Chapter 2:

“Hurricane?” Firefly asked me in a hissed whisper. I didn’t know why she was keeping her voice down—we were the only two ponies in the armory—but she kept nervously glancing around, as if somepony were hiding among the racks of energy rifles and suits of power armor hanging down from the ceiling. “What’s Hurricane? What’s going on, Surprise?”

“I was hoping you would know,” I admitted as I trotted around the narrow hallways, Firefly close on my tail, while I looked for the supplies designated by the mission dosiere. Firefly was supposed to be doing the same, but she’d hardly glanced at the bundle of papers Commander Archangel had typed up for her. If anything, she regarded them as if they were poisoned or something. “I think it has something to do with New Cloudsdale, but that’s all I know.”

“You mean the old prewar pegasus war memorial?” she asked, and I nodded.

I wasn’t certain what I was looking for, but I had to admit, I was getting a little giddy. I’d never been this far back in the armory, only ever being allowed to use the training uniforms during basic drills that everypony on the base endured, and basic power armor when I was sent on menial groundside missions. Back here, however, were the more specialized pieces of equipment. It was amazing how diverse some of it all was.

There were the average suits of Enclave power armor, complete with full-coverings, computerized helmets, wing-guards, built-in energy weapons, and scorpion-like stinger tails. Next, however, came the multiple varieties of energy weapons you could switch out with the standard gear, including everything from low-calibur energy rifles to cannons that fired explosive rounds and even plasma grenade launchers.

After that were the more exotic suits, such as the ultra-sleek Greased Lightning models designed for speed. Only the swiftest of pegasi ever got to wear them, and their miniature under-wing jet turbines allowed for them to fly all the faster. They weren’t much for weaponry, relying mainly on built-in retractable blades charged with electricity, as firearms could disrupt aerodynamics. Nevertheless, they were renowned for their near-instant lethality.

The most intimidating model had to be the Dragonhides. Huge and only modeled for the strongest and largest of pegasi, these hardy suits were slow and hardly maneuverable or agile, but they could more than take the punches dealt to them. According to the specifications I’d heard one of the other recruits boasting, the suits could survive virtually anything short of a balefire egg and up. Furthermore, many of them were equipped with balefire egg launchers, gatling energy blasters, or missile launchers.

“I thought that was just some publicity stunt in central Equestria,” Firefly noted, bringing me back to the present moment. “I had the same history class you did, though all I can remember is that it was supposed to be something to convince taxpayers that the Ministry of Awesome was worth their money, though it backfired spectacularly. Isn’t that what you remember?”

I nodded again, working my way further back into the facility. This was untrod territory for me; I’d never even seen much of this equipment in use. It was a wonder it was even here at all; Primum Mobile was a small military base, and we never saw any action. The only reason the base was here was to coordinate signals between other bases, as well as provide support should a ‘threat to the Enclave arrive from the southern seas.’ Seeing as all that lay across the southern sea was the Zebra Empire, which was now just as much of an irradiated wasteland as the Equestria below the cloud cover, that was about as likely as a magical wave of sunshine and rainbows making the world a nice place to live again.

“If I’m remembering correctly, that memorial was supposed to tour Equestria to boost morale,” Firefly went on, trying to piece together the puzzle. I could tell this was nagging at her analytical brain. “But it was just a footnote in our textbooks. They never even told us where the damn thing was when the bombs fell. It was probably destroyed two-hundred years ago.”

“You got me,” I said, not really paying attention, my eyes wide as they roved the goodies hidden back here. I couldn’t even guess the function of most of these odd-looking weapons, much less think what they were called. The suits were even stranger. One was covered in electrodes, looking like it would make the wearer a miniature mobile lightning storm. Another was a bright, garish pink, bearing exaggerated feminine curves. Emblazoned across its side was the name The Romantic. What in the world could that thing be used for? I could hardly imagine a fetish-based armor being useful in battle. “Have you taken a look at the gear you’ll be using yet?”

“And that still doesn’t explain why Commander Archangel insists on calling New Cloudsdale ‘Hurricane’,” Firefly went on, ignoring my question. “Or why he won’t just tell us what’s going on. He doesn’t trust us, Surprise, not fully. I’d like to know what he has planned before agreeing to be a part of it.”

“It’s the only way I won’t be expelled from the military, though,” I pointed out, a touch apologetically. “I know it’s fishy, and I understand if you’d rather not be a part of it—”

“Of course I’m going to be a part of it,” she asserted. “You are, and that means I will be too. I just wish I had more information.”

“That would be nice,” I agreed sincerely.

I’d reached the back of the armory by now. Each suit looked unique. Checking my dossier again, I finally located the serial number of my designated apparel for the mission and unhooked it from its hanger, laying it on the ground. Truth be told, it didn’t look like a suit of armor at all, though it had some strategically-placed segments composed of overlapping metal components and mechanical paraphernalia. Most of it, however, was a thin, silvery-whitish material that felt smooth to the touch, laced with a hexagon pattern. The helmet was the most armor-like thing about it, but it looked far too specialized to have stopped anything larger than a low-caliber bullet.

“What is this thing?” I wondered aloud. I usually just wore the standard power armor when I was sent groundside, which wasn’t often, and it had always been fine against the crazy swamp survivors and mutants we’d run into every once in a while. I was neither a decent shot nor a reliable hoof-to-hoof combatant, so I usually just maintained the others’ suits and tried not to get riddled with holes. Truth be told, I was pretty good at dodging enemy projectiles, though I wasn’t sure how noble such a talent seemed, especially when ‘enemy projectiles’ were broken-down prewar guns and slow-moving venom spat from blind carnivorous plants who couldn’t move.

As most of the suits I’d seen tailored themselves to a pony’s strengths, I assumed that mine would as well, even though I didn’t know how a suit could be tailored to maintenance. I knew for certain that this suit was definitely not anything like my maintenance smocks. Truth be told, maintenance wasn’t exactly my talent, it was just the only thing I could reliably do that was useful to the military, so I don’t know why I had expected the suit to match that anyway.

“It looks vaguely familiar,” Firefly observed, reaching out to feel it with a hoof as she scrutinized the hexagon pattern. “Wait a minute... this looks eerily like a zebra stealth cloak. You remember those pictures from the training manual?”

I saw her point, though it was definitely of Equestrian make. I carefully slipped it on, trying not to break the fabric, which felt fragile. Much to my surprise, however, the stuff stretched quite far and still resumed its original shape. The suit was cool against my skin, allowing plenty of air to pass through the fibers.

Next, I put the helmet on, stuffing my poofy mane underneath it. My tail wasn’t concealed at all, instead simply hanging out the back. I found that an odd design choice, but gasped as something at the base of the my spine extended itself into a long, snaky apparatus which coiled around my tail. The odd mechanical arm ended in a small metal claw rather than the standard scorpion tail, and I was wondering what utility it could provide. Maybe it was used for scratching the enemy or something?

As I was examining the secondary tail wrapped around my natural golden curls, a list of data began scrolling past my visor as the internal computer booted itself up.

Heart Rate: normal

Body Temperature: normal

Nutrition Level: normal

Anxiety Level: normal

General Health: normal

Next came a rather surprising bit of information:

New user detected. Scanning DNA for user confirmation. DNA approved by Enclave local intelligence. User identified as Private Surprise. Good afternoon, Private Surprise. Whom may I hide you from today?

“Are you... are you an AI?” I asked. I’d never met an actual artificial intelligence. Despite having worked with machines for years, the idea of them having thoughts of their own was still a bit startling. To think that I might be wearing one such machine, well... I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

Negative. I am a Class-I experimental prototype stealth suit. Preprogrammed responses will answer any questions you may have that I have been calibrated to handle.

I supposed that was a relief. Not that I was opposed to AIs, mind you, I just thought it best to work my way up to them. A pseudo-AI would be more than sufficient for now. Still, I was confused; I’d never been trained as a stealth operative. Why, then, had the commander assigned me such a suit?

I looked back at the dossier and flipped through it, quickly scanning over the various mission parameters, locations Firefly and I were to investigate while groundside, and other such minutia. At the very end of the documents, though, was a hoof-written note I had overlooked earlier:

Private Surprise,

I hope the stealth suit fits, and that it serves you well.

As you know, the ground is a dangerous place for a pegasus, and for this reason each pegasus is equipped with the equipment best suited for their particular strengths and weaknesses. However, I am sorry to admit that the military has done a disservice to you. Like so many others lost in the hopelessly naive ‘one size fits all’ mentality utilized by much of the Enclave, your true potential was never recognized for what it was, much less given a chance to flourish.

However, in an attempt to remedy this fallacy, I thought it wise to forego the standard armor so many of our underestimated recruits are placed within, never given a proper chance to discover their own unique abilities. Because of the military’s narrow-minded thinking, though, I never had the chance to learn the nature of your unique abilities any more than you did, nor do I know for certain that this suit will help you find them.

Nevertheless, I’ve witnessed in you a particular attention to detail and careful precision that many others lack, something I feel would be fitting for a stealth suit, regardless of your experience with this equipment. After all, bar one mistake, you do hold a perfect maintenance record, do you not? At the very least, as I know you are not a strong combatant, the suit should help you stay hidden from the major dangers of the Wasteland while your companion Firefly takes care of them, though in time I feel that you will grow to be just as much a capable force as she.

I would have presented you with this opportunity sooner, but contrary to what you may think, never before have I wielded as much influence over the base as I do now, and even my current control comes with a large risk. It is for this reason that I urge you and Firefly to locate the access code for Hurricane with the utmost speed.

As for learning to use the suit, it is largely self-explanatory, and I have no doubt that you will come to master it over the course of your mission.

Good luck,

Commander Archangel

This was perhaps the most confusing thing that had happened thus far. I’d never known the commander as a very warm pony. He had been fair to me, to be sure, but he had also been just as rough on me as any other officer. He was neither one to look down upon me for my condition, for which I was very grateful, or one to provide me with special consideration for the shortcomings my conditions caused, for which I had mixed feelings, though I knew I deserved no special treatment.

However, this letter, it almost made it seem like... he wanted me to succeed in the mission. Not just to gain whatever it was that he was after, but for my own sake. Why would he do that? Out of all the recruits on the base, I was most assuredly the least deserving of his special consideration.

“Stealth suit?” I asked aloud, somewhat awkwardly. “Um, how do I use you?”

Moving your facial muscles in the imitation of speaking your question without actually vocalizing it is all that is necessary to contact me, I read as the words began scrolling across the suit’s visor. You do not need to make actual sound, lest the purpose of my creation be negated. As for the user’s manual, I have been programmed to encourage a hooves-on approach to instruction. I can provide you with the necessary information as the appropriate circumstances arise.

