Ch 5 To Speak Truth To Power
"Speaking truth to power is a risky matter. Moreover, those risks are borne entirely by the whistleblower, while the benefits of the fraud disclosure flow entirely to the victims of the fraud."
-File Uploaded.....processing....processing....name found.....Security Clearance Locked....Security Level Gamma Override....Denied....Password Accepted for Override, Operator Level Confirmed.....
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.....WARNING! WARNING! MAS Access has downgraded, please consult a Operator for reprogramming.....
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Classified File Opening: Starlight Shimmer, Level 7 MAS Operative. Said to have a genius IQ of over 170, though her background is shady at best, though the most early stage places her as a mayor of a nameless town during the Littlehorn Massacre. In fact, what happened in that town was completely subsided by the sheer carnage in Littlehorn, but was no less gruesome due to the fact over 30 Ponies, Pegasi/Unicorns/Earth Ponies alike were all found dead due to a single Zebra Shaman, who poisoned the water supply with a time delay toxin. It comes to mind it was a test run of a lethal biological agent, given the town was too far away from any local hospitals, without radio transmission and not on any known maps.
Oddly enough, Shimmer was out on business guarding a trade caravan and came across her fallen companions, turning the zebra fanatic into a pile of dust and ashes, just as the bombs he planted blew up upon his death as a precaution. Her home destroyed, her followers dead, she turned herself in to the Ministry of Arcane Science to be judged for killing the zebra, only to be rewarded by Twilight herself. Given the explosion vaporized all her citizens, it is unknown why none of them could utilize their talents to check for poison or even attempt to subdue the zebra shaman.
Either way, she became a devout scientist learning under Twilight, the two working in unison on specialized spells and top secret projects, though her identity was masked on memory orbs as Ms. Sparkle wanted most of the credit for the accomplishments they did together. Annoyed with Twilight's need to one-up her, Glimmer made friends with one Trixie Lulamoon, aka Test Alicorn #1, and they 'talked shop' when Twilight wasn't around. It is said she was able to stabilize the I.M.P. formula with help from 'Dark Haze', (Mm******) but she had doubts about the Taint and wished to continue work on Twilight's 'other' projects, travelling to Zebrica in secret during the last days of the War.
However, it is said her Airship crash-landed in Congait and no further intel was learnt, though it is assumed she loosened safety protocols in Maripony regarding lockdown procedures on the I.M.P. vats, which her friend was then contaminated by. Her records show she had hooves dipped into various projects and blueprints in different locations across Equestria, using the O.I.A. to bypass clearance to add in new ideas to improve, though it is uncertain how much control she had over the network, or how much bits were removed from the treasury during her absence. End report-
-Anansi POV-
Wait, wait, what!!!!! This mare knows HIM? I mean, the file partly covers up the name, but I can tell off hand it's his codename. Which means...if I get her to talk, I'll find out where the others are and de-stonify them. Though it seems during my check-over, she got the drop on my host. Magnetuis spell, I believe? Attracts metal objects at high speeds against each other, aka the pipe against his metal gas mask.
With a brief sigh, I noticed her crossing over me with her slim legs attempting to exit out the only door, and reared my tail stinger back into Shady's central cortex to initiate temporary manual control, the eyes flitting back open and heart-beat going to a steady pace. -OH, NO YOU DON'T!- I yelled, though I wasn't exactly angry with her. I was more ticked that I didn't remember her off-hand as Twilight often said she was going out to meet a friend in private back then (and the fact she was able to find a blind spot inside my host's 270 degree vision).
Given I was a bit harsh on her keeping up with the war effort to save pony lives instead of taking them awhile keeping distance from the other's personal ministries, I let her do as she pleased so long as it wasn't a Element of Harmony (had a private PI check it over, though I never saw Glimmer's face, and forgot about it afterwards with a cider binge).
And that's when everything became whiter than a arctic snowdrift, in which I thought I had gone blind for a few seconds before the lenses in the mask corrected it. No, not snow or a whiteout of paint on my eyes...just fog. Fog so thick that you couldn't see your hoof in front of your eye until it was inches away, it was that heavy, and the entire floor, being sealed up with the broken elevator, was now a endless white void that apparently only I could navigate through.
"Oomph! What the-" The sound of a pony snout rebound brought delight to my ears, if I had any, as I could see Starlight rubbing her face after crashing into a wall. "What is this? I thought you Pegasi lost your power over the weather."
"I am not like most." I said darkly, as she seemed to hone in to my voice and zapped a magic bullet at my last location, grazing the floor as I casually moved from it. Of course, I wasn't sure how I was doing this either, but this called for close-quarters given any magic blast could cause the CO2 containers to burst open.
