Fangs: The Order

by Sapphic

Sisters

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

Bolts of both magic and metal shuddered through the magic barrier surrounding me and my sister as we ran head first towards what could've passed as a small army. We were lucky that no reinforcements were coming yet, though I knew that it was inevitable once an observer caught wind of the fact that the fight out here was not a drill.

The first of the spears from the V-formation of earth ponies hit the shield, causing Sweeps to shudder to a stop, and me with her. I could already feel my heart beating fast, both from the effort of climbing that tree, and from the anticipation of the fight to come.

The beatings from the earth ponies came at the shield like drums as they broke part of the formation to have the front five ponies join in in an attempt to bust the shield.

But hey, we beat a smaller platoon of vampire guards, we could handle a few people designed to hunt even them, right?

I popped the spear into my mouth, holding it horizontally, waiting for Sis' magic to falter and fade.

I knew I couldn't handle the strength of their spears on mine with just my mouth, or even upper body for that matter, so the idea I had in mind was to use the muscles that possibly could.

My legs.

The haze in front of me faded, and I tossed my head up and let the spear go while I myself threw my back legs up to where my front ones were, leaving me in air with my back facing towards the ground. I guess I looked a little bit like a baby with they way I was situated, like, a mid-air fetal position.

The other spears hit my own, sending the wood from the handle down onto my hind legs, which sent my back down into the cushiony grass.

I gave them a little slack, feeling a burning pain in my leg muscles as it strained under the force, before giving a rampant kick that knocked all their heads back and sent them stepping back a few feet in recoil.

I took quick aim at the flyers above, not aiming at them with an intent to hit, but more to disrupt, and letting the force from the crossbows knock my hooves back to the ground as a shadow that I had been expecting began to approach.

A set of hooves landed on my own, using them as a stepping stone to jump over the earth ponies and into the unicorns behind them.

'Huh, guess Sis always did have a better butt than me...better start saying she needs to lay off the eating.' I thought to myself, my eyes glued to the rump of my sister as she jumped off of my hooves.

'That'll have to wait though.' I thought.

Now, the first thing I remember being taught in little, old, vampire hunting elementary school, was that you never let the enemy break up the synergy of the team, and they had already done that by letting Sweeps get the drop on them (literally). So, now they were supposed to attempt to divide themselves to hold both fronts.

Of course, they didn't know that, so I pushed the advantage as soon as they all turned to try and gang up on Sis.

A hit to the temple was more than enough to send one of them tumbling to the ground in a deep, hoof induced, sleep. And a few bolts into the back legs of a few others was enough to have three of the stallions out for the count.

Judging by the way Sweeps was wailing on one of the unicorns with her shovel, I could tell she was doing pretty good for herself.

Grabbing the spear that the now sleeping stallions had neglected, I grabbed the pommeled end and tossed it at the head of one of the ones I couldn't quite reach, knocking him to the ground in a daze before turning and backing up a couple yards.

Sweeps' horn let out a flash of light just before a spear dug into the ground from where she had been at, blinding the one who had thrown it, before she appeared right next to me.

She was panting heavily, a bit harder than I was, and put a hoof on my shoulder as a support while she took a breather herself.

My eye wandered off from the enemy, a bad habit I guess, and up to a stone looking watch tower where a familiar face was looking down at me. We locked eye for a second before she ducked down out of sight and disappeared, though I already knew where she was heading.

"Maple...damnit..." I said between pants.

"Huh?" Sweeps wheezed.

"Huh? Oh, well, uh, we mighta just been found out." I said, eyes turning down to Sweeps.

"What's that mean?" She asked, sounding like she already knew what it meant.

"Well...it's not that bad really. Just a few more dozen guys we've gotta beat up, maybe a few really strong ones, and that the generals probably know Octavia is inside." It hurt just to say that many words so quickly.

"Great." She said, taking in a deep breath and yanking her head up in attention before letting it all flow out.

Despite the efforts of getting that kind of second wind out of that, she was still panting pretty hard.

