The pale monster gave up. Her thoughts spun in circles, trying to find a way out. There was nothing, and so she was nothing. All that remained was the few seconds Octavia had left. After that, Vinyl could not fathom her future. She knew she was a selfish, wretched creature who could not keep herself under control. She looked up at the stars, up at the entrance to the Concertorium, and then down at her bloody fetlock. That was her choice, to be a monster.

Vinyl let out the stale air in her lungs. She really did not need it anyway. Everything was very simple now. Just how she liked it, no bothersome thoughts. It was all meaningless in the end. Entropy was the only natural state. Discord was the way of the world, not Harmony. Octavia breathed in, a slow, painful breath, and did not breathe back out. Was that the final song of the final set, then? This was the end of her friend, and the end of Vinyl Scratch. There was no reason to keep her real name, especially since her parents would... Thoughts. Too many bothersome thoughts. Especially the one that kept coming back, kept asking why she fought against evil things in the first place. Was it just to please herself, or to buck the system? No, Vinyl had stopped evil because it was right. There was an absolute standard of right and wrong, outside of herself, outside of anypony else. That was why she had fought. Her mistake here was not in fighting, but in measuring the lives of mortals by her own life. She had thought them less important because they were less powerful. Octavia was important, and she was weak. Octy was nothing, less than nothing now, but she meant something. She had a right to live that Vinyl did not have the right to take away. Just because she had the power, did not mean she had the right.

If all that was true, then Vinyl could not blame her own psychosis on her friend. The ultimate decision was in her hooves. Either she fought evil because it was right, or she fought everything because the world had not been fair to her perceptions. That choice, of monster or mare, was never one turning point. It was two roads, one wide that led to horrors her mother had told her of, and the other narrow. Octy was on the narrow one, had been at least. Maybe there would be more like Octy on it. That... that actually might be better than chaos.

But chaos was a wonderful thing! Cosmic horrors, oceans of blood, endless shiny baubles that changed to your every fancy! Power, power unending, the power to make and destroy gods! How could she turn that away?

Vinyl looked up at the stars, then turned her eyes to the full moon. A long time ago, there had been two sisters. Mom had walked with them, fought alongside them, tasted the first fruits of the harmony they carved from an uncaring world. Then, power corrupted, as it always did, and there was only one sister left to carry a burden meant for two. Chaos was a wonderful thing, but not as wonderful as having a friend who actually cared about you. She had lost that this night. Finally, Vinyl Scratch understood what she was. A sad little girl, the queen of a sad little sandbox, all alone in the world because she had driven off everyone who might have laughed with her. She could have all the chaos she wanted, but she was still alone. That was the worst feeling in the world for the DJ, to be truly alone. She knew what was right, and she had not done it.

Now she felt cold and isolated, as though she were stranded on the surface of the pale moon high above her. Vinyl bit her lip and stomped a hoof down onto the stage. All the power in the world was worthless without friends. All the chaos in the world was white noise without somepony to enjoy it with. She fought monsters because it was the right thing to do, not because it made her feel good, and so she would have to carry on. Tonight had been a mistake, a horrible mistake that had been a long time coming. She had pushed away her conscience, dulled her mind, and finally her willful ignorance had bitten her where it hurt the most. A little flicker of joy sparked in her heart, for at least she knew the narrow path was hers. It was a very little flicker, though. The blood on her fetlock was still fresh.

"So, that's it then." The pale mare whispered to herself. A weight lifted from her heart. She had accepted the inevitable, and committed herself to never giving up control like that again. Her masks had melted down, and her mind was firmly in charge of her body. All the things her mother had tried to explain with words finally made sense now that there was a warm body in front of her. She would listen to her mind now, and with that admission the taint of Discord cried out in agony. Something had died inside her this night, and something had been reborn. "Lost my best friend. Kept my soul." Vinyl closed her eyes. "Bad trade."

She felt a sense of peace, the true peace that she had searched the depths of incomprehension for, settle into her heart where that weight had been. This was what she had been raised to be, not to wander through life as little better than an animal. Still, that something which had been renewed nagged at the base of her mind. The vampire hated to lose, even though she had accepted that there was no logical way of saving her friend. Octavia was probably dead in the clinical sense. Then again, the pale mare never put too much stock in such fancy medical terms.

Despite the blood on her hooves and the body under her, she felt at peace. Vinyl reached upward, trying to touch the stars. They were so close... but so far away. When she was young, her mother had taken the little unicorn outside and shown her the stars. Told her how they changed over the centuries, how beautiful they had been when Luna had first broken Discord's control and unscrambled those beautiful lights. Then, her mother had whispered a secret.

