Following the end of the meal, Melody, Moxi and Dreamcatcher left the higher ups to discuss strategy. The earth pony seemed utterly dumbfounded by his encounter with the Priestess, the first time anything had managed to leave Dreamcatcher speechless in all the time Moxi had known him.
“It was good to see her again,” Melody said, after they’d cleared the palace gates and emerged into the eternal midnight of the 32nd’s basecamp, “after all this time…” Dreamcatcher merely shook his head, “That’s not the pony we once knew, though I suppose we’re not the ponies she once knew either. This war has tempered our youthful innocence. She still remains naïve enough to believe there remains a peaceful option.” His eyes narrowed as he spoke, “She is foolish, little more than a child by most standards… and this world needs nothing more than to be populated with only such ponies…” His eyes softened, and he turned to Moxi, “I know you wish to ask, Moxi, but please, what is in the past…”
“Is in the past,” Moxi completed the statement for him, she’d heard him use it before… to describe his stance towards her former alcoholism… Dreamcatcher nodded, “Thank you for understanding. We were different ponies back then… all of us…” He smiled at Moxi, and turned his attention to the brightly shining full moon overhead, “She really is beautiful isn’t she…”
“She certainly is,” Moxi said, returning the smile, “Though I’m afraid I’ve only eyes for one mare.” With that Moxi turned and strode back into the palace, it was time to grab some rack. Dreamcatcher watched her departure with sad, knowing eyes. “She’s still holding out hope,” Melody said, “isn’t she?” Dreamcatcher sighed and shook his head, “Denial is a powerful thing, but at the very least it gives her drive, that pony won’t stop looking until she finds the proof she needs.” He turned to Melody with a deep concern etched into his features, “But I fear what proof she will find when she does. There is little good to be had from this, the most we can hope for is that Chillwind died a clean death, but even that is unlikely.” The two ponies watched the young mare disappear into the shadowy recesses of Luna’s palace. Highly unlikely, indeed.
Three Weeks Earlier
“You know the routine,” Dreamcatcher muttered to Moxi, his mane plastered to his skull by the Fillydelphia rainfall, “standard smash and grab, security’s tighter than usual, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“I know, Catch,” Moxi snarled, working furiously at the lock on the door to the Solar Empire research lab, cleverly disguised as a disused back door in a filthy alleyway, “you act as though this is my first mission.” Dreamcatcher rolled his eyes at the younger pony, and while she couldn’t see it she told him where he could stick it, “I know, but this is a little higher profile, and you’re still fairly green.”
“That’s why we’ve got the big macho guards,” Moxi gestured to Sergeant Alabaster and his men, “isn’t it?” The sergeant grumbled, evidently not fond of working with ponies as unprofessional as Moxi, but what could they expect? She’d only been on field missions for two months! Frankly, she thought, they should just be glad I’m as professional as I-
-Click-
-am! “We’re in, everypony,” she muttered, the troops lining up in a breach formation behind the door, “thank me later!” Dreamcatcher was the first through the door, nudging it open with his snout, his knife firmly gripped in his teeth, he eyed around the darkened room but saw nothing. “Clear,” he said in a hushed voice over his shoulder, “looks like they set up this room so it would just look like another abandoned building, unless our intel is way off… Move in but keep an eye on the shadows.”
The team worked its way into the building, Alabaster’s ponies fanning out behind the two Spec Ops agents. As the hallway’s vandalized and collapsing structure gave way to the cool, antiseptic white, Dreamcatcher signaled to the soldier ponies to stop. “Hold position back here, make sure they can’t get any reinforcements in,” he spoke in a commanding tone, “Moxi and I will scout ahead, if we require any assistance, we will signal you.” The troops nodded their understanding, and with that Catcher and Moxi made their way into the facility.
“What does Luna expect us to find in this place?” Moxi asked, the halls looked deserted, if she had to guess, she’d have said the facility had been disused, “this place doesn’t look like it’s still active.”
“Luna’s network has never let us down before,” Dreamcatcher retorted, “there’s something important here, we just don’t know what yet.”
Moxi nearly lost her lunch at the sight of the main research room, she had been right to assume the place was abandoned, but wrong to assume that meant the researcher ponies were gone. The bodies of white lab-coated ponies were strewn about the floor, most lying in a pool of their own blood, there were cracks in the walls over the crumpled bodies of other ponies, as though they’d been thrown against the wall with enough force to kill them instantly. There was no sign of any test subjects, though the lab had clearly been geared towards testing on ponies, operating tables with heavy leather restraints sat disused, the restraints stained with what looked suspiciously like crusted blood.
The sight was horrible enough, but what really tore into Moxi’s senses was the smell. The stench of so many ponies, simply left to rot here, was overwhelming and caused Moxi’s stomach to roil in discomfort. “By Luna’s glorious moon…” Dreamcatcher swore under his breath, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Fuck me!” Moxi all but shouted, “For the love of Luna, Catch, can we please just get to finding the files, I don’t know how long I can last in here.” The earth pony gave her a nod, “Yeah, get to looking, grab what you can and let’s get out of here.”
