//------------------------------// // Level 2: Outbreak // Story: Resident Pon-Evil - Operation: Equestrian Downfall // by Delta 727 //------------------------------// Days have passed since the H.S.S. lost the Harrow's Virus and witnessed its metamorphosis in William Buck. Equestria is also with disease due to a P-Virus outbreak. Harmony's Elements are ordered to destroy evidence at the Town Hall linking Harrow Corporation to the epidemic. *Begin Tramsmission* *... Harrow Login... Network Confirmed... Loading... Access Granted* "The failure to contain the Harrow's Virus has left our Security Service in a precarious situation. Delta has been deployed to contain the situation... Chaos is not responding. H.S.S. has deployed their forces." "H.S.S. Team 4, report." "Command, we're seeing a lot of RPD and civillian activity in the downtown area." "Team 5 reporting! Gunfire in the hospital... Command! We have multiple contacts!" "Understood... Move to contain." "Ma'am, please calm down! What is the nature of your emergency!?" "They're trying to get in the windows! Please help us! Oh Celestia, they're in the house! Ru-..." "They're everywhere!" "Containment failed! We need extraction!" ..... "To ensure H.S.S. is to survive, the story of what happened must never be told. We need to make sure the truth dies, along with each scrap of evidence, and every survivor... Harrow's Security Service Task Force. Commence Operation: Equestrian Downfall." --- "Let's move out." Blade said. "Our objective, Town Hall, is up ahead." "Harrow's End is making us responsible for this... 'Accident'..." X-Ray said aloud. He was lucky the communications were currently down. "We're not the ones who clean up their mess." Chainlink said. "Why are they deciding to throw us back into it, hooves first?" "Command isn't getting us out of here until we're sure we've destroyed all evidence linking them, and us, to the outbreak." Blade went on, "And I plan to keep my hooves clean and be alive by morning. Let's go." Delta climbed down the catwalk to the ground floor. They were inside a large storage area, with only one exit door. X-Ray activated the hatch release, and the team cautiously advanced forward. The room was pitch dark. Only the sound of a few generators broke the silence. They advanced around them, reaching another door. "Command." Acid said. "We have just reached Position 1. Orders?" "... Position confirmed, Elements. Proceed into the containment zone." Nopony on the team liked the way he said, 'Containment'. They opened the door into what looked to be a janitor's closet on sterroids, but it was mostly empty and still pitch dark. They began to advance up a small staircase, when Chainlink noticed something near it in a small patch of light. "Ugh... Guys, we've got a body." It was a member of the Equestria Police, and was wearing a thin blue suit with black covering the legs.... Only it was lacking a head, and one of his hooves were chopped off. They began to advance up the staircase, but when they neared the door, loud sounds of groaning sounded from the next room. The team all stood around the entrance. "There's something up ahead..." Acid spoke. "Who... Will be going first...?" X-Ray looked around at the team. "...No one...? Fine... I will..." He walked straight up to the door, pressed the release button, and the door slid open. As soon as it slid open, a grotesquely zombified mare grabbed him, pulling him into the room. "Infected...!" X-Ray barely managed to yell. "Kill them...!" The entire team opened fire. It was messy. Limbs flying, blood splattering, groans of dying infected everywhere. At the end of the firefight, bodies (Or at least the remnants of them) littered the floor. "Ugh..." X-Ray said. "Looks like... They were eating each other..." "They're quite the specimens..." Acid spoke. "I wonder what motivates them..." Delta advanced into the next room, an old office with papers covering nearly every surface. There were only 3 zombies in the room. "I'll take care of these..." Blade said. After activating his cloaking (Did I mention that already?), he slowly moved forward. After that, a gash appeared in the neck of one zombie, an upward slash through the chest of the next, and a cut-off front leg with the addition of one of the most violent moments of gut-spilling that would make anypony sick to describe to the third. Blade reappeared, cleaning blood from his hooves. "Now was that too violent for the rest of you?" There was no answer. The team only stood silently, Acid with a face of disgust and stone cold annoyance. "You're quite well at defiling the undead. Those used to be ponies, you know." "Does it matter?" Chainlink spoke. "They're all freaks now after what that virus did to them. I say they're begging for a slaughter." After a few more rooms (And a few more scenes of killing and maybe a little slashing), they were about to enter a room when a white, blonde-maned stallion in green padded armour that lacked a helmet busted through the door. "Hold your fire!" Chainlink yelled. "He's on our side." "Dmitri Zernovski. Canterlot Security Service, B-Squad. You're Harrow's Security Service? Upper management must have realized that their mad scientist bucked them over with the virus. It's about time..." "Then what are you doing here?" Blade put his hoof on his gun trigger. "My team was sent here to rescue citizens, but there's no time for that. Town Hall is a mess. We're trying to find a safe zone." "Aww, running scared already?" Chainlink taunted. "I guess you guys should be glad to see us. How much have you let it get out of hoof?" "Town Hall is crawling with infected, and some unidentified military personnel. They're looking for something. Why? What are you doi-" "Enough..." X-Ray cut him off. "I say... We silence him..." "... Let's let him go." Blade said. "He'll probably rot with