Tsunami (New)
Tsunami
The Skyray bearing Team TTSS within flew westward across the kingdom of Vale, passing over tall pine forests as the mountains beyond loomed ever larger.
Within the airship, the four members of TTSS – plus their two guests – sprawled about the central space, sitting upon various boxes and bags that had been loaded up on board by the time Blake climbed in. Nobody had yet explained to her what was in them.
“This big box here has my drones inside,” Twilight said, seeming to read Blake’s mind as she patted the large, metal-rimmed case on which she sat upon Blake’s right. “I’ve also got my tools to repair the relay. I’m not sure what the other stuff is.”
“This and that,” Starlight replied. “Grenades, ammunition, MREs-”
“Are you planning an extended trip?” Blake asked.
“No,” Starlight said. “But it never hurts to be prepared, right?” She was the only member of the enlarged team who was not sitting down, managing to keep her balance standing despite the vibrations of the airship as it flew.
“I suppose not,” Blake murmured.
“Hey, Blake,” Sunburst Flare drew her attention to her left. His cloak was thrown back, which meant that Blake could see that he was reaching into a pouch at his belt to produce a deck of playing cards. He shuffled the deck once or twice, then took a handful of cards, spread out in his hands, and offered them to Blake. “Pick a card.”
Tempest Shadow groaned and rolled her eyes. Trixie chuckled. Blake stared at him, eyebrows climbing ever so slightly up her face like mountaineers in the midst of a very cautious ascent up a particularly treacherous summit.
“Come on,” Sunburst said eagerly, shaking the cards a little in his grasp. “Please?”
Blake took a card, which turned out to be the five of diamonds.
“Now give it back to me,” Sunburst instructed, and Blake handed the card back to him without protest.
Sunburst put all the cards that he had offered back at the bottom of the deck and then proceeded to shuffle said cards with vigour, his hands moving rapidly to alter the deck in his hands. “Now,” he said, holding up the two of spades, “is this your card?”
“Um,” Blake hesitated for a moment. “I’m afraid not, sorry.”
Tempest snorted. Sunburst let out a surprised, “Oh.” He took the next card off the deck – the jack of clubs – and showed it to her. “Is this your card?”
“No,” Blake admitted.
“Uh,” Sunburst murmured. “Could it be this one?” He showed her the seven of hearts.
By now, there was a part of Blake that wanted to lie to put him out of his misery, but nevertheless, she shook her head. “Sorry.”
Tempest shook her head, while Starlight said, “Don’t worry, Sunburst. I’m sure that even professionals have bad days.”
“I guess,” Sunburst murmured, putting the deck of cards back in the pouch at his belt. “Sorry for wasting your time.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Blake assured him. “So, you’re into magic?”
“Stage magic,” Sunburst replied. “If you know Twilight, then you probably already know that she believes in real magic existing out there in the world, but I just can’t see it.”
“Not convinced by Twilight’s evidence?” Blake asked.
“Sunburst is unnecessarily close-minded,” Trixie declared. “How can anyone not believe in the existence of magic when the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie stands before you?”
“You believe in magic too, then?”
Trixie laughed. “The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie doesn’t simply believe in magic, the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie has magic! Why else do you think that I’m so Grrreat and Powwwerful?”
“I…” Blake trailed off for a moment. “I really have no idea.”
“Trixie,” Twilight said, “you realise that… your tricks, impressive as they… they’re not real magic, not in the sense-”
“I know that!” Trixie cried. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I can too do real magic!” She swept her hat off her head. “Behold and be amazed, as I produce from out of this hat, Twilight Sparkle’s pet dog, Spike!” She plunged her hand into the hat, and her face froze, set in a mask of confidence betrayed by the way that her eyes suddenly betrayed a degree of uncertainty. “Twilight Sparkle’s pet dog,” she repeated, and it looked as though she was fumbling in her hat. “Twilight Sparkle,” she repeated a third time, an edge of desperation in her voice.
The smirk on Tempest Shadow’s face was unmistakable.
Trixie pulled out her hand – empty – and set her hat back on top of her head. “I don’t need to prove anything to you anyway,” she huffed.
“Ohhhkayyy,” Starlight said, drawing out the vowel sounds a little more than she needed to. “Ears up, everyone; it’s mission briefing time. Twilight, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Twilight raised her right arm, twisting it a little so that a holographic keyboard appeared above her wrist, a few of which virtual keys she tapped with the armoured fingers of her left hand. A holoprojector stirred to life, and Starlight took a step back as the centre of the Skyray was filled with a pale blue holographic rendition of a moderately-sized village, nestling at the back of a wooded valley, with a relay tower rising up high above any other structures in the community and even above the tall trees that jutted out of the rising valley slopes like the jaws of some particularly voracious predator. A river or stream cut through the centre of the village, crossed by only a single bridge that Blake could see and winding its way out beyond the limits of the hologram, which continued until the wooded valley gave way to flatter and more open ground beyond. A part of the valley had been cleared of trees, and tunnels bored into the rockface, though how far the tunnels extended, she couldn’t tell from this hologram.
“Thank you, Twilight Sparkle,” Trixie said, though ever so slightly gritted teeth. “Starlight, give the mission briefing, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure thing, Trix,” Starlight said, with a fond smile that did nothing to explain to Blake why she wasn’t the leader instead of Trixie. “Everyone, this is Badger’s Drift, home to the westernmost relay tower in the Kingdom of Vale. That relay tower went dark yesterday, which means weak signals in a substantial part of Vale and a complete blackout in these valleys where signals from the main tower are blocked by the mountains. This means that we are entering a dead zone; until the tower is back online ,command will not be keeping us company on this mission. Our job is to get that relay working again, which is where Twilight comes in. Hopefully, it’s just a mechanical issue, and she can fix it easily.”
“What if it’s more than just a mechanical issue?” Blake asked.
Starlight looked her in the eye. “Then we search, rescue, and destroy.”
“Speaking of which,” Twilight said, pulling out her scroll, “I’ve developed an app which should be a big help; the General authorised me to test it out on this trip.”
“An app?” Sunburst repeated. “What kind of app?”
“Motion tracking,” Twilight said, as she pushed a button. A moment later, the scrolls of everyone else in the Skyray buzzed with a notification. “With it, you can use your scrolls to detect movement in your vicinity; just in case… you know.”
“Do we have to have our scrolls out to use this?” Tempest inquired.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Twilight replied.
