//------------------------------// // 4: Fire Hornets // Story: The Chaotic Touch of Harmony 2: Bonded by Fire // by law abiding pony //------------------------------// Oypla Garrdoth was a proud man. No, he was not a man; not any more. Man is weak, he thought as he marched down to laboratory one. Mions of various purposes and prestige filled the hall. Garrdoth stood above them all, not because of his physical height as he could only boast a five foot stature, but in intelligence. They are directionless, genetically defective, incompetent, and utterly worthless save for one crucial attribute: they are malleable. The well-lit and hygienic stainless steel halls reeked of chemicals from the labs along this level, but all were beneath Oypla’s notice. He was the Herald’s top researcher in northern Africa, and took immense pride in that fact. As he entered the elevator to go to the lower levels, he found himself alone in the mobile room, so he took the opportunity to vocalize his daily mantra. “I, Oypla, will see the Herald’s great plan come to fruition and through my acts, I will earn my place at the side of the gods.” He bowed his head in reverence; even speaking their name was a holy act. “The Koridost.” He prayed for guidance as the slow decent brought him towards his destination. His once-a-day act of humility was over the instant the doors opened and he resumed his usual haughty demeanor as he walked towards the only place that truly mattered in his world. Thirty meters saw him to those very doors and after a quick entry of a security code and keycard swipe, he found himself in the room where he would assure his ascension to godhood. Before him sat a vast array of equipment, personnel, and prisoners all dedicated to finding the solution to the human problem. Well, the first two anyway. He thought as he eyed the humans in their cages in various mental and physical states ranging from healthy to sickly and violent to suicidal. They had been taken from all over the world and were clean of the Mion plague. The cells had all been soundproofed so the scientists would not be bothered by threats, weeping, or begs for mercy. Garrdoth would have preferred to be able to listen to it all, as it was music to his ears, but alas he found it did get distracting after a while. Anything that distracted him from achieving godhood was abhorrent so he accepted the soundproofing as a necessary evil. He did however, let the prisoners remain visible, not only so the scientists could see what they were molding into perfection, but so the humans could see what fate awaited them. The plexiglass cages lined the northern half of the principle laboratory. The main genetic engineering and sample production equipment sat in the center of the large chamber. On the far western side was the sole other entrance to the lab. The larger steel doors on the west side led to the cargo tunnel where the prisoners and other large equipment was flown in from a remote hangar miles away. On the south side of the laboratory, and in plain view of the captives to the north, were the experimentation tanks. Each one was in use, and not a one was devoid of some new kind of horror. The tanks were filled with water that suspended the sedated occupants. Each one ranged in size from those that could house a man to that which could swallow an elephant with room to spare. It was no longer a new sight for him, but Garrdoth was still pleased to notice that Mions were not the only scientists in the room. In a staff of twenty eight researchers, eleven of which were ponies of various tribes. With an exceedingly rare display of respect for someone other than him or the Herald, he gave a polite nod to each one as he passed. My fellow Mions obey the will of the Herald, but these ponies can never accept the Koridost’s gifts. And yet they are here, helping us achieve our goals willingly and without coercion. They are like us in a way. They knew how inferior they were in their previous lives, and work to rid this world of the persistent vermin so the Koridost can arrive to a pristine world for colonization. The Herald never spoke of what the Koridost would do once they arrived on Earth, but Garrdoth reasoned colonization to be the only logical conclusion. Oypla found a tan furred unicorn researcher by the name of Edfu Mubarak leaving to grab some dinner. The ponies and Mions all came from different regions and languages, but thanks to certain books, all of them had a unified language: Equish. Garrdoth found the language difficult to enunciate properly, but muscled through it for the sake of practicality. The unicorn yawned with exhaustion and was completely at ease, if worn out. “There you are Oypla. You’re just in time, Fenuku was about to summon you to witness our latest test results of the Yeta strain.” The chief researcher clapped his hands in excitement. “Excellent, that strain showed particular promise.” His companion nodded, showing some regret. “I wish I could see it myself, but I have gone all day without food, and my mind suffers for it.” “I will make sure the data is recorded fully for your purview later.” With scientific curiosity at the forefront of his mind, he ignored any other pleasantries and went straight to the middle row of specimen tanks. The stallion shared in Garrdoth’s excitement, but his body demanded sustenance and so he resigned himself to only witness it later through records. Oypla found three other Mions and two ponies glancing between the specimen, a naked man in his late forties who was incredibly overweight, and the data being extracted by various instruments. The breathing mask was the only thing the unfortunate man was wearing. “Is it time?” One of his fellow Mions nodded after tearing his eyes away from the screens. “Yes, the incubation period is moments from completion.” Garrdoth shoved one of the lesser researchers away from the main computer terminal so he could watch both the data and the specimen directly. The floating human just shy of being lucid as the sedatives were beginning to taper off. For over a minute he simply floated there, occasionally trying to pierce the fading fog in his mind so he could see past the mirrored glass of his tank. The change was slow at first; his fingers started twitching as they grew thicker while the nails morphed into claws. The little finger atrophied and the hand reshaped itself to compensate. The alterations accelerated as his skin developed thick red scales that raced up his arms. His fat boiled away as it was used as fuel for the metamorphosis which was now converting it into muscle mass over the man’s arms and torso. His head lost all of its hair as the scales grew up to his chin, but went no further. His teeth sharpened to that of a carnivore and an animalistic rage fell over his eyes. Everything below his chest and most of the top half of his head remained human in appearance. Garrdoth tapped away at the keyboard as the changes stopped. “Metabolism is stabilizing. Excess fat gone, and the body is not driving itself into metabolic collapse to finish alterations. Brain waves however, are abysmal. Animalistic intelligence at best, and the connection to the Link is minimal. Best case is general guidance only, no possibility of complex or even simplistic orders being understood. Instinctual only.” He growled in anger. “So much work over this new Enforcer and we still can’t get the intelligence above a worthless animal!” All of the Mions in his vicinity trembled slightly as his anger was not only felt by the force of his words, but his emotion bled over the Link. One of the females tried to placate him. “But chief, we’ve had to focus all of our efforts on stabilizing the metabolism. Without that, newly infected would just die outright.” He grabbed her by the collar. “Better they die than roam the world unbound by the Herald’s will!” He threw her against one of the other tanks, sloshing the water and putting a slight crack in the glass. The outburst was nothing new, and the more senior researchers knew to keep their mouths shut and let Oypla vent his frustration. However before Garrdoth could fully lay into the unfortunate scientist, she went ridged and spoke with a voice that was not her own. “Stay your hand Garrdoth.” Oypla backed away from her. Every Mion in the room knew the Herald spoke through her for the benefit of the Mion’s equine allies. “Master, forgive our failures.” The Herald silenced him with a gesture. Not a simple movement to signal silence, but by actually blocking all brain signals to the man’s mouth. “I will make my own judgment of your progress.” The puppet closed her eyes as her memory was given freely to the mouthpiece of the gods. A few seconds passed before a curious hum emerged from the Mion. “I see. The Yeta strain will be adequate in its current state.” The Herald released his hold over Garrdoth’s voice who immediately turned to the others. “What are you waiting for? Get the incubation pods seeded and ready for transport!” Mions and ponies alike scattered to obey, giving a supplicating Oypla time to face his window to the gods. “If I may humbly ask Master, why would you wish for this project cut short? I’m sure in a few months’ time we could have their intelligence back to at least human standards.” “You can keep working to improve it, but I am no longer willing to wait that long for a completed strain. Humanity has detected my shell.” Oypla felt horror wash over him. “While I believe my shell avoided giving its purpose away, it is only a matter of time before someone realizes its importance and tries to destroy it and me in the process.” Garrdoth was appalled. “But you preside over the ocean floor. Surely no warship in existence could possibly