'Library open.....Collection of 1 Book: Mastery of Doombunny-fu.' I thought, scanning a copy of a 1st edition of Angel's mixed martial arts that I read long ago and committing each and every page to my memory. Well, mine alone in any case, it's a temporary thing I can do unlike hacking.
Shame my host lacked a tail scythe, but I could make do as I rushed her, narrowly getting grazed by a magic bolt as I leapt to twist in mid-air, launching a flurry of roundhouse hoof-strikes towards her, only to glance off a purple force bubble. Flipping backwards (and nearly losing my lunch), I stood upwards on hind hooves, thrusting forward palms into the shield hard and fast into the center to cause it to shatter like glass. Her surprised reaction allowed me to move forward with a side-lunge kick to her stomach, though with a flash of the horn, teleported several feet away.
"Tch...one of those, huh?" She smirked. I couldn't reply because suddenly she blitzed in front of me to deliver a flurry of her own slightly weaker punches, the Kevlar armor taking the blunt of it. Then teleported behind me to kick me in the back, then again to my side to send me flying a ways, in which I caught myself mid-flap to straighten out. "Try this out!" She said gleefully, as she launched a thick concentration of beams towards my position, in which I flapped upwards over them and flew towards her. Only to see there were now three of her, aiming horn towards me.
The concussive blasts sent me flying a ways, but with a single flap, I righted myself in mid-air and landed, then charged her again with a frontal flurry of kicks to her neck and stomach. Of course, given the fog only extended within a few inches of her person, she was able to deflect the hits with a shimmering cloak of protective magic, which exploded suddenly to dispel my strikes. I didn't give her the chance to gloat though, lashing out with a spin backwards lunge to the skull, the force against her barrier crackling with heavy thunder.
"Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. You're not going to break the barriers I can make with just regular kicks you know." She snickered, even as I continuously hammered away with Doombunny blows left and right.
"Maybe, but you like all unicorns have a limited amount of mana you can expend on this. The question is, how long can you keep this up before your horn burns out?" I asked, narrowly moving from a wide burst of magic that easily pierced a 2 foot section of the wall behind me.
"Long enough." Starlight growled, her horn glowing as I could suddenly feel myself getting heavier and heavier by the second, a red spell circle enclosing around me. "Can't use your fancy kicks when I've turned up the gravity. I mean really, I was trained by Twilight Sparkle herself since she had isolated herself from her so-called 'friends'. What makes you think you, a lowly Pegasus, can beat a top tier unicorn like me?"
Then, with a flash of her horn, she multipled all around me, snickering and laughing at me, "Or us? I am a academic genius standing at the top, and no pony shall surpass me!"
"Sounds lonely." My reply stopped her mid-chuckle, earning me a death glare followed by more gravity weight, which unfortunately had no effect on me but my host. "However, you forgot something very important when using magic."
"And what's that?" She sneered, and that's when I suddenly froze time all around us for the next 5 seconds.
"Every spell you casted, every curse, every tome you've ever read....I came up with it first." I hissed, suddenly in her face to slam her windpipe with a headbutt, followed by a forward cartwheel flip-kick to her backside, and finally placing both front hooves down underneath her slowly falling face, then used both back hooves to spring upwards to deliver a blow to the opponent's chin to smash it inward.
"Anansi Web-Dance!" I roared, just as the SAT's ran out of juice, and Starlight took all the blows at once, weaving and bouncing around like a battered drunk. Then, with a spray of blood from her mouth, fell backwards dazed and out loud from the heavy strikes.
"Ran out of AP....seriously, what was that guy thinking adding limitations to such a simple spell?" I muttered, rubbing my host body's sore spots back and forth, selecting a stimpak or two from his inventory to inject into the bloodstream for quick revitalization upon flapping down to land. Had I used it sooner, she'd take advantage of the delay of selection to strike me down all the way. "Well, whatever. I may as well complete my hypothesis theory on this one."
Trotting over to her prone form, I placed both hooves on her head, front and back and violently twisted hard to snap it clean off. Pegasus strength certainly is something to be feared, I suppose...but as I thought, the blood was red-tinted oil that streamed from her detracted neck, and her eyes flickered open in surprise.
Starlight yelped, scared beyond belief despite being a head. True, her horn was glowing, possibly to unleash magic designed to kill, but without the body's mana circuit, she was technically powerless.
