Vinyl Scratch is (not) a vampire

Vinyl trotted along, her saddlebags full of her shrunken belongings. After her meting with Frederic Horseshoepin, she was happy to know that she had a way back to Canterlot, as well as the majority of any resources she had access to.

Then she hit the crushing reality that she had nowhere to hide out until tomorrow, when her ride set out for Canterlot.

Sighing through gritted teeth ,she kept her head low as she entered the Manehatten downtown, looking for a hotel that was both inconspicuous and wasn't the sort of place you'd be nervous about even if you only planned to have a one night stand there. There were plenty of places that fit one of those descriptions, but nowhere seemed to fit both of them. Classy, expensive and way too attention gathering if you're trying to hide, or roach-filled, disease ridden, possibly-haunted-or-has-a-portal-to-tartarus-in-the-basement that you do not want to sleep at or even near. Ever. Nothing in the middle.

'Way to have options, you friggin high population density load of--' Vinyl's much-too-close-to-adult-language train of thought came to an abrupt and screeching halt as a familiar sound hit her hears. A deep pounding that represented one half of her life, as well as the half she had the most fun with, even though it earned less bits than the other, more respectable half.

A club.

Looking down the street, Vinyl saw something no club wanted to have anywhere near their vicinity.

Ponies.

Specifically, ponies that were leaving the club and looking none too happy as they walked away.

Curious as to what drew this sort of reaction, Vinyl managed to flag down one of the ponies leaving, hoping for answers.

"DJ got into an accident." The mare answered. "Broken leg or something. Ambulance left a while ago, but they said that a new DJ would come around in half an hour or so. Wouldn't be bad, except the new guy clubs like a Canterlot noble."

Vinyl winced. If that was the comparison, things were bad. This one night would ruin the place for a while if that's how things went. The fact that they had tried to stay open after an incident with their DJ stood as proof that it couldn't afford even a minor setback, let alone something like this. Come to think of it, if she listened hard enough, the rhythm was off and the pounding bass was just... wrong. There was no way to effectively describe it.

"Place been here long?" Vinyl asked, an idea already forming in her head.

"Close to eight years. Got a good rep, a bad name and I've been here before, but I won't be coming back for a few weeks."

Vinyl shook her head. "If you're thinking that, so is everypony else." She turned towards the scarlet mare. "But it only takes a  few bad days to firmly run a business into the ground, much less weeks."

The mare frowned, then noticed the small smile touching at Vinyl's mouth. "You think you can save it or something?"

Vinyl's grin only grew wider. "I know I can.

<><><>

The mare had followed Vinyl back to the club, curious as to who this electric blue haired stranger was. The club's manager didn't have much of a choice but to let her set up and hope she was better than the stallion who was currently being chased out with an assortment of fruit, both rotten and otherwise.

It was when she got out her miniaturized turntables and cast a spell to return them to their normal size that something clicked in the brains of every living being still in the club, known as 'pLace'. Little p then capital L in a completely intentional format. At least it wasn't comic sans. Vinyl didn't know why, but the universe just seemed to hate comic sans. It's actually better to just leave things as times new roman.

Once her turntables were finished with general plugging in (a process that Vinyl had streamlined to perfection and therefore only took about thirty seconds) she reached over to the still active turntables left behind by her predecessor and abruptly stopped the record that was playing, creating a second long scratch that seemed to rival even her most bass heavy songs in the impact it had on the crowd. Vinyl then proceeded to push the turntables to a far corner of the room, using her telekinesis.

Standing behind her own setup, she grinned widely, putting on a pair of personalized white and blue headphones she kept with the turntables at all times. Twisting her head slightly, several audible pops erupted from her neck. A pegasus in the crowd recognized her at that moment in time.

In the next moment, two distinct things happened. First, the pegasus jumped into the air, screaming "It's Pon-3!" This was simultaneous with both the club manager and the mare Vinyl had come in with mouthing the word "What?" with surprised and disbelieving expression. At least they'd heard of her.

The second distinct thing was Vinyl putting on a song.

It started rather lightly, not very clubbish, but it gained power as time progressed. Soon, it began to build to a peak, then spilled over.

<><><>

Two hours in and the club was right back to full capacity. The manager even let her use the lighting rigs, allowing her songs to come packed with nothing less than an above appropriate amount of lasers and strobe lights.

In the middle of an exceptionally flashy song she had set up, Vinyl knew that the crowd was right in her hooves. Smiles, drinks and dancing that would make a mother faint. The only way this could be ruined is if one of those Dawn's Light cronies attacked her and that would probably just boost her already bad-ass reputation by a staggering amount.

Too late Vinyl remembered why exactly she had avoided thoughts like that up to this particular point.

A stallion dragged himself into the club, the knocked out form of the bouncer laying on the sidewalk outside, along with several shocked ponies. He was bleeding, but other than that looked as if he had ran a hundred miles without stopping. He was also incredibly familiar...

