Fangs: The Order

by Sapphic

Lost Sleep

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

If there is one thing this horrible place had going for it, it was the coffee they made. I wasn't even much of a coffee fan, but here I was in a break room sipping on my second cup with the feeling of bliss and relaxation almost forcefully covering my body. I felt, for the most part, content with myself; a bit of a rare feeling ever since I had gotten here after kidnapping Vinyl.

I hope they weren't too rough on her. She can get scared easier than you might think.

I heard the door creak open slowly and shut silently as Maple trudged in and shut the door behind her as quietly as possible.

"I'm guessing you found the pillows?" I asked her, knowing damn well how often they would starch their sheets.

Maple jumped instantly at the sound of my voice, pouncing backwards and slamming into the door with her hoof reaching for the handle of the door. Her face had a look of strained fear on it.

I didn't do much, admittedly, to try and calm her and rather just let her push at the door hopelessly until she fell to the ground pitifully. The odd part of the situation was that she was pushing on the door that, just two seconds prior, she had used to get into the room via pushing the door.

Something must've been bothering her.

"Ah...you alright Maple?" I asked, taking another sip of my coffee as she looked up to me.

A wave of relief washed over her face as she saw me, or rather, saw that it was me instead of someone else.

"Ha...sorry about this. I, uh, didn't get much sleep last night." She said, fatigue evident in her voice and the bags under her eyes.

"I'll say." I agreed, watching her closely as she moved up from off the floor and over to the coffee pot.

She was shaky as she poured a cup, coming close to dropping the pot more than once, and when she finally did pour the cup and put the pot back, she nearly dropped the cup as she came over to the table I was sitting at. Even a blind person could see something serious was bother her, just by seeing the way she was sitting and taking sips of coffee.

"Hey, uh..." She began, getting my attention. She mumbled off about half way through though, some hesitation to say what was on her mind.

"...you know that idea I offered to the general the other day? The one about using that Octavia mare or whatever to sort of black mail Vinyl?" She asked.

Indeed I did.

"Yep." I said curtly.

"I, uh.... think we should tell him to not go through with it." She said sheepishly.

I cocked a brow at her, confused by her sudden change in demeanor about the topic. It was about that time I started to realize something. Something oddly familiar and nostalgic about the way she was acting. It could have been a change of heart on her part, but that wouldn't explain her jumpiness and shyness.

My stomach twisted as I came to an assumption.

An assumption, that if true, was very bad.

"Sure. We can tell him." I said, offering her a smile that she seemed gracious to accept.

I set my coffee down and got up from my place at the break room table. Maple, despite just sitting down to drink her coffee, was up in an instant and ready to follow me. I noted her eagerness, which only furthered my suspicions as I walked towards the door of the break room with the full intent of convincing General Care out of the idea to capture Octavia upon her inevitable arrival. An idea that would save everyone some trouble.

Well, until a familiar pair of ponies met us on the way out.

"Aye, mighty fine mornin' Shakes." Stone said happily. He seemed more like a morning person.

"Yeah." I said mutually, waiting for them to come through so me and Maple could leave.

In all honesty, I was doing this just for her sake. I could have easily just let Care follow through with this stupid idea and let him test his luck with Vinyl. And, even though I knew the strength of The Order, I knew Vinyl could definitely put a dent in them if nothing else. If it weren't for the generals themselves she could possibly wipe out the entire order if she willed it.

Thankfully, she wasn't the type to act bashfully unless provoked.

And, well, she had a right to be bashful.

Stone was quick to enter and get right over to the coffee, casting Maple a concerned glance that she disarmed with a reassuring smile. He shrugged, not planning to force his help upon her.

"Maple, you look like shit." Another, more brash voice called out as they entered the room and moved past both me and Maple without casting but a single glance.

Flint, was most definitely not, a morning person. Nor a night person. So, I guess she was a 'strictly midday' person. Too early and she's kind of a huge pain, too late and she's also kind of a huge pain.

"Hey, you two wouldn't know where Care is at, would you?" I asked. May as well get some information out of the two to save me going off blindly and wasting time.

"Observation deck. Talkin' ta' Silver if I 'member right." Stone said, sighing as he smelt his coffee begin to brew.

"General Silver? The Sterling Silver?" Maple asked, looking a bit excited and nervous at the same time.

Silver, supposedly, was the strongest of all the four generals by a long shot. It wasn't by an official announcement or comparative event they held to see who was stronger, it's just what the other three generals admitted.Though they were supposed to be a compliment to the next general's weaknesses, such as Flint being lacking in defensive ability while Stone was plentiful with them, to form a cycle of sorts. A reason that they were so scary was because, if all four ever got together, they were unstoppable by even someone like Vinyl. Silver, however, had been regarded as a self sufficient general by more than a few in the past.

