Fangs: The Order

by Sapphic

Subjected to Change

*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Sweeps...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*

"You know, I'm still amazed that they volunteered to show us where they took Octavia." I said for probably the third time.

"I still don't dear. For all we know, they could be leading us in circles." Vinyl's mom responded.

"I doubt it, considering you pretty much beat them all up practically on your own. Isn't that right guys?!" I called up to the group of vampires in front of us.

A few looked back with a sheepish chuckle to the two of us, one that I returned back to them - though mine was a genuine chuckle at their reaction.

After convincing Vinyl's mom that this was the only lead that we had to currently find Octavia, she reluctantly got off her rock and grumbled as we walked into the brush of the forest. She seemed to be really on edge with the whole situation, which was understandable considering they had just aided in both the kidnapping of a friend and attempted murder of us. But, like I told her, this was our best bet for finding Octavia.

Another thing that I noticed, was that they didn't hesitate at all in their shifts in movement, and that more than just one of them would move in the same direction. That meant that either, they had discussed this before plan in detail great enough to the exact moments and directions to turn, or they were being honest in their guiding.

Suddenly, Vinyl's mother abruptly stopped in her tracks.

I was the only one to stop moving, looking back at her with confusion, but the only response being the twitching of an ear and a look of nostalgia on her face.

I turned away to check on the vampire's guiding us, only to find them in the midst of stopping in their tracks themselves. They all had a similar stance to Vinyl's mom, ear's at attention with an odd look on their face.

I looked back between the two of them, wondering just what had caused them to stop, when it finally made it to my ears as well. A sound that didn't sound natural in the forest, one that was masked by the sound of the crunching leaves beneath the hooves of all of us.

Music.

My eyes went wide as I heard the gentle sound of strings somewhere off in the distance. The sound they made was full of heart and passion, a beautiful and rustic happy sound to the song as it ever so softly floated through the forest and around my ears.

It was a pleasant sound, but the fact it was even there to begin with - out in the middle of the forest - called some needed attention to it.

All at once the vampires scattered, leaping in different directions and out of sight. One in particular, simply darted forwards into the bush with the quickest spring out of all of them.

"Hmm..." The sound of a humming in thought made itself known, sounding a lot like Vinyl's mother.

A quick look behind me though, revealed that she was gone.

"...Pachelbel's Canon..." Her voice said again, this time from in front of me.

"...on a cello obviously; possibly birch..." My eyes narrowed in on the spot where the vampire had bolted forwards, a small rustling coming from the bushes in front of me.

I watched as a squirming vampire flailed about as she hovered above the ground and emerged from the bushes, Vinyl's mother holding them up by the scruff of their neck with a single hoof. She had a look of wonder on her face as she sighed happily.

"...in D major, the only proper way to play it. Especially impressive since a single cello is playing it. Must have taken months of practice to play it this smoothly." She said in what looked like pure bliss.

"Wait a secon-"

"Please don't kill me!" The vampire begged, interuppting me.

"Tell me why I shouldn't?" Vinyl's mother shot back. "I can tell where the music is coming from, and I could easily get there from here thanks to it. It was the only thing that was keeping you alive before, and after you and your little gang just fled, I see no reason to keep you now." She spat.

"P-Please..." She said, tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes as she put in her last efforts to pry Vinyl's mother's hoof from her neck.

"Let her go." I spoke up.

Vinyl's mom turned to me with a scowl, only to have us both stare at each other. She could do what she wanted to since I was in no position to tell her otherwise, that went without question, but it was the most I could do. I had found out that vampires like herself are pretty social creatures and typically comply with requests pretty easy.

She dropped the vampire to the ground and turned away, grumbling.

I walked over to the vampire, helping her to her hooves and making sure she was alright.

"T-thank you." She said to me.

I offered a weak smile.

"Say, why did you guys try to run anyways?" I asked her. I was pretty confused why they would run just because some music started playing.

