Overture
By: Dusk Quill
“Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Begin.”
Fleethoof pressed a button on the shiny silver stopwatch, starting the timer. In a flash, Midnight Dasher bolted off the starting platform and all but threw herself into the obstacle course, the rest of Skyfall watching from a raised platform. She tore down the narrow pathway, surrounded by plywood on all sides to simulate a close-quarters experience. Her honey-toned eyes darted left and right, constantly on the lookout for threats.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, her hooves thundering against the hard stone floor. Though she had run the obstacle course before, she never failed to be surprised when she rounded the corner and the first target popped up in front of her. Midnight skidded to a stop, bringing her rifle up and peppering the target with a trio of shots. There wasn’t time to check where she had hit the target. She had to keep moving to maintain the timeline.
Midnight rushed past the target and rounded another corner. Another target swung out in front of her, and met a similar fate as its predecessor. She finished rounding the corner and rushed up a flight of cheap-looking stairs to the next level of the course. As she neared the top, she saw a dummy of a pony made out of bags of flour swing out to block her path. She knew the target well—it had tripped her up several times in the past.
This time, she knew what to do. With a battle cry, Midnight threw herself at the target, knocking it off its stand and pinning it to the floor. In the next second, she had her pistol out and put it to the dummy’s head, blowing its white, powdery brains out across the floor. Now thoroughly covered in flour, she ran down the short corridor on the second level. Two targets sprung out from either side at the end, and she opened fire on them as easily as she had handled the others.
The obstacle course had become something of a routine to her now. Several weeks into their training with Skyfall, and Fleethoof still had her and Echo running the course, always trying to improve on their accuracy and time. If she had thought training with the Marines had been difficult, Skyfall was an entirely different game. Fleethoof had them all up from dawn till dusk working on refining their skills into the finest instruments of tactical warfare possible.
By the end of the first week, it had become abundantly clear to Midnight Dasher why Fleethoof seemed like an entirely different kind of soldier. The short answer: he was.
Midnight hugged the corner sharply and ran down the last corridor on the second level. Just as she charged through the last doorway, another dummy target sprung up in front of her. She recoiled slightly, taking off guard. That one was new. She reacted purely on instinct, grabbing the dummy by what would be its hoof. She flipped it off its stand, tossing it over her shoulder and onto the ground before putting two rounds through its face. Another explosion of white powder covered her.
Wasting no time, Midnight ran for the open window at the end of the room she had just run into and dove through it, her hooves winding around the rope she knew from past experience was waiting for her and slid down to the plush mattresses below. She remembered her first run through the course, she had dove out the window, not realizing the rope was there, and ended up facedown in the mattresses. Embarrassed didn’t even cover half of how she had felt then.
The second her hooves hit the bottom she sprinted for the finish line. She all but threw herself into the end, tumbling across the ground and coming to rest in a crouched position. Her breathing was hard and labored, her lungs burning with the effort of her run. Fleethoof clicked the stopwatch again and checked the time.
“One minute, six seconds,” he said with a slow nod. “Not bad. You beat your previous time. We’ll check your accuracy after Echo goes.”
Midnight afforded herself a triumphant grin, feeling the relief of victory wash over her.
“Okay, colts. Swap out the targets. Echo, you’re up.”
Echo took her position up at the entrance of the obstacle course. She sucked in a slow breath and released it in a heavy exhale.
“Ready?” Fleethoof asked.
Echo gave a couple snaps of her tongue, mapping out the path before her she had all but memorized now. “Ready.”
“Begin.”
The second Echo heard the distinctive click of the stopwatch, she tore down the narrow hall of plywood like the building was on fire. She counted the steps in her head. Ten… twenty… At thirty paces, the target would pop up. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine… She heard the spring mechanism trigger and had her pistol up before the target had even finished making its turn, putting three rounds clean through the silhouette’s chest.