Pegasi have a bad habit of being picked for archers because they can fly, which makes it so it's really hard for them to be attacked by ground soldiers. That fact gets them a bit cocky, so they spend a lot less time with their training, and end up not teaching themselves how to fly and aim at the same time with accuracy. So, they end up sitting still like idiots when they want to shoot someone.

So I shoved Sweeps away and dove quickly when I caught the sight of the flapping of wings in a single spot out of the corner of my eye.

The sound of the crossbows being loosed rang out four times just as I jumped away.

I felt the ground shake a bit beside my leg where one of them must've hit, and opening my eyes showed my that another one had hit just in front of my head.

"One...two..." I began counting, looking around and spotting another bolt sticking out of the grass where we had both been standing.

"...three..." I mumbled to myself, looking around and not being able to find the fourth.

I kept looking, knowing damn well I heard four shots go off, keeping my ears perked to hear if the pegasi were reloading, or if one of the others were charging.

'Did she really miss that bad?' I asked myself, beginning to question if the fourth had even come near us.

That was when a pained and suppressed groan came out slowly from somewhere, causing my ears to twitch as I zeroed in on the source of the sound. It was coming from somewhere behind me, which was odd, because the only person behind me was...

My eyes widened.

'Sweeps.'

I turned around to see her curling up into a fetal position from the pain.

'No. No no no no no no no no!' I began to frantically chant in though.

I quickly came to my sister's side, ignoring every other sound or movement other than her, and rolled her gently over to see that there was a thin piece of dark metal stuck firmly in her shoulder. No blood had come out yet, though I could see the red around the bolt from where it was about to.

There were a couple of reasons I quit this 'job', one of which was a chance encounter with Vinyl that left others too scared to go out at night.

The other was laying in front of me, whimpering in pain.

I'd always tried to be positive and see the positive, for everyone's sake, and especially for Sweeps'. She was pretty much all I had all things considered, her and Vinyl and Octavia. Despite working at a bar, I didn't get out too much otherwise. But that idea was something Vinyl taught me; that if things ever seem sad, there's only one person you can trust to change that and that's you. I'd held that as a motto for as long as I had ever heard it, because it spoke volumes to me.

But I was finding it a bit hard to do that right now, what with my sister being shot.

I clinched my teeth, accidentally biting the side of my mouth, though I didn't bother to stop and ended up cutting it open a little. The warm and metallic taste of blood came through my mouth and my eyes clinched hard enough for little flickers of light to dance across my eyelids.

With both those senses drowned out in anger, it made it all to easy to hear the trampling of hooves coming towards me from behind.

I jerked my eyes open, only to have them lock with Sweeps'.

They were in pain, but glimmering with something that told me that she was having thoughts like mine.

I took that as a go-ahead.

I let out a chuckle to myself, one that stopped the hooves coming from behind me.

"You're gonna pay for that." Was all I said, and was frankly all that needed to be said.

A snort came from behind me.

A whistling of wind was all I needed to know where the tip of his spear head was coming from, and a spin from my downed position was all I needed to knock one of his hooves of to the side.

But I wasn't stopping there, oh no. I'd let each and every one of these bastards know how it feels to get shot in the shoulder.

I gripped the hoof I had knocked away at the thick of his front hoof, using it as leverage to move forward and snake my hoof up his own, going up til about his shoulder, and becoming parallel with my other hoof.

I tilted my hooves back slightly, triggering the crossbows and sending two black bolts into his shoulders at around the same spot Sis had been hit.

Next came blackness and a dizzy spell that quickly faded, caused by the sudden ramming of my head into his own.

Two more bolts slid into the crossbows almost instinctually as my hooves left the falling stallion, reaching out and grabbing his spear on the way back.

My ears twitched at a whisper of a sound coming from behind me, faint as it may have been, it was plenty loud enough for me to know where to shoot a bolt in order to hit it out of flight.

My eyes never left the spear, using my one free hoof to plunge it at the ground in order to firmly grasp it while my other hoof arched in an opposite direction at the sound where the bolt had come from.

A burning in my lungs marked my fatigue, but that hardly registered as I turned my eyes around at the flying pegasus who had tried to shoot me while my back was turned.