Oh. Well, that was better than reading a lengthy manual, I suppose. I knew Commander Archangel wanted to get this mission done as quickly as possible, so it would probably be best to learn on the way.

“Firefly?” I inquired, wondering where she’d gotten to. While I had been conversing with the suit and going over the letter, she seemed to have vanished. “Did you find your equipment? Where are you?”

I trotted back towards the front of the armory, turning the last corner before the entryway when I nearly bumped into a pony I’d never seen. She had an odd, almost-sky-blue coat and a shockingly yellow and orange mane and tail. Her body was lithe and sleek, almost as fit as Rainbow Dash’s had appeared when I’d been her, though rather than anything Dash would have been caught dead in, this pegasus was wearing a very professional-looking dark-blue suit.

What would a pony wearing a suit be doing on the base, much less in the armory? Any visiting officer would wear their uniforms, so unless she was a businesspony of some kind—

Oh.

I wondered who it would be this time, and nervously, if it would follow the trend and be worse than last time. I stood my ground, planted my hooves, and stared at the mare who couldn’t possibly be real. Concentrating intently, I began muttering “You aren’t real, you aren’t real, you aren’t real...”

I tried my hardest to make her disappear, but she didn’t. Instead, she spoke.

“It’s about time you showed up,” she grumbled.

I refused to reply. If I acknowledged she was there, then it would just give the hallucination more power.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” snapped another voice, making me jump. A gryphon walked out from the other end of the room. She was an impressive figure, with sleek feathers, wickedly sharp claws, and the glossy fur of a lioness. This was all offset somewhat by a sinister scar that slashed across her face, marking out an eye and even going so far as to have made a cruel line in her beak. “I didn’t kill her. You’re pissed. Get over it.”

“Excuse me?” the mare said, sounding immensely offended. “Do you have any idea what I could do to you? I could have every pegasus in the city out for your blood! I could have Princess Luna herself sentence you to execution! I could have the entirety of the princesses-damned Equestrian military on the lookout for you, to be exterminated with extreme prejudice! And that’s if I’m feeling merciful!”

The gryphon merely rolled her eyes, as if she’d heard the schpeel all before.

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!” the mare raged, stomping her hoof. “I’M THE LORD MAYOR OF THE MOST POWERFUL CITY THIS WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN, AND I WILL BE TREATED WITH RESPECT!”

She was breathing heavily now, her shoulders heaving, looking like she was about to fly into a frenzied attack at any moment. I knew she wasn’t real, but I still took a step back.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid my doctor has me on a special eye-treatment program,” the gryphon said, smirking and still avoiding making eye-contact. “I’m not supposed to look at any ugly-ass Rainbow Dash wannabes. It upsets my fragile constitution.”

The mare looked like she was about to throw herself at the gryphon. I didn’t think that would be the best idea—on top of the fact that the gryphon didn’t look at all concerned, she was wearing battle armor and was covered in weapons. Grenades hung from a bandolier and a knife was just waiting in its sheath. An early version of an energy pistol was securely snug in a holster on her other hip.

However, before the mare could react, the gryphon reached forward and gently placed a claw on the mare’s lips.

“Shush,” she said simply. “I also have an ear condition. I’m not supposed to listen to too much bullshit. I think I’ve already had my quota for the day.”

With that, the gryphon turned around and began walking off, swatting the mare’s nose with her tail as she did so.

“I had thought you might want to be reasonable and pay me for my troubles,” the gryphon said, not bothering to look back. “But I see that isn’t going to happen. I guess if somepony ever gives me a contract for your head, I’ll do it for free. Well, at least I’ll give them a discount.”

“Don’t you dare walk away from me—”

“Smell you later, Lightning Dust,” the gryphon said dismissively as she began to disappear around the corner of the nearest weapons shelf.

Lightning Dust? I mentally echoed. Hadn’t that been the pony who Fluttershy had said tried to assassinate Rainbow Dash? I suppose that gryphon had to be the assassin.

This was getting too surreal. My hallucinations had never built on each other. It was like they were becoming a continuous narrative.

“If that’s the way you want to do it, Gilda, then fine,” the mare snapped before a wicked smile crept across her features. “I wonder if Gisella will feel the same way.”

Gilda froze.

“What did you just say?” she asked.

“She’s such a lovely girl, really,” Lightning Dust continued, her smile simply growing. “So kind, so sweet. I don’t know how on earth you two can be sisters.”

“What are you playing at?” Gilda asked, the sneer gone from her voice. If anything, she sounded a touch fearful. She backtracked and looked at Lightning Dust’s face, eyes narrowed as they scanned her for any sign of bluff. “Gisella’s back in the gryphon lands. Your jurisdiction hardly extends beyond your own precious cesspool in the sky.”

“She was in the gryphon lands,” Lightning Dust corrected. “Studying meteorology at the nation’s top university, wasn’t she? Such a bright girl, always the top of her class. All the professors love her, or so I hear.”

“Cut the shit,” Gilda said lowly. “Tell me what angle you’re playing or so help me I’ll—

“Or you’ll what, Gilda?” Lightning Dust laughed. “Kill me? I have no doubt you could. You’d make it slow and painful, every second a lifetime of agony until I begged for death. But of course, then Gisella would wish she was lucky enough to have so merciful a fate.”

“Don’t you dare threaten my sister—”

“Threaten her?” Lightning Dust scoffed. “I don’t know what you mean. If anything, I’ve been nothing but a benefactor to the poor girl. And poor is quite the accurate word, is it not? So bright, yet unable to afford even the local university. Such a wonderful coincidence that the top school in the country started offering scholarships for her field the moment she needed them most.”

Gilda’s eyes widened.

“That’s right, you miserable pile of feathers and furballs,” Lightning Dust spat. “The headmaster of Gisella’s precious school was quite pleased to receive an anonymous donation on the simple condition that a lone gryphon could gain entry. Gisella was just as pleased to be invited on a study abroad program to dear old Equestria’s primary weather research station. In fact, as we speak, she’s helping some scientists of mine develop a sturdier, lighter cloudstuff for New Cloudsdale’s defenses.”

“If you hurt her, they’ll have to redefine torture after I’m through with you,” Gilda threatened, though her voice was unsteady.

“I have no intention of doing so, unless you want me to, of course,” Lightning Dust assured. “Is that what you want, Gilda? Is it? I didn’t think so. Unless I think you’re changing your mind, you will do exactly as I say. Is that clear? And don’t even think of trying to ‘rescue’ Gisella. She knows all too well that her study team is working on classified technology. She understands that such matters need to be kept discrete, including her location. You’ll never find her.”

“If you want me to kill Dash, then fine,” Gilda sighed after a tense moment. “But I’m not doing this unless you give me some kind of guarantee that you won’t just kill Gisella when I’m done to cover your tracks. I want insurance.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands,” Lightning Dust chuckled. “But you needn’t worry anyway. Gisella will prove quite useful to me. After the study program, I’ll grant her an internship. If all goes well, and I feel it should, I’ll even let her be a part of my official weather innovation team. It’ll be the life she always wanted and more. All you have to do is give it to her. Who could be a better big sister than someone who makes their little sister’s dreams come true? Oh, sorry; you couldn’t do that—I’m the one doing that. You’ll just be helping me along the way. Do we have an understanding?”

“...Fine,” Gilda grumbled. “But I need time to plan. Dash will be tightening up her security now. Getting in a hit will be even harder.”

“You needn’t worry about removing Dash in the traditional way,” Lightning Dust said, shaking her head. “I’ve realized you’re far too incompetent to take out a simple government figure. You’ll be doing other, more discrete jobs for me.

“We won’t be killing Dash, oh, no,” Lightning Dust continued, a wild, hungry gleam in her eye. “We’re going to destroy her in another way. By the time I’m done with her reputation, with her life, the very ponies she’s protecting are going to want to tear her to shreds themselves. Dash is going to be the most hated pony in Equestria, and she’s going to have to live through every moment of it. For the rest of her life, little Dashie is going to have to face the fact that no matter what good she does, no matter who she saves, everypony will look down on her as the biggest buckup in Equestrian history.”

For the first time, Gilda actually looked a little...eager. Did she actually have a grudge against Rainbow Dash as well? I had thought her assassination attempt was just a matter of business. Blood money. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

“When do we start?” Gilda inquired.

“As soon as we get Surprise to snap out of it,” Lightning Dust said, turning to look me sympathetically in the eye. “Come on, Surprise, fight it! This is isn’t real!”

“Huh?” I said, shaking my head as the images of the two figures began to blur. When I looked back up, Firefly was standing before me, looking worried. “No, not again! I tried to fight it this time, Firefly, I really did! I just couldn’t break free...”

“I believe you, Surprise,” Firefly said. “We’ll just have to try harder next time. Ready to go?”

I nodded, and she led me out the door.

As we walked towards the edge of the base, where Commander Archangel had instructed the team to meet up before leaving for the ground, I took in Firefly’s own armor. It was far bulkier than the stealth suit, being a fully-fledged suit of power armor, and it was even slightly bulkier than the standard suit of armor. Plenty of antennae stuck out from her back, and what looked like a mechanical arm was folded at the base of her neck, connected to some sort of panel lying against her spine. There were even plenty of removable panels, though I couldn’t guess their purpose. However, the most impressive feature I could see were the tiny rocket-like jumpjets jutting out from the sides of her limbs, giving her the extra boost she needed to fly despite the unusually heavy weight of the armor.

“Do you like it?” Firefly asked, noticing my puzzled gaze. “It’s a little less agile than I would have liked, but it makes up for it with other features.”

“What’s it built for?” I inquired. The stealth suit was obviously for quick movements and discretion, just as the Dragonhide models were built for heavy firefights and the Greased Lightning models were made for speed. However, I hadn’t the slightest idea what Firefly’s suit was meant to do.

“Data management,” she replied proudly. “I have an entire intelligence bunker’s worth of processing power at my disposal. It’s essentially a wearable maneframe.”

To prove her point, she slipped on her helmet. The visor flashed, and I saw data running across it in reverse, showing her the suit’s options. She must have selected one, as the antennae on her back started to twitch and dance with crackles of electricity. One of the panels in the front clicked open and she pulled out a retractable wire, the end of it connected to a device that I’d seen used to connect terminals to other machinery. She released it and the device snapped back into place, the panel closing automatically as the antennae retracted and the suit resumed its normal appearance.

Finally, the mechanical arm on her spine unfolded, taking the panel off of her back and revealing it to be a flat monitor. Streams of data appeared on its screen, presenting many more options than could fit on a visor. I assumed that it would be invaluable when managing multiple terminals at once.

