Noble Blade led the way through the narrow metal hallways on the main level. Princess Twilight was behind him, running to catch up with him, and Firestorm was covering the rear. They were so close to the main doors leading out. Noble could anticipate them finding the main lobby at the turn of a corridor.
He instead rounded a bend and saw a crossing intersection up ahead, which he dashed into. The lack of Noxxa they had seen on the ground level was slightly unsettling to him. After all, the command had been given for all personnel to come to the main level. So the fact that he hadn't seen any made him anxious. While their reluctance to show their faces could simply be attributed to fear, the Noxxa were not the sort who would back down from merely fear. More than likely, they had ulterior motives.
Say, for example, a trap.
As he came to the spot where all four hallways converged, a wall suddenly materialized in front of him with a slam. Noble stopped immediately, putting out a hoof to the side to signal Twilight to slow down. Twilight skidded to a stop as well, but she stopped so quickly that Firestorm slammed into her back, almost throwing them both into the dark grey wall.
"Careful!" Noble cautioned. He drew his broadsword and extended its tip into the wall. Instead of carving through the metal like taffee, the blade halted. Noble pushed harder, but the wall held. Finally, he gave a hard swing. The tip of the mighty blade did not even cause a scratch in the metal.
"What is it?" Twilight asked.
"Confound it," Noble muttered darkly. "Not everything can be cut with our swords." He sheathed his broadsword. "It's a special metal that's incredibly dense. We'd better find another way around-"
But as he spoke another dark wall slammed into existence from the corridor they just came from, and two more to either side of them, sealing them in the intersection.
Noble said nothing but opened his visor vertically, blinking in disbelief. He looked startled and embarrassed. He said nothing.
Twilight shook her head as if trying to shake off a few mosquitoes, then looked at Firestorm. "Did we just get captured again?!"
"Apparently so. The oldest trap in the book, and we fell right into it." Firestorm felt as embarrassed as Noble Blade looked. He looked at the dark walls surrounding him on all sides, then turned to face Twilight. "Well, you walked right into it. I was just trying to keep up."
"Joke some other time," Noble muttered. "Marshal Malice really is here. Only he would maneuver us into such a position."
Marshal Malice was the last thing Firestorm wanted to think about right now. "Or, you know, it could be that knock on the head," he offered, lightly tapping his hoof upside his own head.
Noble Blade didn't even smile. "No. This is bigger than that. How in Equestria did he even locate us so precisely? This is all a complete mystery to me. It should have-"
"Perhaps we should solve the mystery of how we're going to get out of here first?" Twilight suggested out of the blue. Noble looked at her questioningly and she fell silent, even though that wasn't what Noble wanted.
"Never fear, Princess!" the pegasus announced, drawing his twin thin blades. "For I, Firestorm, the super smart, brave, and un-be-lievably hunky, have a plan!"
Twilight and Noble raised a single eyebrow simultaneously.
Firestorm reared up, put the swords in a reverse grip, and drove both of them into the deck beneath him. The swords bounced off the surface, and Firestorm slipped and hit his face into the ground.
"No doubt the ceiling is made of it as well," Noble said, then sighed and helped up Firestorm. "The first level needs to be made out of extremely strong metal to support the rest of the tower. Well, my friends. Any ideas?"
Twilight brainstormed and she found that there was always one contingency plan available. "We, ah, could always just surrender?" she asked.
Both the stallion's heads whipped to face her in disbelief.
"I- I mean, what with the damage you two have caused, and that it'll at least get us out of here, I'm sure that we could..." she searched for the words. "Bargain for our release?" She laughed nervously.
Firestorm, still staring at Twilight, whispered to Noble out of the corner of his mouth, "She's open-minded." He stepped forward. "What if we planted explosives along the sides of the walls?" He then shut his mouth as he realized that using explosives could prove tricky under his explosive-less circumstances.
"Good idea, but for the fact that if we use them in such an enclosed space as this, the explosion would kill us all," Noble pointed out. He then smiled. "But you're open-minded, I'll give you that."