touch you there.” The Herald gave him a critical look, one that was comical in the puppet he wore. “You are a scientist Garrdoth, not a strategist. So I will give you this advice. Leave such decisions to the Koridost, for they are wiser than the stars are numerous.” Oypla bowed his head. “I submit to your wise council.” “As you should.” One of the pegasus researchers respectfully approached from the side. “Begging your pardons my lords, but I thought you would like to know the seeding process will take two hours. After that it will take three days for the cultures to grow and will then be ready for deployment.” Because the person was a pony, and thus outside of the Link, the Herald had to ask his questions aloud. “Do the culture pods meet my specifications?” The stallion nodded. “Yes my lord. Each one can be fitted into a missile with minimal effort or technical expertise. They are all attached to a central incubation pod which will keep the samples alive indefinitely. Once detached, the virus samples will survive a maximum of one week before decaying.” “Excellent. I want them shipped out as soon as possible, I have already informed the transport aircraft to be prepared and ready to receive the cargo.” Oypla took that moment to interpose himself between the pony and the Herald’s puppet. “It will be done Master.” The Herald left his puppet’s body, leaving her mind in a bewildered state. Garrdoth only gave her three seconds to recover before barking orders. “You heard him, help with the seeding process!” “Yes chief!” She tripped over her own feet, while the pony withdrew before he could be yelled at too. As his minions scampered away, Oypla couldn’t help but feel cheated. I was so close to perfecting this, and yet those damned apes spooked the Herald into stepping up the timetable. “Fine then,” he muttered under his breath as he stared daggers at the caged humans on the far side. “Let the cities of the world burn, I will still work to perfecting the Enforcer. It will be my masterpiece offering to the Koridost.” Infiltration used to be a rather easy affair for the herd. The bracelets they all wore rendered them invisible to humans and Mions alike. Yet they were not the only ones inhabiting the pathogenics laboratory. They were the minority, but ponies of all three tribes moved freely about the underground facility in sufficient quantities that the four Americans would have found it extremely difficulty to sneak around. At present, they were inside the loading bay where the ramp from the abandoned German depot led to. During her time in the CIA, Alexia had heard reports of her former trainees fighting against ponies who were allied with gangs, larger crime families, hostile foreign nationals, basically the standard fair for a field operative for the CIA. That was hardly a surprise to the alicorn, if she were honest with herself, she would have fully expected ponies to be fighting other ponies just like humans have fought other humans for almost the entirely of the species’ history. What troubled her though, were those that sided with the Mions. It was something strictly kept within the agency, and even then it still damaged morale. It was even worse on Alexia who felt each pony who served alongside the Mions was a slap in the face to both her and Trinity. Her only hope was that they were being forced to work with the red skinned humanoids. Knowing that if she brooded on it for very long she was liable to lose her temper, Tune decided to push that knowledge away to focus on her surroundings. The herd found the ramp that led deep into the earth was unwatched and snuck into the first chamber unchallenged or detected. It was roughly half the size of the depot above, yet was nearly devoid of sand. A fact Crimson was grateful for. The bay was filled with cargo trucks to the north and a single repair station to the south. The exit they arrived through was to the east and the loading platforms sat on the opposite side. The group was currently hiding inside the cargo bed of a covered truck on the north end with Conrad and Crimson keeping watch. Alexia sat towards the truck’s cabin as she tried to cobble a plan together. Loki grinned madly at her laptop. There’s a WiFi signal here. Oh Lawdy I can’t believe they would actually put WiFi down here. That’s what you get for having fanatics in a hidden base. No one thinks to lock down system security. The network shark tested the waters, cackling manically as she found a possible entry point. “Yessss, my darling, yeeesss. Open yourself to meeeee, for I. Am. Your. GODDESS OF THE MACHINE!” Loki caught herself too late and glanced about to see scowling glares from her mates. She shrunk down with a sheepish grin. “Hehe, sorry.” Conrad was thankful that the chamber was more or less empty now that the day’s shipments had been squared away and the work crews were wrapping things up. “Just keep your insanity to a low boil.” “Normality is overrated,” the green mare replied as she dove back into her work. “If I were normal, I’d have gone insane long ago.” “Aren’t you already insane?” Crimson quipped. Loki abandoned her computer for the moment and wrapped a leg around Crimson and placed a hoof over her mouth for silence. “Hush now. Its hacken cracking time, and I need all of the wublub I can get to massage the door open for my charms to say hello to their new compadres. Ya get it weggit?” The green mare left the pale yellow pony exceedingly disturbed. As Loki returned to her computer happily humming a ditty Anderson turned to her alpha. “…I think I need an adult.” “You are an adult,” Tune replied with a snorting chuckle while brushing off Loki’s antics as she returned her attention to the tome she had summoned several minutes ago. The Dusk Guard section was open and Alexia made sure the golden glow of the text would not bleed outside of the covered truck by casting a darker version of her sunscreen around the book. The more magically inclined pony of the group shifted through the pages of militant illusion magic. Over a dozen were already earmarked, including the one she was searching for. Okay, I know I saw that spell a few months ago when I was searching for—Yes I think this is it! The entry she desired was tapped with a mote of her mana and it expanded from a single name in a long list to a full text document in the image of a scroll. Several pictures accompanied the text, showing the mental calculations needed to weave the spell without the need for a diagram. Alexia couldn’t help but to read the words in Twilight Sparkle’s voice. Here I will go into the specifics of the Plain Sight spell. This is of course, short for the old adage: hidden in plain sight. The spell operates on a simple principle: if somepony is not looking for something, that pony can stumble onto whatever or whoever is trying to get around stealthily. However, if ponies are actively looking for a person or object, they can often overlook it when its right in front of their face. In a way, the hydra in the throne room has a better chance of hiding by sitting on the throne itself when the whole Royal Guard is hunting it, than a parasprite in a mouse hole being happened upon by a hawk if both were using this spell. This is a bit of a stretch for many to trust, and honestly I don’t blame you. However, it’s the audacity of the tactic that warrants attention. After all, if even we don’t want to try it, then those who wish harm against Equestria wouldn’t think to try and counter it. Plan Sight works by passively tricking the mind of all those who would see or hear the caster by thinking he or she should be doing whatever it is that they are doing. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that as I will explain in great detail shortly. Say for example, you are using this spell and hostile troopers are trying to find you. By using this spell, you can reenact the entire play of Marebeth as you act your way from your hiding spot and away to safety. The soldiers will still see you acting out a one-pony-play of course, but will assume you are somepony who belongs there and should be doing whatever it is that you’re doing.(acting out a scene in this case) However it does not need to be singing in order to make the spell function. Simply be as conspicuous as possible and it will strengthen the effect of the spell. Remember, it is the audacious nature of such a defense that will catch many by surprise and will not think to shield themselves from this style of perception manipulation. Plain Sight does have its drawbacks of course. Even when using a ward against antimagic fields, the fields will still strip away any effects Plain Sight will have on anyone. In addition, a strong mind can see past the illusion and if they call attention to you, then even the unaware will see you for what you are. So be mindful of that as you infiltrate unfriendly territory. Alexia scanned the rest of the text with fervid interest, but she ran into one big snag. Damn. This affects the caster and personal effects only. She scowled at the text for a few seconds until a thought occurred to her. Its not fully tested, but now would be a good a time as any to give this new array of mine a field trial… Assuming I can get the damn thing entered into the harness correctly. She turned to her companions. “Okay guys, I have a plan. Just hear me out while I try to write my patented aura diagram into the computer here.” A brief explanation of both the spell and the aura diagram later, the silver alicorn was receiving two looks of complete bewilderment and one of complete and utter joy. Conrad was the first to recover his voice. “That has got to be the craziest thing I have ever heard—outside of Loki. There’s no way