Living Darkness

by vildtiger

The White Hare

Note: this happens one day after the last chapter.

**Unknown location in America**

Sitting inside a room clouded in smoke that conceals some of the many screens that once showed battles between the men Redmond and Bluetaugh hired, now they reveal different locations such as offices, old battlements and some of them even shows what is going on inside cities.
Helen watches them all, and although these cameras show her important information, she knows she cannot watch everything. That's why she has eyes and ears everywhere, some of those are former mercs of RED and BLU.
She might have lost two of the best teams but she still has several lefts, obedience but unfortunately, no match against team Fortress and Vanguard. Speaking of those two teams; Not only did they dare to abandon their contracts but also have the nerve to think she will let them keep respawn for themselves.
One of her personal spies enters the room and hands her both pictures and information of where the two teams are at the moment. It did come as a surprise that Vanguard and Fortress have joined forces, and that fact is, as much she hates to admit it, is starting to worry her.
Helen did not pay much mind when certain mercs began to show that phenomenal of surviving the one-year time limit of being connected to respawn. When she noticed those survivors keep increasing, one of them being Team Fortress- at first it was a team of idiots, people meant to keep Conagher in check and later keep a steady of test subjects to Ludwig, but over the years team Fortress became the most aggressive of all teams and worse still, more and more people kept on surviving. To counter this growing threat, Helen put the best of the best of all Redmond and Bluetach mercs into one team; one she would codename Vanguard. Team Vanguard was made to counter Fortress but before she could pin the two teams in order to subdue Fortress, Vanguard went AWOL and that forced her to blackmail the mercs any way possible, but as feared, that was only a limited solution as Fortress's mercs are ruthless people and hold little regards to others safety.
She wants to cut them off respawn, saves her the trouble with these two great threats but Mr. Russell did a smart choice in conquering the Alpha Respawn, it made her input worthless and even if when she sent her engineers to fix it, that strange crystal tree that grew out from it keeps knocking them out. It frustrates Helen immensely, she hates not to be in control of the situation. But maybe the issue with Fortress and Vanguard can be fixed. According to the latest report, they have been mobilizing in Warsaw, one of the few spots around the world where the respawn zones does not cover. If they get killed there, then it is over.
Bit of a pity she cannot reclaim them, as much she hates their obnoxious tendency of comradely and her great fear of them ruining her plans if let loose, these people are very good at what they do and is a huge asset for her plans. Maybe she can make some more obedience clones from their corpses, worth a try and if it does not work, at least she got rid of them.
Helen turns her gaze away from the screens and to another one, this screen she writes to the SSSR about the seemly minuscule threat. She explains the general she has in her pocket that these men are up to no good and has an uncanny talent in succeeding the odds with some ridicules stunts. She commands him to kill them and not underestimate Team Fortress or Vanguard for that will be the last thing he will ever do.
The man obliges and reveals to her that Ace of Spies has been spotted snooping around one of their command centers. Before they could catch him though, the man had disappeared.
Helen gets the subtle hint the general rather want to spend his resources on catching Ace, that man always sticks his nose where it does not belong. Ace hid it well but his reluctance to mess with her since the discovery about his son makes it rather clear he does not want to lose his legacy.
Maybe she can use this to her advantages.

