"I will survive. I will survive. I will survive."
-Found hoof-written on a scrap of paper tucked behind a vase in the Vivarium.
I was so focused on the mad scramble to land and dash inside the employee entrance that I hadn't accounted for just how much air pressure was behind the doors of the overclocked weather factory. Tunnel vision; it's the sort of thing that costs lives. It very nearly cost mine as the fur on my face was blown back and I had to haul my wings in against my sides, shoving into the wind with all my strength.
The second I was inside the cold, humid space, the wind abated a little. I scrambled away from the door and nearly slipped on my face as my hooves tried to shoot out in all directions. I’d found myself on a metal catwalk that was covered in a layer of slick frost. It was dimly lit by flickering industrial lights that were, likewise, coated in ice.
Below the catwalk, I could see the central cloud forge. I’d never seriously thought about going into weather work—especially considering I could barely sit on clouds without concentrating—but it was impressive to look down into the enraged heart of a hyperstorm held in place with little more than enchantment and stubborn hope. It looked like a swirling, cylindrical bundle of bright blue smoke flashing internally with plasma bursts from time to time as it writhed in a cradle of metal arms reaching out from the walls on either side. I don’t know why I thought it would be any other color; blue was as good as any for a storm mid-production.
I had only a moment to take in my surroundings before an enraged bellow came from behind me. I darted off to my left, barely able to keep my hooves on the slippery surfaces as I galloped into the maze of pipes and valves that provided vapor and magic to the weather factory. It was all badly lit and every circle of light felt precious against the black fog. The Hailstorm’s targeting system was barely functioning; I got only occasional glimpses of the reticle, always behind, always coming closer.
There was no question in my mind what Colonel Broadside would do if he caught me. I did have a couple places the details were thankfully a little vague, but all of them involved a short life full of pain and humiliation followed by a violent death. If I let that happen, Hardy would never forgive me.
----
It’s strange to think I’d only been his partner for a little over two months. I felt like I’d known him a lifetime. Technically several lifetimes.
When I’d graduated from the police academy and asked for placement, I don’t think anypony took me seriously. Even I didn’t. Not really. I never handled blood particularly well and I wanted to go into homicide? It seemed crazy to try, but my scores were high enough I could pick my department and the cockatrice incident earned me an awful lot of good will from somepony.
Hard Boiled wasn’t the stallion I thought he’d be. When someone’s record tells you their literal talent is justice, you expect somepony imposing. You think you’re about to meet a super-pony.
He was just a worn out stallion, only a little taller than me. When I saw him in Chief Jade’s office, for a second I thought there’d been some kind of mistake. How could he be the pony who brought in the Mauler of Elderberry Square? He looked like he had a barstool with his name on it somewhere.
He looked at procedure like most ponies looked at toilet paper. His best friend was simultaneously the scariest mare I’d ever met and somehow exuded this mothering aura that made me want to sit down and tell her what was wrong.
Then we fought, together. We bled, together. We almost died, together, again and again.
He pulled us through things nopony should have lived through, and despite it all, he was still that tired stallion who looked like he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and pull the blankets over his head.
I’d left him to face something impossible and, just then, with the psychopathic Colonel coming after me, I wanted nothing more than to reach out and find Hardy beside me.
Too bad, I guess.
There, at the end, I was well and truly alone.
----
The magic coursing through the building was enough to set my fur on end and I could see the power, like threads of yellow liquid, pouring through the system. It was enough of a distraction that I almost didn’t see the wall of pipes resolving out of the mist until I was right on top of them. I braked with my wings and brought my forelegs up, rebounding off the metal surface and throwing myself to the left.
Broadside’s awful, mutant gun let off a burst of fire that nipped at my heels, but it felt a bit weak for some reason. I wondered what that thing’s upper range was. The Moon Guns had a pretty limited effective range, but he’d torn that one apart and done something to it that left it looking almost like it’d been infected with the hybridization spell. Unfortunately, the only good way to test its capabilities was to get shot again, and I only had so many ears to lose bits of.
The catwalk stretched above and below the central hollow where the storms were built, spreading out on all sides like a spider’s web propped up by a lattice of metal girders. It was a dicey place to fly, but my options were getting limited.