"T-The music came from camp. I'm sure the others were as concerned as I was." She said, still gasping for air and holding her neck.

"So?"

"W-Well, typically we only play music when we celebrate getting a catch." She said reluctantly.

"What, like beans? I'd say it'd be stupid to play music sense it might attract the unwanted, but you guys seem to be pretty good at handling yourselves." I said.

Vinyl's mother shot me a look.

"E-Except from her of course!" I quickly added.

"Ah, well, you guys said your friend got taken by us. I imagine the reasons that we had when we ran were different, but the biggest two were either so you guys wouldn't kill us if you figured out what the music meant, or to go and see if we could save your friend so you guys, again, wouldn't kill us." She explained sheepishly.

"We should hurry if we'd like to make it." Vinyl's mother said impatiently.

I looked back to the vampire with an idea.

"Hey, could you go do that?" I asked her.

Her eyes went wide with surprise and her ears flattened.

"W-What?" She asked.

"Could you go ahead and to your camp and see if you could at least stall them from eating Octavia? I'm gonna have to follow grumpy over there since I can't navigate or hear quite as good as you vampy types." I said.

It took her a second to register the question, most likely from either the randomness of it or the undoubtable glare Vinyl's mother was giving me from behind my back. I felt a bead of sweat break out just from the idea of it.

"S-Sure!" She said, hopping to her hooves and beginning to bolt.

Though she quickly screeched to a halt, taking great care in slowly walk around Vinyl's mom to make sure she wasn't going to be spontaneously strangled again. Vinyl's mom, luckily, decided not to strike out at her, letting the vampire get away and quickly bolt through the bushes towards the camp.

'I hope she's going to the camp at least. I know if I had just gotten almost strangled by someone like her, I'd be running to the next town.' I thought, looking at Vinyl's mom.

"Are you just going to stare, or are you going to start moving dear?" Vinyl's mom asked sharply.

I smiled and let out a little laugh.

"Coming mom." I said sarcastically as I began to trot towards her.

It was, for all intents and purposes, an attempt to cheer her up in the slightest so that she wasn't all grumpy for the rest of the walk. I had learned from Vinyl that everything about a vampire was usually bigger; especially the grudges and emotions.

"Only my daughter calls me that." She snapped back at me.

"What about 'mother-in-spirit'?" I asked.

She only sighed.

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

As we got closer to the campsite, the orange light of what had to have been a campfire began to light the way for us - which let me put out the light spell that had previously been on my horn so that I could actually walk. Vinyl's mom didn't need one - not a surprise - and she even asked me to lower the brightness on it since it was apparently hurting her eyes.

The sound of the music had only gotten louder as we approached, now to the point where you could hear the flickering of the fire if you really focused on it.

"Finally, sure hope Oct-" I began to say, walking forwards past Vinyl's mom, only to have a white hoof almost knock me out with how hard it slapped my face.

Vinyl's mother stuck her head right next to mine from behind.

"I don't trust that mare for a second. As much as I'd like to charge in there and slaughter them all, I have no idea how many there are." She said silently.

I nodded, taking my own hoof and moving her's aside to speak.

"Does that mean-"

"Yes."

"Spying." We both said in unison, different tones used in both of our voices. I loved recon, the idea of spywork was every kid's dream at one point in time. Vinyl's mom, on the other hoof, must have some hate towards the idea of not being able to just rush in and overpower others in every single situation she came across.

She let me go and we both ducked low, slowly creeping up towards the line of brush that kept us hidden from the vamp camp on the other side. We both had learned from the ones who tried to stalk us, making sure not to step on any notable brush below us that might give us away. Though, with the song being played, we had much more forgiveness if we did mess up.

As we parted the brush in front of us, we found that we were still far enough into the woods that the darkness from it would still cover us up.

I turned to Vinyl's mom, only to see her looking with her closed eyes, slightly above my head.

I looked up to see that a chunk of a bush had gotten stuck in my mane, serving to make my head look part bush.