this will work.” “I have to agree,” Crimson agreed. “How in blazes is parading around like the Macy’s Day parade supposed to keep us hidden. Magic or not, it seems highly illogical.” Tune never got a chance to answer because Loki did it for her. “Not at all my good mare. Magic is energy waiting to be converted into some other form of energy right? And the brain works by bioelectrical and chemical reactions. Given the right formula, magic can trick the brain into thinking that the illogical is logical. Drugs do that sort of thing quite easily and all the time. I’ve seen ponies get just as drunk off beer and just as high off pot as any human has, and I bet the same will be true for the Red Menace.” Alexia couldn’t help but nod at that. “That’s a clear way to put it without going too far into the technical details. At any rate, I should be done with this aura diagram shortly.” “Which does what exactly?” The alicorn, like her mentor, loved to talk about magic. So it was with an exuberant grin that she explain herself to the stallion. “It’s a personal project I designed myself. There are plenty of spells that are area of effects, and others that only affect a target or just the caster. But there’s nothing that lets you change the nature of these spells. That’s mostly because if you try to turn say—a love spell intended for a single person into a mass love spell. You need to change the formula entirely, almost to the point where the two different versions are barely similar anymore in their original structure. This aura diagram bypasses that entirely by reflecting the spell’s effect to everyone within five feet of me at the cost of some instability and almost quintuple the mana cost.” Crimson remembered Alexia saying she had plenty of mana to spare, but concern still washed over her. “Are you sure that’s wise?” Alexia puffed her chest out a bit. “If there’s anything I’m good at, its magic. And thanks to certain events of the past, I am practically made of mana. The cost is something I’ll try to tone down later.” A few more minutes and Alexia deemed the holographic diagram to be in good shape. “Okay, let’s give this a spin.” The pale chalk white holographic circle moved from a foot in front of her face to being centered around her chest. The array itself was dizzyingly complicated with lines that crisscrossed to form a weave of lines that had runes of varying sizes. However the reason behind the busy design was that it was extreme hollow, and was more akin to a four inch thick ring than a real diagram. The array was static and made it look like she was wearing a two dimensional skirt that had been pulled up to the top of her abdomen. It also sat at a twenty degree tilt with the top part of the array leaning away from her head. Crimson gave it a sour look. “Now I know I’m a medic, not a spell-weaver. But wouldn’t your normal walking gait break the array, thus rendering it useless?” Alexia hummed. “It would actually. I guess I didn’t really think this one through.” She cast a simple spell to test and sure enough, every time she moved her leg through the array it failed. The resulting feedback was only a mild discomfort due to the simplicity of the incantation. The alicorn stopped casting and flared her wings. Then she took the two pens and dragged the array to sit half a foot above her spine and in between her wings. She also resized the array to fit. “There. I’ll have to mark each of you for the aura to recognize you, but it will increase the range by fifteen feet… hopefully.” Loki clapped her hooves together and had a mad hatter grin plastered over her face. “Perfect. And I know just how to cause the perfect commotion.” She went back to her laptop and tapped in a few commands into the network. “Now I can’t glean the true purpose of this place’s research from here. I need to get down to the lower levels and get direct access to the closed network. These morons who thought “12345” was a good password for the WiFi at least had the sense to protect themselves that much. This smacks of non-IT people making the security policies.” Conrad was appalled. “12345? I wouldn’t even—never mind.” Loki wrote a few more commands before raising her left hoof in the air in a dramatic fashion. She took a deep breath to savor the moment, as if it was an act of extreme patience to let the moment hang. Then with what everyone else thought was a rather anti-climactic motion, she tapped the enter button and started giggling manically. The others waited for something to happen for a minute but nothing seemed to occur as Loki watched the laptop’s screen execute a rapid fire chain of commands into the network. Crimson looked over her fellow earth pony’s shoulder to see the command prompt blitz lines of text she couldn’t even read because it was going too fast. “What did you do?” The pale yellow mare’s voice was laced with dread. “Alex needs a distraction, I gave us one.” Loki said with glee as she popped her ear out of the covered truck and angled her ear to the loading bays. A five toned klaxon resounded throughout the garage. A voice akin to a screeching cat clawing a chalkboard spoke out in Equish. “Alert! No less than thirty ponies have been reported to be breaking standards of conduct regulations by singing and dancing blasphemous music in the hallways. This is a blatant disregard for civil conduct and an outright attack against the Gods! All personnel are to find these individuals and detain them without delay.” Conrad was stunned, but not enough where he couldn’t speak his surprise at the mare who was clipping the laptop to her back while leaving it open with a song on a timer start. “Singing and dancing? I would ask if you’re mad, but I already know the answer.” “Hey we need a conspicuous distraction, so there we go. Now take a sip of water and warm up your vocal cords guys. We’re putting on a show!” Tune barely had enough time to unsummon the tome before Loki grabbed her by the forelegs and threw her out of the truck. “Just follow my lead guys!” Alexia considered herself fortunate that she landed on all fours and that Crimson and Conrad found themselves doing the same moments later. Loki jumped up and over the alicorn to land in front of her. It was only with refined presence of mind that Alexia thought to activate the Plain Sight. Fortunately it interacted with the array as planned and the five workers around the loading bay paid them no more than a passing glance as they laughed about the announcement that would repeat itself every twenty seconds. Although because of the enchantment on the harnesses, they only saw a unicorn mare and three earth stallions. Ordinarily they would have seen the reverse, but the untested aura array was not inert to that enchantment. It was a side effect Tune had no knowledge of, and none of them could see for themselves because they could pierce the illusion. Loki shakily tried to stand up on her hind legs so she could act like a composer with her right hoof being the baton. “I know you guys can feel the instinctual need to sing.” Conrad wanted to duck back behind cover, but the workers seemed to be ignoring them for the moment. “I try to ignore it whenever possible.” “Ditto,” Crimson replied. Alexia was sweating profusely at the prospect of her aura losing stability without her knowing if it was about to happen. “I don’t really feel comfortable doing anything more than humming in public. But singing would strengthen the spell’s influence.” It was all the verification Loki needed. “Then it looks like we all have an instinct that demands satisfaction.” With her trademark less than sane toothy grin, Loki waved her hoof back and forth in time with her words. “A one, a two, a one two three.” As if the mare had timed it perfectly, a fast playing piano opened up from her laptop with a surprisingly loud speaker. Loki dropped back to all fours and started marching to the server room. She started singing the main lead with as much soul and enthusiasm that would have made Jim Croce nod in approval. “Woah! Bad, bad Leroy Brown.” The others chased after the singing mare. “Well the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town-“ Loki jumped the four foot ledge up into the store room with the herd hot on her heels. The public address system kept repeating the declaration to find all of the singing ponies. So with Alexia’s spell in effect, the workers around the herd thought nothing of the four ponies with one of them singing her heart out. “Now Leroy more than trouble. You see he stand ‘bout six foot four.” They trotted out of the store room and into the main thoroughfare to the elevator. “All the men just call him ‘Sir’.” Loki’s memory of the map she pulled from the network let her know she needed to go down four floors. She started skipping and bobbing her head to the beat. “And he’s bad, bad Leroy Brown.” Alexia felt it worse than the others. A spring in her step and an urge to join in tickled her badly in the back of her mind. Crimson tried to ignore the cursory stares they received from the passing workers or guards, but even she was nodding her head to the beat. “Badder than old King Kong, and meaner than a junkyard dog.” Loki threw herself into the song, finally exercising that nagging need to sing. Everyone in the herd knew the song, and the other mares couldn’t stop themselves from joining in as Loki’s chorus. “He’s bad.” “He’s bad.” They sang in unison. “Bad Leroy Brown. The baddest man in the whole damn town.” Conrad looked at the mares with growing concern. More so for himself as he struggled not to join them. “Badder than old King Kong, and meaner than a junkyard dog.” Loki started her solo right as they were arriving at the elevators and pressed the call