Nightmare Team: New Blade

by Ser_Galahad

Chapter VIII: Getting Up to Speed

So I don't think I'm a fan of the rain.

Another burst of lightning came from the port side of the cargo ship. The rain had come in about twenty minutes ago as Twilight had settled into her hiding spot. She currently stood in a shadow in the back of the cargo freighters main deck with her shadow cloak activated. While the rain was a pain in the ass she was glad to have the cloud cover. The moon had been full before the clouds had moved in and made it difficult to stay hidden even under the dark of night. Now the moon was gone and she was nigh impossible to see even when she deactivate her cloak.

The pirate guard sweeping this section of the deck had already walked past her location, and even with her shadow cloak masking her visual presence, she was sure he would find her on each pass. This time wouldn't just be another observation. Twilight had already concluded that his path was patterned and that no other guards came through this area. As the unicorn pirate stepped past her, Twilight stepped out of the dark and ignited her horn causing a dagger length spell blade to silently grow from her right forearm. As she moved forward the cloaks hiding ability dissipated back into its mute black and gray pattern.

Twilight approached the unsuspecting guard as a panther hunts in the dark of the jungle. She moved closer to the back of her prey till she was a breath away before unleashing action. She wrapped her left hand over the unicorns mouth to muffle his coming death rattles as her right, armed with the spellblade, drove though his back and punctured her victims right lung and severed multiple arteries. She held the blade in place and hand over his mouth until he stopped thrashing and she lowered his body to the deck. After a quick visual to see if she had alerted anyone she let her blade fade back to nothing. It had been lucky that the pirate had not been wearing much armor or her blade might not have gone in far enough. While she had been practicing, she was still unable to reliably get her blades to go fully formed like she had during the attack on Canterlot.

Twilight made her way to the door hatch of the rear deck house. She found herself in a tight stairwell that only led up.

Damn I need to get below deck. Might as well make sure that there are no deck observers up here before I cross to the bow.

Twilight made her way up the metal plate steps trying to not give away her approach if there were any more pirates up here. Reaching the next landing she found herself standing in front of a second hatch door. She slowly opened it and moved in. Turns out it was the helmsman's room.

"Who the Fuck are you and what are you doing on my ship?!"

Well shit!

Twilight turned to find the deck officer, a sea foam green earth pony, standing behind the navy blue pegasus helmsman. The officer drew his pistol and leveled it at Twilight, while the helmsman kept shooting glances between Twilight, the officer, and a button off to the far wall labeled 'ALARM'.

Twilight raised her hands to show she had no physical weapons on her. The officer approached with less caution then he should have. Being a earth pony he probably didn't even stop to consider the risk of ethereal weapons.

When he stepped in range Twilight grabbed his hand holding the pistol with her left. With a flare of her horn she re-summoned her blade, this time the length of a short sword, and pushed through the officer's chest.

During this the helmsman had abandoned his post at the controls, and ran for the far alarm button.

Twilight dispelled her blade and grew a magic missile on her right index, middle, and ring finger before letting them fly. In her hast to deal with the mess she a stumbled into all of them missed their target.

Crap, crap, crap.

She took a very quick calming breath and leveled one more missile at running helmsman, ensuring that her aim was true. She let if fly.

Just as the helmsman reached the alarm the missile struck him in the back and he crumpled to the ground in a sprawl of limbs.

"That was real fucking close Spellblade, Let's not let the whole ship know you are there. We need you to get evidence that the griffons are smuggling a bio weapon on this pirate freighter. If they get word you found it then they get enough time to come up with plausible deniability before we reveal it to the public."

The voice came over a small earpiece she wore in her left ear.

Reaching up touch it she replied, "I'm sorry Orion, I didn't want to come up here but I need to cross to the far side and these two would have spotted me for sure."

"I understand but you need to have more situational awareness when entering a room."

"Understood."