We both wordlessly regarded the fact before turning back to the camp to see if we could see anything.

And see we did.

In front of us we made out the silhouette of a particular grey pony with a ruffled looking, raven black mane. A small white stripe on the back of her neck marked the collar of her bow tie, and the large wooden instrument beside her accompanied with the steady movements of her hoof showed us that she was the one playing.

I felt a hoof on my shoulder pull me back further into the forest.

I was met with the face of Vinyl's mother, who looked a mixture of pissed off and deep in thought. I wondered why she was the former, but I didn't have to wonder long.

"Those sick bastards." She muttered.

"What?"

"What do you mean 'What?', they're forcing her to play her own funeral! Those sick twisted vampires must have some sort of... music playing fetish, or something weird like that!" She silently screamed at me, sounding serious.

"I, ah, don't think that's what they're doing." I suggested, though I could tell it didn't do anything to persuade her.

"Of course it is, plenty of vampires develop particular quirks over time that please them the most when it comes to feeding. I've done weirder things back in the day, such as the time when I took a whisk and-" She began.

"Okay, I think we need some more spying!" I said quickly, darting my head back through the bushes so she couldn't continue whatever story she was about to tell me that apparently outranked a "playing-your-own-funeral-music-before-being-eaten" fetish.

I went back to looking at Octavia from behind, trying to look around her at what looked like numerous dancing couples of vampires.

I couldn't make out there faces, but from the looks of it I couldn't see anything immediately malicious like a big boiling pot with Octavia's name on it. In fact, it looked pretty normal from this viewpoint, to the point where I could pretty much believe that they had smoothed things over and Octavia was playing the cello in celebration of just being alive. Well, other than the ruffed up look about Octavia, but that might've come from something else like an initial struggle.

"So, what do you propose?" Vinyl's mother asked me.

"So you want to do my ideas now?" I asked, not sounding snarky, but more surprised than anything. She had scoffed at my ideas before.

"Well, I won't lie that you did a good job extracting the location of the camp from the vampires. It seems that you really know how to handle vampires well." She commented.

She must be really dense to think asking someone was a good way to extract information. Time and-or environment must have really taken their toll on her.

"Well, you might be right that they could be a lot of them who're looking for a fight. So, I was thinking we kinda just grab Octavia and run. Like, you go make a distraction, I go grab Octavia and teleport us out of the woods, then you do the same and we meet at the road." I suggested, looking at her.

She inhaled.

"And no we're not killing one of them as a distraction."

She sighed heavily in defeat.

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

I was honestly surprised that they had a wide array of musical instruments at their camp, an entire tent dedicated to holding and maintaining an instrument of almost every kind. Even more shocking was when one was a marvelous and high quality cello like this one.

Though, the most shocking part was when they asked if I wanted to play something.

It had been a long time since I had played as well as I was right now, which was odd considering that it had been so long since I had practiced and that was still exhausted from the fight beforehoof. Even looking back on the days of when I would wake up just to practice cello almost all day, then go to sleep. I considered myself a master back then, then it slowly became more of a skilled hobby, but right now I was playing in a way that outclassed even the times when I considered myself a master.

The vampires seemed to enjoy it too, a good number of them taking to dancing with one another while the others happily talked amongst each other.

The only complaint I had was the drinks they were serving. While some of it was brewed alcohol they had made locally, the other part of it was from a keg that dispensed an oddly thick, red fluid that I could only assume was blood.

'Better that than myself.' I thought, transitioning my last song into a new one with a similar mood.

"Octavia!"

For being a group of what could be considered outsiders, they had remarkably good tastes that could compare to even some of the upper crust of Canterlot. Though anyone could appreciate a song, it took an avid listener to enjoy it in the way these people were.

"Octavia!"

My nose scrunched a little as the sound of someone saying something got into my head, but I shook it off all while keeping my composure.

"Octavia!"

I peeked an eye open, looking up and scanning around the camp to see if anyone was calling my name. It'd be weird if they were, considering they never asked my name and I never gave them it.

