Magic Fortress

by AppleTank

4. Meet the Soldier

Meet the Soldier
I squirmed awkwardly in my desk/seat. For one thing, it was a bit too small. Probably for foals. The second thing was that heads occupied the other desks. Not heads of state, or manes barely visible over the tables but decapitated heads. 90% of them had decayed into skulls. The only reason I hadn’t vomited a second time was that there were a few hundred cans of Fresh-Breeze with bullet holes in them littering the floor. I still struggle to understand how I was suckered into sitting here.

A boom of a firearm went off in front of the interviewer. Bits of drywall rained onto her desk. The (self-named) Queen of the Night, Nightmare Moon, glared at her, a shotgun floating in her magic. “Stop daydreaming, foal! You still have much to learn in the art of war, along with all these dirt sniffin’ maggots around here.” She waved the smoking shotgun at the interviewer, teeth bared. “Don’t you forget you are in detention, foal.”

She turned back to the chalkboard, tapping at a picture of a big circle and a small circle.

“Now, the first thing you should do in a combat situation is to ensure you can achieve victory. The most easiest and bluntest way to ensure that is to be in a better position to attack than your target.” She tapped the larger circle.

---

Nightmare crouched upon a cloud. She surveyed the disorganized group of ponies dealing with the effects of Poison Joak. “Discord didn’t clean up again. As usual.”

She jumped off the cloud, twirling once with her hooves outstretched. Several rockets floated out of her flowing hair, and she armed them by flipping open the claws.

---

“There are many ways to do this,” she continued. “One is from numbers. However, often times we have to fight solo. Despite the fact we’re supposed to be a team.” She ground her teeth. “A good soldier (like me, obviously,) is also proficient in improvisation. So, we combined that with surprise and stealth."

---

Explosives rained from the sky, scattering bodies all over the place, adding bodily harm to their list of concerns. A shockwave went off as the alicorn explosive-jumped away into the darkness.

---

“Of course, stealth is really easy under the cover of my night,” she stated arrogantly, dark blue smoke swirling around her.

---

The blurred form of the Nightmare crash landed in front of a surprised Sombra. Behind him was Firefly and Twilight, the latter squatting behind an automated turret and a mana-restoration box. Firefly occasionally abused it as a makeshift A/C. “The area is clear of reinforcements. Heavy, watch our backs as we break in and catch up to the Demoman.” She juggled a few dismembered heads around her and galloped around the corner. Sombra grunted at Twilight, motioning his head towards Nightmare’s retreating form. She sent a telepathic message to the last two on the team, allowing time for them to teleport in before she quickly dissolved her totems. Sombra started compacting and reshaping his minigun into a 4-barreled pepperbox shotgun and trotted after the dark alicorn with it in his magic, constantly checking their flank.

Twilight let Firefly carry her by her legs, allowing Twilight’s prosthetic hoof to reveal its hidden machine gun to shoot from a better position.

They soon saw the front door, or where it should be, due to a shroud of darkness obscuring any activity underneath the small lamp above it. The shroud cleared just as they reached it, revealing the dark alicorn with a collapsable war-scythe. “Finally,” she muttered. Twilight gave her a glare. The alicorn briefly shuddered, but soon regained her composure. “Breaking in.” She pulled back a bolt on the handle of the scythe.

BANG.

Propellant shot out of a vent on the top of the scythe, slashing the door in half. She hopped into the air, cranking the bolt back as she did so.

BANG

The recoil blasted her through the door, knocking over a few workers and some security guards already preoccupied with the draconequus flying above their heads laughing maniacally and lobbing explosives or some other physics defying effect. She twirled in mid air, slicing through those unfortunate to get in her path. She skidded to a stop on the other side of the room, holding up several dismembered heads in a semicircle around her. “Now, my subjects...”

---

“...I hope you have learned your lesson?”

I sat bored, doodles occupying half of my notepad. A lot of it was common sense, though partway through she suddenly started ranting about overpowered unicorns and their goody two-shoes trainers, other night related things, or how drugs were bad for you. Occasionally she would mention something she does on the field, but since I doubt she ever gets any feedback, she just rambled disjointedly and assumed her listeners understand her. Most of the time, she understood herself perfectly. Unfortunately, I don’t. Now though, she seems to have returned to sanity. Finally, I was starting to fall asleep.

“You better have remembered it, because we’re going to be training again, and I would be very disappointed if you get your heads lopped off again.”

Ugh. She keeps the heads of those she killed with her? Gross ...Wait a minute, what’s this tingling feeling...!

The pony practically flew onto the top of the desk as a wave of dark purple magic flowed through the room like liquid nitrogen. The smoke clung to the desks and slowly crawled up the legs like some sort of capillary effect. The pony frantically grabbed her notebook and waved the weakly clinging smoke off her own desk. As she did so, the smoke curled around the skulls, slowly raising them. A faint outline grew around them, gradually getting thicker and opaque. The smoke extended downwards, forming a vague equine shape.

“Rise, Shadowbolts.”

---

All of the heads regrew their bodies, though no matter their previous coat color, they were all dark blue and had hollow, yellow, translucent eyes. If you looked at them from the right angle, you could see their skulls.

The undead acrobatic team (since a number of them couldn’t fly) jumped into the sky. twirling between everyone in their path, excluding the rest of the team filing in through the door.

The Shadowbolts landed in a triangular pyramid. Most of the one on the top had blades for forelegs. And plenty of blood on it. The confused victims didn’t notice they were dead until their torsos started to slide apart.

The acrobats dispersed, whirling, slicing and kicking as Twilight’s emplacement gun rebooted and fired upon anything the Shadowbolts haven’t reached yet.

“Watch out below!” Discord called, holding out a detonator.

BOOM

The tables, machinery, and lab equipment exploded.

The Nightmare and her Shadowbolts rode the shockwave, blowing out another wall and air strafing in formation. The dark alicorn pulled a rocket launcher off her back and loaded four rockets into a revolving chamber. “USELESS MAGGOTS, ALL OF YOU!” she yelled out, firing a salvo of rockets into the next room.

---

The interviewer stared out the window, her jaw hanging as Nightmare explained how Shock and Awe was useful, especially if that means you can gut them when they aren’t paying attention.

Author's Note:

In case you haven't noticed by now, the Interview is mostly linear, while the "Game" is not:
1. ???
2. Scout
3. Heavy
4. ???
5. Demoman
6. Soldier
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
Also, since apparently it wasn't clear enough, if Sombrah's mysterious accent confused you, it's because someone spiked his drink with crystal dust and dried his throat out, aka that smoke coming out of his mouth. It was a shoehorned attempt at the part of Heavy raging, and it was the best excuse I got.