Shadowbolt Harmony Division

by Rainium

Chapter 2

As Rainy stalked down the wide city streets, she was struck by how empty the city was. Hooflyn was practically deserted, but that was because everyone smart had evacuated to get away from the sickness. Manehattan was under quarantine, so there should be at least some survivors, but there weren't even dead bodies. It was like the entire population had just disappeared. Where were the EUP guards that were supposed to be keeping order? Where were the rioters causing the unrest? Where were the Shadowbolts she was supposed to replace?

She shook her head. She had to focus on the task at hoof, worrying about questions she couldn't answer at the moment would only hinder her progress in finding the truth. Rainy continued on, following the directions to the Base of Operations given to her in her HUD. She was only a couple blocks out now.

Rainy flicked on her mic, her SPARC automatically connecting to command. "Command, I'm approaching the Maneway Station. Motion trackers have been quiet the entire walk here."

"Roger that. EUP pulled out of this area days ago, so not many ponies decided to stick around. Smart choice."

"Acknowledged. What made them fall back?"

"The EUP barely have enough ponies to secure a block, much less a neighborhood. Command recalled all their perimeter forces to better secure the Base of Operations."

"Looks like that didn't turn out too well..."

"It still took a spellcaster and a freak accident to take them down, Agent. We had a good hoofhold on this city, and we can still regain it... we just need hope again."

"I wouldn't call holding a single block in an entire city a hoofhold, command."

"It was better than nothing, Rainy... You should be coming up on it now."

Rainy looked up to see the Maneway Station in front of her, on the left side of the street. It was still an impressive sight, despite all the damage that had been done to it. The charred, twisted remains of a supply helicopter were still visible in the crumbled remains of the front right-side wall. Part of the main entrance had collapsed along with it, but there was still enough room for a pony to enter through.

"...Yeah, I see it."

"Acknowledged. Secure the site, we'll contact you again if we learn anything new."

"Roger that. Rainy out."

Rainy quickly took the front steps to the main entryway, stepping past the crumbling granite and twisted steel of the wreckage to make it inside the terminal. Inside, a once orderly living space was reduced to chaos. Cots and gurneys were knocked over, papers scattered across the floor. A circular information booth, which appeared to have been turned into a ration distribution area, sat in the middle of the concourse, the four-faced clock on the top cracked and unmoving.

The shops and ticket purchase booths along the outside had been repurposed as a quarantine area for the sick, with the anti-theft shutters pulled down in an attempt to lock the patients in. However, the entire station was empty. The vast domed roof was unharmed by the helicopter crash, most of the damage involving the front right corner. A limp. bloody hoof poked out of the rubble, causing Rainy to grimace and look away.

The lights were off, and the hum of the main generator was absent, meaning the place was without electricity. Enough light streamed through the stained-glass windows to provide adequate lighting, but this place would be pitch black once night fell. She needed to either fix the main generator or find the backup ones to make this place operational again. The utility rooms were usually held down below, by the train tracks.

Rainy headed that way, carefully stepping past abandoned desks and chairs, pinboards covered with maps and markings, and empty wheelchairs and spilled rations. She eventually made it to the steps which marked the descent down to the maneway tracks. The darkness below intimidated her slightly, so she pulled out her rifle as she hopped over the turnstiles and made her way down.

She could hear the squeaks and skittering of rats as she arrived at the first train platform, the only light being provided from the windows upstairs. This limited her visibility to just a few meters ahead, so she took in as much of the scene as she could. Through the darkness, she was able to make out a door in the wall between the two sets of tracks, a sign reading Maintenance next to it.

"Perfect."

Rainy slowly turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, poking her rifle through the opening as the inside was revealed to her. A single large generator sat in the middle of the small room, with a workbench against the wall and various other janitorial tools scattered around. The generator itself looked like it had been there for decades; it was a wonder that the bulky old thing had taken this long to malfunction. Near the base of the generator was a maintenance panel; three of the screws holding it in place were missing, and the one left was barely screwed in.