the rest of the infected anyway. Let's go." "All the best with your 'mission' " Dmitri said before walking back the way Delta came from. The team moved through the same door into a stairway shaft. "The Town Hall has been locked down. Access the security pannel and override it." "Copy that, Command..." X-Ray said. Delta advanced up the stairs to a door surrounded by a few bodies, but a largely suspicious pool of blood coming from the door. When they opened it, the entire hallway was spattered with blood, zombified ponies lumbering about. "Go...!" X-Ray barely yelled, and the team ran through the hallway, blasting every zombie pony in their path, splattering the rest of the hall in blood. Lovely. A large door came into view. Chainlink bucked it open, and a bright spotlight shined on them all. "SpecOps!" Blade yelled. "Let's get the buck outta here!" X-Ray gunned down a few. Acid tripped one over, sending a spray of bullets into it. Blade stabbed a SpecOps in the neck, throwing it to the ground. Chainlink snapped the neck of one more SpecOps soldier as they reached the other side into the main building of Town Hall. "Command... We're inside Town Hall..." X-Ray said as they entered. They rounded a corner, through a door, and into a large surveillance room, full of monitors. X-Ray walked over to one of the monitors, and eyed it suspiciously. It looked like a security feed. "Good. Now your team can access the main security feed and override the lockdown." Command said through their radio. "Observe... That monitor there..." X-Ray pointed his hoof at a monitor. "This is a security feed from earlier today..." A video began to play on the monitor. It was Dmitri. He stopped in the doorway of the exit of the surveillance room, but he turned, and shot one of his team members in the leg. Dmitri closed the door and locked in his team. A large horde of infected ponies lumbered in. The soldiers bucked and banged at the door, crawled onto machines, and the injured soldier pulled a pistol. But it was not enough. The soldiers were overrun, and promptly eaten alive by the horde. "That's Dmitri and his team..." Blade said. "They didn't put up much of a fight." "I hope you don't mind me saying, but we have a mission to complete." Acid said next. At that moment, zombies burst in from every door, crawled out from crawlspaces, and even Dmitri's team stood up. "Let's move! Now!" As they blasted their way through the room and up the corridor (Plenty more infected blood spilled along with the second deaths of Dmitri's team), they moved up a stairway and into an open balcony across the center of city hall. Two SpecOps soldiers were shooting at infected ponies down the way. Blade and X-Ray snuck up, stabbing one in the neck and cutting the other one through the back. After walking through several more bloodstained hallways, (Possibly several more unidentified body fluids and parts), they entered the intelligence storage room. Of course, this meant destroying every hard drive in it, erasing the evidence of linking the H.S.S. to the outbreak. And then, yet again, a massive horde of zombies. "Good. Now proceed to the records room and finish the job." Command ordered. Delta proceeded into the next bloodstained hall, and back out onto another balcony. Advancing around it to the right through more SpecOps and a long firefight, they moved up a central staircase at the North side of the walkways. Two doors led in front of them, and inside was a room full of documents. "Records room located..." X-Ray said. "Let's... Watch it all burn..." "Good. Now find that evidence and get rid of it!" And so they did. They found every last document, file, staffing plan, and recording leading the H.S.S. to the outbreak. As of then, their hooves were clean. "Command... The evidence... Has been destroyed..." X-Ray spoke. "Mission accomplished." Chainlink said. "Now let's get the buck outta here!" The team exited the records room, leaving it in a smoldering pit of flames and ash. After a quick ressuply in a downstairs ammunitions room, they exited to find Dmitri on a high platform in a largely open room. "Dmitri! Why are you doing all this? And why did you kill your team!?" Blade yelled at him. "Hahahaha..." Dmitri laughed. "They served their purpose most excellently! Just as YOU will!" He fired a pistol shot in their direction, but he missed as if he deliberately wasn't aiming... "Dmitri! Stay where you are!" Blade yelled back. Acid darted her green eyes around at a scurrying on the roof, and a horde of infected emerged from a hole in the ceiling. But they looked very different from the mutated forms of the other ponies. They had long, sharp claws, had more flexible legs relative to a frog, and were lacking eyes and skin with their brains exposed on their heads. They crawled around the roof like spiders and lashed out with long razor tongues. As Delta pointed around their guns, it was inevitable: They had just walked into a nest of the creatures. "Everypony out! Move!" Blade yelled. Killing the creatures one by one with shots to their exposed brains, the team dashed around bookcases and fallen debris to a door at the end of the room. As Blade tried to open it, it wouldn't budge. "It's locked. It needs a keyca-!" Just then, Chainlink bucked out the door. "No we don't, now move!" They exited out back into the open courtyard at the front, and it was filled with only a few infected, and made their way through in a few unexciting shots. Okay, an enormous horde of them, and they blasted their way out one pile of limbs at a time. Satisfied? They burst their way out of Town Hall, and into the city streets. "Good. Now that the evidence is gone, continue on with your mission, and we'll look into this security officer, Dmitri." Command ordered, and Delta galloped off, hooftrot by hooftrot, into the night. *Transmission Ended*