Twilight takes a peek around the outside halls to her quarters, making sure nopony is around.
She closes and locks her door, doing the same with the shudders, before taking a seat.
Cautiously, she pulls out her communicator, pressing down on the green button, and placing it on a table in front of her.
Crk.
Crk.
A minute or two passes. She bites her lip.
Crk.
Crk.
Still nothing.
Just as she’s about to start losing hope…
Beep!
A small magical aura manifests above the communicator, slowly but surely starting to take shape.
Twilight breathes a sigh of relief, seeing the device get a response.
The aura eventually becomes the vague shape of a pony sitting in some kind of room, using simplistic black and white shapes and lines to create a crude image. The pony appears to be looking right back at her, albeit with some confusion.
“Hello?” Twilight asks.
“Yeah?” the other side responds.
It’s Jack.
“Oh thank Sol it worked! I was half-expecting you to not be able to turn it on…”
Jack grumbles. “Well thanks for believin’ in me...” She says, sarcastically.
“I didn’t mean it like that! I—”
“Can ya’ just say what you gave me this thing for??? It’s honestly a bit freaky…” Jack looks like she’s trying to poke Twilight through the feed or something.
Twilight looks around her quarters a few times, a bit paranoid.
“You’re somewhere safe and private, right?” The unicorn asks.
Jack nods. “Uh huh. Probably not a good idea to let anypony see me usin’ this.”
The unicorn takes a deep breath.
“I’ve been looking through the Enclave’s Information Registry and I need-”
“What’s that??”
Twilight pauses.
“Uh… it’s like a magical library. I need you-”
“I don’t know what that is either.”
“You don’t know what a library is???”
Twilight face-hooves. This feels like the talk at the wreck-site already.
“Listen! I was just looking through… stuff that happened recently, okay? And it says that there’s been a lot of attacks conducted by Hovels — oh, by the way — that's what we call all of you Earthen ponies living outside the Enclave, thought I should finally clear that up….”
Jack raises an eyebrow.
“Anyways, there’s apparently been quite a few attacks by the Annui in specific. Would you happen to know anything about this?”
Jack's avatar glitchily puts a low-res hoof to her chin.
“I know that theres’ been… Hovel attacks…” She sticks her tongue out a little after saying the word. “But the Annui? No. Besides the attack to rescue me, and that one pony we killed when ya' got captured, the Annui have not interacted with y’all recently. We’ve been tryin' to keep a low profile.”
Twilight frowns. She’s certainly a bit more inclined to believe Jack now than at the wreck-site, considering the earthen basically saving her, Flitter, and Comet's lives... and the majors...
But still. The attacks are listed on the registry, alongside undeniable proof.
“Has there ever been cases of other groups of Hovels disguising as or pretending to be the Annui?”
“Well, duh. It’s happened a few times. Heck, we’ve dressed up as other tribes, too. Everypony’ does it to everypony else. But I assume a ‘few times’ ain’t enough time to explain the amount of attacks you’re talkin’ about?”
“Mhm. I think there were somewhere around twenty recorded ones in the past two weeks?”
Jack looks completely shocked.
“Twenty?? Yeah, no. That is not us. We don’t even have the ponypower to do that.”
“I never bothered asking, but how many of you are there anyways? The Annui, I mean.”
Jack ponders for a moment.
“Probably… about thirty to forty of us. Including me.”
Twilight has trouble believing that such a small number of ponies could do what the Registry shows. Maybe if there were thirty to forty warriors in the tribe. But when the entire tribe is only thirty to forty, that’s implausible…
Jack suddenly interrupts her train of thought.
“I’ve been itchin’ to ask one of y’all some questions of my own, though.”
The unicorn looks surprised, but somewhat intrigued.
“I’m listening.”
“We’ve been having an uh… er… kidnapping problem.”
Twilight tilts her head somewhat while leaning forward, clearly confused.
Jack groans.