“More useful for those of us who can use our weapons one handed,” Starlight observed, “but we’ll make it work.”
Blake cocked her head to one side. “If the village was attacked by the grimm then any survivors might have fled into those caves. Do we know what they are?”
“Mining tunnels,” Starlight said.
Blake blinked. “Dust mines?”
“Diamond mines,” Twilight corrected her. “Most of the diamonds sold in the Kingdom of Vale are mined from this area, and it’s the only place in Remnant where blue diamonds have been found.”
“I’d look so good in blue diamonds,” Trixie observed.
Tempest snorted. “Better get a lot better at magic if you want to make that kind of money.”
“With that much lien at stake, I’m surprised it’s such a small town,” Blake observed.
Starlight shrugged. “It’s hard to get people to move to a remote place like this so far from the big cities. Hard to supply and defend them too.”
“Plus, there isn’t a lot of good farmland nearby,” Twilight added, “and in any case, most of the mining is done by robots.”
“I see,” Blake murmured. If only the SDC would follow suit.
Or not. If they automated their workforce, then fewer faunus would be dead in mining accidents, but more of them would be destitute.
It occurred to Blake that if Badger’s Drift was bigger, then they – the owners of the mines – might have found themselves powering down their robots just to provide jobs for the population.
The Skyray flew on. Blake got her scroll out, her address book open, watching as the amber indicators of weak signal began to flash up against the images of Sunset, Rainbow Dash, Yang, of everyone she knew who wasn’t sitting in this airship, until eventually, their images darkened, indicating that she couldn’t reach them at all. Only Twilight and the members of Team TTSS remained. They had entered the dead zone.
She put her scroll away and glanced at Twilight, who was looking down at her hands as they rested on her knees.
“Twilight?” she murmured, reaching out and touching Twilight’s armoured elbow. “Are you okay?”
Twilight looked up. “I, um… I’ve never been out in the field without Rainbow Dash before, you know?”
Blake nodded, smiling out of one corner of her mouth. “I thought as much,” she admitted. “Are you nervous?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Blake assured her. When she’d gone on her first mission without Adam, she’d barely been able to keep her hands from shaking. “It’s… it’s normal, especially for a non-combatant. Anyway, the point is that Dash isn’t here, but you’re not alone. I’ll take care of you.”
“We’ll take care of you,” Starlight corrected her, crossing the couple of steps separating them in the Skyray. Tempest seemed to be watching them as she knelt down in front of Twilight. “Hey, Twilight.”
Twilight smiled, if only for a moment. “Hey, Starlight.”
“I know that I’m not Rainbow Dash,” Starlight said, “but we really do know what we’re doing… even if it might not always seem that way.”
“I heard that!” Trixie cried.
Starlight chuckled. “The point is, even if this turns out to be something more than a simple mechanical error, we’ve got each other's backs, and we’re coming home safe.”
“That’s right!” Trixie yelled, getting to her feet. “Though our enemies are numerous, and though their fangs are sharp, we will prevail, because we’re Team Tsunami, and we strike with the force of a rampaging hurricane!”
“Yes, we do,” Starlight agreed. She paused. “Twilight, do you mind if I load up on your semblance before we land? It’s pretty versatile.”
“Sure,” Twilight said.
You’re just giving her your semblance? Blake thought.
It must have shown on Blake’s face, because Starlight said, “My semblance doesn’t always cut semblances; I can just copy and leave Twilight with the ability to access her semblance even while I can use it too. It depends on whether I’m borrowing from a friend or denying an enemy.”
“I see,” Blake said softly. That sort of explained how easily Twilight could approach this transaction, but at the same time, Blake still didn’t like the idea of just anyone being to copy her semblance. It was a reflection of her soul, it was hers, it was one of the things that defined who she was. While Starlight Glimmer was defined by the fact that she could just take that away whenever she wanted to.
Blake couldn’t help but think that said something about her.
Nevertheless, Starlight pressed on, holding out her hand to Twilight. Twilight didn’t seem to hesitate as she placed her own hand, encased in its lavender armour, into Starlight’s open palm. There was a flash of teal light in Starlight’s hand, Twilight let out a soft gasp, and then Starlight pulled her hand away, clenching it into a fist.
“Thanks for… for letting me do that,” she said, unable to meet Twilight’s eyes.
Trixie, on the other hand, did meet Twilight’s eyes and nodded silently to her.
The Skyray set down upon an airstrip, a flattened patch of ground covered with concrete near the mouth of the valley. With what Starlight had said earlier about the difficulties in supplying settlements like this one, and from the fact that she couldn’t see a road or a railway line anywhere, Blake guessed that airships were the only means of supplying Badger’s Drift, its only means of contact with the outside world… the only way the lucrative diamonds reached the rest of Vale, there to adorn the necks of the likes of Skystar Aris.
Admittedly, Blake had never actually seen Skystar wearing anything like that, but she had only met the other girl a couple of times, so that wasn’t too surprising. She’d be very surprised if she didn’t have a couple of fancy necklaces, being the First Councillor’s daughter and all.
Mind you, I was a princess of sorts, and I never had anything like that.
They dismounted from the airship, leaping down with all of their gear onto the tarmac surface, at which point, the airship rose into the sky again, taking off in a wide and lazy circle over the surrounding area.
“Team Tsunami, this is Rapidfire,” the female voice crackled in Blake’s ear. “I’ll stay on station until you call in.”
“Thank you, Rapidfire,” Trixie said. “I promise we won’t keep you waiting too long.”
As Badger’s Drift was set in the rear of a valley, it could be protected by a single wall of white stone, maybe ten meters high, running from one side of the ravine to the other; a pair of towers rose a little higher than the wall, topped with pyramid-shaped roofs, on either side of the gate. It was not the most sophisticated defence setup, but it probably served to keep bandits from trying their luck and would even be enough to hold off the occasional grimm who might amble by.
Whether it had been enough in this case remained to be seen.
The silent relay tower rose high above the wall; the only building in the village that was visible above the wall. Some attempt had been made in its design to accommodate a traditional Valish aesthetic, and those efforts had borne fruit with the result looking a little like the sort of tower that the eponymous girl might have been trapped in… if it weren’t for the obvious antenna sticking out of the top.