I spread my wings and tried to catch some air, flapping as little as I could in the tight space as I rocketed down the passageway past dozens of pieces of arcane industrial equipment, all churning away at maximum speed. Pipes were starting to burst and mist was leaking everywhere. I had to coast over a giant puddle of multicolored runoff that looked worryingly like liquid Beam.
“You’ll die begging, filly!” Broadside snarled.
I risked a look over my shoulder and his massive shape filled the corridor behind me. His bulging body put me in mind of a train, for some reason; a thing that would simply run you down and not even feel your body crushed beneath his hooves.
Unfortunately, it was then that my hoof caught and I went tumbling, nose over flank. I skidded face-first into the railing of the catwalk and my muzzle let out a worrying crunch, followed by a sharp spike of pain radiating from my nose, down my cheeks. Struggling up onto all fours, I had only a second to orient myself.
A battering ram seemed to come out of nowhere and I was spun around, again. I felt sure I should be seeing stars, but my new eyes didn’t seem to do that. I could still see perfectly, and what I saw was Colonel Broadside looming over me.
Coming to a stop at the end of the catwalk, I lay there panting, my ears ringing and my cheeks aching like I’d just kissed the front bumper of a speeding cab. He’d backhooved me hard enough that the muscles in my shoulders hurt. Bracing a leg under my chest, I spit something hard out on the catwalk. It was the tip of one of my sharp back teeth.
‘Your dentist is going to have an awful lot of questions,’ I thought.
I heard Broadside’s heavy hoofsteps approaching from off to my left.
“Filly, I swear, you have guts,” the colonel said. I tried to turn my head, but my neck twinged, stopping me right quick. “If somepony twice your size said that to me, I’d have called them brave, but you? A pint sized mare, barely got her mark? You must be crazy.”
I coughed into my hoof, then sat up, feeling for anything broken. Other than the unpleasantly crunchy feeling in my face, nothing seemed more than bruised. I swung my head around, staring up at where Broadside stood a foot away, staring down at me.
“M-my partner is crazy and h-he threw a wrench in all of y-your plans,” I said, adding a defiant smile. “I’m j-just following his example.”
“Your partner,” the giant stallion snorted, grabbing my chin with his hoof and turning my face this way and that. He forced me to look up into his deformed face, seeing the scars that crisscrossed his bloody muzzle and the mouth packed with curling, ripping teeth. “You mean that foolish police pony who delivered us the Helm of Nightmare Moon. What a damned bother he was. I saw him on the television before Skylark died. I saw him at that party at the Castle my brother attended. He had guts, too. Strange, that the last time I saw him he was more brass than pony and burning like a neat little pyre. Seems like that’s how ponies with guts tend to end up, no?”
I gritted my teeth, trying to call on my anger and that incredible magic that I’d unleashed during the fight with the P.A.C.T. death squad, but it just wasn’t there. Maybe Tourniquet’s power was too drained or she was too far away. Maybe the artificial storm was interfering. Maybe I was just too darn tired.
“M-my partner is ten times the stallion you’ll ever be,” I growled, struggling to back away.
The Hailstorm’s turrets were twitching in their cradles, but the targeting reticle wouldn’t appear. I’d been fighting for what felt like an hour and I’d only flown a little bit of that. The batteries were empty.
“You say he ‘is’?” Broadside mused, releasing my head and giving me a rough shove that sent me stumbling backwards. I was close to the railing and could feel the sucking energies of the cloud forge below. “What’d he do? If he’d sent a changeling in his place, it would have reverted the instant we filled it full of lead. Same with any illusory enchantments. Besides, none of that struck me as his ‘style’.”
“Y-you can’t kill him,” I growled. “He’s the Detective. He’s the S-Spirit of Justice.”
Throwing his head back, Broadside laughed, long and loud. It echoed off the pipes, taking on a strange and otherworldly quality. I edged toward the railing, trying to keep myself from losing it. He could kill me any second, so I had to keep him talking. Keep him interested. Keep him amused.
When the Colonel finally got control of his laughter, he turned to face me and took a few steps closer. “Heh, filly, I’m guessing you read an awful lot of superhero stories. Spirit of Justice. I hear some of what those fools in the streets called him. Bulldog, eh? I’ve killed dogs. Crusader? Some of those gangers prayed to a pony named Crusader. Others scream for this...Warden of Everfree to take them to the Lady of Shadows. Lately, they say nothing. Just lie there and don’t say a word while they’re killed. Spooky, gotta say.” He shook his head and grinned, fiercely. “But where was I? Oh, right. So Hard Boiled is alive?”
