Shadow of Evil

by MoonShine

Deceitful trust of humans

Last chapter: He exhales as he starts to feel better; Thomas walks out of the house to leave to get better, on the way out Mathis begins to tell him whether Kieron will survive or not, “Sir, he will get better but due to the rapid healing and shock to his body he may experience psychological downsides, in other words, he might become a bit insane or crazy.” Thomas looks into the house at Kieron but then closes the door and heads home.

The city has been attacked by Viperox forces but the Fade has intercepted these attacks and now has spread to numerous ships that now roam the air space over the city. They have also managed to finally overcome the defences in Chronus that have fallen by Viperox attacks, the Fade has got through them and is now spreading to the remains of the city and into the Viperox ships without any notice from the ponies and the ponies, and the infection is spreading farther and farther with every day.

A SEA soldier is running down a street as is being chased down by at least seven Fades, two ponies and the rest human, he runs round a corner and is confronted by numerous Viperox soldiers, without even thinking he jumps up and kicks off the head of one of them only to fly over the rest of them and land on the other side, he looks back to see the soldiers turning to face and ready to attack but then shout out on confusion as the Fade bump into them and start to bite at them, while the two sides are fighting he runs off down the street to get away as far as possible. This soldier luckily wasn’t just any soldier but was a Talon that had been stationed there long ago to help with the Fade breakout.

He reaches a low building that is dwarfed by the many skyscrapers surrounding it, atop of the building were some other soldiers guarding, one looks down to see him and waves an arm to tell him to get up there, he runs inside and closes the door just as a large crowd of Fades start to swarm the area, some ponies, most humans and now some even Viperox.

He reaches the roof rather quickly and they all get into a dropship, the survivors only reaching a total of about 16 people, the doors close as he gets one last glance of the city, the engines ignite and the dropship is thrown up into the air then forward as they twist forward.

Over the radio a voice can be heard, “All survivors in the area of Chronus, please evacuate ASAP, the Grand Master has ordered the destruction of the city. Repeat, evacuate the city ASAP, the city will be bombed at 0200 hours.” The pilot then look at the radio to see a small image saying, ‘Message sent at 1:24AM’ he looks at the clock on the HUD only for it to say ‘1:58AM’ he panics as he looks back at the passengers getting ready calmly knowing they will be fine, as the dropship starts to move away from the city centre he can see a large dropship heading towards them with two Havoc mechs escorting it, the mechs then break formation, the bay doors below the plane open and a flash of light coming from below it.

He knew right away that it was a missile, the light coming from it was blue not the usual orange, just then he knew it was an Element X bomb, SEA was taking no chances, the missile is heading right for them, he grabs the stick and pulls hard to the right just in time so that the missile flies past them, some of the passengers not even in their seats yet are thrown to the left side of the dropship as they bank hard.

He levels out the plane and hits a button saying ‘Emergency over boost’, he looks back at them and shouts, “Get into your seats, NOW!” they then clamber up into any of the spare seats and quickly clip themselves in, the engines glow bright as they firstly start using the afterburner, the bomber already turned round and heading the other way, the mechs long gone. He watches a small part of his HUD which shows the missile after he locked onto it; it soon reaches the city centre and hits dead on the middle of the city. The boosters activate and the dropship is thrown forward at immense speed, the pilot and passengers experiencing at least 6G’s of force pushing on them, one of them even passing out from the G’s, the pilot using his training to keep conscious as he manoeuvres the dropship past the many Viperox ships the fill the air, and the SEA ships.

The dropship somehow avoids all shots that fly past them and hit SEA ships, and vice versa. They soon come to see Alverton in sight; the boosters suddenly shut off along with all other power, the HUD goes dead, the pilot panics as he presses the ignition buttons and pulls in some switches to try a manual re-boot but nothing happens, the dropship starts to lose altitude as the altitude meter starts to tick back at high speed, 12000ft....9000ft....5000ft, he looks back at the others and shouts at them to brace for impact, just then the dropship hits a low flying Viperox ship and bounces off to crash into the ground, the dropship digging into the ground as it slows down, soon coming to a full stop and a trail showing where it has slid across the ground.

The crew disembark quickly and ready their weapons to see Viperox ships in the distance, nothing was in the local area of them, and they get out along with the unconscious soldier of a stretcher, all of them then head towards Alverton on foot.

As they get closer they can see a Havoc mech heading in their direction, one soldier pulls out some flares and cracks them so that the blinding light erupts from them, he runs forwards while waving them like mad, the mech begins to fall and it starts to land, it must have seen them. The soldier drops the flares and heads back to the others to help only for them to look past him and start to run the other way, he turns to see the mech heading right for them as if they weren’t there, he goes to run but didn’t have enough time as the mech lands right on him and grinds across the floor, throwing piece of him up into the air.

The others run and shoot pot-shots at the mech but it stops and the core opens, they quickly dive into a crater that had been created by a stray missile, the pilot of the mech jumps out and runs towards them, they pop their head over the edge to see it coming right at them, they pull out their guns and start to open fire on it. As it gets close a large explosion blinds as it erupts behind the figure, a Viperox ship had been hit by a hyper-velocity round coming from Alverton, the ships falling to the ground in a pile of scrap metal.

They look around to find the figure gone, they search for it but they can see nothing but darkness and the Viperox ship plus Alverton in the distance, the pilot and soldier staying with the stretcher to make sure the soldier is alright. Suddenly the pilot collapses after something snaps his neck, the soldier with him pulls out his pistol and aims at the pilot then around him, nothing was about, his breathing heavy as he searches, “HAY, something’s here!” he shouts to the other who turn to see the soldier collapse as his head is ripped off and a laser blade coming out of nowhere.

