//------------------------------//
// Tactical Strike 
// Story: Blacklight: Dead Man Walking 
// by The Salesman 
//------------------------------//

	Deadman’s eyes darted around the area as he flicked on his HRV once more, moving quietly with the now snoring Princess of the Night being carried upon his shoulders.
He was approaching the castle, having successfully avoided the sudden influx of activity throughout the night. The aerial scans of the area gave him all the more reason for him to return her to the castle as soon as possible. Whatever had caused such a panic, it was surely not good.
Hearing a sharp cracking noise from the direction he was walking, he spun into cover and flicked his HRV on. In the castle there was a large amount of fighting between two varieties of yellow shape, and Deadman instantly came to the realization that they were being invaded.
Action was needed. First, he needed to drop Princess Luna off where she would be safe from harm.
Looking around, he located Princess Celestia and a group of guards were holding in a tower, which he assumed was her personal quarters.
Shrugging, he turned off his HRV and marched along the outer perimeter of the castle. He was not dumb enough to enter through the front door when an invasion was going on and the attackers were already inside. His plan was to find another entrance, possibly a door from the gardens or something similar.
Circling around, every so often checking his HRV to make sure there were no invading forces coming towards him, he found a site he knew well. It was the hedge maze which he had visited in the morning.
Smiling, he made his way towards the area he had been led to earlier. He remembered that there was a path leading towards the area he saw Celestia was in. Double checking to make sure she was still there, he continued his long walk with a passed out princess in his arms.
As he approached the door, he heard chittering on the other side which caused him to immediately freeze. Flashing his HRV, he noted that there was a group of three hostiles on the other side of the door similar to those ponies with both wings and a horn, but they were much more lean looking as well as having bodies which were far more damaged looking. He could not imagine that wings, horns, or legs with holes in them were practical at any level. Knowing the bodies of the position of those standing in between him and his goal, he now needed a plan.
Inspiration dawned on him as he saw a small rock lying in the garden. He gently placed the princess on the ground to one side of the door before standing beside her and throwing the rock hard against the castle wall on the other side of the door. Almost immediately the door swung open and the first creature, covered in some sort of black chitin, exited the castle and turned towards the sound.
Deadman drew his tomahawk but waited. It was not time for action yet. The second creature exited soon after the first, but he still held position.
As soon as he saw the snout of the third creature cross the threshold of the open door and turn towards the source of the earlier noise, he sprung into action.
Springing forward with his tomahawk, he brought it down down hard on the neck of the one in the rear, the blade slicing rather cleanly past the initial hard layer before it bit into hard bone, a second skeletal structure in addition to the layer of chitin plastered on top. He was not biologist, but he was certain that it was not normal.
The other two in the line were beginning to react to the cutting sounds behind them, undoubtedly they had heard the sound of the ultrasonic tomahawk sinking into their comrade’s neck.
Yanking his axe free as the body dropped, Deadman sprinted forward as they began to turn. He had to eliminate them quickly and quietly to make sure escort duty was a tiny bit more safe.
He threw the axe directly at the being first in line while closing on the second before pouncing in close quarters combat as his target turned around and he saw for the first time the pupil lacking eyes of his enemy.
As he grabbed the neck of his enemy he heard the distinct noise of his thrown weapon cutting into the flesh of the other remaining hostile followed by a gurgle. It seemed likely to him the axe landed in its neck.
The creature in his grip began to panic, raising his hooves to try and push him off but its strategy was rather ineffectual. The creature was not only outmatched strength wise, but it was also in a bad position to strike back from, especially for a quadruped.
He twisted the neck of the creature once in one direction before following up rapidly with a twist in the other direction, causing it to go limp in his grip as he felt the internal bone structure as well as portions of the external bone structure give away under his grip.
Dropping the creature and making his way over towards its fallen comrade in front, he crouched down and removed his axe before pressing a few buttons on his wrist to designate all of these creatures as hostile. making his way back over to the princess. As he picked her up again, he remembered the stained glass window. These creatures did hold quite a similarity to the ones which he had seen in that piece of artwork, perhaps they were the same species if not the same faction.
With Princess Luna resting on his shoulders, he marched into the castle, ever watchful and rerouting his course as needed to avoid groups of hostiles. Facing off against an enemy without any advanced scanning equipment was a pleasant change.
