//------------------------------// // Chapter 44: Intruder Alert. // Story: Fillies and Monsters // by Solaris Vult //------------------------------// Twilight was led down various corridors, her eyes taking in all the machinery and the magical dust used to power it until she came to what she could recognize as a medical wing… Here, two people were laid out on medical beds, there were surgical scars from where they had been cut apart, Twilight was a bit conflicted, on one hand, that was the purpose of the spell, to allow people to be cut up and not suffer any permanent harm, on the other, did these humans really know what the spell did, were they willing to risk their subjects in such a way? Ironwood pointed to one of the incapacitated men, “Can you revive him, he was found at the site of the battle and might be able to shed some light on your guilt or innocence.” Twilight nodded, pulled her magic forward and twisted, breaking the enchantment placed over the man. He woke with a gasp, and looked around, confused, “W-What, where?” “Abraham Locke, you were placed in a form of suspended animation, you are currently aboard the AABS blue-two…” “G-General Ironwood, sir,” The man said, saluting, despite the numbness in his body. “Tell me, what happened at the site of the explosion…” “Yes, sir… After the seismic alarms went off, myself, private first-class Argon Actin, and a dozen or so AK-200 Prototypes were deployed to investigate. There, we saw four faunus, assumed to be White Fang, or possibly unlicensed huntsmen, we landed. The AKs were activated and we tried to take the subjects aboard the ship, there was a disagreement when we tried to confiscate their weapons, and Argon, without orders, opened fire on the targets assuming them hostile. The AKs, following their programming, opened fire, but one of the faunus had a powerful shield semblance and had blocked both the AK’s fire and the dropship’s rotary autocannons. After that, I blacked out.” “Yes, that was my doing,” Twilight walked up, “It was the most effective way of ending the conflict without harm, after that, the ‘dropship’ you call it, launched off into the air and I tried to hold it still with my semblance, I was hoping to disable that thing’s engines so we would board and place this ‘Argon Actin’ into stasis as well… Unfortunately, we had only damaged one of the engines when I was unable to keep my hold on the vessel, and it flew off into the air, with a damaged engine it couldn’t fly properly and it crashed, I am unsure what happened to Argon…” Twilight punctuated her words by casting a spell that projected an illusion of the events, taken from her own memory. “From what the Ace Ops have informed me, Argon was killed when the dropship crashed.” Twilight suddenly looked shocked, appalled, and apologetic, “I-I didn’t know that would happen, I-I” Ironwood was unsure if she was being sincere, but testimony, combined with that hologram of the events, was proof enough, although, the hologram could have been faked… Ironwood suddenly found himself conflicted, unsure of this woman’s innocence or not… In any case, it was evident that they were not the aggressors, and that Argon had acted without orders. He sighed, “While I still am unsure if you’re being sincere or that the vision you showed me was genuine or not, this does clear you of the ‘destruction of military property’ and of the other two potential murders, as for Argon, I will count that as accidental manslaughter for the time being. Once we land in Vale, you and your friends can go free, but you will be monitored, any further breaking of the law will have serious consequences and you are not permitted to return to the Kingdom of Atlas, is that clear…” “Yes, sir, we were planning on moving to Vale anyway, as our relatives are currently enrolled in Beacon Academy, at least according to a friend of ours…” She placed a bit of disdain on the word ‘Friend’, and Ironwood raised an eyebrow. “Very well, once you remove the stasis on the other subject, you and your friends will be escorted to some spare quarters and locked in there for the remainder of the trip. The only time you will be permitted to leave these quarters is during lunch at twelve-o-clock on the dot, afterwards, you will be escorted back to your quarters under guard until we land… Is that clear.” “Understood,” Twilight sighed, she didn’t like the treatment, but understood why the general was doing this… That was when an alarm sounded across the ship, so loud it hurt her pony ears. Rainbow was soaring through the sky on a trail of multicoloured light flowing from her rainbow-feathered wings. She saw an airship in the distance, an angular and blocky thing, there were three of them, accompanied by a fleet of smaller vehicles… How would