**Meanwhile in Warsaw* *

With only minor problems, the trio arrived inside the capital city of Poland and found themselves a place that will work as their base of operation. While Cowboy sat up the teleporter, Sniper scouts the area to be sure they won’t get ambushed by the red army or whatever hides on this side of the Iron curtain.
Sniper stops when he spots something hiding between the remains of a demolished building: an attic hare, white thanks to the winter coat. This white hare stares at him but shows no fear as most hares would when spotting a person. Sniper stares, but not because of the boldness this animal has nor why an animal usually not seen in bigger cities is here, he stares because Ignis told him he should keep an eye out for a white rabbit– sure this is not a rabbit but he doubts that Ignis can see the difference between a rabbit and a hare. He walks carefully over to it, the hare does not move, makes him wonder: is it hurt?
The hare gets on its feet when he gets too close but does not flee as he expected, Sniper stops before the animal and carefully reaches his gloved hand to it. The hare sniffs to the offered hand to then somewhat ignore him, seemly far more interested in watching the crowded streets of this city. “Have to be a pet.” Sniper muses from how it is behaving, he pets the tame hare- it jerks but other than that it does not react on him. He honestly not sure what he should do with it. Ignis said it was important but he can’t see what makes this hare— hold up, Sniper blinks when his fingers touch something metallic around its fluffy neck, checking he finds a collar having a microphone attached. “The hell?” Is this hare a living bug? By who?
He decides to take the hare and returns it back to the base, the others have just arrived and most of them look quite confused at him for bringing back an attic hare. Sniper does not blame them but he needs to figure out what's so special about this hare.

“What’s an attic hare doing inside a city?” Garry asks.

Sniper shrugs and puts down the hare on the nearby table. “Some bloke is using this as a bug.” and shows the others the collar around the surprisingly chill animal.

Engineer steps over and checks the collar, she tries to get it off the hare but that ends up with her getting scratched. “Well, apparently your new friend likes its collar.” She remarks and lets Tristan heal her bleeding hands from the assault the animal did. With her hands healed and this time not attempting on removing the collar, she is quite surprised at what the collar is. “Yeah, that’s a microphone— a bug. Whoever is on the other line, can hear everything we are currently saying.” She explains the others as she pets the hare without really thinking.

“What should we do with hare?” Heavy asks, not really sure he likes the idea of the unknown owner of this hare can hear what they are saying. Before they can decide, the hare jerk Chio’s hand away and leaps off the table, do stop for a moment at the door, looks at them before it disappears back into the city.

Sniper blinks. Was it just him or did that hare… smile? Before he could’ve been certain, the hare had disappeared, probably to join its owner.
“That was… weird.” The blue dressed Pyro remarks and Sniper wholeheartedly agrees and yet he is not really as dumbfounded as the redhead. Been thrown into another world makes one quite indifferent about weird occurrence such as a weird acting hare that happens to be bugged.
His thoughts about it have to be put aside when Vanguard’s Medic begins to talk. “Before we leave.” He puts down a small trunk, opening it reveals elongated crystals and when he picks one of them up, it gets a subtle orange glow. That color reveal makes Sniper glance to his team’s Demo and as expected the scot is surprised to see the color of his element reacting to the blond medic. “These are the bark of the respawn tree. Crush it against your skin and you will gain your power. But only for an hour, so be mindful when you will use it.” Tristan explains and by a hand gesture, allows them to take a piece each. The bark lets out a faint red shine when Sniper’s finger touched it and checking on Black Spy, his suspicious that this man has the element of loyalty proves correct as his piece has the same red shine. Checking the others of team Vanguard, his fellow sniper has kindness – makes sense with that friendly attitude the man has. Same with Scout having the element of courage, again makes sense and so does their Demoman having the Element of Laugher. What does surprises him is their pyro got the element of generosity, he figures he didn’t expect that because he hasn’t tried to get to know the man, nor their heavy who has the element of guidance. Does wonder why the big guy got that element when he barely speaks. Kreel has love, both makes sense and yet not but he can fully see the Sheila engineer have the element of hope, Amadi has told him their story and can see she deserved that element more than anyone. But what truly catches him off guard is who got the strongest element of them all: magic.
That person is Cowboy and if what Dell told that Cowboy had more than enough power to knock their Medic out, then he can see why that man got it. Does makes him wonder if that’s why Josef turned him invalid? Because he sensed the element in him? Speaking of the doc, Sniper eyes him and can see Medic is rather startled by this revelation, with a hint of his well-known curiosity. Doc better be careful though, Sniper has noticed how Kreel is staring at Medic and she looks ready to use her knife on him.