Trixie tapped her earpiece, and Blake guessed that she was broadcasting on all frequencies, or at least the ones she thought the town would respond to. “This is Trrrixie Lulamoon of the Atlesian Team Tsunami,” she declared, and though she didn’t refer to herself as ‘Great and Powerful,’ she seemingly couldn’t help trilling her Rs. “We’re here to help you with your relay problem.” She waited; Blake couldn’t hear a response, and she guessed that Trixie couldn’t either. “Hello?” she said. “I said this is Trixie Lulamoon of Team Tsunami, can anybody hear me?”
“It is a dead zone,” Tempest pointed out.
“Yeah, but we should be able to get point-to-point contact at this range,” Sunburst replied, a little nervousness creeping into his voice. “Right?”
Starlight pulled her rifle off her back and into her hands. Its lines glowed green with power.
Trixie took a deep breath. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she pulled a phial of fire dust out of a pouch at her belt and slipped it into the base of her wand. She took another deep breath. Her hand might have shook, but her voice was firm as she said, “We should get moving.” She led the way herself, striding forwards and forcing the others to follow. Starlight had the stock of her rifle pressed into her shoulder, although the barrel pointed downwards. Sunburst carried a bag of gear in one hand and his staff in the other, while Tempest had two bags slung across her back and surprised Blake by transforming her staff into a very slender-barrelled rifle, one that had no stock of any kind and no handle to speak of either. Blake slid Gambol Shroud free of its sheath, the ribbon fluttering from the hilt.
They approached the gates, which were of a dark wood and resolutely shut. There was no sign of anybody in the towers.
“Hello up there!” Trixie called, her voice carrying over the wall with great ease. “This is Team Tsunami of Atlas Academy. We’re here to fix your relay tower. Open up!”
Silence was the only response which they received.
“Can anyone hear me?!” Trixie yelled. “I demand to speak to your supervisor!”
“The supervisor’s probably dead too,” Tempest muttered.
Sunburst winced. “Did you have to?”
Tempest shrugged. “Everyone’s thinking it; I was just saying it.”
“If everyone was thinking it, you didn’t have to say it,” Blake murmured.
Tempest glanced at her, a slight trace of a smirk upon her face.
“What do we do now?” Twilight asked. “I could have one of my drones fly over the wall and-”
“No need,” Trixie assured her. “The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie will simply teleport onto the other side of the wall and open the gate.” She raised one fist into the air. “The Magician’s Exit!” She threw down her hand, and Team TTSS and their companions were engulfed in a cloud of grey smoke. Blake’s eyes watered a little, and she started to cough as the smoke filled her throat. Fortunately, it cleared within moments and without any ill-effects that Blake could determine, what was more, revealing the sight of Trixie Lulamoon trying – and failing – to scramble up the wall.
She lost her handhold and fell, landing on her rear end with ill grace. She glowered at everyone as she got back up to her feet, as if daring anyone to make an issue of it.
Blake didn’t say anything, but inside, she was beginning to wonder if Rainbow Dash was the exception to Atlas, not the rule; if the majority of Atlas students were incompetent blowhards like this, then the northern academy was probably not the place for her.
On the showing of Team TTSS thus far, she was beginning to think she would be better off at Beacon.
Twilight knelt down, opening up her case of drones and lifting one of the delicate machines out of its resting place. “Why don’t I use this drone to see if I can find another way through the wall?”
Trixie sniffed. “An excellent idea, Twilight Sparkle, I was wondering who would be the first to suggest the obvious course of action. Hurry along, now; we haven’t got all day.”
Blake found herself exchanging glances with Tempest Shadow, who jerked her head towards Trixie in a ‘see what I have to put up with’ kind of manner.
Twilight also glanced at Blake, although apologetically in her case, before she activated her drone. The little machine rose a couple of feet, rotors whirring, even as a feed from its camera began to appear on Twilight’s scroll.
The team remained where they were, weapons out, eyes glancing around them, as the drone set off, running along the course of the wall, camera trained upon said wall and transmitting images back to Twilight.
“Have you found anything yet?” Trixie demanded.
“Not yet,” Twilight said, with admirably equanimity in the face of Trixie’s impatience. “Give me a little- oh.”
“'Oh'?” Starlight repeated. “'Oh' what? Is that good 'oh' or an-”
“Oh, that’s not good,” Twilight murmured. “Oh, dear.”
What was not good, as the rest of the team found out as they gathered around Twilight to look at the image on her scroll feed, was a culvert set in the base of the wall to allow the village’s namesake drift to pass through without being contained. It looked as though a metal grate had covered the culvert’s entrance from the outside, but it had been almost completely torn away, with only a few jagged stumps of metal protruding from concrete.
“Does that look big enough to admit a grimm to anybody else?” Sunburst asked tremulously.
“Depends on the size of the grimm, but, yes,” Starlight agreed.
Blake took a step forward. “If a grimm can fit, then so can I; I’ll crawl through the culvert and open the gate for you from the inside.”
Trixie opened her mouth, but was cut off by Starlight saying, “I’ll go with you.”
“I can do this by myself,” Blake said.
Starlight’s gaze was flat, hard and unyielding. “I’m coming with you,” she said, in a voice that left no room for discussion.
And, to be perfectly honest, there wasn’t time for an argument about this. “Fine,” Blake said, turning away from the rest of them and striding off down the wall in the direction of the culvert.
Starlight was slowed by the need to take off her vest first – or at least she wanted to take off her vest so that she was thinner and smaller crawling through the drain – but she soon caught up with Blake by moving at a jog.
“Clearly, you weren’t listening when I said that the lone wolf stuff stayed behind,” Starlight declared.
“Were you listening to yourself when you said that this team was capable?” Blake demanded.
Starlight reached out for Blake’s shoulder. Blake recoiled, turning on her toe and retreating a couple of steps away from Starlight.
Starlight held up her hand. “Just because I can copy your semblance doesn’t mean I’m going to,” she pointed out.
Blake stared at her. “In my experience, people rarely tell you that they’re going to snatch away the things that make you who you are. They just do it, because they can.”
“That’s not who I am,” Starlight declared. “You may think that you’ve got a pretty good idea of what this team is, but I’m asking you: don’t write us off just yet.”
Blake didn’t reply to that. There was nothing much to say in response to that. It was all very well for Starlight to ask for patience, but this wasn’t class; there were lives at stake here, and she wasn’t convinced that Trixie understood that, or cared about it.
“Let’s get this done,” she whispered.
Starlight didn’t stop Blake as she resumed leading the way to the culvert. They found it easily enough, not least because Twilight’s drone was hovering beside, camera still trained upon the hole where the grill had been torn away.