"Octavia!"

I turned around behind me, finally realizing where the voice had come from, only to see the two faces of VInyl's mother and Sweeps sticking out of a bush a couple feet back from the camp. They were using their horns as flash lights of sorts to light up their faces so that I could make them out through the darkness.

"Don't worry! We're gonna get you outta there!" Sweeps said reassuringly.

My song wavered ever so slightly at the mention of that. I developed a sudden fear that these people would be attacked again, this time by someone much more competent and proficient in killing - someone like Vinyl's mother.

"No, Sweeps-" I began, but the two heads disappeared back into the bushes.

My mind began a mental battle on whether or not I should get up and do something about the two of them. On one side, I was sure Sweeps could keep Vinyl's mother in check about murdering us all, but at the same time I doubted that. On the other side, stopping now and telling them would just alert Sweeps and Vinyl's mother, so they wouldn't show up, and I'd just look like an idiot.

Suddenly a crackling was heard in the woods a bit in front of me, getting the attention of a few ponies with myself included. As soon as we began to wonder what it was, getting a bit fidgety about an unknown noise coming from the woods, out questions were all answered with one swift, crashing sound.

A large tree suddenly fell from the forest, slamming down into the camp and bringing everything to a complete stop with a violent crash. Along with said tree came Vinyl's mother, straddling the log with an oblivious look on her face as she wordlessly sat on top of the log.

"Uhm, miss? Are you-" A few of the nearby vampires asked her.

"Sweeps! I couldn't quite get through it like you asked!" She suddenly shouted to seemingly no one.

An odd sound caught my attention and I turned behind me to find that Sweeps had emerged from the forest as well, her hoof having smacked into her face.

"I said 'to the tree' not 'through!" Sweeps' voice shouted from behind me.

"Ah, can we help you two?" A larger vampire asked. He had distinguished himself to me earlier as the leader of the camp, though he made it clear to me that the camp made its decisions together.

"I'm a distraction." Vinyl's mother said simply.

Sweeps slid her hoof from her face and turned to him, an annoyed look on her face.

"We're here for Octavia. A little group of yours from earlier came after us and took her; we want her back." She said, gesturing to me with her eyes.

The vampire's curious look turned to one of sheepish apology.

"Ah, terribly sorry about that. Feel free to take her if you'd like, though I'd ask for you to stay the rest of the celebration. We've ale and blood for plenty." He said happily.

Sweeps' face was one of pure disbelief.

"S-...Say again?" She stammered.

"Ah, yeah. Your friend there gave a few of our boys quite a run for their money before this little champ brought her down all on his own." He said, his hoof moving to shoulder the small pegasus that was chewing on my ears from before. I felt a little swell of warmth form in me just looking at the adorable foal.

"Octavia, dear, you're going to have to step up your game if a foal such as this brought you down." Vinyl's mother added in, still stradling her log.

The stallion smiled at Vinyl's mother before returning to Sweeps.

"Please, please, take a seat. Vibrato, give 'Octavia' here a break while we all talk." He said, a unicorn stallion jumping from the crowd and trotting up to me.

"You are truly masterful, madame." He said as he took the instrument into his magical grasp.

I blushed at his comment as he took my seat and began to play his own songs while Sweeps and I trotted over to the downed log Vinyl's mother was resting on.

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

"-we've stockpiled enough blood and ale to last us long enough without feeding for a while. And even when have to start that again, we only take them here and drain the bare minimum to knock them out. The we take them back to the road." The stallion explained to both Vinyl's mom and Sweeps.

The had seemed to have gotten more comfortable at the party, thanks to the help of both the ale and blood being served to them seemingly without limits. While sweeps was on her first mug of it, Vinyl's mother had already downed five tankards of blood in the time it took the head vampire to explain what they did.

"So why'd you attack us then?" Sweeps asked.