After some time of careful avoidance, Deadman had reached the beginning of a tall staircase spiraling upwards. Sighing, he flashed on his HRV, confirming that they were still up there, before beginning his long climb upwards.
As he approached the top of the stairs, he flashed his HRV and saw a small group of guards standing ready outside of the doors of the princess’ quarters, with a fair few more guards within.
Deadman rounded the corner and was immediately greeted with the guard ponies at door pointing their spears at him. Resisting the urge to incapacitate them on the spot, he said “VIP secured, I require entry to deliver her to the designated safe-zone.”
The guards, to their credit, didn’t budge from their spots and still held their spears at the ready.
“I require entry to the safe-zone for the VIP to be delivered. Non-compliance will result in this safe-zone being declared rogue and appropriate action being taken,” he threatened.
The guards flinched a bit more at this, causing Deadman to latch onto this momentary weakness for all it was worth.
“Go get Celestia, I saw plainly that she is in there by the way so don’t bother telling me she isn’t here, and tell her I have brought escorted her sister back here safely,” he stated and gestured to the unconscious alicorn on his shoulder.
The two guards looked at each other for a few seconds before one of them made his way over to the door and opened it, slipping into the room which only had a few soft mumbles emanating from within, which were almost immediately quieted by the opening of the door.
As soon as the pony was in through the door it shut behind him, and silence reigned outside as he turned quietly turned to lean with his back against the wall. Granted, carrying Luna made it a bit awkward, but he pulled it off. It was a small price to pay to disallow any attackers the ability to sneak up on him from behind.
Several minutes of awkward silence later the door opened again, and the guard pony from earlier stepped back out and walked towards his previous position before motioning towards the now open door.
Stepping inside, he saw that there were far more figures of importance than he saw in here before. Celestia, Captain Shining Armour, Princess Cadance, and Princess Twilight Sparkle were all around a table, with Celestia at its head, looking down on a series of maps with some figurines placed on it with a very clear resemblance to their forces and the forces of their enemies. This was their command server.
He felt the need to reprimand them for placing themselves where one well placed artillery shot could crumble the entirety of their upper command, but he resisted the urge when he saw Celestia glaring at him.
“What did you do to my sister?” she snarled, leaning forward over the table a bit towards her as the guards around the room as well as the other VIPs at the table became increasingly worried.
What exactly had he done? All he did was evacuate her after they were attacked because she was unable to support herself on the way back.
The realization came to him moments later when he realized how bad that must have looked from an outside perspective. A creature of a species previously unknown which was constantly in heavy armour appeared in a drinking establishment with one of the co-rulers, followed by the co-ruler being incapacitated mentally and the warrior rearranging the face of a citizen before disappearing into the night with the co-ruler over his shoulder. It explained those ponies doing searches of the area.
“I evacuated her because she incapacitated herself on rye and nachos before we were engaged by hostiles on the way out,” he stated, keeping his voice carefully level as he looked around the room, searching for somewhere to place Princess Luna down. He had to get back out there soon. The siege must be broken.
“And why am I supposed to believe you? There were multiple eye witnesses that said that you carried my sister out into the night and injured a pony who tried to stop you!” she exclaimed, causing him to look around uncomfortably. He hoped that this room was sound-proofed. They couldn’t let them know where they were.
“Because they seem to only have part of the story. The pony who tried to stop me attacked me first, and I used force to secure your sister from other potential attackers with minimal risk to her. Besides, if I had any ill intents why would I come here? You know as well as I that I could have removed myself from his city with your sister if that was my intent,” he explained, moving over to a couch and gently laying the sleeping Princess of the Night down while keeping his eyes on Celestia the entire time.
“Then why avoid the night guards looking for you?” Celestia queried before glancing towards one of the maps, which looked to be of the Canterlot area and had several grids on it. IF he were to hazard a guess he would say that was the map of the area they were searching for him.
“Because I had no proof of their intentions. If an attack was to occur on your sister it would be possible that it was done by someone who could access guard uniforms. However, I knew that if I could find you it would be a safe area from potential assassins if they were attempting to be at all subtle,” he said, growing rather bored of this little session of questions with obvious answers.
Celestia stared at him for several seconds more before she let out a sigh of relief. “Fine,” she said, “I believe you. Will you help us?”
“I believe we can make an arrangement, Princess Celestia,” Deadman said, formulating a plan rather quickly.