He pointed a hoof at her and said something, but the sound of the music and noise of the club blocked him out. Vinyl was no lip reader, but she could figure out the gist of what he was saying. Likely something around the lines of 'Hold it right there, vampire scum!'

Vinyl rolled her eyes behind her shades, pretending to have not seen him. His anger flared, forcing him to worm his way along a wall in an attempt to near her stage. The few ponies who noticed him gave him a curious look, but the ever shifting lighting in pLace -- oh dear sweet Celestia that name... -- kept them from seeing the blood trickling down his forehead or the scowl that had rooted itself in place of where a normal mouth would go.

He was at the corner of the stage before too long, but failed to notice the light Vinyl had discreetly moved to point at his eyes. When he placed a hoof on the stage in order to climb up, Vinyl blasted with the light.

The stallion screamed in surprise. "Gah! Son of a b--" His sentence ended prematurely when he slipped on some spilled cider that had decided to be in the exact spot his hoof landed when he tried to regain his balance. Because the spot that's most likely to cause collateral damage is the best possible place for it to be.

Vinyl raised an eyebrow. "Oh. That explains a lot actually..." she muttered to herself, stopping the music at a motion from the manager, who had turned in time to see the stallion's fall, but not Vinyl's blinding of said stallion.

It took a few minutes, but the stallion eventually rose to his own four hooves, right before a yellow blur shot in, located him at the same moment he saw her and proceeded to get into a hooffight in the pLace.

Scrunching her face in concentration, Vinyl actively wondered what Yellowjacket was doing following that pony. Her eyes widened in realization that at any given moment, she could be recognized. Ducking behind her turntables, she unplugged every wire she could, even preparing her shrinking spell and scanning for any emergency exits.

Two more familiar voices reached Vinyl's ears over the commotion that was occurring on the other side of her equipment.

"Where'd she go?"

"Silver, do you honestly not see the fight right in front of you!?"

"...Oh. Hey, wait a minute. Plow, check that out."

'Oh please no, oh please no, oh please no...' Vinyl prayed to anypony who might be listening still looking around for an easy escape.

"Silver..." Plow answered. "That looks just like Vinyl's equipment..."

Vinyl pointed a hoof at the sky, careful to not let the limb go beyond the shield of her turntables. She then pointed at the ground and slammed the hoof into her other one several times, expressing a clear desire for any Gods that may or may not exist to come down to Equestria so she may beat the ever-living tar out of them.

"O rly?"

Vinyl immediately stopped in her actions, acutely aware that she had just heard a crime against grammer. She slowly turned to find a mismatch of seemingly random animal parts sitting behind her, only barely hidden by her turntables.

Taking his eyes directly out of his skull, Discord -- the only possible thing this abomination could be -- rolled the two misshaped orbs in his lion paw before tossing them cross the meager space separating the two entities. They bounced off of Vinyl's shocked and incredibly scared form, stopping in between the two hidden beings in the form of a pair of yellow die studded with red dots. One had a four face up, the other a three.

Discord clapped. "You win the bet!"

Next thing she knew, Vinyl was outside the front of the pLace, her turntables miniaturized and stuffed into her saddlebags.

She glanced around. "What?" She asked to nopony in particular.

"I just asked you if you thought I should change the name." A voice beside her said. She slowly turned to find the deity of chaos standing before her. "Honestly, were you even listening?"

Vinyl's mouth dropped open, but Discord mistook the sign of brain.exe being shut off for an attempt at speech.

"No! Don't you dare! You haven't been the same since we got married." He said, tears in his eyes. He reached down to his eagle talon and took a diamond ring off the middle claw. "I'm sorry, but you're not even the same person I once knew..." Discord placed the ring in front of Vinyl, sniffing and holding back tears. "You'll receive the papers by tomorrow."

With that, he turned and left, walking down the street. Then he immediately ran back, shouting "Eureka!" at the top of his lungs. He was also covered in soap bubbles and water.

Snapping his talons, the sign of pLace was immediately replaced with one that said 'The Naughty Ottsel". Along with that, a large figure of what Vinyl guessed was an ottsel sprung from the building's roof, one hand holding a pitchfork, the other performing the devil's horns hand sign. Lastly, it had a pair of red demon horns on its head.

Looking around, Vinyl noticed that Discord was gone and it was daytime. By happy coincidence, Frederic Horseshoepin greeted her.

"Vinyl! There you are! I was actually just on my way back to our ride to Canterlot. Come on, don't want to be late." He paused to look at The Naughty Ottsel. "Hm, must be new. We'll have to check it out if we ever come back, right Vinyl?"

Vinyl had fallen to the sidewalk, out cold.

Frederic glanced around. "I'll never understand her..."