Twilight moved the bodies of the officer and the helmsman to the back of the helm room. Checking through the bodies revealed two beneficial items. The first was the access key to the hold and the second was a cargo list that told her exactly where in the hold her target was. It wasn't detailed enough for Twilight to take it as evidence but it did make the search for the right crate easier. Now she just had to get to it without getting spotted again.

Twilight magically locked the controls of the ship so that the ship would continue to go straight so that it wouldn't alert the rest of the crew. She then set off back down the stairs to the main deck.

She made her way across the deck taking cover behind the occasional crate or cargo container so that any passing guards didn't spot her. The rain and darkness thankfully help to mask her movements and sound as she crossed to the bow of the ship. Thankfully she didn't actually see any more deck guards.

Maybe those three where the only ones above deck.

Once she made it to the front of the ship she found the hull hatch that allowed her to descend to the the next lower deck.

"Make sure to watch your corners." the voice in her ear said

She found that she was passing through the crew quarters. A series of bunks filled the sides of the hall, four on each side for a total of eight. All the bunks were sloppy as if they were slept in and never made afterwards.

As she slinked through the hall she noticed another pirate, a griffon this time, walking down the hall with his back to her.

Well, walking may not be the correct term for the movement that the griffon was performing. It was a mix of swaying and sloppy flailing. As Twilight approached she saw that gripped in the griffon's claw was a large bottle of cider that was all but gone at this point. There was no way to go around the griffon so she decided that she needed to go through him.

Approaching from behind she pulled the same move that she did on the guard up above. This time however she didn't just leave the body on the deck. She lowered the griffon into one of the bunks where she covered him with a blanket.

Twilight continued on. The next hatch door led her to the cargo hold. Spotting a ladder to her left she climbed up to the catwalk above. From her vantage point she spotted three more guards; a unicorn, an earth pony, and another griffon. Noticing that their patrols crossed each other she knew she couldn't just sneak up on each guard and take them out with her blades.

She grew a magic missile and waited for the right time when one of the guards wan't being watched. Finally the unicorn stepped behind a crate and for a brief second was out of sight of her comrades. Twilight fired the shot striking the unicorn in the head killing the mare instantly.

The griffon didn't see the shot but he did hear the sound of the body drop. He started to make his way to where the unicorn had been standing a few seconds before.

"Oy! Daisy, did you trip over your own damn feet again?" the griffon called out.

He turned the corner and walked right into Twilight's line of fire. Another magic missile took him out as well.

The remaining earth pony was alerted once again by the sound of a falling body.

"What the fuck are you two doing back there?" he said as he too went to investigate only to get a missile to the chest for his troubles.

Well that was easy. That should be all of them.

Twilight made her way back down the ladder and walked to where the cargo document said her target was located. Sure enough she found a cargo container with Griffon Kingdom markings. Twilight opened the container door and walked in. The container was filled with crates and each crate was filled with small vials of green liquid. Twilight reached up and tapped her ear piece.

"Orion, this is Spellblade. I have confirmation on the bio weapon."

"Good job Spellblade. Grab a vile and the shipping manifest in the container so that we can link it to the griffons. When you have them get the hell out. Rainboom is in a holding pattern above the ship waiting for you to call for an evac."

"Copy that Orion."

Twilight grabbed the nearest vile of the green substance and the shipping info that was attached to the inside wall of the container. Once she had them she made her way back to the stairs that led to the top deck.

Suddenly Twilight's senses were assaulted by a flashing red light and the sound of a klaxon going off. Twilight's expression melted.

That can't mean anything good.

"We have reports that the alarm's been set off. Get the hell out of there. Now!"

Twilight was all to happy to comply. She rushed up the stairs to the top deck. The storm had apparently grown while she had been below deck. It was starting to rock the ship more side to side.

"Spellblade this is Rainboom. I'm waiting off the port stern for you hurry up we need to go fast."

Twilight rushed for her life and made it all the way to the far side. She saw Rainboom hovering anywhere between a meter and five meters off the side of the ship. She couldn't maintain a good distance because of the swaying.

"You'll have to jump for it!" Rainboom cried.