I must've looked like a mad mare, because she nearly forgot to flap her wings when we locked eyes.

I ripped the spear from the ground with my one hoof, doing a full spin to get some momentum, and gave her another glance before the spear left my hoof.

I had resolved to show mercy, to make sure every throw and shot was non-lethal, and to not take a life during this little scuffle. I had even decided to make sure I knocked them out as fast as I could.

But that was before they hurt Sweeps.

Although I should've expected us to get hurt, or even killed, because I knew that they didn't play by a set of rules like we were, it still was only natural that I got mad.

So, I cut them a break.

They'd live, but they'd remember this - even if they forgot everything, they'd have the scars to remind them.

The spear hit the pegasi nearly as quick as the spear had left my hoof, plunging into the shoulder I had aimed at, which also shook them enough mentally to stop them from flapping their wings.

I wasn't sure which one had shot Sweeps.

'Oh well.' I smirked, breathing heavy as the mare hit the ground like a sack of bricks.

Their numbers were dropping faster than that pegasus had, even with two of the unicorns Sweeps had beaten on getting back up, and they seemed to know it.

And that only spurred me on.

But I managed to stop myself and turn back to Sweeps, who was sat up and wincing in pain as she prodded at the bolt in her shoulder.

I almost ran back at them all right then and there, but I walked over to her instead.

"You think you can still cast some magic?" I asked her gently, kneeling near her.

A breeze came through the base, chilling myself and blowing the grass around us. Not good for making a shot.

"It's about all I think I can do." She said, looking down at the bolt sadly. She had taken getting shot for the first time a lot better than I thought she would've, definitely a lot better than I did the first time around.

I felt a mix of calm and relief wash over me with her answer. I had been scared for a good little bit there, and I don't really do well with getting scared.

You could ask that stallion and mare with bolts and spears in their arms about that.

"How about teleporting?" I asked her, having a few creative ideas in store for the next few of them, as I jiggled one of the holsters for bolts off of my leg and onto the ground.

"I'm, ah, not too good at that kinda stuff." She said sheepishly.

"Hey Sweeps?"

"Huh?"

"What's you're favorite color?"

"I really don't see how that's important right- SHIT!" She shouted unceremoniously as I ripped the bolt out of her shoulder and quickly wrapped the leather straps from the pouch I had taken off onto the wound and pulled it as tight as I could.

"No reason." I said, smiling gently to her.

I turned around and lowered my back end, scooting up to her.

When she didn't crawl onto my back, and moved my back end backwards quickly, hitting her nose with one of my flanks.

"Get on lazy ass, don't think a little shoulder injury is gonna get you outta this. This ain't gym class."

Despite what I had said and how I was saying it, I was still pissed, and if that injury had been serious, not a single one of those hunters would be alive to tell the tale of how they fought with 'captain Shakes'.

It was a bit arrogant in all honesty, to call themselves 'hunters', when in reality it could go easily both ways. They more so just handled grunts of vampires, whereas a real vampire would require someone like Stone to pin; and even then it was a gamble. The highest ranking people in this organization were really the only ones who could call themselves hunters, and even then it was still a fifty-fifty split on who really was the hunter.

I felt a pair of hooves wrap around my neck, squeezing my out of thought.

"So, what did you want me to do again?" Sweeps asked, almost weakly.

"Heh, a few things actually." I began, turning back to the dwindled numbers of the hunters.

"One of them is gonna be reloading the crossbows for me, I can do it quick on my own but I could focus more on aiming if you load."

Sweeps noded. Well, I think she did at least from the shaking on my back.

"The other is gonna be teleporting a few bolts around when I ask."

"But I already told you I can't teleport them accurately. Much less after you shoot them." She complained.

I turned back to her with a smirk.

"Well lucky you, I don't want you teleporting the bolts after I shoot," I turned my head forwards, "I just want you teleport them in the air, not even accurately."

We worked best as a team, and that's what made us deadly; the fact that we made up for one another's shortcomings equally and rounded out if we worked as one.

