Octavia was down to her last few shots. These Chimeras were outfitted to look like heavy construction vehicles, not war machines, so a civilian could easily ignore them. This meant such luxuries as pintle-mounted heavy weapons had been stripped off. The grey mare put down a zombie at the front of the mob and watched its fall trip up two more, who were mercilessly trampled underhoof. The huge four legged creature made of pulsing lights and whirling ooze was twenty five meters behind her, but her orders had not changed. Keep the mass of living dead from overwhelming the convoy. Still, she could not help but throw a glance over her shoulder at... that. While her eyes were on its horrible form, she saw the streak of red, white, and neon blue gallop out of the hatch of the AFV.

Vinyl, for she immediately knew it could be nopony else, was cackling like a madmare. The vampire bounded past the other two Chimeras, scooped a lascannon from the hooves of a half-slagged corpse, and dropped to an odd sort of kneeling slide, putting nearly all her weight on her hindlegs as she slid underneath the dripping monstrosity. Its eight main eyes followed her, and the pulsing pink mess of its tongue shot out after the vampire, but it was too slow. Vinyl pulsed the lascannon again and again, sending white-hot shafts of light up into the creature's underbelly. Around the impacts, the ooze hardened and the monster's swirling energies seemed to fade. It was a creature of chaos, and just as exposure to raw madness would maul a mortal, so the lance of cold science shattered the spawn's corporeal manifestation. The remains of Echo-Seven, who had gone to ground behind whatever cover they could find, started to poke their heads and guns up.

"Impressive," Octavia heard from below, followed by the hissing discharge of a plasma bolt. The ball of energy sailed upward, smashed into a diving pegasus-zombie, and reduced her to a falling heap of slag. A half-second later, the grey mare saw the imposing muzzle of the Lady Bon Hadescream as she climbed atop the Chimera with a leather satchel on her back.

"Thank you, miss." The cellist said nervously, accepting the satchel and finding it full of ammunition. "I mean, ah... m'lady!" She was unused to the honorific, but knew what it meant. The Bon Hadescream Corporation was a family enterprise, passed down through the generations along with the title of Lord or Lady. Publicly, it was a token of gratitude rendered by Celestia for the Bon Hadescream family's service centuries ago. Octavia had heard from the Manehattan cell Operatives that it was far more than a stuffy old honorific. On the shoulders of the one who bore that title was the stress of managing the Corporation, and the duty of commanding the Organization.

The creme colored mare wiggled the wooden shaft of her lollipop and smiled. "As you were, sharpshooter. We need to buy your friend about ninety seconds-" She cracked off another ball of plasma into a particularly swift gang of zombies that had rushed ahead of the main mob, then held a communicator to her mouth. "Unit four, suppress the rear. Unit six, medivac Echo-seven into your Chimera and provide supporting fire to the Asset." She raised her pistol again and loosed three smaller balls into the densest part of the onrushing mob, then hissed in pain as the coolant coils on her sidearm glowed hot from the discharge. "Lambda, this is Bravo, I need that wire fie..."

Octavia took a deep breath, and the rest of the creme mare's words faded to a muddle. She felt an odd sensation rush through her body. As she pressed the trigger again and again, she realized why she felt so peaceful. Ever since she was a foal, she had learned to destroy. Her father had made a weapon, but tonight she was not glorifying his name. She was not pulling the trigger to continue his legacy, to kill the innocent and suppress the meek. This was where she belonged, fighting to preserve a just cause. No, she could never atone for her sins, but that smile from the Lady Bon Hadescream had said much. There was a place for her here, as long as she was good enough. Perhaps it was just that the throbbing pains in her skull were completely gone, but she felt a little stronger with each shot that gave some poor pony peace. As she reloaded, she caught a glimpse of her pale friend.

To touch the Warphound would be catastrophic for most mortals. Its epidermis simmered like a stew made from rotten eggs and nightmares, and its drippings smelled just as bad. Vinyl found out when part of the guts she had blasted loose fell upon her that it really, really hurt vampires too. Just as the lascannon's power brick ran dry, a steaming glob of ectoplasm slopped down too fast for her to dodge. Her left front leg melted down to the bone, and she lost her grip on the depleted heavy weapon. The vampire bit her tongue and hissed in pain as she rolled out from under the monster, then limped behind the cover of a fallen hunk from a nearby building. There she found the decapitated body of another poor Bon Hadescream Operative. After a second's thought, she leaned down to lick at the spilled blood, but though it tickled her tongue she could find little strength in it.