"Let's see here..." Rainy mumbled to herself as she crouched down, removing the panel from the generator with careful hooves. A mess of tangled, overheated parts greeted her. The old beast had been worked so heavily, it probably collapsed the second something went wrong; in their case, a giant helicopter caving in the roof. It would take someone beyond her expertise to return it to working order. There weren't any backup generators in this room either, they must be located in a different area.

She sighed and carefully replaced the panel, before a noise from behind her made her jolt up, spinning around and raising her rifle.

"Who's there?" Rainy called out.

Her motion tracker showed nothing, and the space in front of her was too dark to see more than a few meters in front of her. She remained wary, switching off the safety of her rifle as she stepped forward out of the maintenance room.

"I am a Shadowbolt Division Agent authorized by the Crown to use lethal force. Show yourself immediately."

Something clinked against her hoof, and she looked down to see a unicorn's horn, apparently severed from the owner, lying in a small pool of blood. She stared at it in confusion for a split second, and that's all it took for her guard to drop.

A blur of movement in the corner of her eye caused her to look back up, but it was too late. A flying silhouette zoomed into her field of view, smashing into her and knocking her onto the platform. Rainy cried out as she was hit before her air was knocked out of her, turning the cry into a gasp for air. Her gun was knocked out of her hooves and skidded away across the ground, just out of reach. Rainy squirmed, trying to scoot within reach of her rifle, before hooves planted themselves onto her chest, pinning her down.

A unicorn mare with a severed horn loomed over her, blood dripping from the nub in the center of her forehead onto Rainy. Her mane was matted and clumped with blood; its former color was barely recognizable. The unicorn panted as she stared down at Rainy, its mouth moving but no words coming out.

"Get off me!" Rainy grunted, pushing up at the pony with her forehooves.

The unicorn squealed as the force from the hard shove launched it off her, landing with a thud onto the platform next to her. The unicorn quickly rolled to its hooves, looking at Rainy with scared, crazed eyes as the pegasus scrambled to grab her gun. The pony glanced around before jumping down onto the train tracks, galloping towards the tunnel leading deep into the maneway system.

"Wait! Stop!" Rainy quickly jumped to her hooves and leveled her rifle, letting out a flurry of shots that whizzed past the disappearing tail of the unicorn, striking the side of the tunnel.

"Dammit!" Rainy jumped down onto the tracks as well and galloped to the beginning of the tunnel. A vast expanse of darkness greeted her, the tracks underneath her hooves continuing off into nothingness. There was no way she was gonna find the unicorn in there.

Rainy mumbled curses under her breath as her wings lifted her back onto the platform, stalking back over to the maintenance room. Her motion trackers still showed nothing, and she tapped her goggles with a hoof to try to get it working, but to no avail. Dammit. That little malfunction could have killed her. She lifted her hoof to order her SPARC to run diagnostics... but something on the ground caught her eye. It was the broken horn; the one that had distracted her long enough for the pony to ambush her. It was the same color as the fur of her hornless attacker, and it glistened with the same fresh blood. The horn hadn't been broken off; it had been removed with a clean cut, probably sawed off. Self-inflicted? Most likely.

Why would someone cut off their own horn?

Her mind flashed back to the billboard on the riverside. "Magic kills". Something was going on here, but she couldn't piece it together. She didn't have enough of the pieces.

But once again, her thoughts are interrupted by a voice, this time from behind her. "...A-Are they gone?"

Rainy spun around, her rifle aiming at a cowering stallion, hidden in the ticket booth. He cried out in panic and threw his bloody hooves up in the air. "Don't shoot! We're EUP!"

Rainy raised an eyebrow. "...We?"

He nodded, and three other ponies poked their heads out from behind the counter. "Are they gone?" he tried again. "The rioters?"

Rainy sighed and lowered her gun slightly, looking the four guards over. "Yes, there's no one left here now. At least, no one left upstairs."