"All the lights in the sky, dahlink, zey are ours. One day, when zhis little vourld is strong enough, und vise enough, ve vill be able to reach zem. Then... We go!"

One day. And Octy would go too. A lil' bit of her, at least. Vinyl licked at her fetlock, tasting the mare's blood mixed with the stallion's. It was a horrid mixture, the pungent vitae of the pegasus drowning out the savory flavor of the earth pony. One day, but on this night Vinyl had not been strong enough or wise enough to keep herself in check. There was nothing she could do to help her friend, the logic was clear. Logic had saved her from that wide road. Logic started small, with little axioms. Then it grew. It multiplied. It built up to irrefutable truths. It branched out into monolithic concepts that reshaped the entire world. A dangerous thought floated across the vampire's mind. Sometimes, logic and rationality could not get the job done. Her eyes flicked from the stars above to the grey mare below her. Some ponies might call this her fate, her destiny. Vinyl called it the worst mistake she had ever made. But, just because she believed that, did not mean she had to surrender to it. She glanced up to the stars again, twinkling in the night just as they had for centuries of centuries. That was where chaos came in.

Vinyl pulled herself upright, a red glow flickering behind her glasses. She hugged Octavia tight once more, feeling the mare's warm body against her cold vampiric flesh. Octy had not come here to die. This was not just what Vinyl Scratch wanted, this was what the earth pony wanted too. The creation of another vampire was called siring, and it took far more effort than raising a mindless zombie. However, Vinyl herself was not a true vampire. She was a wretched combination of her mother's vampirism, her genetic father's Lunar Blessing, vast power stolen from a creature from beyond the fabric of their reality, and a touch of blood from the stallion who had taught her her first word, "da-da". Coalescing her into existence had required the precise alignments of the stars and two hundred years of preparation. She had emerged from a maelstrom of chaos her mother had wrangled into submission as a newborn corpse, writhing with aethral currents. Vinyl Scratch was an undying weapon, both more and less than a true vampire. One of the costs of her manifestation was an inability to sire more like her, for there could never be another like her. If there was, the universe would explode. That's what the stallion she called her father had told her at least, and he was an excellent critic of such matters. Her mother had simply explained that the pale unicorn's blood would not raise another pony from near-death into un-death.

Vinyl did not want to sire, she wanted her friend alive and well. A mad idea finished forming in her mind, and she realized that there was nothing to lose. The vampire pressed the mare to the floor, cradled her close, and sank her fangs deep into Octavia's left carotid. What remained of the earth pony's blood began spurting into her mouth, and it was the finest ambrosia she had ever gorged upon. The pale mare's eyes rolled back in her head as her thoughts blanked in a moment of bliss, and then glowed with an eldrich light as her mind filled with pleasures no mortal could perceive. All vampires were twisted differently, the natural chaos of Discord's taint ensuring that no two were ever truly the same. Many fell into bloodlines or clans, general groupings of their powers, but mutation was the rule. All vampires hungered for blood, for it carried traces of the lifeforce they were condemned to steal. Only weak vampires could not turn a mortal pony into a bloodthirsty creature of the night

Vinyl Scratch was stronger than even her mother, one of the most antediluvian of all vampires, and only sought blood as a delicacy. Octy was the one pony that she had never let herself taste. She was perfect vampire-bait, refined, fit, highly educated, a "juicebag with a pedigree". To Vinyl, this blood was the one pleasure she had denied herself, and it was delicious. She did not need it to survive like others of her kind, because it was too weak to sustain her. The blood of any creature, mortal or vampire, was just a conduit. Vinyl Scratch subsisted on savory souls, ripping them from their owners through the crimson current that flowed in their veins. She needed souls, but she wanted blood. To devour a soul meant to rip away the bonds connecting it to a body, and use them to lash her own parody of life to her corporeal form. The true essence of the individual lost its anchor to the physical world, and passed on to wherever such essences went. Now, she was drinking Octavia's blood, and could feel her soul. It was weak, ready to pass on. Logic said there was nothing that could be done, except to dine.

Who the hay did logic think she was? Kick logic out. Make the impossible possible! Vinyl felt Octavia's soul draw closer to the maw of her mind. She closed her eyes and let the connection between them solidify as the blood oozed down her throat. Things invisible became opaque, and she growled as the natural laws of the universe tried to pull Octy's essence from her grasp. The earth pony's soul was dim, her body no longer able to anchor it firmly. The pale mare turned back to her own soul and found the ball of soul-scraps from that worthless pegasus orbiting around her crimson core. Vinyl twisted the currents of the mare's life pattern, tweaking her cosmic state like it was a particularly unlucky album on her turntable. The earth pony's brainwaves morphed into impossible curves, and her pulse began to hammer like a bass speaker.

