The D.S.P.I.

by DungeonMiner

Operation Skipping Stone

The DASH-1 shot through the air like arrow. The briefing was short and sweet, and Alpha Team was still raring to go after the easy mission they had the previous night. In short, the Covenant had located an old site of ancient power, surrounded by thirteen standing stones, and chances were, they were planning something terrible.

Fluttershy opted to stay behind this time, but Spike and Flurry Heart both stood in the airship's cabin. “We seriously need one of these,” Flurry muttered as they flew north towards Galloping Gorge and the Unicorn Range.

“Then buy one,” Spike said. “You have the entire Imperial budget.”

“Yeah, because a city-state empire makes so much…” she grunted.

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” Spike said.

“Hush.”

Tinker spoke over the intercom. “We’re closing in on their position, but it doesn’t look like there’s a good LZ for the DASH-1, it looks like you're going to have to rappel out.”

“Don’t worry about us, Thundercloud. Alpha Team knows what they’re doing.”

“Roger that, Commander,” the pilot answered, as she pulled around. “Turning to run silent,” she said as she flipped levers and the powerful whine of the engines died down to nothing.

“Alright ponies, let’s move, we have some climbing to do out there.”

The large cargo door dropped open, slowly yawning open as they faced the mountain side of the Unicorn Range.

“Let's go, ponies!” Spike yelled, before he grabbed one of the ropes that had automatically dropped from the roof above the door.

Alpha team followed his lead, grabbing the ropes and rappelling down to a stone ledge.

“Keep the meter running!” Flurry cried as she hovered next to the cargo door, before she dived for rock ledge, pulling up just in time to keep herself from splattering against the stone.

Spike drew his weapon. “Ready? Let’s move.”

===ᐁ===

They moved carefully, walking along a terribly thin mountain trail. The pegasi hovered trail, with Flurry leading them as Spike and the others carefully navigated the stone. It was hardly wide enough for a single pony to walk down, and with the entire squad traveling the trail, every loose pebble threatened to send them all to their deaths.

Silver stayed silent, running through the rules that Spike had laid down.

First and foremost, do not touch the altar.

“And don’t climb on top of it either, Mandible,” Spike joked.

The changeling had muttered something rude in response.

The second rule was to not touch the standing stones.

Third rule was far easier. Leave one alive for questioning.

The sound of loose rock sliding caught his attention, and he looked back to see Chestnut beginning fall sideways, towards the cliffside and the great, open space that sat beside them.

Amber dove in, crazily flapping her wings as she tried to push the Heavy Weapons pony back onto the ledge. She pushed and shoved, and with the help of Neon pulling him, they just barely managed to get him stable.

Once his hooves were under him, he sighed. “Thanks, Medic, Support.”

“Just don’t take me with you, big guy,” Neon said.

“Just keep on the straight and narrow,” Amber told him.

Silver sighed, keeping quiet as they continued on their way, trying desperately to avoid the drop that yawned beside them.

They moved further into the mountains, and continued to walk along the dizzying heights that shadowed them.

“We’re almost there,” Spike whispered, before Flurry spoke over the communicator.

“Sniper, Agent, Medic, Scout, with me, we’re going around to offer assistance on the other side,” the alicorn said, before she led the winged members of the squad down in the open darkness below them, before they flew forward, ahead of them.

Spike then spoke in a whisper. “No talking from here on out, we don’t need any echos giving us away.”

Silver nodded, as did the others as they slipped into silence.

They continued forward, this time without their pegasus entourage, as they pushed through a hidden pass. It was an agonizing pace without their winged companions, and Chestnut took extra care, moving slowly as he tried to maneuver his massive auto cannon so it wouldn’t scrape against the stone or push him over the edge.

Finally, they saw the stones.

On a massive, natural platform, a strange stone plateau that was reminiscent of clearing in a forest, stood the thirteen standing stones. The perfectly round platform seemed naturally carved, if not for the perfection in its curve, and the smoothness of the sides that disappeared into the darkness below.