The three new ponies sighed in relief, but the lead stallion looked up at her with curiosity. "Y-You're with the Division, right? Are you here to help us?"

"Yes. Where did everyone go? Why are you still here?"

"W-We were wounded in the helicopter crash. We weren't able to evacuate with the others when the rioters attacked..." The guard winced, rubbing at his bandaged hind leg.

"Where did they go?"

"To the Garden... down the street..."

Madisoat Mare Garden. Wrestling stadium, hoofball court, concert hall, the most famous venue in all of Equestria. The last thing she heard was that it was converted into a field hospital, using all that open space to stuff all the infected into and hope for the best.

Before she could respond to the guard, her SPARC chimed into her ear with a message from command. "Agent, drop what you're doing right now and get topside. Immediately."

"Yes ma'am." Rainy responded, clicking off her mic momentarily, directing her attention to the EUP guards. "Stay here. Don't move, don't draw attention to yourself. I'll be right back."

The lead stallion gave her a nervous nod, and she turned and galloped back to the entrance, turning her mic back on. "What's the situation?"

"We've located Dr. Glimmershine, she’s at the Madisoat Mare Garden.”

“Yeah, I’m slightly ahead of you there,” Rainy replied, slipping back through the ruined station entrance and back onto the street. “Some EUP survivors tell me that’s where everyone else retreated to.”

“Yep. And our target mare went with them, trying to treat the wounded they managed to take with them. But the rioters attacked there as well, reinforced with the weapons they took from the base. Drove the remaining EUP forces out, took the ones who couldn't escape hostage. She's inside being held prisoner, and we need you to get to her before those assholes decide to kill her. We need her alive, she's our best hope for beating this thing."

"Copy that. What are the rules of engagement?"

"You're a Shadowbolt, Agent Rainy. You have no rules."

---

"...Oh Goddesses... I don't want to die..."

"You're not gonna die," Agrippa replied reassuringly, carefully wrapping the EUP guard's head in gauze. Blood poured from a gouge where the guard’s right eye used to be; it stained her blue hooves as she worked, turning the fur into a matted purple. "At least, not from your wounds. I made sure of that."

"...It hurts so bad..."

"I bet it does, but those bastards took the rest of my morphine. Probably shooting it up now as we speak. But you know what they say: if it hurts–" Agrippa smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "–it means you're not dead."

The guard just whimpered, her good eye glistening with tears.

"Tough crowd," Agrippa sighed and tied off the dressing as she looked around.

She was locked into a small hoofball locker room by the rioters that stormed the place, with four other guards keeping her company. Each of them was dying of injuries that stopped them from escaping with the rest of the EUP when they had the chance; Agrippa had done her best to patch them up, but she was low on supplies and time. Not many ponies could work under these conditions, but she made do.

Agrippa leaned back to look over her work carefully before nodding in satisfaction. "Alright, I'm done. Just scoot over there with the others, okay?"

The EUP guard nodded and sniffled slightly as she stumbled over to her squad mates, thankfully remaining quiet. Agrippa sighed before leaning back, laying down on the floor. She had been working nonstop in the hours that she had been held here, either patching up the prisoners she was being held with, or the wounded rioters from the attack that she was forced to heal at gunpoint. And that didn't include the countless hours she stayed awake at the Maneway Station and here, working to heal the sick before the rioters attacked. Her vision had begun to blur slightly, and she closed her eyes, hoping for a few minutes of silence.

However, her respite was short lived, as the door swung open to reveal two rioters, both armed with swords.

"Doc, we need you to come with us."

Agrippa groaned, her eyes popping back open to look up at the two. "Look, I'm not on call right now. Can you come back later?"

The rioter snorted and stepped forward. "We're not askin'."

Agrippa yelped slightly as he grabbed her by her gold mane, pulling her up to her hooves. "Okay, okay! Gosh, I hope I'm getting paid overtime for this..."

