I Blame You, Too

by Whitestrake


What the Fuck is a FiMFiction Gold Account, and Why the Fuck Does it Say I have One?

We returned to realspace around noon, on the ship's time. We had sat in our strider for the past hour, waiting for the Skyward Valkyrie to receive clearance to use an orbital dock. It took only twenty seconds after returning to the material universe for Shipmaster Delray to alert us to something most unusual. While, yes, we had followed our mark's wake, and exited in roughly the same location as he, this system bore no resemblance to Telroth's. The most obvious sign was the complete lack of unnatural satellites, which meant we were truly away from the sector's civilized locales.

Every reading said we were in the correct area, with our mark only perhaps a day or so ahead. Alexander Drem, the boss's personal savant, had already cross-checked every starmap and explorator report he had in his possession. There was little comfort to be found.

“I am sorry, my lord, but it seems this area is not registered as being part of Subsector Telroth.” The man's ragged, small voice spoke volumes for his character. I knew he had contracted a near-fatal lung infection as a teenager, which traveled up his throat and down his esophagus, ruining his vocal cords in the process. To make a long story short, his lower jaw was a prosthesis, as were his upper respiratory and digestive systems. He was also a shark at regicide, as anyone who knows the guy can tell you. “Worse, it doesn't appear to be anywhere within Imperial space.”

“But we're sure the bastard's here, right?” Oleg, a giant of man half again my height, asked in his rumbling voice. He often accompanied the boss planetside, both for his considerable strength, and his hidden cunning. The man could probably fire an autocannon one-handed, but he was equally capable of disarming most homemade bombs.

“Most certainly; there are no signs of his ship leaving the system.” Alexander must have been sure, otherwise he would be wasting the boss's time. My employer sat quietly, absorbing the information even as his pict-slate showed him an image of the mystery planet.

“If Ophidia is there, we have to bring him in, or end him.” Of course, this meant we would be landing on an unknown world, before atmospheric scans were complete, and search for a known heretic and his cabal. If my boss wasn't an inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, I'd outright refuse. At least I could curse this whole mission as I fired up the strider's engines.

Just another day at the office.

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Morning hit Ponyville in force. The sun's light embarked on an insidious quest to rob the town's inhabitants of restful sleep, using it's deadly accuracy to land on ponies' eyes, no matter how tightly their curtains were drawn. Many adults groaned and pleaded Celestia to withdraw her dawn until a more convenient time. The rural town was only barely waking, but one household, surrounded by the mysterious Everfree Forest, had a member who had not found restful sleep in days. Still, he reclined on his porch's roof as the sun rose.

Taylor had come to Equestria ten years ago, originally hailing from the United States. To be specific, he was born and raised in northern Alabama, and, in true American fashion, told the laws of physics to hold his beer while he did something cool. The metal disks that marked the skin over his spine attested that he'd seen some shit. He'd actually tried to burn his wife to death when they first met, but that was ancient history. The thought drew a smile.

In the sky, some miles away, Taylor could see a black dot descend from the clouds. That sight alone would warrant no further thought, but it was touching down in No-Return Bog, a small, relatively flat portion of the Everfree. While not full of monsters and poisonous plants like most of the forest, it had a lion's share of dangers unique to its area. Just as much, the object, and it was obviously and object of some sort, was far too large to be a pegasus or alicorn, even if Celestia packed on a few tons. Given its rate of descent and lack of parachute, the UFO was possibly an aircraft, because UFO doesn't means aliens. Probably.

The human dropped to the ground, heading for the door to his home. Scipia, his daughter, had her friends over, and the trio slept in the living room floor. He did his best not to disturb them; they were children, sleeping in was expected of them. Once safely out of earshot, the man climbed the stairs. He reached the master bedroom without a sound, not even waking his sleeping wife. Neatly placed on a bedside rack was his armor, a gift from a very old man he met years before. The power armor was sleek and blacker than midnight, save for its ivory faceplate.

Donning the stealth suit would take, at most, ten minutes; grabbing his gun and sword would take another three. If time was of the essence, and it almost always was, he needed to see a certain pyromaniac before Celestia started freaking out.

Who knows, maybe it was time to get the band back together.

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A strider is a small spacecraft, only seventy meters from nose to tail, with stubby wings. I actually owned the model we used, and really hated having to set her down in swampy terrain. But Inquisitor Dahl, my boss, decided this was the best possible location; far enough from the local settlement to avoid detection, and close enough that we wouldn't be walking for hours. Even as the strider gently touched ground, Oleg was at the door. He and I would be accompanying the boss while the rest of the inquisitor's retinue stayed aboard the Skyward Valkyrie.

Dahl and I hit the dirt at the same time, while Oleg was already scanning the brush for anything that may prove hostile.

“Orbital scans showed the settlement to be small; if any of the locals have seen Ophidia, they'll remember it.” Dahl sounded sure of this, and I knew he was. We had seen the area from above, and the building looked like cottages from a vacation world used by nobles who wanted to rough it. Low tech, but that meant they couldn't annihilate us if they were hostile. Probably. If, for whatever reason, the locals aren't human, I only hoped my las carbine would penetrate any thick armor they may have. “There is little time to be lost.”

Our advance was slow, tactical, deliberate. Oleg, in his hard armor, was at the front of our three-man wedge, with Dahl and I watching the flanks. Our weapons were out, of course; Oleg had his autocannon, and Dahl had his heavy stubber. Between the three of us, we cold probably take on most singular opponents, but the forest's thick vegetation was full of hiding places. The place smelled like an ambush waiting to happen.

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Taylor arrived at Sweet Apple Acres not twenty minutes later, dressed completely in his stealth armor. Big Mac, looking up from his current task, knew something must have been happening if the human showed up at the farm dressed like that. The red stallion was about to go and wake Jay and Applejack anyway, so telling his human brother-in-law to get ready for battle was a non-issue. However, the pyromaniac saw fit to stick his head out the window, hair disheveled by sleep.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”