“You killed him, and all you did is make him angry,” I said, scooting farther from him. “He’s going to kill your brother.”
“Oh? If he does, I’ll shake his hoof,” Broadside replied, trotting over to the railing opposite me and peering out down into the cloud forge. He seemed unconcerned by my gun, as though he knew it wasn’t functioning. “I couldn’t kill my brother, and Tartarus knows I tried. I’m not ashamed to say he’s smarter than I am.”
“Wh-why do you fight for him? T-that thing in the basement of the house out in the Wilds?”
Broadside’s lip quirked on one side and he turned to look down at me, contemptuously flicking his short-shorn tail. “My brother has some hair up his backside about that. Thinks it might be some kind of ‘divine being’. Might be that he’s right, but it doesn’t matter to me.” Pressing his hoof to his breast, he raised himself up and stood to attention. “I am, as ever, a loyal servant. He has his projects. I have mine. I will see a ponykind that survives even this.”
“We were surviving just fine,” I said, bitterly, finally finding the strength to stand. He still towered over me, but standing felt better than lying there like a ragdoll waiting for him to give me another kick. “Colonel Broadside. You’re under arrest.”
He glanced at me. “What?”
I took a step back towards the railing behind me and continued. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law. If you choose to continue active resistance, I will consider my life in danger and will respond accordingly.”
“Filly, you are out of your damned mind, aren’t you?”
“Probably, but I think if all ponykind has to rely on for a future is your penis, then we’re out of luck, aren’t we?”
The look on his face turned instantly stoney and he spread his giant, leathery wings, but I didn’t hang around to see what he would do next. I ducked under the safety railing and began to fall. The cloud forge raged under me, sucking at my feathers, but I held them close and dropped like a stone, trying to get every inch of speed I could.
I’d calculated my descent to take me past the vortex as best I could, but I didn’t know exactly how strong the pulling forces might actually be. Fortunately, the ground was a long way off and the power inside the vortex was just strong enough to bring me into a slight curve that followed the inside of the long cylinder opening below the forge itself. Magic pulsed through my atrophied weather senses and every part of me wanted to be well away from that cloud, but that wasn’t an option. I needed velocity and I needed Broadside to follow.
Just as I crossed under the vortex, I slammed my wings open and couldn’t hold in a shriek of pain as there was a pull in my chest. I’d injured flight muscles before and it didn’t feel like more than a sprain, but it still hurt, though not so bad as my hurt nose. If I survived the stupid thing I was about to do, I was going to wish I’d died in the morning.
Scooping at the air with my aching wings, I shot upwards on the side of the storm opposite the catwalk, trying to keep roughly the same speed I’d pulled into going down. Unfortunately, climbing is harder than falling.
‘Power. Come on, power!’
It could have been my imagination, but I thought the Hailstorm’s targeting reticle appeared for a tenth of a second. It would have to be enough. If it wasn’t, I was dead.
The cloud forge grumbled like a wild animal, as though it could feel an interloper crossing too close to where the storm outside was birthed. Any second, I expected to feel a lash of lightning clip me out of the air, but it never came, and the control spells keeping the pulsating monster weather formation in place held.
I caught sight of Broadside, hovering high above the vortex, right where a smart ambusher would be. He’d know I had nowhere to go. He’d know I’d have to try to get back on the catwalks to find the exit, unless I wanted to try to hunt for one at ground level. Pegasus logic dictated I avoid ground level like the plague, especially when in a panic, and Broadside still thought I was trying to run; underestimating me, like everypony else.
His mistake.
I darted under him, looked him right in the eyes, and hauled myself belly-up over top of the vortex, readying for another dive. I stuck my tongue out at him and flipped my tail in a way every filly is taught to avoid unless it’s her special somepony looking, holding it up as I began my second fall. Scarlet would have been proud.
Whatever demented will kept Broadside’s temper in check seemed to snap. His wings slapped against his hips with a whip crack that I could hear over the whistling of the cloud forge and he launched himself towards me. I started for the catwalks.
‘Make it look good.’
