Chapter Four
Stay light on your feet, stay to the shadows, keep a box at hoof. The guidelines to be a stealth master.
Falcon parted the brush to look at his objective.
The camp was encircled by a tall woven wood fence that had branches and leaves sticking out every which way, a barrier of foliage and vegetation. It was in the shade of the swamp trees, several yards away from a waterline of murky greenish-brown water that bubbled and stirred constantly.
He looked back at Alana and nodded to her one last time. She looked uncertain but nonetheless nodded as well. Falcon Wing was a lot more prepared this time around for his mission than his first failed attempt.
For one, he had his cloak on, hood pulled over his head so that his face was enshrouded. Secondly, he had his Pipeye on, E.F.S active in addition to its myriad of other functions that would no doubt prove useful in one way or another. Thirdly, he had his bandoliers on and they were filled with potion vials for quick aid should he get hurt while on the other side of that fence. It was a much better plan.
"I wish I had brought that battle saddle with me," Alana whispered. "Then you wouldn't be going this alone..."
Falcon Wing waved a hoof. "It'd only slow you down while traveling. This is a quick detour. After this we get those herbs and get back to Glyphmark," he said to console her. "besides, I wouldn't want you firing that thing from a tree or something. After what Klaxon and Steiner did to it, that would end just as badly for you as the pony you shot!"
"Just be careful. A lot more careful. More careful than you've ever been. Those ponies might think you're still in a ditch bleeding out but they will be on alert," Alana warned, seeing past Falcon's words. Realizing that his attempts to take the edge off of the situation weren't working, he nodded. This was very serious business.
"I will, and I mean it. Unconsciousness is old hat anyway," he replied, smiling a small smile then slinking off into the bush, sinuously approaching the wall, taking cover behind burly trees and moving along lines of shrubs, his dark cloak allowing him to slip through the dimness under the swamp canopy seamlessly.
He had a sense of deja vu doing so, most likely because he had done this before and it was just another detail he had forgotten after his beat down. This and how he actually got into the camp the first time had yet to come back to him. On the bright side, his Pipeye's auto mapping was at work recording the data it couldn't have the first time.
Before too long, Falcon Wing was bracing against a mossy tree, peeking out from the side at what looked to be a gate. Unsurprisingly, it was closed. Red marks were on his HUD compass, he assumed they pertained to the ponies that were behind the wall, but as with the Enclave E.F.S, the level where enemies were and the type of enemy were details not shared by the Pipeye. He maintained a level of enhanced caution.
The only other entrance to the camp was from above if the gate was closed. Logically, the guards would have most of their attention trained on the trees whose tendrils snaked over their heads. Without his cloak, Falcon would have stuck out like a sore hoof.
He skittered over to where two large trees grew close to each other, their roots mingling amongst each other and making strange bumps in the mud. It was in that soft earth, Falcon Wing saw hoofprints. His own hoofprints. Deja vu indeed.
Falcon Wing opted out of repeating his previous actions for fairly obvious reasons and did a once-over of his surroundings. He found a few other trees growing in close proximity and decided those would be the preferable choice.
He jumped onto one tree, kicked off onto the other and alternated between the two with surprising silence, ascending until he landed skillfully onto a tree branch in a way only a pegasus could have dreamed of, swift, poised and most importantly of all: quietly.
He crept along the branch carefully so as to not rustle the leaves that hid him from view. As expected, ponies in black, form fitting armor were standing guard. Four Enclave pegasi. Or rather, former Enclave pegasi that became soldiers for hire apparently. They were not as well equipped as he'd expect his former military kin to be. They lacked magical energy weapons and instead had more conventional -- though not at all less deadly -- battle saddles. Assault rifles of various models, a few shotgun wielders. In spite of the fact they all had their helmets on and thus had their E.F.S, the guards seemed oblivious to the sneaking colt.
He considered himself fairly skilled in the art of stealth, but not good enough to beat arcane technology. Definitely not that good.
The answer to this little mystery came in the dark blue stallion's words spoken so long ago. "I will take care of that, don't you worry."