"It's very simple. You're a bio-brain connected to a Flux Suit." I turned her head to face the prone body below, as it melted away into a purplish mass of gel with various pieces of machinery embedded into it. No doubt to connect nerve endings to the legs and body. "You probably weren't aware of the swap because Flux bodies are similar to real ones. Only your head has a separate power core to maintain it's stability."
She wailed, I felt no pity for her as I stood up on both hind legs and casually walked out the door.
"Bio-Brains are different from robots, but unlike most, your memories were tampered with to make you believe you were normal. No doubt your original body was destroyed somehow, and HE must have made the flux suit to conserve your form. That 'cryo-chamber' is a Flux Replenisher Status Module, to keep the flux skin stable every hundred years." Now she was gnawing on the arm, desperately terrified of what I was unveiling onto her. I ignored it, the bites were herbivore teeth after all, ineffective as I came across another terminal.
She angrily asked, as I downloaded all the data in the facility into my pipbuck to look over it later.
"Outside, duh. We almost caused this place to go sky-high with our fight and I do not want to contribute any more damage." I answered, walking into the hallway and over into the broken elevator shaft. It would be pointless getting any info out of her if Mmoatia messed with her head, I can only depend on Fleet Admiral Biscuit Hammer's techies to restore what knowledge she had. Reading through the information obtained as I gallantly flew upwards, her screaming mildly bugging me. Come to think of it, there were several items that she was working on that required higher access than what I could give, but from what I could ascertain, she was trying to do a side-project regarding the Gardens of Equestria.
Okay, yes. I admit I had something with that project, given it was a major back-up plan in case all Tartarus broke loose (note to self, find out if Tartarus entrance is undamaged by balefire explosions), but it required at least one of the Harmony wielders to trigger it. If the bloodline of all 6 mares went ka-put during their time in the stables or if they never made it...I shudder to think of what will happen once all the post-war resources are used up. Still, if the project she was working on could heal the environment, her knowledge may be invaluable to the cause.
Finding the closed elevator door was a tad tricky, but mostly if my host was awake as I kept hooves clinging to the wall and wings flapping like mad. I counted the floors one by one as we were plummeting after all, logging it to memory. So it was relatively easy even in the near-lightless elevator shaft for me to find the right doors, push against the edges with all my host's might, and heaved the sides open...only to see the cocking of multiple rifles, blasters and a bazooka aimed at my face.
"Really?" I said dead-pan, glaring at the idiotic enclave troopers who were ready to accidentally flash-fry their commanding officer, "I'm gone for less than a hour and you go for a ambush frontal assault? You did hear the elevator crash, right?"
"Well, yes, but-" I cut off the closest of them, whom I recalled from his personnel file as Jar Head (he has a concussion issue that allots to short-term memory).
"But nothing, you should be glad I don't court-martial your sorry flanks for failing to check on my condition even if I gave the order to stay up top. It's called initiative, so please next time use it if it means saving a life of your commanding officer. Understood?!?" I banged the floor with my hoof, causing the four of them to salute with a steel-cold gaze of military protocol.
"Sir, yes Sir!" They shouted in unison, though some of them were puzzled by the severed head of Starlight still biting my leg.
"Okay, now that that's out of the way, Sky Burst, Shockwave and Jar Head, I am going to take a bit of a brief nap on the mattress. Bolt Cutter, you are to take the head to the Ziz, tell them you have my permission to access but do not stay too long. I want 'her' analyzed by the labcoats to access her memories and any info on what projects she may have been heading. Apparently she's one of those robo-brains I found down below, so bind and gag her." I stated my orders properly, awhile eyeing the nearby mattress as my 'save point' to swap back control. Though I guess I'll have to ley my host know of my abilities, if not partially. No sense giving him knowledge about black ops involving Starlight and the MAS at this point until she was willing to cooperate.
"Understood." One yank of the teeth, and Starlight vanished from my sight down the hallway and to the left, allowing me the chance to sigh briefly. Mmoatia was one of the brightest minds I've ever known, a true friend with skills in all forms of magic and technology. What could have changed him? Why would he have let this world end up like this? Given Discord's chat, it would seem the various forms of Time Travel I was aware of wouldn't be able to re-shift things back to normal unless I knew the exact way things occurred after I was cast into the apple. Pity that, as I laid on the bed and closed my eyes shut.
In any case, mind swap starts right about....now.
Shady Smog's POV
'What happened? Ah, my head!?!?' I thought, slightly dazed as I sat up, rubbing the back of my skull.
-Good to see you up. That violent minx bopped you good, then took off.- The Bookworm again, and somehow with a quick glance, we were back at the top by the elevator. How? Why?