“Pretty neat, huh?” she said excitedly. “I’m a one-mare data division with this thing.”

I nodded. It was indeed impressive.

As we trotted past the end of the base’s perimeter, I couldn’t help but notice the ponies flying about shooting me dark glances. They’d always done something of the sort, but before now they’d tried to be discrete about it. If not for Commander Archangel’s interest in me, I knew for certain they’d be acting on the impulses behind those glares. The worst part was that I didn’t blame them.

The other members the commander had selected for our team were already waiting for us, each standing in a circle around the drop point. The drop point itself was a large metal disc set into the clouds, a crack running through its center to allow the two panels to slide to the side and reveal a clear passage through the cloud cover. From there, it would be a straight drop to the ground. The Enclave had been using them for centuries to bypass swimming through the thick cloudstuff, which was difficult given its density and the double-edged sword that came with it being substantial to pegasi.

None of the other pegasi looked up at us as we arrived and took our places by the drop point. Their communication links pinged as their suits connected with the central network broadcasted by Firefly’s suit, and each checked in with an unenthusiastic “Present.”

I could tell this was going to be a rather awkward mission.

Firefly looked at me as if asking if I wanted to say anything. I quickly shook my head vigorously.

“I understand that many of you may have a problem with Surprise,” Firefly spoke through the com link. I felt relieved and infinitely grateful that she was addressing this issue. I didn’t know how much good it would do, but hopefully it would at least make them slightly less frightening to work with. It probably would have worked too, if Firefly hadn’t still been in adoptive big sister defense mode. “However, she and I are in charge, and you are to follow our orders without question, as per Commander Archangel’s instructions. Those of you who don’t, know that I will report you to him when we return. Those of you who plan on taking out your aggravation concerning the loss of the main building on Surprise, know that if I find one scratch on her, I’ll rip you all to shreds.”

I groaned, and Firefly shot me what I knew she hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Everypony ready?” Firefly inquired. The others gave an unemotional affirmative, and I squeaked out my own confirmation. “Then let’s be down and back as quickly as possible. If you read the mission dossier, you’ll know we’re headed to the local SPP Tower, northwest of the Neigh’Orleans ruins. If you didn’t read the dossier, then I feel I should remind you that it’s on the edge of Blackmarsh, so we shouldn’t have to deal with too many groundsider tribals or the mutant flora and fauna.”

She announced a few commands into her suit and the door in the clouds began to slide open with a groan. Warm air wafted up through the opening, and Firefly leapt forward and downward with me hot on her hooves. The others were quick to follow, and we spread out into a formation.

We were currently just over the heart of Blackmarsh, the irradiated swampland covering the coast. Looking back, I could see the ruins of Neigh’Orleans resting on the very edge of the marshy growth, the sea sparkling just beyond it. Sunlight streamed out over the water, but the cloud cover ended just beyond the Neigh’Orleans harbors, ensuring that the dead city and everything further inland had been cloaked in shadow for the last two centuries.

I idly wondered if we’d be headed into the city, and thought it likely if the SPP Tower proved fruitless. There were precious few other locations of interest in Blackmarsh, especially any that could have withstood two-hundred years of water, rust, and overgrown plantlife.

I’d never been to the city, and despite my fear of what bloodthirsty survivors and who knew what else called the ruins home, I found myself more than a little excited to finally get a chance to explore it. I gave it another glance, marveling at how an entire metropolis had been built below sea level right on the coast, with nothing but three immense dams to keep out the sea. Even after all this time, even after the balefire strike that had destroyed the city at the end of the Great War, the dams still stood, their automated mechanics still running.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Firefly shouted through our com link. I looked around just in time to see a humongous, roiling green ball of fire rocketing towards us. Others soon joined the first, bursting out from beneath the canopies of the Blackmarsh.

My wings clapped to my sides and I dropped out of the trajectory of the first shot, watching it soar over where I had just been, singing the air with a crackling hunger and leaving a wispy trail like a comet tail. I could feel its heat wash over me, and I knew that if I had been any closer my blood probably would’ve started boiling. It was a wonder my suit hadn’t melted on my flesh.

“Where the buck did these things come from?!” one of the other pegasi shouted into the com system. Everywhere I looked, I saw our squadron rolling about, narrowly dodging the fireballs as more and more began zooming up towards us. One had been easy enough to dodge, but they were coming in scores now.

I spread out my wings, shuddering as I struggled to breathe, thanking Luna a thousand times over that I hadn’t been burned alive.

Wait, where was Firefly?!

I looked around frantically, riding the updraft over one fireball and narrowly rolling to the side of another as I searched the burning skies for my one and only friend. I couldn’t even see all of the other fliers, though the data in my visor read that we were all still accounted for—

A piercing scream flooded my earpieces, filling my brain with a white-hot horror. The data rearranged itself to read that we were now one squadmate less.

The numbers began dropping in droves. One mare was flying just in front of me, having just dodged one fireball only to have inadvertently ducked into the path of another. It was too close for her to flee, and I heard her scream louder than the first when the flames consumed her. Her body briefly darkened into a shadow in the heart of the blast before dissolving into so many pieces of ash that quickly evaporated.

I nearly choked, my blood running cold despite the heat all around.

No, no, no! I mentally shouted. This isn’t supposed to be happening! Firefly, where are you?!

The screams were deafening now, all around and constant. I knew it wouldn’t be long until my voice joined the awful cacophony. I wasn’t any better a flier than I was a marskpony or any other number of things that it was good to be when you were in the military. I was a maintenance pony, for crying out loud, and I was only moderate at that job at best!

I didn’t want to die. Not like this, not without Firefly, not without ever having conquered my hallucinations. If I wanted to do any of those things, I’d have to make it out of here the same as Firefly.

“Suit!” I mouthed. It would have been a shout if I had said it, but somehow I slipped into simply mouthing the words. “Do something stealthy! Hide me from the attack, do something!”

Initiating thermal camouflage, the suit informed me. I wasn’t disappearing or anything, as I could still see my hooves outstretched in front of me, but the hexagons patterning my suit began changing colors. They darkened to a red before darkening further to a bright green, flickering like the fireballs. I didn’t know what good that would do, but I intended to find out.

Another fireball was headed straight towards me, and I dropped beneath it, only to roll out of the way of the one coming directly behind and below it. Seeing an opening in the firestorm, I shot sideways as fast as my wings could carry me.

I scanned the ground for the next barrage of fireballs, but...it didn’t come. They were still firing, but as I continued to swoop downward towards the base of the SPP Tower, none of them shot right up towards me. What in the world?

Wait a moment... they had been targeting us specifically. In the confusion of the attack, I had either not thought of it or just assumed that the shots were fired at us in a haphazard way. If you fire enough shots, you’re bound to hit something—even I knew that.

However, there must have been a pinpoint precision to the artillery. The number of teammates my visor displayed as still alive had dropped to just two, not including myself, and I prayed desperately that one of them was Firefly. However, a squadron of Enclave soldiers could easily have dodged a barrage of random shots.

The fireballs had been planned. There was a pattern, I realized—they must have been fired so precisely that dodging one would send you into the path of another. We had been herded into the fire.

So why had I escaped?

At the moment, I didn’t really care. The fireballs weren’t targeting me specifically, so I strayed as far from the general line of fire as I dared while still sticking close enough to spot any other pegasi.

I didn’t see anypony.

“Suit, locate Firefly!” I commanded silently.

Communications/positioning system for Private Firefly is offline, I read. What?! No, no, no no no no—

“Suit, find somepony, anypony!” I ordered. Maybe her communications link or identification system had been damaged. Maybe she was still out there. Maybe I could still—no, I had to still be able to find her!

My visor was fogging over as my eyes moistened, though thankfully the suit began venting the helmet to clear the obscuration.

Communications/positioning system for Private Firefly and Private Falling Skies are offline, it told me.

“That’s not possible!” I snarled, checking my teammate count. It still read there were two others left. How could it know that if it couldn’t contact them?! “You know they’re alive, so tell me where they are! Message them! Do something!”

Elevated anxiety level detected, the suit read. Would you like an injection of soothing chemicals?

“No! Tell me where Firefly is!”

Suddenly, my teammate counter switched from ‘2’ to ‘1/0.’ What did that even mean?!

I asked the suit, barely able to form the words. I felt I was going to crash into the canopy any moment now.

One teammate assured alive, it read. One teammate condition is unknown.

I looked back up towards the sky, wondering if I should abandon the mission entirely. Firefly, if she was alive—and she had to be, she just had to—would meet me up there, right? Or would she want to rendezvous at the first objective? Oh, how I wished I had read the mission dossier beyond the equipment specifications!

I was far closer to the SPP Tower than the cloud gate now. For all I knew, the cloud gate might have been vaporized by a stray fireball.

Tears in my eyes, I sped ahead over the canopy towards the white tower.

It reared up before me, piercing the cloud cover. It was featureless and dull, save for a few points higher up where panels had fallen out over the years, though they were few and far between. The control center for the tower would be at the base, and as soon as I reached the monolithic construction, I circled it before crashing through the canopy surrounding its lower levels. Tree branches snapped and oily, slimy leaves slapped me in the face as I tried to make my way down. Twigs scraped at my hide, and I knew I was drawing blood, but at the moment I just couldn’t make myself care.

I touched down on the gooey, muddy bottom of Blackmarsh. Much of the swamp was usually covered in at least a foot of murky, muddy water, and you never knew where it would suddenly drop off into deeper depths. This close to the edge of the swamp, though, the terrain had evened out to merely muddy ground.

My limbs were shaking, and my breaths were coming in rushed, haggard wheezes. The stealth suit offered more ‘soothing chemicals,’ but I rejected them yet again, folding my wings and rushing forward through the undergrowth. The plants whacked me in the face with their low-hanging branches and oozing leaves, almost as if they were consciously trying to keep me from my goal, but I pressed forward anyway, each hit only serving to drive me into a more frenzied determination.

I finally saw the Tower through a gap in the foliage and leapt through it, though my hind leg caught a root that couldn’t have possibly been there a moment ago and sent me tumbling onto a muddy clearing.

Wait, what? The Blackmarsh had grown unimpeded for over two centuries. What could have cleared it away?

I looked up, mud dripping from my chin and belly to see a barren path stretching out to either side of me. Many of the limbs and shrubs lining the path looked mangled, sliced, or even burned. If the plants of the swamp weren’t so naturally moist and the air so damp, the fires that had caused such burns would likely still be burning. What plant matter was left in the clearing had been squashed into the mud by something...heavy. Every few inches, a large indentation had been pressed into the mud. Each indentation was deep and perfectly rectangular, and each were spaced with a mechanical precision.