With that set, Scout explains the others there have been a few changes to their plan. “It has come to Black Spy’s attention that a master spy going by the name Ace of Spies had this mission before us, but for some reason abandoned it.”

Miss Pauling frowns at this, last time they met Ace of Spies he was teamed up with White Death and Force of Nature, leaving by a strange pathway with a crate full of Australium. “Any idea what he is doing?” She asks. Whatever Ace is doing, it’s worth someone’s attention. She notices a grumpy look on Ace son’s face and it didn’t change when he replies her question. “That’s part of the change of plans, I will take a small team to his last location and get the information that was so important for him.” His blue eyes land on her, before he even spoke again she knew she would be part of this team. “You are one of them.” Miss Pauling nods, figure Tristan needs her skills with intel gathering.
Vanguard’s medic exchanges a look with Scout and from a nod from the team leader, the medic reveals who will be on this intel gathering team. “Fortress sniper and Demoman, along with Engie will be on this side mission.” The three nod and Scout turns to the remaining, saying. “The rest of us will resume on the main mission given. Kreel and Black Spy will be moving ahead and work as our eyes. Ignis-” eyeing the man able to control fire with his mind. "I want you to stay here and make sure this area stay safe for when we return with the family."
Ignis nods but Miss Pauling did not miss the strange look he has in his eyes like he knows something is up.
By Scout's command, the two spies head out and after have taken their gear, Tristan’s small team heads out as well. Miss Pauling notices that Sniper has replaced his rifle with that silver bow he got in Equestria. “No rifle?” She asks.
Sniper shakes his head. “Bow’s better indoor.” He replies and she takes that as a good enough explanation but can't shake the feeling there is another reason why he took the bow instead of the rifle.

With the information Vanguard’s medic got the group heads to a facility that looks like an ordinary bank from the outside but if taking a closer inspection, one can see that compared to how small and inconspicuous this building looks, it has an excessive lot of guards for a place that shouldn't be worth's one attention. Near the building, Engineer activates her power which is the ability to control computers and with that, she can make the cameras delete any videos they might have caught on them. Without having to worry about the cameras, Sniper and Demo takes out the nearby guards and hides the two bodies in a nearby trash pile. They return to the others just when Engie got through the door’s security lock.
Inside they start looking for anything holding important information, they do find a computer in one of the rooms, after Engie hacked through the lock, Miss Pauling takes over and searches the files. She stops at a file named “Zhenniao” opening it she is not sure if the one who wrote this was batshit crazy or this facility really has bred and trained monsters for their own use.

Unaware that on the other side of the ocean, in a hidden location, her former boss noticed the intrusion when someone opened those files without her permission.
And knowing Ace was in that building as well, Helen did not hesitate to release the monsters this facility held.

Miss Pauling jumps when she suddenly got the warning that the cages to those Zhenniao is opening. “Guys, we have a problem.” She warns the others. Medic moves over to check, lets out a curse. “Move out!” and that’s what they do, but the way out is slower than the way inside, the sirens of the cages getting open has alerted the whole building, personnel is in a panic frenzy, desperately trying to get out and has any reason for doing so. Suddenly, down a second hallway, a sharp green goose-sized bird with a crane shape flies right into the woman and tackles her to the ground. The woman manages to get the bird off but it’s clear that the bird did something from how disorientated she has become. She struggles to stand on her feet. Blue spots like bruising begin to appear on her face and arms, and the stench of rot begins to emit from her. The blue spots cracks and blood seeps out from them, she whimpers a weak sentence, before she drops to the floor, still breathing as her body gets shredded by what looks to be a very aggressive acid right before the horrified mercs.

