Blacklight: Dead Man Walking

by The Salesman

Showers and Dining Rooms

As Deadman and his escort approached what he was sure were the barracks in the castle, he heard what he assumed was the leader of the group say “In there,” before gesturing towards a set of doors made of a heavier seeming wood than the rest of the castle.

He was just going to assume this was some sort of waterproof door substitute in place of one made of plastic or stainless metal.

He strode forwards and turned the handle, opening the door inwards and instantly being treated to a rush of moist air from the interior. He glanced back towards the guards one last time, to make sure that they weren’t going to insist on continuing to ‘guard’ him, before walking in and closing the heavy door behind him.

Looking around the room he saw it was rather nicely decorated, with stone tiling of various shades spotted with a few drains, and ornate faucets, along with an attached room which resembled a locker room back home; but, it was still less decorated than the rest of the castle. Still a damn lot nicer than the Blacklight HQ showers, that is for sure.

Walking further into the room, he froze for a second, before flicking on his HRV and doing a quick full turn scan of the area. To his relief, he noticed no one was lurking within another section of the showers, waiting for him to let his guard down. He had learned his lesson about the importance of checking his bathing area when he and several other agents decided to use a public pool shower after they thought they had cleaned out the area.

Deadman looked around the nicely tiled area, and decided on setting down his weapons within the locker room. Walking into it, he set down both his LMG and his heavy pistol side by side, both with their safety enabled of course, before unpacking all of his extra magazines and setting them down alongside the weapons. He refrained from putting his axe and hammer away, though, he learned that lesson from the same pool shower incident.

Walking back into the shower, he turned one of the dials on to full blast, and stepped into the shower to scrub his armour down, using his hands due to the fact that he had no sponge, and no soap to use. He was just glad that the materials used in Blacklight armour did not stain easily.

As he scrubbed his bloody suit down, he thought on many things, like how absolutely ridiculous he had to seem right now to an outside observer. A large man in a suit of power armour, taking a shower, without leaving said armour, in a land full of equinoids ruled by a diarchy, like it is the most normal thing in the world is a sight not often seen. However, his thoughts shifted over to more dire nature as his wanderings drifted back to duty and protocol. Would he be able to get back home in order to continue his duty? Did his presence on this world rob him of his purpose? Above all, what was he to do now? He hadn’t had no objective for years; he was at a loss for what to do. Deadman decided that he would just go with the flow for now, and decide on a course of action later.

Perhaps he could train a local installation of Blacklight here from the native population so that HQ didn’t think he was sitting on his ass the whole time if he were ever to get in contact with them. He smiled at that novel thought as he moved on to cleaning off the hammer and the ultrasonic tomahawk, the last pieces of equipment that needed the blood off of them. Sure, it was an interesting thought, but like hell it was going to happen.

After his cleaning ritual was complete, he strapped both of those weapons back to his sides and walked back out of the showers, packed up his mags and side arms before hoisting his LMG back into his arms, and walked towards the door he had entered through.

Once he had reached the door, he twisted the curved handle, and pulled open the door once more, stepping out of the moist environment and into the halls, which were now in a darkened state as evening had set upon the land as he was cleaning himself.

Deadman turned towards one of the golden armoured guards, who was beginning to look sleepy, and had as such not noticed his presence, and stated “I believe you are supposed to escort me to the dining hall at this time.”

The guard jumped within his armour at the unnerving voice as one of the blue armoured guards let out a rather unprofessional snicker.

“Yes sir, right this way,” the guard said, now looking far, far more awake than he was previously.

He smiled at that, and let that guard and his other golden armoured partner take the front, as the two in darker armour took up position behind him. He was just going to guess that the difference in armour colouration was to draw the line between the guards of the two princesses, judging by their shared colour schemes, and the fact that it seemed like the dark armoured guards only showed up when Princess Luna had decided to make herself known and throw a fit about the giant spooking everyone. Why the distinction between the guards, though? Surely, if they ruled equally as they had implied earlier, it would make no sense to split the guards up into two groups.

His musings were then cut off as they approached a heavy looking and tall set of doors which were, surprise surprise, well decorated. Flanking each side were three guards. As they approached, one guard from each side and broke off, opening the doors. As soon as the door opened, he saw a large dining room. Dining hall seemed far more appropriate here, he would wager.

From the ceiling hung several large chandeliers reflecting the light from candles which were almost certainly a bitch to get up there, even if they had staff members that could fly; given how that holders were hidden behind so much crystal. The edges of the walls were spotted with clear glass windows, through which he could see the night sky. Throughout the room was several tables laden with cloth and silverware, which were perpendicular to another table, more elaborately decorated and upon a raised dais. At that table upon the raised dais sat Princess Celestia and Luna, both of whom he had met earlier, each sitting at an opposite end of the table. Along with them, two additional of what he believed he had heard were called alicorns. A pink one and a purple one both sitting down by Celestia’s end of the table. Were they also princesses? Glancing around the room, he noticed that the guards here were mostly of darker armoured guard. Perhaps the dark armoured guards specialized in night operations?