“A few Annui and ponies from other tribes have been seemingly getting whisked away. Nopony knows where they are. Some of us’ think it's the work of predators or monsters or the like’, but there’s never stuff like blood or even a body.”
Twilight puts a hoof over her mouth, shocked.
“That’s terrible! How long has this been going on??”
“Last two, three, months maybe. Nopony I knew personally has gotten taken… yet. But the threat is still there. I gotta ask, how often do you see others like me over there? Do y’all do stuff with Hovel prisoners like that all the time? That could explain it.”
“When I saw you getting released out of the cart, that was one of my first times ever being there. I can’t say how oft—”
Twilight’s eyes widen as she sees a large figure behind Jack poke their head into the feed’s frame.
“Jack! Behind you!” Twilight cries.
Jack immediately turns around, like she’s about to fight somepony. She pauses.
“Oh. Hey Mac.”
“Hey. What’s that?” He asks, hoofing towards the feed.
“I’m just talkin’ with that unicorn from yesterday.” Jack responds, very casually.
“Oh. Okay.” Mac responds, just as casually.
Twilight looks flabbergasted. “Wh- Jack! Who the heck is that?!” Twilight exclaims, thinking they’ve been exposed.
“That’s my brother. He’s the big red’ guy I think you met? Don’t worry, he’s chill.”
“He threw a bag over my head and tossed me into a cage!”
“Compared to what he could've done, that’s chill.”
There’s a pause.
“I-Is he okay with us talking like this right now?” Twilight asks, a bit unsure.
“If I’m okay with you, then he’s okay with you. He’s pretty easy-going.”
“Eeyup.” Mac responds.
Twilight blinks a few times. “Okay then… as I was saying—”
She’s interrupted by a knock on her door.
“Twilight? Hello?”
It’s Comet Tail.
“Shoot! I need to go right now!” Twilight says. Before Jack can say anything, she hits the communicator off before stashing it somewhere hidden.
The unicorn frantically tries to make her quarters look like she wasn’t just having a secret conversation.
From the outside of the door, Comet hears a lot of quick movements, crashes, and even something that sounded like a ‘splat’.
After a few seconds of silence, Twilight opens the door, slightly frazzled.
“Heeyyy Comet! What’s up?” She asks, leaning against the side of the doorframe.
“Twilight, are you okay? You sounded like you were talking to somepony…”
“Ah— well- I was just having using a communicator to talk with one of my friends… Golden Harvest.”
Out of all the things she could've said, why did she pick the one that can be easily proven false?!?
“Oh. Okay. Well, I came here to talk to you about Rare Find.”
Twilight stands up a bit more normally, and with a slight look of worry.
“What's wrong with him? Has he gotten worse?"
Comet shakes his head. “Quite the opposite, actually… he looks like he’s made a full recovery…”
Twilight looks surprised.
“Really? But wasn’t he sick just like—
“Yesterday. Two days ago he was so sick he had to be interred in the Medical wing. And now he’s just… perfectly fine.” Comet says, with a bit of disbelief.
“Is that supposed to be uncommon? What if they gave him some kind of medi-shot or something similar?”
“Medi-shots work for physical injuries and ailments. You can’t just use it to fix a head-ache or disease.”
Twilight puts a hoof to her chin, tilting her head somewhat.
“Didn’t we heal Jack with one, though?”
“The root cause there seemed to be the bad leg — once we fixed that, I assume everything else went back into order on its own.”
Twilight shrugs.
“It’s a bit weird, sure, but it could just be chalked up to some false positive, or super short-term disease I suppose.”
She pauses.
“Not to be rude, but why did you come to me, in specific?” Twilight asks. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, It’s just wouldn’t it have made more sense for you to tell Flitter and I together or something?”
“I’m not sure about telling Flitter right now… if there actually is something going on, there could be more problems roping her into it. I’ve always seen them as being ‘closer’ to each other than normal squadmates.”
“You mean like they’re dating?”
Comet Tail quickly shakes his head.
“Woah woah, I never said that! Don’t tell anyone you got that idea from me.”