The full moon peeked past the mountain tops, and filled the platform with silver light. The thirteen stones cast long shadow that stretched into the darkness, and in the center was a single altar, decorated with a brilliant, red banner.

Thirteen ponies, each standing in front of the equidistant stones, droning in some terrible language as the moonlight kissed their bright, crimson robes. In the center, however, were two more, one, a unicorn mare tied to the altar, and a fourteenth cultist, wielding his own knife.

This knife was far different from the one Mandible found. It had no eye, but rather, its entire blade was carved from ruby. The handle was decorated with tear-shaped garnets, each surrounded in gold. Its wielder did not spin it, like the mad man from a few missions before, but rather it sat, perfectly poised over the white-furred neck of his sacrifice.

The mare whimpered quietly, gagged as she was, and her two, blue eyes welled with tears.

Spike’s breath caught in his throat as soon as he saw her.

“Sir?” Silver whispered, only to be silenced by a quick wave from the dragon.

And then the dragon moved. He charged the circle, leveling his weapon before a single shot tore the dagger from the cultist’s grip. “D.S.P.I.! Wings, Horns, and Hooves where I can see them!”

The leader hissed. “Kill them!” he ordered, before he pulled a tome from behind him.

The thirteen cultists from the stones began to move, drawing swords and flintlocks as the unicorns began to prepare spells.

Silver sighed. Well, this isn’t going to end quietly anymore.

A sudden burst of light and heat rained down above, and Silver looked up just in time to see Silk above them, her TS Longrifle ready to put a hole through another cultist skull.

Silver roared. “Move, ponies! Move!”

Flintlocks roared, filling the air around them with thick, grey smoke that made it hard to see, and whistling lead shot past his ears as he dove for the open ground.

Silver could see the leader of the cultist chanting from his tome, hear him intone his spell, even as Chestnut began covering the area in automatic fire.

His silver, sun-blessed bullets simply slammed into an invisible shield, stopping a foot away from the leader as he chanted away.

Sparky, Mandible, and Amber began firing from behind, shooting their crossbows from the air, and catching a good number of the cultist by surprise.

The leader continued to chant, coming to a crescendo.

Spells, smoke, and steel filled the air as Alpha squad poured into the clearing. The cultists threw everything they had, falling as fast as Alpha Team’s bolts.

Spike leapt into the air, flying through the air towards the altar, and the mare that lay there, screaming through her gag. “I gotcha!” he yelled, landing next to her and slicing her binds away with her claws as he leveled his weapon at the cultist leader’s face.

And then the leader’s spell finished.

The emptiness around the platform erupted to red.

Giant geysers of red shot into the air, and the sky above them became crimson.The remaining cultists that lived began to scream, turning to pools before their very eyes. They oozed, and flowed down, towards the leader, gathering around him as he smiled maniacally.

“Crap,” Spike grunted, before he picked up the mare, and leapt away from the altar.

The cultists gathered, transforming the leader before Alpha Team’s eyes as they slowly, instinctively knew that they stood in a place between places.

A monster began to form, five stories tall, with tough, sinewy muscles on long, thin, lanky arms and massive claws. A massive pony skull crested the top of the monster, and it howled like some kind of rabid dog.

“What’s the plan, Commander?” Silver asked.

Spike opened his mouth.

“Leave this one to me,” a voice said, as a pink blur dropped from the sky.

Flurry Heart stood in front of them, giving the biggest, cockiest smile Silver had seen as her horn shimmered with a golden light.

The monster looked at her, cocking its head as it regarded the alicorn, before it’s left arm exploded.

It howled in pain, before Flurry shot forward, an aura of gold surrounding her. The aura sliced at the ropy cords of muscle, causing them to snap and whip through the air.

Spike growled. “You can't just take that thing by yourself!” He roared, before signaling Amber over and handing the would-be-sacrifice over.

“Watch me!” Flurry laughed as the monster took fast and powerful swipes at her as she danced around him.

Spike began yelling. “Heavy, fill that thing with silver! Assault, Sniper, everyone else, shoot that thing down!”