"Simple. We were worried about the increased activity The Order had been doing lately. A good number of us volunteered to stake out by the road and try to reduce their numbers. We figured that the vampires in Canterlot were getting the business, but needless to say we didn't expect you all to come along." He said, getting a sheepish look out of me and Sweeps while Vinyl's mother downed another tankard of blood.

"Heh, yeah. We're not with them by any means, but we are looking for their base, if you'd know where that is." Sweeps asked.

The stallion's face tightened at the mention of us going towards their base.

"Why would you all need to go there? It's a horrid place that'll be your downfall, even with all the skill you people have." He said sagely.

"We're looking for a friend." Sweeps said.

"My daughter." Vinyl's mother added, putting down the tankard.

The vampire put on a look of sympathy, but he seemed to still hold a similar stance. Even if he didn't tell us where the base was, we'd still go out and try to find it - we weren't going to stop until we either found VInyl or died trying. Hopefully he'd understand that and tell us anyways, but we couldn't ask anything of him considering the kindness he had already shown us.

I sighed.

"I really hope Vinyl is okay."

The sounds of music and dancing went dead silent, and a look around the camp showed me that everyone was looking dead at all of us. While me and Sweeps seemed to notice the change in atmosphere, VInyl's mother was too busy tipping up a tankard of blood to the sky. The silence went on for a while until the leader broke the silence.

"D-did you say Vinyl?" He stammered.

I nodded.

"No wonder The Order is working at full steam..." He said, snaking his hoof around his head.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sweeps asked.

"Well..." He sighed heavily, looking around at all the 'edge-of-panic' faces that were on all the vampires in the camp before leaning forward.

"A lot of us come from a castle that was out in the Everfree. Not sure if you realize it, but Vinyl's a bit of a vampire and a strong one at that. I mean, she blew up nearly half of our castle because our leader got crazy and decided to lure her there. It worked, but she went off hunting and apparently got free of whatever it is he used to keep her on a leash. Think he ended up taking her marefriend or something, ended up costing us our home. Dumbass." He said, retelling a story everyone but Vinyl's mother had heard.

"Sounds about right for her." She commented, finally putting down her tankard.

"And you're her mother?" He asked.

Vinyl's mother set down the tankard and gave him a single, slow nod before picking the tankard back up and returning to her chugging.

"No wonder we didn't last long." He said.

He turned to Sweeps.

"So you're her friend? Mind if ask what she's like? Not to sound invasive, but she's been a topic around here for a while. Even the simple things like what she's like as a person." He said.

"Heh, might wanna ask her. That's that marefriend you were talking about." Sweeps said with sly smirk.

His eyes widened, along with the entire camp's, as they looked at me. A mix of emotions in their faces, ranging from overwhelming fear all the way to happy relief.

"Y-You're...her g-g-girlfriend?" He asked.

I nodded, blushing in embarrassment at all the attention.

An overwhelming sigh could be heard from the camp as they all let out a breath they seemed to be holding. Apparently they were really nervous about something.

"Thank Luna we're so incompetent. If we actually killed you and Vinyl found out, she'd probably just level the entire forest we're in." He said, leaning back on the log.

"So...could you tell us where that base is?" Sweeps said, eagerness gracing her face.

"You know, even if I don't tell you, you'll just go looking for her anyways. You wouldn't happen to have a map would you?"

Sweeps already had hers out and pushed towards him, even having a marker in her other hoof. He took them both and quickly scribbled along the map before hoofing them back over to Sweeps. After that she quickly stuffed it into her pack and got up, ready to go. Vinyl's mother realized this and finished her current cup before putting it down and thanking the mare who had been giving her the constant stream of blood filled tankards. I realized that we were preparing to leave, and got up as well.

The stallion had an odd look about him when I looked at him closely, almost nostalgic looking in a way, though I made no move to ask about it.

"You all stay safe." Was all he said as Vinyl's mother's horn lit up in a red glow, and a flash soon followed.