Twilight took a deep breath to steel herself and took a running start. She got to the edge and leapt.

*Crack*

The revolver rang out. Twilight felt a shock of the impack in the back of her head as she fell to the waters below.

Then her world went black.

---

Twilight opened her eyes to find that she was staring at the floor of her simulation room. Laying on the ground Twilight started to rub the back of her head. It may have only been a training simulation but she still swore she could feel where she had been hit. She hadn't of course. The magic crystal embedded in the ceiling of the simulation room took and returned signals directly from the brain of the pony in the room, as well as the one next door. This allows for the user, or users, to have a scenario play out in their minds while allowing them to affect it. It didn't however, translate the damage from the simulation to the user in the real world, but it could still mess with the mind.

The door to the room opened and Twilight finally pulled her face from the floor to see Sunset and Capt. Hunter walk in.

"So do you know what you did wrong or should I tell you?" Sunset said, standing above her with her arms crossed. She had aviators and duster on over her battle armor

"I didn't run fast enough?" Twilight hazarded as a guess as she pushed her self up to a kneeling position before moving the rest of the way to a standing position.

Sunset just shook her head. This was the third time that they had run the simulation or a variant of it. The first time Twilight didn't even make it below deck before she was found and shot. The second iteration had turned out very similar to the one she had just completed, only she hadn't made it to the jump that time.

"No, it's your situational awareness that keeps getting you killed," Sunset said turning to the captain. "Do you want to explain what she keeps missing or should we run it again?"

Capt. Hunter shook his head and looked over to Sunset, "No, I'll tell her. This is clearly not the way to get her to learn the lesson. She has most of the technical skills down, the problem is her either over or under thinking about the situation. We need a new method to drive this home."

Twilight frowned at the discussion of her failure, especially when it came to the criticism of her critical thinking abilities.

He turned to Twilight, "How many pirates did you take out during your maneuvers before you thought you were in the clear?"

Twilight did a quick headcount, "The first on the deck, the two at the helm, the drunken on, and the three down in the hold. That makes seven."

"That's correct," Capt. Hunter confirmed. "Now how many used beds were there?"

Twilight thought back to the simulation and the hallway where she had killed the drunken griffon. "There were four on each side and they all seemed to be ruffled as if they had been slept in. I guess that would make eight used beds in all."

The captain just nodded as if there was some conclusion that Twilight was supposed to be drawing.

A second later there was an almost audible click went off in Twilight's head. She face palmed and groaned to herself. "I missed a pirate didn't I? That was the alarm right."

Sunset was the one to answer, "Exactly, I was hiding and running random patrols every few minutes to see if you left any substantial evidence of you being there. And my how much evidence it was. Seven kills and only one of them did you try to conceal in any meaningful way. Good rule of thumb is don't drop a body if you don't have to. If you do, hide it well or make sure that you drop all of them. You think you will be able to go up against a cunning opponent like that Luna forsaken, weasel of a back stabbing coward Cain if you don't pay attention to what is going on around you."

Capt. Hunter jumped in at this point, "Despite the saying a dead pony does tell a lot of tales to observant eyes. That is why you need to make sure you have complete situational awareness on a mission. Do you get what we're trying to show you?"

Twilight nodded in confirmation. She did see how the issues they had were valid. While she was great at collecting all the details in an academic situation it was different in a live fire situation. She couldn't always just observe everything before she acted. Twilight knew she had a bad habit of forming a plan and being loathe to deviate from it. She needed to learn how to take information on the fly and alter a plan as needed.

What was that phrase Shining always uses? 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy'?

There was however one other issue that she had.

Twilight looked over at the Gunslinger and huffed a little in frustration, "It would be a lot easier to not kill if you showed me how to do that shadow walking trick."

Sunset shook her head at Twilight, "You may be the team's Shadow-walker but you're not ready to learn that yet. It takes a special kind of battle field understanding to be able to properly use that maneuver with out screwing it up. There is more to situational awareness then just reading the ponies and how they will act it also goes for the enviroment. Could you tell me where every major shadow was on that ship?"