"Steiner you magnificent son of a bitch!" Falcon Wing thought. His cloak was enchanted! The realization almost gave him a giggle fit.
He regained his focus and continued slipping through the shadows, coordinating more revealing moments with the occasional breeze that swept through the swamp, such as leaping over to another branch. As softly as he landed, it was bound to make some noise, but as long as it seemed natural he didn't have to worry.
His destination was a large building of lustrous gray metal and dull, rusted scrap all built around a wooden frame. It was a shack, but a glorified one. It even had places for windows, without any glass panes. It worked for Falcon's intent quite well.
He felt like a ghost, moving so effortlessly around the soldiers with them being none the wiser. There was a pleasant irony in fully grown soldiers that went through extensive training exercises being bested by an infiltrating colt with a magic coat.
Then again, these were the ponies who beat him to the verge of death and dumped him in a ditch. It was a good thing they underestimated his damage threshold and didn't consider Alana at all.
He was in the glorified shack. There was a rim of catwalks over the ground floor where numerous cages were kept. The cages seemed to be as crude as the structure itself but apparently they served their purpose well. Large, dangerous animals appeared to be held at the whims of the bars.
"Fuck," Falcon realized. "enchantment goes both ways. It can make me a shadow... and it can make crap diamond-strong."
He ducked at the edge of the platform of wood and metal as a lime green unicorn in a white coat stepped forward towards a Manticore. What was left of a Manticore. The unicorn's horn flared and Falcon saw a very large dart fly out from somewhere underneath him, impact with the beast's discolored hide and then retract. The tortured creature groaned and snarled. Seconds later, that area of its body began swell and writhe in a way that made Falcon's stomach lurch.
It was not long at all before the cancerous looking bulge of flesh burst, splattering the lime green unicorn with crimson. The pony -an elderly sounding mare- started laughing to herself, reserved at first but as the process escalated that laugh became a deranged cackle.
Sinew and flesh were morphing, the Manticore roared in protest, clawing at the bars it should be able to break so easily, flashing a vicious set of teeth at its tormentor with blood lust in its feline gaze. It reared its scorpion tail and lashed out but the barb ended up short every time it struck out. The unicorn took care in keeping out of its strike range, doing their mad science solely with telekinesis.
It was making Falcon Wing's blood boil watching that animal suffer under such unfair and harmful treatment. Being angry and sick to his stomach was an interesting combination.
An ear rending screech filled the room as the bloodied serpentine head emerged from the gaping hole in the Manticore's body. That warranted an enraged bellow from the beast, which then turned on the intruder in its body, swiping it with a claw, tearing off a chunk of flesh and then screaming in agony. That intruder was as much a part of it as its bat wings and scorpion tail.
That intruder was a Quarray eel and somehow the unicorn was able to instill rapid development of the animal in a completely unrelated host, though it was far from perfect. Even before that slash across the dying head's throat, it was horrifically deformed. Bony ridges stuck out of where an eye should have been, its jaw was misshapen, its head was bulging on one side and caved in on the other.
Falcon Wing had seen enough.
He whipped his gun out and fired...
... onto the Manticore. Three shots went wild but one drove its way into the suffering animal's head, ending its misery. Another shot found its way into the Quarray eel. Seven shots left.
Before he could have gotten up to run, Falcon Wing was caught in cyan glow. "Aw fuck this is gonna hurt!" he managed to think seconds before he was wrenched from the platform and sent tumbling through the air, though with much less force than he anticipated. Rather than being slammed into the ground with a power greater than the unicorn could have ever conjured physically, it was more like he was made weightless, floated over the edge quickly and left to fall the roughly twenty feet to the ground...
... which was no problem for him, being a pegasus pony and all. He streamlined and twisted his body, succeeding in maneuvering during the fall to turn himself around and land on his feet in a heavy crouch, facing the unicorn, 10 mm pistol pointed at the lime green mare. That crouch looked a lot like a combat stance. His cloak billowed, fluttered and wafted over him during it all.