Firestorm shook his head in defeat, swaying his fiery mane. "Well okay, then. I suppose now we try a new plan that I totally made up. It's called... patience."
"Patience," Noble said suspiciously. "That's a plan? Coming from you?"
"Yes, actually. You know, what zebra shamans tell people?" He assumed a zen-like pose and spoke with a heavy accent. "With patience, you must persevere, until the mud settles and the water becomes clear.' So we wait."
The knight looked skeptical. "Wait."
"For the security patrol. A couple of guards will be along in a moment and they'll have to drop the walls to take us into custody, won't they?"
Twilight was undeterred. "And then?"
Firestorm shrugged. "And then we kill 'em all."
"Brilliant as usual," Twilight said dryly. "What if they turn out to be Berzerkers? Or worse?"
"Pppppttttttt, come on! Worse than Berzerkers? Besides," he said, flourishing a hoof, "Security patrols are always those skinny, useless little grubs fresh out of training."
At that moment, the four doors simultaneously dropped. Four of those skinny useless little grubs appeared, one on each corridor. They all carried loosely-fitting armor and oversize spears. One of them said in a shaky voice, "H-hoof over yer weapons!", resulting in a chorus of "Yeah!"s to emanate from the others.
"Oh no. I'm soooo scared. I'm shaking in my custom-made armor uniform, I am so darn terrified." The sarcasm in Firestorm's voice was heavier than a barbell. He gestured at one of them over his shoulder, speaking to Twilight. "See? Nothing to worry about."
And directly behind them, materializing seemingly out of nowhere, eight heavily armed and armored Noxxa Berzerkers came into view, two into each corridor, their solid yellow eyes fixed with blind rage at the princess and the two Guardians.
Twilight facehooved and said to Firestorm, "You were saying?"
"Okay, okay, fine. Fine. It's Marshal Malice." He made air quotes at the name in disgust. "Or something." He rolled his eyes. "I suppose that means you're off the hook."
Behind the Berzerkers in each corridor marched sixteen more troops with the light glinting off of the blades they had in their mouths and claws. And in one of the corridors marched a creature the likes of which none of them had ever seen before.
Twilight whispered, "Noble? What is that?"
"Remember what you said earlier about 'Worse than Berzerkers'?" Noble asked grimly. "I think we're looking at him."
It was a white creature that had four legs spread like a walking stool. He had long, wicked axe blades welded onto the end of his four arms in place of appendages. Its head was that of a spider, and his eight eyes were bright red. The creature pointed his axe-tipped claws at them. "He said, hoof over your weapons, pony filth," it snarled in a deep, sinister voice.
Whoever he was, he definitely didn't just come out of basic training.
Noble Blade cleared his throat. "Under the, ah, circumstances, Storm, I recommend we execute a plan B."
Firestorm sighed. "The Princess's idea is sounding pretty good right now."
Noble Blade slowly unstrapped his shield and drew his sword out of his scabbard, then lay his sword on the inside of the shield and reluctantly hoofed it over to the strange white creature. The creature, however, continued to glare down at the knight expectantly.
With a consigned look, Noble unfolded a part in his armor and drew out his bandoleer of explosives and tossed it on the shield as well.
Still, the creature waited.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, Noble unsheathed a dagger from near his flank and slapped it down on the shield.
Finally, seeing no more weapons on him, the creature nodded and motioned for Firestorm to come up as well. Groaning like a little foal, he unsheathed his twin thin blades, as well as two additional combat knives on his flank and underbelly, and reluctantly placed that on the shield as well. The pale creature nodded again and a few Noxxa came forward with ropes to tie down wings and cuffs to bind them.
Noble, however, noticed what Firestorm had not brought up, and he facehooved. "Firestorm," he said exasperatedly. "Where are your explosives?"
Firestorm chuckled nervously. "They're not lost, if that's what you're thinking." That part, at least, was true; he knew exactly what had happened to them.