Twilight shook her head, "No I guess I couldn't. Why would that matter?"

"When you shadow walk you enter a plane called the Shadow Realm. You can think of it almost like a large open field full of closed doors and small windows. Each one of those doors is a shadow that you can pass through back into the real world and they are based on proximity and direction in relation to you when you entered the Shadow Realm. It is however, not a one to one scale always. Some of the more stable shadows will allow you a small glimpse though them, but most are not that strong. When you are in the shadow realm it is impossible to know for certain where a shadow will take you. That Is why you need to understand how the real world is functioning and what is going on with others before you can use it."

Sunset raised a hand to her chin and rubbed it in thought. Then a sly grin crossed her face as she turned back to Hunter.

"We could always have her play a game of 'tag' like how Nightshade had us when we were his trainees. If that doesn't teach her to read a situation then I don't know what will."

"We could do that," Capt. Hunter nodded slowly while considered this option. "I think that might be the best option."

The captain led Twilight and Sunset out of the simulation room and into the rest of the live fire training area.

When Twilight had first seen it she had marveled at it. It was a giant concrete room, rivaling the size of the training center back at the Day Guard HQ. Twilight also found that it had many possible configurations. Most of the time it was just a very large firing range with the simulation rooms off to the far left side. She had been told however that they could have the room set up to do multiple different live fire training exercises with the whole team. This was mostly done when there was an upcoming mission to prep for. The only reason they hadn't used it was that They had wanted to do practices with multiple "enemies" and that was hard to do outside of the simulator.

"Twilight, why don't you go take a break. Sunset an I need to talk about exactly how we want to do this and get the set up ready." Captain Hunter said directing his gaze to Twilight.

Twilight nodded. "I wouldn't mind a short break. I could use a shower."

She really could. Twilight could feel the layer of sweat all over her. While the simulator reduced your neural connection to the muscles, it didn't stop all of it. This meant that some actions were actually being performed by your body. It also didn't stop your mind from reacting to all the movement that it thought you were doing, or the heat that you would normally feel from it. Because of this you still tended to sweat quite a bit in the simulator.

Taking her leave Twilight walked out of the live fire range and to her room. Normally after using the range you needed to go to the armory to store your arms, but Twilight didn't have that problem.

Twilight had been given one of the personal rooms that were behind the four doors on the sides of the common lounge. Her's was on the same side as the chess board, and next to Sunset's. Twilight's room was the one closer to the lobby while Sunset's was closer to the training room. The two rooms on the other side housed Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash. When Twilight had quickly noticed that there were fewer rooms them Nightmares she had been informed that the captain had a room behind his office, and that Bulwark kept his room in the medical bay so that he was always there if an emergency happened.

Twilight pushed through her door and peeled her LDUs off and levitated them to the wash hamper. From here she made her way to the bathroom that was attached to her room. She turned on the water and waited for it to warm. One relaxing shower later she was dressed in a clean set of LDUs and laying on her bed. Her head swam with thoughts. It started with a detailed break down of the training session and what she should have done at key points. From there she went over the criticism and feedback that she had received. This only lasted so long, as when she started to think of the criticisms that she had been told one surfaced above the rest.

"THEN FUCK YOU!"

The exclamation reverberated in her mind for some time.

Does he have a point? What could I have done? I got their as fast as I could. Could I have been more ruthless in my attack? I was trying to save the innocents not kill the attackers. I get that he has no one now but...I don't know.

That was just it. She didn't know, and it was eating at her. Why was she his target. She was the one that had probably saved him, but none the less it had been her that he had directed his anger at. Why did he......

*RATTATATATATA*

The strange repeating sound pulled Twilight from her internal thought process. It seemed to come from outside Twilight's door and back towards the physical training area.

What is that? It sound almost like a machine gun firing on auto with a suppressor on.

*PING*

The noise reverberated around the base. It sounded almost like a bullet going off in a sealed cave.

"CELESTIA DAMN IT! COLT OF A BITCH!"