"Ow, ow, ow. Why can't he just use bullets?" the vampire hissed, ever so slightly regretting how much it had drained her to save Octavia's life. She heard it roar and thump toward her chunk of cover. It was hurting far worse than she, but it was still far stronger. Vinyl reached down into her reserves and lapped at the blood pooled on the ground. The beast inside her reminded the vampire of those succulent soldiers nearby. Surely they would not miss one more, and she needed more than just dead blood to fight this monster. It would be a sacrifice for the Greater Good. Vinyl sank her fangs into the corpse's neck stump and sucked, pulling scraps of life from the body along with a trickle of blood. The Warphound was almost upon her, she could feel that unnatural pressure against her fur. With an expenditure of willpower, she managed to scrounge up enough to reconstitute her leg with a sickening crunch, smack, and schlup. The vampire was whole again. A savage grin crossed her muzzle. "Okay, you mangy mutt."

She pulled out her guitar with a glow of her horn and jumped atop the rubble. The Warphound was a bare three meters away when she pushed tight her shades and yelled, "you wanna play with lil' red riding trenchcoat?"

It roared back, and opened its mouth wide to devour her. Vinyl Scratch held up her guitar and ripped out an ear-splitting solo, pouring out a wall of sound right into the monster's face. If it had been mere notes, the Warphound would have gobbled her up without a second thought, but this was not noise pollution. It was raw power, played on a Draconic-styled guitar by a mare who had a taint of chaos in her own soul. This was the magic of heavy metal, and so an invisible claw of sonic force smote her foe. The dripping beast staggered back and tried to roar in pain, but its cry was crushed. The vampire continued, her strings beginning to glow orange-hot as she cracked the corporeal bond between the ectoplasmic goo and flickering figments of lost souls. Dark cracks spread through its form, gibbering portals back into the netherrealm from which the beast had been coalesced, and a clear sign of weakness to those who knew how to look.

From atop the Chimera, the Lady Bon Hadescream looked over her shoulder at the Warphound, while still putting bolts into the mob. All of that racket from the vampire had caused her Operatives to duck for cover again. "Stand up!" she roared into her communicator, louder than the music. "Do not be afraid! You are the voice of the unavenged, the blade of the forgotten, you are the line between this city and this beast. Bring it down!"

Her command called forth a hail of lasbolts upon the writhing beast of chaos. Alone, they were the stings of an insect, but together they overwhelmed its feeble mind. It had no easy prey, only the pain of physical reality intruding into its envelope of immaterial insanity. It lashed out at the guitarist, but Vinyl easily dodged to one side. Her music had shattered its sense of balance, and so the swipe caused it to crash into the side of a building. It rocked back to its legs and butted its head against the windows where a few Operatives were firing from, only to find that the steel and cement of Celestia's little ponies was cold and unyielding. Though a clump of goo slung through a window and melted through an Operative's armor before her comrade could burn it off, the building held. The beast felt something stronger than its rage. Fear. This world was not bending to its anger, it was not crumbling as it had before!

The vampire stuck out her tongue as she lept atop an overturned carriage and hit another chord. Sparks flew from the front of her guitar, and her strings began to burn her hooves. She hissed in pain, and blew on her front legs. As the echo of her music faded, the Warphound began to regain its strength. Its eyes turned to her, but there was no offer of truce, no understanding that they were both monsters. It hated her for not letting it have its way, hated her with every eye and every little spark within its wretched form. It drew power whence it had been summoned, she had to get by on what she could scrape together from this world. The lasbolts continued to pelt it, and for a moment Vinyl considered letting the Operatives finish the fight. Then she glanced back to the parked Chimeras, where Octavia lay. Octy was doing her bit. This one was hers to deal with, even if it would burn her hooves a little.

Besides, she really hated this thing right back. The mare rolled her neck and licked her hooves. "Everypony get down!" Sparks flew from her guitar, and the ground rumbled around her as she began to tap a hindhoof in time with the music. As each spark fell, she guided it with her horn into a little bundle that hovered in front of her. The Warphound turned back to her and lashed out, smashing the carriage flat just as she jumped clear with the little ball of sparks levitating right behind her. One of the escorting Chimeras' special weapons teams had gotten into position, and began hucking grenades into the monster's form. They stuck in the outer epidermis and blew large chunks of goo all over the road, but lacked the penetration to truly harm the beast. Fortunately, they were more than enough of a distraction for Vinyl to finish weaving her spell. It bellowed with rage at the grenadiers, but thanks to a timely order they had gone to ground before the glob of slime it spat landed. Suddenly, the street fell silent. Another order had silenced every lasgun.