"No?" Noble asked, being herded next to Firestorm by the Noxxa.
"No."
"Where are they, then?"
"Can we talk about this later?"
"I don't think we might exactly have a later."
Firestorm sighed in defeat once more. "While you were in the elevator shaft... unconscious, you know... I kinda sorta maybe used the explosives to destroy the pulley systems holding the elevator up. And the rest of them fell down the shaft." He rushed the last part. His cheeks were flaming as much as his hair.
Noble was silent for a moment, then said, "And why did you do this, exactly?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Look, Firestorm-"
"Hey, you don't have yours either!"
"That's different."
"Of course it's different. I managed to actually use mine, but noooo! Not you! You did the better job and had your explosives taken from you rather than use them! That's soooo much better." He went into an exaggerated high-and-mighty Canterlot accent, imitating Noble's voice at the same time. "Nevah let anything happen to the explosives, Fahirstorm! It could very well be the success or failure of the mission!"
Noble, who had just a tiny drop of a Canterlot accent, frowned at the over-exaggerated caricature his friend was making. Twilight, on the other hoof, tried to hold back a snicker.
"Perhaps," Noble said as the cuffs were clicked on him, "we should talk about this later."
Firestorm intoned severely, "I dost not thinketh that we shalt have-"
"Okay, okay, enough." Noble was the one flushing now. "One for your side."
Firestorm suddenly blinked. "I'm sorry, what was that?" He couldn't help but grin. "Could you speak up a little?" He tilted his head and opened his ear a little more.
Noble scrunched up his face. "It's not very polite to gloat, Storm."
"I'm not gloating, Noble," Firestorm said as they were spurned to march, with Twilight behind them."I'm just... savoring the moment."
Again, Noble looked questioningly at his close friend. "Savoring the moment?"
"Yeah. As long as we're here, we might as well enjoy it." Spying the look Noble gave him, Firestorm began to explain. "I mean, okay, yeah, we've been captured. But so what? We've been captured before. Yeah, we're surrounded by these creatures of Tartarus. But so what? We've faced worse. You remember Skyworld? In Skyworld we were outnumbered by at least ten times this many."
"In Skyworld we could use our magic."
"Touche." He shrugged. "My point is, what makes you think this'll end up differently?"
Noble was quiet for a moment, then said softly, "I just thought that when we die, we'll die alongside Freedom Fighter."
"You know him as well as I do. If he were to find out we had died by these monsters, he would have slaughtered every single one until someone else killed him as well and we meet him in Heaven in the afterlife. And then we can all annoy Faust for all eternity until she gets fed up with us and throws us into Tartarus instead. And it won't matter if we're in Tartarus or in heaven because we'll all at least be together. But we should prolong that time by doing our job and giving Freedom Fighter more time. We need to spend every instant we still have alive giving him it."
"Which may not be enough," Noble worried. The group fell silent until Noble spoke up again. "It's going to be a grand exit from this life, Storm. To go out like a knight-- defending his country. For many years I've fought my enemies. But it is a far greater honor to die alongside my friends."
A somber but triumphant tone was then present among all three of them as they walked, stirring courage and sacrifice in everyone's head. They took every step with confidence and selflessness. They were filled with resolve.
That is, until Firestorm broke the mood. As usual.
"So when you say friends, you just mean the princess, right?"
"What?" Noble was confused.
"You'd much rather be with a hot princess than a hot mess like me, is what I'm saying."
Twilight, behind them, flushed hard. "Hot?!" she exclaimed in disbelief.
"Well, would you rather be called ugly? Yeesh," he muttered. "You get mad when I call ya hot, you get mad when I call ya ugly. Firethtorm confuthed," he said with his tongue between his teeth, crossing his eyes.
Twilight looked at Noble, but Noble looked at the ground almost sadly. Twilight was also confused. Why'd he look so sad whenever she was mentioned?
The answer was nonexistent as they plundered on in hoofcuffs to meet their fate with Marshal Malice.