button. “Now Leroy he a gambler, and he likes his fancy clothes. And he like to wave his diamond rings under everybody’s nose!” The elevator arrived, revealing it was large enough for twenty people to squeeze inside. So they found themselves cramming inside with five Mions and three other ponies. Alexia despised the fact that these fellow ponies were working alongside the Mions. Yet she did not let that stop her from joining in Loki’s next chorus. “And oh that girl looked nice!” Loki went back into her solo as the elevator filled up and started its decent. “Well he cast his eyes upon her and the trouble soon began. And Leroy Brown had learned a lesson ‘bout a-messin with the wife of a jealous man.” The song came to an end right as the doors opened and Loki’s playlist moved right on to the next selection. Shockingly, the elevator, while depositing them on the correct floor, opened straight into the cafeteria’s dinner crowd. The surrounding patrons gave the four ponies quizzical looks, Alexia most of all with her horn aglow. She elbow’s Crimson and whispered, “Crimmy start singing.” “But this song is degrading.” “These people will degrade our flesh if we don’t keep singing,” Alexia hissed back. Shoring up her courage and dignity, Crimson started singing the first verse. “Finally I get to teach a whoooole lesson all by myself. And I’m going to teach something relevant, something modern, the internet!” Conrad’s resistance at hearing the intro crumbled to dust. Loki just had to pick that song! As the group followed Loki towards the other side of the cafeteria, Crimson kept singing. “The internet is really really great.” The stallion’s resistance faltered for a moment and he belted out two musical words. “For porn.” “I’ve got a fast connection so I don’t have to waaaait.” “For porn.” A few lines of the song went by as the herd managed to exit the northwestern exit garnering no more than a few disinterested glances. The klaxons warned of singing equines again. This time the herd was trotting directly underneath one of the loudspeakers and the ten Mions and ponies listened to the announcement and then paid the quartet no mind. Loki happily pointed towards the server room while Crimson was fully in the swing of the song. “Hold on a second!” The herd nearly complied with the assumed order until Anderson continued the line. “Now I know for a fact that you, mage, play video games and mock people on forums.” “That’s correct.” When I have time anyway, She added silently. “And Samurai, you watch sports and have an unhealthy fixation on the San Francisco obituaries.” “Sure.” Hopefully I’ll see my father on that list one day. “And Green Bean, you know exactly what you do,” Crimson sang accusingly. “Yes I do!” Conrad couldn’t help but tap Crimson with the tip of his wing. “Oh but Doc- What do you think they do after? Hmm?” As Anderson sang her disgust, Loki turned the corner and spotted the server room. The herd started galloping towards the room, passing fifteen Mions along the way. Loki skidded to a halt in front of the keycard scanner and pulled a cord from her harness, one end was a USB male connector and a rewritable keycard in the other. “The internet is for-“ She slid it into her laptop’s USB port and waited for the computer to recognize it. “The internet is for-“ Everyone sang merrily besides Crimson. The laptop proclaimed the card was ready and the hacker slid it through the scanner. The virus was implanted into the scanner and quickly caused an overload and burned it out, opening the door. “The internet is for PORN!” The herd bolted inside with Conrad going last and pushed the door shut behind him by pressing his back to it while shouting the ending verse. “Yeah!” Alexia’s aura flickered as the harness spat a few sparks as the heavy mana load was too much and some of the critical circuitry burned out, causing the hologram to vanish. This made the three system administrators, two Mions and one earth pony, to go from giving them a passing glance to growing alarm. “How da hell you get in here!?” The pastel purple stallion barked. Crimson was the first to respond. “Mage, pancake maneuver!” The command snapped Tune out of her mild stupor and switch her mana from maintaining the illusion, which had shrunk to just herself, to grappling each administrator in her kinesis and slamming them once against the rocky ceiling and a second time against the stone floor. Without hesitation, Conrad ran over and delivered a hard kick to each one to make sure none of them would ever get up again. Loki was at the SysAdmin terminal in a second, the man had left himself logged in so it was trivial for her to work with. The first thing she did was to cancel the running program that was repeating the warning about singing ponies. “Even the written language is in Equish. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say ponies were running the show here.” Conrad stayed by the door to ambush anyone that went inside. It was within earshot of Loki’s station so he was able to respond. “Doesn’t really surprise me. These people probably hail from all over the world and we can learn Equish within a few days. It makes sense they would make it the unified language here.” He glanced at the sputtering crystals on Alexia’s back. “That has got to be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.” Loki nickered in response. “It worked though. No one raised the alarm and now the guards are busy scratching their heads.” Tune couldn’t stop staring at the purple stallion’s broken corpse lying on the cold ground. She may not have delivered the final blow, but she was the herd’s alpha. She alone was ultimately responsible for their actions, especially when on assignment. “We—we killed a pony.” Crimson nodded to the others to keep working and let her handle this. The pale yellow mare walked up to the silver one and nuzzled her. “He made his choice. He chose to work with these cultists who are trying to commit specicide. I say good riddance.” The alicorn hung her head a little, her voice became soft. “I guess it would be hypocritical of me to wish no harm to my fellow ponies when I’ve been clamoring for equality with humanity after all.” “That it would,” Crimson replied with both steel and sympathy. “But you’re a politician so I guess hypocrisy is just par for the course.” “Way to make me feel better,” Alexia managed a choked laugh despite herself. She’s right though. None of the ponies I saw along the way look as if they are being mistreated, and some of them were even throwing jokes around the lunch table with those red skinned bastards. What disturbed her most of all was that at least half of the ones she saw in passing had their cutie marks. There’s nothing I can do for them. Even if I were to try and leverage my alicorn magic to convince them to switch sides, I can’t do anything for those with their marks. They found purpose and a will to live in the act of extinction. Crimson felt a wash of cold air radiate from the alicorn and she took a step back. She noticed Tune’s horn was inactive, but she knew the chill was the alicorn’s doing. The silver mare’s stature became stony, and her jaw clenched in boiling fury. The Mions she could at least say were mentally corrupted by the plague, but the ponies were a different matter. She saw no evidence of coercion or even mistreatment. Hell, they’re even using our language to help coordinate their efforts. Our language! she shouted in her mind. Before the alicorn could give voice to her rage, Loki chirped a musical note at finding the facility’s purpose. “This place is definitely a bio lab, that’s for sure. Let’s see what you people have been doing exactly—” The other two mares walked over to see. Tune’s hate was not directed at her mates, and was loath to lash out at them. Crimson glanced at the data, but it was too far outside of her expertise to know more than that the base’s focus of study was pathology. “If I had to guess. This might be the place where the Mion plague was engineered. Probably right under the Algerian government’s nose.” “That or the officials were bribed to look the other way,” Conrad suggested from his post at the door. Loki scanned for recent activity. A large flurry of data appeared on screen. “Here we are, the primary lab’s main project.” Loki had her laptop sitting on the desk and promptly gathered a connector wire from her harness and slotted it into both computers to start copying everything. The text was beyond any of them, but the video recordings were plain for all to see. Human captives were seen thrashing inside water filled tanks as their bodies warped and changed. Most of the recordings were marked as failures, the mutations were unusable or deformed from the intended design. All of it was gruesome to watch. It was not until some of the unicorn scientists started infusing the viral particles with mana that the test subjects’ changes were more thorough. With the abundant energy that mana provided, what were once a few alterations that used to barely cover something the size of a forearm could now encompass half of the body before the rapid changes ceased. From a series of pictures, it was obvious the rest of the changes came later, after the victim ate an abundance of food. Tune’s wings trembled with her rage. To her, it was as if the Mions and their equine allies had taken everything Trinity and its inhabitants stood for and twisted it into a horrific mockery of her new hometown. If Alexia could have been called slightly miffed before, now her fury was boundless. Her eyes started glowing with an angry azure. She needed to vent and the first thing that came to her mind were the three corpses of the network administrators. The herd looked at her