“Bloody hell…” Demo gasps in horror, both on what a single touch on that bird did and from how slowly it kills. Before he can make a move to end the woman's misery, Medic has taken Sniper's kukri and slit her throat, she is dead shortly after. Demo slowly turns his eye to the green bird that caused this, the bird is cleaning itself in a rather odd manner. He's no bird expert but their own medic's doves are not that twitchy when preening themselves. The green bird snaps its attention to them, stares with its reddish eyes and pupils that almost looks blind. The bird does a few croaked sounds, and it’s lime green drool drops to the floor… which leaves acid marks. It dries the drool onto its wings and when done, the bird takes flight right towards them. Knowing touching it will do to them, none wants to get that poisonous bird anywhere near.
Sniper fires one of his arrows at it and fortunately, he hits and knocks the bird out, and a good thing too, for as it’s lying there, the floor around it starts to fog in reaction to its poisonous saliva on its feathers. To their luck, more birds arrive and this time they have their trainers, so by a whistle by those guys, the poisonous bird takes flight towards them.

Without anyone having to tell them, all of the mercs- minus Miss Pauling activate their power giving by the tree of the alpha respawn. Demo swings Eyelander and slice at the bird trying to land on him. It lets out a single croaked squawk before it explodes, did prove to have been a stupid decision as even this thing’s guts were highly acid. Demo is very relieved he put on his class’s armor as that protected his body from most harm, the only thing that got hit is one of his arms as he used them to protect his head. He can feel the poison pretty much right away and it’s a very disturbing sense. It’s like a reverse feeling of going through respawn, instead of being put together, it’s been taken apart.

After have shot down one of those birds, Medic shift over to the Quick-fix and turns it on Fortress’s Demoman’s rotting arm. “Let’s hope this can counter their acid.” He muses, otherwise, he has to cut it off to save the man.

Sniper needs a moment to discover what his power is: shapen sight, which was what saved him from getting sprayed by that bird’s guts from Demo’s explosive attack. Checking on the scot who took quite the hit but it seems the medigun can counter the rotting effect the bird's poison have, then his shapen eyes make him quickly realize that the medigun only heals the rot away, it cannot stop the poison. That makes it clear that if they get hit by the birds like that woman, then it’s game over.
He does quickly snap away from the doc and Demo and starts shooting at the bird that just keeps on coming from the command of their trainers. He gets a few, but about there, the floor around them starts to give under from the many holes of the killed, knocked out and the acid guts dotting the floor. Realizing this, Sniper warns the others. “Floor's breaking!”

Medic looks down, then at the trainers keeping them pinned down. He crushes his gem and uses his powers over water to keep the trainers from commanding the birds. Without their trainers, the acid birds stop attacking. “Move it!” He commands and they run over to the subdued trainers. He hears the floor collapsing and for a moment he thought they all made it, then he realizes that Fortress sniper is nowhere in sight. He commands Miss Pauling and Engie to kill the trainers while he and Demo run over to the collapsed floor, they find Sniper down there; badly wounded but still conscious.
“Sniper!” The man looks weakly up, hopefully, he is conscious enough to understand what he will tell the man. “You have to bandage your arm! If not; you will bleed out!”
Sniper slowly turns to his bleeding arm, he tries to sit up tend his injury but for some reason, he cannot move. That’s a bad sign. “Something’s wrong, I have to get down to him.” If not then they will lose the man.

Checking the area, Demo sees nothing they can use to pull Sniper up from there, all he can see: “It looks like Sniper fell down to the floor below us. Maybe we can reach him by going downstairs?” and is more than a little surprised when the doctor suddenly jumps down to Sniper- after he has chased one of those poison birds away by shooting it in the wing. “Hey, what the bloody hell are you doing?!” He calls down to the Vanguard medic who almost broke his leg from that stunt.
Limping from the fall, the man moves over to check on Sniper before he calls up to him. “Your sniper is close to bleeding out, I have to tend him now! The rest of you has to meet us down here.” Oh right, Demo nods and runs over to tell the two others about this.

