//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Breakout // Story: Ghosts // by Booni //------------------------------// "Damn. Haven't seen a thing out here since we brought this guy in. Maybe they aren't coming. I mean, what do we even need with this guy anyway?" the voice of a grey unicorn mare asked as she gazed above the forest and into the night sky from the roof of a three story building, levitating a crossbow in her magic. The first floor was a garage, with a garage door covering almost all of the front wall, and a small brown door to its right. A small drive extended out from the front and onto a dirt path, which led out of the forest. The second and third floors had two large windows that only revealed a white set of stairs leading up to the roof. "I don't know, but I do know that if he wasn't useful to us, we wouldn't have captured him," another unicorn's deep voice calmly responded as he trotted over to the opposite side of the roof, also wielding a crossbow in his magic. "If you say so, I guess. What about the chairman's plans?" "What, you don't know? Doesn't surprise me that you probably slept through th-" "What did you say?" "Uh, Fix?" No answer. "Fix? Fix, come on, don't mess around here," the mare called out again, wondering why she got no reply. "Fix!" Worried that still no answer came from Fix, the mare trotted over to the other side of the building and peered over the side, only to find her friend lying in a pool of blood on the ground 40 feet below her, a silver arrow right in the middle of his forehead, where he had been shot. "What the? OH F-" A soft thud sounded out as the mare's voice suddenly ceased, and she fell onto the ground, a large silver arrow sticking through both sides of her head. "Snipers down. Quickdraw, Speed, area's clear," whispered a small grey pegasus mare with a long, dark blue mane into the microphone of her headset, watching the building with a scoped crossbow from a rather comfortable vantage point on top of a large tree. "Copy. Good kills Prisma," Quickdraw, a light brown pegasus stallion with a chocolate wind-swept mane, answered as he snuck into the front garden, looking for any guards around the entrance before he made his way up to the front door. "Speed, get in position on the back side of the building and wait for my mark. We'll breach at the same time from both sides, and take them by surprise." "Copy that Boss, just leave some of 'em for me this time," Speedster quipped, earning a sly comeback from Prismatic Flare. "Heh. Maybe if you pull your weight for once, you'd get a few kills under your belt. Oh, and watch out for Switch, we don't want to accidentally kill him, and knowing you-" "Yeah, yeah, I get it. Lets just get this over with already," Speed snapped, cutting Prisma off before she could finish her sentence. "Focus kid, you ready?" Quickdraw snapped his flustered teammate's attention back to the task at hand. "Yeah, come on, let's do this!" "Alright. Prisma, keep an eye out for any hostiles in the surrounding area. If you see anypony coming towards the building from any side, take them out. Don't let them blow our cover." "Affirmative," the squad's sharpshooter responded, gripping her crossbow and aiming down the scope. "Okay, three, two, one, go!" Inside the garage, two unicorns stood before a beaten white pegasus stallion tied to a chair. One held a hammer in his magic, laughing manically as he struck the pegasus' left foreleg twice, before striking him in the face, breaking his muzzle. The torturee cried in pain as he felt his muzzle bend awkwardly to the side. The second unicorn, a mare, held a knife in her magic, and slashed him across his cheek. Seemingly losing her patience, she put the knife down onto the table, and demanded, "We haven't got all day, tell me what you know, or I'll-" Her attention was rapidly drawn away as the sound of two doors being kicked down echoed throughout the room from all directions, followed by a harsh thwack and thud from the front entrance. The two unicorns looked toward the sudden commotion, gasping as they saw a muscular, brown pegasus in a black armoured flight suit, adorned with fern coloured stripes extending down each leg, pulling a tomahawk from the neck of their now deceased comrade. Before either could recover in time to shoot the pegasus with a magic blast, their heads were smashed together, the mare's horn impaling the other's eye, before their necks were both snapped, releasing two loud cracks as they dropped lifelessly. "HAHA!" Speedster guffawed, thoroughly satisfied at the sight of the dead unicorns as he trotted over to Quickdraw, only to be silenced by him. "Quiet! There are still ponies outside! They might hear you if you're not careful-" "-as usual," Prisma interrupted from the two stallions' headsets- "-and before you know it we'll get ambushed." Both stallions' attention was drawn towards a dry cough from behind Speed, and a voice huskily called out, "Uh, A little help? Please?" "Oh, right, yeah, sure, sorry, uhh, how you feelin', Switch?" The skinny blue pegasus stumbled over his words, a little embarrassed at the fact that he already forgot that his squadmate was even there. He swiftly flew back over to Switch and untied him from the chair, mumbling incoherent sounds to himself. "Yeah, they didn't bang you up too bad did they?" Quickdraw followed behind, unresponsive to Switchback's bent, bloody muzzle. He instead focused on the contents of the garage, surveying it. The chair that Switch was tied to was in the middle of the room. To the left of the chair, stood a table where the unicorn mare had placed her knife, a cloth, and a gas can. On the floor next to the table was the hammer that the torturer had previously held in his telekinesis. Both the hammer and knife were lidded with blood. Quickdraw swivelled his ears towards Switch as he waited for a response. "Nah, only broke my beautiful face- aagh!- uh, and my left foreleg. What took you guys so long? Thought I was- rrgh!- gonna have to break myself out," Switch finally replied after trying and failing to stand on said foreleg. From listening to Switch, Quickdraw assumed that the hammer and knife were both used to torture the injured stallion, while the gas can was still sealed and the cloth was dry. Ears folding back at his imagination of Switch being waterboarded, Quickdraw was glad that his squad was at least in time to save him before that could happen. On the other side of the room was a large board that showed the faces of different members of the Wonderbolts, with the lesser known members around the edges, and Captain Spitfire, in the middle, circled and underlined with a red marker. Quickdraw took a small camera out of the breast pouch of his flight suit, and took a picture of the board. After checking to make sure the picture was clear, he put the camera back into the breast pouch and scanned the room for anything else that could be useful. Alas, he could find nothing. Grunting in frustration, Quickdraw acknowledged Switch and Speed. "Good. Get over it then. Let's get back to base. We need to figure out who these ponies are, and what they want with the Wonderbolts." He ordered, letting Switch lean on his right side for support as they made their way out of the garage, Speedster grimacing at the sight of blood all over the chair and hammer to the side. "All clear boss, you're good to go," Prisma announced as she heard her leader's commands to leave the garage. She watched as the three stallions made their way back to her, and flew down to meet them. Upon inspecting Switch's injuries, Prisma joked, "You're looking worse for wear. They treat you well?" "Just dandy," Switch breathed a sigh of relief as he laid down to rest, and let the mare examine him further. He winced and flinched as Prisma felt around his broken foreleg and muzzle, eliciting a bop to the back of his head. "Stop being a little filly." At this, Switch facehoofed and grumbled to himself, "Charming as ever. What else would I have expected from you?" Prisma heard his comment, but decided to ignore it, instead turning to Quickdraw. "So, what did you find out?" "We don't even know who these ponies work for, but we know that they want something with the Wonderbolts. Lets head back home first. I want to let Princess Luna know, then she can pass this on to Captain Spitfire."