he find which one her friends were aboard? She didn’t have time to waste looking around, and she was going to be spotted for sure with her rainbow trail, so she headed toward the one in the front, figuring that, if her friends weren’t aboard it, then, at least, she would find whoever was in charge and beat the shit out of her until she told her where her friend were. There came flashes of light from some of the vessels, and blasts of energy started flying in her direction, Rainbow swerved, ducking under and around the streams of magical energy with all the speed of the rainboom behind her, and all the manoeuvrability of a hummingbird. She streaked toward the forward ship, the blasts of energy stopped and were replaced by swarms of metal pellets flying through the air like a swarm of angry flies, streaking bright orange through the air.  She flew up to a window, holding her gun backwards in front of her, ready to slam the stock into the glass… It had been designed to survive bullets, cannon shells, and dust blasts, but not a faunus, with full aura, travelling at mach-twelve. The glass caved and she shattered through the window, time seeming to travel in slow-motion to the experienced senses of Rainbow. There were dozens of human guards inside the room, and Rainbow raised a leg as she flew through the air, slamming her boot right into the head of one of the guards, as she did this, she twirled her rifle around and fired a burst into another guard, both of them shimmered and their auras broke in the same second. A turret popped out of the roof, and suddenly the ship went red as a piercing alarm sounded, but Rainbow ignored these things, leaping off the first guard and twirling through the air, dodging every shot sent her way, and kicking another guard to the ground. The targeting systems in her rifle latched on to three other guards on the other side of the room, all raising their rifles, and she fired a dozen blasts at each of them, all three falling to the ground unconscious from the shock of their auras breaking. The turret locked on to the rainbow pegasus faunus and fired a dozen rounds at her in half a second, but Rainbow was fast and rolled out of the way, leaping up into the air and twirling around behind the turret, jabbing the machine with the bayonet of her rifle, causing it to spark, crackle, and die. Then, in a fluid motion, she fell back down to the ground and fired off another few bursts at the two remaining guards on the other side of the room… There were two doors, one on either side of the room, Rainbow had done this before in training and knew that both presented dangers… She rushed over to one and planted a canister of dust on it in such a way that opening the door would cush the canister and cause an explosion, then ran over to the other door, heading deeper into the ship, Rainbow slammed the door console only for it to say “Access Denied” in a mechanical voice. She huffed and moved her free hand around, summoning a stormcloud… She spent a few minutes doing this, charging the cloud with as much energy as she could manage, and with all the magic being given off by the giant airship, she had plenty of energy at her disposal, finally, she gave it a hard punch and a blast of lightning shot forth and toward the door. The door exploded inward, half-melted, and crushed a guard who was on the other side, he was still alive, but his aura collapsed… There were more guards on the other side and they started wildly opening fire, Rainbow dodged to the side and tossed another dust canister into the room, it exploded in a burst of fire and the guards all fell down, singed and unconscious. Rainbow did the same thundercloud trick to blow open the next door and more ceiling turrets turned to greet her. They started to fire, and Rainbow replied, a few bullets pinged off the woman, but her rainbow-shimmering aura held firm, and driven by adrenaline, she was nigh immune to pain. The turrets exploded as they were struck by blasts of energy from Rainbow’s rifle. She was in some kind of corridor, and saw signs for the crew quarters, engineering, bridge, and confinement cells… Figuring that her friends would be in the confinement cells, she summoned another thundercloud in her hands and blew the door down, rushing down a flight of stairs. There was, of course, another door, so she blew it up too. All the sound she was making was alerting guards all around, but that actually worked to Rainbow’s favour, as none of the human soldiers wanted to engage with a crazed faunus that moved with supernatural speed and agility, and could summon blasts of lightning that could blow down doors, so, watching the security camera feeds, they decided to activate the AKs. Rainbow made it to the confinement cells when there