Water flowed through the culvert, but it was not deep enough that they would have to swim, although the drain was small enough that they would have to crawl. Getting Twilight’s drones and gear through would have been difficult, but for the unencumbered Blake, it shouldn’t present too much of an obstacle.
“Would it make you feel better if I went first?” Starlight asked.
Blake hesitated. It would, but on the other hand, she trusted herself more than she trusted any of Team TTSS right now. “No,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She sheathed Gambol Shroud upon her back and plunged into the water. It was deep enough that it overflowed her boots, filling them up and soaking her purple leggings. As she started to crawl, she could feel it on the patch of bare skin around her bellybutton where her outfit left her stomach exposed. The water was cool, and not particularly clean by the look of it. As she moved her hands through it, she could see little particles attaching to her skin, not to mention all the sediment at the bottom through which she was crawling just as much as through water. She hoped that there was nothing more unsanitary than dirt here, but even if that was true, then she was still going to have to wash everything when she got back to Beacon.
As she crawled through beneath the broken remnants of the grill and into the culvert, the sunlight dying and the world plunging into shadow, Blake heard Starlight moving behind her. She was splashing a lot more than Blake, at least in Blake’s opinion.
“I will accept,” Starlight said, “that we may not have made the best first impression. But come on, give us until the end of one mission before you judge.”
“It may be too late by then,” Blake muttered.
Starlight was silent for a moment. “I told you that we’re not Rainbow Dash. That’s unfortunate, because Rainbow’s great. I can see why General Ironwood likes her so much, although don’t tell Trixie I said that.” She paused. “Since you know Rainbow so well, I’m guessing that she’s sung the General’s praises to you?”
“Something like that,” Blake admitted. “I’m not sure how much of it I believe.”
“Honestly? Me too,” Starlight said. “I accept his experience, I accept that he is respected by a great many people, but do I accept that he deserves to be put up on some sort of pedestal the way that Rainbow and his other admirers do? No. He’s just a man, and men…”
Blake ventured a glance over her shoulder. “Men what?”
Starlight’s eyes gleamed a little in the shadow of the culvert. “You ever heard of the story of the man with two souls?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you think it means?” Blake asked as she turned her head backwards. She was crawling towards the light, the other side of the culvert and the other side of the wall. “It seems more relevant to this discussion.”
“We’re all the man with two souls,” Starlight said. “We’ve all got light and dark within us, fighting for control of our body. Good and evil battle within our hearts each day, and that is no less true of General Ironwood than of anyone else.”
“That makes sense,” Blake conceded, “but spelled out like that, it must make it hard to trust people.”
“I trust some people a lot,” Starlight replied. “I don’t trust anyone blindly.”
I wonder if Rainbow or Twilight could say the same. “But you want me to trust you and your team?”
“I want you to reserve judgement,” Starlight corrected, “for just a little while longer.”
Blake reached the end of the culvert. The grill here had been torn away, just like it had at the other end, and so, there was nothing stopping her from crawling out and back into the sunlight. She scrambled onto her feet and out of the water; her waistcoat and blouse were filthy, with it showing more strongly against the white than the black, and she could feel the water in her boots. Her leggings were soaked through, and the belladonna flower embroidered on them was invisible now.
She would definitely need a wash when she got home.
As Starlight, similarly filthy, splashed out of the culvert behind her, Blake drew Gambol Shroud once more, the sword switching into pistol configuration as she scanned the village before her with her gaze.
Aside from the quiet, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Badger’s Drift was a nice-looking settlement, nestling between the two sides of a valley that was mostly covered with trees, except for the tunnels that the miners had dug to get at the riches that lay beneath. The houses were of stone, irregular in size compared to brick, with edges that seemed a little rough and ready but sturdy-looking at the same time. One- and two-storey buildings mingled higgledy-piggledy, with some modest balconies jutting out from the two-storey houses. The relay tower loomed above all of them, casting a long shadow.
There was no sign – at least none that Blake could see – of any of these buildings having been smashed down, no doors broken into, no windows shattered. The village looked fine. Except it was too quiet. It was mid-morning on a pleasant summer’s day, and no one was stirring? No one was out of doors? No one could be heard at all?
It was wrong, and Blake didn’t like it one bit.
From the frown on her face, Starlight didn’t think much of it either. “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to get that gate open.”
As they ran down the length of the wall, Blake found – much to her discomfort – evidence of the violence that had been hidden from her initially: doors broken down, windows smashed, objects discarded in flight… blood on the streets.
And then Starlight’s scroll began to beep.
Blake looked at her. She was using Twilight’s motion tracking app, and from the other side of the scroll, Blake could see a white dot, representing an object in motion, approaching Starlight, and her.
Blake gripped Gambol Shroud in both hands, finger resting on the trigger, as she turned in the direction of the approaching whatever it was. Starlight held her weapon – Blake didn’t know what it was called – in one hand, holding her scroll up with the other. The beeping was incessant as the white spot headed towards them.
“I don’t see anything,” Blake said, her eyes darting this way and that. She saw the buildings, some of which bore some evidence of violence done unto them, others which looked so peaceful it was as if their owners had locked up and gone on vacation. She didn’t see anything, neither grimm nor survivor, moving towards them.
And yet, the motion tracker didn’t lie, did it?
Blake tapped her earpiece. “Twilight, are you sure your app works?”
“It should do,” Twilight replied. “Why? Are you getting something?”
“I don’t know,” Blake muttered. “Could it be-?”
Something darted out of the open door of a nearby house; Blake snapped off two shots which missed, kicking up dirt and prompting an outraged yowl from the tabby cat which ran across the road towards them.
“Was that shooting?” Sunburst demanded.
“Confirm contact? Starlight are you okay?” Trixie yelled.
Starlight slung her weapon across her back. “We’re fine, Trixie,” she assured their leader. “It was just a cat,” she added, bending down to stroke the feline with her free hand. “It was just a cat, and we were a little jumpy. Sorry about that, little guy.” She petted the cat one last time before she stood up. “We’re on our way to you now.”
They made the rest of the journey to the gate without incident until they actually arrived at the gate. Then, they saw the bodies. Judging by the fact that he was clutching a sword, Blake guessed that one of them had been the huntsman hired to protect Badger’s Drift; she didn’t know who the other three were, but it seemed from the way their bodies lay on the stairs that they had been caught coming down off the walls. Maybe, when they realised that the grimm had crept in through the culvert, they had tried to rush down and confront them… only to be too late.