Every metabolic process became unanchored from one another, the cells of her body ripping and tearing at themselves in response to the vampire's meddling. The DJ was in her element, making things up as she went along. She twisted the currents again and poured in the raw lifeforce from that ball of soul-scraps, feeling them pulse like a second track underneath Octavia's own song of life. The pale mare felt her friend's body twitch. The scraps were bright, the remains of almost everypony who had come to the performance tonight, especially the musicians. She aligned their patterns, nosing up the levels until the two songs were one, with Octavia's dominant. Something deformed within the mare's life pattern, the vampire's meddling far too much for her to take without damage. Vinyl did not care. She felt the earth pony's essence flowing through her grey body again, redefining her physical state with the power given by her friend. Octavia would live. The vampire relaxed in relief as the patterns continued to combine. They flashed together, just as she had hoped, and Octavia's dim little light grew brighter as the others faded into her glow. Hope welled in the pale mare. Vinyl pressed further, tinkering with her friend's connection to her physical form in ways that should not be, jumping between dream-conjured platforms of non-euclidean dimensions upon a mad whirlwind of impossibilities that finally blanked out when she meddled with one thing-that-should-not-be too many.

Octavia coughed, and started to breathe again. Her body jerked unnaturally as the broken bone in her cannon snapped back into position, and the skin grew to cover the healing fissure. The cavity in her lung sparkled as it regenerated, healing in half a minute a wound that should have cost her the organ, and the white talons of her rib cage reached out once more to protect it. Vinyl felt more blood, wonderfully hot and so sweet, gushing into her mouth as the earth pony's veins filled again. The euphoric surge pushed her mind into overdrive, and seeded a worrying thought. Would her friend's mind would return as well, or had the vampire tarried too long? Certainly Octavia's body was healing, but was the mare she knew still there? Reluctantly, the vampire pressed her tongue over the cuts on her friend's neck and sealed them with a glow of her horn. She stood up and stumbled away, a giddy grin plastered across her muzzle from the rush of excitement amplified by the rush of stolen blood through her body. After she nearly fell off the stage, Vinyl slumped down on her rear and stared at the wiggling earth mare. Again, her mind asked what she would do if Octavia was truly dead.

The vampire's answer was simple. She would do the right thing. Whatever that happened to be was a problem for future-Vinyl.

"Pomegranate!" The earth pony sputtered as she jerked upright. Vinyl's smile widened. If Octy had been brain-damaged, she would not be using big words. The vampire coiled her legs to pounce upon the mare and wrap her up in a massive hug, but a stray thought sent her crashing face-first into the floor. Yes, she had saved Octavia. That meant Octavia knew vampires existed, and also that Vinyl was one of them. This was a very bad thing. As the grey mare twitched, the pale one panicked. Various lies, from the almost-believable to the incomprehensible, darted through her mind. None would explain away the bloodsoaked Concertorium. As the earth pony opened her eyes, the vampire decided to simply act calm. Vinyl rubbed her muzzle with a fetlock and adjusted her purple shades, then put on an innocent smile as she straightened up. Behind her, a chunk of rock fell from the ceiling.

The grey mare's eyes turned toward the noise. She looked past Vinyl, silently scanning the ruined theater, then fixed her roommate with a curious gaze. Her barrel slowly rose and fell as she continued to stare until Vinyl began to tug at the collar of her red trenchcoat. The silence threatened to deafen the DJ, and when she could finally stand it no more, she whimpered "Icecream?"

Octavia blinked, breaking the spell her soft purple eyes had cast over the unicorn.

"We... uh... did you want to go out for ice cream?" The vampire continued, gaining confidence as she spoke. "I mean... I usually do after a gig. My treat." She gave herself a mental pat on the back.

Octavia nodded, a dignified bob of the head, and sat upright on her haunches. "Yes..." She coughed, clearing out her throat and dislodging some blood from her mouth. "That sounds nice, actually."

The vampire's grin widened. Awwright, get outa here, get some icecream, sweep this whole thing under the rug. She could not think up a lie that Octavia would swallow, though she could lie to herself quite well.

"But first, I am curious about that blood on your left fetlock." The cellist smiled sweetly.