Up close Medic can see the reason to why Sniper couldn’t move, he’s gotten impaled by a metal pole. Fortunately not a big one and hopefully, it hasn’t messed up his gut too much.
Medic points his medigun at sniper but only a few fumes leave the nozzle, shit… he used all of the healing liquid to heal the Demoman. “Has to do this the old fashion way.” He muses, tears part of his coat off, pour some of the disinfection on and wraps it tightly around the Aussie’s bleeding arm. With that issue put on hold, he can focus on getting Sniper up. “This is going to hurt.” Is all the warning he gives the Aussie before he grabs the man’s arm and pulls him up from the metal bar. Sniper let’s out a cry from the pain and is unable to stand on his feet. That is okay for now, he needs Sniper to sit so he can attend the wound anyway. “I need you to stay conscious, so talk to me.” He tears off part of his sleeve and disinfects it. “Tell me about what you like to do.” A question that needs thinking but not to intrude on privacy.

So different from their own Medic, he likes to chat about his past 'accomplishment' of medical procedure to freak his patients out. Sniper chuckles weakly at this observation. “I like to do my job.”

“As a merc?”

“Assassin.” Sniper corrects him and sneers in pain when the doctor stuffs that cloth into his stomach wound. “I’m no bloody crazed gunman, I have—“ he has to bite his teeth in pain when Medic pulls him up from the floor. “–standards.”
“It’s good to have a moral compass in this line of work.” Medic muses as he supports him through the rubble of this floor. “Otherwise we will be crazy gunmen.” Sniper nods slowly, focusing on walking, then his sharpen senses catch movements on the right. He snaps to the spot and can’t but stare at seeing that attic hare again, watching them in a worried manner, now it acts more like a wild hare. His eyes widened when it starts stomping, a warning of danger. “Stop, we have to stop!” He tells vanguard Medic hard, much to the man’s confusion.
“Sniper, we have to keep moving, you are about to bleed out.” Medic points out annoyed, but Sniper knows that Ignis didn’t tell him about the hare if it wasn’t important. “The hare made a warning.” Nodding to said hare that has carefully leaves its spot. “We can’t go that way, we—” He glances to the hare that keeps on approaching them, wary though as it possible can hear the ceiling cracking. “-has to follow it.” and just there, parts of the ceiling drops, almost hitting the hare that jumps startled and leaps back to its former spot. It stares at them, it's clear it is scared but it refuses to leave them behind. 'What a strange animal' Sniper can't help but think.

But Medic is not in the mood to follow white hares into an unstable room. Less so when he can hear the others nearby. “No, we’re going to find the others and get you out from here.” He tells the clearly delicious Aussie and pulls him to where the others are, to his shock, Sniper jerks his arm away from him and drops to the floor. The man struggles onto his feet, covering the wound on his stomach. “I need to follow the hare.” Medic is starting to get annoyed at the Fortress Sniper, more so when he’s not making any sense. “You’re delusional and we do not have time playing Alice in Wonderland with your white hare.” His annoyance grows further when Sniper limps towards the animal. “Sniper!” About to use his power but right there, a man he rather not want to see again appears from the shadows behind the hare. “Listen to him, the path you wishes to go holds a machine able to split your soul.”
Both he and Sniper freezes up, Tristan does quickly snap out from it in his anger and fear of what will happen to the others. “And you’re letting my team walk right into it?!”

“Control your emotions.” Ace lectures Tristan, which earns him a death glare. Always so defiant... He sighs, wondering what he should do to make him understand. “There is nothing we can do for them now.” His own blue eyes turn towards the sounds of Tristan’s team yelling in fear and the machine preparing itself for the split. His eyes return to his son. “Let’s get out from here, it’s only a matter of time before the guards find us.” He walks over to the hare, expecting Tristan and Mundy to follow.