I gulped as I realized I was looking at the tracks of some sort of vehicle, and a large—no, scratch that—a huge one at that. Maybe even more than one.

Looking up, I saw that even the canopy had been stripped away. Looking back at the cleared stretches, I realized the new path was just as wide as it was tall.

“Stealth suit?” I mouthed. “Are there any other ponies in the area?”

Activating Eyes-Forward Sparkle, the suit told me. A little green bar appeared in the bottom left of my visor, indicating a swarm of ponies—or something—up ahead. All of the tick marks were red. Some places were even so full of hostiles that they merged together to create solid walls of crimson. I detect that your anxiety level has increased again. Would you like an injection of soothing chemicals?

“No!” I silently spat. “Just help me find Firefly!”

Teammate firefly communications and location systems are still offline, the suit said. Additionally, your anxiety level has exceeded safety parameters. As per my programming, I am overriding your rejection command and initiating soothing chemical injection.

“What?!” I gasped, still only moving my mouth. “No, don’t you dare—”

I winced as I felt a sharp pain just below my shoulders, followed by an overpowering numbing sensation. My legs wobbled and I nearly collapsed before feeling resumed and I regained control. Suddenly, I felt really giddy. I giggled, then slapped a hoof over my mouth. For some reason, I found this even funnier than whatever had sparked my last giggle, and I began laughing mutedly under my hoof.

“This. Isn’t. Funny!” I guffawed, unable to control it any longer. I hoped desperately that nopony was close enough to hear me. What was the point of this anyway?! If this was supposed to be a stealth suit, then why inject the wearer with something that made them laugh uncontrollably?! This was no time to be laughing! I had to find Firefly and—

Firefly, I realized. Suddenly, my mood became much more somber, though my limbs still felt lighter than usual and there was a tickling buzz in my belly. Looking up the path, I saw they led straight to the SPP Tower, and I leapt back into the underbrush.

“Suit, don’t do that again!” I reprimanded it, though I knew the moment I had spoken that it wouldn’t do any good considering the suit wasn’t intelligent anyway, artificial or otherwise. It would follow its programming regardless of what I said. I sighed while I galloped as quickly as I could towards the Tower, silently cursing whoever had thought to include laughing juice in a stealth suit. “And I want you to hide me, if you can. There are hostiles ahead. Do something.”

What is the nature of your camouflage needs? it asked. Thermal? Radar? Mechanical? Biological? Other?

“Biological,” I told it.

Initiating background blending spell, it assured me. You are advised to avoid direct contact with hostiles. This suit cannot protect you from being sighted, though it can cause capture to become less likely.

I glanced down at myself as I sped through the undergrowth, ducking under the branches and leaves as best I could but still getting slapped plenty of times. It was like the plants were trying to hit me. I still looked the same as ever, so my suit definitely didn’t turn invisible or anything. I didn’t know what good that made it, but it would have to do.

I nearly galloped straight out of the underbrush, skidding to a halt just before the plantlife abruptly stopped. It was sliced and charred like it had been at the path, and I could see that beyond it the land was muddy and downtrodden with those immense tire tracks. Now, however, I could see their source.

Truly massive vehicles were parked at the base of the SPP Tower, their humongous chassis resting on six wheels, each tire at least a story tall. The cockpits of the things were high up near the front of the vehicles, their tinted windows revealing nothing of whoever was driving them. Unless you were a pegasus, you’d have to make use of the tall ladders built into the sides of the massive machines, the metal rungs leading down from the cab doors to just above the ground, though looking closer revealed that the bottom half was retractable. They must have risen up when the vehicles weren’t parked.

What was most interesting about the vehicles, though, were the insignias painted on the cockpit doors and the flat, elevated beds resting on the back two sets of wheels—or rather, what those flat beds carried. If I remembered history class again, and this would take a lot of remembering, the emblem was an anvil. I hadn’t read about those since the early days of my education, back when they still taught ancient history rather than just wartime history and historical military strategies. The anvil was being struck by a wide pony hoof, and sparks flew from the point of impact.

The flat beds of the vehicles held large, metal barrels nearly as wide and large as the truck beds themselves, and many were still smoking, green sparks wafting out and intermingling with the dark vapors. The barrels of the cannons, as I didn’t know what else they could have been, ended in large conflagrations of complicated machinery. They even had cockpits of their own.

So this was who had been firing at my squadron. Who had murdered my squadron, save two and myself. But who were they? And why were they here? They couldn’t have been here because of...could they? That was too much of a coincidence for my liking, but I couldn’t ignore it.

Keeping to the fringes of the undergrowth, I crept as silently as I could—meaning I broke every grounded branch and twig and ruffled every bunch of leaves present—around the exterior of the muddy circle surrounding the Tower. I couldn’t see inside the trucks, so I couldn’t tell if anypony was watching, and thus I didn’t dare break cover just yet. Speaking of which, were they all inside the vehicles? Shouldn’t there be guards posted outside so that nopony stole them?

When I had crept around to the other side of the Tower, hot, sweaty, muddy, and covered in slime dripped from the trees, I finally saw the ponies who had needlessly shot down my squad. A raised staircase led up from the muddy ground of what had once been a landing pad for aircraft to the entrance to the Tower. At the top of the staircase were two ponies encased in metal, wearing the thickest, bulkiest, most intimidating power armor I’d ever seen. They dwarfed even the Dragonhide models, and each was so loaded with weaponry it was a wonder the ponies inside could walk at all. If not for the built in hydraulics, they probably couldn’t have.

Giving them a careful look, I couldn’t see wings or horns on either of them. Were these the infamous Steel Rangers I’d heard about? The pseudo-military force of earth ponies wearing wartime armor who hoarded technology across the Wasteland? They’d given the Enclave plenty of trouble in the past, being one of the few genuine threats to the pegasus nation’s interests on the ground. Thankfully, we didn’t have many interests on the ground to begin with, meaning that so far our clashes had been few and far between. Nevertheless, even way out at Primum Mobile, every soldier knew they were a force to be messed with. Still, I had never expected even Steel Rangers to have that much weaponry.

Despite every inch of their hides being covered in interlocking metal components or weaponry that looked like it could level a small fortress all on its own, I spotted the anvil insignia on each of them as well. What was that? It certainly didn’t look like the Steel Ranger emblem we’d learned to fear at the military academies, or any variation thereof designating an individual group somewhere in the Wasteland. But if they weren’t Steel Rangers, then who were these ponies? Some rogue faction?

Other ponies were talking to each other beyond the questionable Steel Rangers, an earth pony wearing robes conversing with... was that a pegasus?

What was going on?!

I didn’t recognize the pegasus’ coat colors, and his armor was unfamiliar to me anyway. He wasn’t from Primum Mobile, and he didn’t even look Enclave at all. I supposed he could have been a Dashite, the legendary exiles from the sky, but something about that armor of his just didn’t support that theory. It definitely wasn’t any kind I’d ever seen, though it was decidedly of Equestrian make. I didn’t know if it was meant to be his cutie mark, but on the pegasus’ flank was an insignia that appeared to be a pair of wings made out of swords. That was definitely not an Enclave symbol.

“Suit, can you pick up what they’re saying?” I inquired.

Negative, it told me. I am not equipped with long-range listening devices.

I swore, pondering what I was going to do now. I dared not simply go out and ask, as the tick marks on my EFS were still a brilliant red. Furthermore, whoever those earth ponies were, they had enough firepower to kill me several times over.

Sighing with more frustration, I backtracked into the undergrowth as I saw the pegasi and the earth pony enter the double doors leading into the Tower. I didn’t know how that was possible either—every one of the SPP Towers was supposed to be in the Enclave’s control, meaning only we had the codes to access and enter them—but having seen so many impossible things already, I didn’t question it. The doors closed behind them as I crept back around to my original position.

I checked my EFS again as I tried to formulate a plan, even though logistics and strategy had always been Firefly’s forte. Was still Firefly’s forte. She wasn’t dead yet. She couldn’t be.

The red tick marks were all clustered together directly ahead, though as the EFS told me there were enemies more than it gave me an accurate indication of where those enemies were, I was pretty helpless as to guessing whether they were all inside the Tower or some were still in the machines outside. For all I knew, one might be lounging in an artillery cockpit and blow me to the planet’s core the moment I crept out from cover.

I sat down, resting my frenzied muscles, the buzz from the happy juice having almost entirely died down by this point. I scanned the tower, wondering if I should make a break for one of the panels missing in the upper levels. I doubted it; I had no guarantee that the openings actually led into the Tower and not just a blockade of pipes, wires, and secondary exteriors.

Looking back down, I spotted something I hadn’t earlier. There was a small, shed-sized building attached to the side of the Tower. It must have been obscured by the tires of one of the vehicles before, and I hadn’t been looking from the right angle.

I don’t know how long I waited before I finally took action. I kept glancing at the clouds, wondering if Firefly had done the smart thing and returned to base, even though I knew that she probably wouldn’t have. She would have met at the mission objective, even if the trip killed her, which I knew it hadn’t.

I sighed again and muttered “Buck it.”

I raced out of the underbrush, galloping as fast as I could towards the tower. I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish; I had no idea if there was even a door in the side of the shed-protrusion, much less that it would open. I had no way of knowing if Firefly was in there. My EFS certainly hadn’t pointed out friendlies anytime soon.

But I had to try. I couldn’t go home without Firefly. If she really was dead, I might as well not go back at all.

The vehicles closest to me began emitting a loud, blaring siren’s wail as I galloped towards the Tower. I heard the two earth ponies in power armor shouting to one another on the other side of the massive structure, but I didn’t stop.

WARNING! You have been detected by a mechanical source! Initiating mechanical camouflage.

The sirens suddenly quieted, but the earth ponies kept coming. I could hear the clanking of their armor, the squelch of the mud as their hooves smashed the earth.

I nearly ran into the side of the Tower, praising Luna, Celestia, and whatever other goddesses might be up there in pony heaven that there was, in fact, a door. I yanked it open and darted inside, slamming it closed behind me.

“Why would the alarm stop?” I heard one of the earth ponies ask outside as their armor clunked closer. “They’re not supposed to stop even if whoever has the balls to trespass on us flees.”

“Must be a mechanical failure,” the other answered, sounding much older than the first.

“Our machines don’t get mechanical failures,” the other pony snapped. “We’re the forgemasters of the gods, remember?”

“At ease, soldier,” the other chuckled. “You’ll learn soon enough that even our machines can break down. Just radio it into the Guildmaster. It’s probably nothing, but he’ll want to add it into his report.”