"We don't have the time to mess around with the welcoming committee. Octavia's gonna need us if we're gonna help Vinyl." I said solemnly.

I felt Sis stiffen.

"What happened to Vinyl?" She sounded scared.

"You'll see. Get ready to throw those bolts." I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as she drew a number of bolts from both the pouches and clumped them up together with the points facing downwards.

I resolved myself, letting out a calm breath of air before crouching a little. Sweeps' weight was enough to make the burning in my legs make itself known, but that wasn't going to hinder us once we got going.

"Toss 'em. And burst them apart with a bit of magic if you can." I said.

A flash came from beside me, which signaled me to start moving in a brisk trot towards the group. A second flash came from above them, causing them all to look up and this time signaling me to break out in a sprint towards them.

I had never really prefered doing something like this with arrows and such, as it wasn't exactly comfortable to do and also didn't really go with my prefered way of just shooting things, but I couldn't lie about it not being effective.

Bolts came down towards them like rain, each of them neatly spaced apart and with enough force from gravity alone to make them deadly.

The pegasus was the first to freak out, leaving her open to a pair of bolts to her shoulders, and then two more to the thighs as she fell to the ground.

Sweeps was a good loader.

The next were the unicorns rushing along a spell to make a shield.

Tossing my hooves up mid stride was a bit difficult, but I managed to line up the shots to the point where raising my hooves was all I needed to hit spot on.

A bolt to each of their horns caused the growing magic shield to fade.

I grinded to a halt and watched with a grin as they tried to get out of the way, each of them scattering in every direction. Though I could've easily picked them off...

I wanted to give them a show.

"Hey sis, send them a get well card, will you?" I said, aiming my hooves out in preparation.

"I'll try, but don't blame me if we end up getting hit with them." She said, charging her horn.

I shot them out, and thanks to a very similar mind set from Sweeps, the bolts teleported ahead of where the hunters were running, and conveniently aimed towards them as well. It ground them to a halt, but me and sis were just picking up steam.

She loaded them, I shot them, she teleported them; we were about as close to a factory line as it got, and soon enough the bolts were coming towards the hunters from virtually every angle. Admittedly, Sweeps missed a few times, but on a few of those missed, the bolt ricocheted into another and caused those bolts to hit.

They dropped like flies, the unicorns from the headache they were bound to have gotten and the earth stallions from either a back that looked like a porcupine from the bolts, or from the ones sticking from their hooves, shoulders and bellies - all of them dropping in one big, drawn out sweep as they just succumbed to give up and stop getting pelted.

I walked towards and past them, making careful to step past the black slivers of metal jutting from the ground, and making my way towards the hole in the wall. The heavy panting coming from around my back was enough to tell me that Sweeps had been exhausted like I had.

Though, looking back at the field of the fallen hunters, I could say I was happy with the results.

"Don't pant too hard now Sweeps," I said between heaves of my own.

"We still gotta save Octavia's ass."

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

"Miss Scratch?" I asked, my voice sounding hoarse for no apparent reason.

"Y-Yes dear?" She said shakily.

"I...I take it that you felt that too?" I asked, referring to the odd sort of aura coming from Vinyl.

When she didn't respond, I looked to her once more. Her face was still shaken, though now it looked like she was filled with denial as well. It was as if her emotions had been all contained in a massive bowl up until now, seemingly ever expansive to me since she had been through so much and not even show a sign of emotion towards it. But seeing Vinyl like this was enough to overflow even something infinite like that.

"Y-Yes dear." She said, letting me turn back to Vinyl.

She hadn't made a movement, and was just staring at us with her eerie red eyes. Thankfully, only one was visible through the curtain that was her bangs, though that one eye was more than enough to get a very specific feeling across. Something that was feral, yet honed to a specific task.

A killing intent.

Bloodlust.

It was overpowering in every regard, and if weren't for the fact that I knew what she was really like, I'm pretty sure that I would have fainted on the spot. Either that or started crying and running in terror.

It was odd, as I had never thought you could project something bordering on insanity through something as small as an eye.