and then the corpses as they were encased in azure and were levitated two feet off the ground. With a roar of hatred, Alexia used an inversion of her pegasi magic and created a singularity at the center of each corpse and crushed the bodies into lumps of meat that became small and smaller as she increased the gravity. The sound of cracking bones and squelching fluids filled the room as the objects of the alicorn’s hatred were squeezed tighter and tighter until they were no bigger than a billiard’s ball. Not a drop of gas or liquid escaped her gravity spell. She wasn’t done. No, her anger over such perversion perpetrated by her own kind fueled her magic further and with a one last scream of wrath she squashed them further into the side of grapes before the internal pressure of that much mass was finally strong enough to counter her power and she let go. Tune barely managed to shield her face with a wing before the three pieces of compressed meat exploded back out showering the room in blood while three pieces of ruined meat dropped to the floor in pieces. There was nothing left to identify who they had been. With a fury choked exhale, she faced her reddened mates. “We are going to raze this entire facility. Everyone. Dies.” An alert on the screen managed to claw Loki’s eyes away from the carnage. “You might want to leave that to the troops. It looks like they finished their main project early and are shipping the incomplete viruses out of here.” Tune scoffed as her eyes returned to normal, but the malice was still there. “And? We can just get a message out to Mercer to have him intercept the trucks.” Loki shook her head as she read the orders. “They aren’t stated for the trucks. There’s a second part of the facility to the north that’s on a different closed network. I can’t access it from here and I can’t reroute the virus containers. We need to get down to the lab itself and try to destroy them before they’re moved. If the second exit is too far away, the Bush may not be looking in a wide enough area to intercept it.” Crimson was eager for a reason to ignore the blood covering both the room and her fur. She pointed a hoof at the background of some of the pictures. “Plus there has to be some prisoners around here somewhere. I bet you the captives and the other supplies were being shipped in from that location.” Alexia’s fury simmered for the moment. She would have her retribution, but her responsibilities as team commander pushed themselves far enough to the front of her mind that she was able to remain somewhat logical. “Can you get us down there?” Loki tapped a few more commands and a keycard writer blinked a green light. The hacker opened several drawers to find a box of blanks and found them in the bottom drawer. After inserting it, the machine took a few seconds to work before spitting back out again. “Right here. Every floor below us has key codes as well so I locked all of the door codes to 12345. A memento I left behind for their stupidity.” “Good, set the house up for the cavalry.” Alexia faced Crimson and pointed a wing at the computer’s microphone. “Get a message out to Mercer. Tell him to get the paratroopers over here to clean house, we’re going after those canisters.” And I will destroy anyone that gets in our way. Loki gave the seat to Crimson after activating the lab’s radio and moved over to her laptop to set the place up for the assault. Thompson’s gifted viruses and worms, along with other penetration software came with a multitude of moddable malware. The methods of infiltration were already in place. All she needed was to transcribe whatever prewritten code she had into the worms and do minor alterations to make them function within the Mion network. It took fifteen minutes to modify three worms to do what she needed and after Crimson finished talking with Mercer, the hacker made sure to lock down all security functionality within the network so nothing could stop her save a complete system shutdown. The alicorn levitated some water out of her CamelBak’s straw and washed the blood off herself and the others. She was still furious, but that anger was never directed at the herd. During this time, Conrad was becoming increasingly nervous. He remembered being part of a few heists in his time and didn’t want to stay there much longer. The more we linger, the more likely we’ll get caught. Loki finished a last few commands and some of her mirth returned as she held her hoof magic back a bit so she could physically tap the enter button one last time. “There it’s done. We have ten seconds before this place descends into anarchy. Every door is rigged to slam shut and remain sealed until the paratroopers come in guns blazing.” A stray arc of mana roiled from the base to the tip of Alexia’s horn. “Good,” she said with impatient anger. “We take care of those canisters and then we rip this vile place to pieces.” Mercer stood on the bridge of the USS George H. W. Bush looking out over the flight deck. With Crimson’s transmission coming through loud and clear, the paratroopers were already loading to the waiting Chinook towards the rear of the ship. Loud whining engines heralded the launching of the first of three fighters that would provide air superiority and be equipped to take on armored trucks if need be. Both the case officer and the carrier’s captain took the warning of a bioweapon seriously. As a result, the third fighter that was to be launched was equipped with four Mark seventy seven incendiary bombs to burn the virus canisters should they escape the labs. The case officer did not know the royal herd personally, reputation only, but he could sense the tremble in Anderson’s words. She was scared. But I don’t think it was for her life or that of her mates. I think she was scared by one of them. To what cause or end, I wish I knew. After Loki informed the silver and azure alicorn of the direction to the next set of elevators, she wrenched the door off its hinges with her magic and the air around her took on an azure radiance as the alicorn activated her Kinetic Bleed Field. “We make our way to the elevator, secure the canisters, and kill everything in our way.” The others moved to be inside the curtain of blue air in a five meter radius around the silver mare. All three of them knew what she really meant: to kill everything in her way. Four Mions and two ponies were startled by a door being torn from its mounting and thrown at full force into the opposite wall. Alexia walked out of the server room in the guise of a very irate white unicorn surrounded by an azure aura. Before the Mions could even ask what happened, Alexia gathered a point of mana a few inches away from the tip of her horn and converted it into electrical power. Then she expended more mana to move over to each target and convert into dense collections of protons. The churning mass of electrons above her horn were all too eager to blast forth and fried everyone around her. There was no distinction for species in her mind. The Mions she almost pitied because they were no longer the people they once were, but the ponies still had their minds if not their bodies. She was not going to let a single one escape her sight and further taint the bridge she had been fighting to build between the two species. Alexia looked down the hallway opposite of her destination and saw five more people who were stunned into motionlessness. She grabbed each one in her kinesis and flung them closer to her so she could rip the thermal energy out of two of them until she left the two female Mions as little more than blocks of ice and compressed the superheated air into balls and flung them at the heads of the other two Mions, boiling their brains within their skulls. The flailing pegasus mare screamed fearfully in her native tongue. The alicorn couldn’t make out the words, but their meaning was clear enough. Tune growled back at her in Equish. “What about the pleas of mercy from your test subjects? Or the billions your work will kill?” Alexia crafted ten shards of razor thin needles of condensed mana. The mare stared at both the mana spikes and the perceived unicorn with terror so profound she wet herself. Conrad raced over and places a restraining hoof on his alpha’s withers. “Don’t kill her like this.” He wanted to say her name, but knew that would be a bad idea from where they were. “There’s killing a combatant, and then there’s killing a helpless person. We should take her prisoner.” Tune bit back a snarl as she addressed him in English. “We don’t have time for prisoners!” “Then put her under a sleep spell and let the cavalry take care of her. They might find out if there are other facilities just like this if we leave someone behind for them to capture.” He knew the computer system or even Loki’s data could do just that, but he needed her to step away from the proverbial cliff. Tune looked back at the mare still pinned in her mental grasp with the azure needles ready to plunge forth at their master’s call. The red pegasus, like the pony in the server room, represented more than just an unconscionable scientist. The sobbing red mare stood against everything the alicorn poured her heart and soul into forging ponies and humans into a unified society. By now, the alarms were sounding and red warning lights lit the corridor. Conrad knew Alexia could handle any firearms leveled against them, but he needed her to still be herself. Crimson tugged on the silver equine’s right wing. “We don’t know her story. Maybe she was traumatized or raped after becoming a pony. She may have had her family killed in front of her eyes and she left for dead by humans and joined the cult in revenge for all we know. Leave her to the paratroopers.” Tune’s