He coughs dryly.
Twilight thinks for a moment.
If Comet Tail is able to confide something like this in her, then he probably trusts her. Hopefully. Maybe she can confide in him as well… she’s dying to tell someone, honestly.
“I need to tell you something too.” Twilight says.
Comet lifts his head slightly, a bit intrigued.
“Commander Raven approached me with a proposition. She wanted me to join some kind of elite task force…”
The stallion looks somewhat elated.
“That’s great! Only a few Pathfinders ever get an opportunity like that! Usually its just Combatives like Enfo-”
“I said no.”
Comet stammers a bit. “W-what? Why???”
“She said it would be for specifically counter-Hovel actions! I’m not exactly itching to fight Hovels right now… I’m trying to… make peace with them.”
Comet looks at her like she’s crazy. “Are you serious? Making peace with Hovels?” he asks, in disbelief.
Twilight stomps one of her hooves. “Come on! You’ve seen it’s possible! Back at the wooden fort... thing. Jack was able to get us out of there safely.”
Comet rolls his eyes.
“The main thing I saw possible was getting our asses kicked.” He points to a part of his face still bruised up from Mac’s strikes.
“But you at least saw that they’re more than mindless or feral monsters! They’re ponies, just like us. They’re capable of more than violence, and you saw it for yourself.”
The stallion grumbles, begrudgingly agreeing a little.
“Still. Rejecting her offer probably wasn’t the best idea. That’s going to definitely get her suspicious of you. And besides, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and get something done inside the task-force, instead of having to deal with being on the outside?”
Crap. Both of those points are pretty valid. Twilight didn’t think about them like that.
“Oh. Almost forgot. Rare Find said he uh… had something for you?”
“Come again?”
“He just told me that he had like a… package or something? He didn’t make it clear if it was for you, or if he wanted you to pick it up, but either way he wants you to go get it.”
The mare blinks a few times. Maybe Rare Find has the hots for her.
“Oh… kay? Kind of strange, but sure. Did he say where it was?” Twilight asks.
“He said it’d be in one of the drop-offs in the Exchange Wing.”
“Very helpful.”
“Hey! That’s all he told me. The personnel down there should hopefully help you find it.”
Comet sighs slightly.
“I’m going to head out, but please try to keep your Hovel… peace stuff on the low-key until we can approach it better, alright?”
Twilight nods. That was the plan, anyways.
At least now she knows she may have a deeper ally within Comet Tail.
Twilight looks around the Exchange Wing. She sometimes forget just how expansive this place is, looking at the dozens of ponies bustling around.
In the far distance she sees the vehicle bays side by side. SPAV-1 appears to be idle, and SPAV-3 is being replaced with a new rebuilt one, but SPAV-2 looks gone. Probably an expedition.
She begins to head towards one of the drop-off depots. There’s quite a few of them, although hopefully whatever pony that works there can help her find what she’s looking for.
Entering a designated striped area with a large amount of crates and packages around.
One worker pony wearing a hard-hat notices her and walks over.
“How may I help you, Ma’am?” He asks.
“I’m looking for an uh… package. I was told that there was one sent for me.”
“Do you have the verification number? Package ID? Deliverer?”
“...no.”
The worker slightly groans.
“Miss, I can’t help you unless you have at least one of those things.”
“Will my name help, at least? I’m Twilight Sparkle.”
The worker shakes his head. “That’s how we can confirm it’s for you, but it doesn’t do us much to actually find it. I’m sorry.”
Twilight feels a bit annoyed. Is she going to have to go all the way back to get the stuff, and then come back?
“Can I just take a look for myself?” Twilight asks, approaching some of the crates.
The worker quickly blocks her. “Sorry miss, even as a Pathfinder, you can’t simply mess with the crates.”
“Can you just let me check???” the unicorn pleads.
“No.”
Twilight squints her eyes. "Listen—"
The giant air-lock like gates of vehicle bay 2 opens. SPAV-2 slowly rolls in, coming to a stop at its designated location.