The swears rang out just behind the ringing and at almost the same decibel level. Those pretty much narrowed down the location of the disturbance. Those were the swears of a pissed off engineer. Twilight knew, she had used them herself every now and then when an experiment blew up in her face.

Twilight made her way out of the room, back into the work out area. A stream of smoke pouring out of the Engineering Lab confirmed her suspicions. Twilight approached with caution. She didn't know what had happened just that it had gone wrong apparently.

Opening the door she found AJ with a fire extinguisher furiously trying to douse the flames that were engulfing what looked to be a large metal object. Apple Jack finally managed to smother the fire before moving to the vent controls to try and purge the smoke from the workshop.

"What happened in here? You ok? It sounded like you tried to play the Trotkovsky overture with the real cannons." Twilight said waving a hand in front of her face in an attempt to clear the smoke.

"Nah, nothin' like that. I was workin' on the power plant for mah armored car, and the darn thing done blew on me." Apple Jack clarified in a disgruntled tone. "Got ta get the smoke ta clear before Ah can see what gone wrong."

Twilight lit her horn and allowed her magic to leach into the room in a wave. The wave moved through the work shop and collected all of the smoke while not disturbing the clean air. Once all the smoke particulates were collected and compressed they were force out through the ventilation system. Now with clear air the two mares move in on the engine, that was up on a testing rig, to see what had happened to it.

Twilight had already been by once before and Apple Jack had filled her in on the essentials of how the engine worked. In simple terms combustible fuel was expanded to a vapor state, mixed with air so that it could still burn. It was then injected into one of a group of piston chambers where a spark caused the gas to ignite and expand pushing down the cylinder. As the cylinder oscillated it turned a drive shaft that would then be used to turn the wheels of the vehicle. It was much more complex then that but that was the general gist of it.

Quickly AJ spotted the biggest problem with the engine block. What used to be a solid side of steel, now had a gaping hole in the side of one of the piston chambers. The next piece of evidence was found by Twilight. What looked like a piece of the piston that was supposed to be inside, was embedded in the wall of the shop.

"Well ain't that a hoot 'n a half. If Ah didn't know any better Ah'ld say that mah engine went 'n threw a piston rod at me. How ya reckon that happen' Spellblade?" Apple Jack scratched the back of her head looking at the engine. She stuck her finger in the hole that was just a bit larger then the digit. She pulled it back to find it covered in oil.

Twilight considered a few posibilities, but she needed more information before she could confirm any of them.

"What was going on right before it blew on you? I assume that you were running on the test stand right?" Twilight inquired.

"Yep, Ah was tryin' to test if Ah could get a higher revolution count from the pistons. Ya know, to see if Ah could solve the speed issue Ah been havin' with the car. Ah even made sure ta double check all the connections were tight, 'n as ya can see, it was all oiled up this time." Apple Jack explained showing her black coated finger before wiping it clean on the side of her work suit.

Twilight walked over to the piston piece in the wall. The end that was sticking out looked to have fractured off of the main piston arm. Twilight looked edge where the fracture had propagated.

"How many test runs have you been running on the engine?" Twilight asked.

"According to my engineerin' notebook here, this should be test 153. Why?" Apple Jack replied as she leafed through a bound notebook filled with grid paper pages covered in design ideas, sketches, and test results.

"Have you been using the same pistons for all the tests? How hard have you strained them?" Twilight continued. She took a closer look at the warping that had occurred along the fault line.

"Ah only got the one set." Apple Jack answered to the first part before she had to stop and consult her notebook. "As for the stress on them, they been put through the ringer a few times. You think that it hit it's yield point?"

"I think that it started to move into plastic deformation from cyclical loading and the high rev test just finally put it over the edge. It probably fractured in the cylinder, but the other pistons were still firing so the broken rod started to knock against the sidewall before being shot out the side." Twilight concluded with a satisfied nod. That was the scenario that all the evidence pointed to. The rattling sound, the warping, and the stress that the test had put on the rods.