Vinyl shrugged. She had this in the bag. "Octy, you said it yourself, I had a pomegranate slushie. It got everywhere. You want one?" Behind her, another ornate decoration finally tore itself free from the wall and thudded to the floor.

The earth pony pretended not to notice. She straightened the pink bow tie around her neck again, seemingly reassured by the presence of something familiar. "I see. It is all over your chin, and all over the auditorium, and most certainly all over me."

"You know I'm a really messy eater."

Octavia rolled her eyes and nodded. "Indeed. Still... I am glad you made it tonight." She continued to watch the pale mare to the exclusion of all else in the room, and slowly brushed out her ruined mane with a hoof. "It means so much to me to know you kept your word."

That caught Vinyl off guard. "I wha?"

"Your trenchcoat. I know you always wear it when you go out, so I left your ticket in the pocket." She shrugged innocently. The vampire noticed just how small the blacks of her eyes were, and how she shivered ever so slightly even though it was a warm night. "You... you always did forget the small things."

The vampire slowly reached down into her trenchcoat and pulled out a slip of ornate paper with the Concortorium's iconography embossed around the edges. She glanced over her shoulder at the markings that remained on the walls, and realized it was a front-row ticket to tonight's performance. Vinyl looked back, and felt Octavia's lavender eyes staring into her soul again.

"My first performance with the Royal Canterlot Orchestra. I was nervous, so you promised to be here for me." A small smile spread across her muzzle. "I know you remember. The first chair cellist fell ill from food poisoning, and a kind gentlecolt recommended me as a stand-in since their second chair simply was not up to the task."

Vinyl winced. She did remember, now that Octavia mentioned it. That was why she felt drawn here, because while her body ran on autopilot, her mind had remembered her promise. Her eyes widened as she remembered something else. She was banned from most of the upper-crust Manehattan establishments, so she had told Octavia to book her ticket under the name Eighth. All this, everything that had happened tonight, was her fault.

"We were about to start. I felt so very alone, since I did not see you there." The cellist sighed quietly.

"I'm... I'm sorry." The vampire said softly. She really was. Now that her mind and body were on the same page, she could truly feel sorry for what she had caused. Another thought quietly stabbed her in the heart. If she had been here, she could have saved everyone in the concert hall. She would have been a hero. That would have been really fun.

"I halfway expected you to cause some ruckus or another... but somepony else took care of that in your stead." Octavia put her front hooves on the stage and leaned toward the pale mare. "It was fate, I think. It was fate that my dreams would be crushed. This was to be the greatest moment of my life, the greatest coup of my career. If I did well tonight, then I would be a shoo-in for a spot on the Royal Canterlot Orchestra at the next auditioning session." Her face was hopeful, and her voice held a warm note of satisfaction. Then, she sighed, her shoulders slumped, and she crumpled to the floor with her eyes still locked onto the vampire's face. "All gone, Vinyl. Everything I ever wanted, all gone. My whole life, ruined." Another shiver passed through her body. She was definitely in shock.

"Hey, you had one bad night." The pale mare said nervously. "Why don't we get outa here and-"

"Because I am dead, Vinyl."

The vampire's eyes flashed, and she leaned forward. Her mind rejected everything about that sentence. "No. No, you ain't. You're just fine, everything's fine, and we're gonna go get some ice cream and... and..." Her voice broke. She could not lie to herself any longer, not with those eyes seeing right through her. "And nothing's ever going to be the same again, is it?"

"I do not see how it could." Octavia replied quietly. "Oh, and rest assured, I am screaming on the inside. But a musician never lets panic claim her while she is on the stage, otherwise she is certainly lost."

With her front hooves wobbling, Vinyl asked "How much... how much do you remember?"

"More than I want to." The cellist replied. "I know I owe you my life."

"No you don't. I almost killed you, and-"

"Shush." The earth pony commanded, the strength in her voice surprising the vampire into silence. "I should have known from the start that tonight was too good for fate to let it stand. That is why I asked you here, Vinyl. I needed to see a familiar face in the crowd, somepony who could reassure me this was not merely a dream." A dream it indeed had been, but she had awoken into a nightmare. "I needed a friend."

"You... think I'm-" Vinyl bit her tongue. Octavia was not running away. She was not screaming, or flailing about. She was just lying there, weak as a puppy with a pink bow around her delicious neck. The vampire shut her eyes and realized how foolish she had been. Chaos always had a cost, and it was never as cheap as it seemed. The beast inside her now had a taste of Octavia, and the mare's blood was some of the sweetest she had ever sucked. Octy was just a mortal, a cellist. She could not defend herself if the beast grew hungry one night, and that would be more than enough to drive Vinyl all the way into madness. The real reason they could no longer be friends was her lack of control. She opened her crimson eyes and looked down at the mortal mare. The only way to save her was to drive her away. "No, I never really was your friend. That mare you knew was another mask. This..." A cruel smile spread across her muzzle. "This is the real me."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "So, which one saved me just now? Because it seems they are one and the same."