Needless to say, the mare recoiled, eyes wide. "Intruder! Assassin!" she shrieked. Almost on cue the large scrap doors to the glorified shack turned laboratory were bucked open, impacting with the walls with a "bram!" which echoed through the structure. Growls, roars and snarls of all sorts of other very dangerous animals erupted in response to the commotion. They were in no better condition than the Manticore other than the fact they still lived, but that was hardly better when Falcon thought about it.
Another loud slam was heard but this one was farther away. "Celestia damn it, Alana!" Falcon cursed mentally.
The unicorn ran past her Enclave guards, who fell into their own combat stances, the clicks of their weapons arming sounding off nearly simultaneously as their aim locked on the wingless pegasus. The lime green mare was just out the door and around the corner when the report of the Peashooter reached his ears.
The arrival of another threat and the possible death of their employer was something Falcon was willing to bet the ponies were not expecting. Taking his chance, Falcon Wing raised a hoof to the side of his Pipeye and cycled through spell functions quickly. The lapse in their reaction was frozen in a surreal tranquility when Falcon Wing activated S.A.T.S.
His focus was clear, he was able to count the specks of dust in the air, able to see just how the light streamed in from outside. Able to see the tiniest droplet of blood still caught in the air, expelled by the Peashooter. Alana must have shot the unicorn just split seconds after she disappeared from the doorway.
It was kill or be killed and these ponies were protecting one seriously fucked up mare. So what if they didn't kill him the first time he snuck into their camp, it wasn't like they were sparing his life, taking pity on the pegasus who could not fly. They had simply underestimated his ability to survive and didn't account for him having assistance to get to him in time. And now it was going to bite them in the ass.
He queued up his shots. Four bullets for each helmeted head. Three would be left over. His aim was for the weakest part of the helmet: the eye visors.
Time sped up and he found himself pulling the trigger in rapid succession, the muzzle flash dazzling in his eyes. One guard went down instantly, another was dazed -the shot hit but didn't hit a visor and simply pinged off of the carapace- the other two simply weren't hit at all.
Just as they registered what had happened, Alana's swift aim put them asunder, the yellow lenses being stained red from the inside. The one that was stunned was the last to fall.
Alana gave Falcon a worried look, scrutinizing his body for any new wounds or to see if he had reopened his old ones. He holstered his gun and told her "I'm... alright. Shaken... a bit stirred but fine regardless."
He looked over the bodies of the Enclave ponies then to the stock of darts that the unicorn mare had beneath the catwalk. They were in a metal cart with numerous slots dividing different serums she had created. There was a spell matrix terminal there as well.
"See what you can get off of them, Alana," Falcon Wing said, gesturing to the downed pegasi. "I'm going to see what I can get off of that console over there..."
The console was not locked as the mare was using it just before the interruption. Gaining access to his Pipeye was as simple as plugging in a cord.
Hybridization project. A wayward mind that wished to mix what shouldn't be mixed in the attempts of creating a new bio-weapon for the Enclave remnants. There was mention of a Hellhound mind control project amidst the Hybridization notes. The lines of text streamed down his vision as Falcon read the copied files from his Pipeye.
The recent logs caught his attention. They gave him an idea.
"Hydra activity in the water- avoid at all costs...?"
Alana watched as Falcon wheeled the last of the serums to the edge of the bog water. He had left a trail of the serums along the ground from the camp to the water, smashing each dart with a rock to spill its contents. The ones in the cart he used the last three shots of his magazine to break then bucked the cart into the water. He holstered the gun and beckoned Alana to run.
"Those serums all had traces of blood in them, belonging to all sorts of animals! That hydra's gonna come charging out of there expecting a meal like no other!" he explained as the two darted away as fast as they could. Alana had made sure to strip the pegasi of their supplies before Falcon rang the dinner bell.
The bubbling water exploded upwards as the dark gray and green monster burst from its depths, nine heads sprawling up into the sky, overlooking the swamp. Its necks all had wicked spines extending from them and its legs were like tree trunks. Its thundering footsteps quaked the marshy ground, the two ponies feeling it even as they fled.
When it was finished, there was nothing but rubble left where the camp once stood.