I watched closely as Maple gulped a little bit, clearly nervous. Considering she was already pretty much breaking down as is, this stress wasn't healthy at all.

Honestly, if it weren't for what I thought it was, I would have just called off this. But it would be much worse for her health if we didn't call of this plan.

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

The halls were silent as me and Maple made our way through the hallways of the base. It was still an ungodly hours - from what I could tell by how my body felt - and all the ones that were up were either above ground training already, or down here sleeping. Which, as a result, allowed me to hear the voice of General Care as we began to get closer to the observation room.

"...suggested using the partner of her to force her cooperation with us. So, I'll just continue with testing as normal until they finally do arrive. Hopefully, and judging by what Shakes seemed to hint towards, it will be pretty soon when they arrive. I've already sent word for the guards to bulk up during all times of the day and especially at night." I heard him say.

There wasn't much of a response when he finished, though the main reason was because of myself.

I found that I had began to lean in towards the door to hear better, and actually ended up slipping after leaning just a bit too far.

I tumbled over myself, and went straight into the door and began to slide down it just perfectly onto the handle, which opened the door and let myself fall into the room.

Luckily, I broke my fall with the edge of a desk that I nearly upturned before finally just giving up on not falling, and hit the ground full force.

The room was silent as I looked up, and came face to face with who I could only imagine was General Silver.

The face was feminine, and a fairly attractive one at that, and was matched with two bright grey eyes. They looked like they could pass for a blind person's, but the black pupil in the middle of those grey eyes was a sign that they could still see. Her coat was roughly the same color as her eyes were, only just dark enough to give her eyes enough of a color difference to truly show themselves. Her mane, unsurprisingly was a pristine white, styled back into a ponytail that had a small twine of loose hair coming down near her left eye. I also took note of a set of wings tucked tightly away.

"Hello." She offered, giving me faint smile. Her voice was about as attractive as her face was.

Not to say I had fallen in love with her at first sight, just that these features were a bit unusual with someone sporting the position as general. Take Flint as an example; she's tomboyish and won't hesitate to curse like a sailor. She's also got a few scars and burn marks here and there.

Yet, this mare's skin was unmarked - a sign that she had never been to a real battle, or had never been touched in one.

I was betting on the latter.

"Uh, hey there." I said awkwardly.

Content with my greeting, she straightened up and walked towards the door and past Maple, leaving me on the floor with General Care, who was struggling not to laugh.

As I watched her, I noticed a pen rolling towards the edge of the table nearest to her. I was about to say something, though it was too late, and the pen began its fall to the floor.

Well, until a grey hoof seamlessly kicked it and bounced it back into the air, letting it fly upwards until it almost hit the ceiling before coming back down to land perfectly into a cup full of pens on General Care's desk.

As effortless as it looked, anyone knew that it had been intended, and could have had much more power behind it. She probably could've killed Care with it if she wanted to, which was pretty unnerving to think about. Imagine if it was someone trying to ambush her. She could've turned it around into an ambush on them without even looking their way.

"Quite a mare, isn't she?" I heard Care comment from behind me.

I looked back to see him with a look of pure respect on his face.

"Yeah..." Was all I could say as I picked myself up off the floor, ready to get back to the reason I had come here to begin with.

"Look, Care, me and Maple have been talking, and we think you should cancel the plan for blackmailing Vinyl." I said, Maple coming to stand beside me and nod her head in agreement.

"Well, truth be told it's a bit late for that. I've already given the board our plans to deal with her. Even if I wanted to change it now, there wouldn't be much I could do." He said before looking back to me and Maple.

"Is there a reason that you two might be wanting to change this plan?" He asked, brow raised.

"Look, I know Vinyl well enough to say I know what she's capable of, but what she's been doing lately is... well it's just too sketchy for me to sit comfortably by." I said simply.

"Are you implying she's been hiding her true potential for - what - years now? It's possible, but highly unlikely." Care detested, scoffing at the idea.

"Sir, she's not the average vampire." Maple suddenly spoke up.

"We are well aware of that, but the fact stands that she is still locked tightly inside of this facility. I am confident in our ability to handle a single vampire, the generals are proof of that much." He was beginning to take on a solemn and level headed tone, one of a person who was an expert at arguing and picking apart someone who was opposed to them, and I realized that this argument was becoming useless.