Vinyl could not answer. In her heart, she did not want to lose Octy, but she could not fix herself as easily as she had healed the earth pony.

"You are the same mare I have lived with for years, Vinyl. Still a rascal, a madmare, a mistreater of discs. All that I can see changed is your dental work." The grey mare pressed a hoof to her underside, where the vampire's claw had driven through her body. "And perhaps you have a bit of dragon in you."

"N-no. Just... look, that's a story I can't tell you." She tossed her mane and flared out her trenchcoat, trying to look a little more imposing. "I'm a creature of the night."

The cellist let out a calm chuckle. "Really? That is nothing new either. Name one time you came home early from a party, or failed to wake me shortly before the dawn."

A guilty look crossed the unicorn's face, and her imposing demeanor melted. "I... sorry, I didn't mean to... how often did I?" She looked away. "You never said anything."

"Because it was your way, Vinyl. Also, I rather prefer to start my days early, and you saved me the cost of an alarm clock. Granted, you never sounded at the same time twice, but one gets what one pays for." The cellist pressed her front hooves together on the floor and rolled her head back. Her mane was in a sorry state, but a little soap and water would cure her ills.

"It's more than all that. I'm a monster. I... I eat ponies!" Not usually, but sometimes. The important part was that Octavia see how horrible a creature she really was, and run far into the night. That was the only way, but she still could not convince herself that it was the right thing. "I drink blood. I'm a carnivore. Yeah, I like a pizza now and again, but that's just flavor. I need meat to live." It was not the flesh or blood that sustained her, she was too powerful for such meager feed, but the lifeforce that sustained the soul. Animals had some of it, though they lacked true souls. Explaining that would complicate the point, and claiming to eat souls did not have the same brutal ring as rending flesh with her fangs.

Octavia refused to be repulsed. With a calm smile, she swished the remains of her tail back and forth on the ground. "As do many predators, both great and small. As do dragons, if you believe the old mares' tales." A breath, then she continued. "As do some record company executives. You are far more merciful with your claws than they are with their contracts." That was why she had never signed one. The easy road was wide, and many were those who walked it, not knowing that at its end were the blazing gates of hades.

"No! I'm not merciful, I'm not kind, I'm a vampire, Octavia!" A snarl curled through her words. Her voice rung through the ruin before being swallowed up by the crags. Behind her glasses her eyes glowed a deadly red. Vinyl had no idea what she was doing, save that she had to scare Octavia away. The other option was preserving the masquerade by violence, rather at odds to what she had just done.

"My Roommate is a Vampire." The cellist summarized. She took a contemplative breath and slowly let it out, calming her nerves as though she were about to play her cello for an uncomfortable and judgmental crowd. Her eyes refocused, widening slightly. "Well, that's... that's something indeed. You were always a menace, Vinyl. But, a vampire..." A smile spread across her muzzle. "That's almost as bad as being a DJ."

Author's Notes:

I wish to express my gratitude to everyone who has read this story. I hope you are enjoying it so far! I thought about splitting this into two chapters, but decided that it would hurt the overall impact of the entire scene if it was released in two rough chunks instead of one complete whole. Besides, I wanna treat my readers right!

Also, thanks to everyone who has liked, faved, or shared this story with others. I am its writer, but a story is promoted and propagated by its readers. If you really like a certain part of this story, or you have a beef with a chunk of it, leave a comment and let me know! Little green thumbs and stars are great for statistics, but a comment is a little statement that shares your unique perspective with the world.

When I write, I try to mix a bit of everything into my stories. It's sort of like a chef dashing in a few spices here and there in every dish he makes. So, if you read a part that jogs your memory, it's probably a reference to something. For a bit of easter-egg hunting, see if you can pick out the Splinter Cell reference. The Gurren Laggan reference should be obvious, and of course I tried to make the nod to Dennis the Mennace's My Roommate Is A Vampire as clear as possible. That story, both it's awesome ascent and equally spectacular downfall, was a major motivator for me putting this tale into words.

As always, thanks for your time. I know there are a lot of stories on this site, and if you're reading these words it means you took the time to page through mine. Let me know how I'm doing in the comments!