On a catwalk, a worker moves next to the driver side, peering through the front window.
“SPAV-2, please roll down your window for verification.” He speaks into a radio.
No response.
“SPAV-2, please roll down your window for verification...” He repeats.
Still no response.
“SPAV-2, do you copy?”
Nothing.
He proceeds to cautiously knock on the window with his hoof. Slowly, it rolls down.
Both the driver and co-driver are who they’re supposed to be, but… they look off.
The two of them stare straight ahead, eyes completely open, and legs rigid as can be. They don’t move a single muscle, nor even blink.
“Hello?” The worker asks, leaning in somewhat.
Ever so slightly, the driver turns his head towards him.
“H-Help… m-me…” He sputters.
The worker’s eyes widen when he hears a beeping within the SPAV.
“Just a peek! Come on! I’ll be quick!” Twilight pleads. The worker shakes his head adamantly.
“No, no! Please just drop this. Look, we can’t just—”
BOOOOOOOOOM
A massive explosion rings out from the other side of the Exchange wing. Twilight and the worker immediately look over with shock.
Compared to the explosion at the Epistrey, this one makes it look like a firecracker.
SPAV-2 completely explodeswith a giantic fire-ball. The explosion is so large that it leaks over into both SPAV-1 and the unfinished SPAV-3, damaging them as well.
Debris gets launched from all three SPAVs, colliding around various parts of the wing, smashing stone and denting metal.
It takes barely a second for the shockwave and air to hit ponies nearby, throwing them to the ground or in the air.
Twilight and the worker both get thrown into the crates behind them. Twilight manages to barely slow her impact with levitation, but the worker isn’t so lucky. His back slams into a corner of a crate with a sickening crunch.
The crackling of fire, screams of ponies, and blaring of alarms ring out all around the wing.
Twilight can barely hear it, her mind instead being filled with a high-pitched ring. She looks around, eyes wide but unfocused.
She turns to the worker, seeing him on the ground. The lower half of his body appears to be limp on the ground, his legs splaying out like noodles.
Suddenly, the ringing stops and her focus comes back to her. Twilight immediately dives next to his side.
The worker looks distressed and is tearing up.
“M-my hind-legs… I can’t feel my hind-legs…” he says, trying to pick himself up.
“Don’t! Don’t move! Just… lay down..!” Twilight instructs, trying to keep him calm.
She quickly takes off her jacket, rolling it up into a bundle and putting it below his chin. He lays his head on the ground, somewhat choking up.
Twilight puts a hoof to her head in panic. She needs to get someone for this guy. She looks around, only realizing the greater situation around her.
There’s tens of other ponies in similar situations, some of which have nopony to help them.
Without hesitation, Twilight runs to the nearest victim she sees, a stallion yelling in pain as one of his legs is trapped under a large piece of debris.
She immediately tries to levitate it off, but it’s far too heavy. Twilight looks around rapidly for something, anything that can help.
After dragging it over with significant effort, she wedges it below the debris, before grabbing the pony in the face.
“Hey! You want to get out of this?! Grab this and push down as hard as you can!” Twilight yells, pointing at the metallic wedge.
The stallion, still in pain, complies as best as he can. Twilight sits on it with her body weight while the stallion pulls down with all his strength. Along with the levitation, the combined forces are enough to roll the debris off of the poor stallion’s leg with a loud thump.
Looking around, Twilight sees more victims, but notices something worse in the distance.
The fire from the wreck is beginning to spread up and around, beginning to engulf the entire section of the transport wing. It’s also beginning to climb up the wall and towards support structures.
Twilight’s first instinct is to run. If this gets bad enough, the entire area can collapse.
But she stops. Painstakingly turning around to stare back at it, she sees there’s multiple downed ponies in the nearby vicinity to the fire.
They aren’t in it yet, but it’s spreading towards them.
Twilight thinks rapidly. She could probably get maybe one or two ponies out of there, but she would have to physically drag them away. And there’s no way she could get them all away by herself.