“It’s weird, huh?” Starlight said. “How they… sometimes clean up after themselves, and sometimes not?”
“They want us to know they were here,” Blake replied. “They want us to be nervous.”
“It’s kind of working,” Starlight muttered. “We need to get this gate open. Luckily…” She walked towards the gate, besides which sat a red light, currently glowing, and a green button underneath.
Starlight slammed the button with the palm of her hand.
Slowly, with much low rumbling like the stomach of some great beast, the gate began to slide open.
Twilight, and the other three members of Team TTSS, made their way through the opening portal even before it had completely opened up. It didn’t take a moment for them to spot the bodies.
“So it was the grimm, then,” Twilight murmured. “It can’t ever just be a mechanical failure, can it?”
“Apparently not,” Tempest said.
“So… what now?” Sunburst asked, looking at Trixie. His cheeks had gone a little green. Blake wondered if he’d ever seen the results of a grimm attack before.
“We need to search the area for any survivors,” Blake declared. “Like I said, they might have fled into the mining tunnels-”
“What we need,” Trixie interrupted her, “is to get the relay tower back on line as per our orders.”
“Our orders?” Blake repeated, her voice shaking with disbelief. “This town has come under attack, people have died, and you want to just keep blindly following orders?”
Trixie scowled. “Our priority is to restore the tower-”
“Our priority is to protect life; we’re huntsmen!” Blake cried. “Or at least you’re supposed to be.”
Trixie’s blue eyes blazed. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean are you really going to put blindly following orders like some robot ahead of doing what’s right?”
“I don’t need you to lecture me on how to run a mission!” Trixie snarled. “Even if you are some kind of secret agent! I’m the leader of this team, and I say that we’re going to head straight to the tower and restore communications!”
“Well, I say that we need to search for survivors immediately and rescue as many people as we can-”
“And what will you do once you find them?” Starlight demanded. “Without comms to call in medical, evac, or backup?”
Blake froze. The words stuck in her throat. She looked away from Trixie – who was glaring at her as though she were hoping to manifest a laser eye semblance and blow Blake’s head off – to her other companions on this mission; Twilight didn’t meet her eyes; she was looking downwards as though she were engaged in a very detailed study of the ground beneath her feet. Sunburst was biting his lip. Tempest looked completely unruffled by any of this.
Blake bowed her head. She hadn’t… she had been so focussed on the need to get to people that… Starlight was right; her options would be severely limited once she found any survivors until communications were restored.
“Orders don’t always make us feel good,” Starlight said, “but they usually make sense.”
“More people could die while we’re repairing the tower,” Blake pointed out.
“Then we’d better make it snappy, hadn’t we?” Starlight replied, her voice quiet and not carrying any judgement.
Blake took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at Trixie. “I… I’m sorry.”
Trixie snorted. “Apology accepted,” she replied, in a tone of ill grace. “Now, let’s move. Like Starlight said, the faster we make it to that tower, the better.” She set off, but stopped after a single step. “Wait.” She turned around, looking down at the bodies to her right. She frowned and raised her wand. Fire shot from the tip of it, an expanding cone of flame that consumed both the bodies mounting the steps towards the wall. Trixie turned, and more flame leapt from her wand tip to strike the other two bodies.
Trixie closed her eyes for a moment. “That’s the best that even the Great and Powerful Trixie can do for you,” she said, as the remains were turned to ashes where they lay.
“It’s better than nothing,” Starlight said.
Trixie flicked her hair, tucking a few rogue silver-white strands behind her ear. “Now, we move!” she declared, gesturing towards the rising, looming tower with her wand.
They ran, seeing no one as they crossed the village; at least, nobody alive. There were signs of fighting, signs of the grimm, but they saw neither grimm nor survivors. They did see bodies, though, and Trixie burned them with her fire dust just as she had those at the gate. They lay in the doorways of their homes, but they also seemed to form a trail towards the tunnels dug into the valley wall.
Blake felt her hands start to itch; she understood the need to get the tower back online, but why couldn’t they split up, some to the tower and others to search for survivors? Maybe Trixie was just too blinkered to think of it, or perhaps she didn’t trust her team to be able to function in smaller sub-units.
Either way, Blake doubted that she would get a sympathetic hearing if she raised the idea now. She got the feeling that, just as she had judged Team TTSS, so the team had now finished judging her. And they were no more impressed than she had been.
They arrived at the tower. There was another body outside, this one wearing a green Valish uniform, with what looked like a badge with a crossed pick and shovel on it on his collar.
“Was there a garrison here?” Sunburst asked.
“No, just a detail to maintain the relay tower,” Twilight replied. “An officer and four men of the Royal Engineers.”
“Royal Engineers,” Tempest mused. “How can there be Royal Engineers when there are no royals?”
“How can there be kingdoms when there are no kings?” Blake asked.
The corner of Tempest’s lip curled upwards. “How indeed?”
“Twilight,” Trixie ordered, “open the door.”
The tower might have been built with an eye to Valish architectural sensibilities, but the door was definitely not old-fashioned; it was a solid blast door of black metal, designed to withstand assault; it was shut, but there was some hope that if it had been closed in time, they might find people inside.
It also, however, posed a problem for them getting in, a problem that was swiftly solved as Twilight stepped forward, kneeling down in front of the control panel.
“It’s locked,” she announced, “but if I just…” She trailed off, murmuring to herself as some kind of device – it was long and thin and metallic and looked like a screwdriver to Blake – extended out of one of the fingers of her gauntlet before she inserted it into a socket on the wall. The holographic display on her arm stirred to life, and Twilight began to tap furiously on the light buttons with her free hand before the door slid open, grinding back into the recesses of the wall.
“We’re in,” she said, after it had become obvious that that was the case.
“Good work, Twilight,” Starlight complimented.
“Yeah, you’ve gotten even faster than before,” Sunburst added.
“You know what they say about practice making perfect,” Twilight replied.
“Tempest,” Trixie decreed. “Guard the door.”
“Whatever you say, leader,” Tempest replied.
Inside the tower, it was dark. All the lights were dead, and no amount of flicking the nearest switch back and forth could get them to work again. Starlight attached a flashlight to the shoulder of her vest, and the tip of Trixie’s wand glowed with a bright white light, but it was Blake with her natural night vision who moved ahead, leading the way down corridors which were pitch black to the others but which were as clear as day to her.