"You get to stay alive, does that count?" the stallion retorted, shoving her forward out of the room, locking the door behind them. The other rioter, a mare, escorted her towards the main hospital area, located on the hoofball court.

"Usually, staying alive is not a reward, it's a given..."

"Well, we thought 'not being locked in a city and being left for dead by our government' was a given too, but that's apparently not the case," the rioter mare replied, poking her with the flat of her sword to keep Agrippa moving. "Times have changed."

Agrippa rolled her eyes, but otherwise remained quiet as the two exited the dressing room area onto the court, the grandstands towering up all around them. The main floor was covered in gurneys and stretchers, most of them covered in bloody covers and used morphine needles. Only one of them was still occupied; a young rioter stallion screamed in agony as his friend dropped him onto the stretcher. "Where's that goddamn doctor?"

"Right here!" the mare next to Agrippa called out, leading the doctor to the group of rioters gathered around the gurney.

"Out of the way, out of the way, let me see..." Agrippa called out, shooing the rioters away so she could get a look at her new patient. The stallion was cradling his stomach with blood-soaked hooves, letting out cries of pain as blood continued to drip down his belly and stain the gurney beneath him. "What happened to him?"

"One of the prisoners acted up," a rioter replied, "stole his weapon and shot him with it before I could stop him."

Huh. Good to see there was still some fight left in the troops. Not all hope was lost after all. Agrippa nodded silently at the pony who spoke up before turning her attention back to the injured stallion. He was indeed cradling a bullet wound in the stomach, and from a high caliber round too. Probably shredded his internal organs, causing internal bleeding along with the blood pouring out of his chest. He would be dead in a couple of hours, and there was nothing she could do about it, not with the lack of tools she had available. But she couldn't exactly tell the rioters that, or they'd just kill her on the spot for being useless to them. Instead, she got to work, feigning confidence as she worked to stop the bleeding by applying pressure to his abdomen.

While she worked, one of the observers turned to the pony who had spoken up. "What'd you do with the prisoner?"

"Don't worry, he won't be causing any more trouble," the stallion replied, letting out a soft chuckle that made Agrippa's hackles raise.

Oh Goddesses. These ponies were monsters... She hated wasting what precious few medical supplies she had left on a mortally wounded piece of shit, but she didn't have much of a choice.

Suddenly, a large blast rocked through the building, causing the wheeled gurney to roll away from her. Agrippa yelped as her patient slid away from her hooves, and she grabbed the stretcher to stop it from moving any further, causing his bleeding to resume again. Cursing, she worked to apply pressure once more as the rioters looked around in confusion.

"Shit! Someone blew down the barricade! The main doors are open!"

"Dammit! Come on, guys. Let's go see what idiot is trying to break in now."

There was a murmur of approval as the group readied their weapons.

"Steel! You stay with the Doc, make sure she doesn't do anything stupid."

A gray stallion next to Agrippa nodded, standing over her as the rest of the rioters galloped off to the main entrance. A few awkward seconds of silence followed, interrupted only by the low moans of the injured rioter. Agrippa spared a moment to glance around, her eye catching the stash of stolen morphine stored on an abandoned gurney. If she couldn't save this stallion, she could at least dull his pain.

Agrippa glanced over at her guard. "Can I have some morphine? Please?"

He blinked at her, almost dumbfounded as to why she would ask that question. "...Why?"

Agrippa sighed, struggling to keep her patience. "Y'know, to help dull your friend's pain? Use it the way it's intended?"

The stallion thought about it for a second. "...Nah. I'm saving my share for myself, and I'm sure the others won't let you use theirs either."

"But if he doesn't get some, he'll go into shock and die."

"Well, you'd better hope he doesn't, or we will get pretty angry..." He cocked the slide on his pistol for emphasis.

Agrippa took the hint and shut up, returning to 'healing' the stallion bleeding out in front of her.

She just hoped that explosion meant help. Competent help, preferably, but she'd take anything at this point. If not, she was dead.

She sighed. Still less stressful than medical school...