'And how am I here?' Oddly enough, I spoke directly to him in thought rather than out loud, weird.
-Eh. One of our abilities is the temporary ability to control motor functions of the host body if he is out cold or beaten nearly to death, nothing too fancy. It was a chore to keep balance climbing up the elevator.- That ticked me off, which I responded to it coldly...
'So...you can control my body if I'm asleep.'
-No, if you faint or get knocked out or near-death. Couldn't do it before when you ate me because I was barely at a quarter-strength. And even then, I can't access any special talents or skills you have. Just basic flapping and such.- Okay, fine. As long as he can't control me if I'm asleep, I'm okay with him having minor control. But anything else beyond that and I'll yank him out of the earlobe and squash him flat.
"Okay, naps over. We'll go back to base and transmit our findings to the Ziz. Why are you lunks looking at me like that?" I muttered, growling at the grunts who didn't seem to move out of the way.
"Pardon, sir, but it seems we have hostiles outside who brought a freaking zebra tank half a mile. They seem to be marked with that unibra's logo brand on their uniforms." One of them said, moving to the side as I trotted past him, handing me a new blaster. I really should fill out a form to carry around a flamethrower.
"Tch....and just when I needed more bloodshed." I muttered, chambering a new plasma magazine one of them offered. Of course, had it not been for Anansi, it took me only a few minutes to find the exit instead of 5 days given how complex the place was.
Of course, what I saw was a whooper of a doozy as I peered out the 'mail slot' where we entered from.
Namely two hundred Addax standing around, having materialized from thin air via stealthbuck interlinking. And a freaking Zebra MX-III Tank bringing up the rear, though it was behaving rather strangely as if the turret was sniffing the air. They were also trying to touch the Raptor as if to hijack it for salvage, but it repelled them quite easily due to it’s currently ‘electrified’ exterior’.
"Great...." I muttered, slowly re-closing the slot to type in a few base commands into my pipbuck. Hopefully the transmission wasn't disrupted this close and they weren't packing a data scrambler.
Okay, this may require some luck, a little patience, and perhaps a bit of negotiation, all things Addax lack due to their insane tactics. So I did the one thing they wouldn't expect, poke my gun out the mailslot...and shot out the left leg of the head Addax. Heh, his screaming and cursing in various tongues amused me, even as I shifted the direction of my blaster to fire at more targets.
Am I a coward for doing so, or just stupid? Neither, even as they blasted away with their lame machine-guns, the door's special star metal (which repaired itself after we broke in) took it all in stride and ricocheted back at several more of them, cutting down multiple foes in the process.
"Ah, starmetal. Is there truly nothing that can make you imperfect?" I mumbled, reinserting a fresh clip to take out another wave of those barely armored punks. I mean, sure, I missed several shots once they started to move frantically to dodge, but other blasts insta-crispied flaming holes through their torsos big enough to put a hoof through.
-You seem to enjoy this, huh?- My passenger inquired, though he seemed almost bored with what I was doing.
"No, I'm just evening the playing field until the others catch up and lay some new C4 so I can blast a new exit. Though I may not have wait for them just yet." My ears twitched for a millisecond, as the familiar sound of tracer fire was unloaded via metal storm volley-guns high above.
Heh, having high priority in a firefight has it's perks, especially given Neo Oasis was close by only several miles with a make-shift runaway for rapid deployment. Addax soldiers, puzzled as to where the bullets were shredding them to bloody chunks from, randomly shot into the sky in various directions.
-Okay, what's going on?- The bookworm inquired, no doubt confused as to who our savior was.
"Just a little something I had the tech heads work on, no sense leaving a bunch of broken Cloudtank and Chariot parts to rust away. We call it the Derecho Drone." I said, keeping an eye outside to observe the panicked masses as they scattered or re-triggered their stealth-bucks.
Not that the latter worked, the Derecho's motion and heat sensors detected even the slightest hoofprint and traced it to the user seconds later, blasting heavy rounds into their bodies before they had the chance to scream. Okay, that was dark, I'm sorry. War isn't pretty, and unlike Equestria, those who work in small groups often get killed rather quickly.
Still, those who didn't run, I tried to shoot carefully given many Addax were also known for sharp-shooting using bungee RPGs on their horns. And then, they dropped, one by one into the thickest clusters of Addax regrouping, glass shattering with a ear-splitting roar that sent many, many skyward only to be electrocuted by multiple bolts of lightning from below lancing through them and zapping from one to the next in tight rows (much like a field of a thousand sheep got BBQed by a stray bolt on a open field long ago).