There were no survivors, at least none that she came across. There were more bodies though: Royal Engineers with weapons in their hands, and by the looks of it, civilians who had fled into the tower for protection.
But how had the grimm gotten to them with the door locked?
Blake’s footsteps echoed upon the metal walkways, for the interior of the tower was all Atlesian modernity, with smooth metal corridors that were almost featureless. She didn’t like the sound of all the footsteps in here; she had to keep reminding herself that they belonged to allies, not enemies. The motion tracker apps detected nothing. It seemed they were the only ones here.
Twilight, in the midst of the group, called out directions to those leading the way, and so brought them to what looked like a control room. There were no dead men here, thankfully, but there was a lot of wanton vandalism: the guts had been ripped out of the control panels that lined the walls.
“Oh, no,” Twilight wailed. “It’s been completely wrecked! Do you think they knew what they were doing?”
“I hope not; that would make it one smart grimm,” Starlight replied. “Can you fix it?”
“It depends what you mean by 'fix it,'” Twilight replied. “It will take over a week of repairs to get this tower fully operational again, but I think I can rig up a way to talk to command in… an hour. Maybe thirty minutes, if I’m lucky.”
“Do it,” Trixie said. She froze, her expression doubtful, her eyes darting this way and that. She looked at Starlight Glimmer for a moment, but said nothing. She looked away. Nobody said anything. Starlight and Sunburst didn’t seem inclined, Blake didn’t dare. Twilight was too busy getting out her tools; it was the only sound in the control room, her rustling around in her bag of tricks.
Eventually, Trixie spoke, “You’ll stay here and get your work done, Twilight; Tempest will guard the door. The rest of us,” – she looked Blake in the eyes – “will head for the caves.”
The caves were dark, but not completely lightless; mining lights had been strung up along the walls of rock so black it seemed almost obsidian, and those lights were still on and lit their way as they walked down the largest central tunnel dug into the rock face.
“You know,” Sunburst observed, “Twilight’s drones would be ideal for scouting all the different tunnels.”
“Twilight can’t operate the drones and repair the comms,” Starlight pointed out.
“I know,” Sunburst acknowledged. “That doesn’t mean I can’t regret it, right?”
“I suppose not,” Starlight agreed. “There’s a fair amount to regret around here.”
Sunburst nodded. “Right.” He tapped his earpiece. “Twilight, how are you getting on with the repairs? Twilight?”
“The tunnels are interfering with the reception,” Starlight said. “A dead zone inside a dead zone.”
“I… I hope that some people made it into these caves,” Sunburst said. “I hope that enough made it that they can rebuild this place. It reminds me of the place where we grew up, you know?”
“Yeah,” Starlight murmured, a melancholy note entering her tone. “Yeah, I get you. Like you said… hopefully.”
“Hopefully, Twilight gets communications back on soon so that she can use her drones,” Trixie grumbled. “Or we could be searching these tunnels for days and not find anything!”
A scream echoed up from deeper into the tunnels. A child’s scream.
Trixie was the first one to start running, the others not far behind. Blake and Starlight had their guns ready, Trixie’s wand swung up and down in her hand as she pumped her arms. Her sparkling cape trailed behind her as she ran, rounding a corner to behold a little girl, fallen on the ground, screaming up at the grimm that loomed over her.
It looked like a giant rat; at least eight feet tall, with a tail of bone – spikes protruding out at all angles – that was another four feet long at least and a bony mask over its face from which two giant teeth extended down. Plates of bleached bony armour covered its back, obscuring the black fur beneath. Its forepaws were small, but the claws that ended them were sharp.
It was a stormvermin, a rat grimm, Blake recognised the description from Professor Port’s class; he had told a story about battling them beneath the sewers of… she couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be.
She couldn’t remember how he’d beaten them either. Professor Port made it very hard to recall the important bits of his lectures.
Blake raised Gambol Shroud, snapping off two shots from her pistol which ricocheted harmlessly off its armour plates. The stormvermin swung its head around to brux at her, slamming its teeth together angrily.
Trixie raised her free hand. “Magician’s Intervention!” she cried as she brought her hand down in a swift chopping motion. A puff of smoke surrounded her, and Blake’s eyes widened as she saw a second puff of smoke burst out of nothing between the grimm and the girl… and when the smoke cleared, there stood Trixie.
Her cape swirled around her as though it was buffeted by a hundred winds. The moons upon her hand gleamed silver and gold. And Trixie laughed, her laughter mocking and defiant in equal measure, as she flung out one hand out by her side and brandished her wand before her in the other.
Fire shot from the tip of the wand, fire in a great gust, expanding outwards, cone-like, to consume the upper half of the stormvermin. The grimm screeched in pain, cowering futilely as the fire kept coming, kept burning. The fire danced in Trixie’s eyes as the grimm turned to ashes.
Trixie locked eyes with Blake for a moment, the slightest trace of a smirk upon her face, before she turned and knelt down in front of the little girl that she had just saved.
“Hey there, kid,” she said. “Are you okay?”
The girl sniffed. “I… I think so. Are… are there any more of those things?
“It doesn’t matter,” Trixie assured her, “because if there are, then the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie will protect you over and over again!”
Starlight walked forwards towards them both. “What are you doing here all by yourself? Where are your parents?”
“They’re further down in the tunnels,” the girl said. “I came out because…” She looked away.
“Hey,” Trixie said. “Do you want to know a secret, kid?”
“My name’s Millie.”
“Do you want to know a secret, Millie?” Trixie asked again. “We all make mistakes, even the Great and Powerful Trixie. So what were you doing here all by yourself?”
“I was looking for my cat, Jonesy,” Millie replied. “I… I lost him when we were running, and I was worried about him all by himself.”
“Your cat, huh,” Trixie said, sweeping the hat off her head. Blake could only stare in amazement at the idea that she would actually try this here and now, of all times and places, as Trixie reached into her hat… and there was a yowling sound, the hat shook as though something inside were fighting to get out, and then Trixie produced the tabby cat that Blake had shot at earlier that day. It wriggled in Twilight’s grip, struggling to get free. “Is this your cat?”
“Jonesy!” Millie cried, embracing the tabby with both arms, hugging him tight as he tried to get free of her, ignoring all his attempts to wriggle out of her grasp. “Thank you so much! How did you do that?”
“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Trixie said.
“Say, Millie,” Starlight said, “now that you know that Jonesy’s safe, can you lead us back to where your parents are?”