expression barely changed, but her mate’s words did much to stay her hand. She turned back to her prisoner who was stunned that she was still alive. “To be so naive and let the actions of a few color an entire species. Fool,” she added disgustedly. Alexia disbanded the needles and weaved a sleep spell strong enough to last a full day. Tune may have been persuaded to spare her captive, but a vindictive streak still needed to be satisfied. Alexia unceremoniously dropped the red mare in the puddle of her own spreading urine. If this one lives through the day, I will see to her myself. Tune made sure to remember the red furred, and black maned pegasus for later. She barely noticed the blank flank as she turned to abandon the red mare. Strengthening her kinetic bleed field, the alicorn ran after Loki who was galloping towards the other set of elevators. Loki raced past the various people without caring what they did. With it being a research lab that had successfully hidden for months, only an extreme few Mions were augmented for combat. And no one in the herd’s path between the server room and the second elevator were in any shape to stop them as the three agents incapacitated them with either spell or hoof as they chased after their green member. The alicorn was rougher with her magic than normal, not caring if anyone died from being thrown against the walls or a sleep spell that brought many dangerously close to a coma. Loki reached the elevator, tapped in the code, and swiped the keycard to open the doors. She got inside and waved a hoof to her galloping mates. “Hurry, you don’t have much time before the lockdown starts!” Loki’s computer worms acted right on schedule, and that was too early thanks to Alexia’s moral intervention. Loki was forced back into the elevator as the heavy doors moved to seal the elevator shaft and no amount of jamming the open doors button would reverse it. Crimson ran alongside Tune with a worried tone. “We can’t make it inside now.” “Yes we can,” Alexia shouted as her horn lit up. Loki jumped to the side of the wall to give them space and right as the doors shut, Alexia’s teleport activated and the three other members of the group made it inside. However their momentum followed them in and all three slammed against the far wall. Loki quickly tapped on the inside keypad and swiped the card again before pressing the correct button to begin their decent. As her mates recollected themselves, Loki stood on her hind legs and leaned against the wall near the buttons. “Hell of a time to have a crisis of morality boss mare. I never expected you to have one of that caliber though.” The alicorn huffed indignantly and sat on her haunches while the others spread out. Had she been more attentive, she would have noticed Loki’s joviality was hanging by a thread. “I don’t care what her reasons are. That mare, and every pony out there is just one tabloid cover away from ruining everything Trinity has done over the past two years. You don’t see any humans working with the Mions do you?” “Are you kidding?” Crimson genuinely asked. “The tabloids always spread that kind of stuff. Even some of the news stations say regular people and Mions work to take over the world.” Mana coursed through Alexia left foreleg as she slammed it against the wall, cracking it, but not enough to do more than superficial damage. “But this place is solid proof! The Mions are being manipulated by the plague, we know that.” At least us in the CIA anyway. “But the ponies are not! This isn’t like any other war in history. We’re not talking about simply beating an rival nation or even an opposing ideology. They willingly want to erase humanity with this this—enhanced virus!” She lowered her leg from the damaged wall. “You all have seen the psychological reports on captured Mions. We all know what their end all goal is. I get human mercenaries. They either only care about money, don’t know who their working for, or kill for fun.” Conrad shook his head sadly. “Do you really think its limited to that? Let me tell you something Alex. There are people out there who would make the orchestrator of the D.C. Siege look like a saint. Not every pony will be like the ones in Trinity. You said yourself that Discord’s magic only targeted those who were mentally and physically capable of leaving whatever society they happened to be in at the time. And I don’t think I need to tell you all again the sort of life I led before sprouting fur.” Loki’s cheer faded entirely and her head dipped bit. In the face of Conrad’s readmission of his past, she felt obligated to do the same. “Looking back on it… I wasn’t such a hot person to be around either. Please remember Alex that not all transformees started off as good people like you and Crimmy here.” She paused while nervously rubbing her hooves together. “And I probably would have stayed that way-- if not for you guys,” she added at length. “Becoming a pony wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” She looked to her mates with tears soaking her face’s fur. Crimson listened in silence with a sympathetic look while Conrad was still agitated towards Alexia. The silver mare’s fury deflated at what she suspected Loki would say next. “It was meeting you guys. Falling in love with all of you.” Her gaze passed over all of them before settling on Tune. “I mean, I’m supposed to be the lunatic of the group right?” Loki’s unintentional choice of words hit Alexia like a gunshot to her heart. She had no time to apologize or recover because the elevator arrived at their destination and the doors opened up to warning klaxons and a lone figure standing between them and the main laboratory. The way the Mion stood in the center of the hallway, with his hands tightly clasped behind his back and his otherwise loose posture within his white lab coat spoke of a man who believed what he was facing was a threat to his work, but not to him personally. As with all the Mions seen in the facility thus far, his skin was the color of dried blood. What set him apart was a series of small bony protrusions across his scalp that had completely replaced his hair. The mood in the elevator shifted in an instant. Gone was the apologetic alicorn and she stood up and walked towards the scientist in a slow careful manner. Her Bleed Field was at the ready, but she didn’t want to tip her hand too early. Loki splashed some water on her face to mask the tears and was able to recollect herself while the silver alicorn kept the Mion’s attention focused on her alone. The rest of the herd filed out behind Tune and took up flanking positions, but none of them walked past their alpha. The scientist adjusted his half-moon spectacles, which he wore out of habit from his human days, to peer at what he saw as one mustard yellow unicorn stallion, two earth stallions, and one black pegasus mare. He sighed with indifference as he took his glasses off to rub the lenses with a cloth from his pocket. He spoke Equish in a lofty, if difficult tone. “It seems the Gods were right in accelerating things. While I care little about you four personally, I can only imagine that if you’re here, then your government’s military isn’t far behind.” He replaced his glasses over his eyes. “So tell me, who are you? British? French?” Tune knew he was stalling for time. “Stand down, and I’ll make sure your death is painless.” Garrdoth tsked at her a few times while pacing back and forth one time before returning to the center. “I fear Iblis no longer, for he has no sway over my soul. Even if I should die, I will return anew, forever out of his grasp.” Conrad snorted derisively. “Why does every cultist everywhere always say that?” The Mion smirked. “Ah. Judging by your accent, I’d say you’re American. Gods know you lot can’t stop sticking your noses in the world’s business where it doesn’t belong. I dare say if the Mouthpiece had not arrived when he did, America would have been in more wars within ten years than England has in its entire history.” Conrad had had enough. “We didn’t come here to talk.” He bolted forward, ready to plant his hooves across the Mion’s jaw. “Nor did I,” Garrdoth replied calmly as he focused on the pegasus and shot a wave of crackling sickly green energy from his forehead. Conrad tried to reverse his momentum, but the wall was too fast and it pushed him back through the air. The wall faded shortly after contact and the pegasus landed back on his hooves nearly right back where he began. “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to disturb the seeding process. Its in its final stages and will depart shortly. After that you can have the run of the place for all I care.” Alexia had no qualms about killing a Mion. No matter how civilized this one acted, they were all brainwashed zealots in her eyes. “Then it seems like we don’t have time to waste on your welcoming committee anymore.” Tune grabbed ahold of the scientist with her kinesis and was about to slam him against the walls until he stopped moving when the same green pulse of energy radiated from his forehead and he dropped back down to the ground, only to dust off his pants before standing back up again. “I half expected that not to work. I will need to inform the others of its success when I return to headquarters after we’re done here.” The ponies were stunned that Alexia’s kinesis was repulsed, but the disguised alicorn quickly recovered. “You really expect to leave here alive Mion? Your gods won’t save you from us.” He huffed at the venom in her words. “I suppose followers of the more ‘established’ religions take comfort in giving their mythological rivals pejorative connotations, so I will let that slide on account of your ignorance. That