth full. Vampires make the venom from local stuff inside their body with the idea of injecting it into another body in mind. The immune system of the 'other body' or prey would help fight this type of drug and minimize the effects of it; I suppose that vampires made the venom with this in mind, so the 'watered down' version of the venom was just the right amount of dopey that Vampires wanted. 

If the person who made it drank it, the venom wouldn't be picked up by the immune system of the Vampire since the stuff was made locally in the first place and wouldn't do anything to minimize the effects. It would be like giving someone a really watered down drink versus a drink coming straight from the source; only the watered down version was already enough to get someone wasted.

What the end results of such a situation was, I was both curious and fearful to see.

"Yes, I think so." She sounded a bit more confident, but I was really pulling for the chance she was wrong. "Shakes you seem a bit nervous, what's the matter?"

"It's just that-" I looked at her in the eyes and saw what I could only say was fear, though it was expertly suppressed by her outward demeanor.

"Nothing." I said bluntly. It was an obvious lie, but sometimes a small lie is better than a heart straining truth. I realize how cliche it sounded, but it was still a true statement under circumstances like this.

She raised a brow at me and attempted to speak.

"Shakes, what is going on?" Her panic was now beginning to escape her facade, like the crumbling of a dam. I wanted to stay and at least give her some form of comfort, but Vinyl's situation raised too many questions and risks to leave her alone for too long. I needed to check up on her. Now.

"Look, I've gotta go get Vinyl ready for her job. You just stay here and get some rest okay? You look tired." I said, giving her the best comforting smile I could make before turning around and trotting off to where Vinyl had wandered.


*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*