I heard their hooves clanking again, and I tensed up in the darkness of the tiny building, only to hear their hoofsteps grow fainter. They must have been returning to the front doors. I sighed with relief.

Once I was sure they were gone, though I knew I shouldn’t have bothered since the suit responded to silent facial expressions anyway, I mouthed “Suit, can you give me some light?”

Negative, it replied. However, I am capable of providing night-vision. Initiating.

The darkness shifted into an eerie green, showing me a small room with only a lonely terminal, a crate whose lock had been cast aside, and another door leading into the Tower itself. Was it really that easy to get inside?

I tried opening the second door, and much to my surprise and delight, it complied. However, my face fell when I saw that on the other side of the door was an even larger barrier, this one made of steel. Thick metal bars were laid across it, each ends of them disappearing into the walls of the wholly-metal interior of the tiny room beyond the shed-like structure.

Of course, Firefly was also nowhere in sight.

I tried not to let my eyes moisten, refusing to believe that she had perished. Not yet. Not when the teammate counter read that there was at least one other pony left.

Turning to the terminal, I made a frustrated expression. I couldn’t hack at all. Once again, that was Firefly’s thing. It was all somepony else’s thing. When I really thought about it, what good was I? Just a crazy pegasus with no talent worthy of the military. According to the pegasi who had run the orphanage in which Firefly and I had grown up, the purple trio of balloons I bore for a cutie mark meant that I had an active imagination...probably because they couldn’t imagine somepony like me being a party-throwing, fantastically fun pony like Pinkie Pie had been, even though she had born a very similar cutie mark. That was true, but I’d stopped seeing that as a blessing ever since my hallucinations had started, back when I was still learning to read and write. All they did was bring me grief.

“You think you’re worthless?” asked a high-pitched voice, almost as high-pitched as my own. I looked up, startled, to see that the dull green of the nightvision had been replaced with garish colors. Every inch of the interior of the tiny room was now painted with bright, swerving, haphazard strokes of paint, much of which was still dripping. I nearly jumped out of my stealth suit when I turned to see that the painter, mid-brushstroke, was none other than a certain pink pony with an all-too-familiar cutie mark. Her mane was laced with gray streaks, and the veins in her eye were almost creepily defined, but she was unmistakably Pinkie Pie. “Why would you think that? Besides, I thought my pretty painting would cheer you up!”

“I’m really not in the mood, brain,” I said agitatedly. “Can’t you leave me alone for one day? My only friend in the world may be dead, the rest of squad save one is dead, and I’m too useless to do anything about it!”

“Oh, I get it,” Pinkie Pie said, giving me a consoling smile. She sat her paintbrush down in a can of the stuff that adorned the walls, stepped over to me, and sat down next to me. Wait a moment, how had she gotten so many different colors out of a single can of paint? Oh, well. It was a hallucination. It didn’t have to make sense. “This is about Lightning Dust again, isn’t it?”

She put a foreleg around my shoulder even as I tried to turn away from her.

“I know she’s nothing but a Meanie McMeanerson,” Pinkie Pie said. “And she’s always telling the media how you’re wasting taxpayer dollars and killing the nation’s children in the air force and making one big mistake after another and—”

I shot her a dark look. If this was how Pinkie Pie consoled her friends, then it was no wonder she had always been portrayed as crazy in history class. Wasn’t she supposed to have had a drug addiction too? Maybe she was hyped on happy juice of her own.

“Oh, uh, not helping,” she realized sheepishly. “Well, I suppose there is something I can do to help...”

“Pinkie Pie, I told you nopony has time for parties anymore,” were the words that came out of my mouth in an all-too-familiar scratchy voice, even though I had been planning on telling her to buzz off to wherever hallucinations came from. I imagined that if I looked down, I’d see Rainbow Dash’s body instead of my own, so I didn’t bother. “And no, you can’t try and use your ministry to get rid of Dust for me. You know as well as I do that she’s paid off everypony with power in Hurricane, including the Morale officials.”

“I wasn’t going to do either of those things, silly!” Pinkie Pie giggled. She removed her foreleg from my shoulders, raised it high into the air, and promptly smacked me across the face.

“Ouch!” I gasped, rubbing my face. If it hadn’t been real, the pain had certainly felt real, even though in reality I was supposed to be wearing a helmet. I realized that even if I hadn’t been forced into the role of Rainbow Dash, I’d have said the same thing. “What was that for?”

“For getting you off your mopey blue butt!” Pinkie Pie cheered, leaping up, doing a mid-air somersault, and landing perfectly in front me. Somehow, she also seemed to be wearing a cheerleader’s uniform now, complete with pom-poms. What? How had she done that?! “You’re Rainbow Dash! The fastest pegasus in the history of the universe! You tried to buck a dragon in the face! You stood up to the goddess of darkness and chaos incarnate! You’re the best, most splendiferous, most awesomely spectacular fighter in all of Equestria, and everypony knows it! Luna knows it. Even Lightning Dust knows it. Best of all, your friends know it. The only pony who doesn’t know it is you!”

“But I haven’t.... I mean, the war is still going on!” Rainbow Dash’s voice protested from my mouth. “We’re still no closer to winning than we were when all of this started. I really thought that Hurricane could help end that. I thought I could finally do something more than giving us a little ground at the cost of a bunch of good ponies’ lives. But then... she had to go and steal it all from me! I’m the one who made the damn city, and that... that bitch is doing the exact opposite of what I wanted! Why did Luna ever put her in charge of my city in the first place?!”

“Dashie, I know how hard this has been for you,” Pinkie Pie said. “It hasn’t been easy for the rest of us either. We don’t agree with a lot of what Luna is doing, but that doesn’t mean we should give up.”

Rainbow Dash, or myself, or whatever sort of twisted, mixed-up metaphysical role I played in this crazy hallucination, must have not looked convinced.

“Do you wanna know a secret?” Pinkie Pie suddenly whispered conspiratorially. Her eyes shifted from side to side, as if she was afraid somepony would overhear her. “It’s helped me get through a lot of tough times myself. Especially when Luna is being a meanie pants.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“No matter how powerful Luna thinks she is...” Pinkie whispered, leaning closer. Her mane tickled my ear. “...she’ll never be as strong as we are. And she knows it. She’s afraid of us.”

“What?!” Rainbow’s voice gasped. “Pinkie, that’s... that’s traitor-talk!”

“But it’s true!” Pinkie giggled, almost maniacally. “We beat her once, back when she was even stronger than she is now. We can beat her again if we have to. The only reason she’s always trying to keep us apart and do all these meanie-weanie things to us is because she’s afraid we’ll take her kingdom from her.”

“But we used the Elements of Harmony to do that,” Rainbow pointed out. “Besides, Luna may be a big pain in the ass sometimes, but she’s not evil anymore.”

“True and true,” Pinkie agreed, nodding her head rapidly and sending her pink curls bouncing about. “But the moment she starts being bad for Equestria again, wouldn’t it be our duty to kindly and peacefully remove her from power? Besides, we may be just little itsy-bitsy ponies while she’s got godlike powers, but... the Elements gave up on her. They gave up on Celestia too, remember. They chose us. And if the most powerful force in the universe chose a bunch of short-lived equines over cosmically superpowered immortal goddesses, then what can she do to stop us?”

“I...never thought of it like that,” Rainbow Dash admitted.

“Just think, Dash,” Pinkie said encouragingly. “A goddess is afraid of you. You’re stronger than her, craftier than her. And if you can beat her, then who can stand in your way? If a few ordinary ponies can save the world countless times, then anything is possible.”

“I guess you’re right,” Dash said, a touch of warmth having returned to her voice. “Thanks, Pinkie.”

“No problemo, Dashie!” Pinkie said, smiling. “Just remember, if you ever feel blue again—well, bluer than normal—contact me on your terminal. My ministry taps all the wires, so I’ll erase any data about our calls. We can make fun of moonbutt all we want and she’ll never catch us!”

“We don’t have to make fun of her, exactly,” Rainbow said. “But I get your meaning. Thanks, Pinkie.”

Pinkie smiled wider than anypony I’ve ever seen before smacking me upside the head again.

“Ouch!” I gasped once more, but when I looked back, Pinkie was gone, and the dark interior of the building was a dull green again. My voice had also resumed its usual high-pitch. “Wait a moment...”

I was in darkness. I was in darkness, and I’d had a hallucination...but it hadn’t been nightmarishly horrific. It had been a little weird, to be sure, but even though the two ponies, one of which was a hated criminal in Enclave history, had been speaking what could have been considered treason against Princess Luna...the whole thing was oddly reassuring.

Curious, I instructed the suit to turn off the nightvision. Instantly, I felt a tickle along my foreleg, which grew into a rush of pins and needles culminating in the screaming white noise of an army of spiders that—

I turned the night-vision back on, and the hallucination ended instantly. This green filter hadn’t kept the hallucinations out altogether, but it had kept away the bad ones. Even though I was in darkness, since I could see, it was almost as if I wasn’t in darkness at all. This beat a nightlight anyday!

Smiling slightly at this realization, even if I was still internally wrestling with what might have happened to Firefly whether I admitted it to myself or not, I turned to look at the terminal. On impulse, I reached forward and pulled down the keyboard. Navigating to the password select screen, I scanned for any string of letters that might possibly look like they would open the door into the facility. Who knew? Maybe Firefly was in there.

After all, if a few ordinary ponies could save the world countless times, even if they couldn’t save it in the very end, then anything was possible.

My eyes froze when I saw one particular possible password. It could very well have just been a random word—it was a common enough word—but still, it was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

Firefly.

I highlighted the word and hit enter, and the terminal accepted the password.

That’s still not proof, I warned myself. Don’t get your hopes up, Surprise, it could have just been a lucky guess—

Surprise... I read. My heart skipped a beat.

“YES!” I shouted, clamping my hooves on my mouth the moment the word escape my lips. The guards were probably too far away to hear me, but I didn’t want to take any chances, not when I was this close. Not when I knew she was alive.

Surprise,

I hope you’re reading this. I’ll never forgive myself if I let you—

I can’t even type that word.

If you’re reading this, then you can find me inside. I changed the password to my name, so I know only you can follow me in through the emergency access tunnel. I’ll see you in there, and good luck.

Don’t let them catch you.

Firefly

Nearly crying tears of joy, I scrolled down to the disengage lock option for the massive steel door behind me. The terminal warned me that the door would lock itself once I closed the door again, and I’d have to unlock it once more from the inside. I hit enter, and I turned to see the metal bars across the door sliding into the walls.

Firefly was alive. She’d snuck into a building full of ponies who had taken out nearly our entire squad, ponies who clearly outmatched us. She hadn’t done the smart thing and returned to base for reinforcements. But she was alive. I could live with that.

