“Now that we know where they are, let’s go gear up and take them out,” said Pinkie.
“It might also give us more time for observation,” Twilight mused. “Although I’m pretty sneaky. I might be able to infiltrate quietly.”
“If we’re buyin’ RPGs, then we aint’ doing this quietly,” said Applejack.
“Well, at least we’ve decided on a course of action,” said Rarity.
Excited by the prospect of explosions, Rainbow happily drove them back to the black market.
Counting out the stolen money carefully, they found that they had exactly enough for an RPG tube and several rounds.
“Does anypony else think this game went weird places?” said Applejack. “We’re stealin’ and workin’ with arms dealers.”
“It’s a game,” Twilight reminded her. “Amoral, perhaps, but I don’t see anything wrong with it in a fictional setting, especially since we’re doing it for the greater good. I don’t think I believe that adage that games make you violent, either. We were beating up bad guys long before we started role playing games.”
“Yeah, there aren’t any arms dealers around Ponyville anyway,” said Spike. He grinned and wiggled his claws. “There would be no business. I’ve got the only set of arms in Ponyville.”
Pinkie laughed.
“All right, let’s go back and blow up some bad guys!” cheered Pinkie, hefting the RPG in the back seat of the Suburban.
“I’m afraid someone else will have to do it,” said Twilight. “We need you to breach doors.”
“Well, okay, I guess I can do that too.”
“Applejack, Rainbow, you use the RPG to clear a path and set up a distraction. The rest of you come with me to hit the other side.”
“What about me?” said Spike.
“Fluttershy, stay with the vehicle and protect him,” ordered Twilight.
They pulled up to the building. Spike went to work on the internal surveillance systems again. Everyone else connected their headsets to get realtime updates from him.
“Are we up?” said Twilight. She looked around the vehicle and got nods and thumbs up from all of them. “All right, let’s do this.”
The five that were going piled out of the truck, racking bolts and readying up. The hijabs Rarity had made would do well to conceal their identities.
The five of them hit the building hard and fast. Applejack steadied the RPG on her shoulder and Spike gave her a direction to point it in order to do the most damage. Rainbow made sure to clear the back blast.
“Twenty!”
Applejack chuckled. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Yeah, wow, you just killed all the bad guys on the first floor.”
AJ dropped the empty launch tube and followed Rainbow into the building through the hole they had made. Taking an RPG indoors was a bad idea. It wouldn't meet the minimum arming range, if nothing else.
The two of them found the room they broke into to be full of exploded bad guys. “Well, that was easy,” remarked Applejack.
“Everyone’s dead,” Spike reported to the group.
“So no door breach?” said Pinkie.
“No need. Just walk in.”
Pinkie let out an extended sigh and turned the knob. Twilight and Rarity followed her in.
The two assault groups met in the center of the first floor. Rainbow pushed the button on an elevator.
“Really?” said Twilight. “That’s an obvious giveaway!”
Rainbow grinned. “I was counting on it. See if you can keep up.” As quickly and quietly as she could, she mounted the stairs, racing the elevator. The others followed.
The group burst out onto the next floor, a crowd of guys with guns waiting for them.
“Freeze!” shouted Twilight, though none of them seriously thought any of the combatants would. They didn’t. There was a firefight.
It was easy to hear the shooting from outside. Spike looked nervous, and kept glancing up from his computer. Fluttershy kept her pistol in her lap and her head on a swivel.
Room cleared, the team moved on. “So where’s the big bad?” asked Pinkie, kicking away a few empty shotgun shells.
Spike replied, “There’s only one last room. That’s where the HVI is.”
They stacked up and Pinkie blasted the hinges off the door. She gave it a kick, and Applejack and Rainbow rushed in, plastering two enemies inside. Twilight and Rarity went next to sweep. Pinkie followed them in, bringing up the rear, careful not to let their quick progress allow enemies to encircle them.
The HVI was behind his desk, speaking rapidly into a phone.
“He might be trying to warn someone,” said Twilight. “I try to shoot the phone out of his hand!”
Spike rolled. “Six. Not only aren’t you fast enough, but now he’s also pointing a gun back at you.”
“Really? I didn’t think a six would get me that kind of bad luck,” Twilight argued.
“Hey, be glad he hasn’t fired yet.”
“I’ll shoot the gun out of his hand so we can interrogate him!” said Rainbow.
“Ten. You’re safe, but he’s dead.”
Rather than simply allowing himself to be captured and interrogated, the HVI chose to fight. It was a very short fight.
“Well, now he’s dead,” observed Applejack. “You shot him in the face.”
Rainbow shrugged, unable to come up with a catchy one-liner.
“Now what?” Rarity asked.
“Everyone, sweep for intel,” Twilight ordered. “Maybe we can salvage something here.”
“Well, since you missed his phone, we can pick that up,” Pinkie pointed out.
Twilight touched her earpiece. “Spike, we’re bringing you a cell phone. We’ll need a trace and find out who and where it last called.”
The five of them hurried back downstairs and and got back into the truck. Applejack remembered to grab the RPG tube.
Spike ran the phone signal. “Narrowing it down…” His eyebrows went up. “The call went to the indoor ski place.”
“I heard about that,” said Rainbow. “Hard to believe they were able to create so much snow in the desert.”
“Get us some blueprints, Spike,” said Twilight. “They probably know we’re coming.”
“Wait, we’re going to go into a situation where we have inferior equipment, we’re likely outnumbered, and we don’t have the element of surprise?” asked Rarity.
“I like those odds!” Pinkie declared.
“I never said we were going in,” Twilight clarified. “Because we’re such a small team, we can recon first and decide if it’s worth the risk to engage.”
“Which probably means we’re engaging because no plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” said Applejack.
Fluttershy clutched her rifle tighter. “Are we just rushing into this? I know surprise is important, but we already blew that. The next time might be a harder fight, too, if the HVI was calling Sombrero and the ski place is his headquarters.”
“If we wait, they could bring in more defenses,” said Rarity. “Either way, we might not be able to afford to leave someone behind as an escort for Spike.”
“Um, maybe I could get us some intel and we could go back to the hotel to really plan this thing out,” suggested Spike. “Or I could stay at the hotel when you go on the mission. The realtime intel wouldn't be as good, though.”
“Well, we should at least get out of here,” said Rainbow. She punched the gas and they zoomed away.