She looks around. There’s ponies fleeing the scene, but others like soldiers and workers running in to help.
Some of the ponies further away from the blast are helped away to safety, but nopony seems to want to get closer towards the fire.
Parts of the upper walls and ceilings above begin to creak, pieces falling down and crashing into the ground. Some narrowly miss some of the ponies.
“HEY! THERE’S UNCONSCIOUS PONIES IN DANGER!” Twilight yells to a nearby soldier, hoofing towards the fire.
“WE NEED TO EVACUATE THIS AREA, MISS!” he responds.
“SO GET THEM OUT!” Twilight yells back.
The soldier shakes his head fervently. “THEY’RE IN TOO FAR. YOU NEED TO LEAVE.”
Twilight looks at him like he’s crazy. Is he saying leave them to die?!
She takes one look back at the soldier, seeing ponies running to safety, and then another back at the ponies surrounded by fire and falling debris.
Twilight takes a deep breath.
Maybe she’s the crazy one.
She immediately sprints towards the unconscious ponies. The soldier yells after her, but she ignores it.
As fast as she can, she begin to drag and move the ponies together in a large group. There’s seven in total.
Just as she finishes dragging the last one together, the fire is a mere few yards away.
Twilight steels her nerves, and creates a dome around herself and the ponies.
She takes a few deep breaths, almost re-assuring herself that she can still actually breath with the smoke around.
Magical barriers are not air-tight, but she’s able to make a conscious effort to keep the smoke and flames out.
More debris falls. With the larger profile of her barrier compared to the ponies, a few pieces hit it. Thankfully, they aren’t massive, but Twilight feels the collisions.
She begins to sweat, not only from just the effort, but from the temperature as well. The inside of the barrier is heating up.
Twilight bites her lip. She didn’t think this part through.
She attempts to make the dome into more of an ovular shape, making the curve extend upwards more in order to hopefully let some of the hot air travel up. This, however, requires her to make the barrier thinner, along bring the actual fire closer to her and the ponies.
A particularly large piece of debris hits the top of the dome. Due to the new, weaker shape, it almost breaks through. Twilight clenches her teeth from the effort of preventing the dome from breaking immediately, her horn glowing harder than ever before.
She can feel herself getting exhausted both physically and mentally. She doesn’t know how much longer she can keep this u
The fire and smoke almost entirely surrounds her now, the outside of the dome becoming nothing but orange and gray.
Just as she’s about to give out…
Twilight suddenly feels much less heat around the dome. Looking through her purple barrier, she sees another barrier surrounding it, a very dark purple.
Commander Raven’s magic!
The outer barrier expands out in all directions, swatting away the flames in the immediate vicinity, and giving Twilight a view of the safe part of the wing once more.
She sees Raven with a group of soldiers, workers, and unicorns. Soldiers quickly extract anypony else in the vicinity, while the workers use water hoses and fire extinguishers, and the unicorns use levitation and barriers to physically extinguish fires by smothering or choking out their oxygen.
“Let your barrier down, Twilight!” Raven orders. Twilight sees Raven’s barrier still surrounds hers. Twilight does so, allowing Raven to create a hole through her own. Multiple soldiers, unicorns and Raven rush in to pull the ponies out.
Twilight lays on her back, feeling like she’s about to collapse. However, as she looks up, her eyes widen.
“LOOK OUT!” She yells.
A humongous piece of the ceiling falls from straight above, towards Raven’s barrier with all of them inside of it.
The horns of multiple unicorns along with Raven glow extremely bright, the barrier seemingly being reinforced. Twilight puts the last energy she can manage into it as well.
With a loud BOOM, the metal chunk smacks straight into it. The barrier slightly shakes, along with causing the unicorns to grimace briefly, but it’s safely deflected into the fire.
That last blow was enough to send Twilight out of it.
As her eyes close and vision goes blurry, she sees Raven standing over her, a concerned look on her face.
Twilight wakes up with a bright light above her.