came a loud and ominous mechanical voice, “Intruder, identify yourself,” Dash replied to the machine by running forward faster than the machines could track and slamming it to the ground with a smack of her gun’s stock, bashing the face-plate in, and causing the machine to die with a cybernetic seizure. A few others rushed forward with swords on their hands, meanwhile a few more had rotary guns extend from their hands. Rainbow made short work of the machines, moving faster than their guns could track and dodging around their swipes with ease. All while keeping up her firing, shots burning clean through the automatons… Soon, the room was cleared. “What in Celestia’s name is going on out there!” Came a voice from one of the cells, and Rainbow recognized it. “Rarity!” “Rainbow!” Shouted Spitfire from the cell next to Rarity’s… The cells were tiny rooms, almost too small for a person to reasonably fit, set into the wall. There was a blue glow around one of the doors, and the material of the door seemed to liquefy and bend, changing into strange and alien shapes before settling into an elegantly built golden door like the kind in Canterlot, but metal rather than wood, and Rarity elegantly walked out, eying the destroyed mechancial forms, out of Rarity’s cell stepped Spitfire, Rarity had apparently carved a tunnel between their two cells while they were waiting. “Come one guys! Where’s Twilight, we need to run!” Rainbow shouted, “You should all get to that big room with all the windows, that’s how I came in, I’m going to go to the engine room and blow this entire place to hell before meeting up with you! If they think I’m just going to let them take you and-” “Rainbow!” Spitfire shouted, “Settle down, last I heard, Twilight was taken up to the medical wing.”  Rainbow suddenly looked worried as visions of her friend getting tortured to death came to mind and she ran back up the stairs faster than anyone could follow. She blew down another door and ran deeper into the ship, but she didn’t see any signs for the medical rooms… She blew her way into another corridor and just in front of her was another guard, he tried to pull a small weapon from his belt as Rainbow rushed forward and grabbed him by the neck, slamming him against the far wall and shouting into his face at the top of her lungs “Where is the princess! What are you savages doing to her!” The guard, in a high-pitched, choked, and panicking voice stuttered, “I-Ah-I don’t k-know what you’re t-talking about!” He gave a choked scream as Rainbow pulled back and slammed him into the wall again, this time his aura broke and Rainbow squeezed tighter, easily bruising his neck and go silent as he couldn’t breathe. She shouted the question into his face again, “The princess! Where is she! TELL ME YOU BASTARD!” A door to her side slid open, and Rainbow dropped the man, spinning around and firing her rifle, only to pause when she saw a shimmering purple shield, “Twilight, I came to save-” “Rainbow Dash! What are you doing!” A very, very, angry Twilight replied, standing next to a tall human stallion who was pointing a pistol at Rainbow, but at that moment, Rainbow could only assume the man was threatening Twilight, she rushed forward and kicked the man so hard he flew back down the corridor and slammed into the far wall, shimmering purple. “Rainbow!” The horrified Twilight said before Rainbow blacked out, feeling a stasis spell overtake her body. She passed out with a choked cry of, “I-I came to… Save… You…” Cinder was angry, Cinder was very angry… That was evident. “So, you failed to eliminate the runaway, and on top of that, got yourself seen by a beacon student, and now the police are after you…” “F-Forgive us, ma’am, it won’t happen again…” Emerald said. Mercury was just as angry, that was evident in his voice, and he simply grunted in response. Cinder rolled her eyes, “Make sure of that… Now, getting into Beacon is going to be a damn nightmare…” She sighed. They were inside an abandoned warehouse, not so abandoned anymore, not that the White Fang had moved in… There was a bullhead being unloaded with a recent haul of dust, and White Fang goons were flocking around like rats… Cinder had just finished talking with Torchwick when her disciples came in and gave unwelcome news. Cinder turned in her seat and gestured to the girl in the corner, “Neo,” Her eyes then wandered to that strange White Fang girl, she had seen her in training and she was good, plus, there was just something about her that intrigued Cinder, she was unsure how trustworthy the girl was, but she would do, now that it would be too dangerous to bring Emerald and Mercury with her… She pointed toward the White Fang girl, “And you, what’s your name!” “Cozy Glow, ma’am…” “You two, with me.”