"Hey, ugly! Yeah, you, the one with the face I wrecked!" The Warphound slowly turned back to the pale mare, who sat lazily against a hunk of rubble with a softly pulsing ball of sparks above her. She touched her lips with a hoof then waved it toward the chaos spawn, and the ball of sparks wrapped in her magic zipped after the blown kiss. It split apart a meter away from the monster's face, exploding into a dragnet of arcing electricity and screaming noise that wrapped around the Warphound. The beast was forced to the ground, roaring with agony as the little sparks began to erupt into little pyres of pyrotechnics that lept up and burned down into its gooey ectoplasm. Smoke and ash rose from the bound creature until the web of energy had dissipated. Vinyl smiled wide, "an' we call that one the Thunderball!"

Then the Warphound began to stand once more. It slowly rose to its legs and turned back to her, deep, dark cracks in its ectoplasmic form. Lasbolts began to pour in it once again, each one hitting true, but still not enough to finish the job. The monster growled again, and Vinyl hauled herself upright. The pale mare dusted off her trenchcoat and glared at the fiend.

"Oh, no you do not." The Lady Bon Hadescream muttered as the Warphound turned away from the vampire and seemed to consider taking its chances with the motorized metal boxes rather than the little pale pony. Although it was here to kill the Lady Bon Hadescream, the beast was not actively seeking her life. The bother of actually controlling a Warphound was far greater than simply gluing one together and tossing it in her path. Her father had once compared it to tossing a rabid dog in through the open window of a house. She held down the trigger of her pistol, and very nearly bit through the hefty wooden stem of her lollipop from the pain as the heat from the overstressed coolant pipes washed over her. A ball of plasma bigger than her head tore through the night and slammed right between the primary eyes of the Warphound. A great black void spread through its face, and though its scream of pain threatened her sanity, she savored it all the same.

Having lost almost all cohesion, the Warphound was reduced to little stub-like legs, barely able to keep its body a meter above the street. Vinyl strode up to its nose, while the Operatives continued to pump ordinance into the beast. She taunted, "sorry, Yeller!" then hefted her guitar high above her head and swung it like a battleaxe into the monster's face. As soon as the body of the guitar smashed into the foul ooze, the gleaming headstock glowed with a harsh orange light. It had been forged in the shape of the Fire-Beast, a mighty symbol from a time before time, when dragons ruled the world with an iron fist. Vinyl raised the guitar and brought it down again and again, laughing with contempt as the lesser creature of chaos suffered and shrank back into the abyss. Finally, she lept into the air and hurled her guitar down into the core of the creature with all her might and magic, the flaming metal skull of the Fire-Beast leading the way.

"Thankyooou!" the vampire yelled. All trace of cohesion vaporized as the heat of the instrument cooked the monster from the inside out. With a whiff of ozone and a final soul-scorching shriek, the Warphound disintegrated into a shower of ectoplasm. "And gooooodnight!" Vinyl Scratch held her head high and wiped a spot of goo from her cheek. It was mostly harmless, now. She walked forward slowly, trenchcoat swishing around her legs, and yanked her guitar up from the center of the sludge. "Heh..." Suddenly, the world seemed to wobble before her eyes. "Heh... whazzat... noise?" She looked around, and realized that it was cheering. For her.

Well, that wasn't bad at all. The beast inside her was silent, unable to give a response aside from that ever-present thirst. She trudged her way out of the muck, toward the parked Chimeras. Something was happening on the other side of them, but all Vinyl wanted to do was find Octy, hug her like a teddy bear, and... stop for a little while. Her body was feeling stiff, like when the sun was up, telling her that she needed to slip into torpor for a while. Yeah... it had been a good night.

But the night was not over. "Echo-seven, are your wounded secure for transport?" The Lady Bon Hadescream kicked back a zombie that was trying to crawl up the side of the Chimera, then erased it from existence with a small blast. Octavia was doing her best, but there were just so many. "All Operatives, refocus fire on our rear. Prioritize nearby targets, and fire at will!" She tapped the communicator again, "Lambda, I need that wire-"

Spllooooorrrcch.