Her eyes dilate from the brightness, as she looks around. It looks like one of the rooms of the Medical Wing.
Around her she sees Golden Harvest, her squad, and Raven all looking at her, some of their expressions changing slightly, seemingly from Twilight's awakening.
“Oh, Twilight! You’re awake!” Golden says.
Twilight sits up somewhat, a bit pained. It’s not really physical, though. More like a bad head-ache and some dizziness.
“Is… everypony okay?” Twilight croaks. The first thing she thinks about is the Ponies back at the Exchange wing.
Raven frowns. “There were some casualties… but they were instant when the explosion first occurred. Unpreventable.” Her expression softens somewhat. “But rest assured, everypony you protected made it out safely.”
“The Commander told us what you did, Twilight. That was pretty hardcore!” Flitter says.
“I’m honestly surprised you had that courage in you… we heard soldiers and other Pathfinders at the scene didn’t even dare get half as close as you did.” Comet says.
Twilight grumbles a little. “Yeah. I noticed that too.”
“Well, it sure was a good thing that the Commander was there to help.” Rare Find says.
Twilight frowns somewhat, looking towards Raven.
“Not to sound rude, but why were you at the Exchange wing, anyways?” She wonders.
“Oh, I was simply going there for an impromptu inspection of how the re-construction of SPAV-3 was coming along. Although, as you can imagine, the attack set it back quite a bit.”
Twilight blinks a few times. “Attack..?” She asks. The other ponies look over towards the Commander with some sorrowful looks, but not ones of surprise. They already know something.
“That explosion was no mere accident or happenstance. It was a precise and deliberate strike against us by our enemies.” Raven explains.
“W-what??? By who? The Syndicate? The Cartel?”
Raven shakes her head.
“Forensics are still… inconclusive. But in time, we will get the answers.”
Comet and Golden look a bit uncomfortable, meanwhile Flitter and Rare Find look somewhat angry.
Twilight has a lot of questions to ask, but Raven cuts her off.
“I apologize, but I need to depart right now. The rest of the Compound is naturally in a buzz after this tragedy. I hope you recover well, Twilight… we may need all hooves on deck soon.”
With that, she takes her leave.
The other ponies just look at eachother with varying emotions, however all are negative.
Twilight just stares forward with a neutral expression.
An hour or two later, Twilight still lays in the medical bed.
They’re keeping her for a little longer just to make sure they didn’t miss anything with their initial check-ups and diagnostics.
Golden sleeps on a nearby chair, insisting to stay with the unicorn. Comet Tail, Flitter, and Rare Find reluctantly had to leave in order to help with the aftermath.
A nearby transmitter in the wall suddenly begins to crackle to life.
“Attention, my fellow citizens and personnel of Charlie Compound.” It’s Commander Raven.
“Just mere hours ago, an attack occurred which wracked the very fabric of what we stand for. Within the Exchange Wing, SPAV-2 was sabotaged, causing a massive detonation which claimed the lives of many ponies, and injured dozens more. But know that the perpetrators will not be able to hide… for we have found them. They are the Hovel tribe known as the ‘Annui’.”
Twilight tilts her head a little.
Huh?
“In recent weeks, there has been a troubling pattern of an up-tick in Hovel activity, particularly this ‘Annui’ tribe. Raids and attacks on our beloved Pathfinders and crucial expeditions have ceased to no end, and we have let it go on for far too long. But rest assured. Starting today, we are going on the offensive. I am initiating Operation Outstrike, in order to finally rid us of this menace once and for all. No longer will we need to live in fear of those who reject the proper way of life. Glory to the Enclave.”
The speech ends, cutting out with some more crackles.
Twilight sits still for a few moments, before beginning to hyperventilate.
What??? How??? Why??? This seems impossible.
She has no definitive proof of if the Annui actually did the attack or not, but that’s not the problem. Raven is saying that they did. This is going to make peace impossible, and if the Annui somehow find out about this, it’ll be even worse!
Twilight simply covers her face with her hooves and rocks back and forth.