I raided the hooflocker to find a few grenades and some healing potions, all of which I pocketed. I was never good with explosives, but they might be useful to Firefly. Then again, if they would have been, she would have taken them herself...had she left them for me? I decided not to dwell on it too much and slipped into the small cave-like area in what I presumed was the foundation of the Tower.

The thick metal door hissed closed behind me, and I could hear the steel bars slide back into place. There was another terminal by the door, though I didn’t bother to check it. I was certain Firefly would have already rigged it for our escape.

Making sure the stealth suit was still doing whatever it did to keep me hidden, I trotted down the hallway of what must have been some sort of basement for the tower. Or at least, the first level of it.

Doors lined the hallway, and the smoking remains of a few blasted wires and mechanical apparatuses hung from the ceiling. I wondered what they once were and what had destroyed them, but I had more pressing matters to attend to.

A map I found on the wall informed me that the tower was quite deep. It also informed me that all of the important data that might have the access code to Hurricane would be on the bottommost level. Great.

A barely-audible sound reached my ears. A quiet, mechanical hum, it seemed to be coming from the middle of the hall, nestled between alternating doors and large, solid panels of wall. The source of the noise in question was a pair of metal doors slid closed, doors that could only lead to an elevator.

Panicking, I galloped to the double doors, nearly sliding on my hooves past the doors when I tried to stop. If Firefly was already in the Tower, I reasoned, then she was likely already some levels lower. If the elevator was descending, then it must be carrying the ponies I’d see outside down to the bottom level.

Or was it ascending?

I tried the ‘Open Doors’ button, realizing too late that it would of course not work when the elevator was in use.

I could hear it drawing closer, whether it was coming from down below or up above. Frantic, I tried my best to pry apart the doors with my bare hooves. If it was descending, then maybe I could do something to stop it, sabotage the cables somehow. My attempts went about as well as I had expected, though. This had been a government facility during the Great War; why had I thought my puny pony hooves might be able to break open its technology?

There was a ding, and I nearly leapt out of my skin as the door began to slide open. The elevator must have recognized the ‘Open Doors’ command as ‘Stop at This Floor.’ I looked to either side of the hallway, but there was nowhere to hide. If I tried one of the doors, assuming it wasn’t simply locked, whoever was inside would hear the door close by the time I entered.

Acting on instinct, I rapidly flapped my wings, my adrenaline pumping. I scrambled up the wall, my forelegs and hind legs stretching out to squeeze myself between one wall of the hallway and the other. I was elongated as far as my body could stretch, my wings flared out to keep my balance. The elevator door fully opened beneath me, and the ponies I had seen entering the building earlier stuck their heads outside. If they looked up, I was done for.

“Suit!” I mouthed in what would have been a shout if I’d made use of my vocal chords. “Hide me! Make me invisible!”

I am not capable of total invisibility, the suit informed me. You would require a Stealth Buck for such a task.

“What?!” I silently shouted as the ponies, one pegasus and one earth pony, walked out of the elevator and stood back to back, looking down either end of the hallway. I recognized them as the ponies I’d seen enter the Tower.

One, the pegasus, had his wingtip outstretched on the exterior elevator controls, keeping the doors open. Their eyes scanned the hallway intently, as if whoever had made their elevator stop would materialize out of thin air. If my stealth suit could actually turn invisible as I’d thought it would, then I might have been able to do just that, not that I would have. “What good is a stealth suit if you’re visible the whole time?!”

I am capable of total invisibility from mechanical means of detection, including cameras, robotic interfaces, and radar, it told me. For biological camouflage, I am programmed and optimized with an experimental background cloaking spell. This spell is currently engaged.

“It’s probably just a mechanical failure,” the earth pony said, breaking me free from my silent conversation with the stealth suit. His voice was old and hoarse, but still quite strong. He himself looked rather elderly, though he still bore some impressive musculature beneath his ornate silver robes. I noticed that they were emblazoned with the same anvil insignia as the massive vehicles outside. The stallion himself was a bold green color, though his rather frazzled mane and tail were a snowy white. “It’s a miracle these towers have remained standing this long, given all they’ve had to live through. Besides, they weren’t of earth pony make, which makes it even more impressive.”

“I haven’t lived this long on assumptions,” the pegasus replied curtly. His coat was a deep crimson color, and his yellow eyes, though sharp and alert, were slightly lidded, almost as if he was bored. His voice was even, and though he wasn’t as large or muscular as the earth pony, he had a definite strength about him. His frame was lean, wiry, and lithe. He was fully dressed with power armor, save for a missing helmet. What’s more, it definitely wasn’t Enclave. Truth be told, I wasn’t even entirely certain it was Equestrian. I’d also never seen magical energy weapons like the kind he was wearing on either side of him. Squinting, I could just make out a line of curling text etched into the weaponry, reading Eye of the Storm. “Make sure the elevator doesn’t close on us, would you, Hephaestus?”

“Certainly, Red, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t just continue onwards,” said the earth pony, apparently Hephaestus. “The sooner we have the data from the central maneframe, the sooner we can make plans for what it portends.”

“All will be meaningless if neither of us live to return to the city,” countered the pegasus. His name was Red? It seemed horribly simple. I assumed it was short for something, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what. Still, my mind conjured bloody ideas of what his name might be. Red Dagger? Red Baron? Bloody Red Bloodiness of Death and Gore That All Happens to Be Red?

The pegasus removed his wing from the ‘Open Door’ button, and Hephaestus moved to press it himself. I thanked Luna a thousand times over that neither of them had looked up yet.

‘Red’ began trotting briskly down the hallway, his ears alert and swiveling. When he encountered the first door, he tested it to find it locked. He looked unperturbed, and I heard a whirring noise. Looking down at his energy weapons, I saw the power-focusing gemstones on the ends of the weapons’ barrels light up as electricity crackled around them. Wait, electricity? Not mystical energy?

KRA-KOOM!!

I winced, nearly gasping as the crack of thunder filled the hallway. Spots swam before my eyes, and when they cleared, I saw that the door was gone. Little wisps of smoke were rising from the power-focusing gems of Red’s weapons.

That’s not a magical energy weapon, I realized. I didn’t know what it was, to be honest, but I knew one thing for sure—it hadn’t fired magic. It had just unleashed thunderbolts.

Red darted inside, his eyes a little more alive now, as if he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.

“There won’t be anything in there but old files and ancient weather reports,” Hephaestus called out to his pegasus companion. “That’s all these old rooms contain.”

“Unless somepony is using them to hide,” Red called back.

“Wouldn’t you be able to detect them on your Eyes-Forward Sparkle?”

“There are some enemies that even the EFS cannot detect,” Red replied, and I heard him trotting back towards the hallway. If he just happened to turn right to look at his friend, then he’d spot me. I’d be done for. There was no way I could survive a strike from a thunderbolt, not in this thin, flimsy suit. I doubted anything short of Dragonhide armor could withstand such. “And you would know all about the EFS’ design flaws, wouldn’t you? They weren’t made by earth ponies either, after all.”

Red’s shadow fell out of the charred and blasted doorframe.

It was now or never. Tensing up and praying to Luna this would work, I dropped down behind Hephaestus—amazingly, my hooves didn’t make a sound when they touched the floor—and slipped inside the elevator. I slammed my hoof onto the internal ‘Close Doors’ button, but the elevator doors refused to budge. The elevator must have been programmed not to override one button’s commands in favor of those of another.

I gulped. Not because of what I feared would come next, but because of what I knew would come next, and how utterly stupid I was for doing it. Scratch that, how utterly imbecilic I was for allowing myself to get caught up in this situation in the first place.

I darted my front half out of the elevator, placed my front hooves on Hephaestus’ rump, and gave him a shove. The elderly earth pony stumbled forward and tumbled to the floor, startled, as Red stepped out into the hallway and saw us. His eyes locked with mine.

They didn’t look surprised, or even angry. Certainly not fearful, as his caution of a murderous intruder might suggest. He looked mildly amused, as if I was doing him the courtesy of alleviating a fraction of his boredom.

My head just barely managed to hastily retreat back into the elevator before a spray of thunderbolts fired over the fallen form of Hephaestus and incinerated the other end of the hallway, singing the end of my mane. I pounded the Close Doors button and kept hitting the Bottom Floor button as fast as I could.

The elevator doors closed just before a resounding pounding assaulted them from the hallway. I could hear somepony trying to pry them apart, but they had as much luck as I had. As the elevator began its descent, I heard Hephaestus’ voice say “It’s no use trying to open them, Red. If they’ve survived this long, they’ll survive a little longer, even if they aren’t of earth pony make.”

I sighed with relief, my body shaking, as I slumped against the back wall of the elevator. Now to find Firefly, hopefully before those two and their associates could reach the bottom via any existing stairwells, and—

I was flung off the floor, hitting the ceiling as the elevator began dropping like a room-sized bullet. I picked myself off the ceiling and hugged the wall, seeing cracks appear in the elevator’s roof as the panels groaned inward, blackening even as thin crackles of electricity danced along them. That red pegasus must have opened the doors after all and blasted the elevator’s cables, and now he was after the elevator as well!

I didn’t know what to do, but whatever I did need to do, I needed to decide quickly—if the number of buttons marked ‘Basement Levels’ was any indication, it was a long way down. I wouldn’t survive the elevator’s embrace with the ground. I couldn’t very well escape the dropping death capsule either, though. I couldn’t exit through the side doors for risk of being cut in half by a passing room, and that was only if I could somehow manage to open the doors anyway. If I went up, though, that battle saddle would scramble my atoms. Going underneath the elevator was the most suicidal idea of all.

All of these thoughts raced through my mind in the space of a second, and each seemed as horrible as the last. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know—

Another blast of lightning burst through the ceiling, breaking straight through the floor. If I had been in the middle of the falling room, the elevator would be sporting a new shade of red paint. I looked up through the hole, seeing Red darting down after me, his wings pulled in tight. The focusing gems on his gun barrels were charging once more.

His eyes, however, actually looked fully and purely amused. He wasn’t just enjoying this. He was having fun.

My eyes widened as I realized there was really no way out of this. I was about to die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Tears welled up in my eyes. Firefly would be heartbroken. I would never have overcome my mental instability. And, most of all, I really just didn’t want to die.

“Then don’t,” whispered a familiar voice, one I’d recently been hearing coming from my own mouth. It was high, scratchy, and most all, lethally determined. “Show him why he shouldn’t dare to make you desperate.”