Millie nodded eagerly, and she led the way through the tunnels to a large hollow where around thirty people, maybe more, were gathered, not counting the children, of whom there were quite a few. They were all dirty, ragged, and dishevelled. They had no supplies that Blake could see, and some of them were injured, and their injuries were going untreated. The best that could be done for them was to cover in layers of coats and hope that was enough to keep them warm. Only two people had guns that Blake could see; meanwhile, nerves and anxiety were so plain to see on everybody’s faces that it was a wonder that more grimm hadn’t found them already.
It was clear that nobody believed little Millie when she said that Trixie had made the pet cat appear from out of her hat – Blake wasn’t sure that she believed it herself – but nevertheless, they looked at Team TTSS as though they were more than human, as though they were in some way miraculous for finding them there, and so quickly.
And when Sunburst put down his bag and opened it up to reveal that it was full of candy bars and water bottles, the people looked at them as though they would have happily voted Team TTSS for First Councillor if they could.
Blake watched as Sunburst gave out food and water to the refugees down here, while Trixie distracted with magic tricks and bombastic pronouncements; she watched and was forced to concede that, yes, perhaps she had been a little hard on them before.
“You can admit I was right any time you want,” Starlight said, a smile playing across her face as she leaned against the cavern wall next to Blake.
Blake glanced at her. “You asked me to reserve judgement until after the mission,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Starlight admitted. “Still, you see what I mean? Trixie… she’s got it where it counts.”
“Why is that?” Blake asked. “At the gate, and then here-”
“I’ve given up trying to understand,” Starlight admitted. “Maybe it really is magic.”
“Even if it is magic, then it should still work all the time,” Blake pointed out. Sunset’s does.
“Like I said, I’ve given up trying to explain,” Starlight repeated. “All I know is that-” She stopped as the scroll in her hand began to beep. “Trixie, we’ve got movement!”
Trixie got to her feet. “How many?”
“It’s hard to say,” Starlight said, because there were not a lot of individual dots coming towards them on the motion tracker so much as one great, undivided blob, with a couple of smaller outriders preceding the main group.
Trixie and Sunburst joined Blake and Starlight in front of the mouth of the cave. “How many grimm attacked you?” Starlight asked.
One of the refugees, a man with a balding head and a walrus moustache, shivered as he said, “Just one.”
“One?” Starlight repeated. “That’s impossible, that-” The first stormvermin poked his head around the corner; Starlight blew said head off with a single clean shot, and then did the same to the next. “That’s two right there, and Trixie already got a third.”
“There were many when they broke in,” the man corrected himself, “but then they merged, became one giant creature; I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Oh no,” Sunburst groaned.
Blake blinked. “What? Do you know what he’s talking about?”
“You ever heard of a rat king before?”
“No,” Blake said. “What’s a rat king?”
“Instead of just growing,” Sunburst explained, “stormvermin sometimes-”
His voice was drowned out by the sound of bruxing, the sound of a score or more of stormvermin grinding their teeth, fangs chattering together, growing louder as the creatures came closer and closer, the great blob on Starlight’s motion tracker drawing nearer and nearer, as the sounds that they made got louder and louder and the fear of the children and adults alike became more and more pronounced. They huddled together, they cried out in fear, they wailed and wept as the bruxing, the sound of all those stormvermin, got closer.
But it was not a horde of stormvermin that approached; it was a single rat king.
Blake didn’t know how they had done it, but once they had gotten inside the walls, all of those stormvermin had combined somehow; all their tails were fused together, joined within a spiky, armoured sphere from out of which stretched the bony tails of all the rat-like grimm, turning a mass of grimm into a single grimm. One grimm with many heads and many minds all joined together as one.
The rat king shrieked, a single sound sprang out of many mouths, as it rushed forward, a broiling mass of teeth, individual bodies of the whole scrambling over themselves to reach their enemies.
Many bodies, part of a single whole. It occurred to Blake that this rat king was not a terrible metaphor for the Atlesian forces, and it struck her how absurd it was that she should think of a thing like that at a time like this.
Starlight fired – Blake fired too – laser bolts and bullets from Gambol Shroud slamming into the stormvermin heads, scoring their bony skulls but slaying none of the individual components of the rat king. Trixie thrust out her wand, fire spraying from tip of it, and Sunburst used the wind dust crystal in his staff to create a tornado of air which fanned the flames, increasing their spread and intensity until the rat king was confronted by a wall of flame, flames leaping up the height of the cave, flames which the grimm could not avoid but had to pass through.
Pass through it did, though, or at least, the rat king sent one of its bodies, not seeming to notice that it was on fire, surging through the flames to strike Trixie square in the chest and knock her off her feet, the wand flying from her hand to clatter on the ground.
Blake leapt forwards, Gambol Shroud switching smoothly from pistol into sword as she flung her hook to bury it in the burning flesh of the stormvermin before she fell on it with cleaver and blade and sliced off its head.
The body ceased to burn, turning to ashes, all save the tail, the spiked and bony tail which lashed out like a whip to hit Blake across the midriff and send her flying. Blake, caught by surprise, not anticipating having to use a clone, was sent pinwheeling through the air, hitting the cave ceiling before plummeting down to land upon her front on the ground.
Starlight’s gun transformed in her hands into a long lance, a lance which she wielded in smooth, flowing strokes to slice the tail into pieces before it could strike at Sunburst. The flames began to die down; another part of the rat king rushed forward, and though it was impaled on Starlight’s lance once more, its tail was free to whip her to the ground.
Trixie regained her feet just as another rat grimm leapt over Starlight, forced to her knees and temporarily distracted, its jump so high as to clear the huntsmen completely.
“Oh no you don’t!” Trixie yelled, and from out of her sleeve, she flung a line of multi-coloured handkerchiefs, of the sort that would be pulled from out of somebody’s ear, a line of handkerchiefs all tied together which she flung towards the grimm and which, by some miracle, wrapped all around it like a lasso, pulling the grimm – or part of the grimm – away from the refugees to where Blake – beginning to catch on – severed first its tail and then its head.
Trixie recovered her wand, expelling the fire dust cartridge and inserting a phial of ice dust which she used to create a wall of ice at the mouth of the cave.
They could hear the rat king battering at the ice wall from the other side. Every time its many heads hammered against the wall, the people cried out.
“No one be alarmed!” Trixie declared. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will come up with a solution… momentarily.” She turned to the others. “Sunburst, how do we kill this thing?”