The lab may have been a tangled mess of rotting corpses, but the filing cabinets were as pristine as if the facility was still running at peak capacity. Moxi grabbed every folder she could get her hooves on, stuffing them all into her saddlebags while Dreamcatcher did the same across the room from her, clearly he didn’t want to stay in this room any more than she did.
“I’ve got everything from over here,” Moxi called out, stuffing the last few filed into her bags, “you good to go, Catch?”
“Yeah,” Catcher said, slamming a filing cabinet closed with his hind legs, “let’s get out of this place.” The two ponies made their move toward the door when Moxi noticed something laying beside the still hoof of one of the fallen researchers. She approached the dead pony and grabbed the blood-stained parchment from beneath his hoof, it showed some sort of diagram, but the damn thing was way beyond her pay grade, she folded the parchment up and stuffed it into her scarf.
“Let’s go!” Dreamcatcher hassled her from the door, “Alabaster will be waiting for us.” Moxi followed Catcher from the room and up the hall towards Alabaster and his ponies, but as they approached the spot where Dreamcatcher had told them to wait, they found nothing but an empty stretch of hallway.
Moxi and Dreamcatcher exchanged concerned looks. “Maybe… maybe they decided to hold the fort from outside?” Moxi suggested hesitantly, but as they approached the door, the silent tension they could feel building put a fire at their hooves, and by the time they reached the door to the city streets, they were galloping.
The rain soaked alleyway was littered with the still bodies of Alabaster’s ponies, crimson pooling about them, spreading through the puddles of watcher like macabre flower petals.
“Oh Luna,” Moxi swore, her eyes wide in sheer horror, “what in Equestria could have done this?” Dreamcatcher began reaching for the knife in its sheath on his belt when he was suddenly knocked to the floor by something heavy dropped from above. Sergeant Alabaster’s face was still twisted in vengeful fury even in death as his mangled body lay atop Dreamcatcher. Moxi hastened to help her fallen partner, pushing the fallen Sergeant off of him, but Alabaster was no lightweight, and it took a lot of effort to get him off.
The slow clop off approaching hooves caught Moxi’s attention and she looked up to see an image from her nightmares, The alicorn was solid red, his brown mane wavy and flattened by the rain, he had a sword drawn was eying Dreamcatcher with a hungry sense of satisfaction. “You,” he spoke in a high class aristocratic tone, “are a tough pony to lure, Mr Dreamcatcher. I must say it has taken me quite a few tries to catch you off guard.”
“Aristocrat,” Dreamcatcher snarled, putting as much contempt into the word as he could muster, “you fight like a coward, face me like a stallion!” With that, Dreamcatcher rolled the body of his former comrade off his back and charged the alicorn. The blade flashed so quickly Moxi barely saw it move, and with it, Dreamcatcher fell to the ground, blood spurting from his newly wounded foreleg. “Tsk Tsk,” the aristocrat spoke, disapprovingly, “I would’ve expected better from Luna’s top agent. Come now, we must away.”
Dreamcatcher spat in the alicorn’s face before attempting to regain his footing, the aristocrat pony sneered and his sword flashed several times more, dropping the earth pony screaming to the ground in a spray of blood. Moxi saw the light began to fade from Dreamcatcher’s eyes as his consciousness began to fade, and knew she had to act immediately or Catcher would be dead. She rushed forward and scooped up the fallen earth pony, carrying him into the sky as quickly as her wings would carry her.
The solution was merely a temporary one, the alicorn had wings as well and the only hope of Moxi’s plan being successful is if he was caught off guard enough to buy her a few seconds. She took off at high speed, swerving in and out of the buildings in an attempt to break the line of sight of the alicorn, who must be chasing her by this point. She loosened her saddlebags and let them drop to the streets, spilling out sheets of parchment in a blinding paper haze. She heard the alicorn swing into the papers an heard his cry of discomfort, buying her just enough time to swing into an alleyway and through an open window before the assassin regained his composure.
She heard him swing off into the city streets, roaring in frustration, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She immediately pulled the parchment from her scarf with a quill and began writing, “Mayday, all troops down, Dreamcatcher injured, require immediate assistance! –Agent Moxi.” Once she’d finished writing, she smeared the parchment with a gel from a jar on Dreamcatcher’s belt and watched as the parchment burst into emerald flame, the smoke trailing out the window.
“Please,” Moxi muttered, “please get here on time!” With that, she grabbed Dreamcatcher’s gauss and began wrapping it fervently around his still bleeding wounds. “Don’t you fucking quit on me, Catcher,” Moxi sobbed as she worked, “don’t you dare fucking quit on me!”
Present Day
Moxi knew the wrenching feeling in her stomach anywhere as she sat up in her bunk. She immediately reached for the chamber she kept beside her bed at all times these days and felt her body wretch. What was left of her dinner spilled out into the basin, and her body spasmed with dry heaving for several moments after she’d run out of dinner to spill. When all was said and done she lay back down in her bed and curled up around her scarf, hoping its comforting warmth would help to shield her. She felt the tears come, and she did not fight them.