I felt a pair of hooves gently squeeze themselves between my body and Miss Scratches, which at first didn't alarm me as much as it did when I realized that Miss Scratch still had me held in her own two hooves.

I blinked, and realized that Vinyl was now gently sat not but a few inches in front of me and her mother with her hooves both stuck between my body and her mother's.

Vinyl's mother noticed and began to move, but it was far too late.

Vinyl's hooves moved outward, each of them going in opposite directions, and I felt my body fly backwards with my mane stretched out in front of me - as if a huge fan was blowing towards me from behind and tossing my mane in front of me.

The next thing I noticed was the fact I was lying limply against the wall, looking forwards to see that Vinyl had tossed both me and her mother to opposite edges of the huge room. The things that caught my attention was how Vinyl's mother's impact had formed a crater, and how mine had not, save for the debris that was already there when I had landed. Though when I looked a bit closer at Vinyl's mom, I noticed her horn had a fading red color to it, as if it had recently been used.

Vinyl's head turned to me, and I felt a chill run through me to my core.

It was funny really, how she still maintained that particular grace to her even when she was trying to kill you. A blunt, yet admirable form that you could just see when she walked. Relaxed shoulders and a caved chest rather than a proudly puffed out one, her head just slightly held low as if her neck couldn't put in the effort to keep it up straight. Eyelids always just a little bit low, giving her a seemingly permanent tired look until they either raised or lowered to fit her mood.

By the time I snapped back to reality, she was already in front of me with her head craning down towards me to get a better look.

I managed to make out her eyes this time around, the pupils trying to adjust but never seeming to settle to the light of the room. The irises more red than usual for some reason, while the whites of the eyes had small red cracks in them from where they were bloodshot.

An odd smell came from her hot breath, an oddly metallic smell that only took a second or two to pin down.

Blood.

"You've been drinking again, haven't you dear?" A voice said from behind Vinyl, oddly maternal.

Vinyl's head raised and turned, letting me see that it was her mother behind her.

I noted her clenched eyes beginning to twitch.

Then, they began to creep open.

Vinyl's defining feature, to me at least, had always been the red color in her eyes. Not many others had a color like her’s that shifted so drastically with her mood, and it wasn't hard in any sense to make her feel something. Whereas her mother was almost the exact opposite, taking something as shocking as a killing intent from her daughter just to get her shaking.

Almost as ironically opposite, were her mother's eyes.

They were an icey blue, a polar opposite of her daughter, though they still both shared the massive pool of emotions. Hers were sensitive to the light pouring into them, an understandable thing since she had spent so long with them clenched tightly, but now I could see that they were equally as captivating as Vinyl's.

A bit of a joke really, her mother's magic was red and her eyes were blue, while Vinyl's magic was blue and her eyes red.

"We both know how you feel about that." She continued, her eyes half-lidded and staring at the ground rather than her daughter.

They changed her whole appearance, whereas previously a frown from her just gave off the impression of sadness, with her eyes open it now gave off the sense of disappointment instead.

Vinyl finally turned the whole way around, the revealing of her mother's eyes apparently enough to completely get her attention.

Vinyl's mother lit her horn up, a brighter and more saturated flare than I had seen from her yet - like a bonfire of magical energy just spewing from her horn for show, and show alone. The contrast of it with her eyes made it look only brighter, though when her eyes finally raised up to look at Vinyl, the brightness of the magic gave way to a darker and more vibrant color of red, oddly similar to the current color of Vinyl's eyes.

"I had never thought I'd have to do this again..." Vinyl's mother murmured sadly.

Author's Note:

Cheers!

Comments

[71M073J]

Fffffffffff fffffffffff fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
F.
Damnit cliffhangers

[Guilty King]

And now to wait for next week...

[ppg1998]

Am I the only who got that star trek reference?

[Twisted_Paradox]

Are Cliffhangers a good excuse for certain homicidal actions because I feel some growing and I don't think it be wise to hold them back....

J.K. I really like how the story is going and can't wait for the next chapter. this story is the true definement of Infinity/10 IGN.