Sunburst pushed his glasses up his nose. “Destroying the cluster of tails will do it; that’s how they’re all linked; taking it out will… either kill them or weaken and confuse them; it’s not entirely clear.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Starlight said. She walked briskly over to the bag of gear that Sunburst had brought with him and rummaged around in it until she pulled out a large grenade.
“That’s not our only one of those is it?”
“No,” Starlight said quickly. “But we do only have two.” The grenade she had been holding hovered above her hand. “Luckily for us, I borrowed Twilight’s semblance.”
“Mm, lucky,” Blake murmured.
The ice wall began to crack. Blake transformed Gambol Shroud into a pistol once more. Trixie loaded her wand with lightning dust, and Sunburst did the same with his staff.
The first head of the rat king broke through the wall. Lightning from Trixie and Sunburst lashed at it, but that didn’t stop more heads from breaking through until the ice wall shattered and the rat king stood revealed once more, pushing as many of its bodies as it could through into the cave, in spite of all the lightning that was loosed on it.
Starlight flung the grenade, Twilight’s telekinesis guiding it through the mass of stormvermin, guiding it towards the mass of tails that had been armoured in bone, dodging this and that individual head, dodging the tail that sought to knock it aside, getting closer and closer-
Until one of the stormvermin leapt out of the black and bony mass and swallowed the bomb whole. The explosion ripped it apart a moment later, but the tails were untouched.
“Dammit!” Starlight growled.
Blake ran for the pack, skidding to a halt beside it as she grabbed the remaining bomb.
“Blake?” Starlight yelled. “What are you doing?”
Blake didn’t respond. She just ran. In her other hand, Gambol Shroud switching once again, flowing fluidly from pistol into sword, her legs and arms pounding as her filthy boots hammered upon the rocky floor. She burst past the members of Team TTSS, leaping over the grimm rat that sought to lunge at her. They must have recognised that she was holding their destruction because another stormvermin leapt up to close its jaws around her, only for its fangs to bite mere shadow as Blake’s clone dissolved, revealing the real Blake several meters ahead.
Trixie had, in the end, shown Blake what she was made of; now Blake would show Trixie what she was made of in turn.
She leapt through the mass of the rat king, using her clones to take the hits while she danced on, rarely bothering to strike and then not aiming to kill, only to get some obstacle out of her way. The rat king was shrieking, its mass of bodies turning over themselves in their rush to get at her, but they were being harried by lightning blasts and by the fire of Starlight’s rifle, and those attacks and the pain they caused hampered it. It couldn’t get hold of Blake; she had too many clones, she was too nimble, they just couldn’t stop her.
And she got closer and closer to the tail. Close enough that she could reach out her hand and the bomb was almost touching the bone covered mass.
Blake pulled the fuse.
The last thing Blake heard was the world exploding. The last thing she felt was being hurled backwards.
The last thing she saw was the fire consuming everything.
“Blake? Blake!”
Blake blearily opened her eyes, the face of Twilight Sparkle slowly coming into focus.
“Blake!” Twilight cried. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”
Blake groaned.
“I’m not surprised; your aura broke,” Twilight exclaimed. “You’re lucky you don’t have any permanent injuries.”
Blake sat up, or tried to sit up, anyway. It was hard when your body hurt that much.
“Try to stay still,” Twilight insisted. “You shouldn’t move.” She shook her head. “Starlight told me what you did. What were you thinking?”
Blake looked around as best she could. Medical personnel were administering aid to the injured refugees. “We won, right?”
Twilight nodded. “Yes. You destroyed the rat king, and Starlight and the others took care of the stormvermin. And I restored communications and requested aid from Vale.”
Blake let out a long, slow breath. “Then it was worth it. One might even say it was cheap at the price.”
Twilight frowned. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“So surprised?” Blake asked. “I’m sure Rainbow Dash would agree with me.”
“Maybe,” Twilight admitted. “Even so, you-”
“It’s what I signed up for,” Blake told her. “Beacon or Atlas, it doesn’t change that.”
“I’m not… I don’t know; maybe you’re right, and I’m just showing my naivety,” Twilight admitted. “So… how did it feel?”
“Almost dying?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “No, your mission with Team Tsunami.”
“Oh,” Blake said. She thought about it for a moment. “They… they weren’t Rosepetal.”
“I heard that!” Trixie yelled.
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Is that a Hilda reference?
Is that a good thing or a bad thing tho?
10676635
No, it's a reference to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which was when I first read about the idea of rat kings.
Though there was a clear reference, I couldn't say I knew from where. I'm pretty sure I had The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, read to me back in 2006 when I was a mere 8 years old, I've seen its front cover somewhere in the parents house.
Definitely got a smirk and a snigger out of me. However, though they are not Roaepetal, I can see them working together in the future, I'd love to see more of them.
Blake, Blake, Blake...never change, but please change for the sake of your health and longevity. Never expected a Warhammer reference, but it is also not unwelcome. Unless, of course, Grimm Stormvermin have access to nukes and miniguns, then humanity is doomed. Team TTSS is as colorful and fun as expected, although Trixie's semblance has me guessing. I'm going with some form of sight dependent teleport, but I have not worked out all of the details yet.
10677640
I think that Trixie is actually doing magic.
Sunset already saw dragon bones in Mistral, there is evidence that there has been some magic leaking into Remnant for a looong time, and in general this Remnant is much more magical that in canon.
More importantly, Starlight is the one willing to admit that Trixie actions are magic, and she is the one who can directly steal or copy semblances. If Starlight is unable to interact with Trixie magic tricks (as I think she was about to admit before she was interrupted) that is a really big point towards Trixie saying the truth about her powers. The unreliability could come from Trixie having absolutely no idea what she is doing, having no-one to teach her how.
Visegrad Relay's gone dark. Noble Team is being sent in to investigate and get the relay back online.
Looks like it's time for Vale to declare the Winter Contingency and... oh, wait, wrong franchise.
All joking aside, I appreciate the Halo: Reach references.
well this was a delight of a chapter.
It wriggled in Twilight’s grip, struggling to get free. “Is this your cat?”
I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be trixie holding the cat.
10677815
Well, it's a little late, but I would ad to your point that this could explain the lack of real magic of the Unicorn Trixie.
Before I finish this chapter.
Okay this is screaming Halo Reach to me, and I thought last chapters comment was gonna be a reference to some book but humored the Halo anyhow. I swear what is gonna happen…
Edit:
AHHHHH