ignorance will not last much longer,” he added with a sinister grin. “Of that, I assure you. Be grateful your kind has garnered the Koridost’s interest, rather than their ire.” Alexia was not willing to waste any more words and forged a dozen meter long needles of solidified mana and threw them at the scientist. Oypla out stretched his hand and a hemisphere of green light surrounded him. Upon impact the needles destabilized and washed over him as nothing more than intangible motes of light. “Having fought against you unicorns for some time now, and working with a helpful few, we’ve had plenty of time to perfect our own counters to magic. After all, spells are only held together by willpower and exacting specific matrixes are they not? Subvert your will and the spell falls apart like—“ He turned around to see the last few fading motes of mana. “so many dancing lights.” He turned back around to face them with a calculating grin. “I’m actually quite happy someone like you arrived. The nagging thought that our allied unicorns were holding back was always at the back of my mind. I thank you for proving me wrong—its a rare event and I will savor this moment for decades to come.” Loki glanced at Crimson and nodded before both mares walked towards the walls. “Savor this!” Both earth ponies gathered their mana and bucked the walls. A few moments passed without anything visibly happening. Garrdoth tilted his head in amusement. “Am I supposed to be intimidated by physical prowess?” Loki sat on her haunches and yawned lazily. “No.” With only a brief moment of rumbling earth as a warning, twin spikes of rock and stone speared out of the walls and impaled the scientist in both the head and chest. He was dead before the first drop of blood hit the ground. Loki rubbed her chin contemplatively. “Do you think he was intimidated in the end? Tune started running forward. “You can figure that out later when we stop the transfer.” The rest bounded after her, with Loki lingering just long enough to study the Mion’s surprised expression before joining her mates. Alexia reached the door and was about to turn to Loki to open it, but she noticed the keypad was smoking. Damn looks like he overloaded the door. He really wasn’t expecting to leave alive was he? The lone stallion tapped the open button on the opposite side of the door frame to at least be able to say he tried the obvious. When it failed he turned to the silver mare. “Can you teleport us inside?” The alicorn grimaced as she remembered the bunker under the White House. “It would be risky. I have no idea what’s on the other side and I have no way to craft a diagram to scry what’s inside. We could materialize on top of a bunch of landmines or into a vat of acid. Teleportation will only correct itself if any of us would reappear inside a solid object.” Coming up with a new plan, Conrad bucked the keypad off the wall to expose the wires within. “Loki, think you can hotwire the door?” “Damn it I’m a hacker not an electrician! Besides, did you just forget Mister Swiss Cheese back there?” Loki demonstrated her point by gently pushing Alexia back away from the door. She rearing up and gather a large amount of mana in her hooves before crashing back down on the ground and the earth in front of her ripped its way out from under the steel floor and pierced the door enough to see through. Or at least it was once Loki kicked the shard of stone and caused to crumble into gravel. “You guys need to think outside the box more often.” Conrad grunted in amusement. “What do you think we have you for?” “Too true,” Loki replied as she stepped aside for Alexia to peer through the hole. She heard a multitude of noises and all of them were unpleasant. She could identify the sound of breaking bones, slurping liquids and groans of joyful messy eating. The alicorn scowled. “Be ready for a fight, and probably something nasty from those videos we saw.” After finding a good spot and her mates gathering around her, Tune teleported the group inside. What they found were that all of the failed test subjects had been let out of their tanks and were gorging themselves on the remains of the human captives. Although the equines could only guess at what the subjects’ meal was because none of the chunks of flesh were identifiable anymore. The mystery didn’t last long. Two pegasi researchers finished attaching the last two crates containing the virus to the ceiling mounted cargo conveyor and noticed the four Americans at the far end of the room. The first scientist escorted the cargo out of the room while the second found a microphone to speak to the agents via the public address speakers. “I hope you enjoy our pets. We let them feed on the cattle, but they are still growing, so don’t expect them to ignore fresh meat when it happens to present itself.” Tune snarled and yelled back at him. “Well let’s test that theory shall we?” She selected two random Enforcers, gripped them in her magic and flung them at the pegasus sitting at the cargo controls. The scientist took wing as the two howling Enforcers landed where the pony had just been sitting. The bestial creatures moved to grab him, but stopped as they sniffed the air. A moment later the Enforcers ignored the researcher and turned away to return to their meal. “It was a good plan I’ll grant you,” said the smug pegasus. “But they know who their masters are.” The researcher hit a button and the massive steel doors started closing. He turned back to say one last sarcastic word before it closed. “Farvel!” The two Enforcers that had been thrown across the room were shaken out of their blind march to the piles of meat when the heavy steel doors slammed shut. They turned and looked at the four ponies and all of the fresh meat they represented. The bigger of the two howled a guttural sound that was more akin to a loud growl than anything else. As one, the others turned to their new prey. Conrad stepped forward to place himself between Alexia and the bipedal brutes. “We don’t have time for this.” Loki produced a glass mason jar and tossed it up and down in her hoof. “This looks like a job for my fire hornets.” The others turned to the green mare with a shared question. “Wait, what?” “Fire in the hole!” Loki threw the jar and it smacked one of the Enforcers square in the face. “Bingo!” The green mare’s cheer faded in an instant and bypassed bothered, scared, and went straight on to full on terror as to what she had just done. “Oh um Alex, could you cast a heat shield around us or something? Like right now? As in now now!” The liquid in the broken jar flared to life as a raging purple fire that covered the howling Enforcer head to toe. Scant seconds later, buzzing embers of liquid fire leapt off of the burning corpse and latched onto every other Enforcer in the room and tried to reach the herd, but Tune’s ward kept the hornets at bay. The test subjects were not so fortunate and all of them burned away to cinders within moments. The hornets were not content with just the failed Mion strain, and were starting to bounce all over the room, setting everything on fire. Conrad glared at Loki. “What the hell was that!?” “Run now talk later,” Alexia cried as she bolted the hundred meters between her and the cargo delivery dock on the far side of the lab. The heat shield was not designed with prolonged casting or enduring stability in mind, only instant protection, and it failed before she reached the door controls. Tune screeched to a halt at the controls to find which one opened the giant steel portal. Loki eyed the fire behind them as it rapidly consumed everything in its path. “I guess I should have remembered this earlier, but fire hornets should never be used in an enclosed area with no access to the outside… like ever.” The traces of snaking fire shot every which way, spreading flames in all directions. Most alarmingly was that the hornets themselves were moving rapidly towards the herd at a frightening speed. Fortunately there were only a handful of buttons on the control panel and Tune quickly found the correct one. The heavy doors opened and the herd galloped through the exit. The hornets were too close to risk trying and close the door behind them so the ponies galloped as fast as they could down the long straight hallway. Conrad felt faster in the air flew up and over the herd to be adjacent to the green mare. “What the hell did you throw?” Loki poured on as much speed as she could muster, knowing full well what her creation was capable of. “I told you they’re fire hornets didn’t I?” “That’s not an answer.” He glanced at the streams of living fire that clawed its way past the door and started charging after the ponies like a swarm of locust to wheat. He cursed and saved his breath to match the mares’ pace. They were coming up on the two pegasi researchers who were riding on top of the cargo crate as it zipped along the ceiling. One of them looked behind him and saw the four agents being chased by a wall of fire and started screaming at the operator to make the rail engine go faster. Alexia turned to see an unwanted sight. The hornets bounced off every surface of the rocky corridor, burning everything that had no right to be combustible. The alicorn cringed at the display. There’s no possible way I could snuff that fire out. She regarded the cargo cart ahead of them. “Leave the bastards to the hornets!” The four agents ran past the cart with Conrad waving at them in their passing. “See ya in hell jerkasses!” The passenger looked back with horror and grabbed the intercom that was linked to the other end of the tunnel. “Go on without the last shipment, we’re dead already and the whole place is going up in flames.” Within moments, the two