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

Me and Care watched as Silver and Flint left the room, Flint truding a little bit while Silver just looked tired. The pure white room had been tinged red in spots where the harder blows had been dealt, and not to mention the countless other spots where the room had either been destroyed or charred. They had been fighting for roughly two hours at this point but it looked like the winner had finally been decided.

And it wasn't Vinyl.

Vinyl was sprawled out on the ground, her head laying limply to the side and some of her white fur singed from flames or ruffled from being hit by Silver.

"Well it was definitely...informative." Care said, his tone neutral.

I was still in stunned silence, looking at Vinyl's downed form.

She had never lost before, and I still refused to accept that she had lost time. Something wasn't right about this, she went down way to quickly and submissively for this to have been real.

"I'm going to check on her." I said, turning and heading towards the metallic sliding door.

"Hey! What about my bits-" He began, but by that point I was already out the door and halfway down the staircase.

I was brisk with my pace, pretty understandable considering I had just watched one of my, what I considered - and hopefully she still considered - friends get beaten up. I must've looked the part too, because the guards at the door just gave me a nervous look and moved aside to let me into the room where Vinyl was.

"Vinyl?" I called, trotting around the craters that littered the floor.

She didn't answer.

I got closer and kneeled down beside her.

"Vinyl?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Suddenly, a red eye popped open.

Vinyl rolled over and hopped up, the spring in her step suggesting she had hardly been hurt at all. In fact, it looked to be the opposite - she seemed to be a bit excited.

"Sorry, had to wait till the lady up there left the room too." She said, pointing to the observation room.

I gave her a worried look.

Her body was moving with excitement, but her voice suggested the opposite. Something wasn't sitting right with her, and the look in her eyes proved it. Oddly enough, this was why I hated Vinyl's glasses. She had the most interesting eyes that would change, narrow and shimmer with whatever emotion she was feeling.

"What's wrong." I asked, though it was more like a command for her to tell me.

"Well, even though we looked like we really tried, everybody was holding back." She pouted.

"I knew after the first hit Silver threw that we weren't actually fighting, and well..." She trailed off.

"Really?" I dead panned.

"Huh?" She asked, oblivious.

"You're mad because they didn't fight as hard as they could?"

"Well yeah, that's why I decided to fall over. They weren't quitting and the fight was getting kinda boring." She explained, as if it was obvious.

"Vinyl, Flint practically threw a miniature sun at you, and you're calling it boring." I asked.

"It wasn't even that hot!" She whined.

"Still, Silver was really holding back - just about as much as I was - and I could tell Flint still had her trump card." She said, her voice sounding like a child who was describing something they had kind of already forgotten.

Vinyl seemed to sound like she thought they could have one if they had tried, but she was also forgetting she had the handicap of not being able to use her strongest aspect.

Her magic.

Vinyl was fast and unpredictable already, but when she started throwing teleports and magic into the mix is when things got really interesting.

I was about to mention that to her, but the loud clanking of the doors opening drowned me out.

Care walked in with a nonchalant look to himself, moving past the debris as if it wasn't even there, while he looked down at his clipboard and murmured silently to himself.

"Time for the lab." He said, stopping in front of the two of us and looking up. The look in his eyes showed how excited and happy he was, but in my case it made me nervous since I was sure it was going to involve Vinyl.

"I just met with Silver and Flint, and we decided what exactly we are going to do."

Author's Note:

Ended up running a bit longer than I thought, so I cut it down in a few places. Also, all credit to the music goes to their respectful creators and owners.

Comments

[71M073J]

... how dare you shorten chapters
How dare you...
It seems sweeps and Vinyl's mom are getting along juuuust peachy

[Dream Dusk]

I just want to see Octy kick flanks and look cool while doing it. And yeah this is a a bit shorter than the rest.

Still, waiting for more.

[roker12]

"Well, even though we looked really, everybody was holding back." She pouted.

do you mean: "Well, even tough we looked really convincing, everypony was holding back." She pouted.

honestly the pony suffix is not necessary but if you're gonna flip flop between the two, don't or try not to.