Alpha Team lept into action, pouring every ounce of firepower they had into the beast. The Monster screamed and howled as Lemon hit the beast with grenades, and the whirring of Chestnut’s auto cannon filled the beast with silver bullets.

All the while Flurry heart flew around the monster, mere inches from its stringy flesh as she dug blades of magic into the exposed muscle.

The monster howled again, and from bright red muscle surrounding its chest opened to reveal a massive bloodshot eye. The eye glared at them, pouring all its hatred into the gathered ponies, before it unleashed a crimson beam of heat that would have torn a pony apart if not they did not leap out of the way.

Spike answered with his number one assistant, firing straight for the pupil.

The needles of solidified magic slammed into the eye, and the beast howled in pain as Flurry flew above it, arcing with her blades of magic above the massive pony skull. “You’re going to have to do better!”

The beast raised its right arm, and spoke a word in a language that no one there could understand. Flurry could feel the magical energies ebb and pull around her, but she was not ready for the bolt of lighting that arced through her back and struck the extended finger of the monster.

She screamed.

The bolt of scarlet lightning ran down the monster’s arm, electrifying the monster’s body, before it began to split apart, transforming into a thousand pony-sized copies. The monsters charged, filling the clearing with their awful shapes and howls, before they swarmed the Department ponies.

Spike cursed, staying close to the now-screaming mare, before he began cutting down the monsters that threatened to take them down.

“Flurry! Flurry!”

“I’m okay,” she yelled back, even as she hovered erratically through the air, recovering from the thousands of volts that had run through her body.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to take everything on by yourself!” Spike yelled as Alpha Team tried to push back the tide of monsters.

They were not doing well. While they were not faster than the trained soldiers, they were powerful, and were quick to push Alpha Team back.

Silver’s blade sang through the air, and was firing his crossbow indiscriminately into the horde of monsters in front of him. A claw bit into his while another cut his face, missing his brain by inches as his honed reflexes kept him alive.

The other thing that saved them was Chestnut’s auto cannon. The high-speed, rapid fire bullets tore through the ranks of the monster’s, shattering bones and ripping muscle apart with ease.

Unfortunately, these were not zombies. They had minds, or at least one mind between them, and it was sharp enough to recognize a target.

The swarm began to concentrate there, slowly piling at Chestnut’s hooves as he slowly emptied his auto cannon. A mound of bodies, both living and dead began to grow in front of him, but he didn’t back away.

And then a vicious claw dug into him.

The blow went deep, up to the wrist, and Chestnut’s auto cannon went silent.

“Chestnut!” A voice cried from above, and Silver looked up just to watch Amber dive for him, emptying her crossbow into the mass of red flesh.

She’d never make it.

“Medic!” he cried, as he tried to move, trying to close the distance between them.

And that’s when Flurry arrived.

Having apparently recovered from the bolt to her back, she dove to fallen body of Chestnut, her golden blades of magic digging into the monsters’ brains as she landed. “Don’t you dare!” she roared, before the blades shot outward in a tornado of magic and atomically-thin edges that divided bones and tissue in perfect segments.

“I’m trying to show my uncle that I’m a responsible team leader, and I can’t prove that if you’re killing his ponies!” she roared, before she dove through the monsters, tearing through them like a hot knife through butter.

The monsters fell by the wayside, even as Amber opened her medicine kit, and tried so desperately hard to save Chestnut as he lay bleeding on the floor.

“Don’t die on me, now, Heavy,” she said, as she poured a healing lotion on the wound before reaching in and holding the cut closed. “We still need you down here.”

Chestnut glanced over at her, his eyes trying to focus as blood continued to gush out of him, before he grunted. “Don’t cry now, I ain’t worth the tears,” he muttered in his delirium.

“Shut up!” Amber yelled. “You are too, worth it!”

Silver stood, trying to pretend that he couldn’t hear as Amber yell and scream at him to stay alive.

“I’m not…”

“Yes, you are!” Amber yelled. “You are worth it, and you are going to live, you hear me?”

Chestnut gave a resigned smiled. “Yes Ma’am.”