researchers and the crate were consumed by the ever hungry hornets who showed no sign of stopping. Only a mild explosion of compressed gas marked the virus canisters’ destruction as well. The long wide tunnel stretched for three miles up an incline before the racing equines. Barely a mile in, the lighting failed as the power lines were burned through. They were left in darkness for only a moment until the silver mare lit the way with a forward angled horn light. The passage itself was mostly barren save for the two heavy cargo carrier tracks that ran along the ceiling. Though they had not seen it in their flight, the passage lead to other sections of the labs behind them. Every so often a piece of debris or uneven flooring had to be navigated by the ponies in their mad dash from the steadily encroaching fire hornets. While having a mixture of all three tribes within her might seem like a blessing to many, the pegasi’s speed and earth pony’s endurance hardly did the silver mare any good when she only routinely practiced unicorn magic over the others. As such, Tune was starting to lag behind even as she tried using her sore wings to give her frantic sprint a much needed boost. Her muscles ached and screamed for oxygen, but still she pressed on with the others. Sweat clung to her fur and mane on the front while the racing hornets behind her kept her hindquarters bone dry and threatened to roast the end of her tail. Her horn lit up and the mare timed a blink forward when all four hooves were off the ground during her galloping gait. She dared not risk a mass teleport because the others would be momentarily dazed by it. It did however, encourage them to go full tilt in their sprint now that they didn’t feel the instinctual need to hold back for their alpha’s sake. Every time they left the alicorn behind a few paces she would blink forward again. This process repeated itself five times until a light could be seen on the far end. As they feared, the steel doors were sealed shut. The light they saw was the reflection of the fire behind them on the massive doors. All four ponies were panting heavily and running on nothing more than fear and adrenaline. Crimson flinched at another one of Alexia’s blinks when it placed her side by side with the pale yellow mare. “Are we going to blind port through?” Tune spared a glance at the hornets. The fire was scant inches behind them and seemed to accelerate even further at the prospect of finally having cornered four very combustible morsels. “Its our only chance.” Anderson didn’t want to look back. All she needed to know was that her tail was uncomfortably hot. Alexia stopped flapping her wings and held them in tight. “Get in close and hold on to your butts.” The others followed the alicorn’s lead and were about to smack into the steel doors when a brilliant flash of azure light saw them through to the other side. They found themselves inside a large underground hanger where a medium sized cargo plane was throttling up to roar down the lit up runway towards the dark night sky. The aircraft was in such a hurry to make off with its precious cargo that the back ramp was only just starting to raise up as the plane started its take off. “Oh no you don’t!” Before the others could even come close to regaining their wits, Tune teleported the four of them into an empty space above the canisters and three of the researcher Mions and the one remaining unicorn. The momentum of the aircraft made the back ramp smack the ponies, and stalled its hydraulics. It groaned as it tried to finish closing and started to succeed once the four ponies were brought up to the aircraft’s acceleration. “Kill them or get them off the plane!” one of the female Mions commanded as she ran towards the front to find a weapon, leaving two Mions and one unicorn mare to safeguard the cargo. The unicorn tried to blast Crimson off the half open ramp, but between the drowsiness of the two rapid teleports, the dead sprint for over three miles up an incline, and a sudden lurch in the aircraft, the mare could barely stand and flopped back down to the deck. The energy blast passed right over the prone mare and rent a hole large enough to see through. And what was visible through that hole stopped every hostile person from making a move. Alexia gulped and looked back to see the steels doors had been slagged and the fire hornets were already engulfing the back of the hanger, detonating the spare fuel tanks. As if spurred by the enticingly flammable lump of fuel encased in aluminum, the hornets chased after the fleeing aircraft with wild abandon. One of the Mions took advantage of the distraction and kicked the lever to fully reopen the ramp and cut the rear most canister loose so it would roll back and push the barely lucid agents to their demise. Tune saw what he was doing and barely managed to latch her kinesis onto the rolling cargo before it smacked into Conrad and the others. She found several guard wires and tried to wrap enough around the canisters so she could use her focus on offense. The unicorn fired a second kinetic blast at her, but Tune deflected it with a wave of her horn and the spell punched through the airframe inflicting minor structural damage. The distraction was enough for the second Mion to race forward and sacrifice himself by tackling the alicorn far enough to where they rolled back towards the edge of the ramp. At the same time, the aircraft tilted up as it crawled into the air, sending the rear most canisters rolling back and it pushed the four agents and one Mion out of the aircraft and onto the desert sands. The four guard wires Tune managed to wrap around the canisters kept them from fully falling out after them and the remaining Mions and one unicorn fought to reel it back inside. The four ponies and one Mion rolled far enough away from the entrance to the underground runway that when the fire hornets emerged into the open air they withered and died instead of roasting the five prone forms. The hornets left nothing behind save for grey ash. After the alicorn managed to stabilize their roll, she pinned the Mion to the ground with her kinesis. He didn’t bother struggling and let her press him into the sands while Tune checked on her mates. He let off a loud victorious chuckle as he fought against her magic to see the escaping aircraft. He didn’t know if she spoke Equish, but decided to taunt her in it anyway. “Ha ha ha ha. You have failed, thralls of humanity. Soon your masters will be one with the Herald along with the rest of the world.” Alexia lit the surrounding area with her magic and saw her mates were dusting themselves off. Exhausted, but in one piece. That great weight lifted from her withers and she was able to breathe a sigh of relief. She turned to the unresisting scientist who had a sneer plastered over his face. “Do what you will. My sacrifice has earned my place with the gods.” “I wouldn’t bet on it. You guys lost the moment we found this place.” She grabbed a radio from her harness and adjusted the frequency. “Bravo actual, this is Charlie one.” The scientist’s mirth froze over as he couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation. “Package is onboard the bogey retreating from my position. We are not onboard. I repeat, we are not onboard.” A few moments later, the distant sound of fighter craft could be heard high above. Two fast moving points of light appeared and streaked down towards the cargo aircraft. Twin flashes of light later, the plane came down with a sudden case of missing wing. It careened into the flat desert ground a flaming mess and dragged along the soft sands for quite a distance before finally coming to a rest. A few seconds after that, four incendiary bombs were dropped; two on the wreckage and two on the long drag mark in the sands. Nothing remained except for fire and charred scraps of metal. Alexia turned back to the dumbstruck Mion. She heard the fighter pilot’s comm chatter. “Target neutralized, nothing left but a smoking crater.” The Bush’s mission control responded. “Good work Arrow three. Hang loose Charlie one, evac is inbound.” “Copy that Bravo.” When she turned back around to the Mion, he wasn’t wearing the expression she was expecting of him. Instead of fear, anger, outrage, or even disappointment, he possessed a look of complete indifference. “So. One is lost,” he said at length as he stared at the moonlit smoke before facing the what he perceived as an orange unicorn stallion. Alexia’s aura array had permanently twisted the illusion enchantment and would need to be fixed later. “What a shame.” This was not the same voice the Mion possessed earlier. It was calm, collected, and spoke with superiority. He would have made a gesture if the puppet were not restrained by Alexia’s magic. “I have over a dozen more scattered throughout the world, your accomplishments tonight mean little.” By now the other ponies were picking themselves back up with Crimson being closest and having heard the entire conversation. The thing she picked up on most was the voice was impossibly unstable. It fluctuated between unnaturally deep baritone to midrange alto in a seamless transition that did not crack during speech. It most certainly did not sound like the Mion’s voice a few seconds ago. “Who are you?” The person in question regarded what he saw to be a ruby red unicorn stallion, ‘his’ voice matched his image. The Mion thought about his answer for a few seconds as he studied the disguised ponies, unable to pierce the veil of their harnesses’ enchantments. “I am called many things by my flock, annoyingly so at times, but it hardly matters. You however may call me The Herald of the Koridost, and you have garnered my attention.”