Octavia's lasgun twitched from side to side, searching. There had been so many just an instant ago, where had they all gone? Yes, that one was standing there, but he was missing half his head. That one had been flying, but his wings had come loose and gravity had done the rest. She, with the missing eye, had been jumping toward the Chimera, but now she was in too many pieces to be worth a precious lasbolt. Octavia unfocused from the sights of her gun for a moment, and realised that the entire street was coated with... blood. Liter upon liter of the stuff, everywhere, mixed with green goo and gibs. It took the earth pony a very long moment to process, but finally she looked up. "All targets neutralized, m'lady."

The businessmare patted her on the back and smiled. "Well done, sharpshooter." She held up her communicator. "And good show, Lambda."

Octavia sat upright, then hugged the gun and bag of spare clips tight out of some childlike instinct. The night felt so cold all of a sudden. In the corner of her vision, she could see Bon Hadescream Operatives filing back to their vehicles, some carrying bleeding comrades, others black bags that zipped up the front. "I... was that... was that..."

"The Angel of Death." Her employer said with a smile. "Your old friend. My maidservant. One of the finest the Organization has ever trained. Ah, and such sweet music she makes upon her harp." After a long blow on her pistol to cool the smoking coils, she slipped it back into a padded holster within her topcoat. "I do not know how I could manage without her."

A bright smile appeared behind the earth pony, owned of course by a mint unicorn. However, she said nothing, merely bowed her head and held out a map. The grey mare glanced over the edge of the AFV and saw Vinyl below, spitting everywhere and pawing at her mouth.

"Pllleagh! Dis zahmbie bludd 'astes 'ike tar, an' iz got wire innit!" She yanked at a hunk of the wire, and yelped in pain when part of her tongue flew out of her mouth, snipped clean through by the razor-sharp line.

"Miss Vinyl Scratch." The Lady Bon Hadescream called.

Vinyl's ears perked up. She rolled her regenerating tongue in her mouth and asked slowly, "yeeah?"

The creme colored mare swung over the edge and landed next to the vampire. She took one of the mare's fetlocks in her own, "welcome to the Bon Hadescream Organization. I shake you warmly by the hoof." A sly grin crept across her face. "Tremendous things are in store for you."

Octavia smiled proudly at the vampire. Operative Lambda produced a comb and worked a few stray pieces of gore out of the cellist's mane. The pale mare stuck out her tongue and spat again, still trying to dislodge the foul taste from her mouth. "Got any candy?"

"As a matter of fact," the businessmare fished inside her coat, "I... Miss Scratch, why is my fetlock in your mouth?"

Vinyl smiled as innocently as possible, her fangs mere millimeters above the Lady Bon Hadescream's flesh. "Beeecause..." her eyes darted down to the still-warm plasma pistol inside the creme-colored mare's topcoat. "You burned your hoof, an' I was licking it better for ya?"

The Lady Bon Hadescream yanked her front leg back and shook the saliva off. Vinyl hissed softly. She needed a good bite. "We'll forget that ever happened, but the next time it does I will shoot you. Now," she pulled out a bag of jellybeans, "you may have-"

The vampire was already on her back, muzzle stuffed into the bag, merrily munching away at the candies. "Nom-nom-omm-nom!"

After a moment, the candymaker had to admit that she at least looked cute. She leaned against the side of the the AFV and held up her communicator to confirm that all ponies were accounted for, then gave the order to mount up. As she toggled off her communicator and looked down at the vampire once more, a feathered head leaned around the side of the Chimera. She raised an eyebrow, "Officer Rollins?"

He glanced down at the vampire, then back at his superior. "Ma'am. Just got off the link with BRNCOM." The gryphon gave her a fatalistic smile. "It's like I always say, off the spit-roast, into the dragon's mouth."

Author's Notes:

Another foe vanquished, and now we know how Vinyl was accepted into the Bon Hadescream Organization. The next chapter will give us another glimpse inside the Bon Hadescream Corporation's inner workings, and show how hard they work to produce top-quality candy so they can afford all those wonderful toys! I hope this chapter was enjoyable, I tried to make the battle of attrition between Vinyl and the Warphound as action-packed as I could manage. I'd love to know what you thought.

Also, what would y'all like to see more of in Bon Hadescream? More looks at the lore of these shadow societies, or more adventures with just Vinyl and Octavia? More big guns, or more magic? More plot and thought, or just more action? I've already heard the call for orbital bombardment, and yes, that's penned into a future chapter when the story allows it. No, the Bon Hadescream Organization doesn't have a kill-sat, they can barely afford terrestrial munitions! Section Eight on the other hoof...