A sudden knock came from the door, and a nervous looking stallion came into the room. He must've been a new recruit from the looks of it.

"Uh, sir?" He asked, looking to the general.

"Yes?" Care asked.

"Uhm, we... we have a situation at the holding cells." He said.

Care's eyebrows rose up before his eyes shortly followed and he trotted out of the room at a brisk pace, leaving me and Maple looking at each other before trotting out after him.

There was a crowd of ponies near the holding cell doors, a crowd that split apart as General Care approached it, me and Maple tailing close behind. Though, we didn't have to go too far into the holding cells to see what the crowd was for.

A particular cell holding a particular white mare was currently undergoing some... 'renovations'. The metal bars meant to hold her inside were bent to the point that I thought they were never cell bars in the first place.

Inside of this cell, sat Vinyl, a small smile on her face as her eyes met my own.

Care wore an opposite expression.

"Move her to the observation room. That will be her new cell." He said simply, waiting for a set of guards to come and escort her to the room.

Though no one stepped forwards.

There were competent guards among the crowed, though being stationed in a place where no action went on - where everything typically went according to plan - had left them rendered incompetent at the face of something going against that perfect agenda they had gotten used to. They were used to moving someone to their cell, they weren't used to having to take them out of it after they broke it.

Instead, Vinyl raised off the ground and moved out of the cell herself.

The crowd parted once more as she walked past them all as if they weren't there to begin with, heading out of the holding area for a moment or two before sticking her head back in.

"Where's the observation room at again?" She asked.

The room was silent until Care broke it with a hopeless sigh, and a painful sounding face-hoof.

"Down the hall on your right, down the stairs, take a left at the bottom, and it's the big set of doors with a bunch of locks on them when you first step out." He instructed.

Vinyl nodded and smiled before leaving once again.

The rest of the guard looked silently to Care, who gestured for them to dismiss. Something that they did with swiftness, realizing they had failed to do their job.

"If there is one thing I can say for sure about that vampire," Care began.

"It would have to be that she sure knows how to put people on edge."

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

I felt myself begin to wake up from the hard night of sleeping I had gone through. My muscles were sore, I felt hot and groggy, and even worse I felt like my chest was collapsing in on itself. I tried squirming a little to attempt to ease the feeling in my chest, though found even that simple task to be near impossible.

It was around that time I noticed the weight I was feeling was from outward source.

Cracking one eye open quickly, I noticed that Vinyl mother had since moved from her spot on the other side of the bed to the middle of it. During this movement, which had to have been a gradual over the the course of the night, she had also draped her front hooves over my body in the process. Hooves which felt more like lead than hooves right now.

I first tried moving her hooves with my own, though the way she had draped her hoof over my own pinned my hooves to my body and made moving hers impossible. I struggled a bit harder and managed to free a single hoof, which I then used to attempt to move her hoof, only to find it stuck as if it were welded there. Instead, I pushed up on her hooves and managed to pull my torso out of her iron like grip.

'Good god I don't need to be going through this this early in the morning.' I thought to myself, giving up on my efforts to remove myself.

I instead, just sat there and reveled in the horrid feelings I was going through.

It was a bit odd that I was feeling so bloody awful. I mean, I had 'worked out' last night, but I figured it wouldn't have lead to this much discomfort.

It was about time that I noticed that most of that horrible feeling was coming from my upper body. More specifically, my neck.

My eyes went wide with the idea that... that had happened over night, and my hoof shot up to my neck and began feeling around in search of two distinct bumps.

I felt my hoof roll across a set. Now, the set that Vinyl had given me had died down over time and had been nearly flat and unnoticeable last time I had checked.

This set, was fresh and protruding.

I turned to Vinyl's mother with a rising anger at her. I had trusted her to sleep in my bed without doing anything, and yet here she had gone and done just that!

I took my now freed hooves and moved them over to Vinyl's mother's sleeping form, but found myself hesitating.

The natural fear I had amassed of her getting mad at me, combined with the chiseled in etiquette I had been taught just left me thinking about a more polite way to wake her.

'To hell with that idea, she feasted on my blood. I don't need to pay her manners.' I thought to myself, gathering the courage needed to wake her up, then moved my hooves into position with preparation to jab her in the side.

"U-Uhm, Miss Scratch?" I said, slightly louder than an inside voice should have been, while gently nudging her side.

'Damn my manners...' I thought to myself, watching as Miss Scratch woke slowly and pleasantly.

The first thing she did upon waking, was swiftly unwrap her hoof from around me. The second thing was a sheepish smile to me as she sat up to meet me at eye level.