My eyes narrowed as a rush of adrenaline raced through my being. Quicker than I could realize what I was doing, I whipped out a grenade from a pocket, yanked out the trigger with my teeth, and tossed the deadly metal apple up through the hole in the ceiling. Red’s eyes widened and his wings flared before flapping rapidly, knocking him back into the wall of the elevator shaft. He pushed off, as much in the direction of up as he could, before flying back towards Hephaestus.

The grenade exploded, creating dust everywhere as the metal casing of the wall and chunks of the concrete underneath were torn to shreds by fire and force.

I leapt up through the hole, spreading my own wings and slowing my descent, though I still allowed myself to glide downwards as much as I could in the narrow confines. Praise Luna for all those years of practice gliding down the elevator shaft to the maintenance department.

The elevator sped down beneath me, at last coming to a crash at the very bottom and flattening itself in a horrific crunch of metal. Sparks erupted everywhere as the mechanical and electrical components of the machine were crushed.

I... had done it! I couldn’t believe it! I had actually—

“Don’t celebrate just yet!” the scratchy voice warned, breaking me out of the euphoric stupor of not having died long enough to realize my mane and tail were standing on end, as were the fine hairs of my coat. I had lived in the Cloud Nine Resort long enough to know what that meant.

Darting to the side and scraping against the wall, I narrowly dodged another bolt of lightning. It carried straight through the still-dispersing smoke of the grenade, further pulverizing the ruined remains of the elevator car.

Red came diving through the smoke, his battle saddle already sparking again.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?!” I yelled up at him as I yanked out another grenade, pulled out the trigger, and threw it up at him. Really, why wouldn’t he? He had attacked me first! All I had been trying to do was run away.

This time, however, Red didn’t stop his descent. Instead, his wings pulled in tighter, and he rocketed downwards before striking out a hoof, catching the grenade and throwing it back at me. He stopped as quickly as he could, smirking as he watched the grenade continue its fall towards me.

My eyes widened and I pushed off the wall much like he had done, only I shot downwards. I pulled in my wings, angling myself to be as aerodynamic as possible, my heart pounding.

The grenade exploded close, way too close. I could feel the heat on my backside and tail as the flames burst out against the elevator shaft. The force of the explosion knocked me forward like somepony swatting a fly, and the sharp, shredded remains of the elevator car rose up faster than I could slow down.

I realigned myself, flipping around and flaring my wings. I flapped as hard as I could to slow myself while I grabbed onto the sides of the shaft, my hooves burning as sparks flew up from my suit.

WARNING! Stealth suit at 25% damage! Recommend repairs immediately.

“I’m a little busy right now!” I silently spat, finally slowing to a stop before slowly dropping the last few stories to the bottom floor. I winced as I looked at my hooves. The metal components were hot to the touch, heavily scuffed and slightly discolored. I didn’t like the looks of that.

I reached out to try and pry open the last doors, but I gasped in pain at the heat when my hooves touched the metal. I had a bad feeling that the damage didn’t stop at just the suit.

But how was I going to get inside if I couldn’t even touch the doors?! I hadn’t been able to open them with fully operational hooves; I suppose I had just hoped this adrenaline could help me. It certainly did me no good, though, if I couldn’t touch the blasted things! Putting the pressure on my hooves necessary to pry them open, even if I could have, was out of the question.

The air began to charge again, and I angrily looked up through the clearing smoke. This guy just wouldn’t give up, would he? But what could I do now?!

I pulled out another grenade, wincing at the touch, but able to stand it due to the lack of pressure. It was the second-to-last one. That made prospects even worse. Unless...

Before I could reason my way out of it, I yanked out the grenade’s trigger placed it at the edge of the elevator door, and zoomed back up. I pulled out and activated the final grenade as well, though I held onto it even as Red emerged from the smoke of the last explosion, still rocketing down towards me. However, I angled myself so that he couldn’t see it until the last moment.

I threw the grenade up and halted, trying my best to hover in place. I sincerely hoped that I was far enough above the bottom floor to escape that explosion, and I prayed for the same being true of the one about to come from above. Truth be told, I was probably going to die either way. The odds of making it out of this were infinitesimal. Still, just like I imagined a certain blue pony would have done, I wasn’t giving up without a fight.

Just as before, Red zoomed down towards the grenade, reaching out a hoof to grab it. I prayed I’d timed it right. I prayed he wouldn’t catch on. I prayed a lot of things, each more unlikely to actually happen than the last, but that didn’t stop me from praying.

A blast rocked the shaft from the bottom, a wall of fire rising up towards us. At the same time, another fiery flower blossomed above, right as Red reached it. The twin fires, one above and one below, rose up and down to greet me. I hovered and closed my eyes, waiting for the flames.

They never came.

Unbearable heat washed over me instead, and it felt like I was being squished between two mountains of solidified air. The wind was knocked out of me, and I tumbled every which way, losing my orientation on up and down. It was only when I began plummeting that I realized which way was which, and I flapped as hard as I could to regain some semblance of flight, gasping for air as I did so.

I finally righted myself, dropping down to see that the bottom floor’s elevator doors had indeed been blown inwards. I grinned in spite of myself as I swooped through them, the world wobbling in my vision but becoming steadier all the time. I tried to ignore the debris—and other such things—that fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft behind me.

I felt giddy.

This time, I had done it. There was no way somepony could survive a grenade at such close range.

The shock hit me in the face when I realized what I’d just done. I had killed another pony. Not just that, I’d blown him to bits. The most horrific thing about it, though, was not the horrible guilt and horror that I felt because of doing so. Rather, it was the lack of just that.

I had encountered plenty of ponies on my groundside missions, of course, but when conflicts arose it was always the others who had dealt with the situation while I hid. I had just been there to work on their weapons and armor. Sure, I had felt bad for the other ponies, but at the same time, I had never pulled the trigger.

This time, I had done the killing, but I didn’t feel like a murderer. I felt...cold. Sure, I had killed Red, but only because if I hadn’t, he would have killed me. There was literally no other way I could see the situation having played out.

I had never thought killing made you a monster, at least in self-defense, but did feeling as calm about it as I now was make me monstrous? Even at that thought, I couldn’t work up the nerve to feel that it did, which just reinforced the feeling that was nevertheless bland and meaningless.

Maybe that’s just the way it is, I thought, shocked at myself for thinking that. It was so surreal that the oddest thing about killing another pony was how mundane it felt. When I met up with Firefly, I really, really hoped she didn’t think I was a monster for feeling nothing. I mean, I had done the only thing I could have, right? What else could I have done but let myself be killed? Even if others would think that that would have been the nobler choice, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine I would have acted any differently. I had wanted to live, he had wanted me to die, and that’s all there was to it.

Wait a moment—Firefly!

I looked around the room I had entered, finding it to be a large circular space filled with all manner of machinery. They were old and rusted, but still running, each quietly humming as their engines worked, their gears turned, their lights blinked. I could see data streaming on dusty old terminal monitors. One monitor in particular, however, just beyond and above a bulky appliance whose purpose I couldn’t guess, was free of dust. Wide circular sweeps had cleared it, as if a hoof had recently wiped away the grime.

A shock of electric blue mane rose from behind the bulky appliance, followed by an all-too-familiar hot-pink face.

“Surprise?” Firefly asked, wearing my namesake on her face. “Was that explosion... did you do that?”

“Yes...” I admitted sheepishly, as if I had done something wrong. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off now, but I knew we were still far from safe. “I had to use those grenades you left me to open the door. The elevator wasn’t exactly working. It’s a long story, but that’s not important right now—we have to get out of here! They’re coming!”

“I hadn’t thought you had it in you to use explosives, though I’m glad you used the ones I left you in spite of that” Firefly said, sounding impressed. “But we can’t leave yet. I’m still downloading the data.”

“But—”

“We have a mission to complete,” she cut me off, her eyes pleading.

“Who cares about the mission?!” I said, landing on the metal floor. I winced as my hooves made contact with the ground and pain lanced through my legs, but I remained on the ground. The pain was less than it had been, but still agonizing. I had a feeling I’d be flying a lot more than walking for the near future, but I had to rest sometime. “All of our squad is dead or missing, I was nearly vaporized by some stallion with a lightning battle saddle on my way down here, and I had to kill him with a grenade!”

“You think it was easy for me to get down here?” Firefly shot back, surprising me. “There was a whole internal security system I had to override, and I still had to take out plenty of turrets that I didn’t realize were on a hidden backup system.”

She stepped out from behind the bulky machine to reveal that her armor was covered in harsh dents from what could only have been bullets. I couldn’t imagine how painful that must have been and must still be. I could repair damage like that given the proper tools and time, but for the moment that inverted metal must have been digging into her sides.

“And that’s why we have to finish the mission,” Firefly continued. “We can’t let everypony have died in vain. Their deaths have to mean something!”

“What does that matter if we die too?” I demanded.

“This is bigger than anything we imagined,” Firefly insisted. “Those ponies who shot us down? They’re not anywhere in Primum Mobile’s records. Who are they, and what are they after? Why did they come to the Tower at the exact same time we did? Something is going on, Surprise, something that could be a legitimate threat to the Enclave. If we don’t figure out what, then who knows what could happen to everypony above the clouds? Our squadmates died trying to serve the Enclave, and if we have to die trying to protect it, then what better deaths could we have?”

“I... never thought of it like that,” I admitted. “You really think this could hurt more ponies?”

She nodded her head firmly.

“Then I’ll help you,” I asserted. Her face lit up with a smile. “But we need a plan. We still fail our mission if we can’t live long enough to get the information to Commander Archangel.”

She nodded again, and walked back to the terminal. Walking carefully over to her, wincing with every step even though the pain was lessening a bit—I suppose I could walk well enough—I saw that a cable was connecting her armor to the terminal. DOWNLOAD IN PROGRESS flashed on the screen in bright green letters against the black backdrop while scores of ones and zeroes fled across the monitor.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked. She frowned at my question, concern in her eyes. I could tell this must be hard for her; usually she was the one helping me.

“I don’t know how long the download will take,” she said, glancing back at the terminal. “But I need you to stall whoever is coming down here until it’s finished. I’ll turn my communication link back online so I can tell you when it’s ready. Then I can wipe the data so they’ll get nothing and we can escape.”

“Turn your com link back on?” I echoed. “I didn’t know you could turn it off.”

“Of course,” she said. “Weren’t you unable to locate me earlier? I had to scramble my readouts so the gunners couldn’t track me as easily. That’s the only way I could escape them with this bulky armor. They must have been tracking us from the moment we dropped below the cloud cover; that attack was too well coordinated to have been line-of-sight firing.”

“You scared me to death,” I said as I walked towards the only other doorway in the room. Opening it, I found the stairwell, leading all the way up countless flights. “I thought you might have been one of the ones they got.”