He came in fast enough that I heard the air rushing through his wingtips and snatched me out of the air like a hawk grabbing a sparrow before I’d even gotten close to the top of the vortex again. His forelegs crushed me to his chest and I yowled in pain that didn’t have to be faked in the slightest; my body was a mess and he’d just mashed my wings flat against him. His muscles felt like carved stone without an inch of give.
“No more little jokes, filly,” he rumbled in my ear. “I’m having you, right here, right now. You ever take a mating flight? Well, I don’t feel like chasing you, anymore.”
Something hard prodded against my tail.
“Me, either!” I shouted.
The Hailstorm purred as its turrets spun and dropped out of their sockets to either side. The barrels clicked loudly, then spun a hundred and eighty degrees until they were pointed backwards. A flash momentarily lit the underside of our bodies and I felt a bit of a chill on my hips.
Broadside went rigid from head to hoof.
I brought one rear hoof up and kicked as hard as I could. There was a sound that could be heard above the storm, above the wind, and above the clattering of overloaded machinery. It was the crunch of shattering ice. The pressure on my tail had vanished and something fell into the cloud forge below as the Colonel’s eyes instantly widened in shocked disbelief and pain. His forelegs slackened slightly.
Wrenching myself around, I wrapped my front knees around his barrel. He only had an instant to tense before my teeth found his throat. Every other inch of him was covered in muscle and tough, leathery hide that I’d have struggled to get through with a hacksaw, but the instant I bit down, I tasted sweet, sweet blood. Pony blood.
It was delicious. The best I’d ever had. I wanted nothing more than to bathe in it, but a little voice in my thoughts told me that would be a bad idea.
Broadside let out a wet gurgle and tried to push me away, but I held on, biting deeper, until I felt something hard. My jaw might not have been up to the task of ripping through his armor, but bone? Bone was lovely.
His neck crunched and he went limp, but he was still trying desperately to draw a breath.
He’d have started to fall immediately, were his wings not already extended. Pegasi who lose consciousness in mid-flight can glide for a long time.
I heaved my wings free and caught the air, forcing us into a spiraling drop. The forge was close. Too close for comfort. We were falling straight into it.
Mustering the last of my strength, I shoved his massive bulk as hard as I could. My knee popped and I made the mistake of clenching my teeth, which hurt like the dickens, but it was enough.
Broadside’s face was locked in deathly surprise, helplessly flailing his legs as he vanished into the vengefully howling stormfront. The cloud formation turned a worrying red. More of that delicious blood spattered my face, almost sending me wobbling out of the air as I hovered there overhead, watching to see if any of him made it through the other side. Nothing did.
The first herald of disaster is ever the soft ‘ping’ of a bolt coming loose. In that case, it was one of the bolts holding the right control arm that extruded from the wall to the outside edge of the forge. Watching with the kind of horror of somepony witnessing a train wreck happen a few dozen yards away, I froze as the entire control arm suddenly tore free, only to be sucked straight into the vortex.
Out. Away. Free.
Blood is delicious.
You need to kill more.
‘No. No, I don’t!’ I snarled, then felt around inside my head for another voice to counter the loud one that wanted more flesh.
‘Tourniquet!’
‘Swift!? You’re alive?!’ she replied, though it was distant and muted.
‘Weather factory! I’m inside the forge room! It’s going to blow!’
She only hesitated a moment. If it’d been two, I’m pretty sure I would have died.
‘At the bottom of the cloud forge, there’s a hatch! It’s labeled ‘safety bunker! Big red panel, yellow hoof-hold!”
Without another thought, I shoved a wingful of air and flew for the floor. Bits of metal and machinery began to fall all around me as the suddenly freed storm started to wrench at the building around it. Lightning spiked against the wall, sending dangerously dancing arcs across every surface and nearly blinding me, if I could still go blind.
Some distant part of me realized I was starting to fall a bit slower and that gravity felt like it was getting awfully light. Wind yanked at my tail.
I saw the floor.
There was the red hatch and the hoofhold. I reached out for it, trying to slow down to brace for touchdown.
Thunder cracked the air and a shockwave slammed into my back, driving me into the ground before I could get my hooves spread out. If I’d been coming in even slightly faster, I’d probably have cratered, rather than just having the air knocked out of my lungs. Bits of machinery were raining down around me as I lay there for a second, struggling to breathe.
I looked up to see the other control arm holding back the storm let go and begin to fall.