"Ah think ya might be right." Apple Jack agreed before she stomped on the floor of the shop. "Shot! I really thought I was getting close to a breakthrough and now I got to machine all new parts."

"Well I guess in a way you did make a bit of a 'Break Through' with the engine." Twilight joked wearily before letting out a small laugh at her own joke.

"Would ya look at that! We got us a comedian." Apple Jack gave Twilight a good natured shove in the arm before laughing herself.

"So how's the trainin' goin' with Wolf and Orion? You look mighty worn down." AJ asked seeing the weariness in Twilight's face.

"I'm not that worn from it really." Twilight tried. It was not completely the truth, but not technically false. It wasn't the training that was weighing on her the most.

AJ gave her glance that told Twilight she was not taking the deception.

"To be honest, I don't know if the training is the biggest thing weighing on my mind." Twilight admitted waved her hands in front of herself trying to dismiss the suspicion. "It has more to do with a colt that I met when I was back in Canterlot."

AJ's expression softened and she wrapped an arm around Twilight's shoulders. "What happened shug? Ya ok?"

Twilight's eyes fell to the floor. "I think so. It's just that after the attack on Canterlot I found this small colt. He was badly injured, but I was able to get him some medical help. When I went back earlier this week I went to go check on him, you know see if he was healing well."

"Was he gettin' worse or something like that? Is that what's getting to ya?" AJ asked.

Twilight shook her head. "No he is actually healing a lot better then I thought he would have. Most of his burns are gone. No the issue is that his parents died in the killing spree, he's an orphan now. That's not the worst part. When I went to see him, he blamed me for his parents not surviving. He said that I was too slow to respond. That's whats killing me. I don't know what I could have done differently. I don't get why he hates me."

Thinking about the little colt had Twilight was on the verge of crying again.

AJ rubbed Twilight's shoulder. "Ah don't think that little colt really hates ya Twilight."

Twilight looked over at Apple Jack with confusion. "What makes you think that?"

AJ pointed to the broken engine on the stand.

"Well, because Ah've found that ponies are like machines at times. When they are stressed 'n strained ta their limit, parts brake in side."

Apple Jack shifted her finger from the engine to the piston piece in the wall.

"Some times those pieces are so broken that they need ta go 'n lash out. They don' always want ta, they have ta. They also don' always pick their target. They jus' hit the nearest thing when they let fly. They gotta hit something, 'cause if they don't they jus' fly off 'n are lost for ever. Do you understand what Ah'm trying to say? If I had ta hazard a guess Ah'd bet that he regrets what he said too after he finally calmed down"

Twilight just nodded. AJ's words made sense in her head and they had made her feel better. Perhaps she should go back again to the little colt again to find his real feelings and to talk to him in earnest.

Maybe if I get a reason to go back there I will, but it will probably take a good reason.

Twilight hugged Apple Jack and thanked her for her comforting words. They had just disengaged from the embrace when the door to the shop opened. It reveled Capt. Hunter standing in the door way looking at the mess that the broken engine had caused.

"Hot damn Honesty! Did you try to blow up your shop again?" He shook his head and turned to Twilight. A knowing smirk crossed his face.

"We're ready for you Spellblade."

Author's Note:

If you have any feed back for me please send it my way. I don't know what you do or don't like if you don't tell me.

Thank you again for reading.
Aim High All

Comments

[Commander Darklight]

moar plz

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

Poor Twilight...

[Tali_The_Lamia]

(Before reading the story) Anthro huh? So a stage 2 anthro form?

[Ser_Galahad]

8804650
Ya. Think a little more pony then EQG during transformations. Also unicorns have their horns. I needed hands because I can't wrap my mind around ponies pulling triggers when they don't have fingers

[Tali_The_Lamia]

8805066
So.... their more pony then EQG but still have hands.
Stage 3 then.?
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/8585055517249844/

Also if you look at the Ottomans during the 1400-1500s they had muskets that you literally gripped the handle to shoot not pull a trigger. It was a favorite in the Elite Janissaries.