“Sorry to have frightened you,” she said sincerely. “But you did the same thing. I couldn’t get you on my radar either. You must have used your stealth suit to evade detection, right?”

I supposed that was true, and I nodded, not really caring how she had escaped as long as she had. I was so relieved I thought I might collapse, but there would be a time for that later. Right now, I had some ponies to stall. I only hoped they weren’t as intent on killing me as Red had been.

Static buzzed in my ear briefly after I closed the door quietly behind me, and Firefly’s voice confirmed that our com links were reestablished.

“Suit?” I mouthed as I climbed the stairs. My hooves were feeling much better now, though they still stung a little with every step, and I thought I better conserve my wing energy while I could. I noticed that even though the hoof-coverings were damaged, they still didn’t make a sound despite being metal on metal. “How are you holding up?”

Damage remains at 25%, it told me. I recommend repairing me immediately.

“I will as soon as we get back to the base,” I silently promised it. “But first we have to stall some hostiles. What do you recommend?”

Analyzing situation...zero hostiles detected. Hostiles are either beyond EFS range or are utilizing cloaking techniques. Analyzing most likely situation...I recommend tactical assassination or incapacitation techniques, on which I will instruct you on an as-needed basis.

“Let’s go for incapacitation,” I told it. Even if I surprisingly didn’t feel as bad as I thought I should for killing Red, I didn’t fancy killing more ponies unless I absolutely had to.

A single red tick mark popped up on my visor, moving around erratically. I assumed that was because whoever they were would be moving down the stairwell as fast as they could, and the EFS couldn’t gauge vertical distance, only horizontal.

Why only one, though? I had expected a whole herd of hostile ponies.

Regardless, I had to think of a way to deal with this one. I didn’t want to keep ascending the stairs, as there was no way of knowing when I might just run into them. There weren’t a whole lot of places to hide in the stairwell, either.

Looking around, I finally looked up, supposing that the best place to hide would be right below the hostile. I leapt up, using my wings to give my hop an extra push before pushing all four hooves into the bottom of the overhanging underside of the above staircase. There was an opening in the middle of the stairwell, which divided the alternating sets of stairs. It let one see straight up or down, and it was just wide enough for a pony to fit through. It was much narrower than the elevator shaft had been, so nopony could have flown through it, but I hoped that one leap up would work.

I waited as the tick mark continued to dart about, until finally I heard the clanging of hooves on metal. When the top of the staircase I was under began to vibrate with the hoofsteps, I pushed off of one side with my hooves and used my wings to push me up and over the side of the stairs, kicking out my hind legs and knocking the pony into the wall. I caught him completely off guard, and the wind escaped from his lungs as he hit the stone.

He was another pegasus, wearing power armor like Red, but much less ornate and obviously of a lesser quality. Still, I didn’t recognize the make or model. The armor was all blue like the clear sky, with streaks of lightning-colored gold outlining certain features. I only hoped his energy weapons were energy weapons and not thunderbolt-guns.

He turned to try and get a look at me but I scrambled onto his back, holding his armored head in my forelegs, not letting him see me. Getting his wind back, he began bucking about, trying to throw me off. His wings tried to stretch, but I kept them clamped to his sides with my hind legs.

“General!” she shouted. “I’ve encountered a hostile! They’re near the bottom floor! General? General?!”

Now that I was in action, my heart was pumping furiously again, though I admit I had no idea what to do next.

“Suit?!” I silently exclaimed. “How do I—”

A cartoonishly outlined yet still transparent three-step diagram appeared on my visor, illustrating the proper way to execute something called a ‘sleeper hold.’ I followed them, gripping the pony’s neck as tightly as I could and compressing it to try and starve his brain of oxygen. His bucking became fiercer and more frantic. He tried slamming me into the wall, but I held on as best I could. Finally, his motions became less active, growing sluggish until he finally collapsed.

Breathing heavily from my own exertion, I climbed off of him. Placing an ear on his helmet, I heard soft breathing inside, though he remained motionless. I sighed with relief, having not had to kill him.

Still, that only took care of one pony, and I was certain more would come. I assumed this one had just been an advance scout.

My fears were confirmed when a voice came crackling through the stallion’s own communications link. I had to lean down and press my ear to his helmet again to hear it.

“Canary?” the voice called out through a backwash of static. “Canary, do you copy? What’s your status?”

Rising and retreating a few steps, I whispered “Firefly, can you hear me?”

“Copy,” she responded. “How’s the situation?”

“I incapacitated an advance scout,” I told her. “But there’s more coming. I can’t take them all if they come all at once.”

She was silent for a moment before answering with an eerily gleeful tone.

“Wait a moment,” she said. “I have an idea. Just stand still for a few seconds, and... yes! I used your suit to hack into the scout’s armor. Now I have access to their com link from my end. Let’s see if we can scare them away. Oh, and try not to freak out, Surprise. This is going to sound weird, but I have to keep you linked into their com system in order to relay it to them.”

Sound weird? What was she talking about? I recognized her voice and knew what she was up to. How could Firefly frighten me?

A blaring static assaulted my ears, and I winced as an intense dread welled up in the pit of my stomach. My head began pounding, my vision pulsing as the light seemed to dim and then flare, over and over again. And then came the voices...

I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was some sort of low, rhythmic chanting. It wasn’t gibberish or some other language, either; I just couldn’t make it out amidst all the static, though it sounded creepily familiar. The voices grew louder, becoming more coherent. At last, I could understand them.

“...We are the Yellow Ones... we feast upon the flesh of the living... we will drain your souls of light and joy... we will erase your very existence from the planes of reality... we will—”

“Shut it off!” I heard an unfamiliar voice wail. “What the buck is that?! Shut it off! Shut it off! SHUT IT OFF!”

“Canary?” called the first voice to contact the mare I had incapacitated. “Canary! Can you hear me! What in the name of Luna is that? Canary!”

“SHUT IT—”

The static abruptly cut off, and with it the dread. I shook, my thoughts swimming in a sea of liquid darkness. I could taste blood. What was that?!

“Surprise, are you okay?” Firefly asked. “Can you hear me? They killed their com link, so it must have worked. Surprise?”

“I’m okay,” I said weakly. “But... who...”

“It’s an old audio file I found down here,” she explained. “It nearly drove me mad the first time I heard it. It was rigged to play through the loudspeakers of the room whenever somepony opened the door. If my armor couldn’t cancel noise on command, I’d have lost it.”

“But...what was it?” I wondered, my legs still shaking.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Whoever set it up did so after the balefire strike. It’s not part of the Tower system; it was all jury-rigged from scraps. Whoever did it must be long gone.”

I certainly hoped so. There was no way in Tartarus I ever wanted to run into whoever had been behind that.

“Anyway, that should buy us some time,” Firefly said. “I think the download is almost—there! It’s done! Come back down and we’ll use the elevator shaft to get out of here.”

I gave an affirmative and hurried back down to the bottom floor. Firefly was waiting for me, having put her helmet back on. The terminal had stopped spewing data, and in fact now looked dead.

Seeing my glance at the terminal, Firefly said with pride that “I wiped all the data and reworked its circuits to overload the next time somepony turns it on. It’ll explode in their faces.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that last part was necessary, but overkill was the least of my concerns right now.

I galloped over to the elevator shaft, spread my wings, and flapped hard. Firefly was hot on my tail, rising up after me with the use of her jumpjets and furiously flapping wings. I imagined it must be frustrating to her to be the one tailing me rather than the other way around, as she was by far the faster and more athletic pegasus. It just went to show how bulky her data management armor really was.

It was a long way up, but we reached the level of the emergency exit without incident. I was terrified that at any moment a flock of pegasi would plummet down towards us from the darkest, highest reaches of the elevator shaft to avenge Red’s death. However, nothing of the sort happened. We didn’t even hear anypony on the other sides of the elevator doors as we ascended the levels. Perhaps they had all just given up and left? I highly doubted that, but we couldn’t hear any activity at all.

Finally reaching the emergency exit level, we left the elevator shaft and hurried down the hallway where I had first encountered Red and Hephaestus. The elderly earth pony was nowhere to be found, thankfully, even though I wasn’t really certain what threat he could have possessed save for signaling the others of his party. I saw Firefly’s shock as we passed by the archive room whose door Red had blown to bits with his lightning guns.

Firefly accessed the terminal and opened the thick metal door for us, and we slipped inside the small shed-like extension to the Tower. This was all going so well. I could hardly believe it. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it...

Maybe nothing was wrong? It wasn’t impossible to imagine we would actually make it out of here. We’d made it this far, after all. I allowed myself to think of returning to the base, having completed our mission. We had sustained heavy losses, and that would eat away at my brain for ages to come, but I still had Firefly. If I had lost her... I didn’t want to think about that. But I hadn’t. Maybe that meant this whole ordeal would soon be over as well.

I checked my EFS, which was completely devoid of tick marks, red or otherwise, save for the one noting the friendly presence of Firefly right beside me. It seemed, despite how unlikely it had sounded, that the other ponies really had left.

I cautiously opened the door and, seeing nothing but the empty Blackmarsh outside, stepped out. Even the massive vehicles and their impossibly huge guns had left, leaving nothing but those deep tire tracks in the downtrodden mud and crushed plant-matter.

Firefly followed me, and we trotted out into the mud, looking around in disbelief.

“Why would they all leave like that?” Firefly asked, voicing my thoughts.

“I have no idea,” I breathed with relief. “But I don’t plan on sticking around to find out. Ready to head back cloudside?”

“Actually, we have to—”

A small, spherical object appeared in the air about a dozen yards away, zooming towards us. It landed before we could react, burying itself halfway in the mud at our hooves. It was an all-too-familiar shape, looking almost identical to the weapons I had used to escape Red. However, rather than green, this one was a dark blue, emblazoned with a crescent moon insignia against a splotchy black backdrop. In the moment before it exploded, I vaguely recognized it as an official seal of Equestria, modelled after Princess Luna’s cutie mark.

The sphere exploded, and a light blue gas washed over us.

WARNING! my suit told me, the bright red letters flashing across my visor. Foreign gaseous compound detected! Unable to filter!

The world spun, and shapes began to lose their outlines, splitting into doubles of themselves as everything swirled around and began to darken. I collapsed, and I heard Firefly do the same beside me.

Just before the darkness overcame my vision and plunged my mind into oblivion, a shimmer appeared in the air from where the grenade had materialized. The shimmer coalesced into the form of a pony, a pegasus in power armor similar to Red’s, but not as ornate and lacking the Eye of the Storm lightning gun.

“I have the hostiles secured,” the pegasus spoke, looking us over. “How do you want me to proceed, Guildmaster Hephaestus?”