I felt my fear fade a little now that she had woken and there was no longer a risk of waking her up in a grumpy mood, and decided to crack down on her.

"What," I asked, leaning my head over and gesturing to the two bumps on my neck. "are these?"

She went pale at the sight of the two bumps, something I had never seen from the typically free caring and semi-egotistical vampiric mare until now,

She kept up her sheepish smile for a few second longer before letting it drop into a look of disappointment with a fitting sigh following along.

"I'm sorry dear." She said, sounding surprisingly disappointed in herself.

"I won't lie to you and say I didn't mean it. I fully enjoyed drinking a little from you. But I was sincere when I came here asking about sharing a bed and I didn't have the intention of feeding on you when I did so. It just kind of...happened." She said.

I wasn't exactly sure how to deal with this kind of intense honesty. Typically, with Vinyl that is, she would playfully and sheepishly deny things, which would give me an opening for some scolding. I simply wasn't used to someone flat out admitting what they did.

"I - uh - just..." I search for words that would fit the scolding more.

"Uh, but dear, I have another...confession, to make." She said, looking even more sheepish and scared than before.

I raised a brow.

"When I was...feeding... on you, I may or may not have accidentally injected you with a bit of vampiric fluid. Like, a lot of fluid." She said, her hoof sneaking back behind her head and rubbing it sheepishly.

I couldn't help but not see a little bit of Vinyl in her, which was probably the reason I was taking it so easy on her.

"W-What!?" I screeched, ignoring the rather interesting fact she had just admitted to me.

"Like I said dear, I injected you with a lot of-"

"I know that! B-But....how?!" I asked in panic.

I knew the effects of that stuff. It got me kicked out of my old job and had some other lasting affects on me that I wasn't exactly keen on going through. Needless to say, I was worried about Vinyl's mother injecting more of it.

"Like I said, it was an accident." She shrugged.

"But..."

I was pretty much at a loss for words. She was just so casual about it, and I guess I wasn't used to making something into a problem if the other person was convinced it wasn't a problem.

It was about that time, in between my mild depression, Vinyl's mother took on a soft look and tone and came to my shoulder.

"Look dear, I didn't mean to. I was half asleep when it happened and the half that was up was used to having a fresh source of blood next to me. I....I apologize deeply." She said, suddenly turning rather somber.

"I know you mean something to my daughter, so you mean something to me by association."

I felt a bit more reassured with that response, but still in a combination of shock and anger at the same time, to the point where I was simply speechless. She looked like she was in a similar position about something as well, a look on her face that looked like she wanted to tell me something but also one that showed that she didn't have a particularly good way of actually breaking it to me.

"C...Care to go get breakfast?" She asked suddenly.

A quick look over to her showed me a rather eager face, one that sincerely wanted to stabilize our relationship. Despite her closed eyes, I could tell by her eyebrows that this was important to her. I felt a bit sympathetic to her, it wasn't her fault I suppose, and I seemed fine as far as I could tell. That, and it meant quite a bit to see someone so eager to try and heal a shaky relationship.

And I was pretty hungry.

"Sure." I said, offering a smile to Vinyl's mother.

She looked thankful at that, her brows un-furrowing and just her whole body in general relaxing upon my agreement.

Though, seemingly as soon as we agreed, a hard knocking came from the living room, signaling someone was at the door.

It wasn't the first time someone had knocked on my door at an ungodly hour, but I had since spotted a correlation between "early knocks on the door" and "something significant happens or goes wrong", so I was already dreading opening the door.

Comments

[Folomo]

And now I can't stop thinking vinyl mom may have fallen for Octavia too

[Midnight Blossom]

I just read almost STRAIGHT through the first story as well as this story and I must say, I'm really enjoying it. Sure there are some errors and such, but overall it's a good set of stories. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes, and hoping there will be more of their adventures to come after this story concludes.

I just hope this doesn't go the path I've seen many go, where one or the other dies trying to protect the other.

P.S. If you'd like to get in touch with me, perhaps we could get the errors and editing issues taken care of for you.

Midnight Blossom

[HeartfireFirebrand]

"Down the hall on your right, down the stairs, take a left at the bottom, and it's the big set of doors with a bunch of locks on them when you first step out." He instructed.

Vinyl nodded and smiled before leaving once again.

The rest of the guard looked silently to Care, who gestured for them to dismiss. Something that they did with swiftness, realizing they had failed to do their job.

"If there is one thing I can say for sure about that vampire," Care began.

"It would have to be that she sure knows how to put people on edge."

Come on you know she is only doing what you say because she wants to right.