Echo moved fast and nimbly, like an ice skater dancing across a frozen lake. Fleethoof watched her methods with approval. She swerved around the tight corner and heard the second target make its appearance. Another three rounds ended its life, and then she was hurdling up the stairs two at a time.
The third target sprung out as she reached the top. Echo ducked underneath it, spinning like a dancer underneath its reach and spinning back around with her knife in hoof, driving the blade viciously through the back of the dummy’s head, ripping the sack open and spilling flour across the floor. The stallions of Skyfall all made soft sounds of shock as they cringed at the sight.
“That’s your partner, Sharp,” Valiant noted with a chuckle. “Better not ever piss her off.”
Echo let out a sharp whistle, reorienting herself before charging down the hall on the second floor. The two targets at the end popped up simultaneously. They were dealt with by two shots to each before Echo pushed past them and rounded the last corner, sprinting for the final room.
The last flour dummy sprang out to surprise Echo. The bat pony slid across the floor, diving beneath its legs and leaping up behind it. In one fluid motion, she stabbed her knife into the dummy’s lower torso and pressed her pistol to the back of its head. A squeeze of the trigger sent powdery white spraying across the walls and floor.
Her final enemy defeated, Echo ran and dove out of the window. She had learned from numerous tumbles to the mattresses below that there was, in fact, a rope there. It was a narrow cable though, and her echolocation had missed it on her initial run. Now her hooves wrapped expertly around it and she swung gracefully down to earth before making the final dash across the finish line.
She heard Fleethoof click the stopwatch again as she skidded to a halt, trying to catch her breath.
“Fifty-eight seconds. That’s remarkable, Echo.”
“That’s gotta be a course record!” Sharp said.
Valiant shook his head. “Nah. Fleet’s still got fifty-five, and Lightning Flash still holds the record at forty-nine.”
“Little Echo is brutal warrior,” said Cupcake with a proud grin. “Nopony will be challenging her and winning! She should be new pointpony of team.”
“Hey, don’t replace me so soon. I’m not that out of date yet,” Fleethoof said with a chuckle. “Besides, Sharp needed a spotter. His position has been compromised on missions in the past, and he could use the backup.”
Sharp Shot grumbled, “I don’t need a foalsitter, boss. I can handle myself.”
“It’s handling the enemies I’m worried about, Sharp. Really, are you telling me you don’t want Echo helping you after what you just saw?”
Sharp looked to the bashfully smiling Echo as she readjusted the black bandana around her eyes. She shot a happy smile his way. He merely rolled his head and groaned in defeat.
“Fine, okay… I’ll take her with me…”
“Jeez, fight a little more, Sharp,” teased Valiant sarcastically with a smirk. “The captain really had to twist your hoof there.”
“I know where you live, Val.”
Fleethoof retrieved the targets from one of Quarter Master’s assistants as they cleared the course. He looked over the paper silhouettes with a nod and laid them out on a nearby table.
“Very nice work, fillies. Clean kills, nice grouping, no misses…” He flipped between the two operators’ targets. “You both handled the dummies well too—although some with more finesse. Echo, you did that run with just your pistol, didn’t you?”
Echo gave her officer a nod. “Yes, sir. I did.”
“Very interesting tactic. Explain your method.”
“I knew the course was close-quarters, and I put more trust in my draw with my sidearm than my rifle,” she answered with a shrug. “Plus I sorta wanted to show off to Sergeant Sharp Shot a bit, just to show him I was worth dragging around.”
Fleethoof grinned and heard the others snicker behind his back. He turned to look at the sniper, who was busy trying to ignore the blood rushing to his face while Cupcake playfully jostled him. Fleethoof chuckled as well.
“Very good work, fillies. You’ve improved tremendously this week,” the captain noted with a pleased smile. “Now the rest of you get to run it. Don’t want anypony getting rusty, do we? Cupcake, you’re up first.”
The monstrous pony gave a loud bellow and charged the course like a tank, barely giving Fleethoof enough time to start the timer before he was gone, guns blazing.