Grabbing the hoofhold, I wrestled the hatch open on squealing, rusted hinges. Below was a dark stairwell lit by flickering blue lights. Using one back leg, I shoved myself over the lip, hauling the hatch closed behind me, and struggled down the steps, bracing one hoof on the wall to keep from collapsing where I stood.
I stumbled and staggered, pulling myself along step by step. I could still taste Broadside’s blood, but it was mixed with my own which wasn’t nearly so tasty. The air in the safety bunker was stale and the space was little more than a hallway which took a curving path into the distance.
The ground started to shake under me and I tried to move a bit faster, but my joints hurt and nothing seemed to be working exactly right. I couldn’t even keep my wings from dragging along the floor at my sides.
Tourniquet’s voice broke into my quickly numbing thoughts.
‘Swift? Oh Celestia, I couldn’t feel you for a few minutes there! The weather factories are on their own generators and the storms are interfering with everything, but I think you’re pretty close to an external power line that’s still got juice. You...you...—”
‘I’m okay. Stinky, but okay. Broadside is dead. Is there another way out of here?’
‘You have to keep going! The building is collapsing and that storm is...oh skies, it’s ripping up the land around it. There’s an exit about five hundred meters further ahead.’
‘Is my mom safe?’ I asked.
‘She’s still inside P.A.C.T. headquarters and I think it’s...I don’t think the storm is strong enough to damage it anymore. It’s already losing power, but the other storms in the city are all going nuts. There’s tornados over the Bay of Unity and we’ve got like, six inches of snow near the Vivarium. Supermax is having heavy rain. There’s...Swift, it was raining blood for a few minutes.’
I felt myself involuntarily smile a wicked smile, then stopped because my face felt like I’d been slapped again.
‘It was raining Broadside,’ I replied.
‘Ick. Thankfully I don’t think anyone else noticed. I don’t think I’m telling them, either. Oops! Brace yourself!’
I threw myself against the wall and held my breath as an explosive decompression filled the hall behind me, followed by a wave of smoke and dust that left me coughing into my wing. The emergency lights ahead of me still blinked, but the ones behind had all gone dark. Cocking my head back the way I’d come, I could just make out the ceiling of the corridor, bent and broken, with a dozen steel girders impaled through its surface.
‘I was just standing there,’ I thought, dumbly.
‘That was the weather factory collapsing. Swift, you’re not safe, yet. The city is still being attacked and the monsters are still out there. Can you fight or do you need me to send somepony to get you?’
I lifted one wing, inspecting the damage. There were an awful lot of missing feathers, though none of them were flight essential. I just wasn’t going to be very agile, even if I hadn’t pushed every single major muscle group beyond the limits.
Turning to look at my gun, I tried to will the Hailstorm to work. It let out a ready-sounding buzz, the turrets rose, and a flicker of frost appeared on their barrels. It wasn’t much of a charge, but it was enough.
‘Just direct me to the sewer, T.’
‘O-okay. Where are you going?’
‘I...I’m headed toward Uptown. If the shield comes down, Hardy will need backup.’
‘Swift, Nightmare Moon gave you a list of instructions a couple days ago, didn’t she? Wasn’t one of those to let Hardy fight the battle in Uptown by himself?’
‘I’m going to. But when he’s done, we both know he won’t be in any condition to save himself.’
Rather than reply, Tourniquet filled my mind with the grand map of the sewer system. I picked a promising-looking direction and set off, limping towards my partner. A quick thought occurred to me and I pulled my bulletproof vest open, lifting out a ladybug onto the tip of my hoof. It shook its thorax and looked up at me, expectantly.
“Sir...Hardy. I don’t know if you saw what happened, but Broadside is dead,” I told the tiny insect, setting it between my ears. “I hope that was all enough, because I’m afraid I have to request tomorrow off. If you can hear this, you better be there to take a vacation with me, or I’ll tell Taxi on you.”
There was a little itch on my upper lip and I quickly wiped it away with my other leg. It came away red. I went to wipe it on my chest, then stopped as I gazed down at the bunny patch sewn over an old hole. I couldn’t even remember what’d made the original tear. Funny. It was a mess, but one tiny corner of one ear was clean.
I wiped my hoof on the wall, instead. Taking a deep breath, I continued limping along the hall, trying to inhale as little dust as possible.
Hardy was waiting.