They open fire on where it is only to hit the ground and the head fall to the floor, one by one the other soldiers start to fall to the ground by gunshots at necks breaking or being stabbed, soon only the Talon and two soldiers are left stood at the edge of the crater with a pile of bodies in the centre of it.

“SCREW THIS, MAN!” one of the soldiers shouts as he finally cracks and climbs out of the crater and legs it for Alverton, the others try to stop him but he’s already gone, they then run off after him to catch up as they would be better off in a group than separated.

They now and then look back to see nothing but the mech that came to them and some Viperox and SEA ships in the distance, the sky now a dark red thanks to the raging war.

They keep running but don’t look back any more, one of them trips over but the other soldier keeps running, the Talon stops and goes back for him, the soldier on the floor scurries to his feet but is lifted into the air, the Talon sees this and charges for behind the soldier at full speed, the power armour allowing him to go at least twice the speed of a human, the soldier it stabbed by the laser blade from before but then is quickly thrown to the side as the Talon shoulder dives at it and hits something.

The Talon and the figure fall to the ground; he quickly raises a hand to punch only to see the helmet of the figure fold back and can see that it is Kieron; he rears his head in confusion, Kieron grins with a manic look upon his face, his pupils tiny and a scar over his eye and down his cheek.

The Talon falls back off him and stares at him as Kieron slowly gets up and walks over to him, the helmet folds around his head before a slightly muffled voice says to him, “You now will die, the infection can’t be allowed to spread.”

He pulls back an arm and the laser blade emits from his arm, the Talon objecting while scurrying back along the floor as he knows he isn’t infected. Kieron walks towards him as he tries to get away, just as Kieron goes to thrust down at him a gunshot impacts and causes him to stumble back a few steps, he looks over to where it came from to, he can see the remaining soldier running towards him with gun out aiming at him.

Another shot hits him and once he gets balance he runs for the soldier who fires again but Kieron dodges then turn invisible as he cloaks, the Talon shouting to tell him to run. The soldier stops and looks about for the figure, shoots a few rounds to see if they hit something, the Talon gets up and switches his visual to thermal to see Kieron slowly sneaking up to the soldier from the side, he runs over to the soldier without Kieron seeing and pulls at him causing Kieron to fall to the ground as he dives for him.

The Talon runs with the soldier over his shoulder, somehow still able to run as fast as before, Kieron quickly gets up, roars at them then takes pursuit, the soldier trying his best to aim at him as they try to get away.

They soon come to the border that was set up for protection of Alverton, the Talon doesn’t even show ID as they right away know he is one and quickly open the gates for them to get in, once through the gates begin to shut, just as they are almost shut, Kieron pushes himself through the gap, his cloak coming off as he does and the gates end up with a Kieron sized hole in the joint where the two doors join.

The guards witness this and run after him not realising it to be him, they chase down the figure down many streets after he loses the Talon and soldier but then noticed them running after him, he leads them down to a dead end and puts his hands against the wall then turns to face the many guards stood with guns aimed at him.

“Kieron...hey, Kieron, WAKE UP!” he hears as someone shouts.

He suddenly wakes up to see Moonshine stood with a bag in her mouth, she puts it down on the table and walks over to him, “It was all a dream?” he asks, she looks at him as if he wasn’t right in the head.

“What was? Never mind, your wounds are healing really quickly, in fact I would say they HAVE healed, you can get up now if you want to.”

“Since when did you get a degree in being a nurse?”

“Hay, you may be better but it doesn’t call for any sarcasm.”

“Fine...” he says before looking over to the bag then putting his head back down on the pillow to rest for a bit and think about the dream, the light coming in from outside, it must be at least 12:30PM looking at the bright light coming in.

Moonshine goes to leave but then stops and looks back, “By the way, did you hear about the soldiers that got killed not far from here, they were survivors from Chronus.” She says before walking out of the house, Kieron lifts up quickly to look at her but she was gone, it WASN’T a dream after all, he puts a hand to his face as he can’t believe that he did that to them.

Thomas pits the key into the slot and turns only for the key to turn most of the way =and then suddenly stop, it was already open, he looks up at the door, pulls out the key and pushes the door open, he walks inside and looks about, no-one was about, “I must have forgotten to lock it when I went out, ha ha ha.” He says to himself, just then he looks over to the table next to his chair to see a briefcase, he walks towards it and his chair jerks as something gets off it.

It was Claire, she gets up and stands behind the case, “Claire, what are you doing here?”

“I brought you a gift, a present for you, I think you will like it, no, love it.”

“Oh really, is it port, scotch or whiskey?”

“No, none of them, something much better, much more invaluable.” She replies before undoing the clips as he walks over to it, she pulls back the lid to reveal six tiaras, all with a jewel at the top of them, all different colours.

“Claire, is that.....the Elements?” he asks as he gently picks up one to look into the jewel to see his reflection.

“Yes, yes they are, I told you that you would like them. If you don’t know why then I will tell you why I went and got them.” She says to him, he looks at her while putting the tiara back, “We can turn them from being the Elements of Harmony into the Elements of Chaos, we will use them to rule this planet and wipe out all of them.” She adds.

He looks at her with a tear in his eye, his evil trait has finally rubbed off on someone, and he puts a hand on her cheek and comments, “Well done Claire, you may have just turned the tide of this war.”

Author's notes: This is how Claire looks, https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-1ReHFFxBLa0/T7YW7m6-9fI/AAAAAAAAIHk/yTRfMjinSjE/s413/Claire.JPG