"Ah, the sweet sound of Airburst Grenades...followed up with Lightning Jars to render them crispy-fried. One would wonder why we never used them sooner in the war." I grinned, just as my ears detected one of my comrades finally locating my position to help make a new hole. I casually waved him over, given the fighting was just about done as the Derecho mowed down the last of the opposition like frightened buckwheat....did that seem off? Weird.
-Technically, you did. But there was a defect in the weapon that caused it to prematurely detonate within a few seconds instead of 10, killing many of them. So they had to do a recall for a few weeks to fix it up...I guess they did it awhile I was gone?- Anansi muttered, making me a tiny bit curious how he knew that sort of thing if he was working the magic ministry. Backing up a bit as the C4 charges were placed, the explosion that came a minute after was less muffled on the inside of the wall somehow. The brightest burst of sunlight caught me off guard for a second, forcing me to wince in discouragement.
"My, it's bright. Have to tint for a second." I stated, clicking my helmet to swap out new lenses given this particular place of land was now cloudless...at least until the drone left. Such a pain, given the Derecho required both Pegasi to move clouds in a wide swath of area and sunlight to run smoothly with the multiple solar panels on it's back. With my tinted lenses, it was easy enough to spot the sky-camouflaged, 'squid-shaped' aircraft with multiple barrels from it's mechanized tendrils cooling down.
Gotta give the techies a bonus for a perfect test-run, I suppose, I jotted that down in my Pipbuck notepad for later. Walking through the rubble and assorted corpses, I scanned each of them, just in case one of them was playing dead. Apparently a wildebeest trapper did that a month ago, nearly blowing off half my tail in the process, nailed him in the mouth in retaliation by accident. Heck, even the tank was in shambles due the fact one of the airburst grenades fell in it’s turret as it was locking on to the mail slot, turning the inside of it into a mushy microwave with the occupants as the popcorn. I definitely knew from a brief scan of it that those idiots were not alive, but I checked away for any addax who still had a breath of life in him or her.
Took me a few minutes until I actually found one survivor, barely hanging on to dear life as he whimpered and begged upon me coming up upon him like the alicorn of death. Two of my men roughly stood him up with their hooves, keeping him in place with a brief struggle despite the near-lethal pocket marks of bullets that gutted him head to tail. "Such a pain, but here's your 'reward', kid." I smiled menacingly, even though he couldn't tell via the gas mask, as I stuck him in the flank with one of my remaining stimpaks. The bullets popped out, one by one, as skin, muscles, organs, blood veins and bone healed up in a matter of seconds, but not quite enough for a full recovery of his lower half to walk away from.
"You two, close your eyes or look away. And I assume you have a fair amount of information for me, huh? Like who sent you?" That last part was in the Addax's tongue, possibility due to the Bookworm's 'supposed' translation abilities the Admiral was talking about.
"B-buck you." The Addax soldier wheezed, coughing up some blood as he tried to bite off his own tongue, had my hoof not suddenly jammed in to part the teeth.
"Now, now. Let's not be too hasty. The fun is just getting started after all." After making sure his captors were looking away, I undid my gas mask and peered directly into his eyes which caused a surprised startle. "Am I not a trustworthy face? Am I not somepony who can have your back and healed your wounds? Would you like to be....my ally?"
=Intimidation=
He stared back at me with tears in his dopey eyes, and answered back as mechanically as he could, his soul currently chained and bound to my will until he died. "I'd like to help you in any way I can."
"Excellent!" I turned gleefully as something turned out for the better, walking over to the undisturbed Raptor craft (as it would appear the Addaxes were focused solely on our arrival) and deactivated the self-defense measures so that all of us could board, including our prisoner. "Let's go back to Neo Oasis for resupplying, a brief lunch and then assembling a new army with all sorts of soldiers to take on the Big 5! Move out, on the quadruple!"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
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-Tch....so he got lucky. But a couple hundred scrubs won't mean squat once I deploy one of the largest missile bombardments down on your flank. Prepare for insta-kill strategies 101!-
Level Up!
Anansi- High Flying Kick!: Thanks to acquiring the Doombunny manual, you are now able to wield special martial arts with your host’s powerful legs when your host in out cold, which boosts STR by 2, and reduces it back when he wakes up. It is possible to upgrade to new forms of ‘belt’ given practice with your technique
Shady Smog- Intimidation Downgrade: Although you’re not at max level, being with Anansi temporarily allows you to create a temporary follower of low level grunts and animals. They will essentially do whatever you say without question, though their free will to act on their own is stunted badly as a result, and what knowledge they have is limited to what they know offhand. Has no effect on those of higher level than you.