“No, I am not leaving them behind...!” Tristan growls, his father stops, only a hint of disbelief in his eyes. “It’s too late for them, don’t throw your life away for—“ the man tries but Tristan won’t hear it. “If I have to suffer a split soul for my team's sake, then so be it!” Turning to Sniper. “Are you coming Sniper?” The Aussie hesitates, then eyes him with a look that says everything. Tristan is furious this man is willing to leave his friends behind. “I can see comradery is not part of your moral compass.” He growls and leaves to find the others.

Sniper really wants to go with the doc, truly he does but… what illusion Pyro said, what Ignis said… he has to do this… he has to leave his team behind. “I’m sorry, mate…” He limps over to the hare, gasps when then his legs refuse to carry his weight anymore and he collapses onto the floor, the bandage around the arm loosens and blood starts to bleed out. Sniper turns to Ace but the master spy is gone, so much for his help. The hare jumps into his view and looks at him with unnatural intelligent eyes as he has never seen a hare show emotions such as worry. Then to his huge surprise: “I’ll get help, don’t die.” It— she speaks and runs off. Sniper stares at where the talking hare disappeared, then slowly he tries to stop the bleeding but it is so hard, he has trouble focusing…

*****

Meanwhile, as Ace had said, Miss Pauling, Demo and Engie have been caught in a machine that held what two of them recognized as a Shadow Pony. The machine and the creature of shadows threw them to the floor, forcing them to draw out the worst part of themselves and the shadow pony— or human as its form is currently latched onto this darkness in them and by its power, the machine tore their souls into two. Tristan arrived just as their bodies formed a clone that would hold the second part of their soul. He runs to the machine but got caught in the force field that caused their souls to split. Like the others, he tries to fight it, but he has no chance of standing up against the machine's raw power.
He collapses onto the floor and can do nothing but let the machine do its job.

One of them can fight this darkness though, as he got help from another. In Equestria, Applejack stops her work on the farm from the feeling something is terribly wrong and know it comes from her partner. She closes her eyes, focusing and the second she senses the magic of their shared element in her. “Don’t give up partner.” She whispers determent.

A transparent forcefield surrounds the almost fully split Demo, his soul join and the forcefield gathers around his neck, forming the silver necklace and it shines brightly by the power Applejack lends him. Not wanting to waste his partners surprisingly aid, Demo grabs Eyelander and throws the sword right at the machine, it impales the machine and after two seconds, it blows up. Out from the smoke, the Shadow Pony flies out to who knows where.
Demo wobbles onto his feet, his body aches in the really bad way from almost getting his soul and body split up again. Fortunately he is still whole.
The others weren’t that lucky… a tired sigh snaps him away from the others; now dealing with a split soul. A man dressed in black stands in the smoke and for a second Demo mistook him for Black Spy, then he realizes this spy is waaay older.
“I warned him.” Is all the man says, which did not help much on Demo's confusion on who this is.

**Late evening**

“Is there a way to fix this?” One of the Miss Pauling asks worried, glancing to the other her who keeps a nice distance so the kill-one-another effect won’t kick in. The female engineer walks up beside and assures her. “Fortunately there is, but we have to be at a respawn for it first.” Miss Pauling smiles weakly to the other woman, does drop when Ace’s son suddenly starts yelling.

“—We wouldn’t have been in this mess if you haven’t been so selfish!!” Tristan retorts back to Ace’s stupid remark that he has been reckless, and leaves. It’s hard enough not to punch the man in the face as it is already. His other crosses his arms. “Seriously, how hard is it for the master spy to shut down a machine’s power?” The only good thing that came out from all of this is that Sniper might have done the right choice in not going with him. He wouldn't have survived the soul split in his weakend state.
“I was hoping you would’ve used your brain and not went into that trap.” Ace retorts back, though in a way more controlled tone. Both Tristan snorts at this.