He snapped out of his reverie as he heard the guards behind him pass him by, leading up to the table. He followed them up, and he could instantly feel the eyes of the every guard in the room, as well as the eyes of the princesses and what he guessed were other princesses set upon him.

His first instinct was to seize up, he was not used to this many eyes being on him except when he was torching a horde of SIVs, but his training kept him going. He looked into the eyes of each of them for a second, in order to get an idea of their moods and where to sit. He detected polite friendliness in Celestia’s gaze, but not much else. He knew the gaze of a politician well, so he was going to guess that she was hiding plenty more emotions behind that gaze. Luna looked just as guarded before, not even bothering to hide her distrust. The pink one looked as if she had no idea what was going on, so she could go either way on the possibility of pleasant dinner conversation. That is, no dinner conversation. The purple one had a look of curiosity. He disliked this, she would be questioning, and that would be unproductive to the idea of a quiet dinner.

He glanced down the table, counting the number of seats between the purple and pink pair sitting side by side, and Luna. One, two, three, four... Looks like he did not have room in order to be outside of conversation range of both of them. He would have to handle this carefully. Hostility, or questions? He briefly considered sitting as close to Luna as he could just to annoy her, but dismissed that thought quickly. He was not a school child, even if he was counting out seats like one in order to avoid being talked to.

As soon as he approached the table, he made a snap choice, and moved towards the table, he stopped once to salute the occupants of the table, considering that he was dealing with royalty. “Blacklight Agent Deadman reporting for duty,” he crisply said.

Following up the drop of his arm, he circled the table and sat beside the pink alicorn, with the purple one sitting on the other side of her. Settling his large gun on his lap, he pulled his chair in and it was subsequently concealed underneath the table.

He felt like he was going to regret this decision, but he had no other choice at this point.

He turned to them, and nodded to both of them, and instantly was assaulted with a torrent of words as the purple one opened her mouth to say, “Oh my gosh! You are the one that Celestia told us about; she told us about how you think that you may be from another world and that you have a crazy magic suit, and how that you can make moving images appear from your arm, and how that you can-” During her spiel, he mused whether he could pass it off as a cultural misunderstanding if he got up and walked over to sit by Luna.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, I am sure you can space out your questions a bit, make it easier on the poor fellow,” said the pink alicorn, thankfully cutting off the queen of run on sentences could say anything else.

“But Cadance, how can you not be excited? This is first contact with something from another world. I’m sure he has so, so much to teach us,” The one he now knew as Twilight waxed on, words excitedly bubbling out of words at a steadily increasing pace.

“And I am sure you can ask him about things he can teach you later, with your questions paced out and maybe prepared in advance, hmm?” said Cadance, with a small smile flitting on her face as the purple alicorn’s eyes widened in realization.

“You’re right, I absolutely can not go into this unprepared, what if I had said something stupid? I have to make flash cards.” The alicorn gasped, before levitating a small notebook and a pencil from under the table, before beginning to fervently write in it.

Deadman breathed a sigh of relief as he turned his head and brought his thumb up as he flashed a green holographic smiley face in front of his helmet.

Cadance jumped a bit, but the smile widening on her face told him that she understood the message.

He turned the hologram in front of his helmet off, and went back to politely resting his hands by his side. As soon as he had finished that gesture, he heard the distant noise of hooves on stone, and he reflexively raised his arm up to flick on his HRV and see what was wrong. His eyes widened at what he saw.

Nobles, nobles and their processions. Hundreds of equinoids all coming this way. He instinctively raised his hand to rest on his axe as he glanced over to all the alicorns sitting with him at the table. Celestia apparently sensed his distress and gave him a reassuring smile. Alright, he could do this. He was representing Blacklight on another world, so he had to do this. No bolting out after yelling, “Hey, everyone, look over there.” He could handle this.

Tonight was going to be hell.

Comments

[MarcusBullet]

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[subjectdeltapunch]

Send In moar agents from both sides!!!!!!

[The Salesman]

2821578
Hue.

2821693
Although transfer to or from the Blacklight universe may or may not happen later on (If I run out of my many, many ideas), don't expect it any time soon. On top of that, I think one of him is all that poor, poor Equestria can handle.

[Medium-Chan]

Amazing work my friend! I am in love with this story!

[Bisilat]

Shit... I'm not sure if I made the first Blacklight Retribution story anymore... I'll start reading
ADD MEH ON STEAM: Bisilat [SCAF]