Silver shifted his attention, focusing on Flurry Heart and the carnage she carved ahead of her.

She cut a swath through them, slicing the monsters as where they stood.

And then, in a flash, it was all gone.

The walls of red water were gone, the beasts were gone, all that remained were the thirteen stones, the altar, and the ragged body of the leader, panting heavily as he lay in a gory puddle of red goo.

“Alright, buddy!” Flurry said as she hovered above him, smirking. “Time to fess up!”

The leader smiled. “Go to Tartarus…” he said, before he fell backwards.

And then he died.

===ᐁ===

Flurry sighed.

Well, this mission could have gone better. Between nearly losing their Heavy, and having the trail go cold, this whole thing was nearly a bust.

It didn’t help that she vaguely felt that the whole thing was her fault.

The heavy was being carried up by the DASH-1’s sky crane, lifting him up as he lay on a stretcher.

The medic followed him the entire way, flying beside him.

And that bucking leader died before she could get any actual information out of him.

She sighed again, before she hovered over to the gathered squad, watching as their teammate was taken up into the airship while Spike spoke to the poor mare that had been tied up just hours before.

Now that was whole separate can of worms.

The Support looked over at her, before he whispered. “Um...Miss Flurry?”

“Yeah?” she answered, hoping that he wasn’t going to ask what she knew he was going to ask.

“Do...when the commander ran in like that...was it because he saw a mare in danger, and tried to save her, or...was there more?”

Flurry looked him in the eyes. “No. There was no other reason than a mare being in danger. That’s it.”

She could tell the unicorn didn’t believe her.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, look,” she began again, glaring at him. “Are you allowed into Uncle Spike’s room. His personal room, are you allowed to go in without being killed?”

The support blinked. “Um...I…”

“No,” the Assault said, walking up to her. “No, we’re not.”

“Then Uncle Spike’s not ready to talk about it. Just leave it alone, okay?”

There was a long, unbroken silence.

She sighed again, already feeling like an old mare, before she spoke again. “Look, I don’t...I only barely know what happened. It was before my time, and it took years before he opened up to me, and I’m the only living family he has, besides Celestia. It’s...very personal, to say the least.”

The Assault nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Neon. It’s just the commander’s thing. He has secrets.”

Neon sighed. “I guess we all do.”

===ᐁ===

Spike sat in his office, going through the various forms that would give Ivory, the mare he pulled off the altar, any necessary care and/or therapy she would need to deal with the fact that she had nearly been sacrificed for a blood ritual to bring a horde of monstrous terrors to the world.

Personally, he thought she was taking the whole thing rather well.

A knock sounded on his door. “Come in,” he said, before Flurry Heart walked in.

“Hey, Uncle Spike,” she said dejectedly, as she walked in.

“You seem chipper,” Spike noticed sarcastically.

“Look, I’m sorry Uncle Spike,” she said.

Spike leaned back. “About what?”

She sighed again. “I shouldn’t have taken the big guy alone, and because I did, your squad didn’t have my support, and you nearly lost your heavy. Not to mention the fact that we didn’t get the info we were looking for.”

Spike nodded. “Well, at least you know when you have a problem. Then again, I suppose you should have learned something after a couple of hundred years.”

“Thanks, Uncle, you always know what to say,” she said in a deadpan.

“It’s a gift,” he said. “That being said, it’s not as bad as you think.”

Flurry raised an eyebrow and listened.

“For one, the Heavy’s going to make it. He’ll be out of action for a bit, but he will make it.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said.

“And second,” Spike said, reaching down below his desk for the large red tome that the leader used, “this isn’t just any spell book. This is Crystal’s.”

Flurry blinked. “Like, Dark Crystal’s?”

“The very same,” Spike said. “In short, Flurry, you were right, like you always thought you were.”

Flurry blinked, and smiled. “Well of course I was right about that, the Empire does have the best info network known to ponykind.”

Spike smiled, and shook his head.

Comments

[djthomp]

A white furred, blue eyed unicorn sacrifice? I feel like that was aimed at Spike specifically.