“Now is not the time, Deadman,” Celestia growled as the rest of the table continued to be silent.
“Please let me finish, your highness,” he requested before walking up to the table and beginning to look over the maps “The terms of the agreement I propose is that you lift the restrictions towards my weaponry for the duration of this siege as well as any regulations in regards to the treatment of the invaders. In return I help your force and use the HRV to locate hostiles accurately right here and now for you.” At this point he didn’t care about the rest of the command and some of the guards knowing about the HRV. Celestia and Luna could just leak information about it whenever they felt like it anyhow.
Celestia paused for a second before her expression brightened. “You can consider it a deal,” she confirmed, causing him to start to reach up to flip on his HRV before the voice of another pony gave him pause.
“Wait a moment, wait a moment, what is HRV and how exactly does it help us right now?” Captain Shining Armour asked.
“The Hyper Reality Visor is a technology employed by Blacklight Agents which enhances the capabilities of an agent further. Long story short, it allows us to locate objectives, targets, hostiles and the like through walls as well as providing various miscellaneous functions,” he explained.
“And you’ve had this all this time and neglected to tell anyone?” Shining Armour asked, his expression indicating suspicion. He would likely be suspicious too, if an alien was concealing something that big.
“I assure you, both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna knew of its existence. We met earlier and discussed it,” Deadman said and smiled under his helmet, carefully avoiding the fact they extracted knowledge of it from his dreams.
An inquisitive look in Twilight’s eye told him he would have to avoid her for a good while after this blew over. He considered asking Cadance subtly to save him from her, but the very same suspicious look in her eye as the the one in Captain Armour’s stopped that thought in its tracks. The maze was probably a safe place to lay low.
“Anyhow,” Celestia intervened “We need the positions of the changelings, Deadman, what have you got?”
“Why don’t you take a look for yourself, your highness? Be ready to rearrange your maps. Something that shows up yellow is a pony, something orange is a changeling,” he said before turning on his HRV and pressing a few buttons on his wrist to link up his HRV to the holographic projector and turning it on too.
He took up a position where he could see as much of the castle as he could before saying “Update away,” follow by the rapid shifting of the tokens on the map. While they were doing that, he noticed one thing in particular: down deep below the castle there was a fairly high amount of immobilized ponies and active ‘changelings’ as he heard Celestia call them. A changeling down there that drew his eye was one which stood a good deal taller than the rest of the them by about a factor of two, in a similar way that Celestia towered above the rest of the ponies, and to a lesser degree Luna as well. Perhaps taller changelings tended to be important, as he didn’t see another example of such a large specimen. He should bring that up with them when they were done moving figurines.
A few moments later,the last statuette settling as he turned off both his HRV and the projector. “I have an inquiry,” he said.
“Go ahead,” Celestia said, nodding.
“I saw a changeling twice as tall as the rest down with the captured ponies. Is it significant in any major way?” he asked.
Both Princess Cadance and Shining Armour shuddered at the mention of a larger changeling.
“It could be their Queen, Chrysalis,” Princess Cadance said “She was responsible for their last invasion too, during Shining Armour and I’s wedding. She is powerful and able to cast many types of foul magic. She is also able to truly shapeshift her body into that of another pony, rather than just casting an illusion which makes her look like one.”
Having effectively confirmed his hypothesis regarding the changelings and the tapestry, he nodded before saying “She is near a bunch of other ponies. They could be either castle staff, guards, or both. I think that it would be the most efficient path to both free them and cut the invasion off at its head if we attack that location.”
“And how do you suggest we do that? Our forces are split up and if she is by all those captives, she is in the dungeons, which would bottleneck what forces we do have into places where they would be sitting ducks to a powerful enough spell. One ball of fire could kill dozens in such an enclosed place.


“Blacklight Agents are recruited from special forces and trained as well as geared up even further. If I were you, I would be more worried about how much you have to clean the area of the dungeon I kill her in before it is usable again,” Deadman stated, ignoring the bit of absurdity that was the power of love bit. In a land full of magic he expected that something like that would pop up eventually.
“Do not underestimate her, I made that same mistake in the past,” Celestia said as Deadman began to walk towards the door.
“I shall not, this will be done by the book,” he stated and smiled, stepping through the door and closing it behind him, ignoring the stiffening of the two guards he had passed by earlier. He imagined that no one had any idea the rules about agent conduct would come into play on another world, but whoever designed them would likely be proud of them being held up even here.