Demo stare confused while Miss Pauling has figured out who this spy is, unlike Fortress Spy and his son, these two are not faking the hostility, well Tristan is not hiding the fact he loathes his own father. But looking past the family issue going on between the two. “Um, Ace?” The master spy turns to her, and it catches her quite off guard from how different his whole demeanor is compared to when she saw him in Australia. No longer he has this playful mystique, but instead a cold calculated aura. Now she can see where Spy got it from. “Can you tell us what those birds were for?” But all she got from the man was a light snort and he continues walking. Not what she expected, she thought he would make some smartass comment without answering the question, this sharp turn of personality is quite off-putting but she is talking to the Ace of Spies after all.

Noticing the sharp turn of personality from the man Miss Pauling addressed as Ace of Spies. “You’re quite different from last time we saw you.” Demo remarks to the man and must say: “I liked you better back in Australia.”
Ace lights a cigarette, almost in the same manner as Spy did back when he pretended he was an unfeeling asshole. “I don’t honestly care what a drunken fool like you think of me Mr. Degroot.” Demo jumps in surprise the man knows his name– then remembers this is the master spy he’s talking to. “My only concern is I lost weeks of hard work from you people fumbling around.” Ace blue eyes meet his dark brown in a gaze that reminds Demo of a man talking to an idiot. “Go home to your own country. Leave this to the professionals.”
Medic rolls his eyes and Ace turns to him, lecturing the Vanguard Medic. “Stop acting like a child, you wouldn’t have needed me if you kept yourself in better standards.” Medic clearly did not like that.

“Vete a la mierda! No soy tú!”

“Tu eres mi sangre.” Ace retorts back, sounding angrier by Medic’s hostile behavior towards him.

“I wish I wasn’t.” Tristan sneers back. “You do not and have never cared, I am sick and tired of you keep reminding what I am to you! All I am— all he was is your legacy, but know what Ace.” He speaks the name like an insult. “You failed, he took back the child you made him abandon.”
Ace’s eyes wides ever so slightly, the only sign of his shock. “What did you do?” Which confused the heck out of Demo. He eyes Tristan and the man looks quite smug about whatever he did. “I reunited them. Didn’t know I succeed before your new legacy decided to challenge me.” His other laughs and tells the master spy just as smugly. “Oh, how it pleased me from how defensive he got when I hinted at his child. Oh and he knows about her as well.”
Ace hid it well but even Demo can see that the old spy is livid in whatever Medic did to this other legacy of the master spy. “All of my hard work, ruined for your petty spite.”
Tristan’s smile widens, but it has gotten angrier as well. “It’s very easy to despise you, but my main reason is to prove what you consider a weakness is a powerful strength. You simply cannot see because of your own ego.”

“And yet you still try to reach what you can never gain.” Ace replies coldly, he turns and leaves. “Why I even bother with you is beyond me.” He did not see the angry and deeply hurt look in his son’s eyes. As well Tristan couldn’t see the frustrated expression he wore that his own son ruined all of his years of work to create the best spies in the world for something that is too dangerous to keep.

Engineer puts a hand on Tristan’s arm in a sign of support, without a word he puts his own over hers. After a moment of assuring him that he got what he always wanted throughout his childhood, the two heads back to their current base.
Demo and Miss Pauling follows not long after, none of them saw the Shadow Pony watching them inside the darkness of an alleyway.

Author's Note:

the birds are made from a Chinese mythological bird called Zhenniao or the poison feather bird, I long wanted to put a poisonous animal into one of my chapters and at first considered a Nordic creature called the Tatzlwurm, but then I realized that the MLP universe already have one of those, even if it looks nothing like the monster of mythology which came as a big disappointment. so instead you get the Zhenniao.

thanks to Living Darkness, I got more into the MLP community and has seen the bad but mostly good in people. it truly makes me happy to read the comments that my big passion in storytelling is something other people can enjoy and not only inspire others but this silly idea would turn into something that would allow me to connect with people I otherwise would have struggled doing in real life.
so for that: thank you.