The rain in Thatchholm fell cold against the little village in northern Equestria. Nestled comfortable into the range of mountains separating the land from the Frozen North, the town made its presence as unassuming as possible. It was a peaceful, humble hamlet to all who resided in it—which made the presence of the stallion dressed in a fine suit all the more ostentatious.
He cantered briskly through the cold rain, pushing through the muddy street that ran the length of the village, ducking from cover to cover while thunder rumbled threateningly overhead. He stared up at the dark storm clouds with a scowl, muttering a curse under his breath as he ran under a nearby awning. Back and forth he weaved down the street until he came to a familiar porch.
Wasting no time, he rushed up the steps and stepped into the warmth of the building. He shook his wet mane out, glancing around the quiet lounge while removing his hat with his magic, revealing the horn concealed beneath. Keeping to himself, he maneuvered his way past tables and chairs to the only flight of stairs in the establishment and made his way to his room with practiced steps.
Approaching the door marked with a ‘3’, he gave a short series of four rhythmic knocks before slipping the key into the lock and granting himself entrance. The first thing he noticed was that the room had been tidied up a bit. The piles of disorderly paperwork he had come to know and love had been sorted into appropriate files and tucked neatly away. He frowned, bidding his organized chaos goodbye in his mind.
He looked across the room at his partner, another unicorn, this one a mare, who was busy reading something. She hadn’t even glanced up when he entered. He set his hat on the doorknob and slipped out of his waterlogged blazer, tossing that across the back of a nearby chair.
“Reading up on the aerial sweeps of the manor?” he asked, grabbing a bottle of liquor with his magic and pouring a glass for himself.
The mare shook her head, still not breaking eye contact with the papers. “No, the activity log over the past week.”
“Got anything interesting?” The stallion paused, taking a long draft from the glass. “Anything new, I mean.”
“No, nothing. We’ve got nada, zip, zilch,” the mare said with a sigh and dropped the papers to the table in disdain. “We’ve been at this for… what, three weeks now? A month? If there was anything going on, I think we would’ve found it by now.”
“Well, you never know, Dawn. Sometimes things just happen. Maybe it’s a matter of timing.”
“I wish we could just storm up there and snoop around,” said Dawn, moving over to the only window in the room. She cast her gaze out past the town, to the tall manor house sitting on a hilltop a short ways away. “I just know if we could get a pair of eyes in there, we’d find everything we were looking for…”
“Yeah, but that’s the kind of thing that needs a warrant, and no judge is going to let us violate somepony’s privacy based off hunches. We need some sort of evidence of suspicious activity before we can act.”
Dawn sighed and rubbed her aching temples with her hooves. “I’m gonna be stuck as a field agent forever.”
“Hey, you can’t get upset if there’s nothing going on.” The stallion downed the rest of his drink in one go. “If nothing else, it gets us out from behind our desks for a while. You’ll have another shot at becoming a lead agent. Maybe you’ll even get your own team to boss around.”
“Oh yeah, because when I joined the RIS, I was actually trying to score a free vacation out to sunny Thatchholm.” A flash of lightning and clap of thunder made her irony all the more perfect.
“I joined for the guns and the mares.”
“You did not.”
The stallion chuckled and grinned. “Well, I was promised guns and mares. So far, I’ve only gotten one of the two.”
Dawn groaned and gave her partner an exasperated look. “Keen Eye, if you weren’t such a damn good detective, I would’ve asked for a new partner a long time ago.”
“You know nopony else would put up with you, Dawn Glimmer,” Keen replied teasingly.
With a roll of her eyes, Dawn turned back to the manor on the hill. If there was anything going on up there, she was going to find it. She wasn’t a part of the Royal Investigative Service for nothing.
“So do you really think there’s something sketchy going on up there?” Keen Eye asked, passively looking over the notes they had gathered so far. “Do you really think there’s some sort of sinister plot going on up there?”
Dawn just shook her head. “I don’t know… but if there is, we’re gonna stop it.”