As he trudged down the stairs, he took out his pistol and slipped a magazine into it before slipping it back into position and doing the same with his LMG. The familiar weight of his gun in his arms comforted him as he flicked on his HRV and confirmed the positions of the changelings. While we may not like it, he had to remain as quiet as possible prior to his arrival at the hostile leader.
Too much gunfire before he had her backed into a corner could scare her off, and an enemy commander on the run was a truly dangerous thing. Necessity was the mother of innovation, after all, and an intelligent being with both pressure on them and time could come up with unpredictable strategies.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs his eyes darted left and right before he took off down a corridor, rerouting his path every once and a while to avoid a group of changelings he spotted through the HRV. Awareness of your surroundings was the pivotal factor in winning or losing a fight, and he had awareness beyond that of a normal person.
After a few minutes of running he recognized a door to the dungeons right around the corner. One problem was that the was a group of changelings outside. The second problem was that they were all facing away from the door, so he had no chance of sneaking up on them.
Going around to locate another entrance could take too long, they could dig in heavily in that time period. Weighing that against alerting them to his presence, he decided to go loud. The stealth part of this operation was over.
Gripping his gun tightly, he placed his back up against the wall before pivoting out into the open while aiming down the sights. The first shot was his, they were taking their time with processing his appearance.
He fired off a single, loud shot at the furthest most left changeling, splattering its brains on the wall behind it as well as showering the area in bits of skull.
He smiled as he leveled the gun against the next changeling and fire out a three shot burst directly into its chest, downing it as the rest of the changelings began to react to his presence. This brought back pleasant memories.
As the other three began to run towards him, he fired off a single round into two of them, dropping them also before retreating behind the corner. The last one was close, and he didn’t want to use any more ammo than needed. He was on a limited supply, after all. Now that he thought about it, he should have done without the three round burst.
Waiting at the corner, he put away his LMG and instead took out his hammer, checking to make sure that it was ready as the changeling approached.
As soon as its head appeared from around the corner, he brought the hammer down hard on its skull, the captive bolt triggering and multiplying the force of the blow to cause its skull to explode in a shower of red pieces. With its body tumbling from its previous momentum, he noted that the pieces of bone impacted from the impact site were bigger than expected. Perhaps the presence of both and endoskeleton and exoskeleton was what was to blame for that.
He checked his HRV once more before he walked down the steps, opening the door and stepping into the darkness of the dungeon, which was quickly corrected by his visor.
All the torches in the dingy prison had been extinguished and in places there was a green and black coating on the walls. He had a very bad feeling about this.
As he walked through the dungeon, he flashed his HRV again. He couldn’t see Chrysalis anywhere. Where did she go?
“I believe we need to have a bit of a talk,” he heard a very alien female voice behind him say.
Whirling around, Deadman spotted a much, much taller changeling standing in the middle of the hallway. He resisted the urge to shoot her for now. She indicated that she wanted to talk, and he would. Perhaps he could glean some weakness from what she said to be used against the rest of the changelings if this assassination did not have the intended effect.
The queen was for a changeling tall, on par with Celestia’s height, and her chitin was jet black, even a bit more than the rest of the changelings he had seen. Long, green hair flowed down from the top of her head to close to the ground, and her tail was of similar colour and length. Insect-like wings rested jutted from her body, attaching to a dark green section of her upper body, which became lighter the farther it went down her back. In addition, it connected to a glossy looking area on which circled her midsection. A wicked looking horn jutted from her forehead, looking rather sharp and generally menacing.
What really contributed to that appearance was the holes in the end of her legs as well as in her horn, hair, and wings. The fangs were a nice touch. He couldn’t exactly tell if they had any use or if they were merely for intimidation.
The pupils of her eyes had a similar gradient effect with similar shades to her back, and her iris was slitted. Overall, she would be a rather intimidating specimen. That is, if he was a civilian and unarmed. Both his training and his arms made her far less intimidating.
“Alright, speak,” He said, training his gun on her but not firing yet.
She paused for a second, her horn glowing a sickly green before she disappeared and reappeared in a green flash a few feet closer to him.
“I simply want to help you find peace so far from home, lord Deadman,” she purred, her horn beginning to glowing green again, but more intensely than before.